Focusing on a period neglected by scholars, Higgins reconstructs how during the colonial period criollos - individuals identified as being of Spanish descent born in America - elaborated a body of knowledge, an "archive," in order to establish their intellectual autonomy within the Spanish colonial administrative structures." "This book opens up an important area of research that will be of interest to scholars and students of Spanish American colonial literature and history."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume provides the first full-scale commentary on the eighth book of Virgil’s Aeneid, the book in which the poet presents the unforgettable tour of the site of the future Rome that the Arcadian Evander provides for his Trojan guest Aeneas, as well as the glorious apparition and bestowal of the mystical, magical shield of Vulcan on which the great events of the future Roman history are presented – culminating in the Battle of Actium and the victory of Octavian over the forces of Antony and Cleopatra. A critical text based on a fresh examination of the manuscript tradition is accompanied by a prose translation.

In this volume, Stanisław Rosik focuses on the meaning and significance of Old Slavic religion as presented in three German chronicles (the works of Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, Helmold of Bosau) written during the time of the Christianization of the Western Slavs. The source analyses show the ways the chroniclers understood, explained and represented pre-Christian beliefs and cults, which were interpreted as elements of a foreign, “barbarian”, culture and were evaluated from the perspective of Church doctrine. In this study, individual features of the three authors are discussed– including the issue of the credibility of their information on Old Slavic religion– and broader conclusions on medieval thought are also presented.

In The Catholic Church and the Bible: From the Council of Trent to the Jansenist Controversy (1564-1733), Els Agten studies the impact of Jansenism and anti-Jansenism on the ideas regarding vernacular Bible reading and Bible production in the Low Countries in the broader seventeenth century. The book provides a review of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century book censorship and an analysis of the ideas and the writings of ten protagonists, including theologians, Bible translators, ecclesiastical authorities and representatives of Port-Royal. This way, Agten demonstrates that the Jansenists were stimulating the laity, with the inclusion of women and children, to read the Bible in the vernacular, with no restrictions whatsoever. Their opponents, in contrast, adopted a more wary position.