Inquisition

The presentation on the Spanish Inquisition focused on what specifically happened in Mexico.  What I found interesting about it was how Jewish families in Mexico would deal with their faith.  She said that Jewish families would often hide their faith from their own children until they were older.  That it was a serious enough of a problem to keep this faith from your own family members was terrible to hear.  A lot of her presentation dealt with the actual violence of the auto-da-fe's or acts of faith was the punishment decided by inquisitors.  The punishments were often brutal with people frequently being burned at the stake. But the accused often were allowed to make penance in order to not be burned.
This clearly relates to the reading of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, the book has a huge problem with Catholics and you can see why Spenser would have hated the church.  Because the inquisition started 100 years before Spenser even began writing, this feud between Protestants and Catholics would have been a huge part of his life.  I think the violence of the epic can definitely be tied to the violence Protestants faced at the hands of the Catholics. It would make sense that Spenser would want to turn it around on them.
-Molly Hakso