ABSTRACT
It has become axiomatic that, in the second half of the sixteenth century, under the impetus of the Council of Trent, the Spanish Church undertook a massive programme of religious indoctrination which sought both to transform the understanding of doctrine among the Old Christian population, and to impose uniformity of belief and practice. Scepticism and idiosyncrasy were not mutually exclusive phenonema; the fact that they could co-exist in the same individual, as in Gomez, demonstrates their complexity. The significance of manifestations of these forms of religious deviance has been obscured in the past because debate has tended to revolve around the less meaningful issue of whether it was possible to be an atheist in the sixteenth century. In order to appreciate how this debate has marginalized the wider question about popular expressions of religious scepticism and idiosyncrasy, the 'atheism' issue needs to be addressed here. Rejection of traditional concepts of hell and the afterlife may indicate materialism rather than scepticism.
