¡El olor! ¡El olor! Olores de santidad en Lima colonial

During the 17th century, the olfactory illusio lacked the status of other senses such as eyesight or hearing. However, this article seeks to demonstrate how –within the baroque imaginary– scents were ordered according to a moral hierarchy, ranging from the most pestilent ones and, thus, imbued with depravity to the sweetest
smells and therefore blessed. Hence, the «odour of sanctity» was a fragrance so much desired by the inhabitants of the Colonial Lima, which was a fetid city, punished by natural catastrophes and abandoned to eschatological pessimism. It was thanks to the discernment of this fragrance in almost forty figures of sanctity
that the population of Lima perfumed a malodorous century.