Imperial Pietas Austriaca: Baroque Piety in the Spanish Hapsburg New World Empire

The Hapsburg dynasty’s claim to world dominion in the seventeenth century was based not on claims to geopolitical strengths but on virtue, and above all else on piety. This piety was expressed in their devotion to the Eucharist, their faith to the Holy Cross, and the promotion of Marian and patron-saint devotions. The message of Hapsburg piety was disseminated through literature, pamphlets, theater, and public ceremonies. The influential literary topos of the “Triumph of the Church Militants,” associated with Hapsburg pietas often took the form of battles waged by martyrs and saints which in Europe meant the triumph of Catholicism over the Turks and in the New World triumph over idolatry. The American ceremonies of the lignum crucis, for example, served to create an ancestral connection between the New World Church and the wider Catholic Hapsburg Empire centered in Madrid and Rome. Since these ceremonies were usually followed by investigations of idolatrous practices among the local indigenous populations, they also constituted an important stage for the monarchy’s local battles for bodies and souls.

This paper examines the cultural and political meanings of baroque religious rituals and images associated with a characteristic pietas austriaca as defined by Coreth in the viceroyalty of Peru and their role in the genesis of an imperial Hapsburg Catholic community. The celebration of Corpus Christi, the transformation of the Mass into a daily ritual with the regular partaking of communion, the cult of the Virgin Mary, the promotion of official patron saints devotions, and the inclusion of these images in ceremonies centered on the body of the Spanish king, constituted important venues by which the Catholic Church, the Hapsburg monarchy, and the viceregal state inculcated obedience and loyalty to God and the King. Ultimately, these ceremonies fostered a cosmopolitan identity symbolically unifying the Spanish Hapsburg Empire.