Dangerous Speech: A Social History Of Blasphemy

Blasphemy, the act of speaking God’s name sacrilegiously. In Javier Villa-Flores’ book Dangerous Speech: A Social History of Blasphemy in Colonial Mexico he writes about the ways blasphemy is used, prosecution, and how blasphemy was represented in Mexico between the 16th and 17th century. In order to understand the culture and history of Mexico during this time blasphemy cases are used to understand popular piety, and social culture. During the sixteenth and seventeenth century there were many cases of blasphemy. With a collection of all these cases, they can be used in order to better understand the nature of popular piety. In the introduction of the book Villa-Flores states that blasphemy is in fact a way to intentionally harm God, “... blasphemy is not a sin against the Christian faith, but against the confession of that faith, that is, against the reverence and piety expected of all professed Christians vis-à-vis their God,” (10). What I think Villa-Flores is stating is that blasphemy is basically one sinning against themself and their belief towards their God, disrespecting the deity that gives us and everything else life. Another thing that he states is, blasphemy was used by men in way of confrontation. For example, Hernando Ortíz did not care if was sentenced to go to hell, but renounced God, in way to force Pedro Ruiz to pay him the money he owed him. They are several cases similar to

In both chapters 1 and 5 he does not state how many. In 5 it could be because sometimes it was not easy to determine the background of the person. In chapter 2 he mentions 141 cases of male blasphemy between 1527-1708. While in chapter 3 he only talks about 32 case between 1526-1695 relating to gambling. And as for women cases in chapter 4 he writes about 21 cases that occurred from 1564 to