TY - JOUR
T1 - The "contagious stench" of idolatry
T2 - The rhetoric of disease and sacrilegious acts in colonial New Spain
AU - Solari, Amara
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 by Duke University Press.
PY - 2016/8
Y1 - 2016/8
N2 - In the colonial theater of New Spain, multiple actors utilized the rhetoric of disease to discuss and describe the ongoing discoveries of indigenous traditional religion, which they termed idolatry. Focusing primarily on Yucatán, this article closely analyzes these usages, arguing that the two primary modes of understanding the spread of illness in the early modern world, that of miasmic factors and that of contagion, provided rationalizations for the perseverance of idolatrous practices, informed the institutionalized prevention of these heretical acts, and ultimately provided models for their possible cure. As the definition of idolatry was expanded to include all religious crimes committed by New Spain's indigenous population, it was severed from the material aspect (idol worship) that had originally defined it. The result was the conceptual conflation of two of the defining characteristics of early colonial experience: epidemic disease and ongoing idolatries.
AB - In the colonial theater of New Spain, multiple actors utilized the rhetoric of disease to discuss and describe the ongoing discoveries of indigenous traditional religion, which they termed idolatry. Focusing primarily on Yucatán, this article closely analyzes these usages, arguing that the two primary modes of understanding the spread of illness in the early modern world, that of miasmic factors and that of contagion, provided rationalizations for the perseverance of idolatrous practices, informed the institutionalized prevention of these heretical acts, and ultimately provided models for their possible cure. As the definition of idolatry was expanded to include all religious crimes committed by New Spain's indigenous population, it was severed from the material aspect (idol worship) that had originally defined it. The result was the conceptual conflation of two of the defining characteristics of early colonial experience: epidemic disease and ongoing idolatries.
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U2 - 10.1215/00182168-3601658
DO - 10.1215/00182168-3601658
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84979707961
SN - 0018-2168
VL - 96
SP - 481
EP - 515
JO - HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review
JF - HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review
IS - 3
ER -