Mad for God: Bartolome Sanchez, the Secret Messiah of Cardenete. .

Mad for God: Bartolome Sanchez, the Secret Messiah of Cardenete. By Sara Tilghman Nalle (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2001. x plus 228pp.).

Sara Nalle's most recent work, entitled Mad for God: Bartolome Sanchez, the Secret Messiah of Cardenete, chronicles the experiences of Bartolome Sanchez with Cuenca's Inquisition tribunal over the course of seven years, from 1553 to 1560. Nalle's selection of Sanchez--and her apparent long-time fascination with his case--stems from the dramatic nature of his story. A seemingly average impoverished laborer, Sanchez's bizarre and rebellious behavior occasions three Inquisition trials to be prosecuted against him. He confesses and receives penances twice, once on the verge of execution, then finally is deemed insane and committed to an asylum at the close of his third trial. At this juncture, in 1560, Sanchez disappears from historical records. During his colorful trials, he claims to be the second coming, radically rejects some Church teachings, and challenges the Inquisition through arguing with the inquisitors and decrying the evils of the institution. Nalle transforms Sanchez's trial record--the only source on his life--into a vivid reconstruction of "one man's descent into religious madness" (p. 2). In her introduction, Nalle undertakes a novel presentation of an Inquisition trial.

It is part courtroom drama, part adventure story, and part debate over the nature of religious inspiration, insanity, and criminal responsibility. The issues raised by Sanchez's story are at the same time universal and specific to the cultural environment of sixteenth-century Spain: Who decides what is a genuine message from God? (p. 2)

Sanchez's trial thus becomes both a dramatic historical tale and a vehicle for exploring madness, religious toleration, and inquisitorial procedure in his era.

The depth of Nalle's knowledge about early modern Cuenca and Spanish religious, inquisitorial and educational culture underlies the greatest strengths of her book. She produces an evocative portrait of the Inquisition's workings, and of the practice of religion in Cuenca and Cardenete. Moreover, she allows the inquisitor Cortes, and the inquisition functionaries like the doctor Vergara and secretary Ybaneta, to play an important role in her narrative. Nalle refreshingly treats all the interpersonal dynamics of the tribunal, rather than focusing merely on the "victim." As she traces Cortes' career through the 1550's, she gives valuable impressions of the daily realities of an inquisitor's docket. While they function as asides to her main narrative, she uses Cortes' other cases addressing conversos, witchcraft, and insanity to round out her portrait of Cuenca's Inquisition.

Nalle presents particularly strong material in her fourth chapter, which treats the possible sources of Sanchez's heterodox ideas, biblical and legal knowledge, and the like. She draws links to legal culture, common visual imagery, and Franciscan spiritual currents. Notably, she finds a remarkable similarity between some of Sanchez's pronouncements and a few propositions from the 1525 Edict of Faith combating alumbradismo (p. 65). She creates a compelling picture of the mid-sixteenth's century's complex intellectual milieu. "Without any training, he [Sanchez] leaped feet first into a complex religious world, where millenarian traditions met with heterodox ideas, all swirling just beneath the surface of outward conformity" (p. 63). Yet, Nalle later confuses this image. "Ordinary people, country folk without any real religious education or any Jewish or Muslim ancestry, were not supposed to become heretics and reject everything that society held dear" (p. 95). While these two statements are not necessarily cont radictory, Nalle does not reconcile her theories about wide exposure to ideas with her rhetorical devices about the simplicity of country folk.

There is no doubt that all this makes for compelling reading, but Nalle's desire for a dramatic presentation sometimes compromises her historical interpretation. She clearly aims for readers to "experience" and "feel" the realities of early modem Cuenca (6). Despite having only inquisitorial documentation with which to reconstruct his life, she often treats Sanchez as if he had left a detailed memoir. She concludes her study: "And in the end, in an ironic twist of fate, through the papers of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, Bartolome Sanchez, failed farmer and secret Elijah-Messiah, is reborn" (p. 168). Thus, she aims to give a hero new life: she glories in his forceful replies to inquisitors' questions, and constantly mentions the threat of "murder" (rather than a judicial death sentence). Such flourishes are unnecessary in an already intriguing history.

Nalle's lionization of the Sanchez case is symptomatic of the book's overall methodological flaws. While trying to write an individual story at the same time as weaving in historical context, Nalle encounters many problems with presentation. Often she seems more interested in writing a novel out of Sanchez's story, as in her digression about springtime in Cuenca's countryside (p.93). Such interludes muddy her often well-stated arguments. Moreover, her close chronological following of Sanchez frequently creates topical problems. She intersperses interesting side material about local witchcraft cases, and the like, but they become confusing when sandwiched in between Sanchez's trial motions (p. 110). Oftentimes, Nalle uses the same statements repeatedly, as in her recapitulation of Sanchez's claims to be the Messiah toward the end of the book (p. 140). Conversely, she muddies her argument by scattering critical proofs of a single point across several chapters. The most glaring example of this delay is when Nall e waits until the seventh chapter to give her most compelling evidence for Sanchez's madness. Then, she reveals the full content of a letter from Ybaneta, the trial recorder, which shows the inquisitors' doubts about the trial, and their omissions. She belatedly informs her readers of the extent to which the trial papers had been doctored.

Whatever those rantings and behaviour were, they were suppressed, so that the trial transcript paints only half a portrait of Sanchez, one that shows a man with considerable skill in debate and no sign of irrational thought other than the belief that he was a second messiah. On paper, everything pointed to Sanchez's guilt, but Cortes and the others could not bring themselves to convict (p. 130).

Such information makes the already difficult task of using Inquisition documents appropriately even more difficult for the Sanchez case. But, such concerns aside, this revelation finally supports many of the assertions that Nalle has made throughout the earlier portions of the book, when she claims to know what the inquisitors may have been thinking or what Sanchez had done that was not recorded. In withholding the letter for a later chapter, she compromises cogency for dramatic effect.

Nalle further problematizes her presentation by trying to fit too much of the trial into the form of a dialogue between Sanchez and the primary inquisitor, Cortes. The benefit of this approach is that she captures the important dynamic between inquisitor and accused--and the attendant issues of spiritual correction and persuasion--that so many historians ignore. Nevertheless, such an approach adds a conversational element that could not have been gleaned from the documents, as when Cortes reaches "a moment of exasperation," or when "within minutes he appeared to lose control of the hearing with this peasant" (pp. 83, 30). When Nalle queries, "What could Cortes say?" she renders a formalized procedure in a too colloquial manner. At other times, Nalle's narrative devices imply an improbable collusion between inquisitor and heretic: "It was beginning to look as if Cortes and Sanchez were running out of options" (p. 92).

Perhaps the confusing structure of Nalle's work is a result of conflicting desires about the book's aims. Her initial, bold claim seems to reject any traditional mode of historical argumentation. "This study has no overall thesis, no highroad to historical truth, not even simple closure to the story" (p. 1). While Nalle does preference a dramatic chronological narrative of Sanchez's encounters, there is a constant tension with the "universal" issues of religious toleration and insanity that she sees highlighted in the Sanchez trial. In fact, Nalle does advance intriguing theses about how inquisitors viewed madness, and about the cultural milieu that enabled Sanchez's seemingly bizarre beliefs.

Yet, the most problematic attributes that Nalle grants Sanchez are those of an appealingly "modern" man. She warns that "Sanchez's world" is essentially alien, though it "can seem surprisingly modem" (p.3). Unfortunately, she finds an emphasis on Sanchez's most progressive elements hard to resist. She is particularly interested in Sanchez's criticisms of the Inquisition and his seeming advocacy of religious toleration. "Unlike the inquisitor and many of his social superiors, Sanchez was not willing to judge a man by his blood. Each became what his works made him" (p. 96). In short, Nalle too often makes Sanchez egalitarian, misunderstood, underprivileged and tolerant in pursuit of a more sympathetic protagonist.

On a more practical level, I have reservations about Nalle's presentation of Inquisition trials as source material. Her references to the problematic nature of trial records are too scattered to form a coherent disclaimer. Most dangerously, she frequently attributes emotional reactions and desires to both the inquisitor and Sanchez that could not be gleaned from the trial record, and are thus based solely on inference. Such suppositions, taken in concert with Nalle's simplifying of the trial language, add too many layers of interpretation to the original source material. Nalle also neglects to discuss the difficulties of witness testimony. Sometimes she compresses the witnesses, as when she forms a composite picture of Sanchez's breakdown from numerous depositions (p. 187, n. 1). At other times, she allows for greater pluralism of testimony (p. 151). As Nalle does include some caveats, her treatment of the source material is rather inconsistent. In sum, Nalle has crafted a very compelling story littered with insightful commentary, but has not managed to overcome the substantial methodological difficulties in order to make her approach to Sanchez's trial coherent.