Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition by Luis R. Corteguera (review)

This book is the result of a four-year investigation by the Mexican Inquisition to find out the author or authors of an incident that took place in a small town near Puebla in 1578. Under cover of the night, an effigy wearing a sambenito had been nailed to the door of the Franciscan monastery of Tecamachalco. The effigy held in one hand a spindle and a distaff and in the other a sign with the name of a local trader. Clearly, the message conveyed by the effigy was that the trader was either a heretic or a Jew. The Inquisition tribunal in Mexico City quickly intervened, not to ascertain whether the trader was a heretic or a Jew, but to make clear that the symbols of the Inquisition could not be used so lightly. It would take the tribunal four long years to find the culprit of this transgression. After the investigation was concluded, it appeared that the author of the defamatory effigy had been a royal notary who was having an affair with a woman who had been offended by the merchant. It was also evident that the merchant, for one reason or another, was disliked by many townspeople, a fact that led the inquisitorial investigation to more than one dead end.

The bulk of Death by Effigy consists of a description and discussion of the many twists and turns of the investigation. The prologue discusses the historical context in which Tecamachalco and the Mexican Inquisition operated in the sixteenth century. In an epilogue, Corteguera reflects on some of the most significant aspects of the case, focusing in particular on the complex religious and cultural symbolism of the Tecamachalco effigy and on the powerful impact of rumor, gossip, and defamation in colonial and early modern societies. Corteguera poses the question of why the resentful notary had chosen to defame his hated enemy symbolically instead of trying to beat him up or even kill him. The author concludes that, in the complex symbolic culture of the period, defaming a man was seen as being worse than killing him.

One of the most interesting, and revelatory, aspects of this book is to discover how the Mexican inquisitors dealt with the question of torture. The use of torture was not peculiar to the Inquisition but was part of the customary judicial practices of pre-modern Europe—the system of proof required the use of torture. In that regard, this case study shows that, contrary to the popular image of the Inquisition as a tribunal that was always quick to torture its prisoners, the Mexican inquisitors showed great restraint. For the first three and a half years of the investigation, they thought they did not have enough evidence to allow the use of torture with any of the suspects. When the inquisitors finally decided that they had enough evidence because of some new developments in the case, the archbishop of Mexico City was included in the meeting at which the tribunal was to vote on whether the use of torture was warranted—and even here the opinions were divided. The text also shows that the use of torture was highly regulated and that some of the accused engaged in wild contradictions while being interrogated under torture. We also learn that the accused had defense lawyers, a contradiction to the idea that the people tried by the Inquisition had to face the tribunal alone and defenseless.

This book will be an excellent resource for classroom use, as students will be able to follow, step by step, the typical procedures of the Spanish Inquisition. The author has included in his discussion numerous excerpts of the original document translated into English. With this book scholars and students will have the opportunity to examine a complete case of the Inquisition in great detail without the drudgery of poring through the hundreds of pages of repetitions and legalese...