Reading Male Piety in Colonial Lima

This project analyzes how colonial subjects in seventeenth-century Lima understood and constructed masculine piety within the framework of Tridentine Catholicism. Drawing on devotees’ testimonies from beatification processes—particularly those of Jesuit Diego Martínez, Mercedarian Pedro Urraca, and Dominican Juan Masías—it examines how lay witnesses read, projected, and negotiated models of male holiness. By focusing on depositions, hagiographies, correspondence, and testaments housed in the Archdiocesan Archive of Lima, the study explores how ideals such as humility, obedience, suffering, and spiritual authority were framed as masculine virtues. Methodologically, it asks whether male interiority can be accessed through mediated ecclesiastical sources and how devotional practices shaped gendered identities. Ultimately, the project develops a “social history of holiness,” arguing that devotional life offered spaces in which colonial Catholics articulated religious identities and engaged systems of power, thereby contributing to broader discussions of global Catholicism and human development.