De comisarios, confesores y vecinos: la proyección de la Inquisición a finales del Antiguo Régimen [Commissaries, confessors and neighbours: the Inquisition’s projection at the end of the Old Regime]

Abstract

Commissaries, confessors and neighbors were essential anchors for the action of the Spanish Inquisition in local societies. By the eighteenth century, the inquisitorial presence in the districts was as weakened as the social appeal of their titles declined and some of the central elements of the symbolic projection of the inquisitorial power attenuated. Taking the Court of Logroño as a case study, this work assesses how the inquisitorial projection in the local communities of that disctrict was maintained, the collaboration and resistance it encountered there in its performance as a court of faith and agent of social control at the end of the Old Regime.