Santos reyes. Virtuosos Incas. Antiguos tiranos: the image of the monarchy in the sacred river plate homiletics (SS. XVIII-XIX)

Abstract

Homiletics were an instrument of defense of the established political order, as well as an instrument of criticism of the regime in decline. They can be characterized as a religious speech with a strong doctrinal and ideological content that reached a wide audience. The homiletics were delivered in Marian feasts, in funerals of the Monarchy or at civil-religious celebrations; they intended to build ideal models of behavior and to transmit values and representations from the Catholic world view. Moreover, they were opinion creators and opinion diffusers as pieces of political theology in which they wanted to legitimize the Crown or the revolutionary government. The saints, the Virgin and the canonized kings were taken as ideal figures. In this article, I analyze what was the image of the monarchy preached in general, and the set of ideas and beliefs shaped on the figure of the Spanish monarchs in particular, during the late-colonial and revolutionary periods, a moment where the political and revolutionary changes, and the projects of institutional organization continued to exert influence.