Barbara Fuchs is a professor of Spanish and English at UCLA.Mercedes García-Arenal is a research professor at Grupo de Investigación de Historia Cultural del Mediterráneo.

"How did theology, medicine, law, natural science, exegesis and literature respond to the rising demand for credibility and truth? All nine essays in this volume adopt an approach we could call case-based, a CHOICE that renders the individual articles particularly intriguing."- Vincenzo Lavenia, Università di Bologna (Journal of Jesuit Studies) "Barbara Fuchs and Mercedes García-Arenal have distinguished themselves, not only as gifted scholars but also as notably successful collaborators and editors of collections of essays. Their previous volumes of essays demonstrate a consistently high quality of scholarship and a coherence of thematic focus. The Quest for Certainty in Early Modern Europe: From Inquisition to Inquiry, 1550–1700, is a worthy addition to this corpus." - Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, Principia College (Journal of Modern History)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionMercedes García-ArenalI. Staging Inquisitions: Nature, Culture, Religion1. Trusting the "I": Picaresque Confession and Early Modern ScepticismBarbara Fuchs2. Feeling Certainty, Performing Sincerity: The Emotional Hermeneutics of Truth in Inquisitorial and Theatrical PracticePaul Michael Johnson3. Conflicting Certainties or Different Truths: Healers and Inquisition in Baroque SpainMaría Luz López Terrada4. True Peste and False Doors: Medical and Legal Discourse during the Great Castilian Plague, 1596–1601Ruth MacKay5. Policing Talent in Early Modern Jesuit Rome: Difference, Self-Knowledge, and Career Specialization Javier Patiño LoiraII. Negotiating History and Theology6. Stolen Saint: Relic Theft and Relic Identification in Seventeenth-Century RomeA. Katie Stirling-Harris7. Baptizing "Uncertain Human Beings"? Probabilist Theology and the Question of the Beginning of Human Life in Seventeenth-Century CatholicismStefania Tutino8. Truth and Human History in Melchor Cano’s De locis theologicis Fernando Rodríguez Mediano9. Ambivalent Origins: Isaac La Peyrère and the Politics of Historical Certainty in Seventeenth-Century EuropeCarlos Cañete

Barbara Fuchs is a professor of Spanish and English at UCLA.Mercedes García-Arenal is a research professor at Grupo de Investigación de Historia Cultural del Mediterráneo.

"How did theology, medicine, law, natural science, exegesis and literature respond to the rising demand for credibility and truth? All nine essays in this volume adopt an approach we could call case-based, a CHOICE that renders the individual articles particularly intriguing."- Vincenzo Lavenia, Università di Bologna (Journal of Jesuit Studies) "Barbara Fuchs and Mercedes García-Arenal have distinguished themselves, not only as gifted scholars but also as notably successful collaborators and editors of collections of essays. Their previous volumes of essays demonstrate a consistently high quality of scholarship and a coherence of thematic focus. The Quest for Certainty in Early Modern Europe: From Inquisition to Inquiry, 1550–1700, is a worthy addition to this corpus." - Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, Principia College (Journal of Modern History)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionMercedes García-ArenalI. Staging Inquisitions: Nature, Culture, Religion1. Trusting the "I": Picaresque Confession and Early Modern ScepticismBarbara Fuchs2. Feeling Certainty, Performing Sincerity: The Emotional Hermeneutics of Truth in Inquisitorial and Theatrical PracticePaul Michael Johnson3. Conflicting Certainties or Different Truths: Healers and Inquisition in Baroque SpainMaría Luz López Terrada4. True Peste and False Doors: Medical and Legal Discourse during the Great Castilian Plague, 1596–1601Ruth MacKay5. Policing Talent in Early Modern Jesuit Rome: Difference, Self-Knowledge, and Career Specialization Javier Patiño LoiraII. Negotiating History and Theology6. Stolen Saint: Relic Theft and Relic Identification in Seventeenth-Century RomeA. Katie Stirling-Harris7. Baptizing "Uncertain Human Beings"? Probabilist Theology and the Question of the Beginning of Human Life in Seventeenth-Century CatholicismStefania Tutino8. Truth and Human History in Melchor Cano’s De locis theologicis Fernando Rodríguez Mediano9. Ambivalent Origins: Isaac La Peyrère and the Politics of Historical Certainty in Seventeenth-Century EuropeCarlos Cañete

Barbara Fuchs is a professor of Spanish and English at UCLA.Mercedes García-Arenal is a research professor at Grupo de Investigación de Historia Cultural del Mediterráneo.

"How did theology, medicine, law, natural science, exegesis and literature respond to the rising demand for credibility and truth? All nine essays in this volume adopt an approach we could call case-based, a CHOICE that renders the individual articles particularly intriguing."- Vincenzo Lavenia, Università di Bologna (Journal of Jesuit Studies) "Barbara Fuchs and Mercedes García-Arenal have distinguished themselves, not only as gifted scholars but also as notably successful collaborators and editors of collections of essays. Their previous volumes of essays demonstrate a consistently high quality of scholarship and a coherence of thematic focus. The Quest for Certainty in Early Modern Europe: From Inquisition to Inquiry, 1550–1700, is a worthy addition to this corpus." - Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, Principia College (Journal of Modern History)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionMercedes García-ArenalI. Staging Inquisitions: Nature, Culture, Religion1. Trusting the "I": Picaresque Confession and Early Modern ScepticismBarbara Fuchs2. Feeling Certainty, Performing Sincerity: The Emotional Hermeneutics of Truth in Inquisitorial and Theatrical PracticePaul Michael Johnson3. Conflicting Certainties or Different Truths: Healers and Inquisition in Baroque SpainMaría Luz López Terrada4. True Peste and False Doors: Medical and Legal Discourse during the Great Castilian Plague, 1596–1601Ruth MacKay5. Policing Talent in Early Modern Jesuit Rome: Difference, Self-Knowledge, and Career Specialization Javier Patiño LoiraII. Negotiating History and Theology6. Stolen Saint: Relic Theft and Relic Identification in Seventeenth-Century RomeA. Katie Stirling-Harris7. Baptizing "Uncertain Human Beings"? Probabilist Theology and the Question of the Beginning of Human Life in Seventeenth-Century CatholicismStefania Tutino8. Truth and Human History in Melchor Cano’s De locis theologicis Fernando Rodríguez Mediano9. Ambivalent Origins: Isaac La Peyrère and the Politics of Historical Certainty in Seventeenth-Century EuropeCarlos Cañete