Moving images: Marketing the sacred in viceregal rural Peru

Castrejón S.G. · Religion and the Medieval and Early Modern Global Marketplace (2021) · DOI: 10.4324/9781003082842-7

Resumen

This chapter investigates rearrangements and substitutions of sacred images in colonial churches of rural Peru and their making, remaking, change, exchange, placement, and displacement, which will give an insight into the dynamic realities of marginalized indigenous communities which aspired to be heard, seen, and acknowledged as politically mature and (synonymously) as generators, not only recipients, of evangelization. Going back to San Miguel Arcangel de Cayma, the parish priest has just found a long-lost Saint Augustine sculpture which, according to early modern inventories, dates from 1797. Confraternities, masses, and processions are long gone, and the same happened with rivalries and altercations surrounding patronage. As for Santiago de Navan, it seems to be the irruption of General Jose de San Martín’s army that triggered the display of novel, republican-related iconography on the presbytery’s vault, just above the Holy Wafer in its monstrance, the privilege that so many decades had taken to secure.

Instituciones: Universidad de San Martín de Porres