Entangled Sainthood: Imperial Canonisations and the Invention of Saints in Colonial Latin America

This article examines the impact of canonisation trials on the promotion of new saints across the Spanish Empire. Focusing on New Spain and Peru, it demonstrates that the physical arrival of copies and summaries of a canonisation trial or hagiographies of a saintly candidate supported by the Spanish crown in Colonial America served as a catalyst for revitalising pre-existing devotions and even inspiring the creation of new ones. By examining the start of the canonisations of Fray Sebastián de Aparicio in Puebla (Mexico) and Toribio of Mogrovejo in Lima (Peru), the work provides an introduction to an often neglected phenomenon: the entanglement between religious, political and cultural forces in the formation of Latin American sainthood, mainly in four ways: causality, opposition, dialecticism and affiliation. *