Missionaries, Humanists and Natives in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Indies - a Failed Encounter of Two Worlds?

Iberian missionaries in God’s vineyard: Enlarging humankind and encompassing the globe in the Renaissance

“…The task of describing nature and reporting on the history of this new world was given mainly to specific figures in the colonial administration: the crown’s cronista (chronicler) or the royal cosmographer (Carrillo Castillo, 2004; Coello de la Rosa, 2012; Portuondo, 2009; Sanchez, 2013). The missionaries’ intellectual work was complementary and decisive: whether it was the Dominican Las Casas and his History of the Indies , or the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún (1500–90) and his General History of Things in New Spain (Leon Portilla, 2002; Reinhard, 1992), the scholarly contribution of the mendicant orders accelerated the European process of ‘appropriating’ the world (Certeau, 1975: 5; Pardo Tomas, 2014; Romano, 2014b).…”

Det spanske imperiet – Imperial etos, identitet og legitimitetsgrunnlag

“…Som Wolfgang Reinhard argumenterer, må kollektiv identitetsdannelse -forstått som konvertering og konfesjonalisering -ses på som en iboende del av koloniseringsprosessen (Reinhard 1992), da «the missionary movement and humanism remained firmly tied to the colonialist process; indeed they were an integral part of it, if not its very basis» (Reinhard 1992: 360). Som nevnt tidligere i denne artikkelen, kommer grunnlaget for en slik forståelse fra religionens rolle som integrerende faktor bak ulike deler av det sosiale livet, samt dens rolle i den europeiske statsdannelsen: «The general integration of all areas of human life under the guidance of religion in the early modern period in general, and the close link between expansion and mission in particular, lead from the very beginning to a need for mastery of the new world beyond the Atlantic in a religious form» (ibid.…”

Religiously Motivated Migration

“…Religion has motivated migration, both in the past (Dann ; Reinhard ; Beiler ) and present; internationally (Dietz ; Cavalcanti ) and internally (Toney ; Toney, Stinner, and Kan ; Stump ); and among Christians (Connor ; Anderson ), Jews (Dashefsky and Lazerwitz ; Palmer ), Muslims (Eickelman and Piscatori ; Masud ), Buddhists (Carter ), and others. Despite religion's diffuse role in triggering migration—apparent in these cases but seemingly incidental in inclusion—religiously motivated migration has been undertheorized, an oversight this article rectifies with a theoretical framework that demonstrates how religion can influence migration decisions.…”