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RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICES Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition. By Luis R. Corteguera. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Pp. xviii, 222. Notes. Glossary. Index. Acknowledgments. $39.95 cloth.
This book is the result of a four-year investigation by the Mexican Inquisition to find out the author or authors of an incident that took place in a small town near Puebla in 1578. Under cover of the night, an effigy wearing a sambenito had been nailed to the door of the Franciscan monastery of Tecamachalco. The effigy held in one hand a spindle and a distaff and in the other a sign with the name of a local trader. Clearly, the message conveyed by the effigy was that the trader was either a heretic or a Jew. The Inquisition tribunal in Mexico City quickly intervened, not to ascertain whether the trader was a heretic or a Jew, but to make clear that the symbols of the Inquisition could not be used so lightly. It would take the tribunal four...