Standing on Shaky Ground: Claiming Ecclesiastical Immunity in Seventeenth-Century Lima, 1600–99

Standing on Shaky Ground: Claiming Ecclesiastical Immunity in Seventeenth-Century Lima: 1600-1699

The ecclesiastical practice of granting sanctuary to fugitives fleeing secular punishment is well documented by medieval legal historians.  This paper examines the cases of enslaved prisoners who were forcibly removed from Lima’s vast network of religious institutions by secular officials for criminal prosecution. The cases document the everyday concerns of crime control, public safety, and the administration of criminal justice in Lima’s jails and courts. The records reveal the perennial struggle in consolidating states between ecclesiastical ideals of clemency and intercession with secular realities of punishment, deterrence, and retribution underwritten by the racial grammar of the criminal depravity of black and mulatto men. The cases paint a fine-grained picture of the criminal lives and networks of the urban poor, the enslaved underclass, and the links forged by newly imported African slaves with other kinsmen—invaluable for the social historian of the Atlantic World.

Using a representative sample of cases, this paper poses two questions. First: Why does ecclesiastical sanctuary die out in Western Europe by the 16th century but thrive in important colonial cities? Second: what is the Church’s stake in ensuring the rights of accused criminals who seek their protection?