El diablo llegó a América protegido por el imaginario colectivo y el mito tradicional, pero los autores del discurso contra la magia y los propios colonizadores afirmaron que siempre había estado allí, fungiendo como señor de los naturales, proclamándose dios entre las supersticiones y las idolatrías. Así que fue necesario gestionar en la continuidad de los discursos que alertaban, aleccionaban y protegían contra un enemigo capaz de disfrazarse y adoptar formas rituales autóctonas; comenzó entonces una nueva etapa en la redacción de textos asimilados a la tradición del discurso demonológico. La atención se centró en la idolatría; el enfoque remozó su prejuicio diferenciador, y el formato recurrió al tratado, al informe, y la literatura. En el presente libro se analizan algunas muestras representativas de este proceso cultural acaecido en la época novohispana, pero detectable aún bajo las bases de nuestra idiosincrasia, a la luz de la teoría que Occidente había legado para comprender la presencia del mal y sus representantes en el mundo.

Women, Witchcraft, and the Inquisition in Spain and the New World investigates the mystery and unease surrounding the issue of women called before the Inquisition in Spain and its colonial territories in the Americas, including Mexico and Cartagena de Indias. Edited by María Jesús Zamora Calvo, this collection gathers innovative scholarship that considers how the Holy Office of the Inquisition functioned as a closed, secret world defined by patriarchal hierarchy and grounded in misogynistic standards. Ten essays present portraits of women who, under accusations as diverse as witchcraft, bigamy, false beatitude, and heresy, faced the Spanish and New World Inquisitions to account for their lives. Each essay draws on the documentary record of trials, confessions, letters, diaries, and other primary materials. Focusing on individual cases of women brought before the Inquisition, the authors study their subjects’ social status, particularize their motivations, determine the characteristics of their prosecution, and deduce the reasons used to justify violence against them. With their subjection of women to imprisonment, interrogation, and judgment, these cases display at their core a specter of contempt, humiliation, silencing, and denial of feminine selfhood. The contributors include specialists in the early modern period from multiple disciplines, encompassing literature, language, translation, literary theory, history, law, iconography, and anthropology. By considering both the women themselves and the Inquisition as an institution, this collection works to uncover stories, lives, and cultural practices that for centuries have dwelled in obscurity.

Die vorliegende Festschrift zu Ehren von Klaus-Dieter Ertler vereint Beobachtungen von internationalen Forscherinnen und Forschern der Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften zu den spezifischen Schwerpunkten des Jubilars, allen voran den Moralischen Wochenschriften und der Kanadistik. Die 27 Beiträge dieses Sammelbandes nähern sich Ertlers sprachlich und kulturell weit verzweigten Interessen aus unterschiedlichsten Perspektiven und ermöglichen wertvolle Einblicke in romanistische sowie darüber hinausgehende Forschungsbereiche.

This book is an extraordinarily rich account of the social, political, cultural, and religious relationships between parish priests and their parishioners in colonial Mexico. It thus explores a wide range of issues, from competing interpretations of religious dogma and beliefs, to questions of practical ethics and daily behavior, to the texture of social and authority relations in rural communities, to how all these things changed over time and over place, and in relation to reforms instigated by the state.

A study into how native Amazonians experienced and shaped life in missions in its different facets. The book focuses on the missions of Maynas during the Jesuit administration, from 1638 to 1768.