Abstract
Preserved in the archives of the National Historic Archive in Madrid, the life story of Catalina Muñoz uncovers the ways in which she, as a triply marginalized subject – black, woman, and slave – obtained power and social clout by capitalizing on the fame she acquired because of her role as spiritual advisor and healer to the Valencian religious community of Sanct Martín Church. This essay positions Catalina as an astute agent and spiritual advisor who navigated with savvy the intricacies of Valencia’s sixteenth-century religious elite. In doing so, the article aims to re-assign and parse Catalina’s agency as a prophet. It is through the caveat of prophecy where Catalina obtains her power and position by capitalizing on the fame – often referred to as ‘escándolo’ [‘scandal’] – she acquired as a spiritual advisor and healer to the Valencian religious communities.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.
Benjamin Ehlers urges against taking at face value the Jerónimo’s influence on Catalina via his prediction of a supernova in 1572. See Ehlers (1997), 101–16.
Blumenthal (2005, 225–46).
Graullera Sanz (1978, 136–69).
Conversos and moriscos were the baptized converts to Catholicism from Judaism and Islam.
For more information on these two women’s trials, see Homza (2006).
Palacio o Palao (1644, fol. 167v).
See Dangler (2001).
References
Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Inquisición, legajo 533, expediente 2. 1588a.
Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Inquisición, libro 916. 1588b.
Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Inquisición, libro 937. ‘Relación auto público de la fe que se celebró en la Inquisición de Valencia, domingo 19 junio 1588.’ 1588c.
Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Inquisición, legajo 524, #11. 1600–02.
Bennassar, B, ed. 1981. Inquisición española: poder político y control social. Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Crítica.
Blumenthal, D. 2005. ‘La Casa dels Negres’: Black African Solidarity in Late Medieval Iberia. In Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, eds. T.F. Earle and K. Lowe, 225–46. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Caciola, N. 2003. Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Caro Baroja, J. 1966. Las brujas y su mundo. Madrid, Spain: Alianza.
Casares, A.M. 2005. Free Black Africans in the Spanish Renaissance. In Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, eds. T.F. Earle and K. Lowe, 247–60. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Casares, A.M. and R. Periáñez Gómez, eds. 2014. Mujeres esclavas y abolicionistas en la España de los siglos XVI al XIX. Madrid, Spain: Iberoamericana-Vervuert.
Corteguera, L. and M.V. Vicente, eds. 2003. Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Cortés López, J.L. 1986. Los orígenes de la esclavitud negra en España. Salamanca, Spain: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
Cortés López, J.L. 1989. La esclavitud negra en la España peninsular del siglo XVI. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
Dangler, J. 2001. Mediating Fictions: Literature, Women Healers, and the Go-Between in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.
de Covarrubias Horozco, S. [1611] 2006. Tesoro de la lengua castellana o Española, eds. I. Arellano and R. Zafra. Madrid, Spain: Iberoamericana-Vervuert.
de Rojas, F. 1999. La Celestina, ed. D. Severin. Madrid, Spain: Alianza.
Earle, T.F and K. Lowe, eds. 2005. Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ehlers, B. 1997. La esclava y el patriarca: las visiones de Catalina Muñoz en la Valencia de Juan de Ribera. Estudis 23: 101–16.
García Cárcel, R. 1979. Herejía y sociedad en siglo XVI: La Inquisición en Valencia 1530–1609. Barcelona, Spain: Ediciones Peninsular.
Gerli, E. Michael. 2011. Celestina and the Ends of Desire. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Giles, M.E., ed. 1998. Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press.
Graullera Sanz, V. 1978. La esclavitud en Valencia en los siglos XVI y XVII. Valencia, Spain: Instituto Valenciano de Estudios Históricos.
Guilhem, C. 1984. La Inquisición y la devalución del verbo feminino. In La Inquisición española, ed. B. Bennasar, 171–207. Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Crítica.
Hamilton, A. 1992. Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth-Century Spain: The Alumbrados. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Homza, L.A. 2006. The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Kagan, R. 1990. Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Kamen, H. 1997. The Spanish Inquisition: An Historial Revision. London, UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Levack, B.P. 1995. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. London: Pearson.
Martín Casares, A. and R.P. Gómez, eds. 2014. Mujeres esclavas y abolicionistas en la España de los siglos XVI al XIX. Madrid, Spain: Iberoamericana-Vervuert.
McKnight, K.J. and L. Garofalo, eds. 2009. Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550–1812. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Muñoz, J. 1981 [1573]. Libro del nuevo cometa. Ed. V. Navarro Brotóns. Valencia, Spain: Pedro de Huete.
Navarro Brotóns, V. and E.R. Galdeano. 1998. Matemáticas, cosmología y humanismo en la España del siglo XVI. Los Comentarios al segundo libro de la Historia Natural de Plinio de Jerónimo Muñoz. Valencia, Spain: Instituto de Estudios Documentales e Históricos Sobre la Ciencia, Universitat de València–C.S.I.C.
Ostovich, H. and E. Saber, eds. 2004. Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print 1550–1700. New York: Routledge.
Palacio o Palao, M.A. 1644. ‘A, B, C, Cartilla para los que saben leer con la qual tendrán noticia de cossas raras de entrambas letras divinas y humanas.’ Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Add., A 141.
Perry, M.E. 1990. Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Perry, M.E. 1998. The Morisca Visionary, Beatriz de Robles. In Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World, ed. M.E. Giles, 171–88. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Petroff, E. 1986. Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pons, F. 1991. Místicos, beatas y alumbrados. Valencia, Spain: Edicions Alfons el Magnànim, 1991.
Surtz, R. 1990. The Guitar of God: Gender, Power, and Authority in the Visionary World of Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Surtz, R. 2002. Female Patronage of Vernacular Religious Works in Fifteenth-Century Castile: Aristocratic Women and Their Confessors. In The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature, eds. R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and N. Warren, 263–82. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Sweet, J. H. 2011. Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the African World. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Vicente, Marta V. and Luis R. Corteguera, eds. [2003] 2017. Women, Texts, and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World. New York: Routledge.
Vollendorf, L. 2005. The Lives of Women: A New History of Inquisitorial Spain. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jones, N.R. Valencia’s miraculous prophet: The Inquisition dossier of Catalina Muñoz (1588). Postmedieval 10, 36–49 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-018-0113-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-018-0113-3