Purity Of Blood Research Articles

Rethinking the Coloniality of Race: Blood Purity and the Politics of Periodization

The coloniality of power stands as a major framework for theorizing race within the context of Latin America, providing an influential account of the origin of race in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Without abandoning the task of theorizing the ways in which race functions in Latin America, this article asks: what is obscured by an insistence on 1492 as the moment when race emerged, and what different understandings of race can be made available by connecting the colonization of the Americas to a different set of temporal and spatial referents? Specifically, I develop a “prismatic” approach to analyze the impact of fifteenth-century Iberian blood purity statutes on the development of race without positing these as the new, singular origin of race. This article thus suggests an alternative genealogy of racialization while providing a critical engagement with the coloniality of power’s account of race.

Social Hierarchy and Purity of Blood in New Spain

Social Hierarchy and Purity of Blood in New Spain

Conceiving of Purity: The Literary Immaculism of María de Zayas's Desengaños Amorosos

ABSTRACT: The Virgin Mary is a central figure in María de Zayas's Desengaños amorosos (1647) but has not yet been analyzed through the lens of the Immaculate Conception, in spite of Zayas's own immaculist leanings. Indeed, despite its extraordinary and unique popularity in early modern Spain, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has received little scholarly attention outside of theological considerations. Recent scholarship has begun to suggest its broader social implications, including its connection to the contemporary discourse of blood purity. The Desengaños articulate and explore this intersection by pairing the intervention of the Immaculate Virgin with anxieties over women's role in maintaining genealogical purity. In this article, I analyze the third, eighth, and ninth tales of the collection, as well as the frame narrative, to argue that Zayas proposes Mary's immaculacy as a counterweight to the perception of women's indelible impurity in the context of limpieza de sangre . Through immaculist language and imagery, and drawing on the early modern obsession with honor, Zayas reimagines a disordered society that viewed women as fallen and corruptible by proposing a uniquely feminine source of genealogical purity.

Inquisition and Purity of Blood in Portugal during the Seventeenth Century

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role played by the Portuguese Holy Office in the process of social discrimination against New Christians, that is, those who were considered to be descendant of Jews converted to Christianity in the late fifteenth century. This article focuses specifically on the different and changing attitudes of the Inquisitors General to the issue of purity of blood during the seventeenth century. In the course of that century, some people considered to be New Christians (with fama or nota) managed to join the Portuguese Holy Office. Nevertheless, this was not due to the fact that Inquisitors General and members of the General Council rejected discrimination using theoretical, religious and moral arguments, but to the impossibility of achieving undoubtful knowledge about the origins of those seeking to join the Inquisition. At the same time, once racial discrimination became institutionalised within the Inquisition during the final third of the sixteenth century, the Inquisitors General became less concerned about the allegations of impure blood made about some of its ministers, so long as it could be demonstrated that they were good Christians and of use to the institution, or else capable of contributing to the specific personal interests of the tribunal’s rector. Nevertheless, not all supposed or real conversos succeeded in joining the Holy Office, as evidenced by cases of self-exclusion and the numerous proofs of “purity of blood” that were not approved. To address these questions, we turn to the proofs of “purity of blood” carried out by the Portuguese Inquisition, as well as to correspondence and documents from other institutions of the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies.

Psychosocial Perspective of Honour Killing

The Indian constitution forbids untouchability and caste or religious discrimination. Caste, on the other hand, is extremely important among Indians. India’s social system is ruled by the Hindu caste system. Even though we live in the twenty-first century, we continue to use the caste system. Each caste had its own set of rituals, customs and values. As a result of increased education, employment, urban growth, modernization and technological innovation, inter-caste marriages have gradually gained widespread acceptance in India. According to the 2011 census, 5.8% of the population throughout India, inter-caste marriages account for one-quarter of all marriages. For many years, however, Indians might have a conservative attitude towards inter-caste marriages. ‘Upper castes’ have viciously maintained the generational purity of blood by imposing endogamy and denying upper caste women the agency to marry outside their own castes. People are culturally conformist, so when their daughters or sons marry outside their culture, religion or language, it can lead to honour-related violence or honour killing. A total of 145 honour killing incidents occurred in India between 2017 and 2019 (Government tells in Lok Sabha in 2021). Furthermore, the majority of honour killings are misidentified as suicides.

Features of Health-Related Tradıtıons ın Kazakh Culture

Kazakh people have always seen human health as the first wealth and gave importance to healthy life above all in education. This is also true today. With the rapid development and change of today's society, competition in life has psychological and physiological effects on human health. In this study, the folk tradition of healthy life in Kazakh culture is explained with its unique features and its genetic importance is explained. Based on the Kazakh people's tradition of not marrying for seven generations, different ways of maintaining blood purity and establishing a healthy family are discussed. The role of parents in the family order and the importance of health among young people and adults are stated. In addition, the current situation of the Kazakh people's health traditions was examined in comparison with the views of the Turkic peoples living in the southern region of Kazakhstan, and determinations were made according to the results of the surveys and interviews. In the survey study, “Do you strictly comply with the condition of not marrying until seven belly buttons, or does it not matter to you?”, “Do you know your seven ancestors?”, “How old do you think an individual should get married”, “What if your family objects to your decision and preference to start a family? do you?” and “Did you know that avoiding consanguineous marriages up to seven navels is important for generational health, How do you know?” By asking questions such as, the effects and consequences of global phenomena on the attitudes of today's youth were analyzed. In the conclusion part of the study, the importance of Kazakh culture, which shapes the welfare of the generation in the context of family upbringing, is presented.

Taking Account

Taking Account

Mind the Gap: A Machiavellian Lesson in Anti-Racism

This article analyzes the development of race alongside Machiavelli’s writing on difference and his theorization of the relationship between truth and appearances. I focus on the rise of blood purity statutes in early modern Spain, showing how racialization responded to anxieties regarding the ability to discern subjects’ true identity. Whereas race functioned to cover over the potential gap between truth and appearances, I argue that Machiavelli insisted upon the impossibility of bridging this gap. He thus offers us a theory of subjecthood that resists racialization.

Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean by Ashley Williard

Reviewed by: Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean by Ashley Williard Virginie Ems-Bléneau Williard, Ashley. Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean. UP of Nebraska, 2021. ISBN 978-1-4962-2024-0. Pp. 294. France's national narrative has denied, or at the very least downplayed, its active participation in the slave trade and slavery for centuries. Today, public discourse still tends to point the finger to England or the United States for ruthlessly displacing and exploiting Africans in the pursuit of wealth and glory. "There were no slaves in France," a phrase repeated in many classrooms to highlight France's intellectual and ideological superiority following the Enlightenment. Engendering Islands will serve as an astute reminder that France, too, owes its current influence and wealth to the enslavement of Black bodies. The title's reference to gender illustrates Williard's approach: she shows how France constructed gender and race to meet the needs of the plantation economy in the French Caribbean of the seventeenth century. European binary definitions of gender (male vs. female) and race (European vs. non-European) evolved to take into account the new realities of colonial life. If masculinity for European men had signified courage and agency, this interpretation could no longer be applied to non-European men whose basic rights were systematically denied. Colonial society therefore deployed new racially-informed definitions of masculinity. Colonial publications discursively constructed the masculinity of African men as dangerous and violent to justify literal and symbolic emasculation. Furthermore, colonial narratives also reinvented femininity along racial lines. While planters were happily marrying Creole women due to the scarcity of European girls on the islands at the beginning of the period regardless of their skin tone, concerns over blood purity and morality engendered a shift in what would be considered desirable in a bride. Whiteness and religious education thus became the standards by which all women would be judged. In the context of colonial expansion, one might be lured into thinking that women and non-Whites were the primary targets of colonial control. The section on pirates and buccaneers shows, on the contrary, that any digression from the newly established gender norms proved threatening to the power structure. Pirates operated outside of the rules of society on several levels, including in their refusal to bind themselves to plantation society through a wife and a plot of land. Indeed, crew members formed homosocial partnerships called matelotage, which replaced patrilineal inheritance and ensured the wellbeing of wounded freebooters. These non-normative unions threatened colonial order so much that the Crown attempted to sever these bonds by using land, slaves, and women to entice sailors to settle down. While Williard reports that these tactics were ultimately unsuccessful, an analysis of the long-term consequences of such resistance would have been extremely interesting, and could be the object of further research. Although the overall scope of the book is not particularly [End Page 222] novel, this volume is well-written and thoroughly documented, making it a useful reference book for the study of race and gender in the early modern French Caribbean. [End Page 223] Virginie Ems-Bléneau Georgia Southern University Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

The Philosophy of Upbringing Healthy and Well-bred Generation of Kazakh Nationality


 
 
 The article deals with the role, peculiarities and philosophical issues of upbringing healthy and well-bred generation in Kazakh ethnomedicine, which has been passed down from generation to generation and has not lost its importance. Attention is paid to the peculiarities of the Kazakh people’s attitudes to nature, formed in connection with the natural environment, and the method of treatment based on shamanic beliefs. Philosophical concepts of nobility norms preservation of the Kazakh nation, following the tradition of exogamy in the formation of generation health, have been analysed. The doctrine of blood purity is discussed in Treatise on Healing by Uteiboydak Tleukabyluly, a scientist-healer of 15th century. Tleukabyluly considers debauchery, love relationships outside of marriage, unacceptable. He gives a reason why Kazakhs should be banned from related marriages up to the seventh generation, since, according to his observations, this leads to infertility and miscarriages or the birth of an imbecile child.
 The role of the mother in the healthy generation was studied in the national philosophical context.
 
 

Cartas Ejecutorias de Hidalguía (executory certificates of nobility): a survey in materials analysis, legal, and aesthetic contexts—two case studies

Illuminated manuscripts are relatively well studied, but the available publications greatly focus on religious manuscripts of a geographically limited area. In contrast, technical examinations of illuminated legal documents have received far less attention, e.g., Spanish cartas ejecutorias de hidalguía (executory certificates of nobility). These documents are suitable case studies to deepen current knowledge of manuscript-making in Spain for two reasons: First, they are dated (late fifteenth to early eighteenth centuries); and second, they are unusual and understudied from both the textual and materials analysis standpoints. Cartas contain judicial proceedings whereby a family gained or was re-assigned hidalguía (lower nobility). A key exhibit to achieving this status was proving their “blood purity” which implied they were faithful Catholics, so finding religious representations within the document is common. In addition, families embedded their faith and links to monarchs in their coat of arms through symbols like crowned eagles, trees, and towers. The deliberate choice of heraldic and religious elements is as important as the materials used to produce them. Interested in better understanding illumination in Spain we are studying these unique documents from the historical, materials, and iconographic points of view. Herein, we present the earliest results of an ongoing survey, detailing two case studies: Davila and Nuñez D. Armesto cartas. This research uses a combination of: (a) instrumental techniques (X-ray fluorescence, reflectance, and infrared spectroscopies; peptide mass fingerprinting; and gas chromatography); and (b) historical research using both the manuscript’s contents as primary sources, and published research. The preliminary results are enabling us to shed light onto Spanish (legal) illuminated manuscript-making, and the symbolic role materials played, e.g., use of precious metals adorning monarchical elements, presence of ultramarine mixed with azurite on both coats of arms, and on Virgin Mary’s gown, etc. This survey intends to simultaneously learn more about illumination practices in Spain, inform conservation decisions, and hopefully better understand problems connected to historic ideologies that were legalized in beautiful albeit disturbing documents, e.g., persecution of non-Catholics at the time in Spain.

Denying Sameness, Making Race: Medieval Anti-Judaism

Denying Sameness, Making Race: Medieval Anti-Judaism

Knowing Fictions: Picaresque Reading in the Early Modern Hispanic World

Knowing Fictions: Picaresque Reading in the Early Modern Hispanic World

Medieval Automata and Later Medieval Judeophobia

ABSTRACT A widely shared sense among later medieval Christians that Jews represented a growing threat led to efforts to clearly mark or distinguish Jews. These efforts often demanded special garments or distinguishing marks on Jews' clothes, or sought natural signs visible in the Jews' body that would identify them. When these measures failed, some fifteenth-century Spanish Christians placed their hopes on mechanical devices or automata that could clearly identify Jews, conversos, or crypto-Jews in order to effect a separation between Christian and Jewish communities. This article examines Alonso Tostado's description of a “talking head” or automaton, inspired by one previously fashioned by Albertus Magnus, which identified any Jew who attempted to enter the town of Tábara. It traces this tradition through early modern Spanish and French literature to demonstrate the special concern to safeguard Christian “purity of blood” in Spain but absent in French sources.

Review of implementation of animal model for diagnosis of past and present with special reference to Canis familiaris

Science has always given utmost value to diagnosis that is recognizing or verifying facts. But medicine has more to give in this field than any other. Throughout the ages a varied number of upgrades are gradually seen in the area of diagnosis. Acharya has explained a varied number of diagnostic tools to achieve the goal of identifying a disease by a spectrum of applications of sense organs.In the context of pratyaksha pareeksha that is direct observations Acharya has explained that the taste of different tissues of the patient is without a doubt an object of gustatory sense organs. He gave an example of raktapitta bleeding disorder wherein he explained how the purity of blood and blood vitiated by pitta can be observed in contrast by feeding the blood to a dog and crow. The most recent development in this concept of the use of animal models especially Canis familiaris dogs surfaced during the efflux of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence an attempt to study and widen the concept of the application of animals in the area of medicine past and present.

El Beaterio de Nuestra Señora del Carmen a la luz de un documento inédito de 1772 y de la arquitectura actual del recogimiento

The document, dated 1772 and kept in the Archbishop’s Archives in Cusco, presents a request from María Nicolasa de Christo, preposita of the Beaterio de Nuestra Señora del Carmen, demanding that her beaterio not be converted into a chaplaincy. The tertian describes the beaterio’s institutional and economic situation. Her petition is supported by the testimonies of nine witnesses from Cusco who visited the homes and chapel of the tertian. The witnesses’ descriptions give us a picture of the architecture and decor of the Nuestra Señora del Carmen beaterium in 1772. At the time, it was one of the most important in Cusco. The document serves as a pretext to reflect on the architecture of the beaterios in Cusco and their functions in the urban structure and multi-ethnic society of Cusco. In the 17th and 18th centuries, one can observe the hierarchization of the social structure, which depended on economic status, blood purity or gender, and the beaterias were a response to the need to create a living space for single women, very often lacking sufficient economic resources to support themselves.

EU’s Neocolonialism: Safeguarding the Purity of Ni-Vanuatu Blood through Blackmail

EU’s Neocolonialism: Safeguarding the Purity of Ni-Vanuatu Blood through Blackmail

Turkism in the Thought of Dr. RIza Nur: A Reading from the Perspective of Primordialism

Turkism was one of the political movements emerging in the last period of the Ottoman Empire. Under scope of the Turkism movement, initially Ottoman belonging and realism were identifying factors. Subject matter realism comprises of such concepts like balance, strategy and interest. In the subsequent period, matter of racial origins became prevalent within framework of Turkism movement. Racial origin was construed as descending from Turkic blood. Figure of transition between the two periods of Turkism drive appeared as Dr. Rıza Nur. Dr. Rıza Nur acted as a figure defending Turkish identity based on purity of blood and race. It is to be reviewed in this article the Turkism perspective of Dr. Rıza Nur as the figure of transition between these two periods. Dr. Rıza Nur’s ideology shall be interpreted in respect of ethnical nationalism.

Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories in the Early Modern Iberian World: Narratives of Fear and Hatred by François Soyer (review)

Reviewed by: Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories in the Early Modern Iberian World: Narratives of Fear and Hatred by François Soyer Claude B. Stuczynski François Soyer. Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories in the Early Modern Iberian World: Narratives of Fear and Hatred. Leiden: Brill, 2019. xvi + 315 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400942100026X Among the many myths spurred by the Covid-19 emergency is the false claim that Jews caused this pandemic to secretly dominate the world.1 Soyer's book confirms how often conspiracy theories entail a perception of Jews—whether openly professing or "hidden," through religious conversion or assimilation—as quintessential conspirators. Karl Popper has argued that conspiracy myths have proliferated since the French Revolution mostly because they offer simple nonreligious answers to complex realities in a secularized world. François Soyer's focus on earlier historical stages shows that conspiracy myths are indeed compatible with a belief in Divine Providence and with theodicy. In cases loaded with theological connotations, such as traditional anti-Jewish hatred, conspiracy myths reveal a dualistic perception of the world, understood as the arena of cosmological strife between the followers of light, good, and/or God and the agents of darkness, evil, and/or Satan. No wonder that Norman R. C. Cohn, a pioneering historian of anti-Jewish conspiracy myths in modern times, also studied the imprint of Christian eschatology and apocalyptic thought on medieval and early modern violence, and the origins of Europe's scapegoating obsessions, which led to witch-hunting.2 Soyer's book thus helps us understand Popper's explanation against the grain: less as an example of Weberian secularization as disenchantment of the world, and rather as a profane appropriation of the religious and the sacred. This implicitly political-theological perspective unifies those scholars who explicitly question the accuracy of the once-consensual periodization of premodern anti-Judaism, understood as theologically grounded, and of modern antisemitism, perceived as equivalent to pseudoscientific and nonreligious racism. [End Page 464] Perhaps Soyer's main contribution to the history of anti-Judaism in the West is precisely its focus. Late medieval and early modern Iberian anticonverso attitudes have already been treated by eminent historians such as Cecil Roth, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, and David Nirenberg, who identified astonishing analogies with later forms of racism and antisemitism.3 Soyer's contribution to this scholarship is twofold. First, he integrates early modern Iberian conspiracy myths with the better-known "purity of blood" exclusionary laws; second, he convincingly demonstrates that some of those old Iberian stories nurtured later Western myths. Oddly, the author makes no reference to Francisco de Quevedo's satiric episode The Monopantos' Island (La isla de los Monopantos), originally aimed against Count-Duke of Olivares's purported proconverso policies, as one of the probable indirect sources of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, via Hermann Goedsche's Biarritz (1868).4 According to Soyer, Jews and conversos were simply a means, and not the aim, in Quevedo's satirical fiction, which is why there is no single reference to The Monopantos' Island in later early modern Iberian antisemitic literature (82–83). At the same time, Soyer is fully aware of Quevedo's influence during Olivares's times; he identifies Quevedo's circulation of the belief in a converso and Jewish anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish conspiracy plan in a passage from his earlier pamphlet, Execración de los judíos (1633). In this vitriolic leaflet, Quevedo explicitly invoked "the correspondence between the Jews of Spain and the Jews of Constantinople" to denounce Portuguese conversos as a dangerous fifth column in Iberia, although he expressed doubts regarding the authenticity of that epistolary exchange, as if anticipating sympathetic future readers of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.5 In chapter 2 (54–92) and in the epilogue (275–81), Soyer painstakingly probes the origins of these forged letters, which were initially used by Archbishop of Toledo Juan Martínez Silíceo (1477–1547) to support anticonverso exclusionary laws of "purity of blood." Soyer thus sheds light on the way these letters framed anticonverso conspiracy myths in early modern Iberia, and most surprisingly, on the fact that this spurious correspondence (along with a French variant) was still echoed in...

François Soyer. Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories in the Early Modern Iberian World: Narratives of Fear and Hatred. Leiden: Brill, 2019. xvi + 315 pp.

Among the many myths spurred by the Covid-19 emergency is the false claim that Jews caused this pandemic to secretly dominate the world.1 Soyer's book confirms how often conspiracy theories entail a perception of Jews—whether openly professing or “hidden,” through religious conversion or assimilation—as quintessential conspirators. In this vitriolic leaflet, Quevedo explicitly invoked “the correspondence between the Jews of Spain and the Jews of Constantinople” to denounce Portuguese conversos as a dangerous fifth column in Iberia, although he expressed doubts regarding the authenticity of that epistolary exchange, as if anticipating sympathetic future readers of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.5 In chapter 2 (54–92) and in the epilogue (275–81), Soyer painstakingly probes the origins of these forged letters, which were initially used by Archbishop of Toledo Juan Martinez Siliceo (1477–1547) to support anticonverso exclusionary laws of “purity of blood.” [...]without attempting to show an organic continuity, Soyer demonstrates that the (alleged) epistolary exchange between deceitful Iberian conversos and open Jews living in the Ottoman Empire was recycled through subsequent antisemitic reverberations. 8 It is worth mentioning that for Soyer, Iberian anticonverso conspiracy myths were not exclusively a top-down phenomenon: “The existence of a ‘Jewish plot’ to destroy the Church and Christian community was seemingly accepted as an incontrovertible fact by members of all social ranks” (137). [...]among the many fascinating examples sprinkled throughout the book, the author refers to an anonymous eighteenth-century painting of an alleged flagellation of a crucifix by Portuguese