Silencing the Voices: Finding Conversas in the Inquisitorial Records

Abstract

The past decades have generated much discussion by archivists and historians surrounding the claim that archives and written documents on women’s lives cannot be examined separately since archives play crucial roles within the conceptual framework of women’s history. By researching women’s experiences preserved in archives, it has been demonstrated that their voices were frequently obscured within archival data. In order to reconstruct the lives of women in history, this paper will attempt to address quantitative, qualitative and methodological challenges that arise when power silences the voices of Judeo-Conversas (Christian women of Jewish origin) from the early modern crowns of Castile and Aragon. By unearthing Conversas’ religious experiences from written sources, mainly inquisitorial dossiers, and by applying theoretical framework defined by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, the author suggests that Conversas’ voices were silenced at four stages: first, when the sources were written; second, when these documents were assembled; third, when narratives were created; and finally, when history was written by historians.