Salvar la fe, restaurar la monarquía. La defensa de la Inquisición en Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo: una mirada comparada entre política e historiografía

In the last decades of the 19th Century, in the shadow of the monarchical Restoration, defending the Inquisition meant saving Catholic tradition and consolidating the monarchy. The work on Spanish heterodoxy (1880-1882) by Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo (1856-1912), which was conducted with erudition and which received critical attention emerged within this interpretative line. Despite their different ideological and confessional affiliation, for many european and extra-european intellectuals and historians, Menéndez Pelayo’s work on heterodoxy ended up becoming an essential reference. The analysis of some fragments of this work, of the formation of its author and of some examples of national and international relations maintained by the cantabrian polymath is the focus of these pages. This article thus wants to be part of the broader dialogue of this historiographical dossier.