Gleeson Library’s Special Collections include more than 17,000 items including books, manuscripts, photographs, drawings, engravings, and other artworks. Here’s a peek at just one of those special items.
Gleeson Library recently digitized a bound manuscript from 1791 entitled Geneologia y limpieza de sangre de Don Juan Ventura Balbina de Batiz y Urquixo.
This document is a genealogical testimony asserting that Don Juan Ventura Balbina de Batiz y Urquixo, of Cosalá Mexico, had no Jewish or Muslim ancestors, in accordance with ‘limpieza de sangre’ statutes and laws that governed activities such as emigration to the colonies, holding positions of power in society, and the race-based casta system in colonial Spanish America. You can view high-resolution images of this manuscript in Gleeson Library Digital Collections.
Documents like these these were made in compliance with racially discriminatory practices that were carried over from Europe to colonized territories. These practices were dictated by the Spanish and Portuguese Empires in conjunction with the precepts of the Inquisition — the judicial structure and particularly bloody arm of the Catholic Church. Their stated aim was to combat heresy and their effect was to maintain political and social dominance. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions focused on scrutiny and persecution of Catholic converts, especially formerly Jewish and Muslim peoples whose communities had been subject to expulsions and forced conversions. Deeply held antisemitic, racist, and xenophobic attitudes fostered suspicions that these conversos and “New Christians” could not be trusted. Punishment for heresies ‘uncovered’ by the Inquisition ranged from penance, confiscation of property, banishment, imprisonment, or even execution.
This manuscript in the Donohue Rare Book Room gives us a look into the genealogy and history of one family. It also serves as a testimony of the political and ecclesiastical forces that reached around the world through conquest and Empire.
You can get a closer look at this manuscript by looking at the digitized copy in our digital collections. To view this manuscript in person, stop by the Donohue Rare Book Room on the 3rd floor of Gleeson Library. You can also contact us to ask questions or schedule an appointment.
For more about this topic, see:
Martínez, María Elena. Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza De Sangre Religion and Gender in Colonial Mexico. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. [Print book available at Gleeson Library]
Martínez, María Elena. “The Black Blood of New Spain: Limpieza de Sangre, Racial Violence, and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico.” The William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2004): 479–520. https://doi.org/10.2307/3491806.