Fellatio,
Sainthood, and the Mexican Inquisition
Zeb Tortorici
Department of History, UCLA
This essay attempts a
history of fellatio in colonial Mexico by looking at two
Mexican Inquisition cases--from 1610 and from 1775,
respectively--in which religiosity and sexuality clearly
merge. The 1610 case is a solicitation case in which
a Spanish priest,Christobal de Valencia, asserts that
performing fellatio is a path to sainthood and the San
Pedro and the apostles all practiced fellatio and that the
biship even gave him permission to do so. In the 1775 case,
a mestizo man named José Antonio de la Peña denounced
his mulatto friend Manuel de Arroyo for frequently
performing oral sex on him. For his part, when
questioned by the Inquisition, Manuel de Arroyo asserted
that he performed fellatio on his friend on numerous
occasions, but that he only did so "in charity of God."
According to Arroyo, both
his priest and his doctor had informed him that regarding
his friend's sickness (he had granos or pustules
on his penis) the only way to cure him was to nightly
perform oral sex on him with rum
in his mouth. While this is merely the beginning of
two unusually rich Inquisition cases, I am interested in
how these men justify actions deemed heretical in
theological discourse by admitting that he merely
performed fellatio out of God's charity and goodwill
towards others.
While these assertions made
their actions seem even more heretical in the eyes of the
tribunal, both Christobal de Valencia and Manuel de Arroyo
exemplify how often corporal and sexual practices deemed
sinful and heretical in the eyes of the church were not
conceptualized as sinful on a popular level.
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