Maria de Bohórquez

María de Bohórquez, (Seville, ca. 1539 - Seville, September 24, 1559) was a Protestant martyr burned at the stake by the Spanish Inquisition.

Maria was a young Sevillian woman convicted in the cars of faith celebrated in Seville in 1559, for professing and spreading Protestant doctrine (what was then called "dogmatizing heresy"). Her courageous defense of freedom of conscience astonished even the experienced inquisitorial secretaries, who left documentary evidence of the ardent and deep theological argument that this girl, only 24 years old, was capable of. They also found their failure as confessors of the Inquisition, to obtain from the area an abjuration in extremis, despite the rigor of the pressure that, according to the documents of the own inquisitorial institution, had been exercised against her. His is one of the many examples that the history of Spain gives us to understand the special insistence that developed in our country to make disappear any vestige of tolerance and peaceful coexistence of creeds and the contact of the Spanish population with other cultural manifestations and artistic ties linked to them, rejection that has characterized our historical development over the centuries.

Fortunately, today we live different times that allow us to present the musical heritage of the Reformation as part of the cultural heritage of mankind, without the tensions and prejudices of yesteryear, and make available to the public the work of composers who, although many of them are widely known, their spiritual background has often been overshadowed; an oblivion that limits the viewer when it comes to perceiving the depth and the symbolic reach that, in infinity of occasions, these compositions contain. Echo in Fiction

The novel Cornelia Bororquia. True story of the Spanish Judith by Luis Gutiérrez, written around 1799, is based on a very free treatment of the lives of Maria de Bohórquez and Maria Coronel combined into a fictional person. Bibliographic

wiki