Book tells how a woman fought the Spanish Inquisition

[Ojo_Feliz]

This book sounds interesting, not only for the level of detail, but because it concerns the Inquisition as it was conducted in the New World.

Doña Teresa Aguilera y Roche was a privileged, educated, tenacious and outspoken woman who was not afraid to voice her complaints about living in what she considered a hardship outpost in dusty Santa Fe.

In the mid-1600s, though, those complaints combined with her misunderstood ways – not to mention the hardball politics of the day that pitted state against church – brought her under the scrutiny of the Spanish Inquisition, whose reach crossed an ocean into the Americas.

Frances Levine, director of the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors from 2002-14, brings the little-known story to light in “Doña Teresa Confronts the Spanish Inquisition: A Seventeenth-Century New Mexico Drama” (296 pp. University of Oklahoma Press), scheduled for release in July.

abqjournal.com/777439/facing-the-inquisition-in-new-mexico.html

I am a little concerned about the tone of the book, as I am not familiar with the author’s writings and the subject matter sometimes stirs extreme emotions. However, as a professional historian, perhaps the author takes objectivity seriously.

 

[JurisPrudens]

This book sounds interesting, not only for the level of detail, but because it concerns the Inquisition as it was conducted in the New World.

abqjournal.com/777439/facing-the-inquisition-in-new-mexico.html

I am a little concerned about the tone of the book, as I am not familiar with the author’s writings and the subject matter sometimes stirs extreme emotions. However, as a professional historian, perhaps the author takes objectivity seriously.

I think, the advertisement exaggerates the contents.

 

[John_Lazarus]

Levine’s book mentions an attempt by a Chiapas bishop to ban chocolate-drinking during Mass that ended with angry women severely beating him.

I know I shouldn’t laugh, but … it just seemed so ridiculous.

 

[Mintaka]

I don’t know much about it, but I know there was a lot of controversy about chocolate.

See, originally people were drinking it the Mexican/Aztec way, which was bitter. They drank it as a health supplement or a medicine, so it was permissible to drink it during Lent and under certain fasting conditions.

Then the Basques invented the idea of chocolate mixed with milk or cream, and sweetened with sugar or honey. Chocolate candy was also invented. Suddenly, chocolate was clearly not a Lenten fasting drink or a medicine. Bishops and priests wanted to change the rules. Laypeople tried to apply the old rule to super-sugar drinks and food. Conflict!

Unfortunately, I don’t have any primary sources about this. I just know it was a thing.

 

[claymcdermott]

That book sounds awesome

 

[Ojo_Feliz]

Unfortunately, I don’t have any primary sources about this. I just know it was a thing.

This isn’t from a primary source, but from a magazine published by the Museum of New Mexico:

Chocolate as prepared by the Mayas and the Aztecs was not immediately adopted into their New World cuisine by Spanish settlers and does not seem to have been exported to Spain until at least a generation or more after conquest. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Church began deliberating its proper use. Reportedly, Spanish women had a particular passion for the bitter drink, and its deep brown color cast it among foods that were considered offensive, if not downright sinful, and therefore forbidden. For a time Jesuits ruled chocolate a drink, and therefore not forbidden during Lent or days of fasting. Dominicans took the opposite view. Franciscans, through the works of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, reported in detail on the Aztec use of cacao and chocolate.

By 1636 the properties attributed to chocolate had become the subject of rousing debates after publication of a treatise in Spain on chocolate’s properties, preparations, and moral effects. It was considered food if it was prepared with milk, eggs, or maize, as these ingredients added nourishing substance to a mere beverage. Another round of debates in the mid-1640s permitted maize but not breadcrumbs, chickpeas, or other species of beans. If water was the only ingredient added, chocolate was to be treated as a beverage, like wine, and therefore was permitted during days of fasting.

This still did not end the theological discussion. In the 1730s, an unnamed Carmelite theologian raised the issue of intent.3 If, this treatise argued, chocolate made with water was taken to quench thirst or for medicinal purposes, it was not seen as breaking the fast. But if chocolate was taken as a form of nourishment, then indeed the fast was broken, and it was therefore sinful. While the Carmelite argument noted that chocolate was known to have medicinal properties, the author was more disturbed that chocolate aroused sensuality.

elpalacio.org/articles/winter12/donateresa.pdf

The magazine article, incidentally, touches upon Doña Teresa and her trial

 

[anon67074017]

I wonder what Traditionalist Catholics would think of this book.

 

[claymcdermott]

Dont go there man. You are putting out troll bait. That is open unrelated flame war ammunition.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

She may have fought it…but the real question is did she EXPECT it!?

 

[claymcdermott]

HoosierDaddy, HA!