Through Cracks in the Wall

Recent comparative, interdisciplinary scholarship has underscored the Inquisition’s function in the imperial and colonial Iberian world, particularly in relation to the development of modernity. This book illustrates and enhances these debates on the Inquisition’s relationship to imperialism, colonialism, and modernity through specific case studies of New Christians who became the target of the Inquisition. Drawing on research in the archives of the Spanish and the Portuguese Inquisition in different parts of the Iberian Atlantic World, it analyzes literary writings and inquisitorial testimonies produced by individuals of Jewish heritage who lived in the Iberian Atlantic world during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and brings to light the direct and mediated discourse produced by New Christians, revealing the still veiled contributions of an important but understudied ethnic and social group.