Cultural Worlds of the Jesuits in Colonial Latin America

The Jesuits’ colonial legacy in Latin America is well-known. They pioneered an interest in indigenous languages and cultures, compiling dictionaries and writing some of the earliest ethnographies of the region. They also explored the region’s natural history and made significant contributions to the development of science and medicine. On their estates and in the missions they introduced new plants, livestock, and agricultural techniques, such as irrigation. In addition, they left a lasting legacy on the region’s architecture, art, and music.

The volume demonstrates the diversity of Jesuit contributions to Latin American culture. This volume is unique in considering not only the range of Jesuit activities but also the diversity of perspectives from which they may be approached. It includes papers from scholars of history, linguistics, religion, art, architecture, music, medicine and science.

Introduction

Linda A. Newson

I Jesuit Art, architecture and material culture

1. The Jesuits and Chinese style in the arts of colonial Brazil (1719–79)

Gauvin Alexander Bailey

2. Two ‘ways of proceeding’: damage limitation in the mission to the Chiquitos

Kate Ford

3. The materiality of cultural encounters in the Treinta Pueblos de las Misiones

Clarissa Sanfelice Rahmeier

II Jesuit mission life

4. A patriarchal society in the Río de la Plata: adultery and the double standard at mission Jesús de Tavarangue, 1782

Barbara Ganson

5. Music in the Jesuit missions of the Upper Marañón  

Leonardo J. Waisman

6. Beyond linguistic description: territorialisation. Guaraní language in the missions of Paraguay (17th–19th centuries)

Capucine Boidin

III Jesuit approaches to evangelisation

7. Administration and native perceptions of baptism at the Jesuit peripheries of Spanish America (17th–18th centuries)

Oriol Ambrogio

8. “con intençión de haçerlos Christianos y con voluntad de instruirlos”. Spiritual education among American Indians in Anello Oliva’s Historia del Reino y Provincias del Perú

Virginia Ghelarducci

9. Jesuits, pirates and Indians: The transatlantic resonances of a Tupi Christian doctrine

Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sá and Caroline Egan

IV Jesuit agriculture, medicine and science

10. Jesuits and mules in colonial Latin America: innovators or managers?

William G. Clarence-Smith

11. Jesuit recipes, Jesuit receipts: The Society of Jesus and the introduction of exotic Materia Medica into Europe

Samir Boumediene

12. The Jesuits and the exact sciences in Argentina

Eduardo L. Ortiz