¹ This account is based on de Zepeda, Rodrigo Ruiz Martínez, Relación del Auto General de la Fee celebrado … en la Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de México, Metrópoli de los Reynos y Provincias de la Nueva España (México: Por el Impresor del Secreto del Santo Oficio, 1659).Google Scholar

² In fact, the celebration of the great auto de fe or Auto General was not very frequent because the elaborate staging of the proceedings was very expensive. Their frequency depended on the discretion of the Tribunal. Moreover, the Auto General needed the presence of heretics, as they were the only ones who could give the ceremony its sense of tragedy and intensity. But heretics were always a rarity in colonial Mexico. See Alberro, Solange, Inquisición y Sociedad en México, 1571–1700 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988), pp. 77–78.Google Scholar In any case, more modest autos particulares were staged, almost every year, in the church of Saint Dominic, with all pomp and solemnity and the usual attendance of the Viceroys. Both Guijó, Gregorio de in Diario: 1648–1664 (2 vols.; México: Editorial Porrúa, 1952)Google Scholar and Robles, Antonio de in Diario de sucesos notables, 1665–1703 (3 vols.; México: Editorial Porrúa, 1946) give information on many of these smaller autos.Google Scholar

³ See Flynn, Maureen, “Mimesis of the Last Judgment: The Spanish Auto de Fe,” Sixteenth Century Journal 23:2 (1991), 281–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ See María Victoria González de Caldas, “New Images of the Holy Office in Seville: The Auto de Fe;” also Avilés, Miguel, “The Auto de Fe and the Social Model of Counter-Reformation Spain,” in Alcalá, Angel, ed. The Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind (Highland Lakes, NJ: Atlantic Research and Publications, Inc., 1987).Google Scholar

⁵ See Pagden, Anthony, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990),Google Scholar especially the introduction and chapters 1 and 2, for an analysis of the ideology and images of this imperialism. Also Elliott, John H., “Unity and Empire, 1500–1800: Spain and Europe,” in Elliott, John H., ed. The Spanish World: Civilization and Empire: Europe and the Americas; Past and Present (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991), pp. 41–55.Google Scholar

⁶ “Autos que se leyeron e hicieron en la Iglesia Mayor de esta ciudad de México el día que en ella fue jurado y recibido el Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de esta Nueva España,’ in Genaro García, “La inquisición de México, sus orígenes, jurisdicción, competencia, procesos, autos de fe, relaciones con los poderes públicos, ceremonias, etiquetas y otros hechos,” in Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México (México: Vda. de C. Bouret, 1906), vol. 5, p. 255.

⁷ de Bocanegra, Matías, Jews and the Inquisition of Mexico: The Great Auto de Fe of 1649. Translated by Liebman, Seymour B. (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1974), p. 23.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid., p. 27.

⁹ Ibid., p. 35.

¹⁰ See de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fe, pp. 16–19; and, Matías de Bocanegra, Auto General de la Fe … celebrado en la Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de México, Metrópoli de los Reynos y Provincias de la Nueva España (México: Por el impresor del secreto del Santo Oficio, 1649), pp. 14–19.Google Scholar

¹¹ Edgerton, Samuel Y., Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 15;Google Scholar see also Brandon, S.G.F., The Judgment of the Dead (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), p. 110.Google Scholar

¹² Some of the delinquents (especially the blasphemous) not only must be made to be seen as delinquents but they must be silenced as well. Thus they had gags applied “to prevent the unharnessed fury of their rabid tongues.” See Bocanegra, , Jews and the Inquisition of Mexico, p. 63.Google Scholar

¹³ A sambenito was a penitential garment to be worn in public, often for life, by those being disciplined by the Inquisition. They usually had a half-cross or the full cross of Saint Andrew painted in the front and in the back of the garment (those to be reconciled). After the offenders died, their sambenitos, with their names on them, were hung in the parish church, as a reminder of their shame and penitence. A coroza was the conical hat, similar to a miter, worn by those accused in an auto de fe.

¹⁴ Bocanegra, , Jews and the Inquisition of Mexico, p. 62.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Kamen, Henry, Inquisition and Society in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), p. 194.Google Scholar In the case of Mexico during the second half of the Seventeenth century, there were burnings at the stake in the autos celebrated in 1649, 1659, 1678 (only one person was burned), 1688 (only the effigy of one person was burned), 1699 (one person burned). Those autos where no penitents were burned took place in 1646, 1647, 1648, 1650, 1652, 1656, 1662, 1664 (May 4th), 1664 (December 7), 1668, 1683, 1696, 1700. García, Genaro, “Autos de Fe de la Inquisición de México con extractos de sus causas, 1646–1648,” Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México (México: Vda. de C. Bouret, 1910), vol. 28, pp. 31–35;Google Scholar Guijó, , Diario, vol. 1, 4, pp. 33–47, 111, 201, vol II, pp. 67–68, 124–129, 178, 207, 239;Google Scholar and, Robles, , Diario de sucesos notables, vol. 1, pp. 51, 236, vol. II, p. 39, vol. Ill, pp. 36, 79, 111.Google Scholar

¹⁶ de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fe, p. 144.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Flynn, , “Mimesis of the Last Judgement,” p. 292.Google Scholar For an analysis of the importance of the concepts of guilt and evil in Western culture, see Delumeau, Jean, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, Thirteenth–Eighteenth Centuries (New York; St. Martin’s Press, 1990).Google Scholar

¹⁸ de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fe, pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Flynn, , “Mimesis of the Last Judgment,” pp. 289–292.Google Scholar

²⁰ Bocanegra, , Jews and the Inquisition of Mexico, p. 35.Google Scholar

²¹ de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fe, pp. 148–149.Google Scholar

²² Flynn, , “Mimesis of the Last Judgement”, p. 292.Google Scholar

²³ Bocanegra, , Auto General de la Fee, pp. 160–61.Google Scholar

²⁴ de Caldas, González, “New Images of the Holy Office in Seville,” p. 270.Google Scholar

²⁵ See Dülmen, Richard van, Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1990)Google Scholar and also Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1977).Google Scholar

²⁶ Foucault, , Discipline and Punish, p. 58.Google Scholar

²⁷ Bocanegra, , Auto General de la Fe, pp. 158–59.Google Scholar

²⁸ See Dülmen, van, Theatre of Horror, p. 119,Google Scholar and Flynn, , “Mimesis of the Last Judgment,” p. 294.Google Scholar

²⁹ Bocanegra, , Jews and the Inquisition of Mexico, p. 56.Google Scholar

³⁰ de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fe, p. 24.Google Scholar

³¹ Foucault, , Discipline and Punish, p. 58.Google Scholar

³² Bocanegra, , Auto General de la Fe, p. 160.Google Scholar

³³ Foucault, , Discipline and Punish, p. 60.Google Scholar

³⁴ de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fe, pp. 43–44.Google Scholar

³⁵ Foucault, , Discipline and Punish, pp. 34, 43.Google Scholar

³⁶ See de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fe, p. 147.Google Scholar

³⁷ García, , “La Inquisición de México,” pp. 84–88;Google Scholar “Autos de Fe,” pp. 36–40, 47–48, 57–58, 77–78, 173–185.

³⁸ See Greenleaf, Richard E., “The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain: A Study in Jurisdictional Confusion,” The Americas 22:2 (October 1965), pp. 138–166;Google Scholar also de los Arcos, Roberto Moreno, “New Spain’s Inquisition for Indians from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century,” in Perry, Mary Elizabeth and Cruz, Anne J., eds., Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 23–36.Google Scholar

³⁹ Bhabha, Homi K., “The Other Question: Stereotype, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism” in his The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ ‘Relación del tercero auto particular de fee que el Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de los reynos y provincias de la Nueva España celebró … a los treinta del mes de marzo de 1648 años,’ in García, , “Autos de Fe,” p. 135.Google Scholar

⁴¹ The power of icons was all-pervasive in the minds of Early Modern peoples. Here, an icon is understood as a didactic image set in a specific location where its moral lesson can be shared by the public. See Edgerton, Samuel Y., “Icons of Justice.” Past and Present 89 (November 1980), 23–38.Google Scholar For a brief but illuminating study of the iconography of the Inquisition, see Peters, Edward, Inquisition (New York: The Free Press, 1988), pp. 221–226.Google Scholar

⁴² In this line of argument, I am following Christian Jouhaud's study of the role played by the printed accounts of the Parisian entry of Louis XIII, after his victory at La Rochelle in 1628. See “Printing the Event: From La Rochelle to Paris,” in Chartier, Roger, ed. The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 290–333.Google Scholar

⁴³ Bocanegra, , Jews and the Inquisition of Mexico, pp. 19–20.Google Scholar Similarly, de Zepeda, Ruiz dedicates his account to the Inquisitor General in the following fashion: “Los rayos de ese esclarecido sol de justicia y piedad, que con luminosos rayos de sus grandes letras, santo celo y vigilancia, tiene ilustradas las tinieblas de este nuevo mundo americano, y con la eficacia de su luz (comunicada por medio de sus tribunales del Santo Oficio) ha sido causa V. A. [the Inquisitor General] de la luz verdadera de que goza, sin que la obscurezca ni el obstinado hereje ni el pérfido judío ni otra alguna mala secta ni delicto, aunque sea de muy leve sospecha, contra la pureza de nuestra Santa Fe Católica.” Relación del Auto General de la Fe, p. 4.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ He was also the brother of the Inquisitor Francisco de Estrada y Escobedo. See below.

⁴⁵ Pedro de Estrada y Escobedo, ‘Relación sumaria del Auto Particular de Fee que el Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de los Reinos y Provincias de la Nueva España celebró en la Muy Noble y Muy Leal ciudad de México a los diez y seis días del mes de abril del año de mil y seiscientos y cuarenta y seis,’ in García, , “Autos de Fe,” pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fee, p. 6.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ See Greenleaf, Richard, “The Great Visitas of the Mexican Holy Office, 1645–1669,” The Americas 44:4 (1988), 399–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Alberro, , Inquisición, pp. 30–50,Google Scholar for a detailed analysis of the charges brought against the Mexican Inquisitors.

⁴⁸ Alberro, , Inquisición, pp. 23, 49.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Escobedo, Estrada y, ‘Relación Sumaria del Auto Particular de Fee,’ in García, , “Autos de Fe,” pp. 16–17;Google Scholar

⁵⁰ de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fe, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Bocanegra, , Auto General de la Fe, p. 22.Google Scholar

⁵² Ibid., p. 22.

⁵³ “Instrucciones del Ilustrísimo Señor Cardenal, Inquisidor General, para la fundación de la Inquisición en México,’ “ in García, , “La Inquisición de México,” p. 240.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Alberro, , Inquisición, pp. 50–53.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Colonial society was divided, theoretically, into two autonomous and separated repúblicas, one of Spaniards and one of Indians.

⁵⁶ de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fe, p. 19.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Bocanegra, , Auto General de la Fe, pp. 159–60.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ de Zepeda, Ruiz, Relación del Auto General de la Fe, pp. 39–41.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ibid., p. 43.

⁶⁰ Charles Lea, Henry, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), p. 227.Google Scholar

⁶¹ See Bireley, Robert, The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).Google Scholar

⁶² Botero, Giovanni, The Reason of State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), book II, chapter 15, p. 63.Google Scholar

⁶³ Fajardo, Diego Saavedra, Idea de un príncipe político cristiano representada en cien empresas (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1976), empresa 18, p. 203.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Lipsius, Justus, Sixe Bookes of Politickes or Civil Doctrine (London, 1594), book IV, chapter 2, p. 62.Google Scholar See also Botero, , Reason of State, book II, chapter 15, 65.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Lipsius, , Sixe Bookes of Politickes, book IV, chapter 9, p. 86.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Botero, , The Reason of State, book II, chapter 16, pp. 67–68.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Lipsius, , Sixe Bookes of Politickes, book IV, chapter 9, p. 86.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Rivadeneira, Pedro de, Tratado de la religión y virtudes que debe tener el príncipe cristiano para gobernar y conservar sus estados, contra lo que Nicolás Maquiavelo y los políticos deste tiempo enseñan (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1952), vol. 60, pp. 498–499.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Botero, The Reason of State, book II, chapters 15, 64.

⁷⁰ Fajardo, Saavedra, Idea de un príncipe político cristiano, empresa 24, pp. 264–265; empresa 97, p. 893.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Bocanegra, , Jews and the Inquisition of Mexico, p. 40.Google Scholar

⁷² Ibid., p. 23.