Gendered Crime and Punishment: Women and/in the Hispanic Inquisitions by Stacey Schlau (review)

This wide-ranging book, based on print and archival sources, examines cases involving women tried for heresy before the Inquisition in Spain and the New World from the early sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth centuries. Schlau argues that hegemonic ideas about women’s intellectual and moral weakness resulted in the “gendering” of crime and punishment. Although men appeared more often than women before the Holy Office, the latter were treated quite severely if found guilty of serious crimes. Furthermore, women were charged disproportionately with certain offenses, such as feigned sanctity and sorcery. A major contention is that at the heart of inquisitorial justice lay the will to repress women’s gender non-conformity—claims of spiritual authority, insubordination, or unruly sexuality. Nevertheless, Schlau takes pains to stress that women were not necessarily passive before the Inquisition. Some mounted successful legal defenses; others availed themselves of strategic submissive gender performances. Ironically, inquisitorial trials gave some women a voice, that is, the opportunity to express discontent, justify their actions, or simply leave a record of their existence.

Chapter one begins with the fascinating case of María de Zárate, an Old Christian woman charged with judaizing in Mexico in 1656. Recognizing the difficulties of interpreting testimonies taken under duress, Schlau nevertheless makes a convincing argument that Zárate had indeed converted to Judaism, possibly motivated by her devotion to her husband. Despite substantial evidence that the main witness against her was a mortal enemy (whose testimony should, according to inquisitorial procedures, be disqualified), María was sentenced to abjuración de levi and reclusion as an unpaid worker in a charity hospital. Bernarda Manuel, Portuguese, a woman tried for the same crime in Castile in 1650, attempted unsuccessfully to use the defense that her alleged offenses were a result of obeying her husband. She was sentenced to life imprisonment. (Here, Schlau might have noted that such sentences were seldom enforced for more than a few years.) María Ana de Castro, the last person executed for judaizing in Peru in 1736, provides her third case study. Schlau argues that Castro’s irregular sexual history (she was known as a beautiful courtesan) contributed to the inquisitors’ harsh judgment. This may be so, but a more important factor is that Castro had been tried previously for bigamy, and during this earlier trial she had confessed to unknowing participation as a child in Jewish funeral rites. Thus at her second trial she was sentenced as a relapsed heretic. Despite this omission, these cases support Schlau’s conclusion that the inquisitors considered crypto-Judaism a serious heresy and that legal arguments or rhetorical strategies that might have worked for lesser offenses were ineffective when the charge was crypto-Judaism. Here, a comparative perspective would have been useful. Many Old Christian women were charged with minor verbal offenses (such as declaring that having intercourse with a prostitute was not a sin). In the trial summaries that local tribunals were required to submit to the Suprema, it is not unusual to find the explanation that a particular case did not result in a harsher sentences because the accused was a foolish, ignorant woman—and an Old Christian. Caste, gender, and the perceived seriousness of the heresy worked together in ways that deserve further scrutiny.

Chapter two compares the fate of two pious laywomen: María de Cazalla (1487-?), who was accused of a variety of Lutheran, Erasmian, and Illuminist errors before the Toledo tribunal, and Luisa de Melgarejo (1578-1651), an acolyte of Rose of Lima, charged with Illuminism and pretense of sanctity in the tribunal of Peru. Despite being separated by a century in time and an ocean in space, Schlau finds important parallels. Both were married (unlike most beatas), well-educated, and well-connected in elite circles. Despite their gender non-conformity (they claimed religious authority for themselves), neither received a harsh sentence. María was absolved, but required to pay a hefty fine...