Heretical women
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Reading Friar Juan de Sotomayor accusations leveled against Catalina de Ibiza and her family made me wonder to what extent Inquisition-era Islamaphobia was exploited for personal reasons beyond religious faith. The fact that Maria Ruiz, the other most expounded upon account in Cook's reading, was also a woman furthered my suspicions about the possibility of gender-based discipline disguised as religious Inquisition. Cook suggests that Ruiz's confession could have been motivated by some element of anxiety or paranoia regarding her faith but my immediate thought was that she was being blackmailed by some member of her community as a form of punishment or revenge for a different offense related to a breach of womanly expectations. Historically, faith-based persecution of women is employed as retribution for sexual promiscuity or shirking conventional gendered performance. Part of Sotomayor's evidence that Catalina's family are Morisco non-believers is that she and her children were rowdy and disruptive during church. While this is an instance of Moriscos/Muslims being orientalized and barbarized, the allegation also makes clear that Catalina is being punished for her inability to properly perform the prescribed roles of motherhood and womanhood.
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This gendering of the figure of the Morisca is a really interesting point, @renee_li, and one that I hadn't thought of in the context of Cook's study. I'll bring it up in class.