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7 - Blood Purity and Human Sacrifice

Castilians Meet Aztecs in War

from Part III - Blood Makes a Language in Which to Conduct Disputes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2021

Eugene F. Rogers, Jr
Eugene F. Rogers, Jr
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
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Summary

In Reconquista Spain, a barely united state turned its anxieties inward with anti-Semitic laws on blood purity among converts from Judaism and Islam. The same insecure state turned outward to conquer Mexico, where Franciscans spent fifty years recording Aztec human sacrifice in codices and color drawings. Castilians and Aztecs alike marked their external bounds and internal bonds with blood. Ethnicizing ideas of blood purity crossed the Atlantic to ruddy Christian perceptions of Mesoamerican sacrifice. Two blood-obsessed cultures met to reveal disturbing resonances in Christian blood language. Uses Sircoff on limpieza de sangre and Timothy Radcliffe on cultic irony in Hebrews.

Keywords

Aztecslimpieza de sangrebloodpurityCastileReconquistaanti-SemitismSicroffhuman sacrificeHebrews
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Chapter
Information
Blood Theology
Seeing Red in Body- and God-Talk
 , pp. 161 - 182
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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