Soul Crimes: Religion and Criminal Law During the Process of National State Building in Colombia, 1821-1837 Delitos del alma: religión y ley penal en la formación del Estado nacional en Colombia (1821-1837)

Abstract

It is my purpose to make an analytical link between the development of criminal law that was established in the territory of the recently inaugurated Republic of New Granada, such its name at the time, and the general process of national state building in Colombia, as we can now call it. After the period of the independence wars throughout the first decade of the 19th century the leading sectors of the new Republic assumed the task of instituting the new framework of legitimacy for that political order. The classification of the conducts that were supposed to attempt against the religious faith, and its judicial treatment, show a clear sample of the particularities of the said linkage.