Extra Credit Opportunity Lecture

The extra credit lecture that was offered was very interesting and different. The professor told about her research done about the spanish inquisition and specific families affected by this "El Gran Auto de fe" (sp?). This was in the 17th century colonialism time period and was a time where the inquisition would name all the prisoners and sentence them to their fate. People who were in trouble were people accused of practicing Judaism, Lutheranism and anything else that wasn't catholic. This relates to our class because in european history all of the shifting and clashing of catholics vs. protestants was very relevant and affected that time period greatly. With Mary coming in and proclaiming catholicism and punishing protestants and then elizabeth doing the opposite. We see this clash of religion throughout history and it relates to this El Gran auto de fe. These specific families the professor talked about all had unique stories and were portugese Jews. One man married a woman to move up the social class so he wouldn't be noticed as much. This relates to our class kind of in the way of peace weaving. An interesting thing i learned was that families would lie to their children and tell them that they were catholic but would really be practicing judaism or another. But it was really common for daughters to have loyalty to catholicism because the fathers would force judaism on them. The professor told really graphic ways this was done, like a female version of being circumcised where the father would cut off a part of the daughters skin on her arm and ingest it....This was a sign that the people from el gran auto de fe would look for. Also, fathers would lock up their daughters and children and force fasting upon them. As a penance people would have to wear a special garb that was very interesting. This speech was very interesting and i had no prior knowledge but it really just taught me how big of a deal the catholic vs protestant battle was.


Andrea Yarnell