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Most English people initially saw the Reformation as an unexpected catastrophe, wrenching their religious lives out of shape, and stripping their communities of resources they had naively believed belonged to them.
This lecture will survey this ‘black legend’ and ask what made it so enduring – and why some parts of the story, such as the Inquisition’s genocidal campaign against Spanish Jews, received so much less attention than others.
The lecture asks how the ancient fables address power relations in a slave society. Were they primarily stories for and by slaves, or did they serve ruling-class interests?