Hispanic American Historical Review 85:3 Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press The Search for Idols and Saints in Colonial Peru: Linking Extirpation and Beatification Celia L. Cussen Recent interest in the cultural history of the middle colonial period in Peru has centered on two distinct clerical efforts to guide Christian behavior: the systematic inspection tours aimed at uprooting idolatry among the Indians of the Archdiocese of Lima (frequently called the “Extirpation”) and the initiatives to promote the beatification of saintly Limeños. 1 Both campaigns were linked to the aims of the clerics assembled at the Council of Trent ( 1545– 63), who—in light of the Protestant threat—sought to improve doctrinal conformity and to reaffirm the saints as intercessors and models of Christian virtue. These two activities also expressed the baroque notion that the material world was a battle- ground where God’s allies were pitted against agents of the devil. For clerics in this period, Indian idolatry was manifestly the work of Satan, while urban saints, on the other hand, were evidence of the successful rooting of Hispanic Catholicism in the viceroyalty of Peru. 1. Pierre Duviols opened the discussion of the causes, processes, and outcomes of the Extirpation in La lutte contre les réligions autochtones dans le Pérou colonial (Lima: Institut Français d’Etudes Andines, 1971). More recent contributions include Sabine MacCormack, Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991); Kenneth Mills, Idolatry and Its Enemies: Colonial Andean Religion and Extirpation, 1640–1750 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1997); and Nicholas Griffiths, The Cross and the Serpent: Religious Repression and Resurgence in Colonial Peru (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1996). See also the essays contained in Gabriela Ramos and Henrique Urbano, eds., Catolicismo y extirpación de idolatrías, siglos XVI–XVIII (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de Las Casas,” 1993). Compilations of documents, some with perceptive introductory essays, include Juan Carlos García Cabrera, ed., Ofensas a Dios, pleitos e injurias: Causas de idolatrías y hechicerías, Cajatambo, siglos XVII–XIX (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de Las Casas,” 1994); Ana Sánchez, ed., Amancebados, hechiceros y rebeldes (Chancay, siglo XVII) (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de Las Casas,” 1991); and Pierre Duviols, ed., Procesos y visitas de idolatrías: Cajatambo, siglo XVII (Lima: Institut Français