Opening Bodies in a New World: Anatomical Practices in Sixteenth-Century Spain

Abstract

In 1648 the Inquisition arrested Domingo de Robles in the city of Valladolid, Yucatán,«with some skins that he said were of saints […] with which he went healing and touching women, saying that his relics had healing powers» . Whether or not Domingo de Robles took advantage of the opportunity to physically abuse the women or not, the therapeutic use of fragments of skin supposedly taken (normally post mortem) from the bodies of persons who were sanctified or were believed to be such does not seem very different from theuse of fragments of human bodies for similar ends which circulated throughout the Christian world, including New Spain, in the form of relics. However, in the specific case of the circulation of skins in what had been Mesoamerica slightly more than a century before the incarceration of Domingo de Robles, we are obliged to ask whether this custom went back to beliefs or practices that did not derive solely fromthe Christianity imposed by the colonisers. Human skin was closely related with certain ancient beliefs of the indigenous population and with their religious and healing practices. Nowhere is this relation clearer than in the cult of Xipe Tótec, especially in the rite of the skinning of captives sacrificed during the annual festival Tlacaxipehualiztli