In defense of the national past: the Spanish Inquisition in the battle for the historical memory of the conquest

Abstract

In the context of the crisis of the Ancient Regime, the Inquisition was not only concerned about the defense of orthodoxy and the eradication of heresy. As an institution in the service of the Bourbon monarchy, the holy office took up in defence of a national history, deeply conservative and Catholic that should sustain in the Hispanic glories of the Spanish imperial past. From a new interpretation of the case of the chaplain Miguel Cabral de Noroña —priest liberal author of an anti-colonial sermon and defender of Las Casas— and another censures, this article pretend to profundise in how the Inquisition, as a key piece in the gear of ideological control of the country, was not on the sidelines, nor much less, of the process of construction of memory and national identity that is operated at the end of the century from other fronts.