Associate Prof of European History, the Inquisition, Antisemitism and Gender/Sexuality at the University of New England in Australia. Hispanophile and Lusophile.
Francois Soyer
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January 1538. A family is denounced to the Inquisition in Lisbon for remaining Jewish & keeping kosher. Evidence? The matriarch of the family refused to eat lamprey eels "because they disgust her and look like snakes." (nam comia lamprea por que tenia nojo della por lhe parecer cobra).
January 1538. A family is denounced to the Inquisition in Lisbon for remaining Jewish & keeping kosher. Evidence? The matriarch of the family refused to eat lamprey eels "because they disgust her and look like snakes." (nam comia lamprea por que tenia nojo della por lhe parecer cobra).
German scholar of Japanese history writes a book about slavery in Korea despite the fact that he doesn't have adequate Korean reading skills so instead of collaborating with an actual human Korean expert, he turns to AI to translate thousands of pages of source material. 🤯😡
There's Latin, there's English and everything else which is just "vernacular academic literature."
The huge relief that the historian (i.e. me) feels when there is a change of staff in the Inquisition and a new notary with a much more legible hand starts to record the denunciations.
Context: the accused woman was a "New Christian" (descended from converted Jews) and the suspicion of the person making the denunciation (another woman, by the way) was that she remained a secret Jew.
Today's anecdote from the Lisbon Inquisition probably sets a record for vindictive pettiness. In 1544 a woman is denounced because whilst giving birth she “did not call out to the Virgin Mary but to her [own] mother.”
The huge relief that the historian (i.e. me) feels when there is a change of staff in the Inquisition and a new notary with a much more legible hand starts to record the denunciations.
Today's anecdote from the Inquisition. Pedro Alvares, a cobbler from the Algarve, is denounced on 6 April 1543 because he claimed that "if God came and pinched his stuff then he would smash a pot on [God]'s head."
