tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post5849263343650977646..comments2024-03-28T05:13:13.921-04:00Comments on Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: In defense of history …Frank Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18410473158808750903noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-90535601199647573542017-04-27T00:54:00.896-04:002017-04-27T00:54:00.896-04:001480 to 15301480 to 1530Jeff Mauvaisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-70742146456232465902017-04-27T00:50:51.038-04:002017-04-27T00:50:51.038-04:00As a Catholic, I had high hopes for this book when...As a Catholic, I had high hopes for this book when I bought it last year. Unfortunately, I was deeply disappointed. Stark's supposed corrective to centuries of anti-Catholic bias among historians exhibits the same kinds of dishonesty he condemns. For example, he cites scholarship that shows Jewish conversos represented fewer than 5% of those persecuted by the Spanish inquisitors between 1540 and 1640. His choice of this date range is illustrative of his methods. The same scholarship shows that, from 1580 to 1530, 95% of the persecutions targeted conversos, and that 2000-3000 were executed. Not the hundreds of thousands claimed by earlier historians, but still too many. I suggest going directly to the historians cited by Stark, like Henry Kamen in the case of the Inquisition. I binned Stark's book, something I rarely do, because I didn't want to disseminate yet more dishonesty on this topic by donating it to charity. Jeff Mauvaisnoreply@blogger.com