The Inquisition and prohibited sexual artwork in late colonial Mexico

Abstract

The manufacturing or distribution of pornographic materials was among the many crimes pursued by the Holy Office. Twenty-one denunciations of illicit sexual artwork from 1750 to 1820 are housed in Mexico's Archivo General de la Nación. The items range from illustrations and prints of men and women in sexualized poses to elaborate and ingenious etchings and paintings on watches and jewelry boxes. The protagonists in this article include denouncers, witnesses, and suspects, inquisitors, qualifiers, and other church agents, and producers, sellers, and consumers of prohibited artwork. These cases provide valuable information on the sexual culture of Mexico City's urban leisure class. Those accused of selling and purchasing illegal art did not view themselves as libertines or free thinkers who advocated sexual experimentation. Nor did they advocate anti-Christian or anti-establishment sentiments. Inquisitors did not demonstrate the same fears and anxieties about erotic drawings and artwork that they did with prohibited books, nor did they conflate eroticism and licentiousness with heresy and treason. The consumers of prohibited sexual artwork in late colonial Mexico City seem to have mostly reveled in the excitement of seeing and owning prohibited materials and sharing a good laugh with friends. Neither they nor inquisitors took these items too seriously.

Keywords:

• Mexico
• Catholic Church
• Inquisition
• pornography
• censorship

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the anonymous readers of CLAR, Martin A. Nesvig, Walter J. Petry, Yamile Silva, and Zeb Totorici for comments and suggestions, and the University of Scranton for providing funding for research.

Notes on contributor

Lee M. Penyak is Professor of History and associate member of Latin American Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Scranton. His publications explore the themes of female confinement, midwifery, obstetrics medicine, spousal abuse, male same-sex attraction, incest, religion, and haciendas.

Notes

All translations by author. Spelling of Castilian in primary documents modernized and standardized for consistency.

Abbreviations:

AGN: Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City

Inq.: Inquisición

1. Other investigators have located additional cases concerning erotic stamps and objects in late-colonial Mexico. Moreno Silva (2001) reviews 67 paintings and illicit materials. Kelly Donahue-Wallace (2006) studies engravers, print publishers, and typographic printers who produced and sold local as well as imported prints.

2. The word pornografía first appeared in Spain's Diccionario nacional in 1853 and was defined as ‘Tratado sobre la prostitución.’ Pornógrafo was defined as ‘El que escribe sobre la prostitución.’ See Domínguez 1853, 1388.

3. Donahue-Wallace and Latham provide the following dates for Spanish indexes: 1547, 1551, 1554, 1583, 1584, 1612, 1632, 1640, 1707, 1747, and 1790. The Crown assumed the right to censor and license books prior to publication and the Inquisition asserted the right to ban or expurgate books subsequent to publication. See Schwartz 2008, 145.

4. Ramírez Leyva (1992, 149) determined that 23 edicts referred to prohibited images and 43 edicts specified prohibited books.

5. The protocol for documenting cargo in Spanish ports proved equally inefficient. The shipmaster would either take a dinghy to shore and bring paperwork to the commissioner's home, or might pay to have the commissioner ferried to the ship. Commissioners were paid if a non-Spanish ship had left from a non-Spanish port. See Pérez de Colosia and Gil San Juan 1979, 29–31.

6. In her study of prohibited books in eighteenth-century New Spain, Pérez Marchand (1945, 98) found that book sellers sometimes employed catch phrases such as ‘de gusto’ and ‘aquello’ in order to gauge a client's potential interest in purchasing prohibited material without arousing suspicion. Storeowners' use of the word cortejo may have been a clever double-entendre, since ‘modern’ Spanish elite in the late eighteenth-century employed this same word to allude to the controversial custom of allowing married noble women to ‘befriend’ a member of the opposite sex. See Martín Gaite 1991.

7. For additional cases in which the owners received previously confiscated goods on the condition that they be repaired, see AGN Inq. vol. 1389, exp. 13, and AGN Inq. vol. 1126, exp. 37.

8. Determining the appropriateness of private versus public punishment had been the prerogative of bishops at least since the Council of Trent, as promulgated in its 24th session in 1563. Under the title ‘Public sinners shall do penance, unless the bishop shall determine otherwise,’ council members determined that ‘those who sin publically are to be reproved publically […] so that those whom he by his example has led to evil morals, he may bring back to an upright life by the evidence of his correction. The bishop, however, should he judge it advisable, may commute this kind of public sentence to one that is secret.’ See Schroeder 1941, 198. For other examples where priests' sexual improprieties were shielded from public light, see Penyak 2008.

9. The actions of this unidentified priest substantiate Taylor's (1996, 12) contention that ‘an energetic cura might operate quite freely as keeper of public order and morals….’

10. Snuff was consumed in Mexico City by people in all social classes. But only wealthier members of society could afford elegant cases and other curiosities. In 1790 the lost and found section of the Diario, published in Madrid, included the following description of these ornate pieces: ‘Lost—a snuffbox with an ivory border, the bottom and cover of glass, bands of gold….’ See Kany 1970, 431.

11. See also Defourneaux 1973, 8.

12. See, for example, Pérez Marchand (1945, 138), who states, ‘…se pueden registrar fallas en el funcionamiento del Santo Oficio, que señalan irresponsabilidad y falta de interés en algunos funcionarios menores y mayores, los cuales no despliegan el celo necesario y no cooperan entre sí para cumplir con los estatutos establecidos por el Santo Oficio….’