Según la mente de su Santidad: Roman interstices and sovereign memories in the Bulas de la Santa Cruzada (Chile, 18th century)

Abstract

This article intends to make the presence of the Holy See in the social and religious dynamics of eighteenth-century Santiago visible through the arrival of the Bull of the Crusade. This pontifical document and concession was used for collecting money and sustaining the struggle against infidels throughout the world as well as for maintaining the cult. As parishioners delivered donations, they participated in the Bull’s imposed normative: forgiveness of faults, redemptions of sins, indulgences, pardons, concessions of graces, rescuing souls from the purgatory, and even avoiding the strictness of fasting. These documents have often become trapped in a quantitative reading focused on the collection of money. Nevertheless, this documental corpus was a key component of the Church’s universal governance, an embodiment of the “pontifical sovereign” and the Roman normativity as it went beyond the political frontier of the Iberian Monarchy. This article analyzes how the exchange of documents between Rome and Chile fostered a political-religious memory on the “pontifical sovereign” and a rhetoric of pardon linked to the ceremonial publication of the Bull.

Keywords: Rome, Bull of the Crusade, Chile.