“Heretical Plagues” and Censorship Cordons: Colonial Mexico and the Transatlantic Book Trade
In the 1570s the Mexican Inquisition prosecuted high-profile heresy and piracy cases against John Hawkins and other English and French corsairs. These trials prompted a high alert for Lutheran and Calvinist books as well as vernacular Scripture reaching Mexico. Many of the accused were simply mercha...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2006
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| In: |
Church history
Year: 2006, Volume: 75, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-37 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In the 1570s the Mexican Inquisition prosecuted high-profile heresy and piracy cases against John Hawkins and other English and French corsairs. These trials prompted a high alert for Lutheran and Calvinist books as well as vernacular Scripture reaching Mexico. Many of the accused were simply merchants while others were indeed pirates, but their foreign national and linguistic identities placed them in the crosshairs of a larger debate about the transatlantic diffusion and regulation of books and religious ideology. The issue of trade violations by Hawkins and others paled in comparison in the collective Catholic apprehension over the possibility that the newly conquered Mexico could become “infected” by the Lutheran and Calvinist “heretical plagues“—language used commonly by inquisitional and episcopal authorities to refer to the threat of these same sailors. Among the central concerns was the possibility that vernacular translations of the Bible or books by “heresiarchs” like Calvin, Melanchthon, or John Knox would reach Mexico, infiltrate Catholic homes and minds, and result in an ecclesiological disaster in which the unsuspecting faithful succumbed to the duplicitous charms of salvation by faith and the unapproved theological-linguistic renderings of the Gospels and Pauline letters. |
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| ISSN: | 1755-2613 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0009640700088314 |