The Inquisitor's Wife (43 page)

• Just for fun: Certain varieties of orange trees in Seville hold ripe fruit at the same time they’re blooming. (The same thing happens here in southern California, where the climate is very similar to Seville’s.)

• Three days after preaching a sermon of gratitude at the very first auto-de-fé (the term
auto-da-fé
would not come into use for another hundred years), the Jew and
converso
hater, Fray Alonso Hojeda—the man who single-handedly convinced Queen Isabella of the need for an Inquisition—dropped dead of the plague. (Maybe it’s not a shocking fact, but I particularly like it.)

• Unlike their sumptuously dressed counterparts in Italy and France, married women in Renaissance Spain dressed in plain high-necked gowns, usually black; men wore tunics that fell to their knees while the rest of men in Europe were starting to ditch tunics in favor of farsettos and codpieces. Dress in Spain was so austere that Spanish visitors to other European countries were scandalized.

• Queen Isabella never wore jewelry (except for a small crucifix) in public, in keeping with her pious image. However, in private, she wore pounds of gold and dozens of precious jewels (including a ring on each finger), pushing the limits of good taste even for a wealthy monarch. At the same time, she didn’t pamper herself where duty was concerned, and thought nothing of riding off pregnant to join her husband in battle.

• The Spanish Inquisition also took virulent hold in the New World, where many
conversos
had settled. Part of Columbus’s crew on his 1492 voyage were
conversos
. Today in Latin America, there are Christian families who identify themselves as
conversos
and celebrate certain Jewish practices.

• I tried not to make Torquemada a cartoonish, one-dimensional villain, I really did. But I had an obligation to present the character accurately. He apparently really was as cold, heartless, power-hungry, sadistic, and one-dimensional as our culture has come to portray him. And astoundingly ugly, to boot. He was very secretive, with the result that court members and chroniclers of the period knew virtually nothing about him.

Recommended Reading

Isabel the Queen: Life and Times
by Peggy K. Liss

An in-depth, exhaustively researched, and sometimes startling biography of Isabella. Approachable, fascinating reading. There are several biographies of Isabella, but this is the most scholarly and well-researched, relying on original source materials instead of other biographies. It became one of my main sources.

The Spanish Inquisition
by Joseph Pérez

An overview of the Inquisition from its inception to its demise. It gives a brief background of the politics of the era, plus explicit explanations of the Inquisition’s policies, procedures, and personae.

The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain
by B. Netanyahu

A massive, exquisite collection of research, containing many translations of letters, legal documents, public speeches, and essays from 1400s Spain. (A “research rapture” sufferer’s dream.) Netanyahu put many misconceptions about the Inquisition to rest in this volume, supporting his opinions with a wealth of documents from the period. I relied on it heavily, and based my heroine’s father on a real individual cited in one of the excerpts from a fifteenth-century historian. Not a casual read, but a masterpiece.

Seville & Andalusia:
A DK Eyewitness Travel Guide

An in-depth guide to the area, containing hundreds of photographs, maps, and cultural and historical tidbits. One of the better travel guides. I always draw and refer to a map of whatever city I’m writing about (and of course, have to be sure I have a proper fifteenth-century map). I need to know whether my character’s turning right or left, north or south, after all.

The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision
by Henry Kamen

A defense of the Inquisition, from a churchman’s point of view. Not very well-researched, but an interesting polemic from “the other side.”

The Queen’s Vow
by C. W. Gortner

A fascinating novel about Isabella’s early years, including her perilous ascent to the throne and her determination to marry Fernando of Aragon despite all opposition.

The Burning Times
by Jeanne Kalogridis

My novel about one of the first appearances of the Inquisition in Europe: in Carcassonne, France, in the mid-1300s. The story of a midwife arrested for witchcraft.

Reading Group Questions

1. What did you know about the Spanish Inquisition—either from your own studies, or as portrayed in popular film/television adaptations—before reading
The Inquisitor’s Wife
? How, if at all, did this book teach you about, or change your impression of, this important chapter in Spanish history?

2. How were Marisol and her family different from other Spaniards in fifteenth-century Seville? Do you think Marisol’s attitudes were “ahead of her time”? What do you see as Marisol’s most and least admirable qualities? Take a moment to talk about Marisol’s evolution from a woman who hates her Jewish background to one who embraces it.

3. What parallels do you see between today’s political events and those of fifteenth-century Spain? Is the “Inquisition” (i.e., persecutory institutions and attitudes) alive and well in the twenty-first century?

4. To what extent do you think Jeanne Kalogridis took artistic liberties with this work? What does it take for a novelist to bring a “real” historical period to life?

5. Discuss the nature of fact versus fiction in
The Inquisitor’s Wife
. You may wish to take this opportunity to compare it with other historical novels you’ve read (as a group or on your own).

6. Why
do
modern readers enjoy novels about the past? How and when can a powerful piece of fiction be a history lesson in itself?

7. We are taught, as young readers, that every story has a “moral.” Is there a moral to
The Inquisitor’s Wife
? What can we learn about our world—and ourselves—from Marisol’s story?

ALSO BY JEANNE KALOGRIDIS

The Borgia Bride

I, Mona Lisa

The Devil’s Queen

The Scarlet Contessa

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeanne Kalogridis lives in California, where she shares a house with an adorably wiggly black Lab named Django. She is the author of the critically acclaimed
The Borgia Bride
and numerous other dark fantasy and historical novels.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE INQUISITOR’S WIFE
. Copyright © 2013 by Jeanne Kalogridis. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.