ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the vexed question of faith, fervour and fanaticism from angles as diverse as their authors, who have in common a commitment to our understanding of the complex religious experience of fifteenth-, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spaniards, whatever their individual understanding of that experience may have been. Lesley Twomey's study, based on evidence from the Valencian poetry competitions of the fifteenth century, makes a valuable contribution to the theme by emphasizing the Christian majority context in which Jewish and Muslim life, as well as that of converts from those religions, was lived in the period. Ronald Cueto's wide-ranging study turns from the Mother of God to more earthly Spanish women, who, like her, regarded themselves as responding to spiritual or angelic messages.
