Late, Nineteenth-Century male discourses on María Hernández “The flea” and María Feliciana “The lesser flea". Two eighteenth-century sorceresses, mother and daughter, condemned to exile by the Lima inquisition in 1736

Abstract

María Hernández and María Feliciana were a mother and daughter condemned by the Lima Inquisition in the Auto Público de Fe of 1736. None of their legal relationships are available in the National Historical Archive in Madrid. However, they are mentioned by a group of nineteenth-century intellectuals and scholars in a series of late and indirect documents sent to the Holy Office. Both became iconic female figures, supporting or opposing the Inquisition’s corrective methods. That is, through their condemnations, written by the rector of the San Marcos University of Lima in 1736, nineteenth-century intellectuals recreated a series of discourses, inspired by both women, to support or reject the Inquisition and its interaction with the societies it protected through religious orthodoxy. Our objective is to analyze and reinterpret all the masculine expressions, typical of nineteenth-century intellectuals, surrounding María and María Feliciana, and thus recreate aspects of their lived experiences and everyday life. The nineteenth-century documentation, despite its gaps and lack of detail, will be key to illustrating, at least partially, the life experiences of the mother and her daughter and, also, how masculine discourses construct feminine stereotypes that are worthy of imitation or not.