This week: new research takes the thumbscrews to an enduring image of the inquisition and its victims. Also this week: leading historians make the case for considering clothing, making a murderer of Hernán Cortés, a new history of militant Islam, and the search for Plato’s life beyond letters.
It is a familiar image: a woman in distress, surrounded by men examining her soul in a dimly lit inquisitorial chamber. Fearing torture, she confesses to crimes she never committed.
There is much to redraw here. There was certainly less torture and less arbitrariness in a medieval inquisition than has often been portrayed, and more bureaucratic record-keeping. There were fewer confessions of Satanic conspiracies and sabbaths and more down-to-earth reports of non-conformist meetings and beliefs. But what about the dimly lit inquisitorial chambers? To what extent were such spaces actually used for questioning subjects? And were women really subjected to the pressure of private interrogation by male inquisitors? Continue reading
Did Hernán Cortés Murder His First Wife? Within two months of arriving in New Spain, Catalina Suárez Marcaida, first wife of the conquistador Hernán Cortés, was dead.
‘Wahhābism’ by Cole M. Bunzel review Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement by Cole M. Bunzel is groundbreaking and deserves to reach as wide an audience as possible.
