The study of Spanish rewritings of Italian novellas demonstrates the increasing role of forensic discourse in reshaping the genre during the Counter-Reformation’s culture of control. Even though the structure of the fictitious case can be traced back to Boccaccio’s novellas, the use of forensic discourse by Spanish writers has peculiar characteristics. To begin with, if the fictitious case provides Italian authors like Boccaccio or Bandello with a space within which they can challenge the existing order, Spanish narrators tend rather to validate in their stories the new set of rules established by the Council of Trent.

But the anticipation of objections in fictitious cases also provides a space from which to point out the weaknesses and limitations of the new set of rules created by the Council of Trent. For instance, even though Agreda y Vargas strategically eliminates Father Lorenzo from his story – transferring his motive of social climbing to an emerging middle class composed of servants who change employers at their convenience and apothecaries who sell poison in exchange for money – his story reveals the failure of the Council of Trent to deal with its clash with a set of civil laws that limit the exercise of free will in marriage. While defending an aristocratic ideology that rejects and perceives as a threat the social mobility introduced by money, and displaying a great deal of respect for the Church by avoiding depictions of treacherous clergy, Agreda y Vargas also points out that the doctrine of free will, applied to female subjects in the sacrament of marriage, can erode a social order based on lineage. The custom of permitting the exercise of public power by a woman, as well as the application of the Church’s doctrine of free will to female subjects, are presented in this text as threats to the domain of the home, the Republic, and the international arena.