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With much enthusiasm, Early Modern Iberian Worlds (EMIW) cordially invites you to our second event of the Winter quarter: a roundtable discussion with Professor Giuseppe Marcocci (Oxford) on his most recent research. 

Social hierarchy in the early modern Iberian world revolved around the notion of honor. This largely corresponded to a fantasy about the absence of infamy, that is, not having Jewish or Muslim ancestors. The Inquisition typically targeted the converted descendants of these two religious minorities. Its archives thus became the ultimate repository of social memory. But the extraordinary power derived from the words written on the papers preserved in the inquisitorial archives was not absolute. Infamy was not only a discourse, but also the product of objects that could make it visible. This was best demonstrated by the sambenitos, the garments worn by those condemned as heretics, sometimes for years. However, the Inquisition did not have the same degree of control over defamatory objects as it did over the information kept in its archives. The widespread practice of hanging forged sambenitos on the doors of houses as a form of insult was a popular appropriation of inquisitorial symbols that is also documented for Latin America. The talk will focus on a small replica of a sambenito made of colored cloth that was actually used to set up one of these defamatory installations in Mexico City in 1591. This exceptional record survives in an Inquisition’s case file, which allows us to engage with detailed eyewitness accounts of the appearance of the forged sambenito and its effect on members of colonial society; the reason why it gave rise to an inquisitorial trial and was physically archived in the legal proceedings; the various ways in which it was used during the trial and the discomfort it caused to the inquisitors. Overall, it provides a unique opportunity to discuss the broader social meanings of infamy as a thing and the challenge it might pose to the power of the archive.