(by B Netanyahu) Definitive, immense and profound work on the causes and motives of the Spanish Inquisition. Inquisitiana [Note that TVC recommends the following: Torquemada himself would be impressed with Wakefield & Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages (1991) and Lu Ann Homza’s The Spanish Inquisition 1478-1614; An Anthology of Sources (2006), which is a very valuable resource of primary documents. The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (1998) by Henry Kamen, is a good general volume (TVC has a pretty Folio edition). The Spanish Inquisition (1937) by Cecil Roth is a superior general academic treatment. The Inquisition of the Middle…
Continue Reading →Karol Józef Wojtyła was born on May 18 (1920) and we take the opportunity to remember The Last Confession, a papal election drama that suggests mere mortals can somehow connive their way to the right result… (by Roger Crane) (Australia, 2014) The Pope is dead. Long live the Pope. And his election shall be the wish of God, even if the processes seem all-too awful and human. This is a fascinating account of the serpentine path to that puff of white smoke which signals the supposed will of God. These Cardinals are wily, sly, two-faced and yet somehow, they seem to genuinely…
Continue Reading →(by Victor Klemperer) Despite some confusing Anne Frank with a Nazi (see: Rijksmuseum moments), her diary is mandatory reading and so should be this diary of German Jewish academic, Victor Klemperer. He lived in Germany throughout the Nazi reign and this volume, covering 1933 to 1941, reveals the incremental march to holocaust. Each little step led to the next and so on, quickening in pace: May ’33: Klemperer can still lecture in Romance languages and literature at Dresden but he complies with a ‘request’ to no longer conduct exams; by May ’35, he is dismissed from his post; by October…
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