“Just Rules” for a “Religiosity of Simple People”: Devotional Literature and Inquisitorial Trials in Cartagena de Indias (17th–18th Centuries)

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to establish a dialogue between the archive of an Inquisition tribunal and the works written, published, translated, abridged, and selected by jurists and theologians in order to explain how to prosecute the different cases, and how to practise the “true” Christian doctrine in daily life. Understanding the activities of the Inquisitorial court is not restricted, then, to what is written in the court’s proceedings, nor are the proceedings themselves strictly limited to references to the tribunal. Rather, I shall show that such proceedings must necessarily be associated to other sources useful for the court’s everyday work. In particular, I shall take into account some leaflets [cartillas] and “small pieces” [obritas] which describe the methods used for instructing people and how “remedies were searched” for the “minor heresies” dealt with at the court. The daily work at this court was not characterised exclusively by prosecutions against the “major heresies” of the Muslim, Jewish or Protestant populations. Rather, it mainly aimed at the practices of people who, in the 17th century of this cosmopolitan Caribbean port, constituted a variegated aggregate of “superstitious” Christians.1 Based on a detailed analysis of the court’s proceedings and reports [relaciones], of the available letters exchanged and the books consulted, we see that the court members needed handbooks and “small pieces” [obritas] to expound in a short, compiled way and in plain language how “true devotions” should be practised without lapsing into the risks of superficial approaches and religious vices.