Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1 Cities of God Besieged
- 2 The Possession of María Pizarro
- 3 The Devils of Trujillo and the Passion of the Poor Clares
- 4 The Sally: Christianity Beyond the Walls
- 5 Satan's Fortress: The Devil in the Andes
- 6 The Breach: Devils of the In-Between
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Glossary
- Works Cited
- Index
Introduction
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1 Cities of God Besieged
- 2 The Possession of María Pizarro
- 3 The Devils of Trujillo and the Passion of the Poor Clares
- 4 The Sally: Christianity Beyond the Walls
- 5 Satan's Fortress: The Devil in the Andes
- 6 The Breach: Devils of the In-Between
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Glossary
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
It is a life of pirates, who always rob and pillage. And as there are pirates […] who roam the seas to rob and kill men; so too there are pirates of the divine, who across the most tempestuous and troubled seas seek to rob the devil of the souls he unjustly rules. What was Xavier if not a heavenly pirate, who […] stripped hell bare of millions of idolaters [and with them] entered heaven triumphantly in his rich, royal galleon?
Spiritual piracy seems a strange analogy with which to compare the activities of the Jesuit missionaries who left Spain to evangelize the Americas and the Orient. Given the persistent trouble since the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries caused to the transatlantic Armadas by English, French and Dutch privateers, this choice of comparison would appear to carry oddly negative associations. Yet the cultural popularity in the Hispanic world of what we might now call ‘anti-heroes’ had already a long tradition; in the sixteenth century many found tales of the infamous pícaros highly entertaining. Moreover, chronicles of conquest combined elements of medieval romances and more modern picaresque literature in larger-than-life tales of conquistadors. These originally poor men were considered valiant, won riches and fame, and conquered vast empires. In addition to this tradition, a by-product of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo's attempts to centralize and strengthen the crown's administrative control over the Peruvian viceroyalty was the deliberate re-writing of the Andean past to transform the Incas from justly ruling monarchs into usurping tyrants who were legitimately overthrown by the conquistadors.
The greatest and most unjust tyrant, however, was considered to be none other than Satan himself and, as such, the above quotation is revealing of Hispanic perceptions of ‘the Indies’. With the optimistic humanism of the sixteenth century a mere memory in the seventeenth, it was commonly thought that, prior to the Spanish conquest, the devil ruled the Americas, keeping the souls of its inhabitants enslaved and destined for eternal torment and misery. ‘Soul-pirates’, such as the Jesuits and other missionaries, therefore acted legitimately to despoil this tyrant usurper of what he wrongfully held for his own.
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- Information
- Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 1560–1750 , pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014