The Devil in the New World : the impact of diabolism in New Spain / Fernando Cervantes.
1994
BF1548 .C48 1994 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
Items
Details
Title
The Devil in the New World : the impact of diabolism in New Spain / Fernando Cervantes.
Author
Cervantes, Fernando.
ISBN
9780300068894 (pbk.)
0300068891 (pbk.)
9780300059755
0300059752
0300068891 (pbk.)
9780300059755
0300059752
Publication Details
New Haven : Yale University Press, 1994.
Language
English
Description
x, 182 p. : ill., facsims., map ; 25 cm.
Call Number
BF1548 .C48 1994
Dewey Decimal Classification
133.4/22/0972
Summary
Despite the extensive modern literature on the evangelization of the New World, the devil has received little attention. Yet until the end of the eighteenth century, missionaries themselves saw diabolism as the root of the Amerindian belief system and as the principal reason for their own failure to establish a church purged of Satan and pagan superstition. This book explores the nature of diabolism and describes how it occupied a central place in assessments of all non-Christian religious systems, as well as in the bitter fight to subdue them.
In illuminating a neglected aspect of the European encounter with America, Cervantes sets the full history of the 'spiritual conquest' in a rich and original context. He shows how native Americans themselves received and re-interpreted the view of Christianity presented to them; how they refused to see the world as the missionaries saw it. Based on an exhaustive examination of archival sources, the book brings into clear focus the complex, often bewildering, and sometimes tragic clash between a theology which presumed the existence of competing forces, and one which insisted that all deities were multiform beings within which good and evil coexisted.
The book goes on to do much more: it deals, in compelling and persuasive detail, with the social history of the interaction between the two cultures, explaining not only the impact of European ideas upon the New World, but the influence of diabolism on the conceptual apparatus of the Old. And it provides a subtle account of the role of diabolism in the emerging baroque culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which strikingly challenges conventional explanations of the growth of scepticism in the period. In giving the devil his due, Cervantes's elegant and sensitive analysis transforms our bleak picture of the contact between the American and European cultures.
In illuminating a neglected aspect of the European encounter with America, Cervantes sets the full history of the 'spiritual conquest' in a rich and original context. He shows how native Americans themselves received and re-interpreted the view of Christianity presented to them; how they refused to see the world as the missionaries saw it. Based on an exhaustive examination of archival sources, the book brings into clear focus the complex, often bewildering, and sometimes tragic clash between a theology which presumed the existence of competing forces, and one which insisted that all deities were multiform beings within which good and evil coexisted.
The book goes on to do much more: it deals, in compelling and persuasive detail, with the social history of the interaction between the two cultures, explaining not only the impact of European ideas upon the New World, but the influence of diabolism on the conceptual apparatus of the Old. And it provides a subtle account of the role of diabolism in the emerging baroque culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which strikingly challenges conventional explanations of the growth of scepticism in the period. In giving the devil his due, Cervantes's elegant and sensitive analysis transforms our bleak picture of the contact between the American and European cultures.
Note
In illuminating a neglected aspect of the European encounter with America, Cervantes sets the full history of the 'spiritual conquest' in a rich and original context. He shows how native Americans themselves received and re-interpreted the view of Christianity presented to them; how they refused to see the world as the missionaries saw it. Based on an exhaustive examination of archival sources, the book brings into clear focus the complex, often bewildering, and sometimes tragic clash between a theology which presumed the existence of competing forces, and one which insisted that all deities were multiform beings within which good and evil coexisted.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Record Appears in
On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
All Resources
Table of Contents
1. The Devil and the Amerindian
2. The Indian Response
3. The Demimonde
4. The Interior Castle
5. Crisis and Decline.
2. The Indian Response
3. The Demimonde
4. The Interior Castle
5. Crisis and Decline.