One of the aspects of the trial in Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance is the view of what constituted marriage in that time period in Spain. I found this very interesting because it is an issue that could not be addressed similarly in this day and age. Basically, the Catholic church and the Spanish court (in terms of their laws) considered marriage official only once it had been consummated. In other words, you were not legally bound to someone until you had actually sealed the deal with sex.
In the book, this makes a very interesting situation due to the fact that Francisco Noguerol uses this view of what is considered legal marriage to fight the lawsuit that was started against him. Noguerol was practically forced to marry his first wife Beatriz by his commanding mother. He got a large dowry from her father, which he immediately used to get himself across the Atlantic to Peru. After having been in Peru for a number of years, Noguerol was informed by one of his sisters in a letter that Beatriz had died. A few years later he married a widow living in Peru and when the two of them returned to Spain he was informed that Beatriz was actually still alive.
The lawsuit that she had begun upon learning about her husband’s second marriage was based upon charges of Bigamy. In order to prove his innocence, he declared that he married Catalina in “good faith and truthful ignorance” and that in fact he was never legally married to Beatriz in the first place due to the fact that they had never consummated the marriage. It is amazing to me that this could be brought up as a real defense! Noguerol was very aware and conscious of being married to Beatriz for many years and even recieved the dowry- yet when pressed for a defense he could easily claim it to be invalid. He and Catalina did come out on top in the case and he did not lose all of his money or possessions as Beatriz had hoped. Although it is an unfortunate situation the first wife, it is also a very intriguing and understandable type of scenario. Unless Noguerol was lying about everything, he truly had no reason to not marry Catalina and did nothing knowingly wrong. I thought the outcome of the trial was legitimate for the time, but it seems very likely that it could never have gone that way in a court today. He would have been legally married to two living people with no legal grounded excuse.
I thought the book did a great job portraying the way life was in that time period. Women had a very different role then and additionally so did sex. It is amazing how far we have come from that type of social construction.
I think you give a bit too much liberty to the idea that Francisco had no idea what he was doing and was forced into this marriage. He needed to money to go oversees, so it seems like he was kind of using the system. I think that the authors credited his ignorance more than his culpability and that influenced how the book was read.