Spiritual encounters : interactions between Christianity and native religions in colonial America

317 Pages·1999·13.913 MB·English

by  Griffiths, Nicholas, Cervantes, Fernando

SPIRITUAL
ENCOUNTERS
Interactions between
Christianity and native
religions in colonial America
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SPIRITUAL
ENCOUNTERS
Interactions between
Christianity and native
religions in colonial America
Edited by
Nicholas Griffiths
and Fernando Cervantes
THE UNIVERSITY
OF BIRMINGHAM
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © University of Birmingham Press 1999
While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in the University
of Birmingham Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to
their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly
or in part without the express permission in writing of both author
and publisher.
First published in the United Kingdom by The University of
Binningham Press, Edgbaston, Bimiingham, BI5 2TT, UK.
First published in the United States by the University of Nebraska
Press.
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for
the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
publisher.
ISBN 0-902459-01-6
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Printed in Great Britain by Alden Press Limited
In memory of Bob Scribner
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Contents
Notes on contiibutors ix
Introduction 1
Nicholas Giifliths
\ Spreading the Word: missionaries, conversion 43
and circulation in the northeast
David Murray
2 'The kindness of the blessed Virgin': faith, 65
succour, and the cult of Mary among Christian
Hurons and Iroquois in seventeenth-century
New France
William B. Hart
3 'Here is another marvel': Marian miracle 91
narratives in a Nahuatl manuscript
Louise M. Burkhart
4 Cultural boundaries between adaptation and defiance: 116
the mission communities of northwestern New Spain
Cynthia Radding
5 'Telling lives': confessional autobiography 136
and the reconstruction of the Nahua self
J. Jorge Klor de Alva
6 Contesting the power to heal: angels, demons 163
and plants in colonial Mexico
Osvaldo F. Pardo
7 Andean curanderos and their repressers: 185
the persecution of native healing in late
seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Peru
Nicholas Griffiths
8 El callejón de la soledad: vectors of cultural 198
hybridity in seventeenth-century Lima
Alejandra B. Osorio
9 Repression and cultural change: 230
the 'Extirpation of Idolatry' in colonial Peru
Ins Gareis
vu
10 'Chicha in the chalice': spiritual conflict 255
in Spanish American mission culture
Lance Grahn
Epilogue: the middle ground 276
Fernando Cervantes
Index 286
VUl
Notes on contributors
LOUISE BURKHART is an Associate Professor in the Depart-
ments of Anthropology and Latin American and Caribbean Stud-
ies, University at Albany, State University of New York, USA.
Her publications include The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian
Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (1989), Holy
Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico (1996),
and the forthcoming Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Ear-
ly Colonial Nahuatl literature.
FERNANDO CERVANTES is a Lecturer in Hispanic and Latin
American Studies at the University of Bristol, UK. He is the author
of The Devil in the New World. The Impact of Diabolism in New
Spain (1994). He has also published articles on the intellectual, cul-
tural and religious history of Spain and Spanish America.
IRIS GAREIS (MA, PhD, University of Munich, Germany) was
awarded the 1997/98 Frobenius Prize, and is currently a Fellow of
the Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt (Main), Germany. She also teaches
in the department of anthropology, Institut fur Historische Ethnolo-
gic, Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat, Frankfurt.
LANCE GRAHN is Associate Professor in the Department of
History at Marquette University, USA, and an Associate Member
of the Center for Latin America at the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee. He lectures on the history of Latin America, early
modern Spain and the Caribbean, and his publications include
The Political Economy of Smuggling: Regional Informal Econo-
mies in Early Bourbon Colombia (1997) and La crisis centroa-
mericana: un enfoque cristiano (1991).
NICHOLAS GRIFFITHS is a Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at
the University of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of The Cross
and the Serpent: Religious Repression and Resurgence in Colo-
nial Peru (1996). He has also published several articles on the
IX