Nora Jaffary’s work False Mystics analyzes deviant orthodoxy in inquisitional ruled Colonial Latin America. First Jaffary explains to readers how deviant orthodoxy was produced. Pope Sixtus IV granted power to the monarchs to establish religious inquisitional courts in Castile to impose religious uniformity on the newly consolidated state. The main targets of the Castilian Inquisition Courts were people of Jewish and Islamic descent. Then, the courts were moved to colonial Latin America, but in the colonies the greatest potential source of spiritual heresy, indigenous idolatry, lay beyond the official bounds of the court’s scrutiny. This difference would lead to the prosecution of ilusos and alumbrados in the new world. In the next chapter …show more content…
The labels loca, locura, epilepsy, hysteria and melancholia were added to the list of terms that could be used to describe mystics. These terms of mental instability could be used to excuse a mystic of being accountable of her actions and therefore, she would not be convicted. When looking at table 6 in False Mystics it is obvious that the new medical terms were denoted to mystics of higher status such as doctors, nuns, and priests. The new medical terms helped the inquisitional court to maintain hierarchal social statuses in colonial Mexico because now only the poor lower social classes had to be denoted as alumbrados and ilusos. Higher classes of people could be label as mentally ill and this takes the mystical behavior away from the internal mental execution and towards more of a outward body experience that was due to illness. This made it seem as though higher classes were not affected by mysticism in the same way as the lower class. Finally, it is important to keep in mind that even though new terms were added to describe the accused that only the officers of the Holy tribunal had the ultimate authority of assigning a definitive label to the accused. Thus, a medical term made be given to a mystic by other individuals such as medical practitioners, but in court will not be held to be legitimate unless the Holy Tribunal gives the same label that the doctors labeled the accused. Jaffary points out that there were few occasions upon which inquisitors dismissed trials because they agreed with witnesses’ assessments of the defendant’s illness or insanity. One example that Jaffary gives is that of Juan Luis Torres. He was accused of being an iluso but it was dismissed that he was an iluso because the inquisitors judged him to be ill rather than feigning mystics. Another factor to note about Torress though is his