"Since the sixteenth century, the Spanish inquisition has been synonymous with terror, bigotry, and persecution. In this book, a renowned historian sweeps away old misconceptions and presents a new view of this notorious and fascinating period." "Henry Kamen reassesses the significance and consequences of the expulsion of the Jews and also argues that there is little evidence for the alleged Jewishness of the conversos who were the Inquisition's first...

"1481 Seville: The Inquisition makes its first appearance in Spain. Its target: conversos, Christians of Jewish descent -- specifically those who practice Judaism secretly in their homes. The penalty for 'crypto-Judaism': Burning at the stake. Marisol Garcia, a young conversa, is hurriedly wed to Gabriel, a civil lawyer working for the Inquisition, in hopes that he will protect her. But she still yearns for the childhood love who abandoned her four...

On the eve of the Jewish expulsion from Spain, Amalia Riba stands at a crossroads. In a country violently divided by religion, she must either convert to Christianity and stay safe, or remain a Jew and risk everything. It's a choice she's been walking toward her whole life, from the days of her youth when her family lit the Shabbat candles in secret. Back then, she saw the vast possibility of the world, outlined in the beautiful pen and ink maps her...

When the tolerant culture of Spain is shattered by the Inquisition, Isabel feels safe because of her Catholic upbringing and father's position as a respected doctor, until he is arrested for the family's secret Jewish heritage.

At the time of the Spanish Conquest, a metis from New Mexico is sent to Mexico City to be trained as a Jesuit priest. But the barbarity of the whites, coupled with the love of a woman leads him to abandon his studies and return to work for his people.

In mid-thirteenth century Provence, Dolssa de Stigata is a fervently religious girl who feels the call to preach, condemned by the Inquisition as an "unnatural woman," and hunted by the Dominican Friar Lucien who fears a resurgence of the Albigensian heresy; Botille is a matchmaker trying to protect her sisters from being branded as gypsies or witches--but when she finds the hunted Dolssa dying on a hillside, she feels compelled to protect her, a...

"Teresa Aguilera y Roche, wife of New Mexico governor Bernardo López de Mendizábal, was the only woman from New Mexico ever tried by the Inquisition for the crime of secretly practicing Jewish rituals. Doña Teresa's arrest, trial, and eventual exoneration shed light on the social fabric of seventeenth-century Santa Fe as well as the dangers of non-conformity on even the farthest frontiers of Spanish America. Accusing the governor and his wife of...