Changes in ethical worldviews of Spanish missionaries in Mexico : an ethical transition from sight to touch in the 16th and 17th centuries / by Ran Tene.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tene, Ran, author.

Series:

European expansion and indigenous response ; v. 15.

European expansion and indigenous response, 1873-8974 ; volume 15

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Missions--Mexico--History.

Missions.

Conversion--Christianity.

Conversion.

Psychology, Religious.

Torquemada, Juan de, 1388-1468.

Torquemada, Juan de.

Motolinía, Toribio, -1568.

Motolinía, Toribio.

History.

Mexico.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 162 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Leiden, the Netherlands ; Boston : Brill, [2015]

Summary:

"Conversion" is a basic religious concept, which has manifold implications for our everyday lives. Ran Tene's Changes in Ethical Worldviews of Spanish Missionaries in Mexico utilizes a cross-disciplinary methodology in which the fields of Philosophy, History, and Literary Studies are drawn upon to analyze conversion. He focuses on two moments in Spanish writing about Mexican missions, the early to mid-sixteenth century writings of the Spanish missionaries to Mexico and the early seventeenth century manuscripts of the author/copyist Fray Juan de Torquemada. The analysis exposes changes in worldviews-including the concepts of identity, ownership, and cruelty-through missionary eyes. It suggests two theoretical models-the vision model and the model of touch-to describe these changes, which are manifested in the missionary project and in the texts that it (re)produced. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Conversion and an Ethical Worldview 1

2 Methodology 16

3 Authors of the Historical Sources 19

1 From Sight to Touch in the Ethical Narrative 23

1.1 Earth, Body, and Clothes 23

1.2 The Body 29

1.3 Poverty 43

1.4 Identity and Will 53

1.5 Sight, Touch and Free Will-A Summary 65

2 Two Ethical Systems: Example and Mystery 72

2.1 The Beautiful and the True 72

2.2 From Example to Mystery ('ejemplo"misterio') -To Learn from a Human Story 80

2.3 Self-identity and Historical Memory-Homeland, Family, and History 91

2.4 Moral Particularism and the Ethical Dispute 99

3 Cruelty 106

3.1 Cruelty in the SixteenthCentury - the Object of Cruelty 109

3.2 Cruelty in the SeventeenthCentury - Torquemada and the Cruelty of Sacrifice - the Story of the Goddess Toci 111

3.3 Cruelty Dominion/Rule and Justice 118.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9789004284548

9004284540

OCLC:

893452117