José de Acosta, S.J. (1540-1600)

José de Acosta, S.J. (1540-1600)

Author: Claudio M. Burgaleta

Publisher: Loyola Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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This biography of Jesuit missionary and humanist Jose de Acosta provides a new look at his influential writing, which would later become the foundation for liberation theology.


The Theologian and the Empire: A Biography of José de Acosta (1540–1600)

The Theologian and the Empire: A Biography of José de Acosta (1540–1600)

Author: Andrés I. Prieto

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-02-06

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 9004680861

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Although Jesuit contributions to European expansion in the early modern period have attracted considerable scholarly interest, the legacy of José de Acosta (1540–1600) is still defined by his contributions to natural history. The Theologian and the Empire presents a new biography of Acosta, focused on his participation in colonial and imperial politics. The most important Jesuit active in the Americas in the sixteenth century, Acosta was fundamentally a political operator. His actions on both sides of the Atlantic informed both Peruvian colonial life and the Jesuit order at the dawn of the seventeenth century.


The Perfection of Nature

The Perfection of Nature

Author: Mackenzie Cooley

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-10-26

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0226822281

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"The Renaissance is celebrated for the belief that individuals could fashion themselves to greatness, but, as Mackenzie Cooley uncovers in this timely book, there is a dark parallel to this fãeted era. Those same men and women who were offering profound advancements in our understanding of the human condition-and laying the foundations of the Scientific Revolution-were also obsessed with controlling that condition and the wider natural world. Cooley traces how the Renaissance world, from the Mediterranean to Mexico City to the high mountains of the Andes, was marked by a lingering fascination with breeding. While one strand of the Renaissance celebrated a liberal view of human potential, another limited it by biology, reducing man to beast and prince to stud. 'Race,' Cooley explains, first referred to animal stock honed through breeding. And, to those who invented the concept, race was not inflexible but the fragile result of reproductive work. She follows these early modern breeders' work with Italian horses, Mesoamerican dogs, Andean camelids, and other creatures, discussing it in tandem with natural philosophers' efforts to make sense of inheritance, modification, and the new concept of race. In doing so, she shows how, as the Spanish empire expanded, the concept of race moved from nonhuman to human animals"


Postcolonialism and Political Theory

Postcolonialism and Political Theory

Author: Nalini Persram

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2007-05-10

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 0739159356

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Postcolonialism and Political Theory explores the intersection between the political and the postcolonial through an engagement with, critique of, and challenge to some of the prevalent, restrictive tenets and frameworks of Western political and social thought. It is a response to the call by postcolonial studies, as well as to the urgent need within world politics, to turn towards a multiplicity_largely excluded from globally dominant discourses of community, subjectivity, power and prosperity_constituted by otherness, radical alterity, or subordination to the newly reconsolidated West. The book offers a diverse range of essays that re-examine and open the boundaries of political and cultural modernity's historical domain; that look at how the racialized and gendered and cultured subject visualizes the social from elsewhere; that critique the limits of postcolonial theory and its claim to celebrate diversity; and that complicate the notion of postcolonial politics within settler societies that continue to practice exile of the indigenous. Postcolonialism and Political Theory is an ideal book for graduate and advanced undergraduate level study and for those working both disciplinarily and interdisciplinarily, both inside and outside academia.


The Animals of Spain

The Animals of Spain

Author: Abel Alves

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-07-14

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9004210814

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Writings from 1492 to 1826 reveal that the history of animals in the Spanish empire transcended the bullfight. The early modern Spanish empire was shaped by its animal actors, and authors from Cervantes to the local officials who wrote the relaciones geográficas were aware of this. Nonhuman animals provided food, clothing, labor, entertainment and companionship. Functioning as allegories of human behavior, nonhuman animals were perceived by Spanish and Amerindian authors alike as bearing some relationship to humans. On occasion, they even were appreciated as unique and fascinating beings. Through empirical observation and metaphor, some in the Spanish empire saw themselves as related in some way to other animals, recognizing, before Darwin, a "difference in degree rather than kind."


The Jesuit Missions to China and Peru, 1570-1610

The Jesuit Missions to China and Peru, 1570-1610

Author: Ana Carolina Hosne

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1135018332

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The rulers of the overseas empires summoned the Society of Jesus to evangelize their new subjects in the ‘New World’ which Spain and Portugal shared; this book is about how two different missions, in China and Peru, evolved in the early modern world. From a European perspective, this book is about the way Christianity expanded in the early modern period, craving universalism. In China, Matteo Ricci was so impressed by the influence that the scholar-officials were able to exert on the Ming Emperor himself that he likened them to the philosopher-kings of Plato’s Republic. The Jesuits in China were in the hands of the scholar-officials, with the Emperor at the apex, who had the power to decide whether they could stay or not. Meanwhile, in Peru, the Society of Jesus was required to impose Tridentine Catholicism by Philip II, independently of Rome, a task that entailed compliance with the colonial authorities’ demands. This book explores how leading Jesuits, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) in China and José de Acosta (1540-1600) in Peru, envisioned mission projects and reflected them on the catechisms they both composed, with a remarkable power of endurance. It offers a reflection on how the Jesuits conceived and assessed these mission spaces, in which their keen political acumen and a certain taste for power unfolded, playing key roles in envisioning new doctrinal directions and reflecting them in their doctrinal texts.


A Paradise Inhabited by Devils

A Paradise Inhabited by Devils

Author: Jennifer D. Selwyn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 1351962116

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In recent years much scholarly attention has been focused on the encounter of cultures during the early modern period, and the global implications that such encounters held. As a result of this work, scholars have now begun to re-evaluate many aspects of early culture contact, not least with respect to Christian missionary activities. Prominent amongst the missionaries were members of the Society of Jesus. Emerging as a dynamic new religious order in the wake of the Reformation, the Jesuits were deeply committed to promoting religious and cultural reforms both within Europe and in non-Christian lands. Yet whilst scholars have revealed much about the Jesuits' innovative educational endeavours, and their numerous missions to the Americas, Asia and the Sub-Continent, less attention has been paid to the nature of the Jesuits' global civilizing mission as a key feature of their institutional character. Nor has sufficient work been done to fully explain the relationship between the Jesuits' efforts to evangelize and civilize those areas within the Catholic fold and those without. Taking as its focus the city of Naples, this study illuminates how the Jesuits' work in a Catholic European setting reflected their broader global civilizing mission. Despite its Catholic heritage, Naples was popularly perceived as a place of spiritual and social disorder, thus providing an irresistible challenge to religious reformers, such as the Jesuits, who sought to 'civilize' the city. Drawing in considerable numbers of the order, Naples proved to be a training ground for the Jesuits that shaped the order's missionary praxis and influenced the thinking of many who would later travel further afield. By gaining a fuller understanding of this process, it is possible to better understand what drove the Jesuits to craft and perpetuate a cultural map that continues to resonate down to our own times. This book is published in conjunction with the Jesuit Historical Institute series 'Bibliotheca Instituti Historici Societatis Iesu'.


Narrative Threads

Narrative Threads

Author: Jeffrey Quilter

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2010-07-05

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 0292774338

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The Inka Empire stretched over much of the length and breadth of the South American Andes, encompassed elaborately planned cities linked by a complex network of roads and messengers, and created astonishing works of architecture and artistry and a compelling mythology—all without the aid of a graphic writing system. Instead, the Inkas' records consisted of devices made of knotted and dyed strings—called khipu—on which they recorded information pertaining to the organization and history of their empire. Despite more than a century of research on these remarkable devices, the khipu remain largely undeciphered. In this benchmark book, twelve international scholars tackle the most vexed question in khipu studies: how did the Inkas record and transmit narrative records by means of knotted strings? The authors approach the problem from a variety of angles. Several essays mine Spanish colonial sources for details about the kinds of narrative encoded in the khipu. Others look at the uses to which khipu were put before and after the Conquest, as well as their current use in some contemporary Andean communities. Still others analyze the formal characteristics of khipu and seek to explain how they encode various kinds of numerical and narrative data.


Changes in Ethical Worldviews of Spanish Missionaries in Mexico

Changes in Ethical Worldviews of Spanish Missionaries in Mexico

Author: Ran Tene

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-02-04

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9004284559

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"Conversion" is a basic religious concept, which has manifold implications for our everyday lives. Ran Tene's Changes in Ethical Worldviews of Spanish Missionaries in Mexico utilizes a cross-disciplinary methodology in which the fields of Philosophy, History, and Literary Studies are drawn upon to analyze conversion. He focuses on two moments in Spanish writing about Mexican missions, the early to mid-sixteenth century writings of the Spanish missionaries to Mexico and the early seventeenth century manuscripts of the author/copyist Fray Juan de Torquemada. The analysis exposes changes in worldviews - including the concepts of identity, ownership, and cruelty - through missionary eyes. It suggests two theoretical models - the vision model and the model of touch - to describe these changes, which are manifested in the missionary project and in the texts that it (re)produced.