This relatively short but dense work focuses not on the so-called conspiracy of Lima broadly but on the lives of three men, their extended familial and commercial relations, and how they fared under the Inquisition trials against known conversos after 1635 that culminated in the 1639 auto de fe in Lima. Jean-Pierre Tardieu highlights young Portuguese converso men's shared motivation to immigrate to the New World to flee the Portuguese Inquisition and pursue their ambitions as merchants. He closely examines their distinctive public Christianity and their private Jewish identities.

This book provides narratives of three economically successful families tried during the conspiracy while at the same time extrapolating and highlighting important aspects of how the Inquisition tribunal operated during this particular conspiracy. Tardieu does a better job of the former; the Inquisition tribunal remains more amorphous until the third chapter. For instance, when discussing the actions and rationale of the...

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