Jerry M. Williams. Peru's Inquisition on Trial: The Vindication of Ana de Castro. La Inquisicion peruana en tela de juicio: la vindicacion de Ana de Castro. Bilingual edition, annotated with a critical introduction. Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 2008.
On December 23, 1736 in the Viceroyalty of Peru, Ana de Castro, a fifty-year-old woman of Jewish origin, was garroted and burned for the crime of secretly practicing her ancestral faith. Although many in the throngs that attend the spectacular auto de fe applauded her execution, others protested the cruelty of her sentence. Some, moved by the serenity with which she met her fate, were persuaded that she was not a heretic but a Christian martyr; accordingly, they offered up their prayers to her as if she were a canonized saint. In the centuries since her execution, her case has attracted both apologists and
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