queer masculinities

Martin Austin Nesvig 185
America. 78 Within this genre even a cursory glance reveals a preoccupation
with sexual mores and rectitude among some of the most
influential writers of early modern Hispanic letters. For example, the
first archbishop of Mexico, the Franciscan Juan de Zumárraga, printed
what was considered to be a rather ‘liberal’ doctrine as a primer on the
faith for the literate. 79 In this Doctrina breve, which first appeared in
1543, he discusses sexual morality. His conclusion concerning homosexuality
is unsurprising, condemning it as the worst ‘species’ of the
sin of lust. 80
The view that all non-procreative sexual activity was a mortal sin
remained virtually unchanged throughout the early modern period.
One of the most influential moral theologians of his day, the Jesuit
Tomás Sánchez, wrote a lengthy confessional manual and treaty on
marriage at the beginning of the seventeenth century. One of his questions
was whether or not sodomy precluded a woman from marrying a
man who had committed this ‘act against nature.’ He concludes that
sodomy is indeed grounds for divorce or refusing to marry given the
‘enormity’ of the crime. Moreover the metaphysical reasoning followed
exactly along the Thomist line that sodomy was a grave sin precisely
because nothing could be produced from it (quia ex ea non potest sequi
generatio). 81
These two works represent only a minute fraction of the avalanche
of doctrinal material to flood into colonial Latin America from Europe,
to say nothing of the material produced in the Spanish and Portuguese
viceroyalties. While such discussions tell us little of how ordinary
people responded to official teachings, they do inform us a great deal
about the efforts being made to ‘reform’ the everyman. The teachings
of the Catholic Church in the period after the conclusion of the
Council of Trent, which ended in 1563, were notorious in their
attempts to enforce strict sexual morality and marital stability, even if
these same teachings met with significant resistance across all walks of
life in both Europe and Latin America. 82 In addition to rampant concubinage
that Vainfas shows occurred in colonial Brazil, 83 remarrying,
cohabitation, and keeping mistresses seem to have been relatively
common practices in colonial Mexico. For example, in the direct wake
of Trent, the Mexican Inquisition prosecuted at least 113 cases for
remarriage or bigamy between 1563 and 1579, an astonishingly high
number considering the overall caseload of the Tribunal. 84
Furthermore, this says nothing of the virtual avalanche of trials for
similar crimes at the diocesan levels. The abundance of case law and
the prevalence of moral theology’s obsession with sexual purity, such