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Mexican Inquisition Materials in Spanish Archives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Richard E. Greenleaf
Richard E. Greenleaf*
Affiliation:
University of the Americas, México, D. F
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Extract

Although ninety per cent of the documentation of the Mexican Holy Office of the Inquisition is to be found in the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, a critical group of manuscripts must be consulted in Spain if the researcher is to study the Mexican institution effectively. These records are contained in the archive of the Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisición and in the plethora of royal documents emanating from and arriving in the Council of the Indies. Unfortunately the manuscripts are scattered among the three great archives in the Iberian peninsula: Archivo de Simancas at Valladolid, Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid, and Archivo General de Indias in Sevilla. The Simancas and Sevilla documents on the Mexican Inquisition are relatively sparse; but the AHN houses the extant archive of the Suprema and is a required visit for any investigator in Mexican Inquisition materials from 1571 to 1820.

Type
Inter-American Notes
Information
The Americas , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , April 1964 , pp. 416 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1964

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References

1 General guides and specific catalogues exist for the three great archives and need not be discussed here. The most useful over-all guide for the professional investigator is Francisco Rodríguez Marín, Histórica, Guía y Archivos, Descripción de los, Bibliotecas, y España, Museos de, Sección de Archivos: Archivos Históricos (Madrid, 1916)Google Scholar. Specific guides for Inquisition materials will be cited throughout this essay on sources.

2 In order to trace the transit of Mexican Inquisition materials from the original depositories to their present location, it is useful to know the following three works: Francisco Romero de Castilla y Perosso, “Extracto del inventorio de los papeles de Inquisición (que procedentes del Antiguo Consejo ... se trasladaron al Archivo Gen eral de Simancas en el año 1850),” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas, y Museos, , primera época, III (1873), 118, 136, 149, 168, 183Google Scholar. Idem, “Inquisición de Valencia,” a manuscript cited and copied by Rodríguez Marín, made by Romero from the archives of Alcalá and Simancas. Important for a knowledge of papers that were in Simancas. The copy was made in 1903 from an original in the library of Don Manuel Danvila. Campillo, Miguel Gómez del and Fresca, Francisco, Catálogo de las Causas contra la Fe seguidas ante el Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de Toledo y de las Informaciones Genealógicas de los pretendientes á oficios del mismo. Con un Apéndice en que se detallen los fondos existentes en este Archivo de los demás Tribunales de España, Italia y América (Madrid, 1903)Google Scholar. Obviously these materials, most of which are now in the AHN in Madrid are of critical import for the study of the Mexican Inquisition.

3 Medina, José Toribio, Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en México (México, 1954)Google Scholar. Lea, Henry C., The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies (New York, 1908)Google Scholar.

4 The present author is researching and writing a history of the two searching visitations of the Tribunal of the Mexican Holy Office.