Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Inquisition
- Cambridge Companions to History
- The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Inquisition
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Introduction: Beginnings, Endings, Myths
- Part I The Institution
- Part II Targets
- 5 Conversos
- 6 Moriscos
- 7 Alumbrados
- 8 Protestants
- 9 Old Christians
- 10 Texts
- Part III Geographical Reach
- Index
- References
9 - Old Christians
from Part II - Targets
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2025
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Inquisition
- Cambridge Companions to History
- The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Inquisition
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Introduction: Beginnings, Endings, Myths
- Part I The Institution
- Part II Targets
- 5 Conversos
- 6 Moriscos
- 7 Alumbrados
- 8 Protestants
- 9 Old Christians
- 10 Texts
- Part III Geographical Reach
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter assesses the Spanish Inquisition’s treatment of so-called “Old Christians,” meaning Spaniards who allegedly had no Jewish or Muslim ancestors in their genealogies. While Old Christians convicted of serious heresy could be relaxed to the secular arm and burned at the stake, their ancestry meant that Spanish inquisitors usually interrogated them less stringently, tortured them less frequently, and penanced them more lightly. Moreover, the Spanish Inquisition did not single out Old Christians as a potentially heretical group. Instead, inquisitors typically arrested Old Christians for morals offenses -- which connoted religious error -- as part of a larger effort to discipline Spain’s Catholic population. Speech acts, bigamy, sodomy, bestiality, witchcraft, and magic committed by Old Christians preoccupied Spanish inquisitors. The Inquisition’s attention to a wide range of more prosaic crimes beyond crypto-judaizing rendered the Holy Office a constant presence in the lives of Old Christians.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Inquisition , pp. 209 - 230Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
Suggestions for Further Reading
Dedieu, Jean-Pierre. “Les quatre temps de l’Inquisition.” In Bennassar, Bartolomé, ed.,L’Inquisition espagnole XVe- XIXe siècles. Hachette, 1979.Google Scholar
García-Arenal, Mercedes. “Creating Conversos: Genealogy and Identity as Historiographical Problems (After a Recent Book by Ángel Alcalá).” Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 38, no. 1 (2013): 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homza, Lu Ann. Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates: Witch-Hunting in Navarre, 1608–1614. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ireton, Chloe. “‘They Are Blacks of the Caste of Black Christians’: Old Christian Black Blood in the Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Iberian Atlantic.” Hispanic American Historical Review 97 (2017): 579–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Christina H. The Anxiety of Sameness in Early Modern Spain. Manchester University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Martz, Linda. “Pure Blood Statutes in Sixteenth Century Toledo: Implementation as Opposed to Adoption.” Sefarad 54 (1994): 83–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nalle, Sara T. “Inquisitors, Priests, and the People during the Catholic Reformation in Spain.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987): 557–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sicroff, Albert A. Les controverses des status de “pureté de sang” en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe siècle. Didier, 1960.Google Scholar
Bibliography
Behrend‐Martínez, Edward. “Taming Don Juan: Limiting Masculine Sexuality in Counter-Reformation Spain.” Gender & History 24 (2012): 333–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berco, Cristian. Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status: Men, Sodomy, and Society in Spain’s Golden Age. University of Toronto Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bethencourt, Francisco. Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century. Princeton University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Blázquez Miguel, Juan. “Brujas e inquisidores en la América colonial (1569–1820).” Espacio, tiempo y forma. Serie IV, Historia moderna 7 (1994): 71–98.Google Scholar
Boeglin, Michel. Inquisición y Contrarreforma: El Tribunal del Santo Oficio de Sevilla (1560–1700). Ediciones Espuela de Plata, 2007.Google Scholar
Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. The University of Chicago Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Braude, Benjamin. “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods.” The William & Mary Quarterly 54 (1997): 103–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burshatin, Israel. “Written on the Body: Slave or Hermaphrodite in Sixteenth Century Spain.” In Blackmore, Josiah and Hutcheson, Gregory S., eds., Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Duke University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Dedieu, Jean-Pierre. “Le modèle sexual: la défense du mariage chrétien.” In Bennassar, Bartolomé, ed. L’Inquisition espagnole, XV’-XIX’ siècle. Paris, 1979.Google Scholar
Dedieu, Jean-Pierre “Les quatre temps de l’Inquisition.” In Bennassar, Bartolomé, ed. L’Inquisition espagnole, XV’-XIX’ siècle. Paris, 1979.Google Scholar
Flynn, Maureen. “Blasphemy and the Play of Anger in Sixteenth-Century Spain.” Past & Present 149 (1995): 29–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gacto Fernández, Enrique. “El delito de bigamia y la Inquisición española.” Anuario de historia del derecho español 57 (1987): 465–92.Google Scholar
Gacto Fernández, Enrique “Las circunstancias atenuantes de la responsabilidad criminal en la doctrina jurídica de la Inquisición.” Estudios penales y criminológicos 15 (1991): 7–78.Google Scholar
García-Arenal, Mercedes. “Creating Conversos: Genealogy and Identity as Historiographical Problems (After a Recent Book by Ángel Alcalá).” Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 38, no. 1 (2013): 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuentes, García, María, José. “Inquisición y sexualidad en el reino de Granada en el siglo xvi.” Chronica Nova 13 (1982): 207–29.Google Scholar
Gelabertó Vilagran, Martí. “Inquisición y blasfemias en la Cataluña de los siglos XVI y XVII.” Pedralbes: Revista d’Històra Moderna 28 (2008): 651–76.Google Scholar
Gelabertó Vilagrán, Martí “Mentes sacrílegas, palabras impías. Ateísmo y blasfemia en Cataluña, siglos XVI-XVIII.” Revista de ciencias de las religiones 19 (2014): 93–125.Google Scholar
Homza, Lu Ann, ed. and trans. The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources. Hackett, 2006.Google Scholar
Homza, Lu Ann. Village Infernos and Witches’ Advocates: Witch-Hunting in Navarre, 1608–1614. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ireton, Chloe. “‘They Are Blacks of the Caste of Black Christians’: Old Christian Black Blood in the Sixteenth-and Early Seventeenth-Century Iberian Atlantic.” Hispanic American Historical Review 97 (2017): 579–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordan, Mark D. The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology. The University of Chicago Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Jurado Revaliente, Iván. Cultura oral en la edad moderna. Instituto Fernando el Católico, 2013.Google Scholar
Lee, Christina H. The Anxiety of Sameness in Early Modern Spain. Manchester University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Martínez-Dávila, Roger Louis. Creating Conversos: The Carvajal–Santa María Family in Early Modern Spain. University of Notre Dame Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martínez Millán, José. “La Inquisición contra la bigamia: en defensa del orden social.” Edad de Oro 38 (2019): 173–95.Google Scholar
Martínez Peñas, Leandro. “La reordenación jurídica de la Inquisición del año 1500: Las instrucciones de Diego de Deza.” Isidorianum 31 (2022): 75–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martz, Linda. “Pure Blood Statutes in Sixteenth Century Toledo: Implementation as Opposed to Adoption.” Sefarad 54 (1994): 83–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Megged, Amos. “Magic, Popular Medicine and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Mexico: The Case of Isabel de Montoya.” Social History 19 (1994): 189–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monter, E. William. Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily. Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Morales Estévez, R. “El algoritmo de la hechicería: Análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo del archivo inquisitorial toledano.” Edad de Oro 39 (2020): 43–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreno Mengíbar, Andrés, and Vázquez García, Francisco. “Poderes y prostitución en España: el caso de Sevilla.” Criticón 69 (1997): 33–49.Google Scholar
Nalle, Sara T. “Inquisitors, Priests, and the People during the Catholic Reformation in Spain.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987): 557–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Netanyahu, Benzion. The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-century Spain. Random House, 1995.Google Scholar
Nirenberg, David. “Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain.” Past & Present 174 (2002): 3–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortega, Sánchez, Helena, María. “Sorcery and Eroticism in Love Magic.” In Perry, Mary Elizabeth and Anne, J. Cruz, eds., Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World. University of California Press 1991.Google Scholar
Sicroff, Albert A. Les controverses des status de “pureté de sang” en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe siècle. Didier, 1960.Google Scholar
Soyer, François. Ambiguous Gender in Early Modern Spain and Portugal: Inquisitors, Doctors and the Transgression of Gender Norms. Brill, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tausiet, María. Urban Magic in Early Modern Spain: Abracadabra Omnipotens. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.Google Scholar
Villa-Flores, Javier. “To Lose One’s Soul: Blasphemy and Slavery in New Spain, 1596–1669.” Hispanic American Historical Review 82 (2002): 435–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AA
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
The HTML of this chapter
complies with version 2.1 of the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG), covering newer accessibility requirements and improved
user experiences and achieves the intermediate
(AA)
level of WCAG compliance, covering a wider range of accessibility requirements.
Content Navigation
Table of contents navigation
Allows you to navigate directly to chapters, sections, or non‐text items through a linked table of contents, reducing the need for extensive scrolling.
Allows you to navigate directly to chapters, sections, or non‐text items through a linked table of contents, reducing the need for extensive scrolling.
Index navigation
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
Reading Order & Textual Equivalents
Single logical reading order
You will encounter all content (including footnotes, captions, etc.) in a clear, sequential flow, making it easier to follow with assistive tools like screen readers.
You will encounter all content (including footnotes, captions, etc.) in a clear, sequential flow, making it easier to follow with assistive tools like screen readers.
Short alternative textual descriptions
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
Visual Accessibility
Use of colour is not sole means of conveying information
You will still understand key ideas or prompts without relying solely on colour, which is especially helpful if you have colour vision deficiencies.
You will still understand key ideas or prompts without relying solely on colour, which is especially helpful if you have colour vision deficiencies.
Structural and Technical Features
ARIA roles provided
You gain clarity from ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles and attributes, as they help assistive technologies interpret how each part of the content functions.
You gain clarity from ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles and attributes, as they help assistive technologies interpret how each part of the content functions.