Boal Conservation

This original trial record had the evidence attached in a pouch. Inside were small bones, powder and prayers.

Detail 2

The Mexican Inquisition documents were acquired by the University of California, Berkeley. in 1996. These records, dating from 1593 to 1817, include 61 volumes of original manuscripts. My task was to preserve the collection so that it could be used.

These processes , or trials, include such materials as genealogical and property records as evidence of charges of orthodoxy and sexual misconduct, including blasphemy, relapsed Judaism, witchcraft, superstition, bigamy, and solicitation. Priests seducing women in the confessional ranked among the most frequent offenses.

The collection includes some of the most significant cases brought before the Inquisition, such as the charges brought against Leonor and Isabel de Carvajal for practicing Judaism. The Carvajal family was one of the most famous of the crypto-Jewish families to be prosecuted in 16th-century colonial Mexico.

Perhaps the most prominent Carvajal was Luis de Carvajal, declared governor of the province of Nuevo León in 1579. In 1596, at the height of the Inquisition's fervor against crypto-Jews, he was declared a heretic and burned alive along with his mother and five sisters.

Among the less common convictions — a woman who claimed to have sex with saints and a priest accused of profaning the sacraments by officiating at the marriage of two dogs. In addition to documents, the collection contains some physical evidence, including bones, powder and prayers used for witchcraft.

Also included is a rope that Blas de Magallanes, a suspect accused of not believing in the Holy Virgin, used to commit suicide while in prison awaiting trial. Records show that prison officials found de Magallanes' body when delivering dinner to his cell on August 29, 1597.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/give/bene-legere/bene56/inquisition.html