"I shall not believe, and I shall not obey": Mexico and the “proceso de fe” of fray Alberto Enríquez in the Seventeenth century

Abstract

The study of the dissident representations and religious heterodoxy in Seventeenth-Century Colonial Mexico tends to show different and diverse cultural meanings and ideological affiliations. Although it’s almost impossible to trace the sources from which they drew, we are convinced that they are relevant in different aspects: they force us to reflex on the hybrid and pluriform nature of religious dissidence and its complex theological antagonism but also its ability to re-elaborate and modify and distort —even in the gloomy dungeons of the “Santo Oficio”— the most sacrosanct official religious discourse. The case of Fray Alberto Enríquez, prosecuted as heretic during the second half of the Seventeenth-Century (and finally executed in Mexico Cityin an “Auto de Fe’’ in 1678), is notable because it tends to demonstrate the emergency of an incisive, eclectic and relativistic religious thought, with the capacity to question the exegesis of official doctrines, and ultimately defined a true and powerful subversive and religious mimesis.