“Those People with Little Fear of God”: The Letters of Censorship and Excommunion (New Spain, 17th Century)
The purpose of this work is to offer an approach to the use of letters of censorship and excommunication in New Spain during the 17th century. I maintain that the request for these legal documents served as a popular resource to demand justice from the ecclesiastical authorities due to damage agains...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2023 |
| País: | México |
| Institución: | UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTÓNOMA DE MÉXICO |
| Repositorio: | Estudios de Historia Novohispana |
| Idioma: | español |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/77738 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://novohispana.historicas.unam.mx/index.php/ehn/article/view/77738 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | New Spain excommunication councils ecclesiastical justice Nueva España excomunión concilios justicia eclesiástica |
| Sumario: | The purpose of this work is to offer an approach to the use of letters of censorship and excommunication in New Spain during the 17th century. I maintain that the request for these legal documents served as a popular resource to demand justice from the ecclesiastical authorities due to damage against an individual or property. Thus, excommunication was regarded within the collective imagination as a penalty so terrible that, contrary to what was stipulated in the ecclesiastical codes, it implied the absolute condemnation of the accused both in earth and the hereafter. Derived from the study of sources located in various funds of the National General Archive (Archivo General de la Nación) in Mexico, and based on the approaches exposed by some theorists of the judicial history of the New Spain Catholic Church, I will outline a proposal regarding the use of letters of censorship, the role that excommunication could play within the collective imagination, as well as the work carried out by the ecclesiastical instance as a determining forum of justice against other secular organizations. |
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