“Fortunes and adversities of the Lima Inquisition archive”
Abstract:
The archive of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Lima gathered abundant documentation generated by it and for it between 1569, the year it was founded in the Peruvian viceroyalty, and 1820, the date of its final abolition by the Spanish liberal government. For years, inquisitors were particularly careful with the preservation of these documents, since the efficiency of the Tribunal depended heavily on them. This archive, nonetheless, has had a rocky history. It was sacked twice: first in 1813, when the Holy Office was closed for the first time by the Spanish liberal parliament, and second between 1881 and 1883, during the Chilean occupation of Lima. Later, it was seriously affected by the 1943 fire at the Peruvian National Library in Lima. Reconstructing this archive’s history will allow us to reflect on the inconsistent cultural policies of the Peruvian republican state, the role of archival documents in the shaping of historical memories, and the effects of the loss of inquisitorial records on historians’ work.