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Title: The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision by Henry Kamen ISBN: 0-300-07880-3 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.80 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (20 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: best introduction to the Spanish Inquisition available
Comment: Kamen admirably doesn't attempt to answer all of the many questions that the Spanish Inquisition brings up. Neither does he attempt to reduce it to a simple explanation. Instead he shows us many aspects of the complicated history of the most famous tribunal in the world. Kamen's work is even handed and attempts to understand the Spanish Inquisition on a historical rather than polemic basis.
Kamen's book does fall down in two ways however. At times his arguments seem weak. For instance, in his discussion of inquisitorial censoring and its affect on Spanish literature he uses book sellers in Barcelona in an attempt to show that it the index of banned books had little effect. However, in other parts of the book he repeatedly points out in Catalan in general and Barcelona in specific the Inquisition had little power. Kamen also fails to give any kind of comparison of Spanish literary output before and after the index.
Kamen's second weakness is his failure to put the Spanish Inquisition in context. To a certain extent this is understandable. The book is already over 300 pages, not counting end notes, and a line needs to be drawn somewhere. However, it leaves out any details of the medieval inquisitions that were the basis for the Spanish Inquisition. It also doesn't do a very good job of comparing the Inquisition to other tribunals and judicial systems.
It also would have been nice if Kamen's final chapter "Inventing the Inquisition" had done a better job of explaining how the mythology of the Inquisition grew to be. For what it's worth, Edward Peters' Inquisition delves into many of these issues in more detail.
One note regarding the reader below from Florida. He recommends Jean Plaidy's Spanish Inquisition. It is worth noting that Plaidy's books are 40 years out of date and includes none of the wave of research that was came out in the 70s. For instance, Plaidy contends that the Isabella and Ferdinand "were determined to have a unified country, and they did not believe this ambition could be achieved unless all their subjects accepted one religion." This contention is hard to support given that Ferdinand and Isabella allowed Muslims to exist in their kingdom for 20 years after they forced Jews to convert or be exiled. It wasn't until the rule of Charles V that Muslims were given the choice between baptism and exile.
Rating: 5
Summary: this book is great
Comment: Given the fact that Henry Kamen is Jewish himself, further adds to the objectiveness of this book. The spanish inquisition is often perpetuated as true when the members perpetuating it often have a very small understanding of the actual facts. Henry kamen, in this book, does a wonderful job of using facts and statistics in proving that the Spanish Inquisition was not what most people think.
I would also like to recommend Edward Peters, "Inquisition", who as a University of Pennsylvania professor, expels the myths and continues to show the true nature of the Inquisition. Show how the myths started and continued to multiply to laughable numbers.
Both books should be on the shelf of any objective person investigating the history of the inquisition.
Rating: 4
Summary: Fine Starter for Bewildering Period
Comment: I own a reprint of Kamen's original book of this title and the revised history book and they are superb starters for the period in question. Previous histories of the Spanish Inquisition focused on the more salacious anecdotal evidence. Lea's masterful book, long the standard, is terribly flawed because of his research. Lea's sources were largely English and French. England was a Protestant country that was at war with Catholic Spain and France, an emerging (Catholic) power was envious of Spain and needed to drive it down for colonial purposes in the new world. Therefore, Lea's sources were largely based on the propaganda of rivals. A previous review recommended books by Jean Plaidy, but Plaidy (aka Victoria Holt, etc) is a novelist. I have not read Plaidy's works so cannot assess them. I don't even know if they are novels. And in the past novelists have written servicable histories. But a novelist will still have his eye on the salacious, trying to shape raw facts into a story (if they use primary sources at all). There is no conflict of interest in using Vatican sources for the Inquisition as the Spanish Inquisition was Catholic, although a case may be made that it was guided more by "secular" governmental authorities (Torquemada was the confessor of Isabella of Aragon before being head of the inquisition). It's always hard to find that things one always believed are incorrect, and Kamen's presentation of the Spanish Inquisition may shatter long-held illusions. (I'm surprised the reviewer who recommended the Plaidy book didn't say Kamen was wrong because he didn't say Inquisitors had to be clad in red, wear flight goggles, and that Kamen never mentioned the dreaded Comfy Chair. Kamen presents a Spanish Inquisition Nobody Expects!
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Title: Inquisition by Edward M. Peters ISBN: 0520066308 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1989 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Empire : How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763 by Henry Kamen ISBN: 0060194766 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Spanish Inquisition by Cecil Roth ISBN: 0393002551 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 November, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain by B. Netanyahu ISBN: 0940322390 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $37.50 |
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Title: Imperial Spain 1469-1716 by J. H. Elliott ISBN: 0141007036 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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