An Invisible Thread: Heresy, Mass Conversions, and the Inquisition in the Kingdom of Castile (1449-1559)

Download or read book An Invisible Thread: Heresy, Mass Conversions, and the Inquisition in the Kingdom of Castile (1449-1559) written by Stefania Pastore and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-11-21 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Toledo in 1529, a converso named Pedro de Cazalla declared that the connection between man and God was but a thread and that it should not be mediated by the Church. Hardly an isolated phenomenon, Cazalla’s inner spirituality was a widespread response to the increasing repression of religious dissent enacted by the Inquisition. Forced baptisms of Jews and Muslims had profound effects across Spanish society, leading famous intellectuals as well as ordinary men and women to rethink their sense of belonging to the Christian community and their forms of religiosity. Thus, in this book, early modern Iberia emerges as a laboratory of European-wide transformations.