The following sources provide overviews of ideas, people, and events in the history of medieval and early modern Europe as well as Latin America. When using an article in an encyclopedia or handbook, always check the bibliography for further reading at the end of the article. It will provide a selective list of the books, articles, and, frequently, Web resources considered to be the most up-to-date and reliable. This is a good start for your research as well as a good corrective later on, providing a broader perspective than your research on one specific topic.
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- Margaret Schaus, Reference Librarian and Bibliographer (HC)
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Spanish 312 : Inquiring Minds: Inquisition, Writing, and the Early Modern Subject (HC)
Dictionary of the Middle Ages
Publisher: New York : Scribner, c1982-c1989.
Note that there is a supplement volume that updates the set.
Encyclopedia of the Renaissance
Publisher: New York : Scribner's, published in association with the Renaissance Society of America, c1999.
Links (Inquisition Studies)
Links to Inquisition Sites (University of Notre Dame)
Scholarly articles, primary sources, and reference materials for the study of the Inquisition.
Museo del la Inquisicion
This museum in Lima is housed in the building used by the Inquisition from 1570 to 1820. The web site includes background information on the history, organization, and procedures of the Inquistion, both in Spain and in Peru. There are also lists and biographical notes on inquisitors.
Nos los Inquisidores (University of Notre Dame)
Online exhibit of rare materials from the Inquisition Collection at the library at the University of Notre Dame.
Locating Books:
Use the Tripod Library Catalog to look for relevant books owned by Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore.
The following subject searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic not listed below, try doing a keyword search in the Tripod Library Catalog to find relevant materials and then using the subject headings assigned to those materials to find more material.
Tripod - For locating books, journals, and other materials held in the Tri-College libraries. Delivery within the trico usually arrive in one or two days. Use "Request" or "Get" option. You can mark and then email or print records for multiple items.
Interlibrary Loan and E-ZBorrow - Request items that are not available in Tripod on this page. Note that PALCI' E-Z Borrow provides only books while Interlibrary Loan (ILL) makes journal articles as well as books, reports, and documents available. PALCI takes around three to five days to deliver your requested books, while ILL can sometimes take a few days longer.
WorldCat - An important place to look for many materials not owned by the Tri-College Libraries. This combined library catalog contains more than 49 million records describing items owned by libraries around the world. Many of these items are available to you though interlibrary loan.
Dissertations
Doctoral students go through an exhaustive literature search when writing their dissertations. They also tend to work on new questions, sometimes ones that have received very little attention from scholars before. You can sometimes obtain these dissertations and benefit from all the bibliographic treasures and new ideas.
Check Dissertation Abstracts Online (Access via Tripod) to identify dissertations on your topic. Then request them through the Interlibrary Loan page.
Libro: The Library of Iberian Resources Online
Makes scholarly books on medieval and early modern Spain available online. Useful for searching for names and phrases in the full text.
Identifying Journal Articles:
Journal articles and similar periodical publications provide current information on historical research. The following indexes are the best ways to find journal articles about the Inquisition.
Currently indexes over 3800 journals and magazines in the social sciences, humanities, and sciences starting with 1986. More than half of the citations include the full-text of the article.
Discipline-specific Indexes
These indexes are particularly good for accessing the scholarly literature of specific disciplines, i.e., articles written by historians, and other medieval scholars.
For early modern history, use Historical Abstracts and
Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and the RenaissanceFor medieval studies, use International Medieval Bibliography Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and the RenaissanceFor Latin American history, in addition to Historical Abstracts above, use Handbook of Latin American Studies and
Hispanic American Periodicals IndexFor literature, use MLA
For religion, use ATLA Religion Database
Once you have found citations to journal articles, do a journal title search in Tripod to see if the Tri-College libraries own the title. If the journal is not held by the Tri-Colleges, use the Article Delivery Form on Tripod to request a copy of the article from another library.
Working with Primary Sources:
Edward Peters has done two collections of primary source translations that are useful for the study of the Inquisition:
Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe: Documents in Translation (print location via Tripod)
Torture: Expanded Edition (print location via Tripod) See the appendix, pages 211-288 for the translated documents.
Collections of Primary Source Materials and Archives
Early English Books Online (access via Tripod).
Set that will reproduce the two Early English Books Series with over 86,000 titles published during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century. It is based on the Short-Title Catalogue that attempted to list and describe every book, pamphlet, and broadside published in Great Britain as well as English books printed abroad. There are some titles about the Inquisition available in full text including:
Further oberuations of the English Spanish pilgrime, concerning Spaine...a briefe relation of certaine daemonicall stratagems of the Spanish Inquisition exercised on diuers English men of note of late times... 1630
Nevvs from Sir John Svckin being a relation of his conversion from a papist to a Protestant also what torments he endured by those of the inquisition in Spaine : and how the Lord Lekeux his accuser was strucken dumbe hee going to have the sentence of death passe upon him / sent in a letter to the Lord Conway, now being in London. ..., 1641.
Henry Charles Lea Library, University of Pennsylvania
The Henry Charles Lea Library collects primary materials for the study of the late medieval and early modern period. The Library focuses on the history of religion with a special interest in the institutional, legal, and ecclesiastical bases of Church organization and governance during these periods and, most especially, the Inquisition in Europe generally, and Spain particularly. This collection originated as the private working research library of the Philadelphia scholar Henry Charles Lea (1825-1909), author of books on the Inquisition and the Catholic Church. Witchcraft and magic are also subjects that the Lea Library collects extensively.
Haverford students have worked with documents in the collection over the years. See, for example, the senior history thesis by Drew Konove, "The Devil and the Irish King."
Librarians at Penn's Rare Book Collection welcome Haverford researchers. Call the librarians ahead of time to discuss your interests: 215-898-7088. University of Pennsylvania, Van Pelt Library, Special Collections, 3420 Walnut St., Philadelphia.
Haverford students have worked with documents in the collection over the years. See, for example, the senior history thesis by Drew Konove, "The Devil and the Irish King."
Librarians at Penn's Rare Book Collection welcome Haverford researchers. Call the librarians ahead of time to discuss your interests: 215-898-7088. University of Pennsylvania, Van Pelt Library, Special Collections, 3420 Walnut St., Philadelphia.
PARES: Portal de Archivos Españoles
This site provides access to digitized documents from many historically important collections including the Archivo General de Indias and the Archivo Histórico Nacional. When doing an Advanced Search, check "Registros digitalizados" in order to see the full-text documents.
Witchcraft Collection (Cornell University)
This online collection is a small (104 monographs) representative sample of the collection at Cornell. The Inquisition features prominently as a topic in addition to canon law, torture, and trial testimony.