Andrew Redden

The Best Laid Plans…: Jesuit Counsel, Peacebuilding, and Disaster on the Chilean Frontier; The Martyrs of Elicura, 1612

In a context of ongoing warfare on the Chilean frontier in the first decades of the seventeenth-century, the Society of Jesus and, in particular, Luis de Valdivia (d.1642) labored as both missionaries and peace-brokers between the warring sides. Making peace was an act of mercy highlighted in the Constitutions as well as a necessary pre-condition for evangelization. Nevertheless, in order to develop, champion, and sustain a viable peace process, it was necessary for Valdivia to not just give counsel to the king and the king’s representatives, but effectively become a crown agent with the power to make strategic and highly political decisions. This, of course, flew in the face of the Society’s own prohibitions on engaging in “reason of state” and also antagonized many whose interests lay in the prolongation of war. The following article charts Valdivia’s attempts to balance these spiritual and temporal obligations in the context of the disastrous chain of events that led to the slaughter and enslavement of hundreds of indigenous allies and the killing of three Jesuits at Elicura in 1612. Counsel failed, and the fragile peace-process teetered on the brink of collapse.

Priestly Violence, Martyrdom, and Jesuits: The Case of Diego de Alfaro, S.J. (Paraguay 1639)

The question of what makes a Jesuit, the quidditas jesuitica, is thrown into stark relief by the extraordinary case of Diego de Alfaro (d.1639) and its apologia, written in 1644 by the former provincial of the Paraguayan province, Diego de Boroa (d.1657).2 Alfaro—superior of the missions of Guairá in the province of Paraguay—took up arms in 1639 and fought alongside his Guarani faithful against bandeirantes (slave raiders) from the Portuguese city of São Paulo; in the gunfight with these slavers, Alfaro was killed. Portuguese and Spanish detractors of the Society alike decried the scandal of a priest under arms, yet the Jesuits of the Paraguayan province rallied around their provincial in defending Alfaro’s actions as both heroic and virtuous. From their perspective, his actions were necessary, and he was, according to Boroa’s apologia, even a martyr for the faith. Documented cases of fighting Jesuits are, it would seem, extremely rare, and Boroa’s letter defending Alfaro’s actions is also remarkable in the claims it makes. Yet, the contention of this essay is first that the presence of the Jesuits in frontier missions around the Paraguay and Uruguay rivers was essential to the way events unfolded in the region, the very same events that brought about Alfaro’s violent death. Second, it was Alfaro’s Jesuit formation and mission that

The Power of Huacas. Change and Resistance in the Andean World of Colonial Peru

Books of Chilam Balam as well. The infamous idolatry trials in the second half of the sixteenth century revealed that many maestros were also practicing ah k’ìin, that is, Maya priests. Chapter 7 concludes the book with a synthetic discussion of rhetoric and (religious) conversion. It singles out the 1567 Zapotec Doctrina of Pedro de Feria and the 1666 Zapotec Libana of Agüero as bearers of elements of pre-Hispanic indigenous style. We return in summary to verse couplets and an array of difrasísmos, now linked to religious conversion for their persuasive effect. This linkage of conversion to persuasion is exactly accurate to the meaning of convertir in sixteenth-century Spanish: ‘to convince’. The missionary texts would be accurate to church teaching as well as rhetorically pleasing to indigenous aesthetics. It would turn them away from their traditional practices and towards Christianity, all the while fusing traditional oratory with the language of la fe. This book is an original and significant contribution to the study of Mesoamerican literature, colonial conversion, and the historical emergence of indigenous Christianities with a wealth of new and fascinating information about Zapotec. It is rich and detailed enough to reward very close study, but short and supple enough to be read by non-specialists. It would make an excellent central text for a seminar on any of its core topics.

The Collapse of Time: The Martyrdom of Diego Ortiz (1571) by Antonio de la Calancha [1638]

In 1571, Diego Ortiz, an Augustinian friar, was executed in the neo-Inca state of Vilcabamba (Peru). His killing, and the events surrounding it, marked the final destruction of the Inca Empire by the Spanish and the definitive imposition of a new order on the continent of the Americas. Ortiz’s story was recorded by the chronicler and fellow Augustinian, Antonio de la Calancha, in his Coronica moralizada (1638). He describes Ortiz’s missionary work and recounts his often-fractious relationship with the emperor Titu Cusi Yupanqui before turning to his martyrdom, the destruction of Vilcabamba by the Spanish, and the capture and execution of the last Inca emperor Tupac Amaru. Calancha’s account, meanwhile, exposes a very different way of viewing history from the one we are used to today as it simultaneously describes a teleological narrative while telescoping time into a single moment of creation—the instant time itself was created. This bilingual, critical edition is the first English language translation of Calancha’s account and the introductory essays contextualise these events by discussing the conquest and evangelisation of Peru, and Inca politics of state, while also drawing out this radically different way of conceptualising human history—the collapse of time.

Angels, Demons and The New World: Contents

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 Ramon Mujica Pinilla 8. Winged and imagined Indians Jaime Cuadriello 9. Psychomachia Indiana: angels, devils and holy images in New Spain David Brading.

Angels, Demons and The New World: Frontmatter

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 Ramon Mujica Pinilla 8. Winged and imagined Indians Jaime Cuadriello 9. Psychomachia Indiana: angels, devils and holy images in New Spain David Brading.

Angels, Demons and The New World: Index

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 Ramon Mujica Pinilla 8. Winged and imagined Indians Jaime Cuadriello 9. Psychomachia Indiana: angels, devils and holy images in New Spain David Brading.

The Spiritual Landscape of Antonio de Calancha: The Destructions of Jerusalem, Palestine and Vilcabamba, Peru (69–1572 AD)

In 1572, Spanish forces entered the Neo-Inca State of Vilcabamba, laid waste its settlements, killed large numbers of its population and dragged off the young emperor Tupac Amaru for public execution in Cuzco. The pretext for this invasion, according to the Augustinian chronicler Antonio de Calancha, was the gruesome martyrdom of his co-religious, the Augustinian friar Diego Ortiz, after the sudden death of the preceding Inca emperor Titu Cusi Yupanqui in 1571. Titu Cusi took ill after a religious festival and Ortiz, knowing how precarious his position was without Titu Cusi’s protection, attempted unsuccessfully to cure him with his knowledge of herbs. On Titu Cusi’s death, his wife, the Inca coya (queen) Doña Angelina, ordered Ortiz’s immediate arrest, torture and execution. A few days later, the new Inca Tupac Amaru confirmed these orders and they were carried out with all their ensuing consequences. While Vilcabamba’s landscape (lush cloud forest and high mountains) could not be further removed from the rolling desert hills and escarpments of Palestine, Antonio de Calancha narrates the account of Ortiz’s martyrdom and Vilcabamba’s subsequent destruction in a framework increasingly difficult to separate from the death of Christ and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem in 69 AD. Not only does Calancha map his account of Vilcabamba’s demise directly onto that of Josephus’ account of Jerusalem (thereby constructing a unitary historical landscape), he conceptualises these two events in a spiritual landscape that has

Angels, Demons and the New World

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 Ramon Mujica Pinilla 8. Winged and imagined Indians Jaime Cuadriello 9. Psychomachia Indiana: angels, devils and holy images in New Spain David Brading.