The Inquisitor's Wife (42 page)
“Cerra tus chicos ojicos,”
I sang with her, high and sweet, and never wanted to stop singing again.
AFTERWORD
The characters of Marisol García, Gabriel Hojeda, and Antonio Vargas are fictional; however, Fray Hojeda, Queen Isabel, Fray Torquemada, and Fray Morillo were real historical personages. I have set my fictional characters against the actual events in Seville of the winter of 1480–1481.
Three days after his exuberant sermon at the first auto-de-fé (the term
auto-da-fé
did not come into use until the eighteenth century, well after the Inquisition spread to Portugal), Fray Alonso Hojeda died of the plague.
THE INQUISITOR’S WIFE
Jeanne Kalogridis
About the Author
•
A Conversation with Jeanne Kalogridis
Behind the Novel
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ST. MARTIN’S GRIFFIN
A Conversation with Jeanne Kalogridis
What was the inspiration for
The Inquisitor’s Wife
and its titular heroine?
I’d researched the Inquisition in 1300s France for my novel
The Burning Times
, and I’d always wanted to know more about the famous Spanish Inquisition (beyond the Monty Python sketch, “No one expects…”). So when I was casting about for an idea for a new novel, I decided to look at the origins of the Spanish Inquisition. I
thought
I already knew the basic facts, but the more I researched the topic, the more I realized that, like everyone else, I had major misconceptions about the Inquisition. I quickly became fascinated by the underlying politics, and by Queen Isabella’s real reasons for engineering the Inquisition. She was not the frail, pious saint of legend. And her husband Fernando was king in name only; Isabella was the real power behind the throne, although in writing she always deferred to her husband, claiming that she was simply going along with the king’s wishes. Although the two unquestionably loved each other, they regularly had knock-down, drag-out fights with much shouting and tears. And they all ended with Isabella getting her way. Interestingly enough, King Fernando had a Jewish ancestor, something that Isabella wasn’t above pointing out during their squabbles.
“I work obsessively to re-create eras and personas as carefully as possible.”
Did you take any “artistic liberties” in telling this story? Could you share an example of how you altered a fact (or two!) for dramatic or thematic effect?
My heroine is fictional, although her father is based on a real person; her mother is representative of the Inquisition’s targets. Everything else—detailed descriptions of Isabella and Torquemada, dates, places, names, historical characters—is as accurate as careful research allows. I did, however, take liberties: Queen Isabella probably never visited Seville during the period my novel takes place, so I had her make a “secret” visit because it made the story far more exciting and allowed us a glimpse of Isabella as she really was. Many older biographies give us the inaccurate picture of her as small, quiet, pious, and dark-haired. I relied on an excellent recent biography by Peggy Liss, and learned that Isabella was auburn-haired, big-boned, taller than most men (including Fernando), and fond of bawdy jokes. Politically, she was incredibly shrewd and ruthless. The image of her as intensely pious and resorting to the Inquisition as a result of that piety is inaccurate—an example of Isabella’s brilliance at creating a consistent public image. She was a master at public relations.
My rule for writing a historical novel is this: I never contradict an established fact but will allow myself to create “situations that
might
have been.” Beyond that, I work obsessively to re-create eras and personas as carefully as possible. For example, I have a character hide a mezuzah inside a statue of a Madonna—a technique that had actually been used in Inquisitional Spain and Latin America. I fear I suffer from the phenomenon known as “research rapture”—details so delight me that I always do far too much research, never too little. Most of the heroines in my other novels, however, are based on actual historical figures. I departed from that with
The Inquisitor’s Wife
.
Can you tell us a bit more about your research? What was the most surprising—or shocking—thing you learned about this time period?
I managed to get my hands on some great resources. There’s a marvelous 1,500-page history by B. Netanyahu (father of, yes,
that
Netanyahu) regarding the origins of the Inquisition. It’s incredibly detailed, with documents and letters from the period.
The single most surprising thing I learned (outside of Isabella’s real appearance and personality) was that the Spanish Inquisition
did not persecute Jews
. Church law actually forbade the persecution of Jews and protected them; the Church had no legal jurisdiction over them (although civil authorities did). Therefore, the Inquisition focused on
Christians
, specifically those “new” Christians who were
conversos
—i.e., converts from Judaism. My story takes place in 1481, when the Inquisition first appeared in Spain; but back in the 1390s, prompted in part by hysteria over the plague, Spanish Christians slaughtered thousands of Jews. Those that survived the slaughter were forced to convert to Christianity at knifepoint.
“Those seeking power (today) still use racial, sexual, and ethnic divisions to their political advantage.”
The great majority of these
conversos
became sincere practitioners of their new faith. A few, however, continued to practice the rituals of Judaism in secret. This went on for generations. By Isabella’s time, many Old Christians still looked on
conversos
with suspicion. A very few
conversos
in Seville were blatant about their loyalty to their old religion, and this caused hostility and occasional violence.
Since the
conversos
were Christian, the Church had full authority to persecute them as heretics if there was any evidence that they were still practicing Judaism. Some of the
conversos
who were arrested and subsequently burned at the stake were in fact heretics by the Church’s definition, but many were falsely accused and completely innocent. Many f led Seville and settled south in Morocco, or east in Portugal (where the Inquisition took hold a century later).
I believe, as does Netanyahu and other historians, that Isabella shrewdly played on this antagonism between Old Christian and New in order to start the Inquisition. Before I did my research, I didn’t realize that the Spanish Crown seized the lion’s portion of any arrested
converso’s
wealth and property. Both the Church and the Crown made an obscene fortune off the Inquisition—at a time when Isabella was actively seeking money to fuel wars.
The most frightening thing about the Spanish Inquisition was that Isabella and Fernando insisted that the pope give them complete control over the Inquisition. That had never been done before; monarchs were always answerable to the Church. As a result, there was no third party oversight, and no legal rights for the accused. For the first time in any Inquisition, the accused had no right to confront his accuser or even know who he was, and one could denounce one’s neighbor while remaining completely anonymous. Many innocents were denounced by enemies.
What parallels, if any, do you find between the politics of identity then and now?
Nothing has changed. Those seeking power still use racial, sexual, and ethnic divisions to their political advantage. They ruthlessly foment hatred for political purposes, dividing the world into “us” and “other.” Look at how unscrupulous politicians today are fanning the fires of hatred over issues like marriage rights and immigration reform.
Do you personally know anyone who had to hide his or her Jewish identity during World War II, for example?
Not personally, but I read Anne Frank’s
The Diary of a Young Girl
when I was very young, and being a young girl who loved to write, I identified with her. It touched me deeply; it was hard for me to imagine that someone wanted her dead because of her DNA. I also grew up in the Deep South and witnessed the civil rights struggles firsthand; the Ku Klux Klan was very active in our little town, and even paraded in the streets. I remember the day that blacks were first admitted to our school—how truly terrified those children were, how very cruelly other children treated them. It was sickening and heartrending to watch.
Are you currently working on another book? And if so, what—or who—is your subject?
I’m having a blast writing my current (untitled for the moment) book, which has a much lighter, fun feel and greased-lightning pace. It’s about a young woman who grew up in Florence, in the Ospedale degli Innocenti, Italy’s landmark orphanage. In those days, a fifteen-year-old girl in the orphanage was considered an adult, and had to leave. She was given two choices: Marry (usually an undesirable older man looking more for a servant than a real wife) or join a nunnery. Well, my heroine, Giulia, is too headstrong and independent to countenance either. She escapes to the street. Rather than become a prostitute, like most unmarried, uncloistered orphaned girls, she becomes a highly skilled pickpocket, giving most of her earnings to her fellow orphans.
The period is 1479-80, during Florence’s war with the King of Naples and the Pope of Rome. And Florence was losing big-time. Lorenzo de’ Medici, the first citizen of Florence, risked his neck by paying a secret visit to the King of Naples himself, and launched a one-man diplomatic campaign to save Florence using nothing but his wit and personal charm. It was an amazing, difficult time, and one of the most fascinating events of the Italian Renaissance.
My heroine Giulia will find herself entangled in the intrigue and espionage surrounding Lorenzo’s famous visit to Naples, at which point her life changes forever. Lorenzo is a pivotal character. The story starts two years after Giulia’s departure from the orphanage. We find her on page one with her hand in the pocket of a victim, just as an extremely attractive young policeman catches and arrests her.…
Historical Perspective
Do You Know?
• The Spanish Inquisition did not persecute Jews. Instead, it targeted those Christians of Jewish ancestry who were suspected of practicing Jewish rituals. While there were, in fact,
conversos
who secretly practiced Judaism, they were few in number.
• The Jews in Spain had been living there for a thousand years when the first Visigoths (who ultimately became Spain’s rulers) arrived to conquer them. When the Moors subsequently arrived to throw out the Visigoths, the Jews welcomed them. With the exception of a few individual rulers, the Moors tolerated the Jews well, allowing them more status and freedom than Christian rulers eventually would.
• Jews in Spain were not persecuted during the Inquisition, but they were expelled en masse from the country by Queen Isabella’s decree in 1492, as she prepared to seize the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, Granada. Some think that Isabella expelled the Jews because she needed their wealth to fund her war against Granada.
• The famous Grand Inquisitor, Tomás de Torquemada, who was known for his vitriolic hatred of Jews and
conversos
, had Jewish blood on his grandmother’s side.
• The Dominican order of monks ran the Inquisition and became the symbol of intolerance and racial hatred; however, many Dominicans were against the persecution of Jews and
conversos
. Torquemada’s uncle, the respected scholar Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, also a Dominican, didn’t hide his Jewish ancestry, and argued strenuously for tolerance for
conversos
and Jews.
