Juan de la Cerda y la burocracia celeste: Una historia de ángeles en huelga, una virgen sorda y un Dios extorsionador

amongst the vast set of manuals for female education in the xvi and xvii centuries, the case of vida política de todos los estados de mujeres ("the political life of all women states") by the spanish father juan de la cerda is exemplary for a number of reasons. the purpose of the present paper is to analyze the sections of cerda's book devoted to the social problem of uxoricide so prevalent in his time. this cultural practice represents a rupture in which the pedagogical concord between the religious and secular representatives was broken. in this confrontation no arguments were spared -even the most irreverent in theological terms-, for the sake of exemplification of a claim whose unique and central role was to remove the consorts of a socially legitimized sin.