Ley Iglesias

Ley Iglesias, a Mexican law regulating the cost of church sacraments, named for José María Iglesias, its principal author. The law was promulgated 11 April 1857, while its author was minister of justice under President Ignacio Comonfort. The law stipulated that the poor were not to be charged for baptisms, marriage banns, weddings, or burials. All who earned no more by their honest toil than would provide for their daily subsistence were to be considered poor. All others could be charged reasonable fees. The Comonfort administration had earlier taken from the church the responsibility for registering births, marriages, adoptions, and deaths. Registration of these events and the administration of cemeteries were turned over to civil officials, but these changes were not technically part of the Ley Iglesias. These Reform Laws were later adopted as part of the Constitution of 1857.

See alsoAnticlericalism .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Walter V. Scholes, Mexican Politics During the Juárez Regime, 1855–1872 (1957).

Thomas Gene Powell, El liberalismo y el campesinado en el centro de México, 1850–1877 (1974).

Thomas Gene Powell, "Priests and Peasants in Central Mexico: Social Conflict During 'La Reforma,'" in Hispanic American Historical Review 57, no. 2 (1977): 296-313.

Additional Bibliography

Carbajal, Juan Alberto. La consolidación de México como nación: Benito Juárez, la constitución de 1857 y las leyes de reforma. México: Editorial Porrúa, 2006.

Matute, Alvaro, Evelia Trejo, and Brian Francis Connaughton Hanley, eds. Estado, Iglesia y sociedad en México, siglo XIX. México, D.F.: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM: Grupo Editorial, Miguel Angel Porrúa, 1995.

                                      D. F. Stevens