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

About the Book

Offering a new interpretation of Spanish religious heresies, the book reexamines the long-term consequences of forced baptisms by considering conversos, alumbrados, and a broader galaxy of radical thinkers in relation to contemporary legal changes, theological debates, and social conflicts.

Book Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Stefania Pastore is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy). She has published widely on the history of religious minorities and dissent in Iberia and Italy, and most recently Doubt to Unbelief: Forms of Skepticism in the Iberian World, co-edited with Mercedes García-Arenal (2019).