The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision by Henry Kamen (review)

BOOK REVIEWS625 praelibate de eius e Mediolano translatione (Sigs. A[i]'- [iii]v; Renaudet, Préréforme et humanisme à Paris [1494-1517], p. 552, n. 2, suggests Lyons as the place of publication sometime after November, 1512, and notes this edition in the Vatican collection). Landi also fails to note or cite my "Healing of the Pisan Schism" (1984, 1993), which contains important information and transcription of documents, e.g., detailing Leo X's efforts to have former conciliarists repent of their "heresy." Landi ends his account with Francis I's successful campaign, overcoming conciliarist resistance, to have the parlements of France register the Concordat of Bologna and thus terminate any significant political support for conciliarism. His claim that the collégial exercise of authority in the Church remains to this day an unresolved problem ignores the various collégial structures (e.g., synods of bishops, regional and national conferences of bishops, priest senates, parish councils, etc.) introduced into the Catholic Church after Vatican Council II. Nelson H. Minnich The Catholic University ofAmerica Early Modern European The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision. By Henry Kamen. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; New Haven: Yale University Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 369. $35.00.) The dust jacket correctly notes that "thirty-five years ago Kamen wrote a study of the Inquisition that received high praise." But nowhere, not even in its bibliography (which includes four other books published by Kamen since 1980), does it mention Kamen's 1985 work, published by Indiana University Press, entitled Inquisition and Society in Spain in the 16th and 17th Centuries (a revised Spanish version appeared one year later). The author's unusual act of self-censorship seems oddly appropriate in a world-class expert on an institution which boasted old Europe's most effective censorship machinery. Because a great deal of scholarship, much of it good scholarship, has appeared in this past dozen years, the work reviewed here represents exactly what its subtitle suggests: it is an extensive revision of Kamen's previous book, which in turn was a major reworking of Kamen's original book on the Spanish Inquisition from the 1960's. A quick comparison should help scholars and libraries who own the 1985 Kamen (or its 1986 Spanish version) decide whether or not to purchase the 1998 edition. Both books are almost exactly the same length and divided into fourteen chapters, most of which bear either the same or very similar titles in 1998, although often in different order; one of them (chapter 7 in 1985 and 1 1 in 1998), dealing with Spain's notorious "purity of blood" laws, actually has very little to do with the Inquisition, which neither originated these laws nor applied them consistently. Between 1985 and 1998, Kamen has rewritten a great deal of his 626BOOK REVIEWS text in order to produce an updating of what was then and is now the standard English-language synthesis about Spain's notorious Holy Office. For example, Kamen's first chapter is entirely new, while his second, although approximately the same length as before,has expanded from 48 footnotes to 1 13, primarily because of the volume of work commemorating the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of Spanish Jewry. Other chapters about topics less intensively studied in recent years have been less thoroughly reworked, but even those on the Moriscos or on inquisitorial trials and punishments have kept only half of the earlier text and footnotes. Kamen's bibliography includes thirty titles published since 1985, and his notes suggest how often he has drawn information from some recent authors, including the father of Israel's former prime minister and also this reviewer. Diligent as he is, however, even Kamen can't read everything, and his bibliography omits a few important recent books, includingJaime Contreras ' Sotos contra Riquelmes (Madrid, 1992) or Stephen Haliczer's Sexuality in the Confessional (NewYork, 1996). A great deal of Kamen's earlier arguments remain from his previous book, usually in reinforced form; he simply jettisons outdated information. His most fundamental thesis (implicit in the title of his 1985 book) lies near the end: An enormous amount of data has been produced by researchers, but only limited progress has been...