[134]MARTÍN de Carrascosa y Cabrejas, a lay brother at the Franciscan convent in Cuenca, died on 28 August 1603 in the village of  Tebar while visiting his sister. News of the friar's death reached the city council of Cuenca the next day. With unaccustomed urgency, the councilors swung into action. Brother Martín was not just any lay brother; he was the city's top candidate for sainthood, and his body potentially was a supernatural resource of inestimable value. By accident, Martín had passed on to eternal life outside of the city, and the residents of Tebar, fully aware of the value of the treasure that so providentially had fallen into their hands, swore they would keep the body for themselves, even if it meant armed resistance. The city council was equally determined to retrieve Martín's corpse because, as it declared, "on account of his life, his body is bound to shine." The councilors contacted the Franciscans, Bishop Pacheco and the corregidor and made arrangements for Martín's triumphal return.⁽¹⁾

Before the two communities could come to blows, Tebar and Cuenca agreed upon a compromise: they would share the saint's body. As the place where God had chosen to call his servant to him, Tebar was entitled to some consideration. Therefore, Martín was buried with full services next to the parish church's high altar. Residents from the region came to witness the event and touch the saint's body, perhaps to grab a bit of the friar's tunic or to steal a part of the body. Immediately after the burial, the body was disinterred, cut open, and disemboweled. Martín's entrails were placed in a coffin and put back in the grave. The remainder of the body was sealed in a second coffin, which was carried through the summer heat to the shrine of San Antonio de Padua several miles outside of Cuenca, where the entire Franciscan community waited to receive their brother. The coffin was opened and the body's condition carefully noted- although the habit had been ripped to shreds, only two toes (and the entrails) were missing.

[135] Once near the city, the saint faced a second series of trials: passage through the gathering crowds to a final resting place inside the Franciscan convent. Towards the late afternoon, the body was brought under heavy guard to Saint Ann's Chapel, a short distance from the convent. Here, surrounded by the city's canons, magistrates, and members of the prestigious cofradía of Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, Bishop Pacheco insisted on viewing the saint. This was a mistake. As soon as the crowd learned that the coffin was on the ground and the body open to view, pandemonium broke out. Pacheco's fulminating threats fell on deaf ears; in the ensuing melée, the prelate narrowly escaped injury and Martín lost two more toes. The coffin was hastily resealed, and the canons and councilors took turns forcing themselves and their precious burden through the surging streets. More guards waited at the convent's portal. As soon as the pall bearers were inside, the guards slammed the doors shut, and for safe-keeping the coffin was hurried into an open grave. Later that evening, the body was disinterred two more times so that several noblewomen could view it and the city's apostolic notary could formally recognize the corpse, note its condition, and record the entire event. Finally, at 11:00 P.M. on 30 August, Martín was buried for one last time, underneath the choir by the high altar.⁽²⁾

Although Martín de Carrascosa's acclamation and burial were thoroughly traditional, Carrascosa himself was not entirely a medieval holy man. Certainly, according to his biographers, he healed the sick with his touch and worked small miracles in his convent, but Martín's true gift was for mental prayer.⁽³⁾ He spent long hours lost in meditation, experiencing countless ecstasies and raptures. In this devotion to mental prayer he was typical of his age. During the sixteenth century, Spanish spiritual life turned inward. Religious persons adopted wholeheartedly the practice of mental prayer, and the faith underwent a process of internalization and turning towards Christ, a process that, remarkably enough, was relatively democratic in its embrace.⁽⁴⁾ In the diocese of Cuenca, there was a wave of foundations of religious orders dedicated to the new spirituality. Between 1500 and 1600, the Franciscans (all branches) expanded by twenty-two communities, the Carmelites (both reformed and unreformed) founded seven male and female convents, and the Jesuits established four centers.⁽⁵⁾ The religious orders' example was reinforced among the general population by the church's Tridentine policies. At the Council of Trent, the fathers passed several decrees designed to curtail the community's influence on what the church saw [136] as individual spiritual concerns and sought to promote devotion to the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist, the saints, and the souls in purgatory.⁽⁶⁾ Beyond simply teaching the rudiments of doctrine and enforcing compliance, the goal of the reforms was to encourage a more personal faith, albeit one that conformed to standards set in Rome. In sixteenth-century Cuenca, alongside the traditional forms of worship sprang up new expressions of a more internal religious life of the nature promoted by Spanish mystics and the institutional church.

In effect, sixteenth-century Catholics in Cuenca embraced a vibrant religious life that reflected the ongoing transition from late medieval Christianity to modern Catholicism. Conquenses balanced private devotions, communal cults, participation in the cofradías, amateur public celebrations of the faith, and of course concern for one's salvation. Moreover, individuals were capable of practicing their faith on several levels that today might be considered contradictory. This concurrence of religious models in individuals and communities renders such terms as "popular" and "elite," "rural" and "urban" religion almost meaningless. Tebar, the village, and Cuenca, the city, equally valued Martín de Carrascosa's potential powers, and the bishop of Cuenca was just as eager to pay homage to Martín's body as was the vulgar crowd. Statistics show that certain forms of religious expression were more likely to be found among some social groups, but no group held a monopoly on any of the myriad practices that prevailed in the diocese.

The ideal remained the eremitic and cenobitic life.⁽⁷⁾ When called by Christ or their conscience, individuals retired to the desert or to the isolation of one of the diocese's religious houses to pray and do penance. The diocese's most famous hermit was Doña Catalina de Cardona, who in 1562 abandoned the luxury of Philip II's court and, disguised as a man, took up residence in a cave near La Roda. All of Spain, including Saint Teresa of Avila, was fascinated by the noblewoman's rejection of the world and her courageous vigil in the wilderness. Her cave became a pilgrimage center. Finally, to avoid the sightseekers, in 1571-72 Doña Catalina turned to her former friend, the princess of Eboli, and others to arrange for the foundation of a house of Discalced Carmelite friars that would be built over her grotto. In 1575 she petitioned the city council of Cuenca for a gift of one hundred pine trees from the city's famous reserves for the construction of the building. To encourage the councilors, she promised the city that the friars would be exemplary and that by aiding in the convent's construction, the city would win Our Lady's intercession and suffrages through the friars' prayers.⁽⁸⁾
 

[137] While few persons strove to imitate the heroic isolation of the hermit, more conquenses felt the tug of religious life. One did not have to become a priest or nun in order to join a cenobitic house. All of the mendicant orders maintained orders for lay people and accepted oblates, like Martín de Carrascosa or Francisco de la Cruz.⁽⁹⁾ Women who could not afford the dowry required for entry into one of the female orders sometimes joined the Third Order of the Franciscans. One such group of women wore the order's habit and met regularly in Sabina de Vidal's house in Cuenca during the latter part of the sixteenth century.⁽¹⁰⁾ Catalina de Cardona's example inspired four women from the nearby town of Villanueva de la Jara to form a beaterio that became the nucleus for the first convent of discalced Carmelite nuns to be founded in the diocese.⁽¹¹⁾

Reformed houses of Carmelites and Franciscans and the Jesuits were welcomed by communities because they valued the orders' missionary works and their good example. In several cases the foundations were facilitated by town councils or community charity. Groups of individuals, confraternities, or town councils founded orders in San Clemente, Huete, Iniesta, Villanueva de la Jara, Uclés, Belmonte, Requena, Mazarulleque, and Moya. On more than one occasion, as in Villanueva de la Jara, the foundation was inspired by the predicament of several unwed sisters.⁽¹²⁾ The attitude of the city council of Cuenca towards these new foundations probably was typical. In 1576 the Discalced Franciscans, with the support of Canon Constantino del Castillo, proposed to found a convent in the city, which was now home to six other male religious orders. In the deliberations that followed, Lcdo. Muñoz argued that although there were many monasteries in Cuenca, there was none of the Discalced Franciscans, "whose life and example [are] very well received in this kingdom and they are held in great devotion. Wherever they are, they bring great fruit and benefit."⁽¹³⁾

The councilors did not have to be reminded of the importance of encouraging reformed religious orders, which upheld the monastic ideal to the people. Unreformed houses, nunneries especially, were plagued by scandals that undermined public confidence in the foundations. The Council of Trent granted bishops the responsibility for oversight of the female religious houses, and Cuenca's bishops periodically carried out secret inspections. The 1572 inspection of the city's oldest and most aristocratic convent, the Benedictines, revealed a sorry state of affairs at the unreformed house.⁽¹⁴⁾ Before 1563, relatives of the nuns frequently had visited them inside the convent, and even after the Council of Trent's

[138] orders, strict cloister had not been kept, so that several nuns lived outside of the convent and several men were known to have entered the house on regular visits. The nuns slept in their cells instead of the dormitory, wore nonregulation habits, and, their abbess included, were divided into factions. One of the nuns, Doña Ana de Mendoza, composed a series of rhymes criticizing twenty-one of her sisters and visitors to the convent, which she presented to the inspectors.
 

For María de Salazar,
who's a fart without par,
she wants to take it all in
and swear she saw nothing.

For Don Alfonso Carrillo
who's like a monkey,
all old and yellow,
he wished to do his duty
but the abbess stopped him.

For that Arriega girl,
who's a tart and ugly
and multiplied the world....⁽¹⁵⁾

When the inspectors attempted to interview the abbess, Dona Teresa Carrillo, about her nuns, she refused outright to cooperate. Portillo and Mendez threatened her with excommunication, and she replied they could throw her in the stocks or whatever else they wanted, but she would not obey. After the officials' inspection, most of the nuns banded together against Abbess Carrillo, and reforms were gradually introduced to the convent.

Joining a religious order and retiring to the desert were the most extreme professions of faith individuals could make, and, ironically, the most visible ones. The religious orders kept careful records and periodically issued chronicles that detailed and exaggerated the accomplishments of their most adept members. The quiet faith of ordinary conquenses rarely is recorded in narrative form. Several aspects of sixteenth-century traditional Catholicism in Cuenca are marvelously encapsulated in the story of Ana Martínez and Pedro Bordallo, who were born around 1520 and died late in 1609. Hours before her death, Ana confessed the couple's history to her parish priest, who was so impressed by what he heard that he immediately wrote it down in the parish death [139] register. In composing the narrative, the priest colored the tale with his own value-laden language, but the main points of Ana and Pedro's spiritual life probably are accurately recorded.⁽¹⁶⁾

Ana's religion centered around the fulfillment of religious vows which brought her three spiritual gifts: chastity, the Virgin's protection, and proximity to Christ. Her devotion to the Virgin began while she was still a child, when she made a chastity vow in honor of Our Lady of Succor, whose shrine stood atop a barren hill overlooking the city.⁽¹⁷⁾ In addition to vowing to remain a virgin, Ana promised to attend morning mass (misa de alba) at the cathedral and visit the shrine of Our Lady of Succor every day. At the end of her life, Ana believed that she had been rewarded by the faithful fulfillment of each of these vows.

The first gift involved her chastity vow. For a poor girl such a vow would have been very difficult to keep. The family apparently was not wealthy, so Ana could not afford to become a nun, and she did not enter the city's beaterio.⁽¹⁸⁾ Eventually, to support herself she would either have to marry or work, which would cause her to lose her reputation, if not her actual virginity. When Ana reached the age of majority, her parents arranged a match for her with Pedro Bordallo, a tailor. Unknown to herself or their parents, Pedro had also taken the same chastity vow. Nonetheless, the two young people obeyed their parents' wishes and consented to be married. The priest who recorded the story could not resist dramatizing the inevitable confrontation and unmasking of the truth.

The wedding day arrived and that night their in-laws and relatives left them on the marriage bed as is the custom. Placing themselves on opposite sides of the bed and each waiting for the end, they lay there looking at one another without saying a word for more than an hour. Finally, at the end of this time, both of them blushing and shamefaced, Ana said, "Brother, why do you look at me without saying a word?" Pedro Bordallo replied, "My sister, I'm so ashamed I can't speak, but since you ask, I have to tell you that ever since I had the use of reason, I made a chastity vow to Our Lord in love and reverence for Our Lady of Succor." Ana Martínez replied, "I'm delighted that that should be so because I, brother, have made the same vow to Our Lady, and I wouldn't break it for all the world." And from that hour, they embraced and agreed to renew their vow and the others they had made.⁽¹⁹⁾ [140] Unknown to anyone, God had protected his two servants and arranged the perfect solution to their difficulties. Evidently, the couple had kept their vow a secret, for this was part of Ana's confession.

The second gift, the Virgin's protection, was given to them by Our Lady of Succor. Part of their vows involved a daily forty-five minute hike up the hill to her shrine. In bad weather, snows and storms, Ana told the priest, they frequently lost their way, but a light somehow would guide them to the chapel's door. On account of their devotions, Pedro's tailoring business languished. One day, they were so poor that there was nothing to eat in the house. They climbed up the hill on empty stomachs. At the chapel door they found a coin purse, but no one was at the shrine. Too honest to take the purse for themselves, but fearful that they would be implicated in the theft of the money if they left it behind, they decided to take the purse for safekeeping to their Jesuit confessor. When they returned home late that day, they found that someone had left them some charity. The Virgin had provided for them in their need and at the same time had prevented them from giving in to the temptation to steal.

The last gift came from Christ. In addition to her other vows, Ana had sworn to attend mass every morning at the cathedral.⁽²⁰⁾ This she did without fail until two days before her death, when she came down with a high fever that prevented her from going that morning. The next day, desperate with remorse, she got out of bed and made her way to the church, a steep walk from her parish even for a healthy person, let alone an infirm, eighty-year-old woman. Eventually she arrived, long after services were over. Just as she was about to leave, though, a priest and two acolytes whom she never had seen before came out of the sacristy, celebrated mass, and then disappeared. Perhaps Ana, delirious with fever and fatigue, imagined the mass or failed to recognize the clerics, but she interpreted what she saw as a special gift. She had missed mass, probably her last before she would die, but God gave her another one. Content, she went home, called for the priest, and took to her deathbed. Ana confessed to the priest that her greatest worry was that she would be leaving Pedro, who was no longer mentally competent, alone in the world.⁽²¹⁾ At her funeral, which was paid for with charity, the priest noted that an unusually high number of people turned out to accompany her to her final resting place.

Such devotions as Ana and Pedro's fidelity to Our Lady of Succor or the service of mass were an important part of private religious life in Cuenca. Unfortunately, such detailed descriptions of orthodox private [141] practices are extremely rare. However, the main outlines of faith in the diocese can be reconstructed from testaments of the era and, of course, Inquisition trials. Something of the changing nature of Conquenses' private religion is reflected in the devotional masses individuals requested to be said after their deaths, in the books they read, and the artwork they hung in their houses.⁽²²⁾
 
 

For devout Catholics, during the late medieval period one aspect of practicing one's religion meant following closely the liturgical year in church, perhaps attending to the regular sweep of the calendar with a book of hours. Early in the sixteenth century in Cuenca, devotion to particular services of the mass was relatively rare. In their testaments, only one in six persons requested special masses by the name of the cult they wished to honor. Almost in their entirety, the masses called for dealt with some aspect of the divinity or the life of Christ or with the Virgin Mary. In 1505, Catalina de Valenzuela, a notary public's wife, stipulated two special masses, one in honor of the Holy Ghost and another for Our Lady. María de la Francia, wife of Lcdo. Alonso Cherino, requested masses of the Resurrection, the Holy Cross, the Holy Ghost, and Our Lady.⁽²³⁾

Devotion to the service of mass was highly promoted during the sixteenth century for two reasons. It was, after all, the central mystery of the church, when God became present and his sacrifice for humanity was celebrated. Religious writers emphasized that a Christian could do no better than witness this miracle as often as possible. There was, too, the Protestants' attack on the sacred mystery, which turned attendance at mass into a militant profession of faith. Added to the spiritual benefits of the mass was the fact that the saints, also under attack, had their own offices, so that by attending or paying for a devotional mass one promoted the cult of the saints as well. After 1545 the numbers of men and women requesting special masses to be said in their memory increased rapidly, although for women the trend was more widespread, ran deeper and lasted longer (see graph 5.1).⁽²⁴⁾ Individuals from all social classes - servants, artisans, professionals, gentry and clergy - sought to memorialize their connections to particular saints and mysteries of the faith. From 1545 to 1555 at least one out of every two testators ordered one or more masses in honor of cults he or she held in particular esteem.

Testamentary masses bear mute witness to a once living faith, but no more than that. Testators did not explain why they felt a special [144] connection to Saint Francis, for example. Better-educated conquenses, however, bought books in which to practice their devotions, and these tracts can bring another dimension to the question of an individual's private faith. Although testators rarely mentioned books, it was not because they were illiterate or did not own them. Sixty percent of men and 10 percent of women signed their wills. Among Inquisition defendants, who exhibited slightly lower literacy rates than testators in Cuenca, book ownership was not uncommon.⁽²⁶⁾ Their statements, together with an analysis of the book market in Cuenca, can help build another layer of understanding of personal faith.

Printed material served a wide variety of religious purposes and audiences. Religious books fell into many categories: liturgical and theological tracts, works of mysticism and asceticism, hagiography, books of hours, miscellany such as sermon collections and sacred songs, and religious pamphlets. Judging by the 1545 inventory of Guillermo Remón's bookstore, in Cuenca the market for religious books was diverse and sophisticated. Remón offered an extensive selection of the best-known devotional works of the day, both those from northern Europe and the newer Spanish works, many of them published in Alcalá de Henares by the Christian humanist, Miguel de Eguía.

It was in northern Europe that the taste for private devotions had first developed, among the literate burghers and gentry of Flanders and Burgundy. The book of hours allowed the churchgoer to follow the liturgical year with texts taken from the Scriptures and other sources that could be read privately during the service. Remón carried a brisk trade in the books of hours, offering to the public more than twenty varieties in Spanish, Latin, and Portuguese, in large or small typeface, inexpensive or deluxe editions, or hours composed especially for women or dealing solely with the Passion. Even after the Inquisition banned Spanish books of hours in 1573 on the grounds that they spread the Scripture in the vernacular, Latin hours continued to circulate among readers in the diocese of Cuenca.⁽²⁷⁾

The second wave of northern influence, the devotio moderna, was best exemplified in the works of Thomas à Kempis and Ludolf of Saxony, the De Imitatione Christi (known in Spain as the Contemptus Mundi) and the Vita Christi, ascetic works that turned the reader's thoughts away from the cares of this world and focused them on Christ's suffering and sacrifice. Remón offered both titles in Spanish as well as several other guides to a good death. Finally, the most recent invasion from

[145] the north came in the from of the works of Erasmus of Rotterdam, who achieved the status of a superstar in Spain after 1521. In 1545, despite the Inquisition's long-established hostility to Erasmus, his books still sold well in Cuenca. Readers could pick up the great Inquiridion del caballero cristiano, La lengua de Erasmo, Tractado de las querellas de la Paz, De octo orationis partium, De copia verborum, an unidentified "tract", and his Libellus de ratione studii.

By 1545, native Spanish mysticism was in full bloom. Readers in Cuenca could acquire many of the most famous examples of this new spirituality, which placed great emphasis on mental prayer, love, and self-knowledge. The first work to popularize mental prayer was García de Cisneros' Exercitatorio de la vida espiritual, originally published in 1500. Remón's inventory counted nine copies of the book, valued cheaply at fifteen maravedis apiece. Even more popular was the alumbrado Juan de Cazalla's Lumbre del alma (Valladolid, 1528), which proposed that all creatures could ascend toward God through love. Remón carried fourteen copies of the book, also valued at fifteen maravedis. Remón's varied offerings at affordable prices suggests that the new mysticism had spread to nonreligious classes in Cuenca.

Although Remón's trade in religious texts catered primarily to the well-educated reader, the bookseller did not neglect the lower end of the market, broadsheets and pamphlets priced at a fraction of a maravedi. These mass-produced publications included the apocryphal Testament of Our Lord, quasi-superstitious Prayers of St. Cyprian, poetry dedicated to Saint Mary, and even Christmas songs. Both the topics and prices of these pamphlets marked them for a less spiritually developed, barely literate public interested in entertainment and magic as much as it was in doctrine.

The diversity of Remón's shop hinted at the existence of different groups of religious readers, each with its own needs. There was, in fact, a great gap between the books owned by secular priests and those read by laypersons. Both in their testaments and the occasional inquisition trial, priests named primarily books of theology and canon law, metaphysics and logic, and Biblical commentaries. Several owned popular collections of sermons by Saint Vincent Ferrer, Jacob de Voragine, and Father Osorio, or common guides to liturgical practice. While some priests kept their copies of the Latin classics, probably acquired while they were students, of the more than sixty texts owned by priests only two were devotional tracts closely associated with the spiritual life of [146] sixteenth-century Spain. For priests who mentioned book titles, religious texts were a means of study and reference but not commonly a devotional resource.⁽²⁸⁾

For laypersons, on the other hand, books could form an important part of their religious lives. Books were the primary means by which the ideas of the proponents of the new devotions were spread among the laity. A canon at the collegiate church in Belmonte, in his book of Christian advice to people of all social positions, wrote several pages in praise of reading good (i.e., religious) books.⁽²⁹⁾ Juan de Céspedes' scrape with the Inquisition in 1558-59, which was occasioned by his public reading of Pedro de Luján's Coloquios matrimoniales, underscored the connections between private faith, religious renewal, and possibly heresy.⁽³⁰⁾

It is difficult to imagine that Juan de Céspedes, who was born in Cuenca in 1507, was a near contemporary of Ana Martínez and Pedro Bordallo. Ana's and Pedro's faith was born of simple orthodoxy that can be found at almost any time and place. Céspedes, on the other hand, spent much of his life as an adventurer, and although he never was accused of heresy, there was something of the religious adventurer about him as well. At age eighteen he traveled to Rome to enter the service of Don Francisco de Mendoza, and he remained there until the apocalyptic sack of the city in 1527. He retreated with the imperial forces and served around the Mediterranean until 1533, when he returned to Cuenca and married the daughter of Canon Mata.⁽³¹⁾ The canon's business frequently took Céspedes back to Rome during the 1530s; in 1540-41 Céspedes spent one last campaign in Charles V's service in Perpignan. During his extended service with the emperor and Canon Mata in Italy, Céspedes may well have come in contact with the Christian humanists and fellow conquenses Alfonso and Juan de Valdés (who later became a Protestant) and the group of Spaniards following Ignatius Loyola.

In Cuenca, where in 1558 Céspedes now worked as the cathedral almoner, he was known around town as the "Theatine" because of his dedication to the Jesuits; out of humility and devotion, he even washed their clothes for them.⁽³²⁾ Together with several other men and one widow, Céspedes held meetings in his house where the group read and practiced Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. One day, while standing guard at the city gates during an outbreak of the plague, Céspedes spent the day reading Luján's Coloquios matrimoniales aloud to his friend Suárez, another "theatine". Blas de Embid, who listened in, thought he heard Céspedes [147] say that monks and nuns could marry. He held off from denouncing Céspedes for Lutheranism, Embid explained later, because he was illiterate and Céspedes was known to be such a good Christian. A few months later, however, Embid was travelling with a bookseller from Toledo and heard from him how Lutheranism was being spread in Spain via books. Embid remembered Céspedes's suspicious reading, and enraged by what he saw as Céspedes's betrayal of the faith, went straight to the inquisitors.

Céspedes knew immediately that he had been called to the tribunal on account of his books. The almoner had drunk deeply of the most influential devotional and ascetic texts of his day, both old classics and the latest publications by Spanish writers. Of the older works of devotion, he owned Ludolf of Saxony, Saint John Climacus, the Flos Sanctorum, and the Imitation of Christ. Céspedes had also read modern works, the famous Libro de la oración y meditación by Luis de Granada (soon to be banned), Venegas's Agonía y tránsito de la muerte (borrowed from Doña Juana Pacheco), the Harpa de David (to be banned in 1581), and the offending Coloquios matrimoniales, borrowed from the cathedral maestrescuela, Juan de Salmerón. Had he read any prohibited books? Céspedes replied that he had read Erasmus's Colloquies and Constantino Ponce de la Fuente's Beatus Vir before they had been prohibited, and the Bible he presently owned was the one given to him by the Inquisition in exchange for one that had been confiscated. Céspedes's spiritual adventures kept just ahead of the Inquisition's censors.

After procuring from Céspedes a list of every book he owned, borrowed, or had lent and interviewing the friend Suárez, the inquisitors dropped the case. Indeed, they had been reluctant to indict Céspedes on such scanty evidence (Embid had later retracted his accusation that Céspedes had said that nuns and monks could marry),⁽³³⁾ but considering the "dangerous times, they felt obliged to make inquiries." Other men and women had read the same books and walked down a different path; Céspedes and his group could do the same. Soon, the conviction that dangerous times required severe measures led the inquisitors to the extraordinary questioning of virtually all defendants concerning their education and reading habits.

Although none of the hundreds of individuals who were questioned owned a collection as extensive as Céspedes's, interviews with defendants revealed that the ownership of religious books had spread in the late sixteenth century to all strata of society, in the villages as well as in the towns of the bishopric. The interviews also must have satisfied [148] the inquisitors that their methods of book collection and censorship were working, because their questioning uncovered only a handful of prohibited or unexpurgated texts; the dangerous influence of many of the older mystic writers and the Erasmians had been eliminated.⁽³⁴⁾

Outside the circle of Juan de Céspedes and his friends, that is, outside the bourgeois elite of the capital, in the latter half of the sixteenth century most readers possessed just one or two books of devotions and were far more conservative in their choices. Although the taste for devotional books for private prayer and contemplation had not diminished since 1545, most titles were tried-and-true favorites, such the Contemptus Mundi, Vita Christi, Guevara's Montecalvario, or Granada's recently reinstated Libro de la oración. Among a group of conversos, Juan de Dueñas's Espejo de consolación de tristes was popular, perhaps because the book gave many examples taken from the Old Testament of people overcoming adversity. Sermons by Saint Vincent Ferrer, an occasional book of hours in Latin and the lives of the saints rounded out the religious reading of these book owners, many of whom were farmers, workers, and artisans. If a book proper were too expensive or difficult for a reader, a chapbook of the Passion, a life of St. Alejo (a Christianized version of the life of Alexander), a cartilla, or prayers to the Virgin Mary would do. Many owners of the pamphlet literature confessed that they could read but not write, reflecting a very low level of education. However, rather than spending their few extra blancas on jokes or ballads, even the marginally educated sought to expand their religious life through printed materials.
 

The late sixteenth century marked the growing popularity of another devotional aid that could be used for private contemplation, religious images. The Council of Trent set down that religious artwork in general was useful because it taught redemption through pictures that could evoke for the faithful the saints' example and the miracles that God had worked through the saints. Images were owed honor and veneration because they helped one to pray to God or to some saint, but they did not by themselves possess any supernatural power.⁽³⁵⁾ Because images could teach publicly and privately, and spoke to the learned as well as to the ignorant, there was official concern about the appearance of images, the uses to which they were put, and the manner in which they were interpreted.⁽³⁶⁾

Privately owned religious artwork made its first appearance in bourgeois and noble homes in the city of Cuenca in the late sixteenth century [149] and enjoyed a modest degree of popularity during the next century. Before 1585, it was rare to find artwork of any kind mentioned in testaments, even though both men and women commonly willed specific personal effects to favorite relatives, friends, and servants. After 1585, religious artwork of all types- oil paintings, figurines and simple prints- began to appear in the homes of a small minority of the city's inhabitants.⁽³⁷⁾

The appearance of artwork in conquense houses could be merely an indication of the spread of Renaissance taste to the diocese's elite classes. Certainly, that is what Lcdo. Ponce de León, maestrescuela of Belmonte, thought in 1582 about some paintings belonging to his kinsman Don Miguel. The maestrescuela complained about the lack of control over images and the freedom with which artists painted. He suggested to Don Miguel that his painting of Saint Catherine of Alexandria was an excuse to hang a portrait of a female liaison: "You get yourself a portrait or figure of your lady friend, you put a sword in her hand, and look!-Saint Catherine!"⁽³⁸⁾ Notwithstanding Ponce de León's suspicions, several characteristics of this privately owned artwork suggest that it was valued for its spiritual as well as its material or aesthetic worth. First, testators rarely mentioned artwork dealing with secular topics and paid little attention to it when they did. Religious images were not regarded as heirlooms that had to be kept in the family, nor were they seen as a substitute for monetary gifts. Instead, testators gave artwork to certain individuals because of what the subject matter meant to the recipients. For example, Canon Marquina wrote in his will that when he lived in Rome, the cardinal of Carpi had given him, among other things, a painting of the Veronica "as a token of what we loved." Marquina, in turn, now wished to give the painting to Inquisitor Madriz, "as a token of the special respect and love that I have had and do have for His Grace since the day we met."⁽³⁹⁾ Finally, there was nothing random about the way in which religious artwork was passed from person to person or about the topics that appealed to collectors.

The ownership of religious artwork was overwhelmingly feminine, even more so than had been devotion to votive masses. That the owners of religious images should have been women is not too surprising: a man could exercise his faith publicly, in the cofradías, in the streets or even by joining the priesthood. A woman's religious forum was the church, her home, and to a lesser extent, the confraternity (see below) or convent. The interiority (both literal and figurative) of post-Tridentine women's worship was encouraged by writers such as Luis de León, who [150] reiterated that the woman's place was at home, where she could practice virtue.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Religious reading at home was a viable option for only a small minority of women in Cuenca; even upperclass women in Cuenca frequently were illiterate. Artwork thus provided a way of focusing devotions. When the female owner of a religious image stipulated an heir, the piece almost always went to another woman, perhaps to a friend, perhaps to a sister or cousin who was a nun.⁽⁴¹⁾ Even when male owners of artwork died, in the majority of cases when the gift was specified, the image also went to a woman and sometimes left the family.

Although more women than men owned religious artwork, just as more women than men had sponsored votive masses, their devotional preferences in the artwork differed somewhat from what could be found in the votive masses. Just over half of votive masses were said in honor of Mary, presumably on account of her superior power to intercede with Jesus on the supplicant's behalf. As a subject in art, however, images of Mary for personal use were unpopular with women (see table 5.2) . Instead, figures of Jesus Christ were the clear preference of women. Some of these images depicted the Christ Child, but the majority were images of Christ crucified, which would be used for meditation.⁽⁴²⁾ Men, on the other hand, divided their attention equally between Jesus and Mary; they paid no attention to the Holy Family but collected representations of male saints, particularly Francis, Peter, and Cuenca's own Julián. Among both men and women, female saints fared slightly better as the subject matter of visual art than as the patronesses of votive masses. Just two saints, Catherine and Magdalene, popular subjects for Renaissance and Baroque painting as well as revered in cults, accounted for eight out of the nine images of female saints.⁽⁴³⁾

Images for private devotions could be inspirational, but they also served an ideological purpose in the struggle against Protestant theology, which condemned the use of religious artwork. Every owner of an image, in her mere ownership of the piece consciously or unconsciously validated the church's teaching regarding the usefulness of images. The proper veneration of images was more than an abstract concern in Cuenca. In the second half of the sixteenth century the Inquisition discovered many individuals who were not afraid to speak critically of images or of people's devotion to them. Juan la Peña, from the town of Villalba del Rey and a familiar in the Inquisition of Toledo, in 1567 confessed to the inquisitors in Cuenca that he thought that the statues in some chapels "were so old and badly carved [that] instead of moving one to devotion, they took it away."⁽⁴⁴⁾ In 1571, the parish priest in [151]

 
 
 
 

			Total	Examples
Theme	% of Female Owners (n = 28)	% of Male Owners  (n = 14)	No.	%
Jesus Christ	45	24	36	38
Symbols of faith	11	10	10	12
Mary	11	21	13	14
Holy Family	8	3	6	6
Male saints	17	28	19	20
Female saints	9	7	8	9
Old Testament	0	7	2	2
Total	101	100	94	101

The familiar and the priest were merely pointing out that some decrepit images were unworthy of their subject matter, something the Bishop of Cuenca himself was willing to admit in private and to attempt to remedy.⁽⁴⁶⁾ The Inquisition, however, maintained a strict policy that the Catholic faith could not be criticized publicly for any reason; Erasmus's criticism, after all, was thought to have led to Luther's heresy. Unfortunate indeed was the person who did not interpret correctly what he saw or who in seeing correctly, insulted the faith. In one early case, a priest, Pero Sánchez, was attending a banquet in a hall decorated with various wall hangings, including one depicting the Annunciation. Pero claimed that when he entered the room he saw "certain cloths on which were painted certain dancers with a tambourine man playing, and as he entered by the door he said 'Play, and I'll dance with that drunken woman!'" Unfortunately, Pero did not pause to consider whether the image he meant was that of a saint. The other witnesses thought Sánchez was deliberately making fun of the image of Our Lady, and he was penanced for blaspheming.⁽⁴⁷⁾ A later case which took place in 1567, [152] underscored the problems brought about by the spread of cheap woodcuts to uneducated collectors. A shopkeeper in Requena displayed on the wall of his shop what he thought was an image of the ecce homo. Young Juan Hernández de Sigüenza entered the shop, looked carefully at the print and said, referring to the central figure, "He looks like a tavern-keeper to me" (see plate 6). When the shopkeeper told Sigüenza that it was a figure of Jesus Christ, Juan burst out laughing, and his friend put in "No, it looks like someone who sells tripe or collects vine-cuttings" (both dishonorable occupations). No one interpreted correctly the illustration, which was a French woodcut warning against the dangers of whoring and gambling. It depicted a man in rags (mistaken variously for Christ, a tavern-keeper, or an actor) with a repentant look on his face. On his right a dog barked at him, cards and dice lay at his feet, while two tartly dressed women to his left counted their money.⁽⁴⁸⁾

Except for a few notorious incidents involving Protestant visual propaganda smuggled into Spain or cases of sacrilege, the Inquisition generally seems to have left the oversight of images to the bishops.⁽⁴⁹⁾ Andrés Pacheco was the first bishop in Cuenca to codify the church's position in the 1602 synodal constitutions. Pacheco's constitutions may have been in response to the openly critical attitude of some conquenses towards the diocese's rural images and to the rise in the number of privately owned images. Following Trent, Pacheco attempted to place strict controls over the creation and use of images in Cuenca so that the objects would be decently made, teach the correct message, and be treated with proper respect. No new tableaux of saints could be painted without Pacheco's permission. All existing images were to be inspected and replaced if need be. Following his orders, one hundred and fifty images may have been destroyed.⁽⁵⁰⁾ Images could not be taken outside for masses, and members of cofradías could not take their brotherhoods' statues home with them for any reason. Images of Mary had to be decently attired. Charity seekers could not carry with them pictures, paintings, or statuettes of saints while they asked for alms, because this custom had led to "indecencies, scandal, carelessness, and lack of veneration." Nor could images or crosses of any sort be sold in the streets. Finally, all new miracles and relics in the bishopric had to be approved officially, and no signs commemorating miracles could be placed near the images popularly held responsible for causing them.⁽⁵¹⁾

Bishop Pacheco's final constitution dealt with the most problematic aspect of the veneration of images in the diocese. Images, particularly those of Mary, from time immemorial had been the focus of local or [153] even regional cults.  On the one  hand,

The Marian shrine, with its statue of the Virgin bedecked in fine clothes and jewels, the walls covered in votive offerings and testimonials from the surrounding region, stood at the pinnacle of a network of rural chapels whose function was to protect communities and individuals from the ravages of disease and natural calamities.⁽⁵⁶⁾ During the sixteenth century the independence and enduring popularity of the rural chapels were a constant source of anxiety to church officials. Located on the outskirts of the community, the rural chapel enticed believers away from the parish. Bishop Pacheco complained in 1602 that villagers often went to hear mass at the chapel rather than at their own parish church.⁽⁵⁷⁾ That was perhaps the most innocent of all of the abuses that were laid at the unregulated chapels' doors. In 1531, Bishop Ramírez had lashed out against the fact that both the pilgrimages (romerías) to the chapels and the vigils that took place there were the occasion for too much merrymaking and not enough attention to God. The chapels, fitted out with decrepit ornaments, themselves might be crumbling old buildings that attracted indigents who took advantage of the sanctuary offered by the structures.⁽⁵⁸⁾

Ramírez's pre-Tridentine constitutions had failed to make any impression on conquenses' habits. In the absence of reform, some laymen became quite skeptical of the value of chapels and pilgrimages. At mid-century, the Inquisition of Cuenca tried several men and women for expressing criticism of chapel cults. In 1561, Bartolomé Sánchez, from the village of La Losa, called processions to the chapels "a joke."⁽⁵⁹⁾ Juan de la Peña, noted above for his criticism of images, also had some hard words for processions. He disliked romerías because people became distracted, wandered about, and paid no attention to the religious nature [155] of the outing. He thought that people spent too much money on such processions, which gave rise to scandals; in short, it would be better to stay closer to home where the Holy Sacrament was, "because that was where God was."⁽⁶⁰⁾

As it had been in cases of criticism of images, the Inquisition was quick to punish anyone who voiced disapproval of chapel cults. Behind the scenes, though, Bishop Fresneda relied on Trent's authority to find a solution to at least one problem involving chapels, namely, their inadequate funding and consequent poor state of repair. At the 1568 synod, he explained that false accounts of the diocese's chapels were being made in Rome and causing suspicion there; the best solution would be annexation of the chapels' lands to those of the parish churches, as Trent had indicated. In annexing the chapels, Fresneda made the parish mayordomos (managers) responsible for "the repair and conservation of the said chapels and for all the other necessary and just expenses such as vestments, wax, and oil, as well as whatever else that is done with our permission or that of our provisor."⁽⁶¹⁾

The bishops, however, did not even know how many chapels there were in the diocese. In 1583, Bishop Zapata set out to discover the numbers and advocations of Cuenca's many rural chapels as well as of the bishopric's confraternities. His inspector seems to have been slightly less punctilious in recording the diocese's chapels, but the records still remain the best available.⁽⁶²⁾ The 116 towns and villages surveyed in 1583-85 supported 277 ermitas honoring a bewildering number of saints (see table 5.3).

In reality, despite the large number of chapel saints, Conquenses relied on a few well-known devotions for community protection: eight saints accounted for two-thirds of the chapels' advocations. Sebastian and Mary equally commanded the loyalty of the villages. Fifty-seven of the surveyed communities maintained chapels dedicated to one or the other of the two saints, and twenty-three more towns honored both. Sebastian, of course, was the essential defense against the plague, while Mary gave all-around protection. Altogether, the villages observed no less than twenty-two different advocations of Mary, only a few of them known outside Cuenca. These advocations were extremely local manifestations of the Virgin, who had promised to keep watch over a particular town. After Sebastian and Mary, Christopher, patron saint of travelers, was unusually popular. In Cuenca, Christopher was also believed to cure eye ailments, and mountain communities may have felt the need to seek Christopher's assistance for their members' safe passage through the difficult terrain of the Serranía, with its deep gorges,  snow-covered

The chapel cults described above were scarcely possible without the religious brotherhoods, which often were formed to underwrite the cost of maintaining them. First gaining widespread popularity in Spain in the fifteenth century, in addition to maintaining chapel cults, confraternities were formed fulfill the charitable precepts of the Seven Acts of Mercy. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the penitential brotherhoods rivaled the charitable confraternities in popularity.⁽⁶⁴⁾ As elsewhere, the cofradías in Cuenca were an essential part of the diocese's religious life. A large number of adults belonged to them, and few persons were not affected at some point in their lives by some aspect of the cofradías' activities.

The pre-Tridentine cofradías were a world to themselves, one in which the parish cura played little part and in which even the religious intent behind some of the cofradías lost much of its meaning. The larger brotherhoods offered an alternate religious community to their members. The brothers hired their own chaplains, maintained separate chapels and images, and observed the holidays associated with the cofradía's patron saint. To the dismay of pious individuals, the cofradías' activities often spilled over into the purely secular. In addition to the religious services, the brotherhoods provided their members with social and [157] financial benefits, which could detract from the cofradías' religious and charitable purposes. Membership in a particular cofradía could be a mark of hotly contested social distinction, since many brotherhoods placed a cap on their size or limited places to those who met certain requirements of birth, wealth, occupational status, or title.⁽⁶⁵⁾ Official concern over cofradías began to be apparent in the parish visitation orders at mid-century. The accounts of the Cabildo del Santísimo Sacramento in Buenache de Alarcón, a prosperous seigniorial town to the south of Cuenca, provide some insight into the functioning of a small-town cofradía, and why the clergy objected to the brotherhood's independent operation.⁽⁶⁶⁾

Buenache's chapter of the Blessed Sacrament appears to have been founded in 1522; at least, that was when a few regulations were first written down or copied from a previous register. The cofradía's initial membership was sixty-two men and twenty-two women, and priests were excluded. The brothers were determined to keep clerical influence to a minimum: when priests from the town were finally admitted in 1570, it was on the condition that they could not serve as mayordomos. The brotherhood's activities revolved around the feast of Corpus Christi and the Eucharist. The evening before the octave of the holy day, the brothers gathered in the parish church with their candles and then formed a procession in the church to enclose the Sacrament. For the procession, the cabildo owned its own liturgical ornaments: a silver monstrance, cloths of yellow damask, a red damask banner, scepters, a surplice for the priest, and various implements for making wax torches and candles. On Corpus Christi itself, the brotherhood put on dances and skits and held a fraternal banquet, a common practice at the time. In addition, the brothers voted to observe the feast of Mary Magdalene, "because she was the one who loved Jesus Christ the most." Like all brotherhoods, the company promised to attend the funerals of deceased brothers and pay for some services. Members could also pay the brotherhood to observe special memorial masses and prayers.

The brotherhood's scope grew with the century. Some of the innovations were praiseworthy spiritual and charitable activities. Members were asked to pay two reals extra each year for devotional masses. If a pauper commended himself to the brotherhood, they would bury him for free. In 1532 the confraternity established that on the first Thursday of each month, all members had to attend mass in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. Despite these religious ordinances, early on the cofradía began to run into problems; it seemed unaffected by the ideals [158] of the archconfraternities of the Santísimo Sacramento, authorized in Spain in 1542.⁽⁶⁷⁾ The brotherhood was almost too successful; more people wanted to join than could be accommodated, and as a result there were arguments and "passions" over memberships. The annual banquet soon turned into a rowdy celebration, which alienated some of the members. In 1535 the banquet was put to a vote, and those who felt the feasts should be discontinued lost, 14 to 36. Thereafter the brothers' interest in food seemed to grow at the expense of their religious activities. In 1556 the diocesan inspector ordered the cofradía to spend its income on the masses and candles as they had vowed to do, and not on meals. The brotherhood paid no attention to the order, and in 1558 they spent 5,849 maravedis on seven sheep, thirty gallons of wine, 3.75 bushels of wheat, and several ounces each of pepper, cinnamon, saffron, salt, vinegar, and onions. The inspectors' complaints continued, and the meals became more elaborate. In 1573 the cofradía, which now had 105 members (about one third of the town's men), spent 10,507 maravedis for six sheep and six lambs, thirty-eight gallons of red and white wine, wheat, pot cheese, cheese for seasoning, carrots, onions, spices, and honey. The brotherhood had turned into nothing more than a glorified eating club.⁽⁶⁸⁾

For late-medieval Christians, fraternal ritual feasting was the primary way unrelated individuals could reaffirm their spiritual kinship to one another.⁽⁶⁹⁾ Although priests had always complained about the annual feasts, it is significant that some members of Buenache's chapter had come to hold the same view, that the sacramental function of the fraternity was more important than its traditional charitable one. The vote to discontinue the banquets came only a few years after the confraternity voted to sponsor and attend a monthly mass in honor of the Holy Sacrament. In this instance, the revolution from within was incomplete, and it fell to ecclesiastical leaders to reorder the priorities of the fraternity.

The Council of Trent passed several decrees that gave bishops more authority to supervise and correct the cofradías.⁽⁷⁰⁾ One method to control the brotherhoods was to encourage them to keep account books that would be deposited in the parish archives, which in fact was done with increasing efficiency during Fresneda's episcopate.⁽⁷¹⁾ Still better, as had been suggested by the clergy of Uclés in 1566, it was the aim of bishops to place all the brotherhoods under the spiritual supervision of parish priests. The priests could be counted on to guide the cofradías in a [159] manner that would promote the church's interests. Another way to stem abuses and avert quarrels was to ensure that the numerous brotherhoods did not duplicate services in the parish or unduly compete with the church for the loyalty of the parishioners. In 1566-67 the royal government ordered all Castilian cofradías to combine their rents to support just one or two hospitals in their communities.⁽⁷²⁾ A last way for the bishop to assert some measure of control over the cofradías was to restrict the foundation of new ones and to require the old ones to draw up constitutions, not allowing them to take part in community religious festivals until their bylaws had been approved in Cuenca.⁽⁷³⁾

The constitutions drawn up in 1575 for the cofradía of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, in Honrubia, give some indication of the structure and activities of one such post-Tridentine brotherhood.⁽⁷⁴⁾ At the 1566 Council of Toledo, Juan de Avila had recommended that the confraternities, whose purpose was to supress blasphemy, be brought to every town. The Name of Jesus was made a holiday in the diocese that same year, and in 1570 Fresneda's inspector general recommended that this devotion be brought to Cuenca's parishes.⁽⁷⁵⁾ Honrubia's brotherhood may have been the fruit of the inspector's recommendation. The cofradía was founded in order to praise Jesus's name and combat blasphemy. In contrast to Buenache's chapter of the Blessed Sacrament, which had evolved over time, the confraternity of the Name of Jesus was born fully conceived. In most respects, the brotherhood's activities,as laid out in the bylaws, paralleled those of the Blessed Sacrament in Buenache. The brotherhood celebrated Jesus's Name by holding a procession of its members on the eve of the holy day. In addition, the cofradía was to pay for a mass at vespers and a requiem mass on the actual holiday. Other articles required the cofradía to hire a priest to say the mass of Jesus's Name each Sunday before high mass throughout the year and threatened with fines those of its members who did not attend this mass. The cofradía was also instituted as a charitable organization that served to aid its sick brothers and to give Christian burial to its members when they died. However, the real innovation in the cofradía's constitutions was one of its final articles, which required brothers to refrain from blaspheming because of the particular purpose of the confraternity: to praise God, and not to take his name in vain. Accordingly, the brotherhood established a list of common oaths and the penalties for using them, and promised to report any member to the Inquisition if he or she used more heinous forms of blasphemy.⁽⁷⁶⁾ By requiring weekly

While the reformed brotherhood of the Holy Name of Jesus helped promote piety among its own members, its very existence can be tied to the second of the church's goals: to standardize and reinforce the faith. In this scheme, it was not enough just to eliminate abuses; new devotions compatible with the post-Tridentine church had to come to the fore. Honrubia's cofradía honored a cult that was part of a wider movement in the sixteenth century that sought to increase devotion to Christ. In the second half of the century, penitential brotherhoods grew rapidly in the cities of Toledo and Zamora.⁽⁷⁷⁾ In Cuenca, Bishop Fresneda encouraged the flagellant brotherhoods and other confraternities devoted to Christ while at the same time placing them more under clerical control. As for other cults, there was no doubt in the minds of contemporaries concerning the usefulness of brotherhoods that were sworn to uphold the honor of the Virgin Mary, the truth of the Blessed Sacrament, and the value of purgatory in counteracting subversive influence from abroad.⁽⁷⁸⁾

Reforming and controlling the diocese's confraternities would be made easier if officials had an accurate count of them and their financial status. In 1583, Bishop Zapata's inspectors turned their attention to the rugged eastern half of the diocese and made a point of inquiring after each village's cofradías, hospitals, and rural chapels. The visitation provides a striking snapshot of the numbers and devotional preferences of Cuenca's brotherhoods twenty years after the promulgation of the Council of Trent.

Bishop Zapata's visitation revealed that confraternities assumed the most importance in the smaller towns and villages where there were fewer priests and friars but more cofradías per inhabitant than anywhere else. The 1583-85 inspection recorded that nearly every community had at least one brotherhood (see table 5.4).⁽⁷⁹⁾ Most communities supported an additional one or two cofradías. Even villages of less than one hundred households (four hundred to five hundred inhabitants and usually one priest) found the wherewithal to support a few brotherhoods as well as a chapel or two. Although religious brotherhoods were one of the outstanding features of urban Catholicism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is clear that in small-town Cuenca the brotherhoods frequently were the only religious organization in town  [162] other than the parish church, and as such, they had enormous potential to shape conquenses' faith and collective identity.⁽⁸⁰⁾

The authorities' uneasiness that the cofradías and chapels presented an alternative to the spiritual life offered by the parish church was well-founded, but the visita also showed that Tridentine cults had made considerable progress among the diocese's confraternities (see table 5.5). Penitential brotherhoods honoring Christ's Passion were present in half of the towns, and about one-third of the communities supported cofradías dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtually all of the communities, even the smallest hamlets, supported a brotherhood that coordinated the offerings for the souls in purgatory. The inspector, confronted with the numerous cofradías dedicated to Mary, often simply noted that a village had a Marian brotherhood without specifying which advocation the cofradía embraced. Even so, cofradías honoring the Immaculate Conception (a particularly Spanish advocation), the Assumption, and the Rosary were present in at least nineteen communities. The widespread distribution of these penitential and eucharistic cofradías in the villages and small towns brought home the disturbing paradox: while many conquenses had embraced the new cults, they lived out their most intense religious experiences, not in church, but within the context of a lay religious organization that could escape the clergy's supervision. The bishops' orders concerning account books, constitutions, and chaplains [163]  take on much more significance when, with the aid of Zapata's inspection tour, one realizes just how important the cofradías were to the bishopric's spiritual life.

The 1583 inspection revealed that confraternities and chapels were the organizing principle of small-town religious life, but like previous inspectors, Zapata's men failed to investigate the city of Cuenca itself, where presumably the new policies would take effect most immediately and most deeply. If used with care, testaments from the city of Cuenca can serve as an alternative source of information about the city's collective religious life.⁽⁸¹⁾

Participation in the city's confraternities was constantly evolving, following specific religious trends and responding to economic conditions in the city. In the first half of the century, three types of confraternities were active in the city: those that ran the hospitals, others dedicated to burying the poor, and finally, those associated with a profession or the nobility. The burial associations continued throughout the early modern period, but the hospital confraternities fell off before the end of the sixteenth century, and the trade/noble fraternities declined in the seventeenth century along with the city's economy.⁽⁸²⁾ At mid-sixteenth century, the Catholic Reformation's promotion of the cult of the Eucharist led to the policy that each parish should have its own confraternity devoted to the Blessed Sacrament. Brotherhoods in the parishes of San Juan and San Nicolás were in operation after 1545, and in all of the other twelve parishes plus several of the monasteries by the end of the century. Similarly, the city's penitential confraternities and the Name of Jesus were not active until after 1565.

Except for the companies of the Blessed Sacrament, which were founded as parochial associations, and the trade/noble fraternities, no confraternity in the city was exclusively linked with either one social group or a single parish (see table 5.6). However, just as the city's fourteen parishes were known for their popular or aristocratic neighborhoods, confraternities took on distinct signatures.⁽⁸³⁾ The city's largely working class parishes - San Juan, Santo Domingo, San Martín and San Estebán - made up about half of the population. Elites tended to live in San Pedro, Santa María de Gracía, and Santa María la Mayor, tiny parishes that accounted for only 10 per cent of the city's inhabitants. In the most exclusive confraternity, Nuestra Senora de la Soledad, nearly a third of the cabildo's members came from the more aristocratic parishes. On the other hand, only 16 per cent came from the popular parishes mentioned above. Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia's membership closely mimicked the overall

Source: Based on AGS, Cámera de Castilla, leg. 2159, exp. 48 (1571).

The third estate participated most consistently over time in the collective associations, year after year filling out the ranks of the companies of the Blessed Sacrament, the burial associations, and most of the penitential confraternities. In one membership list preserved from [165] 1589, the thirty-two new brothers of San Francisco were nearly all artisans, who paid four reals a head for their membership.⁽⁸⁴⁾ In contrast, the city's elites and professionals' membership was confined primarily to the noble confraternities and Nuestra Señora de la Soledad.⁽⁸⁵⁾ Except for membership in the latter, noble participation in the brotherhoods declined rapidly after 1575, perhaps another indication of the inward turning of religious life among Castile's educated classes.

Participation in the confraternities was more typically a male activity than a female one; at the height of the cofradías' popularity in Cuenca (1565-75), 62 percent of men and 40 percent of women joined at least one brotherhood.⁽⁸⁶⁾ Few confraternities, however, seem to have limited their membership exclusively to men. Equally popular among both sexes were the penitential confraternities and burial societies. As in Buenache de Alarcón, in Cuenca companies of the Blessed Sacrament were two-thirds male, but the brotherhood of the Name of Jesus attracted a predominantly female membership.

A large minority of both men and women belonged to a second or even third confraternity. Multiple memberships, if one could afford them, made sense, as each confraternity catered to a specific religious or charitable need. For example, Juan Moreno, a weaver from the parish of Santo Domingo, in 1565 belonged to the association of weavers (Holy Trinity) and to the All Saints burial society. Trade confraternities functioned as part guild and part religious association.⁽⁸⁷⁾ Brothers marched on city holidays and at members' funerals, feasted together, and sponsored memorial masses. Evidently, Holy Trinity's funeral benefits did not satisfy Moreno's desire for a good burial, so he joined one of the city's several burial societies. A different case was that of Lucrecia de Espinola, a well-to-do, religious widow who found an outlet for her faith in the city's confraternities. In 1575 Lucrecia belonged to three well-attended associations, Archangel Michael, Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, and the Name of Jesus.⁽⁸⁸⁾ No specific record survives of these cofradías' activities in the city of Cuenca, but in Toledo, Nuestra Señora de la Soledad was a penitential cult, and the brothers and sisters of the Name of Jesus in Honrubia were dedicated to stamping out blasphemy.

An integral part of all confraternities' activities was the public celebration of their patron saint's holiday. As community institutions, confraternities were also called upon to take part in the civic rituals of their town. Before Trent, the local community and confraternities controlled when and how they would practice their faith. Secular entertainment and religious ritual were subsumed into community identity.

[166] Such autonomous celebrations, blurring sacred and profane boundaries, however, met with increasing opposition inside the church. Communities could not be allowed to celebrate whatever holy days they deemed necessary in any manner that they saw fit. Holy days glorified the church first, the cult second, and the town last; all profane entertainment had to be removed from the actual holy day, which was conserved for prayer. In the years following Trent, the key holy days of the year were transformed into showpieces for the church militant and secular authority. In the city of Cuenca, popular processions of humble skits, floats, and dances gave way to extravagant displays of solemn masses, religious theater, pomp, and civic opulence.⁽⁸⁹⁾

Throughout most of the sixteenth century, conquenses created their own religious theater as a matter of course. They called their presentations by a variety of names-representación, juego, farsa and auto- which were used interchangeably.⁽⁹⁰⁾ Both liturgical theater and primitive forms of the Corpus Christi auto sacramental were common. Liturgical drama was so widespread by 1531 that Bishop Ramírez was obliged to pass statutes governing the presentations. He noted that conquenses frequently gave presentations in church on the Nativity, Passion, and Resurrection. As far as the highly educated bishop was concerned, the pieces were rankly amateurish and embarrassing to the church. Ramírez attempted to prevent scandals from occurring by ordering that all theatrical presentations that were to be performed inside a church have prior episcopal approval.⁽⁹¹⁾

Despite episcopal efforts to control the representaciones, religious theater was so popular that its performance was not restricted to holy days. Saint Francis's Confraternity paid on several occasions to have plays put on for them inside their hospital.⁽⁹²⁾ In 1558, seven young tradesmen from Orihuela (Valencia) decided to commit to memory an auto written by a local surgeon and to perform it on a pilgrimage to Toro, in Old Castile. The pilgrim players arrived in Cuenca on 22 May 1558, after performing the auto in the towns of Jumilla, Albestor, El Provencio, and Santa María del Campo. An indication of the popularity of such theater, a sizeable audience of over two hundred, paying an admission fee of four maravedis per person, assembled on a few hours' notice to watch a presentation that dealt with the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Cardinal Virtues, the Devil, and Christ. Unfortunately for the players, however, news of heretics at the court in Valladolid had just reached Cuenca. One member of the audience, in a state of misapprehension, denounced the troupe to the Inquisition because they were [167] from Valencia and therefore might have picked up the Lutheran heresy. After reviewing the play, the Inquisitors told the Valencians to get out of town and not to present their auto again.⁽⁹³⁾

Also highly popular but also unsupervised were the skits and plays that were given on Corpus Christi.⁽⁹⁴⁾ These, too, were amateur affairs, put on with some rehearsing by local citizens and confraternities. A few examples of these popular presentations have survived in the Inquisition's archives. On Corpus Christi, 1551, three young residents of Belmonte staged an auto sacramental that one of their number had written for the occasion. For five days, Juan López, a barber, Rodrigo de Baños, and Antonio Navalón, a tailor, rehearsed their skit, in which an old man and old woman attempt to teach their son, the Fool, the doctrine of transubstantiation. Probably to the delight of the audience, the auto's dialogue turned entirely on the subject of food, ordinary or otherwise. Towards the end, the Old Man explains that "that meal, bread, was turned into God, and the wine into blood without equal." The Fool, thinking he's finally gotten the idea, carries the transformation further-"blood then turned into blood sausage!" he exclaims. This humorous line caused some of the priests in the crowd, particularly Canon Santander, a preacher, to mutter their disapproval. Fearing the worst, López, who may well have been the author of the piece, went to the Holy Office's commissioner in Belmonte to confess his participation in the scandal before someone denounced him.⁽⁹⁵⁾ Despite the doubtful reception that this auto received from the clerics of Belmonte, the piece was popular enough to reappear fifteen years later in a town on the other side of the bishopric. Had it circulated from hand to hand all those years?⁽⁹⁶⁾

From these examples, it is clear that amateur religious theater aroused opposition in official quarters. In Cuenca and Belmonte, denunciations against the autos were passed in by suspicious priests, who distrusted the spectacle of unlicensed laymen teaching doctrine even in a simple skit. After the 1560s, references to amateur autos sacramentales disappear, perhaps an indication that the Inquisition and diocesan officials were able to put a stop to them. But the auto itself was too popular and too valuable a teaching aid for the church to suppress entirely.⁽⁹⁷⁾ Together with several holy days, the auto sacramental became part of the propaganda effort of the Counter Reformation, while popular input to the performances and the holy days themselves was lost. This process can be observed best by briefly tracing the history of the Corpus Christi celebrations in Cuenca.

[168] Corpus Christi, first instituted by Pope Urban in 1264, had grown with the late-medieval enthusiasm for Christocentric devotions.⁽⁹⁸⁾ The city of Cuenca patronized the holiday, and in 1500 the city's leaders wrote to the Catholic Monarchs for their approval of ordinances that would ensure that "the procession of Our Lord's Body is made most honorably and better than in times past." Royal permission was granted. By 1531 the city was spending more money on Corpus than on any other holiday, but the actual festivities still emphasized community participation. At mid-century, the Corpus celebrations consisted in the city's guilds and clergy marching together with their banners, crosses, and wax candles.⁽⁹⁹⁾

The Council of Trent, however, changed the nature of the Corpus Christi holy day. Protestant attacks on the doctrine of transubstantiation led the council to transform Corpus Christi into the triumphant religious holiday of the Catholic year.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ The shift in emphasis is seen in Cuenca's Corpus Christi celebrations, which became more elaborate within a few years of Trent. In the 1570s the city required each guild to compose its own skit or dance honoring Corpus Christi and enter it in a citywide competition. To accommodate the performers, the city erected a stage in the plaza mayor, opposite the cathedral, and then judged each entry. The best play received a prize of ten ducats, and the best dance won six ducats.⁽¹⁰¹⁾

The holiday continued to evolve and, what was most important, to grow beyond the popular celebration it had once been. Gradually, the amateur performances of skits gave way to autos sacramentales which the city contracted from professional troupes. In 1621 one of the city magistrates, Diego Arias, noted that Corpus Christi had grown very popular all over Spain in the past few years and recommended that the city bring in "one of the good companies of representations" which could put on "votive autos and deal with the real presence of the body of Christ Our Lord or figures from the Old or New Testament so that [Corpus Christi] is celebrated spiritually and corporally."⁽¹⁰²⁾ Apparently, the use of a professional company for Corpus Christi had become traditional in Cuenca, for two years later the city's secretary routinely recorded that a company was invited again for Corpus, and he did not mention the popular competition of skits.⁽¹⁰³⁾

One might argue that the switch to professional troupes simply reflects the growth of Spanish theater; before 1579, there were no permanent theaters, few companies, and no fixed dramaturgical forms.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ This may be so, but the switch also occurred during the same years that [169] city and church authorities added two more major holy days to Cuenca's calendar that only take on meaning within the context of the Counter Reformation's need for public affirmation of its goals.

The first holiday adopted by Cuenca in the latter part of the sixteenth century celebrated the virtues of a militant faith. Exactly four hundred and four years after the fact, in 1581, the city and church of Cuenca decided that the time had come to establish a holiday that would commemorate Cuenca's liberation from the Muslims on Saint Matthew's Day, 1177. The timing of this new holiday seems to have been influenced by the unwelcome presence of many relocated Grenadine moriscos in the diocese and the uncertain truce with the Ottoman Turks. The city fathers explained that, considering the great mercy that His Divine Majesty used in liberating the city of Cuenca from idolatry and service to the Devil by freeing it from the power of the infidel Moors, granting victory to the most Christian king, Alfonso [VIII] of Castile...[and] considering that such a great favor was received from His Divine Hand on the holy day of such a glorious apostle and evangelist [St. Matthew], this city together with the bishop and dean and chapter...decided that the fiesta of this glorious saint shall be remembered always.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾

St. Matthew's joyous fiesta, marked by bonfires, processions, masquerades, jousting, and bull fights, fell in September, only two weeks after another new holiday, San Julián. One finds the same aggrandizement in San Julian's holiday that was present in the transformation of Corpus Christi. After the obscure bishop of Cuenca's body was first exhumed in 1518, the city fathers had scarcely recognized Julian's feast day. Then, under steady pressure from the cathedral, the saint's day was transformed into one of the city's principal holidays, with processions, bull fights, and jousting tournaments. In 1551 the saint's day was officially moved from 28 January to 5 September, around the time of the annual fair, so that it would attract greater crowds. The festivities became so expensive that special arrangements were made to pay for the holiday each year.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ When the saint finally won his own service late in 1594, the cathedral, the bishop, and city cooperated to put on the most lavish celebration that Cuenca had ever witnessed. For a week the city was treated to solemn processions, viewings of the miraculous body, masses, dances, bullfights, jousting tourneys, fireworks, and professional theater, all carefully orchestrated so that the purely [170] profane celebrations would not mar the pious intensity of the religious services.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ All of this energy was expended to promote the cult of an obscure saint who, because of his reputed healing powers and virtues as a bishop, had come to symbolize all the material and spiritual advantages that the Catholic Reformation had to offer.

In the second half of the sixteenth century, religious authorities guided conquenses' faith into devotions that reflected the priorities of the new age. For the religiously adept, the age's need for an interior life and direct contact with God could not be denied, but it could be supervised by ensuring that the materials and priests that could inform that interior life represented the latest teaching of the church. Devotion to Christ, the mass, the martyred saints, and of course the sorrowing Virgin were the watchwords of the period. The rapidity with which the penitential and eucharistic cults spread in the diocese indicates the great reservoir of faith among the mass of the people, who may not have been able to meditate but were prepared to offer their suffering and prayers instead. If the city of Cuenca was typical, most remarkable was the speed with which the new cults took hold and the old forms of religious life- the skits and banquets - were dismantled. Just as Conquenses threw themselves into learning their catechism, they also seemed to embrace with enthusiasm the new holidays, cults and religious organizations that religious and civic authorities introduced to the diocese. The most profound impact, however, of the new religious regime was not to be felt in the realm of the living, which, as every reader of the Contemptus Mundi knew, was filled with vanities. The Christian's true reward came after death. The question was, how to obtain it.

1.  AMC, leg. 265, fols. 327-29 (29-30 Aug. 1603). Parts of the city council's determinations are reprinted in J. Moya Pinedo, Corregidores y regidores de Cuenca. Siglos XV al XIX, 175-76. Carrascosa's life inspired two contemporary accounts, P. de Aparicio, Vida y muerte de fray Martin de Cabrejas...; and M. de Huélamo, Tratado de la vida ejemplar y muerte santa del bendito Fray Martin de Carrascosa.... The latter work is summarized at length in P.M. Ortega, Crónica de la santa provincia franciscana de Cartagena, 1: 464-89.

2. Carrascosa  fulfilled popular expectations of his intercessory powers.  One of the more unusual cures involved a man who while asleep had been bitten by a flesh fly (moscarda), which deposited its eggs in his lip.  When the larvae hatched, they migrated to his throat and began to grow.  Although thoroughly disgusted by this incident, the eighteenth-century chronicler Ortega described the man's ailment in correct natural terms (the cure was supernatural).  Compare with the darker undertones of similar incidents described by P. Camporesi, The Incorruptible Flesh:  Bodily Mortification and Mutilation in Folklore and Religion (Cambridge, 1988), 90ñ105.

3. Aparicio wrote, "En Valdemeca, esa villa,/ nació este noble varón,/ de Cuenca veinte y una milla./ Desde niño a la oración/ se dió que era maravilla..." (Vida y muerte de fray Martin de Cabrejas....; see also, Ortega, Crónica de la santa provincia franciscana de Cartagena, 471ñ72).

4. Melquiades Andrés, HIE, 3, pt. 2:333; also, J. Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa.  On the popular Christocentrism of these years, see Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, chap. 5, "Christ Enshrined, 1580ñ1780."

5. See Appendix 2 for a complete list.

6. See Bossy, "The Counter Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe."

7. On the heremetic ideal in Spain, see A. Saint-Saëns, La nostalgie du Désert: l'idéal érémitique en Castille au Siècle d'Or (San Francisco, 1991).

8. All but one of the councillors voted to approve the gift.  The essentials of Catalina de Cardona's life and basic sources are given in DHEE, 1:352.  Her petition to Cuenca was debated 14 June 1575 (AMC Leg. 256, fol. 225).  The rambling text of the holograph letter, addressed to ìHijos mios en jesu christo,î runs as follows:
 

La paz y gracia del espiritu santo sea en vuestras almas amen.  Por ser venida a esta tierra me a parescido a acordaros como a honrra y gloria de dios nuestro señor y de su bentita madre con el favor de los buenos y sierbos de christo se hedifica una casa de religion junto a la Roda dentro deste obispado a donde su sancto nombre sea alabado a ynbocaçion de nuestra señora del socorro del monte carmelo. [A la] qual an de vinir frayles carmelitas descalzos siervos del señor de gran ejemplo y penitencia y por que la charidad que con todos se debe a de ser al respecto de la que con todos el señor tuvo y tiene y tendra aunque yo pecadora os quiero hazer parte de lo que por vuestras limosnas podeys ganar ayudando para el servicio del señor con algo de lo mucho que de su mano teneys rescibido os pido hijos me querays faborescer con vuestra limosna de algunos pinos de los que en vuestras dehesas o terminos teneys de manera que me sea commodidad para esta sancta obra porque en ello hareys a dios nuestro señor servicio y a su gloriosa madre pondreys en mas obligacion de seros yntercesora sereys participantes en los sufragios de aquella casa y a mis hijos me hareys mucha charidad sea mi bien jesus en vuestras almas.  La que ruega a dios por vosotros.

10. Ortega, Crónica de la santa provincia franciscana de Cartagena, 1:410.

11. F. de Santa María, Reforma de los Descalços de Nuestra Señora de la primitiva observancia (Madrid, 1644), bk. 5, ch. 3; A. de San Jerónimo, Vida, virtudes y milagros de la prodigiosa virgen y madre Ana de San Agustín, carmelita descalza, fundadora del convento de Valera y compañera de Santa Teresa de Jesus en la fundación de Villanueva de la Jara (Madrid, 1668).

12. See Appendix 2.

13. AMC, leg. 276, fol. 361v (31 July 1576).

14. ADC, Sec., L-150, exp. 81.  The Benedictine convent was founded in 1448, and the prominent Valdés family had a chapel there.  The second oldest convent was the Franciscan Concepcionista house, also prestigious, but reformed.  Both convents survive in the present-day city in their original locations.  For a description of similar conditions elsewhere, see Bilinkoff, The Avila of St. Teresa, 112ñ16.

15. Ana, a native of El Castillo de Garci Muñoz, was the daughter of Don Juan Ladrón de Mendoza and Doña Leonor Cabrera. The Spanish runs "Para María de Salazar/ que es pedorra sin par/ y a todo quiere catar/ y jurar que nunca lo vió./ Para don Alfonso Carrillo/ que parece un mono/ y viejo y amarillo/ y querría usar su officio/ y la abbadesa se lo ympidió./ Para essa de Arriega/ que es una tarta y fea/ y al mundo multiplicó."  In Christian iconography, monkeys and apes symbolized lust and greed.

16. ADC, Libro de Entierros de San Martin, P-169, fols. 17vñ20r.  This entry is the only one of its kind in Cuenca; the priest must have been extremely impressed to have taken the trouble to write the five-page entry.  Ana and Pedro's story may also be found briefly recounted in Reher, Town and Country in Pre-Industrial Spain, 12ñ13.

17. Someone's memory is faulty here.  The shrine was founded in 1567 by the corregidor of Cuenca.  Possibly the devotion existed prior to the date, but the physical building did not yet exist in that location (M. López, Memorias históricas de Cuenca y su obispado, 1:323.)

18. A house for beatas belonging to the Third Order of San Francisco was in operation in 1551 (AMC, leg. 1516, exp. 4 [5 Aug. 1551]).

19. ADC, P-169, fol. 18r-v.

20. In Catalunya, and possibly in Castile as well, it was believed that attending mass would confer many graces.  The more extravagant beliefs included the following: that as many angels and saints would attend at one's death as masses a person had heard in his or her lifetime; that for the time that one heard mass, one's relatives' suffering in purgatory ceased; and also during that time, one's body did not age (J. Casas Homs, "Las gracías de la misaî).  One cannot know how much Ana understood of what she saw, but it may have been quite a bit, because in 1600, Melchor Huélamo published in Cuenca his Discursos predicables, which explained with total simplicity the entire ritual of mass.  The discursos were written to be read aloud or preached.

21. As Ana died, Pedro came to his senses and announced to those present, "Gentlemen, take note that this woman is truly blessed, and that I return her to Our Lord like the day she was born."  One has to wonder if this was not a literary flourish on the narrator's part.  Don Quijote experienced a similar deathbed return to sanity.  Pedro died within days of Ana.

22. For a description of the Inquisition defendants and trials used in this study, see Chapter 4.  The study of votive masses, artwork, and membership in confraternities is based in part on a sampling of 623 wills from the city of Cuenca drawn every tenth year from 1505 to 1645.

23. AHPC,  P-2, fols. 296vñ297r; P-124, [unpaginated], 2 Sept. 1525.  There are too few numbers involved here to have a clear sense of the social distribution of this form of devotion.  Besides those already listed, a servant and the wives of a tavern-keeper and a carpenter also ordered votive masses.

24. Votive masses in connection with the cult of the dead, and pious bequests in general are discussed in Chapter Six.

25. For purposes of coding, only the first five named masses were recorded.  Less than two percent of testators named more than five advocations or cycles.

26. Nalle, "Literacy and Culture in Early Modern Castile."

27. Miguel Martínez, a resident of Alcantud, was plainly vexed by the Inquisition's decision to ban books of hours in the vernacular.  He was reprimanded in 1574 for saying "he didn't know for what reason or purpose Hours should be prohibited.  He had some Hours in Spanish that were good and he wasn't going to turn them in" (AHN, Inq. leg. 254, exp. 279).

28. Nalle, "Literacy and Culture in Early Modern Castile."

29. F. de Avila, Avisos christianos provechosos para bivir en todos estados desengañadamente (Zaragoza?, ca. 1570), dedicated to the marquise of Villena, 117ñ20.

30. ADC, Inq., leg. 213, exp. 2575.  For a description and evaluation of this popular book, first published in Seville in 1550, see Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 649ñ50.

31. The record is silent as to the woman's legitimacy.

32. When the Jesuits first appeared in Spain they were given the name teatinos because they were confused with the Italian Theatines, a movement of secular priests.

33. Instead, Embid now remembered that Céspedes had said that a marriageís failure to result in offspring was grounds for annulment.

34. On censorship, see V. Pinto Crespo, Inquisición y control ideológico....

35. CTrid.25.Decr.2, on sacred images.

36. For an introduction to Counter Reformation art in Spain, see S. Sebastián, Contrarreforma y barroco.  Lecturas iconográficas e iconológicas (Madrid, 1981); J. Brown, The Golden Age of Painting in Spain (New Haven, 1991); and S. Orso, Art and Death in the Spanish Habsburg Court: the Royal Exequies for Philip IV (Columbia, Mo., 1991).

37. Inventories of household goods are almost never found in conquense wills, although inventories for dowries are very common.  Ninety-five percent of artwork owners appear after 1585.  One in ten testators after that date mentioned artwork.  This percentage is far lower than in Metz, where perhaps as many as 58% of all households owned artwork (P. Benedict, "Towards the Comparative Study of the Popular Market for Art: The Ownership of Paintings in Seventeenth-Century Metz," Past and Present, no. 109 [1985], 105).  In Counter Reformation Siena, artwork also began to appear in testaments of all classes, although in what numbers and topics is not clear (S. Cohn, Death and Property in Siena, 175ñ76.)

38. ADC, Inq., leg. 323, exp. 4641.

39. AHPC, P-247, fol. 311r.

40. Fr. L. de León, La perfecta casada (1583; reprint, Madrid, 1987).

41. The forty-six women and men named heirs for half of the ninety-eight objects mentioned.  Women were just as likely as men to gift their artwork.  Collections usually were split up between several recipients.

42. The popularity of images of Christ and the cross is very much in keeping with the expanded devotion to Christ that W. Christian finds in seventeenth-century La Mancha.  Images of Christ also were the most likely to attract sacrilegious hostility (Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, 192).

43. Leocadia, rescued from heretics, was the ninth example.  Catholics in seventeenth-century Metz exhibited rather different taste in artwork.  Sixty-one percent of Catholic-owned paintings were religious in nature (as opposed to 98 percent of conquenses'), and the Virgin Mary, not Jesus Christ, led the top of the list, at 30 percent.  Jesus Christ was the subject of 26 percent of the paintings, the saints, 28 percent, the Holy Family, 4 percent, and Old and New Testaments scenes accounted for the remaining 12 percent of paintings (Benedict, ìTowards the Comparative Study of the Popular Market for Art, 111.) In the early eighteenth century, preferences in Malaga were as follows: the saints, 36 percent; Jesus Christ (all subjects) 35 percent; Virgin Mary 24 percent; and the Old Testament, 4 percent (M. Reder Gadow, Morir in Málaga, 164ñ65).

44. ADC, Inq., leg. 239, exp. 3118.

45. Ibid., leg. 252, exp. 3415-16.

46. In the 1569 inspection of the diocese, Fresneda's inspector carefully noted the condition and quality of each parish church, its ornaments, and its retablo mayor (ADC, C.E., leg. 1, exp. 1.)

47. ADC, Inq., leg. 61, exp. 892 (1516).

48. Ibid., leg. 242 bis, exp. 3230.  According to Sigüenza's description of the print for the inquisitors, it was "a piece of paper, and on it there were some figures of a man, which on the same paper says 'milhan' [misread or misremembered for 'Mal advise'], and a figure of a woman together, but he doesn't know how the woman was called, who were actors and they're shown like they're gaming... there wasn't any image of God or Christ there."

49. V. Pinto Crespo, "La actitud de la Inquisición ante la iconografía religiosa.  Tres ejemplos de su actuación (1571ñ1665)," Hispania Sacra, 31 (1978ñ79), 285ñ322.

50. Granados de los Ríos, Historia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios de la Fuensanta, 137.

51. Pacheco,CS, bk. 3, title 17, const. 9, "De reliquiis et veneratione sanctorum."  There is no such article in Fresneda's Constituciones.

52. ADC, Inq., leg. 179, exp. 2045. This was said in Jabalera (near Huete) in 1541.

53. Ibid., leg. 289, exp. 4055.  This was in fact what San Francisco de Borja taught (Sebastián, Contrarreforma y barroco,  65).  Casilda, who was a schoolmaster's daughter and literate, maintained that her figurine of Mary, which she kept in her room, was just as good as the image at the regional shrine in El Cañavate.  Moreover, since Casilda herself was a product of the Holy Spirit, while all images are merely man-made, she thought she was worth more than any image.

54. ADC, Inq., leg. 247, exp. 3312 (1570).

55. Granados de los Ríos, Historia de Nvestra Señora de los Remedios de la Fuensanta, 144ñ45.  Another Trinitarian, writing in 1779 about the image of the Virgin at Texeda, stated, "It doesn't seem that they remember she who is in heaven, they look only at this holy image...[and] talk as if they were personally in front of her original" (A. G. Vermejo, Historia del santo y celebre imagen de Nuestra Señora de Texeda..., 239).

56. Readers seeking a more detailed treatment of this subject should consult W. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain.  Christian's material, based on Philip II's relaciones topográficas, covers a good portion of the diocese of Cuenca as well, and includes some aspects of local religion which did not appear in the diocesan reports.  Most important of these was the special holidays voted by communities so that certain saints (Augustine, Blaise, Gregory) would protect their crops.

57.   Pacheco, CS, bk. 3, title 14, const. 16.

58.   See Chapter 1.

59. ADC, Inq., 225, exp. 2804. This is not the same Bartolomé Sánchez cited in Chapter 2.

60. Ibid, leg. 239, exp. 3118.

61.   Ibid., P-1970, fol. 13rñv.  The 1568 synod has left no documentation; this reference comes from the parish account book of Monteagudo de Salinas, where several chapels were annexed to the parish.

62.   62.  The chapels in Alcocer, Valdeolivas, Millana, Salmeroncillas, and Albendea were not recorded.  Still, compare table 5.4 with W. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, table 3.1 "Chapels in New Castile" (70).  On the average, it seems that the Relaciones underreported chapels by one per community.  The question then becomes not merely how many chapels a community may support, but which ones seem most popular (Christian, Religiosidad local en la España de Felipe II, 14).

63. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, 94.

64. The only study in English of Spanish confraternities in the early modern period is Flynn, Sacred Charity.

65. Examples of all of these problems are easy to come by in the conquense archives.  Because of the prestige that accompanied membership in cofradías, Juan de Tavira took his cofradía to court in 1592 for admitting one member too many (ADC, C.E., leg. 771, exp. 738).  The arguments extended to rivalries between brotherhoods:  in 1597, Cuenca's provisor mediated between the cofradías of the Blessed Sacrament and Christ's Blood, from Iniesta, who fought over what position of honor they should take in the town's processions (ibid., leg. 784, exp. 1056).

66. ADC, P-604, fols. 31r and passim.

67. Flynn, Sacred Charity, 122-23.

68. ADC, P-604, fols. 31r, 55r, 61v, 70v, and 74r.

69. Bossy, Christianity in the West, 58ñ59.  In addition to confraternal feasting, in Castile, whole towns gave themselves over to similar banquets called caridades (Christian, La religiosidad popular, 78ñ80).

70. For a summary of Tridentine decrees affecting confraternities and their application to Spain, see Flynn, Sacred Charity,118ñ20.

71. Few of the cofradías' account books predate Trent.  Like parish account books, they become more common in the 1550s and 1560s.

72. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, 168-69.

73. The inspector general Antonio Sedeño ordered this to be done in Tórtola in 1583, when he instructed "the brothers of the chapters of the Holy Sacrament and the True Cross not to meet as chapters until they have bylaws" (ADC, L-204A, fol. 3v). Pacheco prohibited new foundations of cofradías without his permission (CS, bk. 3, title 10, const. 2).

74. On the confraternity in Zamora see Flynn, Sacred Charity, 123.  The constitutions of Cofradía del Nombre de Jesús in Arévalo (Avila) are reproduced in T. Sobrino Chomón, Documentos de antiguos cabildos, cofradías y hermandades abulenses (Avila, 1988), 345ñ52.

75. Avila, Obras completas, 6:259ñ60; ADC, C.E., leg. 1, exp. 1, fol. 43r;  Fresneda, CS, fol. 21r-v.  Saint Charles Borromeo also supported this cult.

76. ADC, C.E., leg. 749, exp. 354.  Arévalo's cofradía also established fines for blaspheming but did not threaten to turn its members in to the Holy Office.

77.  Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain, 164, on advocations of the True Cross, Our Lady of Solitude, Our Lady of Anguish, and the Holy Name of Jesus.  See also Flynn, Sacred Charity, chap. 4.

78. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, 199ñ200.   In 1576 an official in Toledo interpreted people's devotion to Our Lady, Souls in Purgatory, and the Blessed Sacrament as their way of showing "the splendour of their faith against the three principal errors of the Lutherans" (Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain, 164).

79.  ADC, L-204A, "Libro de la visita del obispado...1583."  A comparison of the Relaciones topográficas with the diocesan visitation records gives strikingly different results.  According to the Relaciones de pueblos del obispado de Cuenca, ed. J. Zarco Cuevas, eleven conquense towns in 1575ñ80 supported twenty-nine shrines and four cofradías.  According to the diocesan inspection of 1583, the same eleven towns supported thirty-six shrines and fifty-four cofradías.

80. Despite the importance of confraternities in agrarian communities,  historians have tended to look at confraternities in connection with many of the issues of urbanization: class consciousness, social control and protest, and welfare. (e.g., to name a few, M. Agulhon, Penitents et franc-masons; Flynn, Sacred Charity, R. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982) N. Z. Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France.)

81. Virtually no books from the city's confraternities appear the in parish archives; one assumes they have not survived or they are still in the possession of the city's several functioning confraternities.   Breakdown of testators is as follows in the sixteenth century: 10 percent clergy; 12 percent gentry; 35 percent trades; 43 percent unknown (mostly women).

82. One of these hospital confraternities, the Cabildo de San Francisco, preserves records dating from 1436 (ADC, P-215).  The decline of the hospitaler confraternities seems to have been related to the change in attitude about the appropriateness of the confraternities' role and hospital reform (Flynn, Sacred Charity, 102ñ5).  Interestingly, as membership in these confraternities declined, individual gifts to hospitals increased (see Chapter 6).

83. The correlation between residence and confraternity membership was quite strong, .698.

84. ADC, P-216, fol.138v.

85. While French and Italian penitential confraternities often were socially diverse, Cuenca's nobility seems to have found only Nuestra Señora de Soledad acceptable. In Madrid, the confraternity by the same name was also upper-class, and was dedicated to helping exposed children (J.L. de los Reyes Leoz, "La cofradía de la Soledad, religiosidad y beneficencia en Madrid [1597ñ1651]," Hispania Sacra 39 (1987): 147ñ84).

86. The preponderance of male confraternal memberships is not due to the distribution of the sexes in the sample, which was exactly equal.

87. Trade guilds in Castile rarely achieved the same economic importance as guilds in other European countries.  As a result, the distinction between the guild and confraternity was not as clear-cut as it was in Italy, where members of a trade belonged to the arte for business purposes and the scuola for religious activities (C. Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century [New York-Oxford, 1989],  25).

88. AHPC, P-325, fol. 648; P-585, fol. 634.

89. A recent study of the idea of the Counter Reformation city is J. L. Orozco Pardo, Christianópolis:  urbanismo y Contrarreforma en la Granada del Seiscientos (Granada, 1985).  See also the collection compiled by J. M. Díez Borque, Teatro y fiesta en el barroco.