Angels, Demons and the New World

Cambridge University Press, 2/7/2013
EAN 9780521764582, ISBN10: 0521764580

Hardcover, 330 pages, 23.5 x 16 x 2.4 cm
Language: English

When European notions about angels and demons were exported to the New World, they underwent remarkable adaptations. Angels and demons came to form an integral part of the Spanish American cosmology, leading to the emergence of colonial urban and rural landscapes set within a strikingly theological framework. Belief in celestial and demonic spirits soon regulated and affected the daily lives of Spanish, Indigenous and Mestizo peoples, while missionary networks circulated these practices to create a widespread and generally accepted system of belief that flourished in seventeenth-century Baroque culture and spirituality. This study of angels and demons opens a particularly illuminating window onto intellectual and cultural developments in the centuries that followed the European encounter with America. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students of religious studies, anthropology of religion, history of ideas, Latin American colonial history and church history.

Introduction Fernando Cervantes and Andrew Redden
Part I. From the Old World to the New
1. The devil in the old world
anti-superstition literature, medical humanism and preternatural philosophy in early modern Spain Andrew Keitt
2. Demonios within and without
Hieronymites and the devil in the early modern Hispanic world Kenneth Mills
3. How to see angels
the resilience of Mendicant spirituality in Spanish America Fernando Cervantes
Part II. Indigenous and Afro-American Responses
4. Satan is my nickname
demonic and angelic interventions in colonial Nahuatl theatre Louise Burkhart
5. Vipers under the altar cloth
Satanic and angelic forms in seventeenth-century New Granada Andrew Redden
6. Where did all the angels go? An interpretation of the Nahua supernatural world Caterina Pizzigoni
Part III. The World of the Baroque
7. Angels and demons in the conquest of Peru Ramón Mujica Pinilla
8. Winged and imagined Indians Jaime Cuadriello
9. Psychomachia Indiana
angels, devils and holy images in New Spain David Brading.