All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (review)

Schwartz's new study asks a simple question, but one with significant ramifications: To what degree did tolerance exist in the Iberian world during the centuries when the Inquisition operated? Historians have long grappled with this issue, but only recently have their (often negative) answers not been clouded by shadows of the Black Legend. As one of the most respected historians of the early modern Iberian world, and in particular Brazil, Schwartz is above reproach on this matter, and his analysis merits close consideration. The fundamental argument that he makes in All Can Be Saved is that a constant, widely shared attitude of toleration of religious difference existed among a significant minority of the peoples in the kingdoms of Iberia and in Spanish and Portuguese America. Although it is not possible for Schwartz to gauge the precise extent to which the opinion, pithily formulated in the medieval proverb "all can be saved in their law," was shared, he offers copious evidence to prove that many commoners held a pragmatic view of salvation for those outside the Roman Church (especially Jews and Muslims). Whence, therefore, came the famed intolerance of the Spaniards and Portuguese? From the institutions of church and state, Schwartz implicitly argues, and not from popular quarters. As such, he concludes, the foundations for the rise of toleration in the modern world had been laid long before the Enlightenment era, greatly facilitating the spread of such ideas in the late eighteenth century.

How does Schwartz prove his case for popular tolerance in a social environment of deep-rooted prejudice, such as that of Spain and Portugal? Because sources produced by royal or ecclesiastical officials are of little help, he focuses on a close reading of Inquisition trials that recorded the persecution of "propositions." This legal term indicated a variety of crimes of opinion, from the condoning of sexual license to the defense of the notion that cada uno se puede salvar en su ley (each one can be saved in his law), with which Schwartz is especially concerned. He considers it the fundamental expression of a current of thought among plebeian Spaniards and Portuguese. Indeed, it is surprising that the same formulation is repeated throughout the course of three centuries in trial records deriving from tribunals in Spain, Peru, Mexico, Portugal, Colombia, and Brazil. The common refrain about the possibility for salvation outside of the Church, Schwartz contends, was widespread precisely because it mirrored the simple logic of the semi-educated or uneducated peoples who voiced it—and who were prosecuted for expressing it. That the records of the Inquisition should be the primary historical testament to this current of thought is a fitting historical irony.

Schwartz's argument will surely draw both praise and criticism, since it will overturn many claims about the intolerant attitudes supposedly pervasive in early modern Iberia and the Iberian world. He is nevertheless to be commended for contesting the Black Legend so frontally. All Can Be Saved is the work of a master historian who does not just pay lip service to the importance of the Portuguese in the Iberian Atlantic and who is deeply sensitive to early modern theology and ethnography. This book should spark a larger re-assessment of popular attitudes toward religion, not only in the Iberian Atlantic, but also in the other corners of the early modern world.