Missionary Scientists: Jesuit Science in Spanish South America, 1570-1810

Missionary Scientists Jesuit Science in Spanish South America, 1570–1810

Andrés I. Prieto

Missionary Scientists

Missionary Scientists Jesuit Science in Spanish South America, 1570–1810 Andrés I. Prieto

Vanderbilt University Press Nashville

© 2011 by Vanderbilt University Press Nashville, Tennessee 37235 All rights reserved First printing 2011 Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Latin scripture from Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam, 10th ed., edited by Alberto Colunga and Laurentio Turrado (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1999). This book is printed on acid-free paper made from 30% post-consumer recycled content. Manufactured in the United States of America Design by Dariel Mayer Publication of this book has been supported by a generous subsidy from the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Prieto, Andrés I. Missionary scientists : Jesuit science in Spanish South America, 1570–1810 / Andrés I. Prieto. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8265-1744-9 (cloth edition : alk. paper) 1. Jesuits—South America—History.  2. Jesuits—Missions— South America—History.  3. Jesuits—South America—Intellectual life—History.  4. Natural history—South America—History. 5. Religion and science—South America—History. 6. Peru (Viceroyalty)—History. I. Title. bx3714.a1p74 2010 271΄.5308—dc22 2010020349

To my parents, Isabel and Ignacio, for everything. To Magdalena, for everything else.

Contents



Acknowledgments Introduction: Science and the Jesuit Ways   of Proceeding

ix 1

Part I: Missionary Ethos 1 2 3

Jesuit Struggles in Peru Confessing the Power to Heal Christianizing Demonic Knowledge

13 36 62

Part II: A Collaborative Enterprise 4 5

Science and Expansion Astronomy between Chiloe, Lima, and Rome

91 116

Part III: Natura ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam 6 7 8

The Two Faces of Acosta’s Historia natural y   moral de las Indias The Irreducible Difference of America Local Nature, Local Histories

143 169 195



Epilogue: The Jesuit and the Armchair Philosopher Notes Bibliography Index

221 229 259 275

Acknowledgments

A

s with most projects, I would have never been able to carry this book   to completion without the help, support, and encouragement of friends,   colleagues, and institutions. This book has its origins in the Modern and Classical Languages Department at the University of Connecticut. Osvaldo F. Pardo patiently taught me how to read colonial Latin American texts and how to ask questions of them. His sharp reading and critical skills, his sense of humor, and our shared love of South American music have formed the basis of a friendship that goes beyond the merely academic. Benjamin Liu, Rosa Helena Chinchilla, Miguel Gomes, and David Herzberger all took a keen interest in my career and research, and, more importantly, offered my family and me their friendship upon our arrival in this country. Rolena Adorno, at Yale University, has always shown an interest in my work and has provided me with advice and encouragement throughout the years. My initial archival research in South America was generously funded by the Modern and Classical Languages Department and the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Ricardo Landeira, the chair of the Spanish and Portuguese Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder, freed me from teaching responsibilities during the spring semester of 2008, which allowed me to pursue additional research in South America and to finish my writing. I would also like to thank the University of Colorado’s College of Arts and Sciences for awarding me the 2010 Kayden Research Grant. In Chile, the personnel of the Archivo Nacional were always courteous and extremely willing to grant me my often-unreasonable requests, respecting my time constraints. Their efficiency has turned the Archivo into a model institution, where it is a pleasure to conduct research. I would especially like to thank Liliana Montesinos at the Biblioteca Nacional’s Salón de investigadores, who went out of her way to find me obscure books and to make sure I could receive microfilm copies even after my return to the United States. Father Eugene Rooney, S.J., generously gave me his time and help in searching the Chilean Jesuit archives and databases in Santiago.



ix

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Missionary Scientists

At CU-Boulder, I found the perfect place to bring this project to completion. Here, in an intellectually stimulating climate, numerous friends and colleagues engaged my ideas in fructiferous dialogues. I especially thank John Slater for all the great conversations during which many of the arguments advanced in this book first took shape, and for humoring my coffee addiction. Julio Baena, Juan Pablo Dabove, Peter Elmore, Leila Gómez, and Mary Long all read chapters of the manuscript. Their comments and lucid criticism were key to improving those chapters. Elizabeth Robertson, former director of the CU Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, also gave me her unwavering support. This book was written on time stolen from Magdalena, my daughter. To her I dedicate this book, como te prometí, hija.

Missionary Scientists

Introduction

Science and the Jesuit Ways of Proceeding

I

n 1663, the Genoese physician Sebastianus Badus set out to defend the   curative properties of a Peruvian tree bark from the attacks of other Euro  pean physicians skeptical of this new medicine. In the resulting treatise, Anastasis corticis Peruviae, sive Chinae Chinae defensio, Badus told the story of how in the city of Lima the Countess of Chinchón, wife of the viceroy, fell gravely ill with tertian fever. Undeterred by bloodletting and other customary treatments, the disease threatened the life of La Chinchona, as the countess was familiarly called. The viceroy was growing desperate, when an official from Loxa (in present-day Ecuador) suggested the use of a certain bark known to the natives in his district. The success was spectacular. Within a few days, the fully recovered Countess of Chinchón was making sure the miraculous drug was distributed for free among the poor people in Lima. She also took a large quantity with her upon her return to Spain, and the Jesuit cardinal Juan de Lugo subsequently introduced it to Italy. The tree and the drug distilled from its bark would both become known as cinchona.1 For all its romantic appeal, the story of the countess is, in all likelihood, false.2 Besides the fact that the countess’s cure is accounted for only in Badus’s text, contemporary alternate versions of the discovery of the drug can be found in the texts of Gaspar Caldera de Heredia (1663) and Pedro Miguel de Heredia (1673). According to them, the Jesuit missionaries stationed in Loxa noticed that the natives who had to cross a river drank an infusion made from a tree bark to stop the shivering caused by the frigid Andean waters. After seeing that the relief was almost immediate, the Jesuits started to experiment with the bark to alleviate the chills and shivering of those suffering from tertian and quartan fevers.3 The use of cinchona bark was then quickly disseminated throughout Peru. Already in 1653, the Jesuit chronicler Bernabé Cobo had commented in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo that what he simply called the “fever tree” was so “well-known and esteemed, not only in all of the Indies, but also in Europe, that shipments of it are insistently requested from Rome.”4 These two stories about the discovery and popularization of cinchona are

1

2

Missionary Scientists

illustrative of the historiographical fate of the contributions made by South American Jesuits to the knowledge of nature. As the work of Badus demonstrates, accounts of Jesuit agency in the European discovery of the drug were displaced by the countess’s story very early on. The appellative “Jesuits’ bark,” which became popular in seventeenth-century Europe, referred not to its discovery by the Jesuits in Loxa but, rather, to the central role of the Roman College apothe­ caries in its distribution and particularly to Cardinal Lugo’s interest in the drug.5 The missionaries’ active efforts to apply the bark to one of the most widespread diseases in early modern times were quickly forgotten. This trend has been a constant in the historiography of early modern Jesuit science. Despite renewed interest in the scientific activity of the Society of Jesus during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the contributions to the study of nature made by the Jesuits working in the Spanish American missions have received little attention.6 In this sense, the intellectual activities of the South American Jesuits have had the same historiographical fate as that of early modern Iberian science in general.7 With a few notable exceptions such as José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral, neither the investigative practices nor the natural histories written by the Jesuits who worked in the Spanish dominions in America have entered the current debates on early modern Jesuit science. This omission is all the more strange if one considers that the discovery and colonization of America decisively contributed to the methodological and epistemological changes of ­sixteenth- and seventeenth-century science by revealing a whole continent hitherto unknown to the Europeans, one populated by a vastly different flora and fauna. This book aims to fill this gap by concentrating on the careers and intellectual practices of the Jesuit naturalists who lived and worked in the seventeenth-century Peruvian viceroyalty. In the chapters that follow, I have tried to contextualize the discussion of their scientific practices against the backdrop of their historical circumstances and the specific challenges they faced. By doing so, I underscore the significance of their scientific endeavors to both the Jesuit order and the intellectual and political life of the Spanish colonies. Missionary Scientists is predicated upon the premise that the scientific activities of Jesuits in South America were intimately linked to their missionary endeavors. Although they were to devote themselves originally to urban ministries such as pedagogy and preaching to the Spaniards, the Jesuits quickly realized that the colonial setting in which they had to work demanded changing their ways and methods and making the evangelization of native communities their priority. This emphasis on missionary activity became more marked as the Jesuits expanded throughout South America, particularly into areas such as Chile and Paraguay where urban development was not at the level of Peru’s. The creation of the Jesuit reductions (Indian resettlements) in Paraguay resulted in closer contact with the nature and cultures of the continent, as did their attempts to pacify the warring Mapuche clans of southern Chile by means of Christian indoctrination. Jesuit authors in South America such as José de Acosta, Bernabé Cobo, Niccolò Mascardi, and Diego de Rosales, among several others, devoted most of their



Introduction: Science and the Jesuit Ways of Proceeding

3

careers to fulfilling missionary, pastoral, and administrative duties. In part, this situation arose from the Society’s permanent lack of manpower for carrying out all of its ministries in South America. The scarce number of Jesuits in the Peruvian viceroyalty prevented those members of the order interested in the study of nature from devoting themselves fully to intellectual activities. But this situation was also a consequence of a genuine conviction among South American Jesuits that the salvation of the natives’ souls was their more important and glorious ministry—a ministry that was to take preeminence over teaching and preaching. Unlike Christopher Clavius, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Athanasius Kircher, and other Jesuit writers who worked in European colleges and saw themselves as mathematicians or natural philosophers, South American Jesuits defined themselves first and foremost as missionaries. This difference between the professional identities of Jesuit writers in Europe and those working in the Viceroyalty of Peru arose from the two main forces operating within the early Society of Jesus; namely, the missionary and the pedagogical drives. Despite the fact that Ignatius had originally conceived the Society as primarily a missionary and preaching order to help reform the Catholic world, the Jesuits founded their first school in Messina, Italy, a mere decade after they gained official recognition from Pope Paul III in 1540. This fact profoundly altered the Society’s approach to their mission. Already in 1560, Juan de Polanco wrote to all the Jesuit superiors to indicate that the schools had become the main ministry of the order.8 The heavy involvement of the Jesuits in pedagogy forced them to systematize their relationship to culture and learning. Every aspiring Jesuit had to undergo rigorous training in theology and the humanities as well as in philosophy, mathematics, and the physical sciences. The Jesuits developed a conception of learning as deeply related to piety and spiritual life. Ignatius himself had articulated this view by noting that the study of philosophy and the research of the natural world were not only useful for helping students better understand theology; if the study of philosophy and the natural sciences was done piously and “to the greater glory of God,” then it could be considered equivalent to prayer and divine contemplation: “Even if they never have occasion to employ the matter studied, their very labor in studying, taken up as it ought to be because of charity and obedience, is itself work highly meritorious in the sight of the Divine and Supreme Majesty.”9 When the first six Jesuits arrived in Peru in 1568, the primacy of education over missionary ministries was explicitly stated in the instructions given to them by Francis Borgia, then general of the order. Upon their arrival in Lima, the Jesuits bought a plot of land where they immediately started building the College of San Pablo. This college would soon rival the state-sponsored University of San Marcos. Everard Mercurian, Borgia’s successor as Jesuit general, expected San Pablo to equal or surpass the quality of the main Jesuit colleges in Europe.10 However, pressed by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, the Jesuits soon had to alter their ways and start taking care of doctrinas de indios, parochial posts in the newly founded towns into which the viceroy was gathering the native population, which

4

Missionary Scientists

up to that point had been scattered throughout the numerous valleys traversing the Andes. The decision to accept the parochial duties of the doctrinas was a difficult one for the Peruvian Jesuits. It involved an overhauling of their goals and methods in Peru, something Mercurian opposed. The intervention of a young, brilliant theologian recently arrived from Spain, José de Acosta, was instrumental in this decision. His able manipulation of Mercurian’s envoy, Juan de la Plaza, and his measured and compelling address to the First Provincial Congregation of 1576 put the missionary ministry at the center of the South American Jesuits’ agenda. His manual De Procuranda Indorum Salute (1588) would not only become the most influential treatise on missionary methods written in the sixteenth century, it would also provide a clear path for Jesuit priests—one that would be followed with different degrees of success in places as far apart as Paraguay and southern Chile up to the expulsion of the order in 1767. This change in goals and methods brought on one of the main differences between South American Jesuits and their confrères in Europe. Whereas in Europe the Jesuit superiors quickly saw the advantages of diverting more resources and manpower to the schools and universities managed by the order, in America the Jesuit focus was on the evangelization of native communities. Although the South American Jesuits never forsook pedagogy, their difference in emphasis favored the emergence of a particular professional identity as missionaries. This fact yielded a different approach to the production and dissemination of knowledge about the physical world. Most of the texts on physics, mathematics, and natural history written by Jesuits in Europe were produced by the faculty members of the most important and prestigious Jesuit colleges and universities in Italy, Germany, and France.11 Jesuit superiors encouraged the writing of scientific treatises not only in order to produce up-to-date and doctrinally sound textbooks for their students, but also to gain the patronage of Christian nobles and princes and, therefore, to help the reputation of the order among the ruling classes in Europe.12 In America, in contrast, the emphasis on missionary activity defined different goals for the study of nature. The missionary strategy adopted by the Jesuits implied a prolonged contact between the priests and native communities. Both the practical and theological challenges presented by autochthonous cultures and the need to survive in what was often an aggressive and unfamiliar environment forced the missionaries to describe, explain, and utilize nature and the indigenous lore about it. The identification of the South American Jesuits primarily with their missionary ministry had a profound influence on their approaches to the study of nature. In this book I trace the development of this missionary ethos among the South American Jesuits in order to understand better how this professional identity defined both the corporate culture of the Society of Jesus in the Peruvian viceroyalty and the intellectual practices of its members. As the following chapters will make clear, the institutional settings of missionary practice and the spe-



Introduction: Science and the Jesuit Ways of Proceeding

5

cific challenges faced by the missionaries defined not only the Jesuits’ research practices and goals in studying the natural world, they also influenced the Jesuits’ explicative models, the organization of the information in their texts, and the contents of their natural histories.

T

he story I tell in this book is that of the emergence of a peculiar Jesuit scien  tific culture in early modern Spanish South America. The book is divided into three parts. Each chapter presents a specific problematic of colonial science by using a Jesuit figure as a case study. By repeatedly covering a similar chro­ nology in each part, I attempt to build a multilayered narrative of the emergence of institutional and intellectual practices that fostered the study of nature, while highlighting the complexities of doing science in a colonial setting. Jesuit activities in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish America were not centered upon one particular aspect but, rather, formed a complex array of pastoral, intellectual, and political undertakings. Among these, evangelization and pedagogy were the most salient, and they were often inextricably linked to the interests of Crown and settlers. Each part of Missionary Scientists seeks to add another layer to the understanding of how the challenges and benefits of the different cultural, political, and ecological environments faced by the Jesuits in the vast expanses of the Peruvian viceroyalty affected their scientific practice. Part I, “Missionary Ethos,” discusses the development of a missionary professional identity among the South American Jesuits. The showdown between the first Jesuits who arrived in Peru and Viceroy Toledo forced the Jesuits to adopt a new missionary strategy. At first, the Jesuits dismissed Toledo’s insistence that they take over doctrinas de indios on the basis that such a ministry was contrary to the Jesuit constitutions and the way of proceeding they had laid out. However, what the Jesuits usually referred to as “our way of proceeding” was not a rigid set of rules, but more a series of guidelines allowing for accommodation to specific circumstances. The Jesuits used the expression “our way of proceeding” (nuestro modo de proceder) as an umbrella term that denoted all the spiritual, intellectual, and institutional practices they thought gave the Society its peculiar character among other religious orders. John O’Malley has noted that in their effort to pinpoint this “way,” the early members of the order multiplied the rules and regulations for different aspects of Jesuit life. These rules were, however, guidelines that allowed for a certain degree of flexibility in their application.13 I argue that their final acceptance of the doctrinas and the success they proved to be in the evangelization of the native populations led the South American Jesuits to redefine what they understood as their own way of proceeding. As I already mentioned, this redefinition involved an overhauling of their goals and methods, and led them to the adoption of a fairly different missionary strategy than they originally intended, but one that was better suited to the colonial situation they encountered in the Peruvian viceroyalty. The new missionary strategy adopted by the Jesuits in the late 1570s encour-

6

Missionary Scientists

aged a sustained close contact with native communities. It was while performing their day-to-day chores among different groups of natives that the Jesuits developed their self-sense as missionaries. But it was also in these settings where they started to develop new intellectual tools to foster the evangelization of the members of these communities. Chief among these was the accommodation to native cultures advocated by Acosta in his De Procuranda. The preparation of brief and long catechisms in Quechua and Aymara (presumably by the Jesuit Alonso de Barzana, and officially sanctioned by the Third Council of Lima in 1583) and the use of the doctrina in Juli as a school for learning the Aymara language and culture tell us a lot about the extent to which the Jesuits were personally and institutionally invested in accommodating themselves to native cultures.14 Just like in Juli, in other areas of South America the Jesuits learned native languages and cultures from the Indians, and used this information to advance their own proselytizing efforts. In Chile and Paraguay, the missionaries used native informants to learn about indigenous healing practices, particularly local medicinal plants. This information was in turn re-semanticized by the missionaries in order to offer an alternative to shamanic practices and to control the recourse of the neophytes to native healers and shamans. The intellectual processes by which the Jesuits detached the medicinal use of plants from their native cultural contexts allowed them to expand greatly the number of medicinal plants available to the Spanish population in America. As it will become clear, just as in the cinchona case, most of the new plants described by the Jesuits in the Peruvian viceroyalty were studied first for missionary rather than scientific interest. Part II concerns one of the most salient features of Jesuit scientific practice in South America and in the early modern period in general; namely, its collabo­ rative character. As the Jesuits developed their institutional network of colleges and missions throughout South America, a tension arose between the mobility of members of the order, which the Jesuits still saw as a necessity for accomplishing their mission, and the long periods of residence required for the actual fulfillment of their duties as teachers and missionaries. This tension was resolved, in part, by a constant rotation of individual Jesuits among different posts and offices along their careers. A typical South American Jesuit in the seventeenth century would move among different colleges and missions, keeping a position for up to four years. If he was particularly successful, he would go up the ranks and take charge of administrative duties on top of his pastoral and pedagogical obligations. In extreme cases, such as those of José de Acosta, Luis de Valdivia, and Bernabé Cobo, he could even serve in places as far apart as Arequipa (in southern Peru), Mexico, and even Spain during the course of his career. This feature of Jesuit careers, along with the institutional encouragement of exchanging information among the different Jesuit provinces (mainly by the constant circulation of letters and annual reports), facilitated the creation of a community of Jesuit naturalists in permanent contact with one another. The dynamic between mobility and sedentariness experienced by the members of the



Introduction: Science and the Jesuit Ways of Proceeding

7

order during their careers forged strong ties among them, which were maintained over time and space through epistolary exchanges; thus, for instance, after leaving Peru to work in Mexico, Cobo kept in contact with some of his Peruvian confrères, sending them reports of his observations while en route.15 Mascardi corresponded all his life with his former master Athanasius Kircher. From remote areas of southern Chile and Argentina, Mascardi sent Kircher regular reports of his astronomical observations, while at the same time exchanging data with astronomers in Peru. The collaborations extended beyond the Society of Jesus, as the case of Mascardi exemplifies. Jesuit naturalists used a wide range of informants, both in scientific and historical matters. These informants were drawn not only from the native communities in which they worked, but also from the soldiers, nobles, and aficionados they met at their different destinations. The accumulation of information regarding the natural world thus amassed was crystallized in the works of a handful of Jesuit writers who took the time to order and systematize the wealth of data obtained by numerous researchers and informants within and outside the Society. Part III of this book takes issue precisely with the natural histories written by South American Jesuits. Although the description of American nature had enjoyed a long tradition since the publication of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Sumario de la natural historia in 1526, José de Acosta’s De Natura Novi Orbis (1588) and especially his Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) inaugurated a series of Jesuit texts dealing with the natural history of the continent that lasted well into the eighteenth century. While the works of Jesuit writers such as Alonso de Ovalle (1646), Bernabé Cobo (1653), Diego de Rosales (ca. 1673), and Juan Ignacio de Molina (1776 and 1782) relied on the natural histories written by their non-Jesuit predecessors and contemporaries, their texts also reveal both the con­ ti­nuities and the transformations experienced by Jesuit approaches to the description and study of South American nature during the two hundred years of Jesuit presence on the continent. Acosta was eager to note that his work did not merely describe the exotic nature of America. Instead, he attempted to explain philosophically the purported differences between the Old and New World. Despite his claims, however, Acosta gave way to mere description in the second third of his Historia natural y moral, explicitly renouncing philosophical investigation and even condemning such attempts as vana curiositas, or intellectual pride.16 It is my contention that in this tension between the explicative and the descriptive, we can find evidence for a consistency between sixteenth-century Jesuit natural philosophy and the spiritual and pastoral goals of the Society of Jesus in South America. The influence of Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. This does not mean that his work was universally acclaimed; dissatisfaction with Acosta’s theories and methods, at least in part, motivated subsequent natural historians. Almost half a century later, Bernabé Cobo

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Missionary Scientists

carefully considered Acosta’s theories and line of reasoning, only to find them wanting. His systematic rebuttal of the former Jesuit provincial’s theories clearly reflects the competitive character of Cobo’s Historia del Nuevo Mundo in relationship to Acosta’s more famous book. While for Acosta the study of nature could and should yield a positive theology, making God’s salvific plan for humankind explicit, for Cobo the marvels and wonders of nature were evidence of God’s omnipotence as expressed in the astonishing variety of species, objects, and environments found in America. The specificity of American plants and animals when compared to those species found in the Old World presented Cobo with a taxonomical problem. Cobo’s outlook on the natural world, best exemplified in his explanation of the animal population of the continent, involved a fundamental link between species and their habitats. However, a century and a half of Spanish rule over America had made it difficult to establish the provenance of numerous species. Cobo’s attempt to distinguish between native and introduced plants and animals was an effort to work out the relationship between species and environment in a taxonomic system. His method (asking the oldest Indians he could find) presented a problem Acosta did not recognize: it was impossible to rely on the existence of a native word for a particular species or class to determine if it was autochthonous or not. Just like the natural world, the native languages were in this respect also a product of Spanish colonization; they expressed a knowledge that reflected not the traditional Andean natural space but, rather, the colonial landscape with its newly introduced plants and crops. It is ultimately in this colonial aspect of American nature that the differences between Acosta’s and Cobo’s treatments of nature can be explained. Cobo’s emphasis on God’s power and his recourse to miracles and occult properties as the only way to explain the peculiarities of America shifted the focus from the evangelization of the Amer­ indians that was at the center of Acosta’s intellectual project to an emphasis on the irreducible difference of America. Cobo’s lengthy explanations of the changes to the American landscape and the biological diversity brought about by European agriculture, which form the background for his description of America, emphasize human agency and dominion over nature rather than God’s unfolding plan for humankind and the salvation of native souls. The tendency to concentrate on local nature was accentuated as the seventeenth century came to an end. Due partly to the fact that more and more Jesuits were recruited from the ranks of the criollos (American-born persons of Spanish ancestry), resulting in a more patriotic bent in the histories produced by them, the growing number of local natural and general histories was also a function of the institutional developments of the Society of Jesus in South America during the seventeenth century. In Chapter 8, I examine the production of two members of the order, Alonso de Ovalle and Diego de Rosales. Unlike Acosta’s book, Ovalle’s Histórica relación del reyno de Chile (1646) and Rosales’s Historia general del reyno de Chile (ca. 1673) were, like Cobo’s, full-fledged histories of the Spanish conquest that included long sections on natural history. Unlike Cobo, however,



Introduction: Science and the Jesuit Ways of Proceeding

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they did not aim to describe the nature and history of the whole continent; instead, they focused exclusively on Chile. In this sense, they are examples of what modern scholars have described as the emergence during the seventeenth century of a proto-national identity or Creole consciousness in Spanish America. Their description of Chilean nature can be read as a “rhetoric of praise” in which the comparisons between local nature and the Old World were not intended to highlight the fundamental unity of the world, as Acosta had done, or the difference between Europe and America. Instead, we find in both Ovalle and Rosales a narrative construction of the inherent superiority of the Chilean climate, flora, and fauna, vis-à-vis Europe and other regions of the New World. Using different methodologies, both writers focused on the local, forgoing the wider scope that was so important for Cobo and Acosta. Ovalle published his Histórica relación in Rome, where he was attending the Eighth Jesuit General Congregation. The book was ostensibly written to promote the achievements of the first fifty years of the Jesuits in Chile, particularly their prominent political and evangelical presence in the land. Ovalle’s treatment of nature was instrumental to his exposition of the success of the order in Chile. Distancing himself from the search for the causes of natural phenomena that had characterized Acosta and Cobo, Ovalle focused on descriptions of the marvelous and the unusual. He recorded, for instance, the finding of a tree that resembled Christ on the cross, and the appearance of monsters following a volcanic eruption in the Mapuche lands. Ovalle understood these marvels as manifestations of the Divine Will to pacify and convert the rebel Mapuche people; in fact, he claimed that they were hieroglyphs in which God’s plans could and should be read—particularly, his approval of Jesuit political activities. Unlike Acosta, for whom philosophical speculation led to theological truths, Ovalle (in line with contemporary developments of Jesuit science in the Baroque era) attempted to read God’s will not in the regularity of nature but, rather, in its wonders and marvels, which for him constituted the hieroglyphs with which God had written the Book of Nature. Rosales’s Historia general del reyno de Chile, although it did discuss some natural wonders (such as a fish that showed the cross and the crown of thorns on its skull), placed much more emphasis on the bounty of Chilean nature than on its marvels. Reacting against Juan de la Puente who in 1612 had stated that the nature of America was prone to produce effeminate men, be they natives or Spanish, Rosales focused his attention on the extreme fertility of the land, the massive height of the Andes, its mineral riches, and the evident favor granted to Chile by God. Drawing upon information accumulated through almost a century of Jesuit missionary practice in the country, Rosales provided detailed descriptions of the fauna and, especially, the medicinal plants of the realm, emphasizing their endemic character. This information was carefully compared to that presented by a dazzling array of European authors in order to highlight Chile’s uniquely rich and benefic nature. Anticipating the Jesuit polemics with Cornelius de Paw by

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Missionary Scientists

almost a century, Rosales offered a passionate and thoroughly researched defense of Chilean nature and its inhabitants.

A

lthough the study of nature was not formally a part of the goals or the min  istries of the Society of Jesus in South America, the dedication of some of its members to the exploration and research of American nature was a constant during the two hundred years the order was present on the continent. Because of the peculiar relationship the order developed with culture and knowledge, as well as the usefulness that a deeper knowledge of nature had for the missionary enterprise, the superiors of the order in South America encouraged and stimulated these studies; however, despite this constant effort, neither their intellectual practices nor the contributions of South American Jesuit naturalists have gained them more than a marginal position at best in the current debates about early modern science. As I hope the following pages will clarify, both the importance of these contributions and the specific circumstances in which they carried out their studies deserve better attention if we are to understand the role played by the Society of Jesus in the development of scientific thought in the seventeenth century.

part i

Missionary Ethos

Chapter 1

Jesuit Struggles in Peru

O

n March 1, 1572, Francisco de Toledo sat down to write a long letter   to King Philip II, reporting on the state of affairs in the Viceroyalty   of Peru. Front and center in Toledo’s report were his concerns about the spiritual situation in the realm, in particular the conversion of the Andean natives. After describing the overall ecclesiastical situation and his own efforts toward the evangelization of the native communities by relocating them into fewer towns to be put under one doctrinero (priest), Toledo complained to the king about what he saw as the contemptuous attitude of the religious orders, in particular the Jesuits: “The members of the Society of the Name of Jesus work in this kingdom with the fervor I have described to Your Majesty, and although I truly understand that they are useful in the cities among the Spaniards and the service Indians, they do not know if by their statutes they are allowed to go out to the doctrinas and work in the conversion of the Indians where they are most urgently needed.”1 During the previous four years, the Jesuits had in fact resisted almost every effort made by Toledo to coax them into accepting the newly created parochial posts among the Peruvian natives, claiming that such a practice was contrary both to their pastoral methods and to their internal legislation. Despite the diplomatic tone of Toledo’s letter, the Jesuit refusal to take over the doctrinas quickly became a major source of tension between the order and the viceroy, who repeatedly made clear his disgust with what he took to be an open challenge to his authority and a blatant disregard on the part of the Jesuits toward what he saw as one of the most important responsibilities of the Crown in America. The escalation of this conflict between the Jesuits and Toledo during the first decade of Jesuit presence in Peru would force the newly arrived order into a process of soul-searching, the outcome of which led the Jesuits to refocus their goals and redefine their methods, thus changing the perception the Jesuits had of themselves and of their mission in Peru in the process. From the late 1570s onward, the Jesuits would gradually move away from seeing themselves as a primarily urban-based religious order (as Toledo complained they were) and start



13

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to define themselves first and foremost as missionaries devoted to the salvation of native peoples. As we shall see throughout this book, this change in Jesuit selfperception had a profound impact not only in the subsequent expansion of the order on the continent, it also affected the content, methods, and objectives of Jesuit intellectual endeavors. The conflict between the viceroy and the Jesuits arose from the different goals the Crown and the Jesuit hierarchy had in mind for the presence of the order in Peru. Unlike the monastic orders, the Jesuit ministries in Europe were characterized by active engagement with the secular life of the cities where they were established.2 The order wanted to replicate this model in Peru. When the first group of six Jesuits arrived in Lima in 1568, their leader, Jerónimo Ruiz del Portillo, carried very specific instructions from General Borgia. They were to found a college in Lima and devote themselves to urban ministries such as preaching, confessing, and tending to the poor, leaving the city only to engage on itinerant missions among the population living in the countryside. In any case, Borgia insisted to Ruiz del Portillo, they would have to reside in the same city as the viceroy and always return to it. Their outings were to be only temporary and never last more than a few months; the less time they spent outside the cities, the better.3 Following these directives as soon as they had established themselves in Lima, the Jesuits began preaching several times a week and they started ministering to the poor and the outcast, particularly the African slaves and the native communities living in the city. Following a general tendency of the Society of Jesus at the time, the Jesuits considered teaching at the College of Lima as their primary task.4 Ruiz del Portillo, in fact, spent more money buying books for the planned college than on religious articles and sacred vestments, and the first official activity the Jesuits conducted upon their arrival in Lima was a visit to Governor Lope García de Castro to arrange the acquisition of a suitable lot in the city on which to build the College of San Pablo.5 They soon opened their college, and alongside the regular courses on humanities and philosophy, they convoked the city’s neighbors for an informal roundtable on practical moral problems once a week.6 A few months after the arrival of the first Jesuits, Francisco de Toledo had entered Lima to take possession of the office of viceroy. The younger brother of the Count of Oropesa, the fifty-three-year-old Toledo had had an unremarkable career as a government official up to that point; however, his stern personality, frugal habits, and above all his unquestionable loyalty and dedication to the Crown’s service made him the ideal candidate for the task of putting Peru under the firm rule of the Spanish monarchy once and for all. Ravaged by decades of civil wars and weak government officials, and under the constant threat of native rebellion posed by the survival of the neo-Inca state of Vilcabamba, Peru was far from being the source of revenue so sorely needed by the Crown, in spite of its fabulous mining riches.7 In order to remedy this situation, Toledo sailed to Peru in 1568 with a set of instructions issued by the Junta Magna (a group of notables and advisors assembled by King Philip II) that suggested a course of action for solving the most pressing problems of the colony and reorganizing its administra-



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tive and productive apparatuses. Toledo was ordered to lead a general inspection of all Peruvian provinces, closely examine the situation on the field, and conduct measures toward the enforcement of the laws his predecessors had not implemented for fear of further social unrest.8 Toledo’s general visitation lasted five years, from 1570 to 1575, during which the viceroy and his entourage conducted a thorough inspection of the cities and rural areas that surrounded them in the central Andes, southern Peru, and today’s Bolivia. Toledo’s visitation fundamentally altered the social structure of native Andean communities, which had already been shattered by the conquest, the encomienda system, and the long civil wars between the Spanish settlers. Chief among Toledo’s concerns were the reassessment of tributes collected from the natives, the organization of native labor in order to bring the Peruvian mining industry to full production, and the fulfillment of the royal obligation to evangelize the Amer­indians. In order to achieve these goals, the viceroy arranged for the relocation of the scattered native communities into Spanish-style towns and villages in more accessible areas, a process known as reducción. As Toledo saw it, the reduction was “the most important thing done during this visitation, both temporally and spiritually.”9 It was an enormous undertaking, involving a census and the relocation of well over a million individuals.10 Toledo’s reduction program seems to have been based on the proposal Juan de Matienzo, a Spanish magistrate from the Audiencia (appellate court) of Charcas, had sent to the Council of Castile in 1567.11 Although Matienzo’s main concern had been to stop natives from wandering from city to city and to turn them into a stable labor force, he claimed that the main goal of the reductions was to discharge the royal conscience, since the natives “cannot be evangelized nor become fully human if they are not living together in towns.”12 Following Matienzo’s proposal, Toledo arranged for the relocation of native communities into towns organized around central squares. Each town’s new inhabitants were recounted after their relocation, and careful records were made, noting the age, sex, and marital and social status of each of them. This information was then used to calculate the tributes owed by each town, as well as to organize the mita, which were forced labor shifts designed to ensure a constant number of workers for the Potosi silver mines.13 The creation of these towns was also seen by Toledo as an opportunity to strengthen the patronato real, the Crown’s authority over the ecclesiastical affairs of the viceroyalty.14 As he traveled through the country, Toledo realized the huge difficulties faced by the doctrineros, or parochial priests: “There were doctrinas in which only one priest was in charge [of ] one thousand or more Indians living scattered across sixty leagues of land, in mountains and deserts. This [problem] has been remedied by reducing the Indians to large towns, and giving each priest only one town [as his parish].”15 The reductions were simultaneously administrative and religious institutions, and as the king’s representative, Toledo reserved the right to appoint the doctrineros himself.16 Up to then, the priests had been either designated by the bishops or hired by the encomenderos (beneficiaries of a

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grant of native labor tribute), a practice that according to Toledo had led to several abuses. Besides their religious duties, the priests held de facto police power, and had usually resorted to physical punishment of the natives under their care. Furthermore, the illegal collection of tribute by the doctrineros, either as labor or as local produce, had become a widespread practice.17 Adding insult to injury, several doctrineros also kept native concubines, as the native chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma bitterly complained about early on in the seventeenth century.18 Toledo sought to remedy these abuses and to apply the patronato real effectively by appointing friars and members of the religious orders as doctrineros: “It is convenient to use them in the evangelization of these Indians outside of the main Spanish cities because without a doubt [the friars] are more spiritual than the secular priests, and they are more diligent in teaching and indoctrinating these barbarians.”19 The bishops’ complaints notwithstanding, Toledo insisted that the religious orders should furnish the missionaries needed to conduct religious instruction in the new Indian towns.20 Toledo’s insistence on this point put a lot of pressure on the Society of Jesus to change its pastoral ways, based as they were on urban ministries. Finally, in 1570, Ruiz del Portillo gave in and provisionally accepted the doctrinas of Cercado on the outskirts of Lima and Huarochiri, located east of the city; however, Ruiz del Portillo was not happy with this situation, and wrote a letter to Rome to inform General Borgia of this issue and others the Jesuits regarded as instances of the viceroy’s excessive meddling in the order’s affairs. Borgia’s answer clearly shows how the Jesuits were afraid that Toledo intended to use them for a wide variety of tasks, thus limiting the freedom the Jesuits felt was necessary to carry on with their own pastoral agenda.21 Borgia ordered the Peruvian Jesuits to adhere strictly to the order’s constitutions, and instructed them to minimize their involvement in tasks alien to their mission. He rejected the new colleges Toledo was pressing the Jesuits to found, since he wanted to ensure the economical via­ bility of the two colleges the Jesuits already operated in Cuzco and Lima. In regard to Toledo’s insistence on occupying some Jesuits in the general inspection of the viceroyalty, Borgia was explicit: the Jesuits could accompany him, but they should devote themselves only to pastoral duties, and under no circumstances should they be involved in the political decisions that would lead to reform of the viceroyalty.22 But the most controversial issue was, by far, the acceptance of the doctrinas. In his reply to Ruiz del Portillo, Borgia noted that for the time being, the two doctrinas already under Jesuit tutelage should be kept, but he forbade Ruiz del Portillo from accepting new ones. The main reason to reject the doctrinas was the explicit prohibition in the order’s constitutions of undertaking the curacy of souls.23 This provision, explained Borgia, had been adopted in order to avoid the subjection of individual members of the Society to the bishops or to state officials, allowing the Jesuit superiors the freedom they needed to appoint the members of the order to different offices as they saw fit.24 The level of commitment



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demanded by parochial posts, both at the administrative and personal level, was contrary to the Jesuit way of proceeding. For the Jesuits, the superiors’ ability to move the individual members of the order around freely was a fundamental aspect of their operational capability; on the other hand, for Toledo, taking care of the doctrinas was indispensable. The ambitious project of reduction required the presence of priests residing among the natives to ensure their effective evangelization, and there were simply too few secular priests in the land to cover all the newly created parishes. The Jesuit refusal to accept parochial duties, a fact aggravated by their abandonment of Huarochiri in 1572, was seen by Toledo as a clear violation of the Crown’s authority in ecclesiastical matters. Toledo believed that the only reason Philip II had authorized the Jesuits’ move to Peru was for them to go to the doctrinas and evangelize the native population. Any other ministry performed by the Jesuits, whether it be teaching, preaching, or evangelizing the African and native populations living in the Spanish cities, was for Toledo just a complement to what he considered their main duty. If for whatever reason the Jesuits—or any other religious order for that matter—could not take on parochial posts, their presence in Peru was not needed.25 The escalation of the conflict between Toledo and the Peruvian Jesuits motivated Borgia’s successor, Everard Mercurian, to send Juan de la Plaza to Peru in 1573 as a special visitador (envoy) endowed with ample powers. Although publicly Plaza was sent to find a feasible solution to the doctrinas problem that would content the viceroy and be, at the same time, in accordance with Jesuit legislation, in practice his mission was to discourage Jesuit involvement in the curacy of souls as much as possible. Displaying the kind of political savvy that would fuel the negative stereotype of the Jesuits as cunning and treacherous, Mercurian gave Plaza three different sets of instructions. The first two were meant to be shown to Spanish officials and suggested proper answers for hypothetical questionings, where Plaza would promise that the Jesuits would take care of the doctrinas if certain conditions were met.26 However, the third set of instructions (labeled Instructio accuratior and meant for Plaza’s eyes only) left little room for doubt regarding Plaza’s mission: “It is inconvenient for the Society to take charge of repartimientos or doctrinas de indios as it has been done by other orders, living among [the natives] as parish priests or vicars, and with a certain salary or wage.”27 Plaza’s mission was to stop involvement in the doctrinas at all costs. Despite all this secrecy, Plaza failed even before he could set sail. Unable to find a fleet to take him to Lima, he had to wait in Seville for almost a year. During that time, Plaza started to grow more and more uncomfortable with his mission, doubting the legitimacy of Spanish rule over America and therefore the legitimacy of the Jesuit presence in Peru.28 Mercurian, realizing how dangerous these doubts were, suggested that Plaza discuss these and any other matters regarding his mission with a brilliant young theologian, José de Acosta, who was already in Peru. In practice, Mercurian limited the powers given to Plaza by effec-

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tively putting him under the tutelage of Acosta, both regarding the administrative issues of the Peruvian Jesuits and his own problems of conscience.29 Mercurian’s decision to name Acosta as Plaza’s counselor would, in time, prove to be a turning point for the Jesuits in Peru.

Searching for Solutions The young Jesuit whom Plaza was about to meet with was one of the most promising members of the order. José de Acosta was born in 1540 in Medina del Campo, a prosperous mercantile city in Castile.30 The Acosta family had a deep involvement with the Society of Jesus. The father, Antonio, was a wealthy merchant who enthusiastically supported the order. In 1551, he gave the Jesuits land where they could build a college and a church, along with two thousand ducats to help defray the costs. The closeness of the Acosta family to the Jesuits was reinforced when four of Antonio Acosta’s six sons joined the order. Inspired by the example of his brothers, young José ran away from home in 1552 to enter the order in Salamanca. His father initially protested this, mainly because of his young age, but did not raise any more objections once José was accepted into the Society. The family was pleased to see José return to Medina del Campo to finish his novitiate in the college his father had helped to build. Acosta soon stood out as a brilliant student, and he was charged with the composition of several comedies and religious plays to be presented in the college to celebrate the main Catholic holy days. Upon graduating from Medina del Campo in 1557, Acosta was assigned to several Jesuit colleges in Spain and Portugal where he taught Latin. In 1559, the Jesuit superiors ordered him to enroll in the university at Alcala de Henares to continue his education. His intelligence and oratory skills gained him the respect of his classmates and the praise of his professors, particularly during the Actos Generales Mayores of 1563, in which Acosta publicly defended several philosophical theses with resounding success.31 Acosta’s talents did not go unnoticed by the Jesuit superiors. Contemporary reports about him all concur that Acosta was a brilliant student of “human letters, philosophy, and theology,” and that he would “be able to lecture in [these subjects] with total satisfaction; he is also well suited for preaching and for administrative duties.”32 These reports show the remarkable accuracy with which the Jesuit superiors evaluated their charges. In time, Acosta would excel as a writer, philosopher, and theologian. His tenure as superior of the Jesuit Peruvian province would also prove to be a momentous period for the Society of Jesus: a period that would define the subsequent activities of the order in South America. In 1566, at age twenty-six, Acosta was ordained as a priest. His meteoric career continued with appointments as a professor of theology at the Jesuit college at Ocaña and later in Plasencia. Although Acosta had requested to be sent to the overseas missions as early as 1561, Francis Borgia considered him better suited to become a faculty member of the most prestigious Jesuit institution of higher



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learning, the Roman College than a missionary. Acosta repeated his requests to be sent to the New World in 1568 and again in 1569. After several vacillations, Borgia obliged, selecting him to reinforce the nascent Peruvian province in 1571, along with two other Jesuits. His intellectual activity during the seventeen years of his stay in the New World would mark a watershed in the history of Jesuit missionary and scientific enterprises in South America. When Plaza met with Acosta in the cloisters of San Pablo in May 1575, the young Jesuit profoundly impressed him. Acosta helped him solve his most pressing doubts, reassuring him of the usefulness and importance of the Jesuit presence in Peru to help save the souls of the wretched Andean natives. Barely three months after their first meeting, Plaza appointed Acosta rector of San Pablo, only to promote him to the office of provincial on January 1576. Acosta promptly used the privileged position granted to him by the visitador to advance the missionary agenda of the Peruvian Jesuits in spite of the orders from Rome.33 His mission notwithstanding, Plaza played but a secondary role in the Jesuit decision to officially accept more doctrinas. Acosta’s first measure in office was to call the First Provincial Congregation to meet in Lima during January 1576 and in Cuzco during October 1576. Prominent on the table was the problem of the doctrinas and the effectiveness of the missionary methods employed so far by the Jesuits. Acosta had had an opportunity to form a firsthand opinion on the missionary problems in Peru in 1573, when Ruiz del Portillo sent him on a long journey through central and southern Peru to inspect the various colleges and houses the Jesuits were establishing there. During this trip, which included the cities of Cuzco, Arequipa, La Paz, Potosi, and Chuquisaca, Acosta had had time to get acquainted with the deplorable situation of the Andean natives under Spanish rule, and also with the difficulties both the rugged terrain and the dispersion of the native communities presented to the itinerant missions favored by the Jesuits. In 1574, Toledo (who was by then conducting his administrative visitation) had called Acosta to Chuquisaca to consult with him on these matters. While there, Acosta had had the opportunity to meet with two of the realm’s foremost experts on Andean affairs, Juan de Matienzo and Polo de Ondegardo, both of them acting as the viceroy’s counselors. Their views, although not always coincident, would shape not only the Toledan enterprise but also Acosta’s own perceptions about the utility of the reduction process and his understanding of Andean culture.34 Based on these experiences, Acosta proposed to the Jesuit assembly four ways to increase their presence among the native communities. The first and most important was to take on parochial duties, accepting the doctrinas. The second was to increase the itinerant missions to the countryside, going deeper and for longer periods of time into the lands inhabited by the Andean communities. The third possibility was to establish Jesuit residences in the provinces populated mainly by the natives in order to evangelize them without taking on the curacy of souls. The fourth way to increase the Jesuit influence among the Peruvian natives was to “establish colleges and seminars where piously and reasonably the sons of the ca-

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ciques—that is, the Indian nobles—could be educated.”35 Acosta’s proposal was an attempt to reconcile the Jesuit operational methods sanctioned in the Constitutions with the demands of Toledo. Regarding the doctrinas, Acosta emphasized the fact that the Jesuits were the only religious order in Peru unwilling to accept them.36 His intervention was cautiously tailored to favor the viceroy’s ideas regarding the government and evangelization of the Peruvian natives. The debate focused on Acosta’s first proposal. The Peruvian Jesuits saw several problems that could arise from their involvement in the doctrinas. Almost all of these problems derived from the fact the missionaries would be isolated from their communities and, therefore, from the supervision of their superiors. This situation could lead—as it had already among secular priests and some friars—to the moral dissolution of the members of the order, and to the temptation to exploit the Indians economically for personal material gain. Furthermore, the Jesuits were greatly concerned about the legal implications of their acceptance of the doctrinas, particularly in regard to their subjection to the bishops and the viceroy, about which General Borgia had already warned them.37 The assembly, however, agreed that all these difficulties could be overcome, particularly within the frame of the Toledan reduction already under way, and brainstormed for feasible solutions. But the biggest problem of all was still the internal legislation of the order. The Jesuits felt that the acceptance of the doctrinas was an essential step toward achieving the true evangelization of the Peruvian natives. Based on the precedents set by the Jesuit missions in India and Japan (where members of the order were engaged in parochial duties), they thought if the potential problems foreseen by the Jesuit superiors could be avoided, the general should grant them a dispensation to undertake the curacy of souls.38 While they waited for General Mercurian’s answer, the Jesuits decided to accept the doctrina of Juli, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, for a probationary period of three years in order to see if the difficulties they anticipated could be avoided.39 In November 1576, six Jesuits—two lay brothers and four priests—entered the doctrina. The experience proved to be a fruitful one for the order; two years later, there were eight Jesuits working there. In time, the doctrina of Juli would become the training center for the Jesuits assigned to work in Peru, and the standard on which the missionary strategy of the Jesuits in South America would be modeled.40

The Controversy over Native Evangelization The assembly’s rationale for accepting the doctrinas was thoroughly spelled out in Acosta’s first book, De Procuranda Indorum Salute, which he finished a year after the closing session of the Jesuit congregation.41 The book, intended as a guide to missionary work in Peru, was based on the experience already gained by the Jesuits in the doctrinas of Cercado and Huarochiri. The main lines of action and



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the general orientations it proposed would be the ones followed by the Jesuits in Juli, and in their reductions and missions elsewhere in South America later on. In De Procuranda, Acosta attempted to lay down a general missionary method suited to the colonial situation of the Peruvian natives. Hence, the book dealt not only with the technicalities of teaching Christianity, but also with the anthropological, political, and social considerations that were the foundation of Acosta’s missionary model. This model was based on a critical outlook of the current Peruvian situation, which Acosta had had ample opportunity to assess during his 1573 visita. In fact, in De Procuranda, Acosta discussed at length some of the administrative reforms undertaken by Toledo and listed the moral, political, and religious obligations that should be fulfilled by colonial officers and priests alike in order to facilitate the evangelization process. In Acosta’s view, the conversion of the Peruvian natives was truly a colonial enterprise—one that required the concerted efforts of all members of society and the institutional support of both church and state to ensure its success.42 Overall, the book reflected Acosta’s deep-seated conviction in the ability of the Andean natives to truly understand and embrace Christianity and to achieve salvation. At the time, many priests and secular officers were voicing their concerns about what they perceived as the natives’ lack of the intellectual capabilities needed to grasp the basics of Christian doctrine.43 This harsh judgment, usually expressed by priests who did not speak the native languages, was based on what appeared to be a stubborn cultural resistance on the part of the natives. At least since the 1550s, the missionaries working among the Andean peoples had complained that although the natives seemed to readily accept the Christian faith, they nonetheless secretly maintained their ancestral beliefs and practices.44 Although outrageous to the Spaniards, this custom probably seemed only natural to the Andean peoples. The Incas had enforced the official imperial cult among their newly conquered subjects by sending Inca state settlers to teach the official language and religious beliefs, as well as by sequestering the local idols as a way to ensure allegiance. But the Incas had also allowed the continued worship of the huacas—local deities who inhabited places of adoration such as springs, rocks, mountaintops, and rivers—as long as the tributes due to the state cult were paid.45 The arrival of the Spaniards meant the substitution of one type of colonial rule for another for most Andean peoples. Under these circumstances, they embraced the new official religion while at the same time maintaining their old tribal cults, just as they had in Inca times.46 To be sure, there were some fundamental differences between Inca and Spanish rule, most noticeably in the brutal exploitation of the native communities by their new masters, but also in the claims of exclusivity by the new imperial religion. Furthermore, the survival of an independent Inca state in the remote mountain area of Vilcabamba, ruled by the descendants of the Cuzco royal family, kept hopes alive among the native population for a general insurrection that would get rid of the dreaded invaders and their religion. Probably encouraged by the

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Inca Titu Cusi Yupanqui, third ruler of Vilcabamba, in the late 1560s a messianic movement started to spread among the Andean communities. The movement was known as Taqui Onkoy or dance sickness since it was preached by itinerant dancers who entered an ecstatic state. The movement asserted the belief that the ease with which the Spaniards had conquered the mighty Inca Empire was due to the superior strength of the Christian god. The Taqui Onkoy prophets proclaimed the return of the main huacas, who would wage war against the Christian god and expel him from the land. Apparently, this godly war was to be accompanied by a native rebellion that would drive the Spaniards out of the land this time. In 1565, the discovery of clandestine weapon factories in the city of Jauja frightened the Spanish authorities.47 A campaign to extirpate the idolatries ensued, and it was followed in 1571 by the invasion and destruction of the Inca stronghold of Vilcabamba and the subsequent execution of the last Inca emperor, Topa Amaru. As a result, missionaries and government officials realized that, although voluntary, the natives’ conversion to Christianity could not be trusted to be wholehearted, much less long-lasting. As Ondegardo attested in 1571, “Even those who are regularly preached to and well taught [in Christian doctrine] defend themselves from the accusation of performing their rites and keeping their idols after being baptized by saying that they understood these practices to be compatible with [Christian] teachings.”48 The local cults, tied as they were to the communities’ myths of origin and therefore to their sense of identity, proved to be extremely difficult to eradicate.49 The obstinate survival of ancient religious beliefs despite decades of Christian indoctrination led several priests and secular officials to believe that the Indians were congenitally incapable of comprehending Catholic dogma. Some, such as the Dominican friar Francisco de la Cruz, went as far as to maintain that mere belief in God was enough for the Indians to be saved, an opinion that appears to have been widespread.50 In 1583, the bishops and theologians of the Third Council of Lima, among whom was José de Acosta, felt the need to specify what constituted the bare minimum parish priests had to teach their charges. According to the council, before being baptized, every native should know by heart the Creed, the Paternoster, the Ten Commandments, and all the sacraments. Besides that, they should demonstrate sincere belief in a single God that rewarded the faithful in heaven and punished the wicked in hell, know the mystery of the Trinity, reject their idols as false and devilish, believe in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and understand that Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected after three days.51 The fact that the bishops saw fit to legislate this matter in detail suggests that views similar to those maintained by de la Cruz regarding Amer­indian indoctrination were not uncommon among parish priests. Faced with these concerns, Acosta (who had been one of the judges in the inquisitorial process against de la Cruz) resolutely affirmed the capacity of the Andean peoples to understand and embrace the Christian message. Acosta identified four main arguments used by those who denied the Indians’ ability to con-



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vert to Christianity: the Indians were deprived of divine grace; their nature and customs were too depraved and primitive for them to understand and accept Christian morality; most of them seemed unable to understand Spanish; and their dwellings were too inaccessible for preachers to reach.52 The last two objections were easy to dismiss: it would suffice for the missionaries to learn the native tongues, and the Toledan reduction would solve the problem of their dispersion (De Procuranda [1596], 155–57). But the supposedly depraved nature of the natives and, above all, their purported lack of grace presented a more serious challenge since they seemed to imply that the natives could be a different kind of humanity, one not included in God’s plan for human redemption. The long time God had let pass between the death of Christ and the arrival of the first preachers in America seemed to some to lend plausibility to this view (116–17). Acosta spent most of the first part of De Procuranda arguing that the divine salvific plan did include the Amer­indians, as well as all other races, multiplying to that end his quotations and glosses of scripture and the fathers of the church. “There is not a race of men,” argued Acosta, “no matter how abject or bestial, alien to the medicine of the Gospels, for God does not call anyone whom he has not given the intelligence and grace needed to obtain that for which he calls him” (139). For Acosta, what seemed to be a lack of intellectual capabilities in the Peruvian peoples was not due to natural causes, such as place of birth or the influence of the Andean air, or to some racial deficiency; instead, it was the result of the prevalence “of their ancient customs, and their way of life, not unlike that of the beasts. . . . It is a commonly known fact that upbringing has a bigger influence on a man’s character than birth” (149–50). In fact, the Andean peoples were not at all incapable of learning, as was clear from their mastery of European music and manual crafts, as well as their skill in legal issues. The problem was, instead, the lack of religious instruction in the native languages and the general ignorance of all things sacred among the parish priests. “For a bad teacher,” Acosta stated rather harshly, “all disciples are stupid” (360). Effective evangelization was certainly more than just making the natives memorize the catechism and a few prayers in Spanish. It required a sustained effort on the part of the missionaries. Acosta argued that since the natives’ poor grasp of the Christian doctrine was due to their upbringing in their traditional culture, their acculturation must be emphasized in order to give them the intellectual tools and moral codes needed to understand Christianity. The missionaries would have to educate the Peruvian natives in the European political and moral ways of living before starting the evangelization program proper: “First we must make sure that the barbarians learn to be humans, and then teach them how to be Christians” (324). For Acosta, learning the ways of what he saw as the superior European culture would render the truth of the Christian message self-evident to the Andean peoples. The evangelization of the Andean peoples as Acosta envisaged it demanded a slow and constant effort on the part of the doctrineros. In fact, any attempt to discourage the worship of idols by violent means, whether by forcibly seizing and

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destroying the huacas or by physically punishing the idolatrous Indians, would be counterproductive since it would only instill hate and resentment in the natives. Instead, Acosta recommended “educating the Indians little by little in Christian behavior and discipline, silently rooting out the superstitious and sacrilegious rites, and reforming their barbaric ways” (346). This process required the constant attention of the missionary, who would have to reside among the neophytes to “teach them, reprimand them, encourage them, reassure them, defend them, and carry them in his arms” until they changed their ways (492). Acosta’s view of acculturation as a necessary first step toward achieving the true conversion of the Andean peoples was in consonance with Toledo’s initiative to reduce the native population into settlements, with a Spanish corregidor (judge) and doctrinero in residence at each settlement. As already noted, Toledo’s reduction plan closely resembled the one Matienzo outlined in Gobierno del Perú, where the reductions were seen as the only way in which the Spanish king could discharge his obligation to care for the spiritual and material well-being of the Amer­indians: “Among other things that His Majesty is obliged [to do]. . . is to teach [the natives] the human way of life, so that they can be more easily taught our holy Catholic faith, which is the principal end to which we should all strive. So that this end can be met, Your Majesty has saintly provided . . . that the Audiencia, in accord with the bishops, little by little see that the Indians be reduced into towns.”53 For Matienzo, the reduction into towns would allow the Spanish authorities not only to catechize the indigenous population but also to force them more effectively to learn and speak Spanish, to abandon their ancestral ways in favor of Spanish customs, and to replace what he saw as a subsistence economy for the monetary one in use among Europeans.54 Despite his support for the general model of the reductions, Acosta never went as far as Matienzo in his dismissal of native culture. Instead, following Ondegardo, he maintained that the social, political, and economical structures of the natives’ societies should be preserved as much as possible as long as they did not contradict Christian doctrine or were against natural law.55 Despite this claim in favor of protecting native culture, Acosta’s attitude toward indigenous communities was certainly more paternalistic than that of Ondegardo, and deeply rooted in a conviction of the superiority of European culture and its right to rule and direct the Amer­ indians. Unlike the colonial officials who believed in the congenital inferiority of the native ­peoples—including Matienzo, who claimed their natural tendency to laziness and depravity could only be corrected through strict vigilance and coercion—Acosta contended that their inferiority was the product of historical processes that could be rationally explained and used as the foundation of a new and more effective missionary method.



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Narratives of Migration and a New Missionary Method In Acosta’s proposed missionary method, the grassroots work of the doctrineros was of paramount importance since the burden of teaching the Andean natives was on them. Therefore, Acosta needed to convince parish priests and reluctant colonial officials that the intellectual inferiority they attributed to the Andean peoples was the result of historic processes and not of any constitutional deficiency. This was not an easy enterprise, since any argument put forward by the Jesuits in favor of the ability of the Andean peoples to embrace Christianity was quickly dismissed by the more seasoned secular priests as mere ignorance of the realities of the land.56 If De Procuranda was to be of any use not only to the Jesuit missionaries but also to the secular doctrineros, as was Acosta’s declared goal, he would have to convince them of the feasibility of his project.57 In early 1577, following standard procedure for writers in the Society of Jesus, Acosta sent his treatise to Rome to obtain the general’s approval for publication. Although the book greatly pleased Mercurian, who thought it was a most necessary and long-overdue work, its publication was delayed by the current conflicts between the Society and the Spanish Crown.58 Aware of the delay, Acosta set to work on a brief Latin treatise on the natural history of America, De Natura Novi Orbis, which he sent to Rome in 1583 with precise instructions to print it alongside De Procuranda as a sort of introduction to the missionary manual.59 Claudio Aquaviva, Mercurian’s successor as Jesuit general, manifested his delight with the brief text and reassured Acosta that he would personally see it through publication. Aquaviva, repeating an analogy set forward by Acosta in the letter that accompanied the manuscript, considered De Natura to be to De Procuranda like a sauce that enhances the taste of a meal.60 Acosta hoped that the brief philosophical discussion of the American nature he now presented to regular and secular priests going to Peru would help convince them not only of the usefulness of missionary work among Andean communities, but also that the method he was advocating was suitable to the stage of cultural evolution of the Peruvian natives. In fact, Acosta strove in De Natura to endow his thesis of the inclusion of all races in God’s plan for human salvation with a plausible—if highly conjectural—historical narrative. De Natura was a very different book in tone and methodology than De Procuranda. The introductory treatise dealt neither with technical missionary nor theological points nor with the particularities of colonial rule in Peru; instead, Acosta discussed broader issues of New World nature and cosmography. In particular, he set himself up to refute some of the classical and patristic conceptions of the world that had already been superseded by the Spanish experience in America. Thus, Acosta took issue with such topical problems as the inhabitability of the Torrid Zone and whether or not the skies surrounded the globe of the earth. But if these matters were easily dismissed on logical grounds in light of

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the Spanish experience in America, the mere existence of entire nations populating a continent not foreseen by the ancients posed more fundamental questions. Acosta could easily disprove most of the arguments against the existence of the antipodeans, such as Lactantius’s mocking remark that since the inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere would be forced to live upside-down, they could not be real.61 But arguments such as the one put forward by Augustine in the fourth century were much more serious from a dogmatic point of view. Augustine had denied the existence of inhabited lands outside the known Greco-Roman world because such an idea could not be reconciled with scriptural teachings. His argument was that since the book of Genesis clearly states all human beings descend from Adam, any hypothetical population living on the other side of the world must have come from Europe, Asia, or Africa. Given that human beings lacked the capability of crossing “the boundless tracts of ocean,” Augustine had concluded any mass of land in the Southern Hemisphere must be uninhabited.62 The Spanish experience in America made answering the basic question posed by the argument of the African bishop all the more urgent: how to explain the existence of the native inhabitants of America without contradicting the scriptures? The fundamental unity of the human species could not be doubted; all men and women must descend from Adam and Eve. If it was impossible for the ancients to have crossed from the Old World to the New, then America and every other piece of land in the Western Hemisphere must have been empty, as Augustine argued. But, since the Spaniards had found a flourishing native population upon their arrival, the only logical conclusions were that either the American peoples were the product of a parallel act of creation or they simply were a different kind of humanity, one not included in sacred history.63 The first corollary was inadmissible from a Christian standpoint. The second one, however, was the very point Acosta had wrestled with in his missionary treatise. As a complement to the theological arguments developed in De Procuranda, Acosta set out in De Natura to create a plausible historical narrative that would include the Amer­indians within God’s plan for human redemption. In order to do this, Augustine’s underlying question needed to be met with rational and historical arguments explaining the descent of the New World population from those peopling the Old: “Certainly, we are not to think that there was a second ark of Noah in which men could have arrived to the Indies, much less that some angel brought the first settlers carrying them by the hair, as they did with the prophet Habakkuk,” Acosta noted rather humorously. In fact, he was not to discuss what God could or could not do. Any solution had to be “in accord to reason, and to the order and style of human affairs.”64 Given this requirement, Acosta saw very few possible answers: the first inhabitants had arrived by sea, either in an organized transatlantic expedition (as the Spaniards had done) or accidentally, as the result of a sudden tempest; or, they had arrived long ago by foot. Acosta concurred with Augustine about safely discarding the idea of an organized maritime voyage from the Old World, since the technical advances that allowed transoceanic navigation, such as the invention of the compass, were too



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recent to have been used by the original settlers. No evidence of their use could be found in any of the ancient writers, so it was implausible to think that any ancient nation could have accomplished such a feat. An accidental landing due to a maritime storm that had pushed the helpless sailors away from African or European coasts, on the other hand, could hold as a working hypothesis, especially since modern examples of such wrecks had been documented (48–49). However, this option raised more questions than answers upon closer examination. An accidental arrival, Acosta observed, would explain the human population of the continent but not the presence of animals on it. Since the Universal Deluge had to have flooded the whole world, including America, all its native animals should have perished and the continent repopulated by the offspring of those saved by Noah. Acosta conceded that useful species could have been on board the hypothetical wrecked ship, but it was inconceivable that the sailors would have willingly embarked such noxious animals as foxes, mountain lions, or even skunks that were nonetheless fairly abundant in America. Any theory explaining the arrival of the first human beings onto the continent had to explain at the same time its fauna. Acosta solved this conundrum by postulating the existence of a land bridge between Asia and America, located somewhere near the north or the south end of the continent. After the Flood, both animals and humans could have then popu­ lated the empty continent “gradually by ground travel, arriving in some places and wanting to be in new ones, and moving to different regions for convenience, [so that] all the peoples and nations resulted” (58). Although Acosta admitted to the speculative nature of his reasoning, given that nobody had explored either tip of America up to then, he accepted it as an adequate explanation, at least until experience showed otherwise. In the meantime, Acosta remarked, there was no logical or empirical objection to his conclusion that all of the land masses were continuous, or at least were close enough to each other to allow for human and animal migrations (58). His theory satisfactorily explained the origins of the American peoples within the received frame of sacred history. At the same time, the land bridge hypothesis allowed Acosta to give a historical—if conjectural—ground to the claim he had argued theologically in De Procuranda: that the apparent differences in the intellectual capabilities among different peoples were due to historical reasons, and not to any constitutional deficiency on the part of the American natives. As human populations moved away from the original cultural centers—which Acosta located in the Mediterranean shores for historical and biblical reasons—they gradually lost the main features that defined civilized cultures in the European view, such as the use of alphabetic writing, urban life, political organization, and the existence of organized religious cults. In De Procuranda, Acosta had in fact used these features to postulate a descending classification into which every non-European society could be fitted.65 In the first tier, he located nations that fulfilled all of the requisites described above but had a non-alphabetic writing, such as the Chinese and the Japanese. In the intermediate level, Acosta placed peoples who presented a political organiza-

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tion but lacked writing. According to him, the Aztec and Inca empires belonged to this category.66 Finally, the lowest tier was reserved for groups with no discernible political organization and who usually led a nomadic way of life—the groups the Spaniards referred to as behetrías. Using the idea of the Asian origins of the native peoples, Acosta could explain the different degrees of barbarism he had identified in his missionary treatise simply as a consequence of successive migratory waves from an original point. His three-tiered classification could now be read spatially as an eastward move away from the limits of the Judeo-Christian ancient world. Chinese and Japanese cultures, being closer to the original center, retained more of its features than Amer­indian civilizations did. The apparent incapacity of the latter to comprehend the truth of the Christian message was, for Acosta, a consequence of human history—a function of what he perceived as a cultural involution resulting from a long migration and the Amer­indians’ subsequent isolation from the Mediterranean centers of culture. The cultural differences at the base of this threefold classification of nonChristian, non-European peoples called for different missionary approaches. For those who belonged to the first tier, the best method was to emulate the apostles who had converted the Jews, Greeks, and Romans; that is to say, rationally convincing them of the superiority of the Christian truth without the need of any state support. The two other tiers required a colonial setting or at least the protection of a Christian army in order to preach the Gospels effectively and safely.67 Although Acosta acknowledged that the Society of Jesus had used the first method in Asia—where he located the cultures belonging to the first tier— with considerable success, he was certain that this method would be impossible to apply to the American peoples given their level of cultural development. They needed to learn the basics of European civilization before any level of Christiani­ zation could be taught to them, and this would be possible only in a colonial setting under the rule of a Christian prince.68 Thus, in Acosta’s view, the constant relapse of Andean neophytes into their traditional ways was due neither to any constitutional deficiency nor to their exclusion from the unfolding drama of human struggle for salvation as recounted in the Judeo-Christian historical narratives. Instead, Acosta identified both the incompetence of the secular priests and the strong presence of a native cultural tradition that needed to be overcome through education as the most probable causes of missionary failure. It was for these reasons that the evangelization program he proposed put several demands on doctrineros for its success: They were not only to be intimately acquainted with the official doctrine of the Catholic Church, they would also need to learn the native languages before taking up their parish posts. Furthermore, they would be expected to teach not only with words but also by means of example, leading modest and honest lives that would serve as models of Christian behavior to the Indians. The evangelization of native communities would be a slow and difficult process requiring the constant attention of the priest. To prevent their all-too-common relapse into their ancestral beliefs, the priests would have to constantly “teach them, reprehend them, exhort them,



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reassure them, defend them, and guide them.” In order to achieve this, it would be absolutely necessary “that the fathers and spiritual masters persevere immobile among them.”69 The indoctrination of the Indians would be a gradual process in which both Christian doctrine and European codes of behavior were to replace Andean traditions and practices slowly.70 As Acosta clearly specified in De Procuranda, this would mean a concerted and sustained effort involving government officials, the church hierarchy, and parochial priests.71 As presented in De Procuranda, it was also a very strong argument in favor of Jesuit acceptance of the doctrinas.

Jesuit Missions as Contact Zones Acosta’s method of evangelization was put to test in the newly accepted doctrina of Juli. Located some sixty leagues east of Cuzco, Juli was in a thickly populated area on the shores of Lake Titicaca. When the six Jesuits arrived in Juli in 1576, there were sixteen thousand natives living there, all of them charges of the Crown who were not part of any encomienda. Juli was composed of three closely related parishes: San Pedro, Asunción, and San Juan, San Pedro being the administrative center of the doctrina.72 Later on, the Jesuits would add a fourth parish, Santa Cruz. The priests collectively received an annual salary of three thousand ducats paid by the viceroy.73 Juli proved to be the perfect place for the Jesuits to test the doctrinas as a missionary method. Despite his opposition, even Plaza admitted in his report to Mercurian that “here there are almost none of the difficulties that we feared about our people taking up the doctrinas; regarding seclusion, they live as if they were in a college; regarding the burden to the Indians in supporting the priests, they receive what I have told you from the royal treasury; regarding the physical punishments of the Indians, they have a vicar and a corregidor, who take care of the punishments.” If the Society had to take up any doctrinas, Juli was the most suitable, “because there is no difference with a college except in the obligations of the curacy of souls, and in its administration being subject to the bishop’s inspection.”74 With all certainty, Juli was the place to apply Acosta’s missionary ideas. This positive impression was furthered by the spectacular reception the Juli parishioners gave to Acosta when he visited the doctrina on December 21, 1576, on the occasion of the feast of Saint Thomas Apostle. Although Acosta had not informed them of his arrival, the Jesuits at Juli organized in “two or three hours a most solemn reception” that Acosta took pleasure in describing in detail: The schoolboys walked a long way ahead, singing in their language and in their way. Then came the men in great numbers, dancing two kinds of dances, wearing silk clothes in the Indian manner, and dancing in the Spanish style, and another dance performed by children who could barely walk; next came the pingollos or flutes, and some twenty-five or thirty crosses with their banners, and the leaders

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Missionary Scientists of the town with our fathers, and there was such a multitude of people on the roads, on the streets, and on top of the walls and roofs as if we were the pope’s envoys.75

Acosta was pleasantly surprised to see such discipline and organization, a feeling that only grew when he saw the religious progress the community had made in barely a month of Jesuit teaching. In the eight days of his stay in Juli, Acosta witnessed the baptism of over thirty adults and the marriage ceremonies of well over one hundred couples who had until then lived out of wedlock.76 Juli was certainly a success. Of course this success could not be completely credited to a couple weeks of Jesuit efforts, no matter how hard they had labored. The Dominicans had worked in the area for about thirty years, and only left Juli in 1573, unwilling to fulfill the conditions demanded from them by Toledo to remain in the doctrina.77 But when the Jesuits arrived, they conducted a complete reorganization of the parish. According to Diego Martínez (one of the first Jesuits in Juli), a week after their arrival, the Jesuits summoned all the parishioners, and Alonso de Barzana, the best linguist of the order in Peru, delivered a sermon in Aymara, the tongue spoken by most of the native population in the region. This fact stunned the native audience, who apparently had never been preached to in their own language before. That night, the Jesuits invited the curacas (community leaders) to dinner, where they discussed and agreed on the formal aspects of religious indoctrination so that the daily activities of the community would not be severely disrupted.78 In a practice that would be repeated in other places in South America, the Jesuits would oversee and organize the communal work—mainly shepherding—in order to ensure the economical viability of the doctrina and to prevent idleness among the parishioners. The missionaries and the curacas also agreed on a method of distributing the population among the four parishes, respecting the ties between the different ayllus (the basic units of Andean social structure) as much as possible. The dinner marked one of the most notable differences between the Jesuits and other doctrineros; namely, their disposition to adapt themselves to local conditions. Although the missionaries held the effective power in the doctrina, they delegated some of their authority to the curacas, respecting and engaging the local leadership. The curacas were made responsible for the behavior of the individual members of their ayllus, and among their duties they were to make sure everybody attended Mass, catechism, and every other relevant ceremony. They were also in charge of preventing drunkenness during communal celebrations and denouncing anyone who relapsed to native beliefs.79 The collaboration between missionaries and local leaders proved to be a fruitful one; Juli prospered under their joint guidance, and by the end of the eighteenth century, the community owned some five thousand sheep and over sixteen thousand llamas.80 Administrative duties aside, the Jesuits’ main task was the indoctrination of the natives, and they devoted most of their time to that end. Given what was at stake for Acosta, the first Jesuits sent to Juli had been handpicked for this mis-



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sion. In addition to Alonso de Barzana, who spoke both Quechua and Aymara fluently, two other fully ordained priests, Diego Martínez and Francisco de Medina, spoke Quechua, the lingua franca of the former Inca Empire; they could therefore preach and hear confession from at least some of their spiritual charges. Although the fourth priest sent to Juli, Diego de Bracamonte, seems to have had little talent for languages in general (Plaza noted that the three years of Latin he had taken as a student did not serve him at all), he was known as a natural mediator, a good administrator, and a pious man who prayed daily and who was well versed in the letter and the spirit of Jesuit legislation—all features well suited for the office of superior he was to occupy in Juli.81 The religious life of the doctrina was promptly organized to follow a very intense schedule. On Sundays, the community gathered in the square in front of the church where men and women were split up into groups of twelve or fifteen. One person in each group was designated to lead the prayers and the recitation of the catechism. In order to facilitate the memorization of these texts, the priests encouraged the use of quipus, the knotted strings used as a recording device by the Andean peoples up to this day. A sermon followed, and then Mass was celebrated, accompanied by music performed by native musicians. In the afternoon, the community went in procession to the main square, carrying silver crosses and reciting the catechism in Aymara. The children were also catechized in the afternoon, and a group answered the questions asked by others. Sometimes, instead of a sermon, the Jesuits staged a dialogue based on sacred history, an event that greatly delighted the natives. On weekdays, the children and the elders studied the catechism every day; the adults had to attend only every other day for a couple hours.82 Perhaps the most important and distinctive feature of Juli was the language school established there. Even though most of the Jesuits sent as doctrineros in 1576 spoke at least Quechua, they soon realized that they needed to learn Aymara as well if the evangelization was to be as effective as possible. Francisco de Medina admitted to Acosta that when he first learned of his selection as a missionary in Juli, he had felt “repugnance and feared for my own salvation, seeing how little I know of my own tongue, let alone theirs.”83 Diego Martínez was more optimistic, and affirmed that he wouldn’t change his position for that of the king of Spain, despite the fact that he knew how to say only the Paternoster, the Salve Regina, and the Creed in Aymara. Still, he admitted that they needed someone else to help Barzana confess so many people, for the latter was to the point of feeling ill from lack of rest. The situation would only get worse now that the Jesuits were planning to open a primary school for about two hundred children, and Martínez suggested that lay brother Martín Picón, who also spoke Aymara, could be of the greatest help there.84 The learning of native languages as a precondition for any missionary work was emphasized several times by Acosta in De Procuranda. The 1576 Provincial Congregation had concurred with this view and agreed that the best place to learn Quechua and Aymara would be in the doctrinas, since there the Jesuits

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could get enough practice to master the languages.85 Barzana started to instruct his confrères in Aymara almost as soon as they arrived in Juli. In a couple years, these lectures became a full-fledged school where Jesuit missionaries were taught the Puquina language in addition to the more geographically extended Quechua and Aymara. As the 1579 annual letter to Rome reported, the Jesuit priests in Juli “exercise intensely on the language, and every day get together for one or two hours to make different exercises, compositions, translations, etc. We now have experienced that with this method they can learn enough of the Indian language in four or five months to confess and catechize, and in a year they can preach.”86 This practice received institutional sanction in 1583 when General Aquaviva ordered every individual who entered the Society in Peru to take native language lessons.87 In 1594, the Fifth General Congregation of the Society, among whose participants was Acosta, made the knowledge of native languages compulsory for Jesuits working in America.88 To that end, Juli was designated as a residence for young Jesuits finishing their formation in Peru (a process known as the third probation) in order to ensure that every member of the order was sufficiently exposed to Quechua and Aymara so he could function as a missionary. The special place that language teaching quickly acquired in Juli is amply visible in the anonymous Jesuit chronicle of 1600. In 1576, Acosta’s and the Provincial Congregation’s main motivation to accept Juli was their conviction that the doctrinas were the missionary vehicle that would best cater to the spiritual needs and cultural level of the Andean neophytes. In the annual letter corresponding to 1576, Acosta squarely reported that “the main reason that the fathers of the Society of Jesus had to go there was that the viceroy and His Majesty adamantly insisted on it. Also, it seemed that we ought to experiment with this method of indoctrination, which in this kingdom seems to be the most efficacious for the conversion and salvation of the natives.”89 Barely twenty-four years later, the anonymous Jesuit chronicler unambiguously asserted that the principal consideration that had motivated the Peruvian Jesuits to accept and later keep Juli was because they could establish there “something like a language school for the sons of the Society, who, being away from the commerce with other Spaniards and having no truck with them, dedicated to working only with the Indians, could in a brief time learn the [native] language in order to be sufficiently wholesome workers, able to confess and preach to the Indians.”90 Although formally a mission, the Juli doctrina also functioned as a college in practice, as Plaza had been keen to notice. In spite of the pride with which the anonymous chronicler of 1600 publicized Jesuit success in teaching the natives European ways, the Jesuits were also willing to learn as much as they could from native culture and traditions.91 In fact, constant conversation with the natives in their own language was recommended in the rules Provincial Juan de Atienza wrote for Juli in 1586.92 This practice produced more than just Jesuit missionaries more or less fluent in native languages. In a memorandum written in 1595 by Juan Sebastián, Atienza’s successor as provincial, he reported that “the fathers of Juli have started to write a book of sermons and another of moral examples in



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the Aymara tongue, and they have also written a vocabulary [of the same language].”93 In 1612, an Aymara grammar and dictionary compiled by the Italian Jesuit Ludovico Bertonio was published by the printing press the Jesuits had in Juli.94 These works were the product of a close collaboration between Jesuit linguists and native informants. Bertonio asked the people of Juli, who had been taught to read and write by the Jesuits, to translate into Aymara sample texts based on the life of Christ, the lives of the saints, and moral examples. This exercise had, of course, an evangelizing purpose that was not lost on Bertonio, but these translations, along with his daily experience of talking to the Indians and carefully listening to what they had to say, also formed the basic corpus on which the Italian Jesuit based his grammatical and lexicographical research. As Sabine MacCormack has aptly summarized, when it came down to Andean languages and cultures, in Juli the Jesuit teachers became the students and the native students became their teachers.95 As we shall see in the following chapters, this intellectual interaction between missionaries and natives would become one of the staples of Jesuit scientific activity in South America. Juli became the model for other Jesuit missions in South America, most famously in Paraguay. Here, as in other places of the continent, the cohabitation of the missionaries with the native communities stimulated the intellectual pursuits of the Jesuits. During the seventeenth century, the Jesuit missionaries published a flurry of grammars and vocabularies of native languages—in some cases the only ones ever written. Languages like the Millcayac and the Allentillac spoken in the Cuyo region of present-day Argentina, or the Mapudungun, spoken by the Chilean Mapuche, were systematized for the first time by Luis de Valdivia during the first decade of the seventeenth century.96 In 1595 in Coimbra, Joseph de Anchieta published a grammar of the Tupi language, and in 1639, Antonio Ruiz de Montoya’s Tesoro de la lengua guaraní appeared.97 But the collaboration between Jesuit missionaries and native informers was not limited only to lexicographical and linguistic research. As we will see in the next two chapters, the use of native informants from the missions was an important aspect of Jesuit botanical and medical activity in South America. It is in this regard that the Jesuit missions can be conceptualized as contact zones—as privileged spaces where individuals belonging to different cultural and historical traditions came together in unequal power positions under which both parties exchanged information relevant to their respective cultures.98 The fact Juli was organized following the model of Jesuit colleges, as Plaza informed his superiors, only accentuated this feature. Although evangelization was the Jesuits’ main concern in the missions and doctrinas, it shared their attention with more scholarly pursuits. In his 1586 rules, Atienza recommended that the doctrineros use any spare time they had to devote themselves to the study of native languages “and other subjects” so they could regain the strength they needed for the strenuous task of converting the natives to Christianity.99 As in the European colleges envisioned by Ignatius Loyola, in places like Juli and the Paraguayan missions, quiet dedication to one’s studies was not seen as opposed to the more active pastoral

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duties of a missionary, but as a valid means of achieving spiritual ends, not unlike prayer or divine contemplation.100 This combination of pastoral goals and scholarly interest would mark one of the most peculiar features of the activity of the Society of Jesus in South America. As in the case of Bertonio (for whom grammatical and lexicographical study was an indispensable tool for advancing the order’s missionary agenda), other Jesuits saw a similar function for the study of nature. At any rate, as we will see in the remainder of this first part, Jesuit missions and doctrinas were places where intellectual activity and scientific research were actively pursued, and information about natural phenomena was constantly being exchanged through the order’s epistolary networks. And, just as in Bertonio’s case, the collaboration of native informants was directed—and sometimes enforced—by Jesuit priests taking advantage of their superior position in the mission’s hierarchy. This fact marks one of the fundamental differences between Jesuit intellectual activity in the American Spanish possessions and the work members of the order carried out in the colleges and universities in Europe. Unlike the studies of Christopher Clavius, Giambattista Riccioli, and Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, to name just a few European Jesuit writers, the scientific research pursued by the Jesuits in ­seventeenth-century South America was truly a colonial enterprise, both in methods and objectives.

W

hen José de Acosta returned to Spain in 1586, Juli was solidly established as a model reduction that embodied his vision for the evangelization of native Andeans, and the relationships between Crown officials and the Peruvian Jesuits were on a better foot. Juan de la Plaza, who always opposed the doctrinas, had finished his visita in 1579. In 1581, Francisco de Toledo had been called back to Spain and was succeeded as viceroy by Martín Enríquez de Almansa. By the end of the sixteenth century, the acceptance of the doctrinas had ceased to be an issue for the Jesuits. With the creation of the Paraguayan province in 1607, the Juli model of reduction replaced the itinerant missions that had been used to evangelize the Guarani groups up to that point. The same model was used when, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits started to evangelize the tribes that inhabited Moxos in the Bolivian Amazon.101 In fact, in 1603, Claudio Aquaviva sent to the Peruvian province an instruction intended to foster and improve the missionary activities of the viceroyalty—activities that he now dubbed “the main objective of our mission in those lands.”102 Although the Jesuits still practiced urban ministries and led successful and thriving colleges for the offspring of the colonial elite in almost every Spanish American city in which they were present, their priorities had changed since the time of their arrival in Peru: as Aquaviva recognized, missionary enterprises were now at the forefront of Jesuit activity in South America. Acosta’s tenure as provincial had been instrumental to this change. He had not only pushed for the Jesuit acceptance of the doctrinas at the 1576 Provincial Congregation, he had managed to quench Plaza’s opposition to the project at the



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same time. His manual gave the Jesuit missionaries a set of guidelines to follow when confronted with the diversity of cultures, environments, and local conditions in which they would have to make do. Acosta’s work, with its combination of missionary concerns and scientific curiosity (represented in the simultaneous publication of De Natura and De Procuranda as a single volume), also marked a path to be followed by other Jesuits during the seventeenth century. Acosta, in fact, translated De Natura into Spanish and greatly expanded it, turning it into a full-fledged natural history of America that included the results of his research in the history and mores of the Aztec and Inca cultures. The resulting Historia natural y moral de las Indias, published in 1590, became one of the most popular and influential natural histories of the New World until the eighteenth century, with translations into all the major European languages. But even this book—an ostensibly philosophical treatise that sought to describe American nature and to explain the causes of its natural phenomena—was written with the evangelization of the Amer­indians in mind.103 Acosta’s view of scientific research as a spiritual enterprise to inform and foster the missionary endeavors of the Society of Jesus in South America was clearly articulated in his 1588 dedication of the joint edition of De Natura and De Procuranda to King Philip II: “If, as befits God’s ministers, we can achieve a faithful and prudent treatment of [the matters of natural philosophy and the propagation of the Gospel], without a doubt big advances will be made in the knowledge and veneration of Christ.” The project was embraced by several Jesuit missionaries who followed in Acosta’s footsteps during the seventeenth century. As we will see in the next two chapters, both the opportunities and the challenges presented by the missions pursued by the Society of Jesus in different parts of the continent allowed some of its members to combine their interests in natural research with their apostolic goal of bringing the native Americans into the flock of the Catholic Church.

Chapter 2

Confessing the Power to Heal

O

n April 11, 1593, the city of Santiago was preparing to celebrate the im  minent arrival of the first Jesuits in Chile. The occasion was a joy  ous one. The settlers, impoverished after decades of warfare against the Mapuche people, and separated from the cultural and administrative centers in Peru by the inhospitable Atacama Desert, were eager to welcome the Jesuits. After several unsuccessful attempts, the Chilean authorities had finally convinced both the Society’s superiors and the Spanish king to send a small group of priests to their southernmost frontier of the empire to take care of the education of the conquistadors’ offspring. This fact was somewhat vaguely acknowledged by the Peruvian provincial, Juan Sebastián, who sent seven priests to Chile “to help their neighbors by means of the ministries regularly used by the Society of Jesus.”1 Given the fact that elsewhere in South America the Jesuits had usually founded a college or a residence as their base of operations, the citizens of Santiago could reasonably expect them to do the same in their city, thus giving their sons the education they sorely needed. Having been warned of the festivities being prepared in their honor, the leader of the Jesuit expedition, Baltasar Piñas, decided to make a show of Jesuit modesty and shunned the homage. The group therefore entered Santiago at dawn on the next day and went directly to the Dominican convent, where they had been offered lodging until they could find a place to reside. When later that day they received the official visit of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of the city, the Jesuits refused to reveal their plans until they could speak to all the citizens. That occasion arose a week later. On Easter Sunday, Piñas delivered a sermon to the Spanish population of Santiago in which he presented himself and his six companions. Invoking the order’s legislation and its founder’s wishes, he stated that unlike other religious orders, the Jesuit way of proceeding involved traveling to all corners of the world to work for the salvation of souls. He added that they were also aware of the poverty of Chile and of the city of Santiago in particular—a product, he acknowledged, of the “long and stubborn war that it

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had endured for over forty years” against the Mapuche people. Therefore, they had decided not to establish themselves in Santiago nor in any other city for that matter, to avoid imposing the burden of their presence on the neighbors. Instead, they would travel around the country, tending to the spiritual needs of the Spaniards, but also keeping their freedom to travel into Mapuche-controlled territory to evangelize the natives.2 Clearly, the newly arrived priests were choosing missionary over pedagogical ministries. Piñas’s sermon shows how profoundly the experience gained by the order during their first decades in Peru had altered the way in which the Jesuits conceived of their mission. As we saw in the previous chapter, the instructions issued by Borgia to the Jesuits sent to Peru in 1567 had made clear that pedagogy and preaching to the Spanish living in the cities should be the main tasks taken up by the Society in South America. However, both the clash with Viceroy Toledo over the doctrinas and the missionary program pushed by Acosta during his tenure as Peruvian superior put the evangelization of native communities at the forefront of the Jesuit agenda. Understandably, Piñas’s declaration of intentions caused a considerable stir among the santiaguinos, who had expected the Jesuits to reside in the city and open a college for their sons. The citizens rallied together and successfully lobbied for a Jesuit residence and college in Santiago, gathering enough money to buy two houses and to endow the nascent college with the resources needed to ensure its viability.3 Despite the opening of the College of San Miguel, the Jesuits pushed forward their missionary plans. The Jesuit Luis de Valdivia, who would later have a leading role in defining the colonial strategy toward the Mapuche in the early seventeenth century, set out immediately to work with the natives who lived in the city as servants of the Spaniards. Applying the lessons learned by the Society in Juli, Valdivia became both teacher and student of the Indians, instructing them in Catholic dogma while at the same time learning their language from them. He soon started to systematize the Mapudungun language into a grammar and to compile a Spanish-Mapudungun dictionary, “with which in a short period of time the Indians were being taught in their own language and they could learn the catechism in it.”4 At the same time, the Jesuit Gabriel de Vega was evangelizing the African slaves. The Jesuits organized both groups into sodalities that publicly displayed their progress during religious festivities, “setting out in procession from the Dominican church toward the main square and singing their prayers on the streets in the tongue of the Indians, an event that caused much pleasure and consolation for everybody.”5 These examples show how well the lessons spelled out by Acosta in De Procuranda were assimilated into the missionary program of the Society of Jesus. Unlike other religious orders working in Chile, the Jesuits took pains to learn the native languages in order to make Christianity more accessible to the Amer­ indians, even for those individuals more or less accustomed to the Spanish language and mores, as was the case with the members of the Indian and African sodalities in Santiago.6 In fact, the systematic description in dictionaries and

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grammars of Amerindian languages for evangelical purposes was an essential part of the agenda pursued by the Chilean Jesuits. Besides his grammar and vocabulary of the Mapudungun language, Valdivia also wrote grammars and catechisms in the Millcayac and Allentiacan languages spoken in the Cuyo region, on the eastern side of the Andes.7 Valdivia’s work was a product of the Jesuit view of knowledge of native languages as an indispensable tool for evangelization. This view, articulated most forcefully by Acosta and consecrated by the Fifth General Congregation in 1594, produced grammars, vocabularies, and standardized cate­ chisms in several of the native languages of South America during the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries.8 The emphasis on native language learning and the longer stays or even permanent residencies—whenever possible—of Jesuits among the Amer­indian communities, championed by Acosta, encouraged closer contact with native cultures. When in 1609 the Italian Jesuit Joan Bautista Ferrufino was sent to establish a Jesuit residence in the Chiloe Archipelago in southern Chile, he found that almost all the native communities living on the main island spoke a dialect of Mapudungun. The smaller islands and the fiords scattered south of Chiloe, however, were populated by a different ethnic group, the Chono peoples, who he described as “blond, their faces being of fair complexion . . . polite, very pacific and ­humble,” and who spoke an altogether different language.9 The Chono tribes regu­larly traveled up to the Spanish settlements on the main island to barter. During one of those trade expeditions, Ferrufino met a Chono leader who spoke some ­Mapudungun, and who was accompanied by another native fluent in the same language. Ferrufino seized the opportunity, and with the latter’s help he spent two days translating Valdivia’s Mapudungun catechism into the Chono language. Upon finishing his task, he checked the quality of the resulting translation with the bilingual cacique, as well as with “others who told me it was good.”10 Without judging the unlikely accuracy on finer theological points of this double translation (from Spanish into Mapudungun, and then into the Chono language), this anecdote reveals how eager the Jesuits were to learn from the peoples they were to evangelize. In fact, Ferrufino spent several days interviewing both the Chono leader and his companion in order to learn as much as possible of their customs and way of living. He recorded this information in a letter sent two years later to Provincial Diego de Torres to help him decide on the convenience of keeping the Chiloe mission. This letter and the hastily translated catechism, flawed as it may have been, stand as a testimony to the Jesuit willingness to immerse themselves in the culture of the people they attempted to evangelize—a willingness that stemmed from their view of the gathering of cultural and ethnographical information as the key to change those very ways of living they were recording. This utilitarian view of knowledge about native cultures was of course not unique to the Jesuits. In Mexico, the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún spent almost forty-five years investigating every aspect of Nahua culture in order to “preach against these things (idolatry, idolatrous rites, and superstitions) and especially to know if [the Indians] still practice them.”11 In 1570, the Dominican



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friar Diego Durán also undertook description of Nahua rituals and religious beliefs in order to help Catholic priests to better control native relapses into traditional religious worship. Among the Jesuits working in the Peruvian viceroyalty, the first one to attempt such an enterprise was Acosta, who in 1590 clearly articulated the view of the investigation of native cultures as an essential step toward achieving their complete Christianization, since it would enable the priests to see “if clearly or by way of dissimulation [the natives] are now practicing [their rites], and to that effect many grave and diligent men wrote in long relations what they could find, and even the provincial councils have commanded that [these rites] be put on paper and published. . . . So in the land of the Indians, every information about these matters that can be given to the Spaniards is important for the wellbeing of the Indians.”12 What separated Jesuit inquiries into native cultures from the previous efforts of individuals such as Sahagún and Durán was their systematic and corporative approach to them. The rigorous and homogeneous intellectual and spiritual training undergone by every member of the Society, along with the fact that all Jesuits had to devote themselves to teaching at some point or another in their careers, forced them to systematize their relationship with culture and knowledge.13 At the same time, the constant exchange of information about the nature and customs of the different parts of the globe where the Society operated allowed the development of a sense of unity in their methods and stimulated a comparative and more sympathetic view of native cultures.14 In turn, these attitudes made the Jesuits more prone to seek native collaboration, as we saw in the case of Juli, and to accommodate Christian teachings to native concepts. This approach sometimes put the Jesuit missionaries at odds with the church hierarchy and with other religious orders. As early as 1552, Pero Fernandes Sardinha, Bishop of Brazil, complained to the Jesuit superiors in Lisbon that their missionaries were going too far in embracing the native way of living, and accused them of being overly permissive toward the practice of native rituals. Ferrufino may have been betrayed by his missionary zeal in his decision to enroll the help of an unchristianized native to translate a Catholic catechism, but his was by no means an isolated case.15 Despite sporadic accusations of going native, the Jesuits continued this missionary strategy until their expulsion from the territories of the Crown of Castile in 1767. Although the members of other religious orders did not always appreciate the evangelical outcome of Jesuit practice, Jesuit cultural research in the missions proved to be of great importance for the South American colonies.16 This was particularly the case with Jesuit descriptions of the vernacular flora of the continent—probably the most important Jesuit contribution to European scholarship about South America along with their descriptions of native languages. Indeed, the sheer number of species described in Jesuit herbals and natural histories suggests that the gathering of ethnobotanical information from the natives was not the least among the activities performed by the missionaries. The handwritten herbals that circulated among the Paraguayan missions, for example, de-

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scribed over three hundred medicinal plants and herbs, including their Guarani names, their preparation, and dosage.17 In his Historia general del reyno de Chile, the Jesuit chronicler Diego de Rosales described the medicinal use of more than a hundred indigenous plants; in fact, his Historia is still considered one of the main sources for the study of Mapuche ethnobotanical lore in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.18 Jesuit interest in the medicinal uses of native flora can be partially explained by the elevated cost of European medicines. In Chile, the purchase of medicines added up to almost 61 percent of the total expenses of the missions, an amount even higher than the money spent on the ornaments for the mission churches.19 However, both the remote location of the missions and the general poverty of colonial Chile made the import of medicines insufficient and economically inefficient. The frequent epidemics of smallpox, typhus, and other European diseases that decimated the native populations only aggravated the problem, making the recourse to native flora all the more urgent in order to meet the healthcare needs not only of the neophytes, but also of the Spanish population in the cities. The need to secure access to effective and, above all, inexpensive medicines was of paramount importance not only to the missions, but also to the Spanish settlers in general. Although fully ordained Jesuit priests could not devote themselves to medicine, except under extreme circumstances, they nonetheless took care of the Spanish population by setting up apothecaries attached to their colleges, where Jesuit lay brothers distributed medicines and took care of the sick at no charge.20 The recourse to the native was furthered by what the Spanish settlers perceived as a veritable wealth of native medicinal plants. Rosales, for instance, told the story of an unnamed French physician who, en route from Buenos Aires to (presumably) Lima, stopped briefly in Chile to herborize in the mountains surrounding Santiago. Amazed by the number and quality of the medicinal plants he found, he reportedly said that if only the Chilean settlers knew how to recognize them, they would not need to pay for European medicines, for they could find the remedy for any illness in the outskirts of the city.21 Indeed, the recourse to native medicine was well extended among the Spanish population. Ovalle noted that when gravely ill, most Spaniards preferred to call a machi, or native shaman, rather than subjecting themselves to the doings of Spanish physicians or surgeons.22 Although this choice is understandable if we consider that the medical profession was largely unregulated in Chile, and that the few practitioners that could be found lacked any medical training whatsoever, the fact is nonetheless revealing of the importance of native healers and native medicine during the first centuries of the Chilean colony.23 It was precisely in the missions where the Jesuits could gain access to native knowledge about medicinal flora. However, not all the missionaries were as lucky as Ferrufino had been in finding a willing native informant. In fact, the very establishment of a mission in areas not fully controlled by the Spaniards was a difficult and often perilous task. The Jesuits frequently had to endure the opposition of the indigenous political and spiritual leaders, who did not see with sympathy



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the Jesuits’ attempts to change their traditional ways of life. The killing of three Jesuits in 1611 in Elicura, Chile, bear witness to the level of violence that this opposition could reach. When not threatening the missionaries’ lives, the influence of the shamans on native communities proved to be a veritable challenge to the conveyance of the Christian message. The Mapuche, for instance, were reluctant to accept baptism, which they regarded as a lethal spell cast on them by the missionaries. This conception was actively reinforced by the machis, who denounced the death of anyone who had been recently baptized.24 Despite the opposition of the machis, a series of high-profile baptisms that occurred in the year 1627 provoked a moderate optimism among the Jesuits about the progress of Mapuche evangelization. For Alonso de Ovalle, to give but one example, these voluntary conversions hinted at a change in Mapuche attitudes toward the sacrament of baptism.25 As a proof of the positive turn of events, Ovalle summarized some of the most significant conversions that had occurred that year. Despite the importance of baptizing Mapuche political and military leaders, the most crucial baptisms in Ovalle’s mind had been those of “three machis, which is the name they give to their female healers, of which there are very many, all of them in commerce with the devil.”26 In all three cases, Ovalle described the struggle of the missionaries to free the machis from the influence of the devil, emphasizing in a dramatic fashion the formula of exorcism contained in the baptismal rite: “Before leaving, the devil grabbed her by the throat with such a strength that she was suffocating, but the remedy arrived: the father put over her throat a relic [of Ignatius], loudly urging her to say ‘Jesus.’ She could not speak a word, but with the help of the Holy Ghost she was finally able to utter the holy name of Christ, and at that moment the devil left her. Et cum ejecisset Daemonium, loquutus est mutus.”27 After being baptized, all three machis abandoned the practice of medicine, leaving both the physical and spiritual care of their communities to the Jesuit priests. Although these stories of success demonstrate how important it was for the Jesuits to obtain the conversion of the shamans in order to secure their own spiritual authority, the exceptionality of these cases suggests that these conversions were rather rare. The wide range of functions fulfilled by the shamans in native communities—particularly the superposition of spiritual and medicinal roles— inevitably led to confrontations over authority and jurisdiction between them and the Jesuit missionaries.28 Since shamans drew their authority and prestige mainly from their ability as healers, the missionaries were forced to assume the role of medicine men in the missions if they were to displace them as spiritual leaders.29 Under these circumstances, the knowledge of the medicinal uses of local flora was of paramount importance for the missionaries. Despite the vast quantity of indigenous plants described by the Jesuits, the access to native knowledge about local flora was often a difficult enterprise. The shamans’ opposition to the missionaries made the natives wary of giving any information to the priests. Ovalle reported in 1646 that most of the local medicinal plants were known only by the machis, “who especially hide them from

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the Spaniards, to whom they teach the virtue of one or another only as a sign of great friendship, reserving for themselves the science of all the others.”30 Although Ovalle claimed that over the years the Mapuche had revealed the use of so many of these plants that most of them were by then known to the Spaniards, he found himself capable of describing only three of them. Two of the plants discussed by Ovalle, the quinchamali and the culen, were used to treat wounds and traumas. Ovalle’s sources of information about them were Spanish soldiers or service Indians from the Jesuit college in Santiago. The third plant described in his book, and for which Ovalle gave no name, was used by him as a remedy against typhus.31 Although he knew that the natives used plants and herbs to treat a wide variety of health problems, his own knowledge of Mapuche pharmacopoeia seems sketchy and incomplete, and mostly related to the treatment of battle wounds—a fact that is not surprising given the state of constant warfare in Chile during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite his claims to the contrary, the “science of the herbs” he attributed to the machis does not appear to have been readily available to the Spanish population, and is conspicuously absent from his otherwise extensive treatment of Chilean nature. In part, the secrecy of the shamans was due to their ongoing competition with the missionaries and the defense of their privileged position within native communities. But their silence was also due to ritual secrecy and to the private nature of the shamanic knowledge of plants and their use, which was frequently revealed to the shaman in a dream or a vision.32 Among the machis who work in the Mapuche communities in present-day southern Chile, for instance, secrecy about healing techniques is one of the main ritual obligations that must be followed by the shaman in order to preserve and increase her powers.33 The elevated number of plants that Jesuit missionaries such as Rosales were able to describe thus brings up a series of questions, particularly regarding the methods used to gather this information and about the identity of their informants. As we shall see in this chapter, the ongoing conflict between missionaries and machis for spiritual control of the Mapuche communities made the former apply a double strategy to marginalize the shamans and, at the same time, elicit ethnobotanical information from the Mapuche neophytes. The Jesuits would then attempt to use this information to legitimize themselves as the communities’ sole spiritual and physical caregivers.

Friends and Enemies in the Jesuit Missions in Arauco The Jesuit missions to Mapuche-controlled lands began almost immediately after their establishment in Santiago. According to the Jesuit chronicler Miguel de Olivares, although the Mapuche people were not in arms at the time of the arrival of the first Jesuits, there were no priests or doctrineros working among them. The natives living in or near the Spanish settlements of Imperial, Valdivia, and

Río Ita ta

Concepción

Chillán

✝ Buena

Esperanza

Rí oB ío Bí o Boroa

✝

Río Toltén

Valdivia

Santiago

Nahuel-Huapi

Area of interest

Castro

ar c ch ho i pe n o lag s o

chiloe island

© MollyMAPS

Map 2.1: Jesuit missions in southern Chile during the seventeenth century

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Osorno did have priests who preached to them, but only in Spanish, a language that the Mapuche did not understand: “Since the Jesuits were sent by their king to convert the natives and, moved by their own [apostolic] zeal, once they had put their college in order and had attended to those living in the farms around Santiago, the father rector [of the college] Luis de Valdivia sent two priests to Arauco and Tucapel to preach to the Indians.”34 Hernando de Aguilera, who had worked with Valdivia in the Indian ministry in Santiago and spoke the Mapudungun language, was sent along with Gabriel de Vega to an itinerant mission south of the Bío Bío River. Vega was soon after called back to Santiago to teach the­ology at the College of San Miguel, and was replaced in the missions by Valdivia himself. The itinerant mission to Mapuche lands was repeated in 1595 and again in 1597.35 However, the Mapuche uprising of 1598, in which most Spanish settlements south of the Bío Bío River were wiped out, put a sudden stop to Jesuit activity in the area. For the next fifteen years, the Jesuits devoted themselves to urban ministries, such as teaching at the College of San Miguel in Santiago; the organization of religious sodalities for Spaniards, natives, and Africans in the cities; and the evangelization of the natives living on the conquistadors’ estates that surrounded the city. They were not to resume their attempts at evangelizing the fiercely independent tribes in southern Chile until Valdivia’s return from Spain. Valdivia was probably the most important Jesuit in seventeenth-century Chile. His political and diplomatic abilities, along with his extensive knowledge of the Mapuche language and customs, made him a respected—if controversial—figure among both the native and the Spanish leadership. Born in 1560 in Granada, Spain, Valdivia joined the Society of Jesus at the age of twenty. Soon after being ordained priest, he was sent to Peru, where he stayed first in the College of Cuzco before being sent to Juli to learn native languages, as every Jesuit that arrived at the viceroyalty was required to do. A good administrator, he was sent to Chile in the first Jesuit expedition led by Baltasar Piñas, where he occupied the rectorate of the newly founded College of San Miguel.36 During his long career in Chile, Valdivia combined his administrative duties with his missionary endeavors. His experience with the Mapuche people, who regularly received and lodged him for periods of time during his itinerant missions, led him to a deep conviction that the natives’ war against the Spaniards was fundamentally just. Valdivia’s views informed both his political activities and the missionary approach adopted by the Jesuits in early seventeenth-century Chile. According to Valdivia, the cause of the never-ending war waged by the Mapuche against the Spanish colonists was to be found in the constant abuses perpetrated by the conquistadors. In a letter sent on January 4, 1607 to Pedro Fernández de Castro, Count of Lemos and president of the Council of the Indies, Valdivia reported an interview he had had with several Mapuche leaders: Often the caciques asked me how could they put a stop to the belligerence of their quidugeres, that is how they call their vassals, if yesterday they were free soldiers, and today found themselves forced to work in the mines with no wage?



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And how would they believe that their sons and daughters would not be taken from them to be forever domestic servants in the [Spaniards’] households if they plainly see it happening, and hear from others that this cruelty was used with those who are old peaceful friends [of the Spaniards]?37

Despite the existence of a body of legislation that limited the way in which an encomendero could exploit the natives in his charge, during the sixteenth century in Chile both the isolation from the political centers of the empire and the indolence and connivance of colonial officials gave Spanish settlers leeway to abuse the natives.38 “At the root of the long duration of this war,” asserted Valdivia, “is the Indians’ personal service [to the Spaniards].” If Chile was to enjoy the peace that so desperately needed, this problem had to be remedied. The conquest and settlement of Chile had proved to be a most onerous enterprise for the Crown. The fierce and stubborn defense of their land and freedom by the Mapuche, which in fact outlived the Spanish Empire and became a conflict with the nascent Republic of Chile, inflicted several setbacks on the Spanish colony, and at times, as in the 1598 uprising, threatened to end the Spanish presence in the land.39 The Crown was forced to institute a professional army to defend Chilean towns and settlements, and by the early 1600s it was paying one hundred twenty thousand ducats annually in wages and military equipment.40 Given the situation, the Crown was certainly open to suggestions. Concurring with Valdivia’s view of indigenous personal service as the underlying cause for the conflict, and much to the dismay of the encomenderos, in 1608 the Chilean Jesuits rejected the forced labor regime of the natives working at the College of Santiago, determined daily wages and work hours for those who wished to work for them, and even established a pension for all those workers over fifty who were forced to retire.41 In 1609, Valdivia was sent by the Chilean Jesuits to Spain to propose a new approach to the Chilean war. In a private audience with the king, Valdivia insisted on personal service as the cause of the war, reminding him that the conflict meant over three hundred thousand pesos drawn every year from the royal treasury. But this time Valdivia added a religious dimension to the problem: the constant state of warfare was the biggest impediment of all to evangelizing the natives, and thus to discharging the royal conscience. He painted a somber picture of the spiritual consequences of the last Mapuche uprising for the entire colony. Leaving the military and economical assessments for more qualified commentators, Valdivia noted that given the nature of his mission in court, he could only “cry and lament for the spiritual losses; my heart cannot suffer seeing with tearful eyes so many noble matrons and maidens [captured in Mapuche raids] living among barbarians, getting used to their profane rites; I cannot suffer so many thousands of enemies deprived of any hope of salvation; nor that most of our Indian friends, afraid of suffering more vexations, stubbornly refuse to embrace the Catholic faith.”42 The war was threatening both Spanish and Mapuche eternal salvation. The plan Valdivia expounded to the king was simple: personal service should

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be abolished, and all offensive military actions against the Mapuche tribes who still resisted Spanish rule stopped immediately. Instead of armed incursions, the pacification of those groups would be achieved by sending missionaries to the area. They would attempt to Christianize the natives while trying to secure their allegiance to the Spanish Crown. In this strategy, the professional army that the Crown maintained in Chile would have a supporting role, securing the border between Mapuche- and Spanish-controlled territories and using to that effect the chain of forts and military outposts that had been established along the Bío Bío River by Governor Juan de Ribera in 1602. The soldiers would also ensure the safety of the missionaries working in the area, escorting them when needed during their itinerant missions into Mapuche territory. The plan, known in Chilean historiography as the defensive war, was examined by the council of war and gained royal approval in 1610. Valdivia returned to Chile in 1612, endowed with ample political and ecclesiastical power to implement it.43 Despite the Lascasian overtones that resonated in Valdivia’s defensive war plan, its roots can be safely traced back to Acosta’s missionary manual. In Acosta’s threefold classification of non-European cultures, the Mapuche could be fitted somewhere between the lower end of the second tier and the upper end of the third. They did not live in cities, but were not nomadic peoples either; they certainly lacked writing, and did not form a unified political entity, but in times of war could and did form alliances led by a commonly chosen military leader. Their conversion, therefore, would have to be achieved by sufficiently trained missionaries who would go into their lands and preach the Gospel, “with human help and the support of soldiers who can defend their lives.”44 The role of the army, according to Acosta, was to be eminently defensive, it being morally and legally illicit to attack people in the name of religion.45 Upon his return to Chile, Valdivia immediately set out to organize Jesuit missionary activity among the Mapuche. In 1613, he founded a residence in Concepción, the military capital of the kingdom, strategically situated on the mouth of the Bío Bío River. It would serve as the headquarters for the Jesuit missionaries. In 1616, the Jesuits decided to go deeper into the land and found two missions, Arauco and Buena Esperanza, each located within the shelter of a Spanish fort, from where the missionaries could set out on itinerant missions into the Mapuche heartland. The priests in Arauco and Buena Esperanza had to tend to a variety of social and ethnic groups. Besides the Spanish and mestizo population of the forts, the Jesuits evangelized the so-called indios amigos, Mapuche groups who had accepted Spanish rule and helped the regular army in their war against the clans who remained hostile to the Spanish presence. The indios amigos sometimes lived in towns surrounding the Spanish forts, but most commonly they were scattered in the countryside around them.46 Although the amigos lived in close contact with the Spanish soldiers—or, maybe for that reason—the Jesuit missionaries were appalled when they realized how much work remained to be done in their evangelization. According to Rosales, the amigos living near the Arauco garrison were



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“arrogant, proud, of a ferocious nature, given to cruelty, and exercised in taking lives and spilling blood, lacking piety and inclination toward God and the things of our holy Catholic religion. . . . Most of them are heathens, and all of them have numerous women, and are so inclined to sorcery and drunkenness that the fervor of the fathers who catechize them can do nothing against their vices.”47 The evangelization of both amigo and enemigo communities was a difficult and often perilous task. The missionaries had to take turns visiting all the communities in their charge, accompanied either by a group of soldiers or by a few amigos. The absence of priests residing in native villages made the evangelization process all the more difficult. To solve this problem, the Jesuits asked each community to build a chapel, and tried to convince its ulmen (tribal leader) to gather his people in it to hear sermons and to confess every time the missionaries arrived. This method, derived from Juli’s practice of engaging local leaders in the evangelization of their charges, was based on the Jesuits’ keen eye toward recognizing the leadership structure of Mapuche communities and adapting their methods to local conditions. The Jesuits were, in fact, the first group of Spaniards to identify the political structure of Mapuche communities as a group of clans linked by kinship under the direction of an ulmen. Up to then, Spanish settlers and clerics had considered the Mapuche groups as behetrías—bands without any recognizable form of political organization—who only rallied together during military campaigns.48 This recognition allowed the Jesuit missionaries to articulate a strategy that made their task easier, by prompting the different leaders to make a show of their power and prestige among the Mapuche communities, and to increase them. In Ranculgue, for instance, the Jesuit missionary Alonso del Pozo announced his visit to the leader Antepangui by sending him a cross along with a petition to gather his people and take them to the village church the next morning. After the sermon, Antepangui returned the cross to Pozo, who declined to take it back, asking him instead to give it to Neculgueno, the ulmen of a neighboring community. In this way, the Jesuits established a competition between the leaders, “each of them striving to stand out by bringing more people than his competitor” in order to gain social prestige and authority.49 The importance of obtaining, if not their conversion, at least the collaboration of the ulmens was given by what the Jesuits perceived as the fickleness of the amigos, who could easily change their opinion about the missionaries. Ovalle complained that the amigos suddenly turned into enemies, holding the priests hostage because “they are easily persuaded by the devil that the law we preach is false and baptism is a spell that would bring death upon them.”50 The idea of baptism as a spell that killed the neophytes sprang from the Jesuit practice of baptizing only in articulo mortis to avoid apostasy, and was furthered by the machis, whose influence on the amigo communities was largely unchecked. Writing in the eighteenth century, the Jesuit Miguel de Olivares reflected upon the Jesuit practice during the early seventeenth century of denying baptism to children who, with all certainty, would be “nursed with the milk of infidelity” and therefore would grow up to be apostates. For that reason the Jesuits “were hesitant to bap-

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tize infants unless they were in grave danger of death. That is why the sorcerers persuaded them that baptism was the killer of their sons and of everybody who was baptized.”51 Olivares illustrated the nefarious influence of the machis with the story of Ingaipil, the ulmen of an amigo community charged with protecting the roads from hostile Mapuche groups. Ingaipil was known for his dedication to the Spanish cause, and he was “very close to the fathers and to all the things of our holy faith; he publicly defended our religion among the barbarians, and set out to build churches, and to remove [from his people] the fear of baptism and of confession.” In order to do so, Ingaipil decided to baptize his only son as a practical example for his people that baptism was not a killing spell. Given his close collaboration with the Spaniards, an official from the Arauco fort volunteered to be the child’s godfather, and the ceremony was dignified with a volley of cannon shots and a military parade. “As soon as the infant was baptized,” however, “by God’s inscrutable will, the boy got a sudden fever that killed him in three days.” Immediately, the machis seized upon this opportunity and started to preach against baptism, accusing the priests of killing the ulmen’s son. Devastated and confused by the death of his son, Ingaipil was on the brink of abjuring religion and all things Spanish, when he was providentially comforted and consoled by a Jesuit priest.52 Although in the end, as befitted Olivares’s apologetic narrative, Ingaipil remained loyal to the Spanish and a faithful Christian, it is clear that the Jesuits could not always avoid apostasy or the amigos’ changing of sides. As Olivares’s story shows, the anxiety that the machis’ influence on the amigo communities provoked in the Jesuits lasted well into the eighteenth century.

The Demonization of the Shaman The influence of the shamans on the amigo communities was, therefore, an obstacle for the Jesuit missionary endeavor among the Mapuche. Given the volatile situation on the frontier between Spanish and native lands, and the fact that the army could not effectively guarantee the security of priests if they ventured further into Mapuche territory, the Jesuits could not rely on the methods they had used in Peru to keep the influence of the shamans in check. If in Juli the Jesuits could build a house especially designed to lock away native healers and priests, and then subject them to intensive indoctrination programs, the violence with which their pacifying efforts were sometimes met in Mapuche communities prevented any such display of authority from the missionaries working in Chile.53 The close association of the missionaries with the conquistadors, which led some native leaders to consider them as the spearhead of the Spanish invasion, made it all the more difficult for the Jesuits to confront the shamans, and made violence a more likely response from enemy ulmens. In fact, the killing of the Jesuit missionaries Horacio Vecchi, Diego de Montalbán, and Martín de Aranda in 1611 threatened to put a stop to Valdivia’s efforts even before his defensive war strategy could be given a chance. Faced with these problems, the Jesuits tried to diminish



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the influence of the machis —and, at the same time, legitimate themselves as the true mediators between the worldly and spiritual spheres—by applying a more subtle strategy. This strategy involved two related aspects. On the one hand, the Jesuits tried to control and limit the natives’ recourse to their traditional medicalreligious practices. On the other hand, the missionaries simultaneously tried to gain access to the botanical and medical information that would enable them to displace the machis from their influential positions as healers within the communities. These two aspects of the Jesuit strategy can be seen in the sermons they preached to the Mapuche, as well as in the questions suggested in the handbooks for confessors written especially for the Chilean missionaries. A brief examination of the Nueve sermones en lengua de Chile (1621) and the Arte vocabulario y confesionario de la lengua de Chile (1606) written by Valdivia will allow us a glimpse of the way in which the mechanisms of social control put in place by the Jesuits to impose new religious and moral conceptions on the Mapuche people were also used to obtain ethnobotanical information. Although the nine sermons written in Mapudungun by Valdivia were published in Valladolid in 1621, it seems almost certain that they were used long before that, probably circulating in manuscript form among the Jesuits who set out in pairs to conduct itinerant missions. Their formal structure of two printed columns, one with the text of the sermon in Mapudungun and a smaller one with its verbatim Spanish translation, hints at their intended use by priests who had not yet mastered the native language. Despite the fact that in 1609 Diego de Torres, Provincial of Paraguay, had founded a chair of Mapudungun at the College of San Miguel for the instruction of Jesuit missionaries assigned to southern Chile, we cannot assume that all the priests were fluent enough in the language to fulfill the demanding duties that mission work imposed on them.54 The bilingual edition of the sermons, in manuscript and later in printed form, could therefore enable more Jesuit priests to undertake the itinerant missions. Provided that one member of the team was fluent enough to hear confession in Mapudungun, the other one could help him by committing the sermons to memory and delivering them in front of the community. The sermons could be used as single units, but they were certainly conceived by Valdivia as a complete introductory course on Christian dogma. One by one, they gradually introduced their audience to such concepts as the immortality of the soul, the rewards and punishments faced by all human beings in the afterlife, the immaculate conception of Christ, the T­rinity, and the necessity of belonging to the church and receiving the sacraments to achieve salvation. More importantly, the sermons were carefully crafted to explain these difficult subjects by way of examples and analogies drawn from native culture and beliefs. In this sense, the nine sermons, along with his Arte y vocabulario, represent the distillation of Valdivia’s long experience among the Mapuche people. One of the notions that recurred more often in Valdivia’s sermons was the concept of sin. When defining it, Valdivia strove to include in this concept not only the traditional Christian sense of a violation of the divine law, but also the

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traditional practices of the Mapuche and, more importantly for us, the different roles that the shamans fulfilled in the communities. “Anything that is contrary to what God has ordained,” asserted Valdivia, “is, without a doubt, a sin. To call and reverence the Pillan, the Mareupuante, the Huecuvoe [all Mapuche deities], to believe what the sorcerers say, and to obey them, all is a sin.”55 That was true even for the medicinal role played by the machis, for natives were guilty of sin if they dared to disobey what the Jesuit priests had ordered and “when they are sick, or in any kind of need, go and seek the advice of the Machis (who are sorcerers) or of the elders” (Nueve sermones, 11). Instead of going to their traditional spiritual leaders, the members of the community were to consult with the Jesuit missionaries to find answers to their problems, whether physical or spiritual. Otherwise, they would expose themselves to maladies even worse than physical illness. Valdivia insisted that the natives should understand sin as a kind of disease akin to the outbreaks of typhus or smallpox that plagued the communities from time to time. Sin was indeed “a kind of pestilence. Just like those touched by the plague die, so dies the soul of anyone touched by sin” (7). The analogy between sin and illness was more than just a rhetorical figure. It was a relation that the Indians were expected to understand in a literal sense. Just as death corrupted the body, so she who had been a most beautiful young woman became a repugnantly ugly and pungent corpse when she died, and just as the body of a powerful warrior would become deprived of all strength and mobility once he was dead, so the soul was defiled by sin (8). Valdivia explicitly called sin a sickness of the soul—a sickness for which the only cure had been instituted by the death of Christ (10). The most abominable sin—that which would secure the most horrific torments in the afterlife—was to “reject his death, and his most precious blood, not wanting to cure yourselves with such excellent medicines, stopping your sins” (21). Indeed, Valdivia insisted that the Mapuche should see a causal link between the new and powerful epidemics that afflicted them and their sinful behavior, particularly their rejection of the Christian faith (31). This was an honest belief shared by other Jesuit missionaries. Rosales noted that just as God had punished the people of Israel with a terrible plague only because King David had sinned, so the epidemics among the native population in America were caused by the Amer­indians’ violation of the law of God. The fact that these plagues commonly struck only the Amer­indian and not the Spanish population seemed to confirm this idea: “Their resistance to the faith is reason enough for God to send them these punishments.”56 But these plagues were not just mere punishments; they were also divine tools for evangelization, “as we can see from the fact that in these outbreaks great numbers of these barbarians find God and convert themselves.”57 The notion of sin as a disease, although derived from the Christian tradition, was presented in a manner that could strike a chord in Valdivia’s audience. His insistence on the analogy of sin and illness and the explicit connection between European pandemics and the sinful behavior of the Mapuche people could all be understood within the framework of native etiology and the notion of sickness



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it implied. As modern ethnographical research on Mapuche shamanism shows, Mapuche medicine distinguishes between three different kinds of illness.58 The most basic and common diseases are the re kutran, which are caused by natural agents and can be easily treated by the use of plants known to the community in general. The three medicinal plants described by Ovalle were probably used to treat diseases belonging to this category. The other two types of diseases are those in which treatment by a specialist is needed, since they involve not merely a physical imbalance but also a spiritual or magical component that needs to be addressed in order to achieve a complete cure.59 These diseases are the wenu kutran and the weda kutran. The weda kutran are diseases caused by magical elements—by an evil spirit, a sorcerer, or any other agent seeking to harm a person. The wenu kutran are also supernatural diseases, caused in this case by the deities or the spirits whenever a Mapuche does not observe the küme, which is proper behavior as prescribed by the admapu, the social and moral norms transmitted by the elders. It was precisely to this kind of illness that Valdivia was attempting to link the concept of sin. Valdivia was quick to give a Christian reference to these native conceptions: only God (to whom Valdivia consistently referred by using the Spanish word Dios to avoid any possible confusion in the minds of his audience), creator and master of everything on earth, could send wenu kutran, as well as the plagues and disasters that the Mapuche occasionally classified as super­natural diseases: “The one who sometimes sends sterile years, causing hunger, sickness, and the death of men as punishment for their sins, so they make amends, that one is God” (Nueve sermones, 31–32).60 Members of the community should resort, therefore, to the missionaries and the Christian ritual for answers to their physical and spiritual needs: “In all of your ailments and needs, my sons, go and approach Our Lord Jesus Christ,” the only effective protection against evil and misfortunes (27). In consonance with his appropriation and attempted Christianization of the Mapuche categories of illness, Valdivia described the actions of Jesus during his earthly years by emphasizing his supernatural healing abilities, stopping short of describing him as the most powerful machi in history: “He healed all who were sick, gave sight to the blind, he made the mute talk, made those with only one arm complete again, made the cripple walk, and what is more, those who were already dead, already fetid, he brought back to life” (59).61 Valdivia put the same emphasis on curative powers in his description of the saints and the first apostles, tracing a direct link between them and the missionary priests as their heirs and successors (25).62 This rendition of early Christian practices stands in stark contrast to Valdivia’s picture of shamanic rituals, located immediately after his account of the saints’ actions. Everything that the machis said was “a big lie, full of malice, and worthy of mockery.” The elders and the shamans were “madmen and fools who deceive you, and just so you give them something to eat, they drag you all to hell, where they too will burn forever in the fire with the demons” (26–27). The machis could not be trusted because everything they knew came from the devil, whose only concern is to trick human beings into worshipping him instead

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of God (43). It was with these unreliable beings that “the sorcerers talk, and these devils appear to them, whether in the shape of a bird, a goat, or a man, and then the sorcerer claims to have seen ghosts and to have had visions, and what they see is nothing more than these devils that lead men to fornication, to drink themselves into a stupor, and to kill and to steal, so they will burn in hell with them” (44). In particular, it was the devil who through his mouthpieces, the machis, convinced the natives to turn to their traditional deities and practices to heal from sickness, only to their own eternal damnation (26). Valdivia urged his audience to give up these noxious practices and to turn a deaf ear to the suggestions of the machis, those veritable messengers of hell. Instead, they should seek effective protection from the demons by doing the sign of the cross when they woke up and when they went to bed, and every time they found themselves in a hardship. Not surprisingly, the sign of the cross was also recommended as a protection against illness since, as Valdivia was fond of reminding his audience, this gesture was powerful enough to “free you from all evil” (46). To be sure, the conceptualization of the shaman as an actual devil worshipper was not a distinctively Jesuit attitude. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, concern about the witches’ communication with the devil was by no means exceptional. Elsewhere in America, there was a widespread tendency to identify Amer­indian practices with diabolism.63 The Jesuits’ stigmatization of recourse to shamanic medicine as a sin—given what they perceived as the demonic origin of the shamans’ healing practices—was not unique either.64 What seems to be peculiar is Valdivia’s deliberate decision to play down the medicinal role fulfilled by the machis and to underscore instead the notion of the shaman as a disturbing presence for the native communities, a fact that is evident in his choice of words. In the text of the nine sermons, Valdivia only once referred to the shamans by their Mapuche title of machis. Instead, he consistently called them “calcu che,” using a term that the Mapuche reserved for individuals who communicated with the weküfü or evil spirits in order to produce magical sicknesses and harm communities.65 In spite of the well-known medicinal role of the shamans, Valdivia did not include an entry for machi in his 1606 Mapudungun-Spanish dictionary, grouping all traditional ritual practices under the figure of the kalku. This is a distinctive feature of Valdivia’s glossary. Other contemporary compilations of Mapudungun words and expressions, such as the one attributed to the Dutch sailor Elijah Herckmans (written between 1642 and 1643), translated machi simply as medicus.66 That the Jesuits were well aware of this role can be seen in Ovalle’s references to the shamans’ medicinal and botanical savvy, and to the preference of the Spanish settlers for them over Spanish physicians and practitioners. By choosing to use the expression kalku instead of machi, Valdivia was tapping on the ambiguous stance of shamans within native cultures. As Hélène Clastres has noted, the shaman, by the very nature of his or her trade, is an ambivalent figure. The spiritual and supernatural powers that allow the shaman to get in contact with the spiritual world and thus gain the knowledge and abilities needed to cure disease can easily lend themselves to the opposite end and be used



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to cause sickness and affliction.67 In the case of modern-day Mapuche shamanic practice, a machi has to grapple daily, on behalf of her patients and her community at large, with the forces of evil—ever present in Mapuche cosmology—in order to maintain the delicate balance between them and the forces of good. The particular position thus assumed by the machi in the larger order of things is perceived by many Mapuche as ambiguous at best, and the line that separates machi from kalku cannot be easily drawn.68 Experienced as he was in Mapuche culture and system of beliefs, Valdivia attempted to exploit this ambiguity by squarely identifying the shamans with demonic practices and the production of intentional epidemics, and not with the protection of the community and the care of the physical and spiritual well-being of its members. Furthermore, as we have seen, if the explanation for certain diseases was to be found in the sinfulness of the members of the community, then the machis, with their constant conversation with the devil and their not-so-subtle efforts to prevent the acceptance of Christianity, should be held accountable for the epidemics that ravaged native towns and villages. Valdivia urged his Mapuche catechumens to get rid of the machis and welcome instead the cult of Christ (Nueve sermones, 27). The Mapuche, indeed, should “thank God for sending you the fathers as your teachers so you can be taught the faith in Jesus Christ” (25). The treachery of the machis being exposed, the Mapuche communities should relinquish their dependence on traditional rites and welcome the Jesuit missionaries as their new physical and spiritual caregivers.

Confession and Native Informants We can only speculate on the effect that these speeches on Christian doctrine, with their relentless attack on native practices and beliefs, had on their intended audience. If we are to believe contemporary Jesuit reports, in some quarters, after hearing the sermons, the natives flocked to confess their sins.69 In other places, as on Santa Maria Island, near the mouth of the Bío Bío River, and in the Chiloe Archipelago, the natives confessed their sins in an orderly fashion once a year.70 But the situation was certainly not always so auspicious, as the Jesuit Juan de Moscoso found out. Having been alerted that a sick Mapuche was dying, Moscoso rushed into his hut and tried to convince him to confess in order to ensure his eternal salvation. Despite the repeated pleas by the man to be left alone, Moscoso kept insisting for a long time, “exhorting him to confess, and warning him of the danger of damnation in which the man would incur if he died without confession.” So persistent was Moscoso that the man finally got up from his deathbed and punched the Jesuit in the face while angrily ordering him to leave his house.71 In spite of their apologetic intentions, Jesuit chroniclers had to admit that well into the seventeenth century, a good many natives were still reluctant to accept the new religion and its sacraments.72 What is clear from Valdivia’s sermons, however, is that the deep connection

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between healing practices and the native system of beliefs embodied by the shamans presented a serious challenge to the evangelization efforts of the Jesuits. The ritualized character of native medicine reinforced not only the traditional values and beliefs the Jesuits sought to replace, it also served to reinforce the central position the machis occupied in communal life. Perhaps the best example of the Jesuit anxiety about Mapuche shamanistic practices can be seen in the negotiations undertaken by the native communities of Puren in order to secure the presence of Jesuit missionaries among them. The Mapuche leaders, not wanting to be less than their neighbors, resolved to ask the Jesuit vice provincial for missionaries who could instruct them in the Christian faith. In this way, they claimed, “other provinces cannot boast that they have churches and want to be Christians, unlike those of Puren, that neither have churches nor are Christians.”73 After hearing this request, the vice provincial assured the Puren Indians that he would send two priests to catechize them, and that he would ask the governor to pay for the missionaries’ salary from the royal treasury. The ulmens, as a gesture of goodwill, offered to go to Concepción themselves to secure these benefits. During the interview, the governor, undoubtedly advised by the Jesuits, put forward several conditions that the Puren Mapuche had to meet if they really wanted Jesuit missionaries among them. The first one was, of course, their formal promise to attend the doctrine every Sunday and not failing to attend Mass once they were baptized. Other conditions were to be buried according to the Christian ritual, forfeiting their traditional funerary practices; to abandon polygamy, each man choosing only one woman as his legitimate spouse; and to build a church and a house to lodge the missionaries.74 But the most telling condition for us was the second demand made by the governor: “Nobody that has been baptized can be boquibuy (an old ceremony and superstition of their paganism). And they all answered that not only those who were Christians will shun this heathen ceremony, but even those who were not.”75 This “old ceremony and superstition,” as Rosales called it, in fact referred to the participants in magicalreligious rites, usually aimed toward curing magical or supernatural illnesses.76 If the Puren Indians wanted Jesuit missionaries, even if only to compete with their neighbors, shamanistic rituals and practitioners had to be banned even before the evangelization program started. Despite these negotiations and the attempts made by the missionaries to link in the minds of their Mapuche charges shamanic rituals with godly punishment, at times the Jesuits found themselves unable even to stop the activities of the machis living in the amigo communities located next to Spanish fortresses.77 It seems clear that if the Jesuits were to displace the shamans from their positions of authority and validate themselves as the true mediators between the communities and the divine, more than preaching and denouncing the machis as kalkus was needed. As we shall now see, the Jesuits attempted to use what little influence they may have had on the already baptized members of the communities—in particular regarding their sacramental duty to confess—to obtain information about the local flora that could allow them to compete successfully with the sha-



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mans in the sphere where they gained most of their prestige and authority. It was in fact the Jesuit insistence on the commerce between machis and the devil that allowed them to consider any native who followed the advice of a machi as a sinner who had violated the first commandment (“You shall have no other gods before me”). The conceptualization of the recourse to native healers as a sin allowed the Jesuit missionaries to use the confessionary as a tool to gather information about the medicinal use of native flora. A cautionary word, however, is in order before we discuss Jesuit confesionarios. As Osvaldo F. Pardo has remarked, confession cannot be considered only in its dimension of a mechanism of social control, since such a view would reduce both priest and penitent to passive figures. Instead, we should strive for a view of confession as a particular brand of communicative interaction.78 In their discussion of penance, in fact, the theologians attending the Council of Trent (1545–1563) adopted a view of the sacrament as akin to a judicial process, where the penitent was at the same time a prosecutor and a witness against himself or herself, while the priest had to fulfill the role of a judge, exercising prudence to adjudicate a punishment proportional to the sins confessed.79 Despite the fact that the council located the efficacy of the sacrament of penance mainly in the absolution formula pronounced by the priest, the traditional theological distinction between the three parts of the sacrament—that is to say, contrition, confession, and satisfaction—clearly reaffirmed the agency of the penitent as a most necessary element in order to predispose him or her to receive the grace of God and achieve the total remission of the sins. The penitent should feel not only sorrow and repentance for the sins committed, but also a genuine hatred for them, a desire to confess them vocally to the priest, and a sincere purpose to mend his or her ways and avoid further occasion to sin.80 This could only be achieved through a thorough examination of one’s conscience that led to a specific recognition of all instances of sin and the circumstances in which they were committed. Active agency on the part of the penitent was indispensable, then, for it was upon him that the task to distinguish, categorize, and tally his sins was imposed.81 This step was extremely important because all mortal sins must be enumerated to the priest in vocal confession in as a detailed fashion as possible, “for it is evident that priests could not have exercised [their] judgment without a knowledge of the matter, nor could they have observed justice in imposing penalties, had the faithful declared their sins in general only and not specifically and one by one.”82 Although all mortal sins had to be confessed, their relative importance and the gravity of the offense had to be assessed by the confessor if he was to fulfill his duty as a judge. Therefore, the circumstances that surrounded a specific sin were of paramount importance, particularly if they somehow modified the sin (for it is not the same to kill than to kill in self defense). Opinions among theologians on the number of details that a penitent should confess appear to have been divided, but at a minimum it was required to refer to what kind of sin was being confessed, which one in particular, where was committed, with the help of whom, how many times, why was it committed, how, specifically, and when.83

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What is of interest for us in this judicial simile for penance is its emphasis on the communicative aspect of the sacrament. The penitent had to reflect deeply on his or her conduct in order not only to achieve true contrition, but also to furnish the confessor with enough information so he could properly assess the degree of repentance on the part of the penitent and make an informed judgment about the gravity of the sins. The judicial view of the sacrament certainly determined a hierarchy of actors, putting the priest in an authoritative role as the judge and spiritual director of the penitent. The need for the priest to have access not only to the sins but also to the circumstances that contextualized the sinner’s behavior presented the Jesuits with an opportunity to learn about Mapuche medical and ritual practices. It is in this sense that we can view the practice of confession— as it has come down to us in Valdivia’s handbook for confessors­—not just as a mechanism of social and spiritual control, but also as a communicative device used to elicit from the Indian penitents relevant information regarding the use of ethnobotanic lore in the shamanic healing rituals. Although the dimension of spiritual control and discipline of the sacrament of penance cannot be overlooked, as the very judicial simile used by the theologians at Trent reminds us, it is, I think, fruitful to see it in relation to the communicative aspect represented by the unequal transference of information from penitent to confessor that the same model implies. This is particularly true in the case of the application of confession and confession-like practices to Amer­indians during the early colonial period.84 Given the broad and culturally loaded definition of sin that Valdivia presented to his Mapuche audiences, the rigorous self-examination that the penitent was supposed to carry out in order to achieve true contrition and to be able to confess the sins and their attending circumstances was, at least theoretically, a call for the neophyte to see his or her own cultural practices as detachedly as possible in order to explain them to the priest. At the same time, the priest had to learn enough about his penitents in order to be able to evaluate both the quality and the quantity of the information he was receiving, so he could assess not only the gravity of the sins but also (and more important from a sacramental point of view) the peni­tent’s degree of contrition. The confessional was then an interface, a contact zone where the hierarchical interaction between confessor and penitent produced at once several communicative roles—judge and accused, judge and witness, father and son or daughter, physician and patient, as the traditional church terminology goes, but also that of informant and researcher, with both parties evaluating, weighing, categorizing, and selecting the cultural and personal information given by the penitent.85 The constitution of these communicative roles is evident in Valdivia’s Confessionario breve. Like his Nueve sermones, the book was a bilingual text, in which all the questions and proper admonitions that the confessor needed to make to the penitent were simultaneously presented in Mapudungun and Spanish. The handbook suggested a complete course for the performance of the sacrament. Valdivia proposed to start the ritual by making sure the penitent was a baptized Christian. The Mapuche was to not only assure the priest that he or she was Christian, but



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also give the name of the missionary who baptized him or her, recite the Paternoster, the Hail Mary, and the Creed, and demonstrate knowledge of Christian dogma by answering some doctrinal questions. The priest was also to gather personal information about the penitent, inquiring if he or she had confessed before, how many times, if previous penances given in confession had been carried out, and if he or she was married. In case of performing a confession in articulo mortis, the priest was to summarily instruct the native in the bare essentials of the Christian faith and move on to the confession of sins.86 Interestingly enough, before the priest started to inquire in detail about the sins committed since the last confession, he was to ask the penitent for a general confession; that is to say, a complete review of the penitent’s life irrespective of the fact that she or he may or may not have been in the confessional before.87 Instead of focusing on specific sins, the priest tried during the general confession to assess general trends in the penitent’s behavior and his or her motives to sin. The insistence on the necessity of general confession was one of the salient features of the pastoral ministries of the Society of Jesus in the early modern period, one that was probably derived from the Ignatian exercises.88 Its aim, as the aim of the other preliminary questions that Valdivia recommended in his handbook, was to give the confessor a better understanding of his charges, allowing him not only to fulfill his sacramental duty as a judge, but also to provide spiritual orientation and guidelines to the penitents. Only when the priest was sufficiently satisfied with the soundness of his peni­tent’s Christianity could the actual vocal confession take place. Like most early modern confession handbooks, Valdivia’s Confessionario organized the questions following the order of the Ten Commandments.89 This structure was intended to help the penitent in the task to recall, recognize, and categorize his or her sins, as well as to help the priest to elicit the necessary information about them, making sure that no mortal sin was omitted by the penitent, lest the sacrament lack any validity whatsoever. Given the close association made by Valdivia in his sermons between shamanic practices and devil-worship, most of the questions regarding native healing rituals are found in the examination of the first commandment. After questions oriented to find out if the natives still venerated natural forces or traditional deities, Valdivia included specific questions about native ritual and, more importantly, about recourse to the machis when either the penitent or anyone in his or her household was ill. These questions did not stop at determining whether a native had sought the advice of a shaman. Since the machis themselves were often off-limits for Jesuit confessors, because the sacrament of penance could only be administered to baptized Christians, Valdivia included questions designed to elicit information about the medical advice given by the shamans to the neophytes. During confession, the missionaries were therefore to ask for precise information about the course of treatment recommended by the machi, and for a detailed account of the way these instructions were carried out.90 These inquiries about the Mapuche healing practices are exceptional in the handbook. In other sections of the book, whenever a priest was to ask about the use

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of indigenous plants and herbs for other ends, such as love philters, poisons, or as abortifacients, questions about the names of the plants used or the way to prepare them were not suggested. Punishing their use or the intention to use them was considered enough to control these practices.91 Valdivia’s suggested interrogation sought to turn native penitents into informants regarding the use of indigenous plants for medicinal purposes. To this end, the preparation of the penitent for the sacrament—that is to say, the reception and the exhortations given to him or her by the priest, as well as the assessment of the penitent’s moral traits sought by the general confession—played a fundamental role. By asking the Mapuche neophyte to put his or her life in perspective in order to narrate it for the priest, and to reflect on his or her involvement in the rites and ceremonies that defined Mapuche spirituality, the questions Valdivia proposed for the confession of the Mapuche people sought to equip the Jesuit missionary with sufficient understanding of both his informant and the cultural context in which he or she functioned. This understanding would be fundamental for the missionary in order to evaluate the ethnobotanical information that he had hopefully gathered in the confessional. The inclusion of questions regarding native healing rituals in the Confessionario breve thus was intended both to penalize recourse to native healers and to gather information about the medicinal use of indigenous flora. But the use of the sacrament of penance for purposes rather different than sacramental absolution raises a number of questions regarding both the efficacy of confession as an information-gathering tool and the type of information that the Jesuits could acquire through it. Some of these problems relate to the mode of communication that could be established between Jesuit missionaries and Mapuche penitents. As the bilingual format of the Confessionario breve suggests, not all of its intended users were likely to be fluent enough in the native language to conduct confessions solely by themselves. The questions, then, would have to be asked by a priest reading the text, and the answers either translated by a trustworthy helper or conveyed by means of gestures, something that would seriously hamper the transmission of accurate ethnobotanical information to the priest.92 Even in the case of those missionaries seasoned enough to understand the neophytes and make out the cultural references to the different lawen or medicinal herbs, there were other issues regarding both the method used to acquire this information and the nature of the knowledge thus obtained. In fact, if—as Valdivia’s questions regarding healing practices seem to indicate—the Jesuit missionaries tried to use the confessionary as a tool to obtain information regarding the specifics of native healing rituals, to what extent was the information given by the penitent was covered by the sacramental seal; that is to say, by the binding secret of confession? This is a fundamental problem, because if the seal covered everything said by the penitent during confession, then the information gathered through the confessor’s interrogation could not be made public or used in any way that might betray the identity of the penitent. In small and tightly knit communities such as Mapuche villages, any reference to information furnished by a penitent would



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easily lead to her or his identification by the other members of the clan. The Jesuits then would have been at odds trying to use the ethnobotanical information gathered in the confessional to prevent the very sins from where this knowledge came in the first place. The extent of the matters covered by the seal of confession was a hotly debated issue, one suited to exciting the imagination of moralists and theologians alike.93 Ever since the Fourth Lateran Council of 1216 made annual auricular confession compulsory for all Christians, canon law had prescribed severe penalties on any confessor who broke the seal of the sacrament.94 Whatever information the priest learned in confession could not be used, at least not to the extent that it might reveal the sins confessed and thus cause injury to the penitent by letting others identify him or her by direct or indirect means.95 The problem of the use of the information acquired in Mapuche confessions arose then in part from the status that the Jesuits gave to the answers given by native neophytes. To consult a machi and to follow her advice, as Valdivia stated, was certainly a sin, and was, therefore, protected by the seal of confession. But were the name of the herbs used and their way of preparation part of the same sin, or could that information be construed as merely circumstantial—as information whose use would not necessarily represent a breach of the sacramental seal? Given the amount of ethnobotanical information found in some Jesuit natural histories, the latter interpretation does seem to have been the case. The Jesuits, in fact, may have been at times rather lax in their understanding of the seal, since they were occasionally accused of using or revealing information learned in the confessional.96 In any case, a received practice in the church—that of allowing the use of knowledge gained both inside and outside the confessional—may have played a role in the Jesuit use of ethnobotanical information furnished by native neophytes. Both Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure believed that knowledge obtained outside the confessional released the seal, so if, for example, someone kills a person in front of a priest, and immediately asks the same priest for confession, the priest is not required to remain silent in a criminal court.97 For the Chilean Jesuits, the penitents were not, in all likelihood, their sole informants on botanical matters. As we have seen, Ovalle gathered at least some of his information regarding the use of certain medicinal plants from service Indians at the College of Santiago and from mestizo soldiers, who in turn had probably learned their use from their maternal Mapuche families. In these circumstances, there would have been no problem complementing the information provided by the external informants with that elicited from the penitents. However, the paucity of information regarding vernacular medicinal plants that we find in Ovalle, who never participated in the Arauco missions, compared to the much more detailed description of Mapuche pharmacopoeia found in Rosales’s Historia general, suggests that Rosales’s thirty years of missionary endeavors proved much more fruitful when it came down to the gathering of ethnobotanical information. In addition to the opportunity to confess a much larger number of Mapuche neophytes, the probable exchange of information with other missionaries and soldiers, and non-sacramental inter-

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views with some faithful Mapuche converts all allowed Rosales to describe well over a hundred medicinal plants, whereas Ovalle, writing from Rome, managed to recall only three. More evidence is needed to achieve a more solid understanding of the Jesuit take on the difficult issues raised by the use of information acquired during confession. What appears to be clear, however, is that the missionaries managed to obtain not only information from their Mapuche penitents, but also occasionally even samples of ritually important vernacular flora. The annual letter of 1611, for instance, reports that although the Mapuche were not an idolatrous people, they did have “many superstitions regarding herbs and stones, and one of them brought to his confessor a large quantity of them.”98 The information gathered by the missionaries seems to have been enough for them to start acting as healers among unconverted Mapuche. The Jesuit Pedro de Torrellas devoted part of his career to evangelizing the enemigos who were brought as prisoners of war to the Arauco fort. His activities clearly show how the missionaries were trying to take over both the physical and the spiritual care of the natives that was typical of the machis in order to better predispose them to accept Christianity: “He used to give them a small present, and some medicines; he searched for the herbs indicated to treat their afflictions, and assumed the office of physician of their souls as well as of their bodies, feeling sorry for them, seeing them in a foreign land and so forsaken, doing all this to gain them over for God.”99 The Jesuits’ reputation as healers and expert herbalists even extended to the Spanish settlers who lived in isolated areas, who turned to them when in need of medical care. In Chiloe, the Spanish general Dionisio de Rueda asked the Jesuit Juan López Ruiz to supply him with medicines against an epidemic outbreak threatening to kill the natives working on his estates. Although López Ruiz, trying to make an evangelic example for the general native population of the island, provided Rueda with only a picture of Saint Ignatius Loyola instead of any medicine, the fact that the Spanish general turned to the missionary in the first place suggests that by the second half of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits’ renown as healers was well established among both the native and Spanish populations of the island.100

T

he Jesuit double strategy to marginalize the shamans in areas not fully controlled by the Spaniards thus included the demonization of native spiritual leaders while at the same time attempting to gain access to native knowledge of local medicinal plants. By reconceptualizing sin and its consequences in a way that not only included traditional magical-religious practices but also tapped on native conceptions of illness and its causes, the Jesuit missionaries opened up a door for the use of the sacrament of penance as a mechanism to control these practices. Although it was not their only method, the Jesuits sought to use the confessionary as a tool to elicit information from native neophytes who could otherwise be wary of turning over too much detailed information about native healing rituals to the missionaries. This information could then be contrasted and complemented with the facts and plant names obtained through other sources, be



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they other native informants, mestizo soldiers, or the observations made by the missionaries themselves. The knowledge thus gained was used by the missionaries to assume the healing and spiritual functions of the shamans. But even if the confessionary was not the Jesuits’ sole source of information regarding the medicinal use of plants, some of the problems derived from their conceptualization of shamanic and traditional practices as devil worship extended also to the information furnished by other kinds of informants. Valdivia’s view of the shamans’ knowledge of medicinal and ritual practices as handed down to them by the devil was also shared by Jesuit missionaries in other areas of the continent. This fact made the information provided by the neophytes unreliable. Since, as Rosales put it, the devil “does not seek their health but their damnation,” any information derived from native traditional practices and beliefs was not credible and potentially harmful.101 In fact, Jesuit chroniclers in Chile and in Paraguay tended to regard for this very reason shamanic medicinal practices as nothing but elaborate scams.102 However, both the sheer number of medicinal plants and traditional remedies described by the Jesuits and their efforts to elicit this information from their charges suggest that the missionaries’ attitude toward indigenous knowledge in general and the problematic status of native medical lore in particular was more nuanced. It is to these issues that we now turn our attention.

Chapter 3

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espite all the efforts displayed by the Jesuit missionaries, the machis   remained a powerful influence among both amigo and enemigo communities. The difficulties found by colonial and religious officials in their attempts to reduce the Mapuche into Spanish-style towns weakened the effectiveness of the missionaries’ attempts to control indigenous magical and religious practices. In 1649, Luis Pacheco, the Jesuit superior for Chile, asked Governor Martín de Mujica to make sure the Mapuche were “reduced into towns with as many of them as can be settled, because in this way they can be instructed repeatedly and often in the things of the faith.” For Pacheco, it was also imperative to find a way to prevent the amigos from leaving the towns near the Spanish forts and to stop them from relocating to other areas.1 In part, this situation was a consequence of the establishment of a permanent army on the border between Spanish and Mapuche lands. The close proximity of both sides gave rise during the seventeenth century to a borderland society along the Bío Bío River. In this social setting, wandering, illegal bartering, and the amigos’ frequent change of sides became common.2 War, commerce, and the fickle loyalty of the amigos all combined against the Jesuit efforts to keep the influence of the machis in check. When one considers that the Jesuits did succeed in keeping a sizable native population living in towns under the rule of one or two missionaries in other areas of South America, it is clear that this situation was dictated by the particular development of the ongoing war against the Mapuche. Perhaps nowhere on the continent were the Jesuits more successful than in Paraguay.3 The thirty reductions the Jesuits managed there have come to stand as the embodiment of Jesuit missionary activity in South America, having even been portrayed in a major motion picture.4 Unlike other areas of the continent, where the Jesuit method involved a combination of itinerant missions and residence among the natives whenever possible, the missionary method employed by the Society of Jesus in Paraguay was based almost exclusively on the reducción model that had proved so successful in Juli. This model probably accounted for a great deal of the perceived

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63

Santa María

✝

✝ Santa Rosa

San Ignacio

✝

Santiago

San Cosme y Damián

✝

Itapúa

✝

Candelaria ✝ San Carlos ✝ Santa Maria San José ✝ ✝ ✝ San Javier Apóstoles ✝ ✝ Concepción San ✝ Santo Tomé ✝ Nicolás La Cruz ✝ Yapeyú ✝

✝

San Francisco de Borja

uay Area of Interest

✝ Jesús ✝ Trinidad ✝ Corpus ✝ San Ignacio Miní ✝ Loreto Mártires ✝ Santa ✝Ana

Mod ern n bou ational ndar ies

✝

Río Ur ug

Río Par aná

Asuncíon

Guarani

✝ das Missoes ✝ Santo Ángelo

✝ ✝ San Lorenzo Martir ✝

San Luis Gonzaga

San Miguel Arcángel

© MollyMAPS

Map 3.1: Jesuit missions in Paraguay during the seventeenth century

success of the Paraguayan missions, particularly by shielding the Guarani from Spanish exploitation, turning them instead into an effective workforce for the benefit of the communities as a whole. In spite of this success, the creation of the reductions was a process fraught with peril and difficulties. Some of these were external menaces, such as the raids organized by the bandeirantes, who typically set off southward from the Portuguese enclave of São Paulo and attacked the Jesuit missions in order to capture Guarani natives and sell them off in the Brazilian slave markets.5 The repeated attacks forced the Jesuits to secure from the Crown the unusual authorization to arm the reduction Indians, who in 1641, under the leadership of the Jesuit lay brother Domingo de Torres, defeated a large bandeira in Mbororé, after which the Portuguese expeditions became more and more scarce until they finally stopped at the beginning of the eighteenth century.6 However, the Portuguese were not the only menace the Jesuit missionaries had to overcome in their efforts to settle the Guarani clans into fixed towns. As it also happened in Chile, the Jesuits faced an intense, and sometimes violent, opposition from the paies, or Guarani shamans. Writing in 1673, the Belgian Jesuit historian Nicolas du Toict—also known by his Hispanized name, Nicolás del Techo—squarely accused the paies of being agents of the devil and of being responsible for the fluctuations in the neophytes’ faith by constantly encouraging

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them to relapse into their traditional ways. From the numerous cases and examples recounted by Techo it is clear that the paies presented a strong and constant opposition to both the changes in the Guarani traditional ways of life and to the loss of their privileges as shamans brought about by the Jesuit presence in the reductions. This opposition was manifested either as public calls to reject the missionaries violently, or through the reestablishment of ritual night gatherings, or ñembo’e.7 More often, though, the Guarani made clear their opposition to life in the reductions simply by running away.8 The competition between paies and Jesuits for the spiritual control of the Guarani communities is dramatically illustrated by the martyrdom of Roque González and two other Jesuits in what is today southern Brazil. On November 15, 1628, after celebrating Mass, González left the still-unfinished chapel in the Caaró reduction he had founded two weeks before. Noticing a group of Guarani natives were trying to set up a bell, González joined them. As he bent down to pick up the clapper, he was attacked and killed by the followers of Niezu, one of the most powerful shamans in the area. Alerted by the noise, González’s companion, Alfonso Rodríguez, rushed out of the chapel only to be struck down by the paie’s men. A week later, a third Jesuit, Juan del Castillo, was killed in a neighboring reduction. After the attacks, Niezu donned the black robe of one of the Jesuits and addressed the natives, “yelling that they should not be afraid of him devastating their crops, and following the mores of their ancestors, they should take numerous wives; he also commanded them to obey him as before, since the foreign priest was dead.”9 He then tried to undo the baptisms of the children, washing them with hot water and scraping their tongues with a shell, and then proceeded into what seems to have been a ñimongarai, or ritual naming ceremony, in order to restore the baptized infants’ full Guarani identities.10 Techo’s description of Niezu’s body, covered at the same time with the Jesuit black robe and the traditional emblems of his shamanic power, stands as a powerful image revealing the level of anxiety the missionaries felt toward their shamanic competitors. It also embodies the complex symbolic negotiations undertaken by both paies and missionaries in order to secure their positions as spiritual leaders of the reduction Guarani. As in Chile, the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay also resorted to medicine as a way to cope more effectively with the challenges presented by influential shamans. According to Techo, the missionaries, besides organizing communal life and fulfilling their religious duties, also devoted time to “expose the sorcerers, [and to] care for the sick, bleeding them, preparing medicines, [and curing] ulcers; [they also] cultivated the fields and the farms.”11 The eighteenth-century Italian historian Ludovico Muratori noted that when the Jesuit missionaries set out to found a new mission in Paraguay, they always brought with them “small presents such as fishing hooks, knives, scissors, metal wedges, needles, and other things like these that cannot be found in these provinces but must be brought from Europe and are greatly appreciated [by the natives]. . . . The missionaries also carried medicines for the health of these poor peoples.”12 It was not uncom-



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mon for the missionaries to stress to the Guarani communities that their reduction into towns and their acceptance of the Christian faith would bring upon them not only spiritual goods but also the benefits of Western healthcare.13 According to the annual report of 1616, for instance, the Jesuit priest Diego de Boroa was informed that several Guarani families who had run away from the missions were living at Maracane, where their numbers were dwindling because of various illnesses. Armed with medicines, the priest traveled through the swamps separating the San Ignacio reduction from Maracane and convinced the fugitive Guarani to return with him.14 The combination of agricultural and medical knowledge was invaluable for the Jesuits if they were to entertain any hope of persuading the native communities to settle in the reductions.15 The Jesuit missionaries, particularly during the first decades of the Paraguayan missions, devoted almost as much time and energy to training their Guarani charges in Western offices and techniques as to catechizing them. Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, arguably one of the main architects of the Jesuit missions in Paraguay, not only taught the Guarani the basics of the Catholic faith but also instructed them on the proper way to tailor their clothes, to build the huts in which they would live in the reductions, and to sow and tend the fields.16 Along the Uruguay, Paraguay, and Paraná Rivers, other Jesuit missionaries were engaged in the same kinds of activities.17 Interestingly, Ruiz de Montoya not only acted as a teacher for the Guarani, he also performed the different offices needed for the proper functioning of the reduction, particularly that of physician. As his earliest biographer, Francisco Jarque, commented in 1662, Ruiz de Montoya “performed the duties of a farmer to help them in their fields; and that of a physician and surgeon to cure them in their illnesses and accidents, bleeding them by his own hand and applying to them the various medicines that the Divine Love taught him.”18 Despite the fact that the Jesuit missionaries in general (and Ruiz de Montoya in particular) had become well versed in both Guarani language and culture, and despite their probable use of the confessional as a tool to gather ethnobotanical information in a manner similar to that of the Chilean Jesuits described in the previous chapter, Jarque (himself a former Jesuit who had worked in Paraguay) attributed Ruiz de Montoya’s medical expertise to direct divine illumination.19 Although this attribution is understandable given the hagiographical tone of Jarque’s text, the fact that the silence about the source of medicinal knowledge is a characteristic feature of Jesuit texts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seems to warrant further inquiry. In Jesuit accounts, whenever a Paraguayan plant was successfully used to treat a medical condition, the missionaries had often discovered these properties either by chance or, as in the case of Ruiz de Montoya, by divine inspiration.20 More frequently, however, the origin of this knowledge was not mentioned. In their narratives, the missionaries simply appeared preparing and administering the medicines to the natives without receiving any help from them.21 This silence about the source of the Jesuits’ knowledge of local medicinal plants is directly related to another salient feature of Jesuit texts. In most Jesuit

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chronicles and documents from the period, the missionaries insisted that the Guarani lacked any medical knowledge whatsoever. In 1616, for instance, Boroa (who later would become provincial of Paraguay) stated that the Guarani “have no medicines, nor prepare any remedies, but they let themselves die instead.”22 Statements like this would appear time and again in Jesuit chronicles and documents until the eighteenth century. In 1698, the German Jesuit Antonio Sepp bluntly declared that although the curuzuyaras, or native medical aides, were recognized as expert herbalists, it was the Jesuit priest who had to prepare all the medicines and determine the course of treatment and dosage for every sick person in the reduction: “If the father did not do all this, the nurse would end up killing the patient, giving him everything mixed and confused, making more harm than good, because these people know no measurements.”23 Despite these declarations, the fact appears to be that the Jesuits drew a good deal of botanical information from the natives acting as nurses. During the seventeenth century, Jesuit lay brothers such as Diego Bassauri and Domingo de Torres left behind manuscript compilations of medicines and medical procedures. Although Bassauri apparently obtained much of his information from Spanish physicians in Asunción, Torres’s manuscript included a list of native plants and remedies, along with botanical samples, suggesting the participation of native informants in its elaboration. After his death in 1688, Torres’s list was kept to help the missionaries in caring for the health of the Guarani, and it was still being consulted during the first half of the eighteenth century, according to the testimony of Pedro Montenegro.24 However, it would be a mistake to dismiss Jesuit expressions denying the existence of any sort of native medical knowledge simply as a manifestation of self-perceived European superiority vis-à-vis indigenous lore. As I already noted in the previous chapter, there were genuine concerns on the part of the Jesuits regarding native medical traditions that led them to be suspicious of any kind of ethnobotanical information supplied by native informants. To be sure, the Jesuits’ attitudes toward indigenous healing practices were complex and nuanced, showing different degrees of willingness to accept this information. But, in general, they seem to originate from two related sets of problems the missionaries recognized in native medicine. The first of these had to do with the close relationship between curative practices and native rituals and mythology, which were easily associated with demonic cults and practices by the Jesuits. The second was the lack in Indian medical practice of any recognizable etiological theory linking a disease to a particular treatment. Both of these types of problems cast a shadow of doubt and illegitimacy over indigenous medical lore and practices, which not only led the Jesuits to deny the Amer­indians the possession of any medical knowledge, but also rendered the information provided by the natives problematic and, in some cases, downright dangerous. The vast numbers of local medicinal plants and minerals described by the Jesuits, however, point toward an extensive utilization of native-provided ethnobotanical information. It will be my claim that the disciplinary aspect of medical



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healthcare imposed on the Paraguayan reductions by the Jesuits greatly helped to quench the uneasiness that at least some of the Jesuits felt about native medicine. By trying to control the natives’ recourse to their traditional healing rituals and by supervising the courses of treatment administered by the curuzuyaras, the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay could effectively detach the information about the use of a particular plant from the ritual context in which that same plant had been traditionally used. This detachment, operating as it did both at a semantic and pragmatic level, allowed the missionaries to reinscribe the local medicinal simples into Western clinical practices and theories; that is to say, it allowed them to turn suspicious and problematic information into what they could recognize as legitimate knowledge.25

Native Medicine and Demonic Treachery One of the main sources of distrust for native medicine came from what the Jesuits perceived as the demonic origin of the knowledge and use of plants among the Guarani. The presence of the devil as an active agent presenting a formidable challenge to the missionary efforts was a constant in seventeenth-century Jesuit chronicles. Ruiz de Montoya’s Conquista espiritual del Paraguay (1639), the first systematic history of the Jesuit Paraguayan enterprise, contains a plethora of stories and anecdotes that illustrate how the devil tried to undo the evangelical actions of the missionaries in order to keep the dominion he had so far enjoyed over the Guarani.26 Interestingly, one of the ways in which the devil had solidified his control over the natives was by teaching them the use of certain plants. In discussing at length yerba mate, probably the most culturally and economically significant crop raised in Paraguay even today, Ruiz de Montoya noted that its use appeared to be fairly recent, dating back one hundred years at most: “I have looked very carefully into the origins of its use by asking the Indians who are eighty or a hundred years old, and I have learned that when they were young, this herb’s infusion was not drunk, nor even known, except by a great witch man or sorcerer who had communication with the devil, who showed it to him, saying that whenever the sorcerer wished to consult him, he should drink from that herb.”27 Mate infusions, rich in caffeine, were drunk by the Guarani as a mild stimulant and as a treatment for diverse digestive disorders. By 1639, mate had already become immensely popular among the Spanish settlers as well, much to Ruiz de Montoya’s dismay, who claimed to have seen people “who lost their minds for several days” as a result of its abuse.28 The anecdote relating the use of mate to the devil’s teachings, however, does not appear to be a charge fabricated by the zealous Ruiz de Montoya in order to stop its use. Instead, Ruiz de Montoya was probably interpreting from his own Christian standpoint what seems to have been the Guarani version of yerba mate’s origins and use. Indeed, in its basic lines Ruiz de Montoya’s story closely follows the native myths, which explained both the cause of the diseases and the existence of natural remedies against them.

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Modern anthropological research conducted by León Cadogan and his followers has shown that Guarani ideas about illness are closely related to their concept of soul. The Guarani conceive the soul as a dual entity, comprising the ñe’eng or divine word, and a terrestrial soul. The ñe’eng is claimed to be the real name of a person—the identity with which she or he is endowed in the spiritual realm before birth. This name must be revealed to the shaman during the ñimongarai, the ritual naming ceremony. At birth, the earthly component of the soul is incorporated. This terrestrial soul, known as the tekó-achy-kué, is the product of the tekó-achy, the human passions and our own imperfections as mortal beings, and it is conceptually and etymologically related to one of the two main etiological categories of illness in the Guarani cosmovision, the mba’ achy. These illnesses are those caused by our own passions, which are reflected by the inobservance of social, moral, and religious rules and obligations. But they are also caused by our imperfections as flesh and blood beings; that is to say, by our weakness when faced with physical and natural conditions and agents such as heat, cold, polluted waters, or snakebites.29 In a similar fashion to the anecdote recounted by Ruiz de Montoya, Guarani mythology tells how the gods searched among the plants and trees of the earth for the poã-reko-achy­— literally, “remedies against imperfections”—and gave this knowledge to the Guarani people to help them defend themselves against the mba’ achy.30 After the creation of the earth by Our-Great-Father, he and his companion, Mbaecuaá (Our-Father-Who-Knows-Everything), begot on Our-Mother the Twins, the culture heroes in Tupi-Guarani mythology. As a test of their divine origin, the Twins had to complete the work of the creator, changing some aspects of nature and, more importantly for us, making contributions to human culture, such as donating the fire they had stolen from the vultures and, significantly, teaching the art of medicine to the Añan or demons, who in turn passed this knowledge to the Guarani. With the exception of a single terrifying Añan who devoured the souls of the dead in their transit to the other world, these demons were semi-serious characters in the Twin myths, being the constant victims of the pranks played by the two heroes.31 Although this nuance in the role of Guarani demons was lost on Ruiz de Montoya, his account of the natives’ explanation of the origins of yerba mate seems to be a rendition of one or several versions of these Guarani donation myths. The second category of illnesses in Guarani etiology consists of magical illnesses caused by the pochy, a concept that embodies evil in Guarani cosmology.32 There is no natural remedy for these diseases, and it is one of the roles of the shaman to prevent and cure the afflictions caused by the action of the pochy.33 In extreme cases of pochy-attributed illnesses, the paies could even resort to a second ñimongarai in an effort to cure the patient. By renaming the patient and thus giving him or her a new identity free of disease, the paies hoped to trick the pochy.34 Endowed with a new ñe’eng, the patient became, to a certain extent, a new person, while the illness stayed behind with the old person and name.35 Pochy-related illnesses are usually grave and, if left untreated, often fatal. Recourse to a shaman in



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these cases is of paramount importance for the Guarani. The influence of these conceptions of illnesses among baptized reduction Guarani can be seen in the case of a sick boy reported in the Santo Tomás Apóstol reduction in 1635. Unable to help him through recourse to natural and herb-based remedies, his desperate parents decided to call a paie in an effort to save him from what might have seemed to them the action of the pochy. The boy, however, described by the Jesuit report as a pious and devoted Christian, refused the help of the shaman, calling him a sorcerer and a minister of Satan. Seeing that his son’s condition was getting worse, the parents insisted and the paie performed his ritual while the boy was asleep. Being informed by his brother of his parent’s scheme, the boy called the missionary and told him everything. The Jesuit, aware of how grave the boy’s condition was, confessed him and administered to him the extreme unction, after which the boy died. The missionaries then made the parents confess the name of the shaman, and apprehended him. The paie was legally charged with the death of the boy and sentenced to be beaten publicly. He was then “put in the pillory with a great shame for him and discredit for his art.”36 Despite the triumphant tone of the Jesuit report, this example shows how pervasive native conceptions of disease were, and how they could lead even Christian natives living in the relatively controlled environment of the reductions into forbidden traditional practices. Given these native conceptions, it seems only natural that the Jesuit missionaries felt a great deal of uneasiness when faced with native healing practices, even ones that were merely making recourse to their traditional pharmacopoeia. As Ruiz de Montoya’s account of the use of yerba mate seems to indicate, even if the reduction Guarani did not resort to a paie, the use of their ethnobotanical knowledge in their everyday routines was highly suspicious to the missionaries. Although reluctantly, Ruiz de Montoya acknowledged mate infusions were probably beneficial in moderate quantities. But in his view its effectiveness could not obscure the fact that its use had a demonic origin, and mate figured prominently in all Guarani rituals or “sorceries.”37 The interpretation of the Guarani donation myths as a demonic intervention made any botanical information provided by the natives problematic and potentially threatening. Even if a particular plant or herb did indeed produce a beneficial effect on the body, as in the case of yerba mate, the missionaries considered its use nonetheless spiritually dangerous, especially for the indigenous neophytes, whose recent conversion to the Christian faith made them always suspect to religious error and at risk of relapsing to their ancient ways and traditions. To be sure, neither the demonizing of native rituals and myths nor the perceived antagonistic activity of the devil within the reductions were peculiarly Jesuit attitudes. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, these attitudes were commonplace in the perception of native cultures and religions. Furthermore, the ongoing debate in Europe regarding the realities and dangers of witchcraft, with their associated intensification of demonological investigations, also helped secure the conceptual framework from which Jesuit missionaries interpreted native

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healing rituals, practices, and knowledge. It is worth noting here that the Jesuit missionaries assigned to Paraguay during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries came not only from Spain or Spanish-controlled territories in Europe; several of them—such as the Italian Simon Mazeta, the Belgian Nicolas du Toict, and the German Antonio Sepp, to name just a few—came from different cultural backgrounds where the debates about witchcraft were occupying European intellectuals, lawyers, and theologians in a collective effort to grapple with the reality and extent of the devil’s dominion over humankind. Although a complete review of the European demonological debate and its multiple facets is well outside my scope, a brief survey of some fundamental themes will help us clarify the Jesuits’ reactions to native medical lore and the interpretive operations they relied upon to render ethnobotanical information useful to their own evangelical ends. From the very first years of European presence in America, the religious aspects of Amer­indian cultures had presented a challenge to the friars and conquistadors seeking to impose their rule over native peoples. If in 1493 Columbus could boast about his discovery by stating that the natives would be soon converted to Christianity since they “knew of no sect or idolatry, but they all believe that the strength and goodness is in the heavens,” soon the Europeans would embark on an interpretive task that rendered native practices intelligible as a form of idolatry and devil worship.38 In particular, contact with the advanced civilizations of Mesoamerica and their more complex and spectacular religious practices and beliefs would, in a matter of decades, transform Columbus’s optimistic view into a firm belief in the complete dominion of Satan over the indigenous peoples of the New World.39 The striking parallels between Christian and Mexica devotional practices clearly suggested to the European priests the active presence of the devil on the continent. Writing in the early 1540s, the Franciscan friar Toribio de Benavente—better known by his Nahuatl nickname “Motolinía”—commented with surprise on the existence of an Aztec equivalent to the sacrament of Communion and the mystery of transubstantiation. According to Motolinía, the Mexica prepared round buns for the festival of the warrior god Texcatlipoca. As the buns were consecrated to the god, the Mexica believed that they “became the flesh of Tezcatlipoca, who was the god or demon they thought the most powerful and the one they held in the highest praise; and only boys ate those buns, as a way of communion or as the flesh of that demon.” To add injury to insult, the adult members of the noble and priestly classes did not eat the buns, but instead, in a horrific, literal rendering of the sacrament of Communion, ate the flesh of those individuals sacrificed to the god.40 The existence of rituals that seemed to parody and invert the Church’s sacraments was by no means a surprise to European readers. In his 1529 Tratado de las supersticiones, the Basque Franciscan friar Martín de Castañega had discussed at length demonic ceremonies, rituals, curses, and spells. In his view, all these activities could and should be classed as execraments—that is to say, procedures imposed by the devil that opposed and inverted the Catholic sacraments. This inversion was perfect, according to Castañega, whether one considered the form,



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matter, or intention of any execrament. If the church used simple, clean, everyday materials to perform its sacraments—such as bread, oil, or water—the devil, mocking the Christian practice, would require his minions to use only the foulest, most obscure, and recondite things to perform their rites. If the Catholic sacraments were always accompanied by simple words and carried out in an orderly fashion, demonic rituals were usually characterized by the obscurity of the incantations and their awful rhythms. Unlike sacraments, which were beneficial for their recipients, demonic practices were performed with ill intentions.41 More importantly, if the intention and expected outcome of the church’s sacraments was to make God concur with his grace, the recipient of the execraments “not only does not attain grace and virtue, but incurs the sin of infidelity [to God], which is the biggest sin of all.”42 Through the imposition of execraments, the devil sought only the eternal damnation of individuals and the harm of communities, instead of providing his help. The idea of the demonic inversion of the Catholic rituals was derived from the view of the devil as simia Dei (God’s ape), as Tertullian had famously defined him. The conceptualization of the devil as someone who, out of his immense pride, always strove to supplant God in men’s hearts logically led to a binarism that construed all satanic actions as the reverse of Christian ones.43 Given Satan’s drive to imitate and pervert all things sacred, it was not surprising that he had instituted an organized cult in America, complete with temples, a hierarchy of ministers, and an overcrowded religious calendar that kept native peoples busy worshipping him as God. Reflecting on the numerous religious festivals held by the Mexica before the arrival of the missionaries, Motolinía exclaimed that the whole land seemed to be “a faithful copy of hell.”44 The basic conceptual tools for this rendering of native cultures had their origins in the European late Middle Ages, when the dualist heresies—particularly those of the Cathars and the later accusations of an organized idolatrous cult among the Knights Templar—led the church to shift from previous views of magic and invocations of the devil as lesser crimes to construe these acts as constitutive of the much more serious offenses of heresy and idolatry.45 The complexity and organization of Mesoamerican religious practices and beliefs, especially their more horrifying practices (such as human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism), would have seemed to be a clear example of the lengths to which Satan was willing to go to satisfy his immense pride. The view that all demonic cults were in fact organized in a fashion that imitated the church while perverting its means and ends was one of the cornerstones of Castañega’s Tratado de las supersticiones: “Two are the churches in this world: one is the Catholic Church, the other is the diabolical church,” the latter comprising everyone who did not belong to the Catholic Church.46 However, given the fact there were and had been innumerable different sects and religious beliefs in the world, Castañega recognized that this division was made for the sake of definition only; there were many diabolical churches, but they all had in common the fact that their beliefs and practices were erroneous and idolatrous.47 The Tratado can be seen as an effort to systematize the common features of all these cults and

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to distinguish between licit practices and truly demonic superstitions: that is to say, between those practices preserving God’s majesty and his exclusive right to be worshipped, and those that in fact constituted idolatrous worshipping of the devil. Essential for the making of this distinction was the concept of the demonic pact, since it was through the pact that a Christian renounced the Catholic faith to consecrate himself or herself to the devil. The idea of the pact as the operative mode through which the magician achieved his or her goals was developed in the fourteenth century and became a linchpin of European demonological thinking.48 In their immensely authoritative Malleus maleficarum (1486), the German theologians James Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer declared that in bringing about the evils of witchcraft, “witches and the devil always work together, and . . . one can do nothing without the help and assistance of the other.”49 The most horrifying and offensive aspects of witchcraft were a consequence of the pact, the ritual through which an individual put himself or herself under the dominion of the devil, who could then use him or her as his instrument to unleash evil and gain more servants. This doctrine implied a radical break from previous traditions in the church that, on the one hand, had considered the devil as a fallen angel—a creature merely seeking to tempt man and lead him to sin—and, on the other, had a long-established view of heresy as a matter of opinion. In contrast, the doctrine of the diabolical pact changed the agency of the devil, who now sought to equal himself to God through worship and the inversion of sacramental rites. This change had one momentous consequence: heresy could now be defined not only as a matter of opinion, but also of actions. It was precisely this change that allowed the medieval Inquisition to begin prosecuting cases of sorcery and set the doctrinal basis for the witch-hunts that gained momentum during the second half of the fifteenth century.50 In line with this tradition, Castañega recognized two types of pact. The first was the explicit pact that occurred when a person consciously subjected himself or herself to the devil, whether in front of a demon or in front of an already consecrated minister of Satan.51 The second type of pact, the hidden or implicit pact, was of a more subtle nature. It occurred every time an individual, without intending to renounce the Catholic faith, turned to an execrament in search of any kind of help, believing in its efficacy. The problem here was that execraments, unlike sacraments, were not efficacious signs since neither by nature (that is to say, matter) nor by their institution by the devil could they necessarily yield the desired results, because necessity can only be guaranteed by God and not by any creature.52 If by chance a particular sortilege did in fact produce the expected results, it was to be attributed not to any virtue in the satanic ritual itself, but instead to a direct intervention by demons, who occasionally kept their word in order to maintain their hold over witches and sorcerers.53 In any case, the execraments were considered by Castañega, as by previous theologians, to be real signs of the presence of the devil.54 Whether or not a spell, curse, or any other type of demonic execrament had real and tangible effects on the world, they were nonetheless undeniable signs of the idolatrous pact between human and demon,



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because “anyone who put his confidence in anything other than Christ, and calls upon the help of that one who is against Christ, is then putting himself against Christ and his law.”55 Castañega’s treatise was influential on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1553, the Franciscan friar Andrés de Olmos published his Tratado de hechicerias y sortilegios in Mexico, a work based largely on Castañega’s text, in an attempt to apply its lessons to the context of Mexica ritual practices.56 More tellingly for our purposes, the themes discussed by Castañega are also present in José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias, the most important Jesuit account of native American religious practices. Acosta’s extensive treatment of native religions focused on what he considered the idolatrous practices that were pervasive in the New World. Like Castañega, Acosta mainly considered idolatry to be the result of Satan’s agency, rather than the result of humankind’s natural inclination toward God going astray without revelation.57 Acosta’s description of native religious practices focused on the same two main features Castañega had discussed; namely, the existence of a demonic church and the devil’s inversion of Christian sacramental practices. For Acosta, the parallels between Christian and native practices were so obvious that the only possible explanation was a demonic institution of these rituals and organization. Just as God’s church has sacrifices and priests, and sacraments and religious men, and prophets and people devoted to his divine cult and holy ceremonies, the devil also had instituted in America sacrifices and priests, his own type of sacraments, and “people devoted to fake meditation and spurious sanctity, and a thousand kind of false prophets” (Historia natural y moral, 321–22). The devil even had the audacity to give the name papa (Spanish for “pope”) to his high priests in Mexico, which was for Acosta irrefutable proof of the devil’s need to imitate and pervert Christ’s church in America, particularly considering that the papas were the ones in charge of performing human sacrifices (327, 340). The devil, in fact, had introduced mock versions of almost all the sacraments and main rituals of the Catholic Church. Acosta discussed at length the rituals practiced by the Aztecs and the Incas comparable to Communion, the feast of Corpus Christi, vocal confession, the priestly orders, baptism, and marriage (346–59). But, although comparable, the difference between Christian sacraments and demonic execraments was unbridgeable: Although many ceremonies seem to concur with ours, there is a great difference because they always mix them with many abominations. What is common and general in these [Indian ceremonies] is one of these three things: to be either cruel, or filthy, or unnecessary. Because all these ceremonies were either cruel and harmful, like the killing of men and the shedding of blood, or they were filthy and disgusting, like the eating and drinking they did in reverence of their idols, carrying them, or urinating in honor of the idol, or to smear and paint themselves in such a hideous way, and another hundred thousand vile things. At the very least, these ceremonies were vain and laughable, utterly unnecessary, and more suitable to children than to men. And the reason for this is the very condi-

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As in Castañega’s discussion, Indian execraments were the total inversion of Christian sacraments. Whether considered in their matter, form, or intent, they were always afoul of human salvation and well-being, even if for nothing more than their vain character: their very pointlessness was a way with which the devil kept the natives away from the true God. Acosta’s powerful depiction of Amer­indian cultures as peoples in desperate need of—and in some cases hoping for—deliverance from the devil’s clutches certainly influenced subsequent Jesuit attitudes toward indigenous rituals and practices as much as European demonological speculations had influenced his. In this sense, Jesuit attitudes toward Guarani shamanistic practices and ethnobotanical lore cannot be totally dissociated from the European debates on the methods, effects, and extent of demonic magic. Probably no other sixteenth-­century treatise was comparable to the brilliant synthesis of demonologic knowledge published by the Spanish-born Jesuit Martín del Rio in 1599. His Disquisitionum Magicarum greatly influenced not only Jesuit doctrine on the devil but also that of lay and religious intellectuals on both sides of the confessional divide up to the mid-eighteenth century.58 Given its influence, Rio’s synthesis of previous speculations on the relationship between the devil and magical practices became the unofficial demonological position of the Society of Jesus. Rio started his treatise by defining magic as a kind of knowledge as well as a kind of practice (ars sive facultas). He distinguished among three types of magic according to their efficient cause: natural magic—that is to say, the kind of magic relying on the natural virtues and effects of the objects of nature to accomplish its goals; artificial magic, which was equivalent to technology and engineering; and demonic magic.59 Each of these kinds of magic could be further classified according to their final ends; that is to say, whether their actions were aimed at doing good or harm, with the notable exception of demonic magic, which was by definition evil (3). Although Rio explicitly identified licit means and intentions with natural and artificial magic, while noting that prohibited magical practices were in fact tantamount to superstition and to implicit idolatry, the classification of magical acts according to the intention with which they were performed presents a fundamental ambiguity in his understanding of magic, particularly in the case of using natural elements in demonic magic. The fact that Rio devoted a long section of his treatise to discussing the use of natural herbs and venoms in demonic magic seems to confirm this interpretation. The ambiguous stand of natural magic is due to Rio’s understanding of the role and capabilities of the devil. For Rio, as for Castañega and previous theologians, all magical operations required a demonic pact, whether explicit or tacit (71). However (and in a more judicial fashion than Castañega), Rio did not seem to consider the existence of the pact as a sure proof of demonic intervention. For him, the pact was a necessary precondition for any illicit act of magic, but the



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pact alone could not in any way indicate with certainty that a particular effect was due to demonic magic. Only when a phenomenon did not have a rational or natural explanation and there were no miracles to be adduced was one to assume it was the consequence of diabolical magic (79). Since only God can perform miracles, this line of reasoning deprives demonic magic of any supernatural powers. Rio denied that demons—and therefore, magi—could violate or override natural laws. Demons cannot do anything substantial, because they are only allowed to perform accidental effects. They cannot create anything ex nihilo. They cannot impose form over matter that is not predisposed to that form, and so on. Demons, then, have to conform to natural laws, and anything they do must follow the natural course of things (96–97). Furthermore, the actions of demons can have a real effect if—and only if—God allows it (253). These considerations certainly limit the power and influence that can be attributed to demons while, at the same time, they reveal the difficulties inherent in identifying true demonic magic from lesser forms of superstition—or in the case of judicial inquiries, from simple gossiping or mere ignorance.60 In part, these difficulties arose from the Thomistic view of the devil as sharing in the nature and capabilities of the angels. In De Malo, his only systematic treatment of the problem of evil, Aquinas noted that unlike humans, angelic beings do not need to go from principles to conclusions, but know conclusions immediately from principles. Since demons share in the angelic nature, their way of knowledge is the same as that of the angels, at least in natural cognition.61 If we could have the same immediate knowledge of conclusions as the devil has, then all the effects of demonic activity could be rationally explained; however, given that human intellect does not operate this way, the effects of demonic magic can sometimes appear to us as supernatural. Take the case of curses and spells, for instance. According to Rio, in most cases natural remedies can offer partial help for the health problems caused by a witch or sorcerer, but cannot solve all the ill effects of demonic magic (“remedia haec naturalia ex parte poterunt iuuare, in totum iuuare non poterunt”). But he denied that this has anything to do with a supernatural intervention of the devil by, for instance, changing the substances of those remedies in order to make them less effective. Instead, Rio argued that a myriad of reasons can cause this partial effectiveness, not least among them the fact that physicians can rarely be sure of what means the magus or the devil used to cause the illness, so they are unable to effectively match cause with treatment (Disquisitionum, 697). The impotence of medical knowledge in treating these seemingly unexplainable illnesses gives them the false appearance of being supernatural. Thus, natural magic occupied an ambiguous position in Rio’s system between licit and illicit forms of magic. Since all the actions performed by the magicians with the help of the devil could, at least in theory, be explained by natural causes, the distinction between licit and illicit uses of nature could only be done by tracing back the source of the magus’s knowledge about these effects. If (as Jesuit missionaries such as Valdivia or Ruiz de Montoya seem to have believed) that

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knowledge had been handed down to the shamans by the devil, then the use of this information would always be illicit irrespective of the results or the intentions with which such knowledge was put to use. This view was firmly anchored in the traditional conception of the magic act as requiring a demonic pact, be it explicit or not. The idolatrous nature of the magic act represented by the pact made sorcerers—and, in the case of native Americans, shamans—both victims and minions of Satan. They were victims insofar as their worshipping of the devil made their salvation impossible unless they recanted their allegiance to Satan upon entering the church. But they were also Satan’s minions since the devil not only harmed the communities through their operations, their actions also helped the devil keep his grip on humankind. If, as Rio had defined earlier, magic could be considered good or bad depending upon the means used by the magician and the ends sought by his or her actions, then the idea of a demonic pact (whether explicit or implicit) as a necessary precondition for all magical actions made the intentions of the practitioner irrelevant. Even if the magical practitioner was not aware of the evil he or she might have been causing, or even if she or he had intended to do good to someone (as was the case in healing rituals), the devil’s trickery could turn good intentions into vain observance, a major sin against the majesty of God (327–28). For the missionaries working in South America, this meant that the attribution of good or evil intentions to the practice of shamans had to be made not in accordance to the results achieved by their actions, for it was not enough to cure someone in order to affirm the right of the shaman to perform that healing. If the cure was attributed to anything other than God’s power or to the natural virtues he put on medicinal herbs, then the procedure was vain observance at best, and devil worship and idolatry at worst. Irrespective of their result, the shamans’ techniques and knowledge—his or her ars sive facultas—were always dangerous to the Christian soul, if not the body, for underneath all of the shamans’ actions, the devil was waiting to cast his net of deception and trickery. The devil, Rio warns us, deceives us even when he speaks the truth.62 Or, as Rio’s contemporary the Spanish theologian Juan Escobar de Corro confirmed, the devil hides evil under good appearances and whenever he seems to encourage us to do some good, he is leading us toward evil and damnation.63 The views on demonic magic sketched here can account for the attitudes held by the Jesuit missionaries toward native medicine. Not only did the diabolical interpretation of the Guarani donation myths discussed above make the missionaries suspicious of native medical practices; the initiation rituals of shamans and medical practitioners were also viewed as proof of their standing as ministers of the devil. Techo, for instance, noted that those who wished to become versed “in the magic arts” had to undergo a rigorous training period that included extended fasts and bodily mortifications until “the demon they had invoked finally appears to them.”64 According to Techo, the demonic pact was essential for any kind of activity the paies wished to perform. Then, it cannot be a surprise that their actions were construed as attempts to harm members of the different communities



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in a manner not so different from that attributed to European witches: “Their profession consists of causing illnesses, throwing tiny pieces of bones, hair, and coal [at their victims] that, once affixed to the limbs, produce first emaciation and lastly the death [of the person], unless the one that produced the sickness in the first place takes away [these materials] from the affected body parts.”65 Furthermore, every kind of knowledge the paies exhibited had its origin in their communication with the devil and, thus, was utterly unreliable. This was particularly the case with their medical knowledge: “There are some [sorcerers] that call themselves physicians, and these talk a lot, fake even more, and in the end never do anything useful.”66 Even if the traditional remedies were beneficial to the body, the mere fact that the knowledge of its use came from the devil made them even more dangerous. Given both the claims of the shamans and the cultural explanations for the origins of those remedies circulating among the Guarani, the use of native medicines within a traditional ritual context would inevitably lead the neophytes to the sin of vain observance, if not downright idolatry. Therefore, native medicinal practices were unreliable at best, and dangerous at worst. The last instance can be dramatically exemplified by an anecdote told by Ovalle regarding a Chilean shaman. According to Ovalle, a machi from Mapuche-controlled lands spent several years living in a cave, “taking courses in the school of the devil, who, fruitfully using his falsehoods, talked to her often, and gave her herbs to cure people.” After being captured in a military raid, the machi was assigned to a residence in a Jesuit settlement where, although she attended Mass and listened to the sermons preached by the missionaries, she kept using her traditional methods to heal the natives. One day, the machi fell ill and in order to cure herself she used the European technique of bloodletting. At that moment, the devil appeared and told her she should remove the bandage and let her blood flow freely, which she did, almost dying from exsanguination.67 As this story indicates, part of the problem with demonic knowledge was the impossibility of trusting in its validity. Even though demons were assumed to have a superior understanding of natural causes and effects and, therefore, a more perfect and immediate knowledge of the properties of herbs and plants, their evil nature could not be trusted. As both Rio and Escobar de Corro had warned, even if the devil says the truth or appears to do some good, the dangers of following his lead outweigh the presumptive benefits.

Medicine and Social Control in the Reductions The conceptualization of native medicine as demonic rituals led the Jesuit missionaries to regulate their charges’ access to medical care. To be sure, the institutionalization of medical care in the Jesuit reductions was a response primarily to the necessity of protecting the communities from the numerous health problems that arose from the close quarters in which the Guarani were now forced to live. But its potential as a disciplining tool was not lost on the Jesuits. Describing the

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general functioning of the missions in his report to Rome corresponding to the years 1626 and 1627, Provincial Nicolás Mastrillo Durán noted that on top of their religious and administrative duties, the Jesuit missionaries took turns visiting “every household in town to inquire if there is anyone sick, and if they find any sick persons, they are not just doctors of their souls but also of their bodies, because they fetch their medicines, and administer to them, and they feed them and bleed them with their own hands.”68 Interestingly, Mastrillo Durán commented that the daily medical visits to every family in the reductions were one of the most effective mechanisms of social control, noting that “this way is the one that has worked best for the fathers in domesticating the Indians, especially the newly reduced.”69 In fact, medicine in the Jesuit missions in Paraguay would become a highly controlled activity, allowing the missionaries to control the neophytes’ recourse to traditional magical-religious activities much more efficiently, at least within the mission limits.70 This disciplinary aspect of medical care gradually increased with time and, by the eighteenth century, there were two daily visits to every household in at least some reductions.71 One of the most interesting developments in this conjunction of discipline and medical care was the overlapping of religious piety and the care of the sick toward which the Jesuits directed their Guarani charges. A decade after Mastrillo Durán reported on the daily routine of the missionaries in Paraguay, the Jesuits started to select from the members of the Sodality of Our Lady (chapters of which were present in every reduction) those individuals better suited to assist the priests in the often taxing demands of distributing food and medicines and providing spiritual relief to the sick members of the communities. During a dysentery epidemic early in the 1630s, the cabildo (town council) of the Santos Mártires at Caaró reduction decided to implement a hospital to isolate the ailing. To help with the care of the sick, the priests appointed nurses, who were chosen from among the most zealous and pious members of the sodality. Male nurses were in charge of the clinical care of the patients, while female nurses had to sweep the hospital, clean the surgical instruments, and wash the linens.72 Membership into the sodality itself was highly selective. Ruiz de Montoya, who decided to establish the Sodality of Our Lady among the Guarani of Loreto, summarized the requirements: “We chose only twelve members—the most virtuous ones. We inaugurated our congregation with music, the celebration of the Mass, and a sermon. The members received the Holy Communion that day, which caused a holy desire of emulation to all the people. Little by little others members have been chosen on the basis of their great virtue.”73 To gain acceptance in the sodality, both men and women had to undergo a process of self-examination and then submit themselves to examination in general confession, after which the missionary in charge of selection would decide whether or not to accept the applicant.74 Once accepted, the members of the sodality were required to kneel at the confessional at least once a week. They were allowed to receive Communion more often than the other members of the reduction if the priest found nothing particularly grave in their confessions.75 The selection of individuals from the membership of the



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Sodality of Our Lady points toward the anxiety felt by the missionaries regarding Guarani traditional curative procedures and their perceived link to demonic practices. The criteria guiding the selection of medical aides was not related to their knowledge of medicinal practices, at least not primarily. Instead, the Jesuits looked for individuals whose Christianity was sound enough to dispel any suspicions of recourse to traditional practices to help the ailing natives; the frequent practice of confession helped the priests closely monitor the nurses’ behavior. The usefulness of keeping a native corps of nurses not only to discharge the priests from some of the most burdensome tasks of caring for the sick but, also, to better control the recourse to native medical practices, led to the institutionalization of these groups of medical aides. By 1695, each reduction had a group (ranging from three to eight natives) devoted solely to caring for the sick, known as the curuzuyaras (literally, “the bearers of the cross”).76 Unlike their predecessors, the curuzuyaras were neither chosen from among the members of a religious congregation nor entrusted with the care of the sick based solely on their perceived piety. Instead, they were handpicked from among school-age boys, and they had to undergo a training period under the supervision of the Jesuit priests. Upon completion of this training, the missionaries certified them to act as nurses within the reduction. In certain cases, the curuzuyaras were also recruited from the adult male population, especially from among those whose knowledge of the native pharmacopoeia made them indispensable as aides to the priests. 77 Their duties included visiting each household twice a day to report the number of sick people to the priests, the progress of those under treatment, and singling out those who needed extreme unction. Besides reporting on the mission’s population, the curuzuyaras were in charge of cooking the foods prescribed to each patient by the Jesuit in charge and, more importantly, of preparing the medicines to be administered to the sick. As a reward for their services, and to allow them full-time dedication to their duties as nurses, the curuzuyaras were excused from working in the communal fields and from any other type of public service.78 For the Jesuits, the curuzuyaras were valuable informants of both Guarani medical knowledge and the behavior of the members of the reduction. This fact granted them a position of privilege within their communities. Besides their exemption from community service and agricultural duties, the Jesuits granted them the honor of carrying the cross, preceding the priest when he was on his way to administer the sacraments to the sick—hence their name. But despite their importance and privileged position, they had little control over the way Guarani medical traditions were used and interpreted by the missionaries. Although the curuzuyaras were trained in some European clinical techniques, the final responsibility for overseeing the physical well-being of the community always fell upon the missionaries. They were the ones who determined the courses of treatment and diets prescribed to the sick. The Jesuits also kept under lock and key the provision of herbs and ingredients needed for the preparation of medicines. The information the missionaries obtained from the curuzuyaras was compiled and organized in herbals that gave precise information about the plants,

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their way of preparation, and their dosages. These herbals, usually illustrated, were then circulated among the reductions all over Paraguay. They were not intended to help the curuzuyaras perform their duties better, but to allow Jesuit priests and lay brothers to direct them better. The establishment of the curuzuyaras system in the reductions allowed the Jesuits some measure of control over Guarani medical practices. On the one hand, the daily visits to each household in the community allowed them a tighter and more coercive control of recourse to the shamans. On the other hand, the recruitment of those individuals well versed in the traditional pharmacopoeia gave the missionaries access not only to Guarani lore about medicinal plants but, also, a more effective way to detach traditional Guarani medical practices from their original cultural context by codifying this knowledge within Hippocratic-Galenic theories and clinical practices. The disciplinary aspect of medical healthcare imposed on the Paraguayan reductions by the Jesuits greatly helped to quench the uneasiness at least some of the Jesuits felt toward native medicine. By closely controlling the natives’ recourse to their traditional healing rituals through the double daily visits to every household by the curuzuyaras and by supervising the course of treatment administered by these aides, the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay could effectively detach the information about the use of a particular plant from the ritual context in which that same plant had been traditionally used. Once detached from its original context, this information could be inscribed within European clinical practices and, more importantly, interpreted within the frame of European medical theories. The intellectual operations applied by the Jesuit missionaries to Guarani ethnobotanical lore in order to turn it into what they could recognize as legitimate medical knowledge are visible in the illustrated herbals that circulated among the Paraguayan reductions in the eighteenth century. It is to these texts that we now turn.

Knowledge versus Information Even if the centralization of healthcare in the missions helped assuage some of the anxieties felt by the missionaries toward native practices, especially by keeping the influence of the shamans in check (at least within the reduction limits), the problems derived from the purported demonic origins of native medicinal uses of plants and herbs remained in place. As we saw in the case of yerba mate, even when beneficial, the use of botanical and medicinal information handed down by the devil still remained troubling to the missionaries in no small measure because the effectiveness of these medications was not attributed by the natives to their natural virtues, but to their use within ritual practices and their inscription within donation myths that referred back to traditional Guarani lore and cosmology. As Rio had warned his readers, even medicine could turn into vain observance whenever the healing practice was ritualized, so that the curative effect required the patient to believe in the curative powers supposedly held by



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the healer, or when the curative effects were attributed to the formal aspects of the ritual—that is to say, to the use of figures, symbols, letters, rhythms, or chants used by the healer—but not to God or at least to the natural virtues that he had put on the medicines employed (Disquisitionum, 328). The ritualized character of native healing practices, and the tracing back to a demonic origin of the Guarani botanical lore performed by the Jesuits, made them deny the existence of any kind of medical knowledge among the Guarani. In contrast to European formal medical traditions, native practices seemed to lack any recognizable theoretical model explaining both the causes of diseases and the effectiveness of treatments employed to cure them. It is the confluence of these views on native medicine that helps us understand the silence in Jesuit chronicles about the agency of native informants and nurses as sources of ethnobotanical information and as healthcare providers. From the missionaries’ perspective, native healing practices needed to be removed from their mythical explanatory frameworks and ritual applications and reinscribed within European theoretical frameworks in order to be considered medicine. Even when the healing use of a plant could be traced back to an origin different than the devil, the Jesuits were still reluctant to consider its use as true medicine. As in the case of yerba mate, Ruiz de Montoya gives us an illustrative example of the way the missionaries perceived the relationship of native informants to knowledge about the natural world. In a chapter devoted to describing the most notable animals of Paraguay, Ruiz de Montoya included an anecdote about the macagua, a bird that fed on vipers: There is the most pleasant joust between the birds called by the naturals macagua and some small vipers, of which these birds are extremely fond; the bird hides its beak behind the feathers of its wing, using it as a shield, and charges against the viper, giving it a hard peck; the viper in turns bites back, and if the bird feels wounded, it flies to certain herbs that have the same name as the bird, and eating some branches comes back to the joust . . . until it kills the viper by so many hard pecks, and eats it, flying then to its pharmacy to find the countervenom, eating some buds, and so in this manner the bird is sustained, cured, and triumphant all at the same time. From this joust the naturals learned the use of this herb against all kind of poisons, and we have even seen some other beneficial effects against headaches, fevers, constipations, and other diseases.79

This little vignette reveals one of the basic attitudes with which the Jesuits faced native medical lore: native knowledge appears neither as the product of reflection upon the causes of the disease nor as the product of a systematic exploration of nature. From the missionaries’ perspective, native knowledge was simply a function of the natives’ dependence on nature rather than the product of their rational capabilities. In Ruiz de Montoya’s anecdote, the naturales acquired naturally, so to speak, the instinctive knowledge about the antidote possessed by the bird through simple observation. The Guarani applied this knowledge, according to

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him, with minimal elaboration. They simply mimicked the bird’s behavior and used the macagua as a broad antidote. The missionaries, on the other hand, were able to find a variety of new uses for this medicinal plant through systematic experimentation with indigenous flora. Knowledge acquisition, as conceptualized by Ruiz de Montoya, thus follows an ascendant ladder, which goes from natural instinct to European rational systematizations with native cultures located as links in between.80 As a result, even without taking into consideration its possible links to the devil, Guarani knowledge would have seemed flawed and incomplete to the Jesuit missionaries. This view of native medical lore and the conceptualization of the process of knowledge acquisition that made it possible would remain operative well into the eighteenth century, as can be seen in the manuscript herbals that circulated in the Paraguayan reductions. Perhaps the most important compiler of Guarani pharmacopoeia was Pedro Montenegro. Born in Galicia in 1663, Montenegro was trained as a surgeon and apothecary, and was hired in 1679 at age sixteen by the General Hospital in Madrid. In 1691, Montenegro joined the Society of Jesus as a lay brother and was sent the following year to Tucumán, in the Jesuit Province of Paraguay. In 1702, he was assigned to the Paraguayan reductions as a nurse, where he stayed until his death in 1728. His illustrated herbal, the “Libro primero de la propiedad y virtudes de los árboles y plantas, de las misiones y provincia del Tucumán con algunas del Brasil y del Oriente,” dated 1710, describes 129 indigenous plants, specifying their Guarani names, their properties, uses, and appropriate dosages. Among them we find a thorough discussion of the use of macagua as a countervenom. Montenegro, going a step further than Ruiz de Montoya in the marginalization of native agency, gave full credit to Ruiz de Montoya for the discovery of the plant. Montenegro pointed out that the use of macagua to treat poisonous bites was well extended among the Guarani, as can be observed not in actual practice but, rather, in the text written by “Father Montoya, from where I took its etymology, which is the name of a bird called macagua” (458). The attenuation of the importance of native knowledge is completed in the description of the uses of macagua. While the Guarani had only used it to treat the occasional bite of a poisonous snake, Montenegro indicates the preparation and appropriate dosage of macagua for the treatment of over a dozen illnesses, including epilepsy, urine retention, and menstrual problems (458–61). Montenegro’s effacement of the role played by the natives in the Jesuit access to information about Paraguayan flora is even more evident in his entry about the zuinandi tree. The bark of the zuinandi was the only known medicine to help prevent infection in wounds made by jaguars. According to Montenegro, the discovery of the zuinandi’s antiseptic properties was due to direct observation of the jaguars’ behavior: “And the tiger often uses this remedy to cool down the hotness of its poisonous claws, from the great heat and humidity, by climbing the zuinandi tree and scratching its bark deeply to the wood itself ” (254). Unlike in Ruiz de Montoya’s anecdote, here the native observer disappears completely. The narrative goes directly from the animal’s instinctive knowledge to its systematization by the



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European missionary: “I doubt there exists a better remedy for wounds and tiger bites, according to my experience, although in order to mitigate the hotness and relieve the inflammation, I dissolve some aloe in the zuinandi broth, to make the cure faster and more secure” (254). Emphasizing the natural origin of this information, the illustration accompanying the entry shows a crouched jaguar about to sharpen its nails against the tree. This is the only case in either of the two known manuscripts of Montenegro’s herbal in which he included a non-botanical element in his drawings. As these examples suggest, in Jesuit narratives the relationship of both Guarani natives and Jesuit missionaries to the acquisition of knowledge about nature is established through their ascription to a specific cognitive model: animals know by instinct, natives by observation, and Europeans by rational and systematic inquiry. It was in this sense that the Jesuits could deny the natives’ possession of a real body of medical knowledge. It is worth remembering here that in the Hippocratic-Galenic medical school in which Spanish practitioners such as Montenegro had been trained, theoretical explanation always superseded em­ pirical observation as the guiding principle of medical practice.81 As Montenegro reminded his reader, paraphrasing Galen, the art of medicine consisted of “a certain quality, a certain quantity, and a certain manner of application” that must be determined theoretically according to the causes of the diseases and the properties of the medicines used to treat them (“Libro primero,” 97). This is why Montenegro included at the beginning of his herbal a long section intended to help medically untrained Jesuit missionaries recognize the degrees of hotness, coldness, dryness, or humidity of the different plants included, along with a glossary of technical terms used in his text (97–116). To be effective, local plants and traditional medicines had to be studied and interpreted according to European models, and their dosages and applications carefully controlled and monitored while taking into consideration the virtues and properties assigned to them by these models. Otherwise, one might run the risk of not curing the disease or, worse, endangering the life of the patient, as Sepp had accused the curuzuyaras of doing if left unsupervised (97). It was for these reasons that in the missionaries’ eyes, the Guarani merely had information about the use of certain plants and minerals to treat a rather reduced number of ailments, since their traditional concepts about disease did not amount to a rational theory explaining both the causes of illnesses and the effective uses of certain medicines. This attitude is evident in the scarce mentions of native informants found in Jesuit texts, despite the crucial role played by them as informants and medical aides. Montenegro, for instance, seems to have obtained most of his information about the Paraguayan flora from a Guarani named Clemente, “the most expert curuzuyara or physician I have met in these missions” (250). Although the curuzuyaras were present in all the reductions, Montenegro professed to trust only the information provided by Clemente. This trust was partly derived from the fact that Montenegro was certain Clemente was a good and faithful Christian, eliminating the possibility that his information was obtained from the devil (411).

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But this trust was also determined by what Montenegro considered the lack of a systematic approach to botanical information by the Guarani. Clemente was the only one in all the reductions that knew the herbs and how to use them prudently and effectively. From him I confirmed the true name of several herbs and plants, because I found such a variety of names in the different towns, and among the different curuzuyaras and Indian healers, either because these people come from different places and tribes, or because each tribe uses different names, or because they have corrupted the proper names of the plants by using others they find more appropriate. (411)

The variations both in the use of and in the nomenclature for indigenous medicinal plants constituted a problem for the Jesuits, who were unable to determine “whether with good or bad results” the natives used a certain plant (411). Furthermore, the identification of each plant was all the more difficult since different groups referred to them by different names. Although Montenegro was able to overcome this problem by using only one informant, it is apparent that most of the difficulties came from what the Jesuits saw as the unsystematic and reductionistic ways in which the natives obtained their knowledge about a plant’s properties. The unsystematic observations of animal behavior necessarily made the information possessed by the Guarani flawed and incomplete. From the Jesuit point of view, this fact strongly limited the reliability of native informants on medicinal issues: “The yerba del toro is thus called by the Indians because they see the bulls looking for it and grazing on it. I have found that the Indians use it against the flux of acrid humors accompanied by fever . . . but they have underused its virtues, even though this herb is announcing the very many virtues it possesses by its different parts, so I will speak of those with which I have experimented” (412). These virtues were immediately evident to Montenegro: “This herb is composed of emollient and hot parts as I have never seen nor read about, since it surpasses even melitoto [Melilotus sp.] in softening and dissolving callosities” (412). Since the yerba del toro was hot and humid in the second degree, according to Montenegro’s analysis of its qualities, its main clinical application should be the dissolution of any accumulation of humors in the body; thus, he claimed to have applied it successfully to resolve boils, cysts, and abscesses, as well as kidney and gall­bladder stones. As for the Indian practice of taking it as an antidiarrheal treatment, this could also be explained by its hotness since, according to Montenegro, it was most effective in those cases where the illness had been provoked by an excessive cooling of the stomach (414). It is clear that for missionaries like Montenegro, only experimentation with indigenous plants according to European procedures and techniques could guarantee a more reliable knowledge of their medicinal properties. In practice, this meant detaching local plants from their traditional contexts and reinscribing them in European traditions and explicative models. But this detachment of medicinal



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plants from their original cultural contexts not only helped the Jesuits expand their clinical applications of local plants to a variety of different conditions, it also helped them Christianize the information they were retrieving from native informants. This decontextualization operated on two levels, one pragmatic and the other semantic. On the pragmatic level, the inclusion of a local and culturally significant plant in herbals—such as the one written by Montenegro—allowed the missionaries to redirect its use from native to Western healing practices. ­Coupled with the disciplinary aspect of medical healthcare in the reductions and the close monitoring of the curuzuyaras’ activities, the Jesuits could control the community’s access to medicinal simples and its use of them, at least to a certain extent. On the semantic level, the Jesuit inscription of these plants within European theoretical frameworks helped them to turn what they saw as mere information into what they were prepared to recognize as legitimate medical knowledge. The inscription of native medicinal simples into a theoretical narrative allowed the Jesuits to explain their efficacy and predict further uses for these medicines. More importantly, this decontextualization also allowed for the receding of the stories pointing to the devilish origins of the use of these drugs, freeing the local plants and herbs to be inscribed in a new Christian version of their origins. Perhaps the most striking example of this process in Montenegro’s herbal is his discussion of yerba mate. Unlike Ruiz de Montoya—who, as we have seen, was one of the authorities for Paraguayan botany used by Montenegro—he did not condemn the recreational use of mate infusions. In fact, he praised its multiple health benefits as a gift from God to the people of Paraguay: “God came to the help of this poor land with this medicine, since [the land] is better suited to [this plant] than to chocolate, and it is suited to its inhabitants as much as cacao is suited to those living in the East, because these very hot and humid lands cause grave relaxation of the limbs due to the grave aperture of the pores and so we usually see people sweating in excess” (174). According to Montenegro, ibira caá miní, or yerba mate, given that it had hot or cold qualities depending on the part of the plant used, could help with a variety of conditions ranging from mild stomach problems to sunstroke and even nerve-damaging wounds (174–75). Ruiz de Montoya’s reservations about its use are nowhere to be found in Montenegro’s discussion of yerba mate. On the contrary, to Montenegro this veritable gift of God was “so beautiful and pleasing to the eye, as tasty and useful to [Paraguay’s] inhabitants” (172). More importantly, the story about the demonic origins of mate is not only absent, but it has been replaced by a new understanding of the Guarani donation myths. Montenegro was undoubtedly well aware of Ruiz de Montoya’s inquiry on the origins of yerba mate and its use—an inquiry that, as I discussed earlier, probably yielded one or several versions of the donation myths interpreted by Ruiz de Montoya as evidence of the paies’ commerce with the devil. Ruiz de Montoya’s Conquista espiritual, in fact, included Christian rewritings of several stories from Guarani folklore. The most prominent of these stories was Ruiz de Montoya’s speculation on the presence of the Apostle Thomas among the Gua-

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rani immediately after the death of Christ, which occupies six chapters of his Conquista espiritual. According to the Jesuit missionary, when he and Cristóbal de Mendoza went into the Tayati province, they were surprised by the festivities the natives had organized to welcome them, particularly considering that most of their previous experiences contacting Guarani clans had been marked by the distrust and aggressiveness with which local leaders and paies received them. In contrast, “these people received us with extraordinary manifestations of love, with dances, and festivities. . . . The women came out to welcome us carrying their children, a sure sign of peace and love; they entertained us with their usual foods, roots and fruits of the land.”82 Amazed and flattered, the Jesuits asked the natives the reason for such a reception: “They told us that, according to a very ancient legend that they had learned from their forefathers, in the times when Saint Thomas (to whom the peoples of Paraguay commonly refer to as Pay Zume and Peruvians as Pay Tume) passed through those lands, he told them: The doctrine I now preach to you, you will forget over time. But when, after time has passed, some priests, my successors, come bringing crosses as I do, your descendants will hear this doctrine again.”83 In the pages that followed, Ruiz de Montoya reviewed all the evidence he could find about the presence of Thomas in South America, including Andean myths describing a bearded man who had preached monotheism to the natives, the famous Carabuco cross found in Bolivia, and some rocks in Brazil, Asunción, and Peru that were believed to bear the saint’s footprints. The presence of one or two apostles in America, usually identified as Bartholomew and Thomas, long before the arrival of the Spaniards is one of the ideas most commonly found in chronicles and histories dealing with the native cultures of the continent.84 In part, this belief was derived from a logical necessity, that of the necessary fulfillment by the apostles of Jesus’s command to go and teach to all the peoples in the world, found in Matthew 28:19. “And if this is true,” wondered Ruiz de Montoya, “and it is an infallible truth, how can we think that [the apostles] left America in the dark, without the light of the Gospels, given that, according to mathematical calculations, it comprises almost a third of the earth?”85 In the case of Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay, this belief was reinforced by the stories told by the Guarani, who talked about a civilizing figure who had given them some of the most relevant aspects of their culture.86 The name of this culture hero—Zume or Sume—was phonetically too similar to Tomé (the form of Thomas commonly used in seventeenth-century Spanish) to pass unnoticed by the missionaries. Ruiz de Montoya, conflating native myths drawn from all over the continent (most notably of the Guarani Zume and the Andean Viracocha), built a narrative that brought Thomas from India and Africa (where Christian traditions had him preaching) to Peru via Brazil and Paraguay. While on his journey through Guarani lands, Thomas had reportedly taught them about the existence of a single God, whom the Guarani referred to as Tupa, and the use of manioc, one of the staples of the Guarani diet.87 As in the case of yerba mate, Ruiz de Montoya was interpreting from a Christian standpoint the myths and stories constituting Guarani folklore, albeit this time, instead of the devil, the



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native culture hero became a revered Christian saint, and one akin to the Jesuit priests in his missionary endeavors in far-off lands. As it could be expected from his positive valuation of yerba mate, Montenegro did not attribute the origins of its use to the devil’s teachings as Ruiz de Montoya had done: “It is an old tradition in these lands of Paraguay and in these missions that [its use] was taught to the Indians by Saint Thomas Apostle.”88 Almost seventy years after Ruiz de Montoya identified the devil as one of the culture heroes in Guarani donation myths, a Jesuit lay brother and apothecary who spent most of his Paraguayan career researching the curative power of the plants used by the natives recorded a completely opposite Christian reading of the same myth, one in which the devil’s teaching had become the gift left by one of Christ’s apostles in order to alleviate the discomfort and health problems caused by life in the tropics. The institutional and intellectual processes I have described in this chapter—the creation of a corps of nurses allowing the Jesuits to control the natives’ access to medical care, steering them away from traditional and shamanic practices and toward European and Christian practices, as well as the stripping of medicinal plants from their cultural and ritual contexts to frame them within European theories and clinical practices—allowed not only for the creation of what the missionaries could recognize as legitimate, theoretically sound botanical and medical knowledge; by the early eighteenth century, these processes had also allowed for the Christianization of the Guarani’s demonic knowledge.

part ii

A Collaborative Enterprise

Chapter 4

Science and Expansion

T

he conflict between the first Jesuits who arrived in Peru at the end of the 1560s and Viceroy Francisco de Toledo over the proper way in which the Society of Jesus should fulfill its mandate in South America brought on a change in the priorities of the order. If originally the Jesuits were to tend primarily to the Christian population living in the main urban centers of the viceroyalty through the establishment of residences and colleges (in a manner similar to the practices of the Jesuits in Europe), by 1589, when José de Acosta published De Procuranda, missionary endeavors had replaced pedagogy as the main Jesuit ministry on the continent. The expansion of the order to Chile at the end of the sixteenth century, and to Paraguay at the beginning of the seventeenth, bears witness to this change in the Jesuit agenda. Despite this missionary expansion, it would be a mistake to consider the intellectual pursuits of the South American Jesuits solely linked to their evangelizing goals. Although the missionary ministry very quickly took precedence over pedagogy on the Jesuit agenda, the educational ministry was never forsaken by the order. In fact, the Jesuit expansion in South America was predicated on its members’ success as educators. The colleges fulfilled two key roles in sustaining the Jesuit missionary enterprise. On the one hand, as the example of the College of San Miguel in Santiago shows, the interest of the urban elites in providing a good education for their sons led to their financial commitment to the success of Jesuit institutions of learning. The endowments the colleges received from the vecinos (neighbors), correctly administered by Jesuit lay brothers, could free up some of the revenue needed to fund the missionary agenda of the order. On the other hand, the education of the Spanish youth in their own colleges allowed the Jesuits to identify and court those best suited to join their ranks. The expansion of the Jesuit institutional network, including the opening of novice houses and training centers in different areas of the continent, ensured that the students who decided to join the Society would receive training adapted to the local conditions in which they would have to work. Thus, students recruited in Peru spent their probation in Juli, where they were



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taught Quechua and Aymara, while those recruited in Chile had to take Mapudungun classes at the College of San Miguel and in the novice house in Bu­ calemu. The Jesuit institutional network was thus instrumental to both the funding and the manning of the Jesuit missions in South America. The expansion of the Jesuit order in South America created an institutional network that quickly spanned the Peruvian viceroyalty. This influenced the corporate culture of the South American Jesuits and shaped their personal relationships. The constant mobility of Jesuit priests through this network, filling different pedagogical and missionary posts during their careers, encouraged the formation of lifelong friendships and collaborative relationships between the members of the order, as well as with the members of the communities where they were stationed. These contacts were of great importance to the members of the order who devoted time to the study of nature. In the following chapters, I will explore both the importance of the institutional network established by the Society of Jesus in South America and the importance of the interpersonal contacts this network allowed in the development of a truly collaborative way of understanding the study of nature. This collaborative aspect of Jesuit science is revealed in their use of informants—both native informants (as was discussed in the previous section) and, also, Spanish and European informants who came into contact with different Jesuit researchers as they moved during their careers to the different colleges and residences dotting the landscape of South America. The examples of Bernabé Cobo, a Spanish-born Jesuit who spent his life working in Peru and Mexico, and of Niccolò Mascardi, an Italian Jesuit who studied under Athanasius Kircher and devoted his career to evangelizing the native peoples of southern Chile and Argentina, will show how Jesuit researchers came to depend heavily on the peoples and settings with which they came into contact during their movement from one point to the next in the Jesuit network. Their scientific endeavors will also show how the content of Jesuit science in South America came to be determined both by these opportunities and by the needs of other members of the order, in a manner not so dissimilar from the way in which Jesuit botanical studies in the missions were determined by the problems presented by local conditions. Taken together, the next two chapters will discuss how the institutional development of the order during the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth created the conditions in which research about the nature of America could thrive. It is, then, to these institutional developments we now turn.

Institutional Networks In the constitutions of the order, Ignatius defined mobility as one of the most basic features of the nascent Society of Jesus—the “first characteristic of our Institute,” as he called it: “This is to travel through some regions and others, remaining for a shorter or longer time in proportion to the fruit which is seen.” 1



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As Ignatius envisioned it, the Society of Jesus would fundamentally be a missionary order—one not necessarily preoccupied with education or combating the spread of Protestantism by spearheading the Catholic Counter-Reformation, at least not originally. Instead, Ignatius hoped for a missionary order that would be dispersed throughout the entire globe. “Our vocation,” he insisted several times in the Constitutions, “is to travel through the world and to live in any part whatsoever where there is hope of greater service to God and of help of souls.”2 The original idea that they would be roving missionaries stemmed, according to Ignatius, from the fact that the members of the group who had gathered around him in Paris, and who would become the Society of Jesus in 1540, already came from different provinces and countries “and did not know into which regions they were to go.”3 Not wanting to err in such a momentous matter, the band of companions decided to leave the decision in the hands of the pope, who would decide where each or all of them would more likely help the church. Ignatius later institutionalized this original decision in what came to be one of the distinctive features of the Jesuits: Whereas members of most religious orders took only vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the Jesuits added a fourth one. This fourth vow, the profession of which was limited to those members of the Society who had proven to be worthy workers, was a vow of obedience to the pope regarding the obligation to travel wherever the pontiff might send a Jesuit to perform a mission, expecting neither compensation nor material help to fulfill this command.4 Perhaps nobody embodied better the missionary spirit of the early Jesuits than Francis Xavier. Two years after Pope Paul III granted official recognition to the Society in 1540, Francis Xavier was already en route to the Portuguese mercantile colony of Goa in India. For ten years, until his death on the island of Sancian (off the Chinese coast), Francis Xavier’s evangelizing efforts laid the foundations for what in time would become thriving Jesuit presences in India, China, and Japan. These accomplishments notwithstanding, his real importance in the rapid worldwide expansion of the Jesuit order probably lay in the legend of exemplarity that soon surrounded his missionary endeavors and, particularly, his death. The spectacular reception of some of his remains in Europe, along with the pious narratives about him that quickly began circulating, made Francis Xavier an inspirational figure—the embodiment of the ideal missionary who motivated generations of Jesuits to leave behind the relative comfort of their European residences for the often-risky missions in Africa, Asia, and America.5 As a result of this emphasis on apostolic and missionary work, barely half a century after its foundation the Society of Jesus was firmly established in Europe, Asia, and America, expanding at a rate unprecedented in church history. However, a scant eight years after its foundation, a request for a Jesuit school from the citizens of Messina, in Sicily, would change the course of the Society of Jesus. Ignatius’s decision to send Jerónimo de Nadal and Peter Canisius to Sicily to open the first school operated by the order would in hindsight prove to be a momentous one, changing not only the course of action the fledgling order would take from then on but, also, the dynamic between its members. In fact, pedagogy

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quickly became the most important ministry for the Jesuits, who in time would manage the biggest educational network in history, running over eight hundred educational institutions concentrated mainly in Europe and Spanish America.6 The commitment to education brought a tension upon the Jesuits between the ideal of a roving band upheld by Ignatius and the more sedentary way of life peda­gogical work required. The conflicting demands between the mobility enshrined in the Institute of the order and consecrated by the fourth vow, on the one hand, and the more or less extended periods of residence in a single place required by teaching, on the other, has come to define, at least partially, what the Jesuits term “our way of proceeding.”7 As we will see in this chapter, this tension was accentuated in seventeenth-century Spanish America. Given the relative paucity of Jesuit priests on the continent, the educational and missionary ministries to which the Society of Jesus devoted itself during this period brought on the need to move around the members of the order constantly to man the different missions and colleges they were establishing throughout the Peruvian viceroyalty. At the same time, the very nature of the positions to be filled required at least some degree of continuity if the Jesuit priests were to fulfill their educational and evangelical goals. In part, it was these contradictory aspects of the Jesuit way of proceeding that would define some of the peculiarities of the South American Jesuits and the collaborative character of their scientific practice. When in 1646 the Chilean Jesuit Alonso de Ovalle set out to describe the state of the Society’s missions in Chile and to outline what should be the future areas of activity of the order in the land, he divided all Jesuit activity into six classes of ministries. The first class comprised all the activities the Jesuits performed in the cities, particularly the administration of the sacrament of penance, preaching, and educational activities. In Ovalle’s view, these three activities formed the kernel of Jesuit activity since, unlike other ministries more dependent on local conditions, confessing, preaching, and teaching were practiced equally by Jesuits all over the world. Jesuit activities in the cities normally revolved around a college, and Ovalle used the College of Santiago as a paradigmatic example.8 As we saw in Chapter 1, these urban ministries were originally the main purpose of the Jesuit presence in South America. Borgia’s instructions to Jerónimo Ruiz del Portillo, the first Jesuit superior of Peru, made it clear that the foremost concern of the Jesuits in South America should be to care for the spiritual health of those individuals who were already Christians; the evangelization of unbaptized natives and African slaves was to come only after tending to the needs of the Christian community. To this end, Borgia ordered Ruiz del Portillo to set up residence in Lima, from where the Jesuits could venture on itinerant missions into Indian lands but always return to their primary residence. The mobility Ignatius had originally considered one of the foremost traits of the Jesuits had come to depend (at least in the Spanish colonies) on the foundation of a college—a stable center of operations from where missionary forays into the countryside could be coordinated.9



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Although the Peruvian experience during the first decades of Jesuit presence in Spanish South America (particularly after their clash with Francisco de Toledo) gave pride of place to missionary endeavors as the main task of the Society of Jesus on the continent, the arrival of the Jesuits in a Spanish city or province was still always marked by the foundation of a college. This situation was partly a response to the expectations the Spanish population—particularly among the elites—had of the Jesuit presence in their communities. As the foundation of the College of San Miguel in Chile shows, the vecinos not only expected the Jesuits to educate their sons, in several cases they demanded it, and they were willing to pay for it. Barely a month after their arrival in Santiago, the Jesuits purchased the houses they would use as their college and residence. They paid 3,550 pesos for them, which came from the donations made by the Santiago families to that effect. The balance of 750 pesos was used to furnish and equip the nascent college.10 Similar scenes were repeated in other cities of the Peruvian viceroyalty. When the Jesuits tried to settle in Chuquisaca (in modern-day Bolivia) in 1591, they faced strong opposition from some members of the cabildo or city council. The Jesuit provincial Juan de Atienza tried to secure the right to establish a Jesuit college in the city from the viceroy by arguing it would be a reward to the old conquistadors for their services to the Crown, since many of their sons and grandsons resided in the city. A Jesuit college would also benefit the Crown, Atienza argued, since they could educate the city’s youth “in virtue as well as in letters, making them apt and suitable to serve the Church or Your Majesty.” The members of the cabildo who favored the Jesuits agreed with this argument, noting that the main benefit the Jesuit presence would bring to Chuquisaca would be the foundation of a college, which would help prevent the young scions of the city’s elite from indulging in vice and immorality.11 The creation of educational centers in the main Spanish cities in South America was instrumental to the establishment of the Society of Jesus on the continent. As the long lists of co-founders, donors, and benefactors of the nascent Jesuit colleges show, it was through the education of the Spanish ruling class that the Jesuits could secure enough revenue to fund the residences and missions they needed for evangelizing the native population. By the same token, the operation of schools and colleges gave the order the ability to select the individuals they needed to increase their ranks from the most talented youth of the colonies. The schools managed by the order in South America—in particular the so-called colegios convictorios, or boarding schools—quickly became the educational centers favored by the colonial aristocracy.12 In 1611, the Jesuit provincial Diego de Torres described the foundation of one such college in Santiago: the College of Saint Francis Xavier was founded “following a petition from the Real Audiencia . . . so the sons of respectable people can be educated and from where good priests and good citizens can be obtained.” In fact, among the students enrolled in that first class were the sons of the oidores (judges), and the governor’s nephew. “I have high hopes for this college,” Torres confessed, “and not the least is that we can educate

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in it people who can then be accepted into our Society.”13 Just as in Europe, the Society of Jesus (in spite of the free education they gave) sought to select its future members from among the ruling classes of the colonial society. To meet both the educational needs of the Spanish elite and to prepare the future members of the order adequately, some Jesuit colleges soon aspired to become universities. The case of the College of San Pablo in Lima was perhaps the most traumatic for the Jesuits, it being in fact a reflection of the ongoing conflict between the Society of Jesus and Viceroy Toledo. During the 1570s, General Mercurian had great hopes for San Pablo and wanted to see it rise to the level of the most prestigious European institutions of higher education managed by the order. By 1576, San Pablo had over fifty students enrolled in Latin courses, and about the same number in philosophy and theology.14 The Jesuits also offered a course in native languages well attended by the Peruvian clergy. But in 1578, Viceroy Toledo, claiming to be acting in the best interests of the newly founded Royal University of San Marcos in Lima, forbade all lay students from attending private colleges. In practice this measure meant no layperson could take classes in the Jesuit college, which had to close its doors at the end of that year because of a lack of students. The Jesuits appealed to the king, who in a cédula (decree) dated 1580 attempted a solution to satisfy both parties. The College of San Pablo was allowed to reopen its doors, and the Jesuits were permitted to resume teaching Latin, humanities, philosophy, and theology to both lay and religious students. However, the cédula forbade the Jesuits from conferring degrees. Anyone who wished to obtain a legally recognized degree had to attend classes at the University of San Marcos instead. In practice, this limited the Jesuits of San Pablo to teaching only children and youngsters, preparing them for their university studies.15 Despite these restrictions, San Pablo quickly became one of the most important intellectual centers of the Peruvian viceroyalty. The 1595 decree by García Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquis of Cañete and then Viceroy of Peru, gave the Jesuits of San Pablo the exclusive privilege of teaching humanities in Lima. Confirmed by the Crown in 1605, the privilege turned the College of San Pablo into the only entryway for the University of San Marcos, thus restoring the college’s centrality in Lima’s educational system.16 As did all the colleges of the Society, the Jesuits of San Pablo held weekly roundtables open to the public where the college faculty and the audience discussed specific moral issues affecting the community.17 Perhaps more important for us, the Jesuits at San Pablo maintained one of the best libraries in the viceroyalty. Even before the arrival of the Jesuits in Peru, Jerónimo Ruiz del Portillo had secured from the Jesuit general the right to take with him books of philosophy and theology from the Spanish colleges.18 These books were supplemented with almost two hundred ducats’ worth of books Ruiz del Portillo had acquired in Seville prior to his departure.19 By the early seventeenth century, the library collections in San Pablo contained over four thousand volumes, housed in a spacious and well-illuminated room specially designed for study and research.20 New titles were added regularly to San Pablo’s holdings



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during the seventeenth century, and by 1767 the library contained over twentyfive thousand books devoted to all fields of knowledge.21 San Pablo’s library played a central role not only in the development of the college but also in the establishment of other such libraries in South America. The constant flow of European books to San Pablo was institutionalized in 1575 when General Mercurian created the position of procurator for the West Indies. The creation of this position ensured the complete integration of the American provinces into Jesuit institutional life. The procurator had to facilitate communication between the American and the European Jesuit provinces, making sure that the letters and orders from the Jesuit superiors reached the colleges and residences in America and “making clear and readable copies of the annual reports coming from the Indies, so they can be read in other provinces.”22 Besides facilitating the communication between Rome and America, the procurator had to keep himself constantly up-to-date regarding editorial novelties in order to buy and send the books the American colleges asked for, as well as any others he thought would be useful.23 The goal of the constant flow of books to the American provinces was to ensure the quality of Jesuit education in the Spanish colonies by enhancing the academic competence of their teachers. The books sent by the procurator arrived in San Pablo; from there, they were distributed to the different colleges and residences the Jesuits kept in the Peruvian viceroyalty. During the seventeenth century, mules loaded with books traveled regularly from San Pablo to Cuzco, Potosi, Chuquisaca, Quito, Buenos Aires, and Santiago (among other places), from where the books were distributed to the lesser colleges and residences under the control of these centers.24 The lists of books asked for by the colleges confirm the range of topics studied by the South American Jesuits; thus, for instance, in the instructions given to Cristóbal de Ovando in 1613 for obtaining the Jesuit general’s approval for the founding of a college in Huamanga, Peru, one finds a list of books on canon and civil law, collections of sermons, and mystical and theological works. The instructions also commanded Ovando to acquire any other “curious books newly published” that he might consider of interest.25 Some of these petitions reveal the intention of faculty and administrators to turn their colleges into full-fledged universities. Generally speaking, basic literacy and arithmetic, languages, and the humanities were taught at Jesuit colleges. The two last stages of the modus parisiensis—four years of philosophy (logic, metaphysics, ethics, and physics) and four years of theology—were taught at Jesuit universities.26 In 1597, barely four years after the founding of the College of San Miguel in Santiago, its rector, Luis de Valdivia, wrote a letter to Alonso Mejía in Peru asking for the collection of “some debts [in order] to buy books for this college, for it is lacking in them.” Valdivia asked for very specific titles: the college needed the Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei by Robert Bellarmine, the commentary on the Gospel of John by Francisco Toledo, the theological treatises De Verbo Incarnato and De Mysteriis Vitae Christi by Francisco Suárez, the commentary on Aristotle’s Physics by Benedictus Pererius, and books by Jerónimo Osorio (in all likelihood his Opera Omnia, which had been published in four vol-

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umes in Rome in 1592), along with good editions of the works of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine.27 This list suggests that Valdivia was trying to strengthen the quality of the philosophy and theology classes offered at San Miguel in order to allow Jesuit students to complete their coursework in Santiago, going to Lima only to take the required exams in order to obtain the Master of Arts or Doctor of Theology degrees. In 1607, the opening of a novice house for the Jesuit Province of Paraguay in Cordoba (present-day Argentina) moved Provincial Diego de Torres to ask for permission to grant degrees to the novices who had successfully completed the required coursework in philosophy and theology. Following a suggestion by the Spanish Crown, Pope Paul V signed a bull in 1613 authorizing bishops to grant the degrees of bachelor, licenciatus, master, and doctor to those students who had graduated from Jesuit colleges located away from state-sponsored universities, provided they passed the pertinent exams.28 King Philip III authorized the application of the papal bull “in the city of Manila in the Philippines, and in the Provinces of Chile, Tucumán, and Paraguay.”29 Although this authorization created some problems with the Dominicans, who considered the right to grant university degrees their own, it was ratified in 1624 by the brief In Supereminentis signed by Pope Gregory XV, in which some Jesuit colleges were elevated to the category of universities.30 The Jesuit College of Cordoba became a university in 1622.31 Shortly after, the colleges of Santiago, Chuquisaca, and Cuzco followed suit. The steady rhythm of college and residence foundations, which accompanied the expansion of the Jesuit order in seventeenth-century South America, stimulated the creation of an educational network over much of the Southern Cone. The Jesuit colleges and universities that made up this network allowed not only for the training of colonial and ecclesiastical officers, they also favored the creation of interpersonal networks among the members of the Society of Jesus. The mobility of Jesuit priests during their careers, coupled with their more prolonged stays in colleges, novice houses, and residences, allowed for personal contact between members of the order working in different areas of the continent and generated continued epistolary contact among them. The novice house of the Jesuit Province of Paraguay, for example, brought together novices who would later on be sent to work in the missions and colleges in Paraguay, Chile, and Argentina, at least until 1626, when the Chilean vice province was formally separated from Paraguay and a novice house was established in Bucalemu. A similar situation took place in Peru, where novices studying in Lima and Cuzco underwent their novitiate in Santiago del Cercado and their probation in Juli before being sent out to different colleges and residences spanning from Quito to present-day Bolivia. Teaching positions in the different colleges, on the other hand, also helped forge these interpersonal networks. In a typical Jesuit college, the course of arts, for example, lasted for four years, during which the same professor lectured his students on the different aspects of Aristotelian philosophy. At the end of the fourth year, another Jesuit replaced him and started to teach the course from the



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beginning to the next generation of Jesuit students. This situation was not unique to the colonies. The importance that pedagogy had quickly acquired among the Jesuit ministries and the constant need to fill up the teaching positions produced by the creation of new colleges had led Juan de Polanco to remark in 1560 that all Jesuits could expect, at one point or another in their careers, to spend some time teaching.32 The permanent shortage of Jesuit priests in South America only exacerbated this need, generating a constant rotation of teachers at the Jesuit colleges. In Peru the Jesuits numbered 473 between 1635 and 1639, barely enough to cover the needs of the province.33 The situation was not better in Chile, where there were only seventy-nine Jesuits in 1640, or in Paraguay, where at the time of their expulsion from Castilian territories in 1767, there were seventy-seven missionaries to tend to the spiritual and material needs of some one hundred twenty thousand natives living in thirty-three missions.34 Given these numbers, South American Jesuits could not aspire to prolonged tenures at a college as in Europe, where prestigious teachers such as Christopher Clavius and Athanasius Kircher held permanent appointments at the Roman College. Instead, South American Jesuits were typically appointed to several colleges, missions, and residences during their careers, fulfilling pastoral, educative, and administrative duties, sometimes all at once. In the case of Jesuits involved in the investigation of American nature, this dynamic between mobility and prolonged residence in a college demanded by the institutional needs of the order in South America presented them with ample opportunity to gather information that would have otherwise been difficult to obtain. The career of Bernabé Cobo in Peru and Mexico is perhaps the most striking example of this use of the Jesuit network as a research tool. The author of one of the most ambitious books on the natural history of the continent in the seventeenth century, the Historia del Nuevo Mundo (ca. 1653), Cobo spent over forty years traveling from one Jesuit college and residence to the next, spending between one to three years in each place. As I will now discuss, Cobo considered this feature of Jesuit life one of the biggest advantages he enjoyed vis-à-vis other writers, even regarding it as the centerpiece of his research methodology. In spite of some opposition from the Jesuit superiors, Cobo skillfully used the dynamic between mobility and residence to his own advantage in order to fulfill his ambitious goals as a writer.

Bernabé Cobo’s Historia del Nuevo Mundo Very little is known about Cobo’s early life. Born in Jaen around 1580 to a family belonging to the Andalusian lower nobility, Cobo seems to have shown from an early age a penchant for travel and adventure. In 1595, at barely fourteen years old, Cobo left his family home and joined the party organized by Domingo de Vera that was scheduled to sail from Seville the following year. Antonio de Berrío, Governor of Guyana, had sent Vera to recruit soldiers to discover and conquer

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the mythical lands of El Dorado, which Berrío believed lay further inland in his territories. The expedition proved to be a disaster. Despite having been instructed to bring back a maximum of three hundred soldiers, Vera set sail from the port of San Lúcar with some two thousand people, many of whom were women and children. After a short stop in Trinidad, the party arrived at Santo Tomé on the mouth of the Orinoco River, where Berrío had his main settlement, at the beginning of Holy Week in 1596. The expedition was larger than what the land could support, and more suited to settle than to endure the burdens and perils of exploring and conquering a largely uncharted rainforest area, and it was met with one misfortune after another. Three ships were lost during a tempest, and their occupants were killed by the Caribbean natives. Shortly after, local natives massacred a reconnaissance party of three hundred men sent by Berrío to Manoa; it took six months for the thirty survivors to return to Santo Tomé. Hunger and disease soon began to take their toll on the remaining unfortunates, who started to desert Berrío, fleeing to Cumaná and Caracas. Berrío’s capture by Sir Walter Raleigh later that year put an end to the poorly planned and ill-executed expedition.35 Cobo, who upon his arrival had been sent along with a small group to Hispaniola Island for supplies, decided to desert Berrío early on, staying behind in Santo Domingo. There is almost no record of Cobo’s years in the Caribbean region, but we know that he was in Panama a year later, from where he sailed to Peru in 1599. It was probably during this trip that Cobo met Esteban Páez, an encounter that would definitely alter the course of the young adventurer’s life. Páez, a former professor of theology at the Jesuit college in Naples and acting Jesuit Provincial of Mexico, had been appointed visitador or inspector of the Jesuit Province of Peru by General Aquaviva. Upon his arrival in Lima, Cobo obtained with Páez’s help one of the thirty-six scholarships available to cover tuition and lodging at the Jesuit colegio convictorio of San Martín, one of the most exclusive Jesuit educational institutions in the viceroyalty. At San Martín, Cobo enrolled in the lower humanities courses, these being in all likelihood his first formal educational experience beyond the basic literacy lessons he had probably received in his family household in Jaen. San Martín, catering as it did to the Spanish and Creole elite of the Peruvian viceroyalty, was used by the Jesuits as a seedbed for religious vocations. The spiritual and intellectual education to which Cobo was subjected during his first two years as a Jesuit pupil made a lasting impression in him. In 1601, Cobo was formally accepted into the Society of Jesus, and interrupted his studies to spend the following year as a novice in the Cercado doctrina on the outskirts of Lima. Here, along with the intense spiritual training provided by the Ignatian exercises, Cobo had his first experience with the Jesuit pastoral ministry among the Amer­indians, a task to which he would devote much of his adult life. In 1603, after having professed his first vows as a Jesuit, Cobo was back in Lima, this time enrolled at the College of San Pablo. There, Cobo completed his coursework in Latin grammar and rhetoric and fulfilled the prescribed four years



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of philosophy. In 1609, Cobo was sent by the Jesuit superiors to Cuzco to study theology with Juan Perlín, one of the foremost teachers of the discipline in Peru at the time. From that moment on, Cobo started his lifelong journey through the network of colleges, missions, and residences established by the Jesuits in the Spanish dominions in America. This journey was particularly intense during Cobo’s first two decades as a Jesuit, and it allowed the naturalist-to-be ample opportunity to get intimately acquainted with the nature and history of the Peruvian heartland. In Cuzco, Cobo encountered what remained of the old Inca nobility and their history. In 1610, after attending the festivities organized to celebrate the beatification of Ignatius Loyola, Cobo left Cuzco for the Bolivian highlands. Although the nature of this trip is difficult to ascertain, it gave Cobo the opportunity to examine the ruins of Tiawanaku, a civilization predating the Incas. It was probably around these years that Cobo began taking notes on what would become the main project of his life, the writing of the Historia del Nuevo Mundo. This project would occupy him—much to the dismay of his superiors—for the next forty years. His description of the Tiawanaku ruins in the Historia seems to be based, at least partially, on the measurements and observations he recorded during his visit in 1610.36 In 1613, Cobo was back in Lima to be ordained as a priest. Here he probably finished his studies in theology, for he took his degree exams in 1615, passing them with an unflattering satisficiter mediocriter. Despite his unsatisfactory results, the experiences to which Cobo had been exposed during these formative years marked for him the awakening of what would be his true calling, one that had little to do with the pastoral and educational ministries of the Jesuits in Peru—ministries for which he did not seem to be particularly fit. In fact, for the rest of his career as a Jesuit, Cobo would never go past the basic responsibilities assigned to any professed priest in the order, staying always within the relatively low ranks of preacher and Latin instructor. Unlike Acosta, Cobo never held highresponsibility administrative offices, nor did he ever teach philosophy or theology. Despite this apparent lack of success in working his way up the Jesuit ranks—or maybe for that very reason—Cobo devoted the rest of his adult life to investigating the history and nature of the New World, in particular the Peruvian heartland he knew so well. The resulting Historia del Nuevo Mundo was a monumental work that could in fact rival the scope and philosophical insight of Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias. Cobo originally conceived his Historia as an overview of the nature and history of the New World. Although the original manuscript is now lost and the extant sections only cover approximately one-third of the whole work, Cobo’s description of his project both in the introduction to the Historia and in the dedicatory note of La fundación de Lima (a spin-off of the main text dedicated to Juan de Solórzano y Pereira) give us an idea of the ambitious nature of his project and the topics covered in the book.37 These descriptions also allow us a preliminary comparison between Cobo’s Historia and its most important and influential pre-

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decessor, Acosta’s Historia natural y moral. This comparison, although necessarily perfunctory, shows how the different institutional conditions of the seventeenthcentury Peruvian Jesuit province allowed for a more ambitious treatment of the natural, civil, and ecclesiastical history of the Americas. Although Cobo’s history certainly establishes a dialogue with its more famous predecessor, particularly in regard to discussions of American natural history, I will deal with neither Cobo’s nor Acosta’s treatment of the nature of the New World proper in this chapter.38 Instead, the following focuses on Cobo’s methods of research rather than the content of his Historia. The Historia del Nuevo Mundo was originally divided into three volumes. The first one consisted of a general discussion of American cosmography, and then moved on to American natural history. As in Acosta’s book, American nature was discussed following the traditional arrangement from the simplest things (the minerals) to the more complex organisms. Furthermore (and also as in Acosta’s book), this first part ended with a moral history: a discussion of the political, religious, and military history of the Andean peoples before the Spanish conquest. However, here is where Cobo’s similarities to Acosta end. Unlike Acosta, who clearly distinguished his study of American nature from his treatment of indigenous cultures, Cobo seems to have considered native civilizations to be an integral part of the American natural landscape. Civil and moral history proper would only begin with the Spanish conquest and subsequent colonization of the continent.39 While Acosta had explicitly refused to deal with the Spanish actions in America, Cobo devoted the remaining (now lost) two volumes of his Historia to narrating the Spanish colonial enterprise. The second volume dealt with the discovery of America and the conquest and settlement of Peru, with a focus on “the way in which both the Republic of the Spaniards and the Republic of the Indians were originated and established after the latter converted to Christianity, and the mode of government of each of these republics.”40 The distinction between these two “republics” referred to both the segregated living arrangements for Spaniards and natives, who lived in pueblos de indios, and the different bodies of colonial legislation that governed them. The fact Cobo seems to have been more interested in the institutional development of the Peruvian colony rather than in the missionary and evangelical history of Peru marks what probably was one of the main differences between his project and Acosta’s, for whom missionary concerns remained always at the center of his intellectual pursuits. Instead, what Cobo considered ecclesiastical history proper was “a general description of these kingdoms of Peru by its dioceses and provinces, and a more detailed description of this city [Lima]” (Obras, 1:6). Although this second volume is lost, a fortunate circumstance allowed Cobo’s extensive description of Lima to survive to this day. In 1639, probably in an attempt to justify his scholarly pursuits for reasons I shall discuss later, Cobo sent a printer-ready copy of this description, under the title La fundación de Lima, from Mexico to Peru. Although the text was not published until 1882, the existence of this separate copy allowed it to survive the loss of the original manuscript of the



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Historia, giving us a glimpse of what its second and third volumes might have looked like. La fundación concerns itself with the establishment of the legal and royal institutions that governed the Peruvian colony. Its first part discusses at length the founding of the cabildo (city council) and the election of city officers, as well as the Real Audiencia (high court of justice) and lesser courts and offices. It describes the plan of the city and some of its most remarkable buildings and engineering works. It also includes a list of all the officers who had served as viceroy up to the tenure of the then-current viceroy, Luis Jerónimo de Cabrera, Count of Chinchon. The last two-thirds of the La fundación de Lima are devoted to the ecclesiastical history of the city. Despite how important the missionary ministries among native Americans and African slaves were to the Peruvian Jesuits, Cobo’s discussion of Lima’s spiritual life focused exclusively on church history from an institutional and, more tellingly, Spanish point of view; thus, he began by describing the cathedral and its construction, providing a list of Lima’s archbishops, and listing the main parishes of the city. Save for a passing mention of the Cercado doctrina, nothing is said about tending to the spiritual needs or the religious instruction of the native communities living in and around Lima (2:399). The differences between Acosta’s and Cobo’s historiographical projects I have hinted at here can be at least partially explained by their different goals and the institutional conditions that made it possible for Cobo to pursue his project. While Acosta had explicitly refused to deal with colonial history proper, choosing instead to focus only on those matters that could help substantiate his missionary project, for Cobo one of the main goals of his historiographical enterprise was to set the record of Spanish American history straight: “The diversity of opinions that I have found in the chronicles that deal with this New World,” Cobo informed the reader at the outset of his book, “as well as the desire to inquire and find the truth about the matters discussed in those chronicles, was the main reason that convinced me of undertaking this work” (1:3). The justification for adding yet another title to the already large catalog of works about America was not just Cobo’s attempt to find consensus among these different opinions, nor merely resolving pending questions about American history and nature. Cobo claimed that his history was a necessary addition because it was founded on a new method of inquiry. Indeed, for Cobo the problem with the existing historical literature about America sprang from what he saw as a fundamental methodological flaw in most previous histories; namely, that the vast majority of them had been written by European historians with virtually no access to local records and archives in America. Even when these historians had had access to letters and reports on which they based their works, these documents had usually been written by colonial officers with a vested interest in depicting a certain captain or governor in a positive light, therefore providing a distorted image of American affairs (1:3). The problem was so widespread that it had affected even the work of the official royal chronicler of the Indies, Antonio de Herrera, who had had free access to all the reports and documents housed at the Royal Archives.41 The unreliability of the information at the disposal of European historians had

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affected not only those dealing with the civil, military, and ecclesiastical history of the Spanish colonies, it had also rendered the work of natural historians suspect to falsehood, since they too had been unable to verify the accuracy of the information they had received from merchants, pilots, and travelers returning to Europe.42 As a result, Cobo claimed that all the histories written about America so far were “lacking that most solid foundation on which history must be based, that is, to be supported by the archives of the republic about which one is writing. And besides this most necessary requirement for writing the political and ecclesiastical history, as well as that of the current events, of this New World from its discovery, when it comes down to natural things I haven’t seen anyone who has treated this matter properly” (Obras, 1:3). Included in this blanket condemnation was certainly Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias, despite its success and its claims of novelty and accuracy. Cobo’s use of Acosta’s history as a model for his own work notwithstanding, the work of the former Jesuit provincial could be accused of a faulty methodology, particularly in its gathering of data about the natural world. Although Cobo did not mention Acosta, his systematic rebuttal of the former Jesuit provincial’s theories clearly reflect the competitive relationship that animated the Historia del Nuevo Mundo, in particular when contrasted with Acosta’s Historia natural y moral. I will return to Cobo’s criticism of Acosta’s theories in Chapter 7. For now, I will only point out that the differences between Cobo and Acosta sprang from the different valuation of experience brought to the former by his successive appointments in a fully developed Jesuit institutional network that had been unavailable to Acosta. Clearly, then, for Cobo, historical research, particularly when dealing with almost contemporary events (as in the case of the conquest and settlement of America), could not be conducted by an armchair scholar thumbing through reports and books written and published in faraway Europe. Instead, a historian should conduct his research in the same places where the events had taken place, visiting the civil and ecclesiastical archives and interviewing as many direct witnesses or their offspring as feasible. Otherwise, the historian would run the risk of perpetuating the misconceptions and factual mistakes found in the work of earlier writers, since he would lack the information and the elements of judgment needed to assess the quality and accuracy of their historical narratives (Obras, 1:3). In the introduction to his Historia, Cobo detailed his own undertakings, emphasizing both his long-time residence in America and his access to a wealth of testimonies and documents unavailable to European historians (1:4–5). In his typical Baroque style, Cobo claimed that the many years I have resided in the Indies, not less than fifty-seven, from the year of 1596 when I first came here, until the present year of 1653, and with no little help from my natural inclination to inquire and know all the secrets of the lands where I have resided, and especially by having experienced the different climates that are comprehended in both hemispheres of this New World, since I have lived in each of them for long periods of time, have given me ample op-



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portunity to contemplate and study the nature of these regions, and the strange fruits they produce, that are the things about which natural philosophy professors usually and diligently speculate.(1:4)

Cobo explicitly contrasted the speculative with the active study of American nature derived from direct observation. Unlike natural philosophy professors who, given the criticism of European-written histories in which this claim is couched, had to content themselves with secondhand accounts of New World species or, at best, with decontextualized specimens in museums or botanical gardens, Cobo enjoyed the advantages of direct contact with his subject matter in its natural and cultural context. His was, therefore, a matter-of-fact account composed from firsthand observations of the kind unavailable to other (European) naturalists. Even in the moments when his natural history does slip into speculation, his reflections are always backed by the facts and his own experience as an observer. As other colonial writers before him, Cobo established his credentials not so much on the basis of his academic training or on the authority of textual tradition. In a gesture that reminds the reader of the first soldiers and colonial officials turned historians, Cobo gave pride of place to direct experience and eyewitnessing, both when studying the natural world and in the evaluation of the different and often conflicting reports about historical events.43 It is in this sense that the place of writing assumes a larger importance for Cobo in his claims of authority, one that matters more than stylistic or structural considerations. His book, he confessed, had been composed piecemeal, with him writing “about each region at the time I was residing there, in order to better verify what I had written about them, as someone who is in front of the thing [described] can do” (Obras,1:7). Residence in a certain place allowed Cobo not only to get acquainted with its physical nature, it also allowed him to get acquainted with local historical traditions (both native and Spanish) and with the ecclesiastical, civil, and private archives he needed to assert the validity of these oral reports (1:4). Forty years of field research, claimed Cobo, had allowed him to amass enough material to correct the inaccuracies of previous historians, and to supplement their works with a wealth of new information only he could access, “through the great convenience and expedience (although not without much work) that I had to achieve this end” (1:4). As we shall now see, despite the grandiosity of this claim, by “great convenience and expedience” Cobo simply meant the opportunities presented to him by the Jesuit network of colleges and missions.

Local Networks and Scientific Research What set Cobo apart from previous natural historians of the Indies such as Fernández de Oviedo and even Acosta was precisely the expedience and convenience the Jesuit institutional network gave him to conduct his research project, an expediency not available to his more famous predecessor. Although I will

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discuss Acosta’s Historia in more detail later on in this book, it is worth noting here that Acosta clearly distinguished those sections of his work written in Peru from those composed later in Spain.44 The text written in Peru consists in its entirety of a translation of his previous De Natura Novi Orbis, which dealt primarily with general cosmographic questions and was more speculative in tone and method than the sections of Historia natural y moral written in Europe. Acosta’s descriptions of American plants and animals are far less detailed and more derivative, following previous and contemporary written descriptions, such as those of Nicolás Monardes and the report of the botanical expedition of Francisco Hernández to Mexico, rather than being generated from firsthand experience of American natural specimens (Historia natural y moral, 263). Undoubtedly, Acosta knew several of the species he described, such as the different varieties of corn or the Andean llamas, but the fact he was writing about them from Spain limited both his scope and the number of new details he could give about American nature. Acosta, in fact, seems to have limited himself to describing only those plants and animals of an economic or cultural importance to both Indian and Spanish settlers, leaving aside several other species described both by Monardes and Hernández (270). This fact is not surprising if we consider that Acosta’s attention during his years in Peru was focused mainly on the implementation of a new missionary approach for the Peruvian Jesuit province, with all its attendant problems and conflicts. Bernabé Cobo, on the other hand, joined the Society of Jesus in Peru when it was already solidly established in the realm, with a well-developed network of colleges, missions, and residences that allowed him a religious and intellectual training better suited to the pastoral tasks in the land than the one Acosta had received in Spain. Cobo was instructed in both Quechua and Aymara during his stay in Juli in 1616; Acosta in all likelihood did not speak native languages with any degree of fluency. The dialectic between mobility and stability, which by the seventeenth century had become the trademark of Jesuit life in South America, coupled with his unremarkable career within the order (free, therefore, from high administrative responsibilities), gave Cobo ample opportunity to conduct his researches in several places around the Peruvian realm, as well as access to different individuals, texts, objects, and information circulating through the Jesuit institutional network. On the one hand, Cobo’s mobility within the Jesuit network, particularly during his formative years, allowed him to be in contact with different individuals—merchants and soldiers, as well as secular and regular priests—who not only acted as informers about the peoples and lands from every corner of the continent, but also exposed Cobo to wonders and marvels brought from faraway lands he would have never known about. His detailed description of Paraguayan geodes, for instance, was based on the one he examined in Lima in 1607, meant as a present for the pope (Obras, 1:131). He was also able to obtain samples of fossilized human remains from the Lima area, as well as an enormous fossilized molar—probably from one of the species of Megatherium that had roamed South America during the Pleistocene—which Cobo identified as belonging to one of



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the giants who, according to Genesis 6:4, once lived on the earth (1:124). During his 1610 expedition to the Bolivian highlands, Cobo either witnessed or heard about the experiment performed by the governor of Chucuito, the Count of Gomera, in order to demonstrate the curative powers of bezoar stones: “He took two chickens, and gave each of them the same amount of quicksilver. He then made one of the chickens drink [a concoction containing] the powder from a bezoar stone, and this chicken survived, while the one that did not drink this antidote died” (1:130). During a trip to Potosi, Cobo had the opportunity to see “the strangest and most curious bezoar stone ever found in Peru.” The stone, bought by one Pedro Ozores for two hundred and fifty pesos, was five inches long and as thick as an egg, but its most remarkable feature was an arrowhead emerging from one end of the bezoar, while a piece of shaft was visible on the other. Cobo also received from “a trustworthy priest” a report on another bezoar with a musket ball in its center (1:130). These examples, along with Gomera’s experiment, provided the factual basis for Cobo’s speculations about the formation of the stones in the digestive tracts of the llamas as well as for the explanation Cobo offered for their reputed medicinal powers: The principle and foundation on which all bezoar stones, big and small, are formed is anything that hurts or bothers the animal’s stomach, or anything that has hurt it, or even something that the animal ate while grazing. . . . So when it feels wounded or injured inside, the animal that makes these stones looks for a cure in some herbs that are good against all kinds of poison . . . from where the bezoar stones obtain their virtue to be antidotes. . . . And the said herb, once eaten, goes to whatever is hurting the animal’s gut, and surrounds it and embraces it, and the stomach’s heat solidifies it. (1:129–30)

But if Cobo’s regular change of destinations—whether as a student or later on as a fully professed Jesuit—exposed him to a variety of experiences and anecdotal information that would later find its way into the Historia del Nuevo Mundo, it was the stability required by the pedagogical functions Cobo most often was assigned to fulfill that allowed him to become truly acquainted with the history and nature of the different places in which he resided. It was precisely the relatively long residence in a Jesuit college or mission (usually between one and three years) that gave Cobo enough time to make field trips to the surrounding areas in search of flora and fauna, to conduct experiments to find explanations for local phenomena, and to do research in the parochial and civil archives. These periods of residence in the same place also gave him the opportunity to develop relationships with members of the communities to which he was assigned, thus finding willing informants about local nature and industrial processes. His description of the extraction of silver is a case in point. The Peruvian silver mines were the richest and most productive in the world. Consequently, Cobo devoted four times more space in his book to the mining and processing of silver ore than to any other metal. His description is rich in detail and uncharacteristically abun-

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dant in technical terms, many of them local; thus, suggesting extensive interviews with miners. What is striking, though, is the fact that Cobo made almost no mention of Potosi, the biggest and most famous silver mine in the world. Instead, Cobo concentrated his attention on the comparatively smaller Oruro mine. This odd choice can be explained by the fact that Cobo resided in Oruro from 1616 to 1618 while working at the Jesuit college. Whereas Cobo only undertook brief trips to Potosi, his continued residence in Oruro allowed him to meet individuals involved in the extraction and refinement of silver who instructed him in the different steps of the process. Judging by his description, Cobo learned the complete process of silver mining, from the methods of prospecting for silver veins and assessing the depth and potential yield of a deposit to how much firewood was needed to refine the ore (1:141–43, 46). Accounts of particularly rich deposits found nearby and loads of ore that returned an unusual amount of metal— likely the talk of a mining town like Oruro—were also included in these chapters (1:145–46). The possibility of establishing a close connection with the local population was instrumental to Cobo’s inquiries about the natural world. A good example is provided by his astronomical observations. In the Historia del Nuevo Mundo, Cobo included two descriptions of the southern skies. The first one is part of his general description of the world and the place America occupies in it. The second one appears in his description of Andean cosmology and religious beliefs. The first of these descriptions, and the most complete, was based on the observations carried out by Cobo during his tenure at Arequipa between 1619 and 1621. During this period, Cobo’s responsibilities were to teach Latin grammar to the students enrolled in their first four years at the Jesuit school, and to preach in Quechua and Aymara to the Indians. For Cobo, astronomy seems to have been a solitary practice, given the lack of astronomers in Peru: “I have not communicated in this land with persons given to speculation about the skies of this Austral Hemisphere, as I would have liked to, because there are very few people devoted to these studies, . . . and so everything I have been able to understand in these matters I have done through my work alone” (Obras, 1:27). In fact, the lack of interlocutors well versed in astronomical science would force Cobo to avoid all speculations on these matters, limiting himself to recording the data obtained during three years of observation. Cobo described the semicircle formed by the Milky Way in the Southern Hemisphere and compared its relative brightness to that of its appearance in the Northern Hemisphere, which he had had the opportunity to observe during his years in Mexico. He also described the most salient constellations of the Peruvian skies: the Southern Cross, the Southern Triangle, the Clouds of Magellan, and another constellation he named “Fiducia” (1:30). This last constellation is puzzling: Cobo’s Historia is the only contemporary source that mentions it, and it appears to be formed in part by stars belonging to Hydrus, a constellation Cobo did not describe in his work. It may indicate that Cobo did not know the star cata­ log of the Southern Hemisphere compiled by Dutch sailors Pieter Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, which had introduced Hydrus along with eleven other



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constellations, including Triangulum Australis, which Cobo apparently did recognize as an independent constellation but preferred to subsume with other stars into yet another cross-shaped southern star formation: “In the aforementioned sign of Sagittarius, a little bit more to the east and almost at the same altitude as the Guards of the Cross [a and b Centauri], there are three stars that form the figure of an equilateral triangle: the westernmost of these stars appears to be of the third magnitude, the other two of the fourth; all three, along with brightest of the Guards, form another cross-shaped figure” (1:30). Although both Triangulum and Hydrus were recognized as relevant constellations proper to the Southern Hemisphere, at least since their inclusion in Johann Bayer’s 1603 Uranometria, Cobo seems to have known only the Triangle, ignoring Hydrus completely.45 In fact, in his previous description of the skies in general, Cobo had noted that although according to scripture the number of the stars was infinite, astronomers had identified 1,022 of them, dividing them into the 48 Ptolemaic constellations. “I don’t know,” Cobo mused, “if the astronomers count in that number of stars that I mentioned the stars discovered in this Southern Hemisphere by those who live in it, since [these stars] hide themselves from those living in Europe, although they are many” (1:26). The image Cobo gives of himself, at least regarding his own astronomical researches, is that of a lone observer working in the cold Arequipeña nights. Armed with some outdated textbooks, a cross-staff, and perhaps a telescope, Cobo seems to have carried out his observations of the Southern Hemisphere in isolation, without being able to check his data either with other astronomy enthusiasts or with the latest astronomical atlases depicting the southern constellations.46 Leaving aside his claim that there were not enough people devoted to astronomy in Peru (a situation that would change thirty years later, as we will see in the next chapter), Cobo in fact seems to have enjoyed the help of an unlikely—although well informed—group of individuals during his nightly observations. A brief overview of the second description of the Peruvian skies in the Historia del Nuevo Mundo will show that Cobo, in all likelihood, was not alone while struggling to identify the stars in the clear nights of Arequipa. The second description of the stars of the southern sky is located in book 13, and it is part of Cobo’s discussion of Inca religion and beliefs. This description stands in clear contrast to the technical description of the southern constellations discussed above. In fact, at the end of his first discussion of southern stars, Cobo stated that native Andeans had only a very limited knowledge of the skies: Of all the matters contained in these last eight chapters, the Indians knew almost nothing, lacking even a word for “universe.” They did not understand anything about [the universe’s] shape, size, or its main parts, and even today they don’t care about inquiring and speculating about these things. . . . They only identified and named a few of the main stars, and noticed the seasonal changes brought about by the movement of the sun for farming purposes and to cele­ brate their feasts. (Obras, 1:31)

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Astronomy, according to Cobo, was far removed from any of the concerns of the native population. Besides the bare minimum of knowledge needed for ritual and agricultural processes, neither the systematic observation of nor the speculation about the workings of nature were part of the mental horizon of the Andean peoples. In the same fashion as his confrères in Paraguay, Cobo believed that in this, as in many other matters, the native peoples possessed merely information about American nature—information waiting to be integrated into a systematic and coherent body of knowledge (1:36, 39, 51, 109, 118, 126). Despite his poor view of native astronomical knowledge, Cobo used native informants extensively, as can be seen in his account of native constellations. According to the Jesuit writer, the natives recognized and worshipped certain constellations “in accord with the belief that for the conservation of each species God had appointed, and in a way substituted with, a second cause” (2:159). So, for each kind of animal, the Andean natives had a constellation they worshipped that was responsible for the conservation of that particular species. Cobo’s description of these constellations is almost a verbatim transcription of the corresponding passages from Polo de Ondegardo’s Tratado y averiguación sobre los errores y supersticiones de los Indios, one of the most authoritative accounts of Andean religious beliefs, written probably around 1559 and closely followed also by Acosta in his own description of Inca culture. But, although Cobo followed Ondegardo’s description very closely, there are some instances where the Jesuit seems to be using other sources to identify native stars with European names. Perhaps the most important example is the discussion of the native constellation Urcuchillay. According to Ondegardo, Urcuchillay was worshipped by the shepherds, “who say it is a multicolored ram [llama] that looks after the livestock, and it is understood to be the [constellation] that the astrologers call Lyra. And the same [shepherds] worship another two that are close by, and they call them Catachillay and Urcuchillay, pretending they are a sheep with a lamb.”47 Cobo specified the stars of Urcuchillay, which Ondegardo had simply identified with the constellation of Lyra, and tried to solve what he considered to be a textual problem in Ondegardo’s manuscript; namely, the fact that both the constellation and a star closely related to it but not belonging to it shared the same name. As Cobo clarified, the Indians venerated a star close to the Urcuchillay constellation that they called “Catachillay, which is somewhat big, and a smaller one that is next to [Catachillay]. And [the Indians] pretended that these stars were a llama and its lamb coming from the Urcuchillay” (2:159). Unlike Ondegardo, Cobo clearly distinguished between the constellation and the smaller stars accompanying it, while at the same time explaining away the possible source of confusion: if the constellation Urcuchillay was believed by the natives to be almost as a second cause (the first being God) for the well-being and multiplication of their herds, then the Catachillay star and its smaller companion must be understood as coming from the Urcuchillay, which can indeed be etymologically understood as the “male” (urcu) constellation. The more detailed description offered by Cobo has led some scholars to



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think that he had access to a now-lost version of the original manuscript of Ondegardo’s memorandum—an original that would have been much more detailed than the abstracted version that has come down to us.48 However, Cobo’s own admission that his copy of Ondegardo’s writings was the same previously owned by Archbishop Jerónimo de Loaysa and later on used by the Second Lima Council seems to indicate that the Jesuit transcribed the same text that we have (Obras, 2:59–60). The more detailed information Cobo recorded about Urcuchillay, as well as the inclusion of other stars, such as Quiantopa, not found in Ondegardo’s description—or in any other colonial source, for that matter—suggest that Cobo complemented the description of the native constellations found in his sources with information provided by native informants, probably during his nightly observations.49 As we have seen, the use of local informants was an integral part of Cobo’s methodology and, in the case of American nature, the information provided by native informants was of paramount importance for disambiguating the nomenclature and use of plants, animals, and stars: “This is the method I have followed in most of the doubts that I have come across in this treatise about plants and the other natural things of this land; namely, I have put great care into informing myself from old persons, both Indians and Spaniards, because from the former I have met and cultivated many that even remember the time of the Inca kings” (2:155). Although not directly credited in the Historia, these native acquaintances played a role just as important in his researches as that of the Spanish informants. Cobo’s cultivation of local individuals, be they Spanish, Creole, mestizo, or Indian, granted him access to local traditions, technologies, and knowledge. The availability of these informers to Cobo was largely a function of his prolonged periods of residence among the communities where his duties as a Jesuit took him. Whether they provided Cobo with objects from faraway lands he would never have been able to examine otherwise, helped him disambiguate the names of plants and make sense of earlier writers’ references to native lore, or even showed him the ropes of specific trades such as mining, these friends and acquaintances proved to be crucial to his writing of the Historia del Nuevo Mundo.

The Mexican Years If residence in the same Jesuit college or house was instrumental in the development of Cobo’s research methodology and in the composition of his Historia, perhaps one of the most striking features of Cobo’s historiographical project was his conscious use of the mobility in the Jesuit institutional network to pursue his research goals. Early on, Cobo realized he could not complete his Historia without devoting some time to field research in Mexico. At least from 1615, Cobo began asking the Jesuit superiors for a transfer to the Province of New Spain. This petition was denied several times until Jesuit General Muzio Vitelleschi instructed the Peruvian provincial to permit Cobo to move to Mexico, provided

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the provincial had no objections. Despite granting his permission, Vitelleschi expressed his displeasure with what he considered to be an unusual restlessness and a lack of religious zeal exhibited by Cobo, which Vitelleschi attributed (probably rightly so) to Cobo’s historical and naturalistic researches: “I wish Father Cobo would stay put and stop inquiring about his transfer to Mexico, but if he insists and Your Reverence has no objections of importance against it, discuss it with the father provincial of that province, and then send [Cobo to Mexico] with God’s blessings. And tell Father Cobo that he must stop working on the history he has begun, and truly apply himself instead to the salvation of his neighbors.”50 In spite of the general’s warnings, Cobo never considered his transfer to Mexico to be a permanent destination but, rather, a research journey. In a letter sent in 1630 from Puebla to the Peruvian Jesuit Alonso de Peñafiel, Cobo described how during his trip he “calculated the sidereal time with the North Star and its guards, and found that the count I was following in Lima when I made my instruments to be very accurate” (Obras, 2:464). The empirical testing of his theoretical predictions was only one aspect of Cobo’s trip. In Nicaragua, Cobo devoted his nights to collecting moths with the help of a candle, identifying twelve different species (1:339). In the small village of El Viejo (also in Nicaragua), Cobo discussed with the Franciscan friars living there the use of a local shellfish in the making of lime to be used in the church they were building (1:289). He also interviewed the native leaders of the different pueblos he visited on his journey, and at least in one case he was shown an ancient codex whose images depicted the greetings given by the local leaders to the first Spaniards ever seen in the land (2:463). Once in Mexico, Cobo conducted research at the local archives, took short trips to the surrounding areas to herborize, and conducted astronomical observations. While maintaining epistolary contact with some of his acquaintances in South America, Cobo extended his network of informants by befriending travelers and explorers passing through the viceregal capital. One of the most important acquaintances Cobo made in Mexico—if for nothing else than providing him with geographic information about the shape of America—was the Portuguese explorer and cosmographer José de Moura Lobo, “who, fulfilling the king’s mandate, traveled twice around the world” (1:41–42). Going from Spain to Asia, Moura Lobo passed through Mexico in 1633, and again in 1635 during his return trip. During both stays in Mexico City, he lodged at the Jesuit residence, where Cobo had the opportunity to discuss problems of geography with him: “When he came back from China and the port of Macao, he brought with him a general world map, and since I noticed that he had drawn America as continuous with Asia, he told me he had done so following the advice of the fathers of the Society of Jesus in Macao” (1:42). According to Moura Lobo, some of the Jesuits who had gone to evangelize the “Tartars” living near Japan had told him that those peoples could not believe the missionaries when they preached about heavenly things, since according to the Tartars the Jesuits did not even know the true shape of the earth: “They said this because in our maps we draw Asia and America separated from each other, while they put it as one land in their navigational charts . . . and so



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the fathers of the Society of Jesus asked Moura to pass this information on to Europe” (1:42). Moura Lobo also shared with Cobo the method he had designed to calculate longitude while at sea, based on a combined calculation of solar and magnetic declinations, which he measured with an instrument of his invention (1:43). Moura Lobo made a deep impression on Cobo, who always cited him approvingly in his book, and the geographical information he gave Cobo would later play a crucial role in Cobo’s conviction of the Asiatic origins of Amer­indian peoples and languages (2:35). Perhaps the most compelling evidence of Cobo’s view of his Mexican years as a research opportunity is his involvement with the drainage of the lake in Mexico City, something of which he was particularly proud. Built over an island and landfill in the lower of five lagoons in the Valley of Mexico and surrounded by mountains, Mexico City was prone to flooding, particularly during wet rainy seasons. Plow agriculture and intensive deforestation of the lakeshore area to supply the city with timber had accelerated the process since the 1520s, when the Spaniards built Mexico City over what had been Tenochtitlan. Repeatedly—in 1555, 1580, 1604, and 1607—the inhabitants of the city had found themselves cut off from the mainland and confined to the upper stories of their houses. Several solutions had been proposed, including moving the city to higher terrain. Finally, it was agreed upon to build a canal to drain the lakes to the Tula River and, ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico. Finished in 1608, the work was a monumental feat of engineering, stretching over eight miles of terrain, with at least three miles of underground tunnel. But the project was beset with technical difficulties. The canal and the tunnel were too narrow for the volume of water they were suppose to conduct, and the tunnel showed a stubborn tendency to clog.51 In the spring of 1629, after a particularly strong spring storm lasting almost two days, the city was left under six feet of water. More than thirty thousand people lost their lives, and the Spanish families fled the city.52 According to a letter sent by Cobo to Peru, in 1633 the city was still flooded and people were forced to go about their business in canoes instead of carriages (2:470). An engineering problem such as the drainage of the floodwaters from the Valley of Mexico could not fail to appeal to the ever-curious Cobo: “Regarding the drainage canal, I confess that ever since I came to this city I have desired to go see it, and to see all the contour of this great Valley of Mexico, to determine if another trench could be dug, or where it would be feasible to move the city” (2:470). So in 1633, Cobo asked the Mexican provincial for a leave of absence to satisfy his curiosity. Florián de Ayerbe, the Jesuit superior, gave him a few days, and Cobo left on June 7, formally on a visit to the Jesuit sheep ranch in Jalapa on the shores of Lake Zumpango, where the drainage canal began. As soon as he arrived in Jalapa, Cobo hired a guide to take him to see the works. He discussed the technical problems that had been encountered with the engineers in charge and, the next day, he accompanied Juan Cebicos, the chief engineer, to the opening of the tunnel to perform some measurements of water flow. He climbed down the service openings of the tunnel and measured with a sounding line the depth of the water (2:472). During the following days, Cobo traveled

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along the drainage channel, and then around the Valley of Mexico, trying to determine if another trench could be dug in a more convenient location. Probably not surprisingly, Cobo finished this expedition convinced that the engineers had already devised the best solution feasible and, if only a few technical difficulties (on which they were already working) could be overcome, in a few years Mexico City would be safe from flooding (2:74–75). Little did he know that a definitive solution would not be found until the 1900s.53 While in Mexico, Cobo also took time to finish La fundación de Lima, which he signed in 1639 and sent to Juan de Solórzano y Pereira, a former judge of the Lima Audiencia and author of the influential De Indianorum jure disputatione (1629). La fundación de Lima was but a brief sample of his larger project, and its excerpting from the main text of the Historia was probably related to his need to justify the worth of his research efforts to the Jesuit superiors. In 1633, a scant three years after arriving in Mexico, Cobo had requested his transfer back to Peru to finish writing his history. A year later, Vitelleschi denied Cobo’s request, reminding him that he had already authorized his move to Mexico precisely from Peru, and he had done so in the hope Cobo would stop his wanderings. “I am glad,” Vitelleschi added sarcastically, “that you employ your time so well, and that your history is so advanced. . . . This occupation of yours is so much deserving of praise since, as Your Reverence says, you are not missed in the [pastoral] ministries.”54 In any case, he recommended that Cobo try and find some consolation, because for him “the door is firmly shut.” Cobo, in fact, would have to wait until 1641 to be allowed to return to Peru, and then only out of consideration for his old age. In Peru, Cobo would spend the remainder of his life teaching Latin in Callao, the port of Lima, while incessantly polishing and revising the manuscript of his Historia del Nuevo Mundo, the prologue of which he signed on July 7, 1653, four years before his death.

C

obo’s career as a Jesuit shows how the institutional network of colleges and   residences established by the Society of Jesus could be used to gather information about the history and nature of the continent. Cobo’s methodological program, with its insistence on local archival research and direct observation of the animals and plants of the lands described, was made possible in no small measure by the existence of such an institutional network of colleges, missions, and residences. His Historia, as we have seen, was based on his own observations and archival research, but it was also the product of the collaboration of the numerous informants Cobo had the opportunity to meet during his stays at the different colleges and residences he was sent to. The Historia del Nuevo Mundo, in particular in its natural history section (the only one extant), can be seen as the result of the forty years Cobo spent working on it but, also, as the result of the institutional conditions that made it possible. It is, in fact, a synthesis of the observations carried out by Cobo but, also, by other individuals: miners, physicians, and Andean and Mexican natives as well as fellow Jesuits. In this sense, the book was the result of a truly collaborative enterprise.



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Although the researches that led to the writing of the Historia del Nuevo Mundo did not seem to be influenced by or have an impact on his teaching, Cobo made the most of the tension between the mobility consecrated by the Institute of the Society and the periods of residence at colleges that his teaching duties demanded, thus furthering his research program. Vitelleschi’s reaction to Cobo’s constant petitions to be transferred indicates that his use of the order’s network was something of an extreme case, and was even perceived as a lack of concern for his pastoral duties. His was not, however, the only instance in which a Jesuit made use of the order’s institutional network for research purposes during the seventeenth century; for instance, Alonso de Sandoval was sent to Lima in 1617 to represent the interests of the College of Cartagena before the Jesuit provincial. In Lima, Sandoval divided his time between conducting his college’s business and doing research at the library of San Pablo, where he read what was needed to complete his De Procuranda Aethiopum Salute (1627), a missionary manual that followed the footsteps of Acosta to provide guidelines for the religious instruction of newly arrived African slaves.55 As in the case of Cobo, Sandoval made use of the Jesuit network for research purposes, in this case to gain access to the collections of the best Jesuit library in South America. In this “spacious and well-furnished” library, which “contains all sorts of books, so it must be a rare book, the one not found in it,” as Cobo had described it, as well as in the lesser libraries maintained by the other colleges and universities of the order, the Jesuits found not only the necessary bibliographical support for their researches, they also found a stimulating intellectual climate among their confrères and other individuals with whom they came in contact with at the diverse destinations to which they were sent throughout their careers.56 As the seventeenth century progressed, and the Society of Jesus extended its network of colleges and missions across the Spanish territories of South America, the study of nature carried on by Jesuits working on the continent became an increasingly collaborative enterprise. However, not all Jesuit naturalists tried to use the institutional network of the order for what could be perceived as their own private projects as Cobo did. Most contented themselves with maintaining the friendships and acquaintances gained during their stays at colleges and universities through epistolary activity, exchanging information, data, and observations useful to their researches. Making use of another institutional feature of the Society of Jesus, one also related to the rapid expansion of the order, these epistolary exchanges extended beyond the limits of the continent and included Jesuits working in places as far apart as Rome, India, Mexico, and South America. It is to the global sharing of information about the natural world through these epistolary contacts that the next chapter is devoted.

Chapter 5

Astronomy between Chiloe, Lima, and Rome

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he expansion of the Jesuit system of colleges, residences, and missions throughout South America offered the members of the order unique opportunities for the study of the history and nature of the continent. As Bernabé Cobo’s career shows, the Jesuit network could be used to foster one’s access to archives, natural specimens, and informants, thus putting a wealth of information that was not always available to other naturalists at the disposal of the Jesuit researcher. It is in this sense that natural histories such as Cobo’s Historia del Nuevo Mundo can be seen as products of a collaborative enterprise, inasmuch as they were dependent upon the information furnished by various individuals (natives, miners, sailors, explorers, etc.)—as well as the institutional features that made the Society of Jesus one of the most successful early modern transnational corporations.1 Cobo’s research program was in fact predicated upon a skillful manipulation of the tension between stability and mobility that characterized the careers of the Jesuits in seventeenth-century South America. Constantly moving through the Jesuit educational system while performing the most basic tasks of a professed priest helped Cobo not only to access the information he needed, but also to forge a network of collaborators and informants spanning from Mexico to southern Peru, as we saw in the previous chapter. Skilled as he was in playing the structural features of the Jesuit system to his own advantage, Cobo could not help drawing upon himself the reprimands of his superiors for what they perceived as willful abandonment of his pastoral and pedagogical duties in favor of scientific and historical research. Other Jesuits made use of the same institutional structures without forgoing their missionary and educational obligations. Two of the main institutional features of the early modern Society of Jesus appear to be key elements that explain some of the South American Jesuits’ intellectual endeavors: on one hand, the personal acquaintances and friendships that were made in moving through the Jesuit system of colleges and mission stations and, on the other, the postal system developed by the Society of Jesus as it acquired a global dimension. For instance, during his



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years in Rome as the proxy of the Chilean vice province, Alonso de Ovalle constantly received news and information about Chile from fellow Jesuits back in South America. This flow of information allowed him to complete his Histórica relación del reyno de Chile while in Rome. Whether as an expression of personal friendship or dictated by the needs and obligations being fulfilled by the members of the order (or, more frequently, a mixing of the two), these epistolary exchanges facilitated the emergence of communities of Jesuit naturalists in South America. These communities extended beyond the boundaries of both continental borders and religious order, and included European Jesuits and lay aficionados on both sides of the Atlantic. The emergence of one such community is the focus of this chapter. Although recent scholarship has focused on the importance of the circulation of personnel and information through the order’s epistolary and institutional networks for the Jesuits who worked in the main European Jesuit colleges, these same features also defined the scientific work of the missionaries working in the New World.2 Even though international in scope, the corporative features that made the Society of Jesus one of the most successful missionary and educational orders of the seventeenth century not only facilitated the production of knowledge in metropolitan “centers of calculation,” to use Latourian terminology, it also encouraged the production of local knowledge in the overseas colonies.3 Jesuit naturalists in South America were not mere consumers of European science. They critically reviewed the books and ideas published by their European confrères, correcting any errors or outright falsehoods they found. Rosales’s Historia general del reyno de Chile provides an illustrative example of this process. At the end of chapter 3, book 2, Rosales made a comment regarding a strange phenomenon reported by Athanasius Kircher, who had stated that “in these mountains [the Andes] very often the travelers find themselves so surrounded by fire and incandescent exhalations that men seem to be made of fire and the mounts vomit fire from their noses and mouths. . . . This author would not have believed it if, as he says, someone had not told him that it was so.”4 Rosales found this anecdote very poetic, but utterly false, “for I have crossed those mountains four times, and I have never seen any steed breathing fire.”5 What is surprising in this example is not the fact that a Jesuit in Spanish America dared to correct the most prominent Jesuit writer of his age based on his own experience, which was in fact a common reaction to Kircher’s works in the Spanish colonies.6 What interests me is the identity of Kircher’s informant on this matter. In his 1646 Histórica relación del reyno de Chile, Ovalle had written that “the exhalations and other meteorological impressions that we see so far up in the air from the ground . . . are seen [in the Andes] between the legs of the mules, scaring them and charring their ears” (14). Given that Ovalle had lodged at the Jesuit Roman College during his stay in Rome, it seems safe to assume that he was the one who had told Kircher about the fire-breathing mules of the Andes. As this example shows, information about the New World came from local informants to the European colleges and universities, where it was incorporated into the works of authors such as Kircher.

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At the same time, as Rosales’s reaction to Kircher’s statement shows, information acquired by European writers was then compared to the personal experiences of the missionaries stationed in South America, and rectified by those missionaries and priests working in the periphery whenever an inconsistency—or a blatant falsehood—was discovered. Just as the production of knowledge in the metropolitan centers was dependent upon the information furnished from the colonies, the local production of knowledge in South America depended on the transmission and accumulation of information fostered by the Jesuit institutional structure. This accumulation allowed South American naturalists not only to correct misconceptions and false statements about American nature, but also allowed them to advance their own theories and explanations of natural phenomena. The role that both the Jesuit system of missions and epistolary communication played in the constitution of local communities of naturalists in South America as well as in their dealings with European savants is perhaps best exemplified by the life and career of an Italian Jesuit, Nicolò Mascardi, a former student of Kircher at the Roman College who spent his entire career evangelizing the native peoples of southern Chile and Argentina. He kept in constant communication with his former master back in Rome, supplying him with information about the nature of southern South America and the results of astronomical observations conducted on Kircher’s behalf. Mascardi also developed long-lasting collaborative relationships with other astronomers working in South America, both lay and Jesuit. Mascardi’s position—that of being a part of both global and local naturalist communities—makes him an excellent case study for analyzing the complexities of the transmission of information through the Jesuit institutional network, highlighting not only the use of that information by European writers (such as Kircher) but, also, by local astronomers and naturalists who lived and wrote in the colonies. His devotion to the evangelization of the Mapuche and Poya peoples—a task he balanced with his personal interest in astronomy— makes him an even better example of the dual ethos of the South American Jesuit naturalists than the case of Bernabé Cobo, the paragon of the missionary scientist of the seventeenth-century South American Society of Jesus.

From Rome to Chile Nicolò Mascardi was born in Sarzana in 1624.7 The scion of a noble family, Mascardi was probably destined for a civil position in the Genoese government or a profitable church appointment. In fact, most of the men in his family were either lawyers or priests, including his uncle Agostino Mascardi, a former Jesuit who was professor of rhetoric at the Sapienza, Urban VIII’s cameriere d’onore and, later on, cardinal of the church.8 Of Nicolò’s eight siblings, Carlo, the first-born, became a lawyer and a secretary of the Genoese Republic. The rest joined either the secular clergy or one of the orders. His older brother, Francesco, joined the



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Society of Jesus, although his career as a Jesuit was curtailed by his sudden death during his novice years. Mascardi was probably first educated at the family villa in Sarzana, but was soon sent to Rome to continue his schooling at the Jesuit Roman College. He decided to enter the Society of Jesus in 1638, after spending his summer vacation in Sarzana. His father opposed his decision, at least in principle, possibly because of the death of Francesco that same year. At any rate, Mascardi was insistent, and in a letter dated October 1638, he communicated to Francesco de Luca, his rhetoric professor, that he was running away from home to enter the Society of Jesus in Rome. A week after signing the letter and defying his father’s wishes, Mascardi was in Rome at the Jesuit Roman College. His uncle, the cardinal, scolded him for leaving home without permission and, worse yet, for having begged his way to Rome, which dishonored their family. Putting his familial concerns aside, Mascardi entered the Society of Jesus the following month and began his novitiate in the old church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale under the direction of Gian Paolo Oliva, the future general of the order. Two years later, Mascardi enrolled once again in the Roman College to complete his studies of rhetoric, and later enrolled in the philosophy and mathematics courses taught by the most visible figure of Jesuit science in the seventeenth century, the German polymath Athanasius Kircher. The Roman College, where Mascardi was to spend the next five years, was the most important Jesuit institution of higher education in Europe. The Collegio Romano had been founded under rather modest circumstances in 1551 thanks to a donation from Francis Borgia, Fourth Duke of Gandía.9 The college almost immediately assumed a privileged position within the fledgling educational system of the Society of Jesus as the training center for the future members of the order. From the beginning, Ignatius Loyola recruited the best teachers of the order for the college. In 1559, for example, Francisco Toledo arrived to teach logic, and then physics, metaphysics, and Scholastic theology. It was during his tenure at the Roman College that he produced his influential commentaries on Aris­totle.10 Francisco Suárez, whose renown as a theologian was second only to Toledo’s, lectured in theology from 1581 to 1586.11 By the end of the sixteenth century, the Roman College was slowly becoming an important center for the study of mathematics and astronomy, thanks in no small measure to the appointment of the distinguished German mathematician Christopher Clavius in 1564.12 During his almost fifty years at the Roman College, Clavius not only devised the curriculum and wrote the textbooks needed for the teaching of mathematics in the Jesuit educational system, he also fought to give the discipline of mathematics the dignity and respect accorded to philosophy.13 Clavius’s appointment in the final years of his career as scriptor, which came with a total relief from teaching duties and freed his time up for writing, is a clear indicator of the recognition he had achieved within the order.

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Besides his regular classes, Clavius also conducted an advanced mathematics seminar until 1610. The students in this seminar—handpicked from among the best students in the college by Clavius himself—not only studied under his direction, they also conducted mathematical research and manufactured astronomical instruments with which they made observations of the Roman skies.14 Only two years before the German mathematician’s death, the mathematical and astronomical activities performed in his seminar rose to public prominence when the group was involved in the corroboration of Galileo’s observations of the Jovian satellites, which helped validate the telescope as a research tool. In 1610, the young mathematicians of the Roman College built a telescope and, thanks to some tips given by Galileo, they spent most of the year observing and recording the movement of Jupiter’s moons.15 The fact Galileo himself sought Clavius’s approval for his discoveries clearly indicates the status the Roman College mathematicians had acquired by the first decade of the seventeenth century. Clavius’s standing as the most prominent Jesuit mathematician is evident in Robert Bellarmine’s consultation with him and his group about Galileo’s claims, as well as in the fact that Bellarmine waited until Clavius’s death to demand scientific evidence supporting the Copernican hypothesis from Galileo before forbidding it.16 The reputation built by his mathematical studies at the Roman College survived Clavius. After his death, his disciples continued to participate publicly in astronomical and cosmological debates, harnessing to that end the vast network of informants afforded to them by the Jesuit global system of missions and colleges.17 But it was Athanasius Kircher, newly appointed professor of mathematics and oriental languages in 1633, who made the most of this network of informants. I will discuss Kircher’s epistolary network of informants later on in this chapter. For now, suffice to say that by the time Mascardi began studying with Kircher (probably as one of the students in his advanced seminar), Kircher had already gained the admiration of learned Europe for the vastness of the resources at his disposal and his seemingly limitless curiosity.18 In time, Mascardi would also become part of Kircher’s long-distance network of observers and informants. During the time that Mascardi was completing his studies at the Roman College, Alonso de Ovalle arrived in Rome as procurador (proxy) of the Chilean Jesuit vice province. Among the most important tasks entrusted to Ovalle was bringing back missionaries to work in Chile. In Rome, Ovalle resided at the Roman College, where he got acquainted with Kircher, who may have played a part in Ovalle’s decision to write and publish the Histórica relación del reyno de Chile, which appeared simultaneously in Spanish and Italian in 1646.19 Mascardi, who had been teaching Latin at the Jesuit college in Orvieto since 1645, was deeply impressed by Ovalle’s description of the missionary works undertaken by the Society of Jesus among the Mapuche, and asked the Chilean Jesuit to be considered among those returning with him. This decision was not surprising. Like many other young Italian Jesuits, Mascardi had been considering missionary life for several years. In 1640, he had asked his father and the Jesuit superiors for permission to be sent to the overseas missions, but he had been turned down



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because of his young age. He had tried again in 1643, this time assuring the Jesuit general that he was willing to pay for his own trip to the foreign missions, even if his father refused to give him the money.20 In the face of his previous failures to secure an overseas appointment, one can speculate that the success of his 1646 request to join Ovalle’s party to Chile was due—at least to a certain extent—to the influence exerted by Kircher, who (as we will see later on in this chapter) was probably interested in sending a mathematician trained by himself to the Southern Hemisphere. At any rate, Mascardi left Rome on December 12, 1646 in the company of Ovalle and another young Italian Jesuit, Giuseppe Adamo. After a brief stop in Bologna where they met with Giambattista Riccioli, the group set off for Spain. A few problems delayed their departure, but they finally set sail for Peru in 1650.21 After eight years in the most prestigious and thriving Jesuit intellectual center, Mascardi’s life was about to suffer a radical change in the impoverished and war-ravaged missions of southern Chile.

Missionary Life When Mascardi arrived in Chile around 1652, he spent a year at the novice house the Chilean Jesuits had built in Bucalemu. It was there that he was taught how to speak Mapudungun, and he was soon sent to finish his theology studies at the Jesuit college in Concepción, the military capital of the realm.22 As befitting a student of Kircher, Mascardi proved his mastery of ancient languages in his public doctoral examination, answering his questions in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.23 His performance greatly impressed both the regular and secular clergy in the audience, and apparently he was granted the honor of being the first student to have his thesis published in the realm.24 The Jesuit superiority, “seeing his superior ingenuity, wanted to give him a professorship,” either at the College of San Miguel in Santiago or at the College of Concepción.25 However, Mascardi refused the offer and pleaded with his superiors to be sent to the missions among the Mapuche, arguing that he had left the comfort and security of the European colleges precisely to devote himself to the conversion of the natives. According to Rosales, a contemporary and biographer of Mascardi, “The father provincial, moved by the zeal with which [Mascardi] begged him, sent him to the Buena Esperanza mission, where he quickly learned the Indian language, because he had a great gift for languages.”26 The Buena Esperanza mission where Mascardi would spend the next three years was located at the side of the Spanish fort known as the Estancia del Rey. Rosales described Buena Esperanza as one of the most successful missions the Jesuits maintained in Chile: its church was completely decorated and the mission had been “endowed with many slaves, lands, and vineyards by a gentleman from Zamora, named Francisco Rodríguez del Manzano, in order to turn it into a college.”27 Sharing the pastoral responsibilities with Mascardi in Buena Esperanza were the fathers Domingo Lázaro and Jerónimo de Montemayor. The three of

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them were responsible for catechizing the children every day and the whole community once a week, celebrating Mass with the Spanish troops in the fort, hearing confessions, and undertaking temporary missions to the native villages that were scattered farther in the countryside. In 1655, the three Jesuits’ missionary work in Buena Esperanza was violently interrupted when the Mapuche started an uprising that put most of the Spanish settlements between the Maule and the Bío Bío Rivers under siege. Governor Antonio de Acuña y Cabrera met the Mapuche forces in a skirmish near Buena Esperanza, where he was defeated. Having been informed that another Mapuche battalion of some two thousand men was marching toward Buena Esperanza, Acuña y Cabrera decided to abandon the mission and retreat to Concepción, where the Spanish troops forced him to abdicate and elected Francisco de la Fuente y Villalobos as their new commander.28 The uprising had disastrous consequences for both the Chilean colony and the Jesuit missionary enterprise. Unlike previous general rebellions, such as the one in 1598, the Mapuche did not limit themselves to ransacking the territories south of the Bío Bío River this time; they also attacked the Spanish settlements located in the central region of the colony, which threatened to cut off the communications between the different areas of the realm and put its very stability at risk.29 The Mapuche uprising left over three hundred Spaniards dead, and an even higher number of men, women, and children captured by the different clans that participated in the rebellion.30 The Arauco and Buena Esperanza missions were destroyed. In Boroa, Diego de Rosales and his companion, Francisco de Astorga, resisted the siege for almost a year along with forty soldiers.31 As a result of the rebellion, the Jesuit missionary project established forty years earlier by Luis de Valdivia suffered a serious setback. The Jesuits did not fully recover until after peace parliaments (held by governors Ángel de Peredo in 1662 and Francisco de Meneses in 1665) led to the Arauco and Buena Esperanza missions’ reestablishment in 1664, and establishment of the Santa Fe, Santa Juan, and San Cristóbal missions in 1666.32 When the panicked Governor Acuña y Cabrera gave orders to abandon Buena Esperanza and retreat to Concepción, Mascardi happened to be on an itinerant mission in the countryside. Being closer to the town of Chillán than to Buena Esperanza, Mascardi decided to go to Chillán rather than risk his life by returning to the mission. When he arrived he found the native population of the area ravaged by disease and the Spanish settlers utterly unprepared for what seemed to be an imminent attack. He advised them to abandon the city and build a small fortification, where they could resist the assault. Soon, the Mapuche came upon the city, but were unable to defeat the fortified Spaniards. The native soldiers plundered the city, sacked and burned the churches, and threatened to return with an even larger force to finish the Spaniards off.33 The citizens of Chillán decided not to wait to see if the Mapuche would live up to their promise. Since traveling through the rebel land to Concepción was impossible, the chillanejos voted to flee to the other side of the Maule River (located twenty leagues to the north), hoping that its rushing waters would act as a natural defense against



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the Mapuche. The caravan slowly started making its way north with Mascardi, who was fleeing the devastation of war for the second time within a few weeks; its progress was hampered by the epidemic affecting the service Indians traveling with them: “And the father [Mascardi] was helping everybody with an incredible charity. Now in the vanguard, now in the rear, giving the sacraments to some, burying others, looking for food for this one, looking for shelter and medicine for that one; the father was physician and nurse for everyone.”34 After the fleeing chillanejos arrived at the other bank of the Maule River, Mascardi found a way to return to Concepción, under the protection of a cavalry unit on its way to join the main Spanish forces there. After months of absence, he was finally reunited with his two companions from Buena Esperanza, Lázaro and Montemayor, who “welcomed him with great joy and pleasure, for they had not heard from him for the duration of the uprising, and had already thought him dead.”35 Not all the priests had been as lucky as Mascardi. At least one secular priest had been murdered during the uprising, and the Jesuits Luis Chacón, Alonso del Pozo, and Jerónimo de la Barra had been taken prisoner by the Mapuche and endured a brief captivity during the rebellion. Soon after Mascardi’s arrival, the new governor, Pedro Porter Casanate, decided to send a garrison to rebuild the Estancia del Rey fort. Mascardi joined Simón de Sotomayor, the appointed military chief of Estancia del Rey, and went back to inspect what remained of Buena Esperanza and to see if he could convince the rebels to abandon their weapons and resettle the mission. What Mascardi found in Buena Esperanza was disheartening. The mission had been totally destroyed and burned to the ground. The altars and the images and statues of Christ and the saints that had once graced the mission church had been dese­ crated, torn apart, and scattered in a nearby swamp.36 He combed the surrounding countryside, trying to find his catechumens to convince them to rebuild the chapel. Despite all his efforts, the governor and his circle decided not to rebuild the mission to avoid paying legal wages to the missionaries and thus relieve the already strained coffers of the realm. Although the Jesuit superiors appealed this decision to the king, the royal edict ordering the resettlement of Buena Esperanza did not arrive until 1664. In the meantime, Mascardi was ordered to return to Concepción where, given his success as a preacher, his superiors tried to assign him to a teaching position at the city’s college. However, he refused once again and pleaded to be sent to a mission among the unconverted. His petition was granted in 1658 when he embarked on a ship that delivered supplies annually to the small settlement of Castro, on Chiloe Archipelago’s main island.37 By the time Mascardi arrived on the island, the Society of Jesus had built a college in Castro and owned four estates throughout the countryside, which allowed them to support their pedagogical and missionary endeavors in Chiloe.38 The archipelago is made up of a large island—la isla grande de Chiloé—spanning 3,241 square miles, and a constellation of lesser islands to the south that are also known as the Chonos Archipelago after the natives who populated them. Life had always been difficult in Chiloe. The archipelago’s rainy and wet climate

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made agriculture almost impossible, except for the growing of potatoes, of which several varieties are native to the islands. Wheat, corn, wine, and fruit had to be imported from the continent.39 Besides potatoes, seafood was the staple of Chiloe cuisine, as it had been since its prehistory. Communication between the heavily forested settlements had to be done by coastal navigation, the settlers risking the fierce currents of the fiords and straits and braving an unstable weather prone to unleash unexpected storms.40 Around the mid-seventeenth century, Chiloe’s economy experienced a turn for the better. The settlers began exploiting the forests covering the hilly countryside and exporting timber to Peru. This enabled the stabilization of the Spanish and mestizo population on the main island (which had fluctuated wildly ever since Castro was founded in 1567) at about two thousand people, mainly concentrated in the Calbuco and Carelmapu forts. Meanwhile, the indigenous population continued to decline steadily, from the estimated twenty thousand natives living on the island in 1600 to a scarce six thousand by the end of the century.41 As soon as he had established himself at the college, Mascardi began to make evangelical outings to the native communities that lived on the farms and timber estates dotting the island. The Jesuits, whose presence in Chiloe dated from 1609, considered their work among the island natives to be one of the most dangerous of all their missions. Talking about the risks inherent in evangelizing the warlike Mapuche clans in mainland Chile, Ovalle remarked, “But although the work in these missions is great and excessive, they lose their name and disappear in our preference to the works that must be endured in Chiloe, which are the southernmost [missions] in this province, and among the most apostolic that our Society sustains in those parts, and I do not know if there are any other more trying in the world.”42 The itinerant missions to the Huilliche and the Chono peoples who inhabited the archipelago were particularly dangerous. These trips, usually lasting between three and six months, were taken year round, with the exception of July and August, the harshest part of winter, when passage from island to island was impossible.43 The navigation had to be made on the small vessels called piraguas “that are no more than three planks held together by little ropes and strands made of herbs, their backstitches and junctures caulked also with herbs, made with no nails, tow, or tar.”44 Once the missionaries reached an island, cold and wet, their situation did not improve. Native communities in the Chiloe Archipelago were extremely poor, due both to their population decline and the harshness of the weather, and could not help the missionaries by offering them dry clothes or sometimes even meals: “And all the comfort they can expect to alleviate their hardships is a small bench in the cold church or chapel where they hear confession or catechize the Indians.”45 Despite all these difficulties, Mascardi employed a good deal of the twelve years he spent in Chiloe evangelizing the natives. Following the methods used by the Society of Jesus in other places, he asked the natives to build small chapels on every island he visited, and he selected from among the best neophytes those who could act as fiscales, charging them with



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watching over the community chapel and leading the prayers and the study of the catechism in the absence of a missionary.46 In 1666, soon after Mascardi had been appointed superior of the College of Castro, Juan Verdugo, Governor of Chiloe, decided to raid the plains located at the other side of the Andes, an event that would alter the island’s routine. While claiming the natives living there were rebels—therefore, fabricating a charge that would allow him to enslave them legally—Verdugo sent a military party led by Diego Villarroel to the area surrounding Lake Nahuel-Huapi, located in ­present-day southern Argentina.47 Villarroel returned with some twenty Puelche individuals, among them a woman whom all the others seemed to obey and pay respect to and whom the Spaniards nicknamed La Reina (the queen). Attentive to her superior rank, a citizen of Castro named Francisco Gallardo gave her a house on his estate and the income from one of his mills, along with fifty sheep. The Jesuits donated to her an annual income of one hundred pesos and started to try to win her over, hoping that her conversion would lead to the conversion of all the enslaved Puelche.48 Mascardi, as the highest-ranking Jesuit on the island, visited her regularly to learn her language and evangelize her. At the same time, he started trying to convince Verdugo to free the Puelche, arguing that their enslavement was illegal since it was predicated on false charges.49 After four years, Mascardi achieved both their freedom and the conversion and baptism of La Reina. He also obtained some information about the lands on the other side of the Andes—information that changed the course of his life. In a letter sent to his old friend Giuseppe Adamo on January 30, 1669, Mascardi wrote how La Reina had revealed to him the location of the fabled “Ciudad de los Césares,” a city supposedly populated by the descendants of the ill-fated Argüello expedition, which the Spaniards living in Chile and Argentina thought lay somewhere near the Magellan Strait.50 According to Rosales, in 1540 an expedition composed of two ships paid for by Gutiérrez de Carvajal, Bishop of Placencia, had attempted to pass the Magellan Strait en route from Spain to the Spice Islands. However, a sudden storm wrecked one of the ships. The crew had managed to survive and save most of their cargo, but they had been abandoned by the other ship because there was not enough room to take them all aboard. Sebastián Argüello, the captain of the wrecked ship, had decided to go inland. Taking as many provisions as they could carry, he and his passengers began walking east toward the snowcapped mountains of Chile, where they had found several Indian settlements: “They had numerous battles with them, and being the Spaniards always the victors, they celebrated peace talks, and married the Indian women that had already been baptized, and these sacraments were administered by [the survivors’] chaplains. Some say that these Spaniards founded a city, called ‘of the Caesars.’ ”51 While listening to La Reina tell the story about a Spanish city close to her lands, Mascardi immediately thought of Argüello’s unfortunate expedition. But, before he reported anything, he demanded to see some proof of its existence. La Reina sent messengers to her land and, after some time, her

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brother returned: “And as a sure sign that either news or people from the City of Spaniards will soon follow, he brought a prayer book that although it could have come from Chile, from one of the plundered cities, and it is therefore not a sure sign, but [judging] from its antiquity, for it was printed in Seville two hundred years ago and all other circumstances, it almost surely belongs to the people of Argüello.”52 Furthermore, Mascardi explained, he had sent some trustworthy Indians to the other side of the Andes the previous year, who had reported seeing among the Poya and the Puelche many Spanish things, such as clothing, belts, knives, and hats. Although, in all likelihood, these things must have found their way to southern Argentina through barter with the Pampa natives, who regularly exchanged goods with the inhabitants of Buenos Aires, they were enough to convince Mascardi that La Reina and her people lived in close proximity to the lost city.53 He applied both to the Jesuit provincial and the viceroy to be released from his duties as superior of Castro and to be sent in mission to the Puelche, with the stated goal of opening a communication line with the Ciudad de los Césares. Accompanied by the freed Puelche, Mascardi left Chiloe in 1670 and crossed the Andes to what would be the last missionary assignment of his life. The indigenous tribes Mascardi was trying to evangelize were nomadic hunter-gatherers living in a land devoid of natural resources; their dwellings consisted of tents made of felt and animal hides. The landscape was very different from the forested Mapuche lands and the hills of Chiloe. “[This province is] lacking in all things necessary to the maintenance of human life,” Mascardi noted. “The land is barren and not suitable to grow crops. There have been found no forests or woods, not even to obtain firewood, and whatever it is, is wretched.”54 Mascardi could barely tolerate the natives’ diet, which consisted mainly of fox, wild horse, and guanaco meat “raw and half-roasted in the sun.”55 Despite enduring these hardships, he found the natives well inclined to receive the Gospels. He thought them to be “atheists” believing neither in God nor in the devil, and reported that their beliefs were reduced to considering the sun, the moon, and the rain to be beneficial influences on human life. Unlike other native Americans, they never became inebriated, although only “because one can find no drink to provoke [drunkenness].” While enduring the harshest conditions he had so far encountered in America, Mascardi found some degree of consolation in believing that the task of a missionary among the Poya and the Puelche was an easy and smooth one, and he held on to high hopes of converting them to the Christian faith soon.56

Astronomy from the Last Corner of the World Mascardi spent four years among the nomadic tribes who lived in the Lake ­Nahuel-Huapi area. During this time, he undertook four expeditions to the Magellan Strait, searching for the Ciudad de los Césares and the descendants of the Argüello expedition. It was in 1674, during his final trip there, that Mascardi was



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killed by the hostile members of a Poya tribe who had refused to grant him permission to preach among them. Two of his native companions managed to escape and notify the Jesuits of Chiloe of his murder. An expedition party soon crossed the Andes to recover the missionary’s remains and brought him back to give him proper burial in Concepción, next to the bodies of three Jesuits who had met their demise at the hands of the Mapuche in 1611. The Jesuits celebrated Mascardi’s funeral by “thanking God and the glorious Saint Francis Xavier for having given to this West Indies a saint, an apostolic missionary, and such a missionary and glorious martyr as Father Mascardi, just as they gave a missionary saint and a glorious martyr to the Orient.”57 Two years later, in an attempt to secure official recognition of his death as martyrdom, the Chilean Jesuits sent a report to Rome detailing his death, as well as his pious life and the visions they claimed as proof of God’s grace in him.58 In the minds of his contemporaries, his death put him at the same level as Francis Xavier, the Jesuit missionary par excellence. Most of what we know about Mascardi’s career in Chile and Argentina comes from the biography written by Rosales, which was probably part of the second half of his Historia general del reyno de Chile. This second part, known as the “Conquista espiritual,” included a description of the native system of beliefs along with the history of the Jesuit missions, and the biography of every member of the order who had worked in Chile—whether fully professed priests or lay brothers—up to the last third of the seventeenth century.59 Since it was intended to document the missionary efforts of Mascardi and his martyrdom among the Poya, Rosales’s “Vida apostólica del P. Nicolás Mascardi” naturally focused on his pastoral activities and on his virtuous behavior. However, a more complex and nuanced picture of Mascardi’s personality emerges when one reads his extant letters, in particular those addressed to Athanasius Kircher. In those letters, the missionary zeal portrayed by Rosales appears side by side with an unflinching commitment to mathematics and astronomy. From his epistolary, we can glean a more complete picture of the Italian Jesuit, one in which Mascardi appears as one of the most striking exemplaries of a Jesuit missionary scientist, both for his dedication to astronomical research and for the extreme conditions in which he carried out his evangelical calling. Mascardi’s balance of missionary and scientific endeavors gained him respect from his fellow missionaries in Chile, and also gave him the opportunity to continue collaborating with secular and Jesuit astronomers both in Europe and in South America. Although his work in Chile and Argentina was probably everything Mascardi had expected ever since he began considering a missionary career overseas, he never forwent astronomical observations. During his novice years in Bu­ calemu, he kept scrutinizing the night skies in search of something worthy of note whenever his spiritual training allowed him to do so. Every time a comet or any other stellar phenomenon appeared, he not only performed the appropriate measurements (parallaxes, position relative to other stars, apparent brightness, and so forth); he also communicated this information to Kircher and other friends who shared his interest in astronomy. For instance, from December 15 to

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December 27, 1652, Mascardi recorded the appearance of a comet in the Coalsack Nebula near Canopus, which he saw “in the Valley of Bucalemu, which is one degree west of Santiago of Chile.”60 Six months later, Mascardi wrote to Kircher to communicate the results of his observations of this comet. Mascardi’s astronomical activities had occupied him probably from the moment he embarked for America, as the letter also included the description of a lunar eclipse he observed on November 8, 1650 in Panama while en route to Peru, information he also shared with Giambattista Riccioli.61 It is not unlikely that Mascardi was charged with carrying out observations such as those of the lunar eclipses and of comets by Kircher himself to help with his projected geographical reform. The letters the Italian Jesuit sent to Rome show how Mascardi devoted his time and resources to answering Kircher’s questions and conducting experiments and measurements under his direction. There is an extant description of one of these experiments. In an undated letter presumably written in 1671, Mascardi described to Kircher both the method he followed and the results of his observation of the 1666 summer solstice: Your Reverence asked me also not to forget to observe the shadow of the sun at noon during the solstice, that is, on December the 21st, when the sun is at its perigee. I did it, although I wouldn’t wish you to trust too much in my observations in a matter of such an importance for astronomy, since I found myself in this land of barbarians lacking instruments of such precision as those required for this delicate observation, and just to obey you I carried it out the best I could [in] the year 1666, December the 21st in the city of Castro, metropolis of Chiloe, at 42 degrees of latitude, exactly opposite to the latitude of Rome. I found first the altitude of the sun being 72 degrees and 30 minutes, by means of a gnomon I planted perpendicularly on a surface divided in 1684 equal parts, of which the shadow of the sun showed me 588, from where Your Reverence can calculate the difference between the solstice shadow in Rome and Castro, being both at the same latitude.62

This description of the sundial and its use is a good example of both the construction of scientific instruments in the South American missions and of the transmission of the information obtained with them along Jesuit epistolary networks, a subject to which I will return in the next section. As Michael Gorman has shown, the use of missionaries stationed in different residences and colleges in America, Asia, and Europe as a source of information was an essential element in the scientific project of Kircher.63 The network of correspondents at Kircher’s disposal was so vast and productive that European astronomers and naturalists—both Catholic and Protestant—were eager to gain access to it. His repeated requests for information from his correspondents at the overseas missions have been seen by modern scholars as a paradigmatic example of the disciplined use of the mobility, mathematical education, and self-effacing obedience that characterized the Jesuit training for advancing knowledge about the natural world.64



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Interestingly, Mascardi’s description of the sundial he built in Chiloe is part of a longer description of the lands that lay near the Magellan Strait, included in a letter sent from “apud Puijas ultra Andes Chiloenses.” The manuscript, the longest one attributed to Mascardi, is written neither in Mascardi’s nor Kircher’s hand­ writing, being in all likelihood a clean copy prepared by one of the German Jesuit’s secretaries and translated from Latin (the language regularly used by Mascardi in his correspondence with Kircher) into Italian. Whole sections of it—in particular the description of the sundial but, also, sections about the geography of southern Argentina and the way of living of the Poya—are direct translations from a Latin letter sent by Mascardi on February 10, 1671. It was probably to this translation that Giorgio di Sepi referred in his 1678 catalog of Kircher’s museum: “Here is contained a short work by Father Nicolò Mascardi, Italian, who once was a mathematics student of Kircher, and who sent it to him from Chile, describing the newly discovered regions surrounding the Magellan Strait, worthy in itself and all the more for having been described by no one else.”65 Although long considered a lost work penned by Mascardi himself—perhaps a short tract describing the geography and the most relevant aspects of the flora and fauna of the region—it seems safe to assume what Sepi refers to as Mascardi’s opusculum was not a work in its own right, but this anthology of sorts of the information included in Mascardi’s letters to Kircher. In fact, the Italian manuscript includes descriptions of the Andes Mountains, the flux of the tides in the Chiloe Archipelago, and the night sky near the Southern Pole, as well as reports on the sundial experiment and the way of life, languages, and religious beliefs of the native tribes that inhabited the area; this information is consistent with Kircher’s 1654 description of his plan to use the Jesuit global institutional network to gather enough information to reform geography: “I would also provide instructions for what they [the overseas missionaries] should observe about the flux and reflux of the tides; the constitution of lands and promontories; the nature and properties of winds, bodies of water, rivers, animals, plants and minerals; and, finally, about the customs, laws, languages, and religious rites of men.”66 As Sepi remarked in his description of the opusculum, the fact that Mascardi was the only European with access to the nature, geography, and peoples surrounding the Magellan Strait helped secure Kircher’s attention to his letters. Mascardi, being solus operarius in those forsaken lands, as he liked to remind his reader, had privileged access to information that would have remained otherwise unknown to Kircher, and to any other European savant for that matter. Mascardi was well aware of this fact, and gladly advanced any information Kircher requested from him “for the benefit of the Republic of the Letters.”67 In a province where, in the face of a constant state of warfare against the Mapuche, mathematics were not cultivated by many, as Mascardi complained in 1661, and later on risking life and limb among the Poya while hundreds of miles away from any Spanish settlement, his communication with the German Jesuit in Rome—sporadic and discontinuous as it may have been—was the only link remaining for the Jesuit missionary with the intellectual problems of his time. Mascardi’s let-

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ters to Kircher reveal a longing for his years spent at the Roman College and for the more intellectually stimulating environment he had known there. Even when talking about the satisfactions of his missionary endeavors and his hopes of martyr­dom, Mascardi could not mask his pining for the intellectual community he had left behind in Europe: “I don’t fear death or life, if it can be called life that which is constant anguish and travails, but one and the other I accept gladly as a gift from God, and for God I accept it, since that is the only thing that gives me happiness in this exile.”68 Kircher himself recognized Mascardi’s devotion to scientific inquiries even in the most disadvantaged situations, publicly granting Mascardi citizenship in the Republic of Letters. In 1666, the Jesuit astronomer and missionary Valentin Stansel sent a manuscript copy of his treatise Coeli Brasiliensis Oeconomia from Salvador, Brazil, which was ready for the presses, and to which Kircher contributed a prefatory letter signed on July 2, 1667.69 In this letter, along with praises of Stansel for presenting new and exact descriptions of the skies in the “Antarctic Pole,” as well as a description of the effects of the roving stars in the Southern Hemisphere, Kircher confessed to the reader that this information was not new for him: he had been informed of these phenomena by “Father Nicolò Mascardi, of our Society; a former disciple of mine in mathematics; nephew of that great orator and philologist, the distinguished Agostino Mascardi; whom I see [Nicolò] in the last corner of the Chilean kingdom, in the great island called Quellon [sic], not too far from the Magellan Strait.”70 By paraphrasing Mascardi’s ex ultimo habitatis orbis angulo, a sentence with which he liked to open his letters to the German Jesuit, Kircher acknowledged Mascardi’s remarkable commitment to his research program while at the same time voicing the feelings of isolation from his intellectual peers that Mascardi had confessed to him a few years earlier when bluntly telling him that in Chile “there [was] no high mathematics.”71 As fulfilling as missionary life seems to have been for Mascardi, his correspondence with Kircher conveys a deep sense of frustration with the intellectual climate of southern Chile when compared with his youthful years at the Roman College. With their constant repetition of data and information already included in previous letters, the letters Mascardi sent to Kircher during the twenty-odd years he spent in the missions in the Southern Cone are evidence of this feeling, which he tried to allay by fervently devoting himself to his former teacher’s geographical and astronomical researches, thus gaining at least some sense of belonging to the European Republic of Letters he had left behind.

Comets in the Southern Skies For all his yearning for European intellectual life, Mascardi’s epistolary reveals more than a simple peripheral engagement with the metropolitan research agenda embodied by Kircher. Mascardi was also deeply involved with the local production of knowledge in the colonies, exchanging information, books, and



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probably instruments with other mathematicians and astronomy aficionados in the Peruvian viceroyalty. The 1652 comet again provides a good example. The same year that Mascardi reported his observations to Rome, the Belgian Jesuit Jean Raymond Coninck wrote to Kircher from Juli, reporting the sighting of the same comet he had observed from Cuzco, and that had been witnessed in Lima, Chuquisaca, Potosi, Oruro and, significantly, in the Chilean province as well.72 Although there are no other existing letters to document it, the epistolary exchange between Mascardi and Coninck regarding this comet seems warranted not only by the reference to its sighting in Chile, but also by the fact that, in introducing himself to Kircher, Coninck opened his letter with the mention of the familiarity he had with Mascardi.73 The two young missionaries had met in Lima in 1651, when Mascardi arrived in Peru along with fifteen other Jesuits appointed to work in the Chilean missions. Coninck, who had come to Peru four years earlier, quickly became friends with Mascardi and was impressed by the mastery the young Italian had of Kircher’s research. The two of them spent hours discussing Kircher’s theories, in particular those advanced in his Prodromus Coptus (1636) and the Ars magna lucis et umbrae (1646).74 Their epistolary contact continued at least until the Mapuche rebellion of 1655, since in a letter signed that year, Coninck informed Kircher that Mascardi had survived the uprising and was safe and sound in Concepción.75 Letters such as those sent by Coninck and Mascardi to Kircher offer valuable information for understanding the transmission of instruments and facts among the communities of mathematicians and astronomers throughout South America. Coninck, for instance, seems to have been receiving information about comets, solar eclipses, and other phenomena from observers located all over Peru. In addition to the information exchanged with Mascardi, Coninck was also sharing observational results with his confrères back in Europe, in particular with the Belgian Jesuit Otto Van Zyll.76 Coninck acted not only as a broker of information for Kircher (who does not seem to have bothered to answer him), he also monitored the comet from the small observatory he had in Juli.77 Observatories like Coninck’s were not uncommon among the members of the Society of Jesus in South America. As we saw in the previous chapter, Cobo carried with him several instruments from one residence or college to the next. Letters sent from Rome in 1639 and 1652 commanded the Jesuit superiors in Paraguay to support Pedro Comentale’s observations of the satellites of Jupiter and explicitly authorized him to carry the books and instruments needed to that effect, including a telescope.78 The authorization granted to Comentale was, however, an isolated instance, probably related to the Jesuit efforts to gather evidence against the helio­ centric model in the wake of the condemnation of Galileo. Although the possession of books and instruments by individual Jesuits was a normal practice, it was forbidden by the order’s legislation.79 Provincials and visitadores in South America tried time and again to regulate this practice, often in vain.80 European Jesuits traveled to America carrying their own books and sometimes instruments. Coninck, for instance, had embarked in Seville with a large and a small telescope,

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which he had lost along with some other possessions when the ship wrecked.81 The loss did not hamper Coninck’s astronomical activities. As Cobo had commented a generation earlier, native craftsmen in Cuzco could build telescopes using rock crystal that were as good as any imported from Italy. 82 At any rate, Coninck managed to acquire several instruments in Peru, including a bronze planisphere, several compasses, a cross-staff, a pantometer, and some quadrants, along with a small but up-to-date library of mathematical texts.83 Mascardi also kept mathematical books and some instruments in his cell in Bucalemu and, later on, in the Buena Esperanza mission. In all likelihood, his instruments had been gifts received by the young Jesuit upon his departure from Italy. Just like Coninck, however, he lost them all, although not in a shipwreck but in the 1655 Mapuche uprising. Devastating as this loss was for him, Mascardi owed the forging of one of the most significant collaborative relationships of his career to this unfortunate event. When Mascardi returned to Buena Esperanza, he was overwhelmed by the extent of destruction he saw. The mission church had been burned to ashes, and all its sacred ornaments had been defiled and scattered in the mud. Even more painful was his confirmation of the total loss of his personal belongings: What the father could not find in spite of looking everywhere was a beautiful painting of Our Lady that he had brought with him from Rome. . . . He kept it in his room, where when the barbarians broke in to plunder they could not find anything of their liking, and where the father had many things he loved and estimated. For he had some relics of which he was very devoted that had been given to him by a cardinal, and since he had studied mathematics, and had been a disciple of that great master, Father Athanasius Kircher, he had many curious things such as globes, armillary spheres, clocks, telescopes, and other instruments and curiosities. And everything was thrown away by the Indians, who did not know what those things were, and they also threw away his books, for the great mathematician of Peru, Captain Juan Lozano [sic] communicated often with the father and sent him the most curious books about this discipline. And everything was lost, and the father had enough to fret over these losses, offering them to God. . . . But overall, he felt most deeply the loss of the painting of Our Lady, being so devoted to her.84

Although Rosales, in line with the hagiographic tone of his text, gives pride of place in the missionary’s sorrows to the destruction of his devotional objects—a fact for which in his narrative Mascardi is rewarded by a quasi-miraculous return of his painting, seasoned with the appropriate biblical quotations—the catalog of instruments he provides betrays the importance that the practice of astronomy had for the Italian Jesuit.85 Mascardi himself gave a somewhat different account of his feelings in a letter sent some years later to Kircher. In it, he lamented having lost the books of poetry Francesco de Luca had given him, along with his more practical logarithm tables and all his instruments. But things were starting



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to look better, as one mathematician from Peru had already sent him some books, among them a copy of the Almagestum Novus published by Giambattista Riccioli in 1651. Apparently, more books were on the way: “I am expecting Your Reverence’s works. Indeed, none of my [copies] survived the fire.”86 In the meantime, he had also started to rebuild his instruments, although this time he had to manufacture them from wood, since there was no one who could help him cast them in metal, a fact that greatly distressed Mascardi, who finished his letter complaining about the deplorable state of mathematical studies in Chile.87 The Peruvian mathematician to whom both Rosales and Mascardi referred was Captain Francisco Ruiz Lozano, a former student of the Jesuits. Born in 1607 in Oruro, Ruiz Lozano studied at the Jesuit College of San Martin in Lima.88 Upon graduation, he traveled to Mexico to study mathematics under the Mercedarian friar Diego Rodríguez.89 Ruiz Lozano returned to Lima in 1655 in the retinue of the Count of Alba de Liste, and was commissioned to accompany the newly appointed governor of Chile, Pedro Porter Casanate, as his treasurer during that year.90 It was probably during this stay in Concepción in 1656 that Ruiz Lozano met Mascardi, who had just returned from Chillán in the wake of the destruction of the Buena Esperanza mission. Ruiz Lozano’s stay in Chile was not long, and the relationship between him and Mascardi was developed mainly through epistolary exchange. Mascardi’s complaint to Kircher about Chile being a mathematical wasteland may refer to Ruiz Lozano’s early departure to Peru soon after the reestablishment of the Estancia del Rey fort and the decision to close down the mission of Buena Esperanza. In 1661, Ruiz Lozano was appointed Cosmógrafo Mayor (chief cosmographer) in Lima and, four years later, he was appointed chair of mathematics at the Hospital de Marineros del Espíritu Santo where he had the opportunity to work with his friend Jean Raymond Coninck again, who had quit the Society of Jesus and was now the hospital’s chaplain. After Ruiz Lozano’s death in 1677, Coninck succeeded him as the chair of mathematics.91 The epistolary contact between Mascardi and Ruiz Lozano apparently lasted at least for a decade, producing its most visible results a year after the sightings of the comet of 1664, when Ruiz Lozano published his Tratado de los cometas, the first astronomical treatise ever to come from South American presses. In a letter dated March 14, 1666, Mascardi communicated to Kircher his own observations of the 1664 comet, which he included in a brief text entitled “Observatio Cometarum” that accompanied the letter.92 Of all the preserved letters Mascardi addressed to Kircher, this one, along with Mascardi’s description of the Magellan Strait region, was the only one valuable enough for Kircher to order a clean copy made. The preserved text is a transcription of one of Mascardi’s Latin letters and the accompanying summary of his observations, which are now classified as two separate letters in the Kircher archive.93 As in most of his correspondence with Kircher, Mascardi began by recalling the repeated requests he had received from his former master to send him information about the southern skies, in particular about stars hitherto unknown to European astronomers, along with any information he could provide about the “geographia, et physica” of those re-

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gions.94 In what had become a catchphrase in the letters among Coninck, Mascardi, and Kircher, Mascardi was glad to announce that this time he could report “from the last corner of the inhabited world” the sighting of three comets in the past two years.95 This unusual activity in the southern skies apparently generated a flurry of correspondence among the astronomy aficionados in the Vice­royalty of Peru. As a result, Mascardi was proud to offer Kircher, as a complement to his own observations, the data recorded in Lima by his friend “Francisco Ruiz Lozano, a gentleman devoted to the observation of the stars, a fact that in a secular and rich man is always worthy of praise.”96 Conversely, Ruiz Lozano used the information about the comet furnished to him by Mascardi in his own work, the 1665 Tratado de los cometas. Mascardi’s “Observatio Cometarum” and Ruiz Lozano’s Tratado de los cometas reveal important aspects of the circulation of information within global and local communities of scientific practitioners in the early modern period. Although epistolary networks had been important for communities of naturalists and astronomers at least since the mid-sixteenth century, the scale of the geographical distribution of informants that someone like Kircher had at his disposal was unprecedented.97 Taking advantage of the postal system developed by the Society of Jesus since the sixteenth century, a system intended to centralize the government of the order in Rome, Kircher was able to streamline the accumulation of information and objects coming from all over the world in his museum at the Roman College.98 As Steven Harris has shown, the constant circulation of letters, orders, inquiries, and annual reports between Rome and Jesuit missions all over the world established official channels that allowed for the movement of the agents, texts, instruments, and objects needed for the accumulation of information about the natural world on a global scale.99 Following the model of scientific networks proposed by Bruno Latour, Harris concentrates his analysis on the accumulation of information and the production of knowledge about the natural world that such an accumulation allowed in the European colleges, reducing the role of Jesuit missionaries overseas simply to that of furnishing the data needed by the Jesuit writers located in “about three dozen or so principal compounds, namely the largest Jesuit universities and colleges in the provincial capitals of the Italian, French and German assistencies.”100 At first glance, Mascardi’s career and correspondence with Kircher seems to confirm this thesis. However, once we locate Mascardi within the local community of astronomers active in the Peruvian viceroyalty during the second half of the seventeenth century, we obtain a rather different picture, one in which individuals who worked within the colonial periphery of the Spanish Empire were actively discussing current astronomical theories—theories they tested by using the same experimental methods and mathematical calculations that their European colleagues were using at the time. As in Europe, establishing and maintaining epistolary relationships was essential for their work. In this sense, Mascardi’s simultaneous activity in both a local epistolary network and in the global network managed from Rome by Kircher makes him an



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excellent case study. His access to local practitioners and astronomers also helps to explain Kircher’s interest in his reports. Thanks to his exchange of data with Ruiz Lozano regarding the 1664 comet, Mascardi found himself in a position to offer Kircher a better starting point for speculating about comets, providing him not only with more accurate but also more reliable data by including control observations: “Three comets were seen last year, whose movements were recorded to the point allowed by Your Reverence’s letters, to be incorporated to Your Reverence’s census, and assuming [there is] any mistake, it will not be difficult to correct, and [these observations] can be passed along to your astronomers to examine them; I have no doubt they would have a very exact material.”101 Although highly successful in allowing an individual to acquire a larger set of data about astronomical phenomena, Kircher’s method of tapping into the missionary and educational network of the Society of Jesus in order to gain access to this information did not go unchallenged in the seventeenth century. As his controversy with the great seventeenth-century Jesuit astronomer Giambattista Riccioli shows, Kircher’s method could sometimes be viewed with suspicion precisely regarding the accuracy of the information thus obtained.102 The dispute between Kircher and Riccioli reveal a tension between local and non-local modes of research. Whereas Kircher saw natural investigation as a collective enterprise and sought to marshal the collaboration of numerous observers distributed throughout the globe, Riccioli purposely cultivated local networks of patronage and gave pride of place to carefully crafted (and often very expensive) instruments and a small but well-trained group of close disciples working with him.103 Precisely at the center of the dispute was the role of the observers and their reliability on providing credible reports about natural phenomena. The evaluation of the reliability of faraway observers was an inherent problem in establishing long-distance information networks. Besides having only second­hand reports about many of the phenomena he studied, Kircher had to overcome what in Europe was perceived as a dearth of accurate instruments in the overseas missions. Mascardi seems to have been well aware of this problem; in his report about the summer solstice of 1666 he asked Kircher not to put excessive trust in his data, given the fact that he was “lacking instruments of such an accuracy in these barbarian lands.”104 The insistence with which Kircher asked his correspondents in Asia and America to record not only the data they could obtain but also a detailed description of the instruments and methods used in the observations was an attempt to solve this problem. Mascardi’s suggestion of complementing his measurements of the solar shadow in the 1666 solstice with those of other informants, as well as Kircher’s demand to his informants on eclipses to provide him with a list of witnesses to the observations, seem to point in that direction.105 These measures sought to reinforce the advantages of the network model of acquiring information, while at the same time playing down its weaknesses. They emphasized a multiplicity of observations over the individual, contingent observation that was prone to errors (be they idiosyncratic or induced by the instruments) that could result from a methodology such as Riccioli’s. The im-

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pact of erroneous individual observations was limited by amassing a large enough number of reports collected from different independent sources. The inclusion of other people’s observations in the “Observatio Cometarum” also reveals important aspects of the workings of local networks of informants, which show a functioning equivalent to that of Kircher’s, albeit on a smaller scale. At the end of the “Observatio Cometarum,” Kircher added a brief note indicating that Valentin Stansel had also reported his sightings of the 1664 and 1665 comets, which would be published in Prague “so the astronomers in Europe can deduce the differences and similarities with those [comets] observed in Europe.”106 The publication to which Kircher referred to was, in all likelihood, the Coeli Brasili­ ensis Oeconomia for which he wrote the preface, and where he also linked the observations made in Brazil by Stansel with Mascardi’s report. This process is virtually identical to the one performed by Mascardi in the “Observatio.” The measurements of the 1664 comet made in Lima by Ruiz Lozano represented a good counterpoint to his own for the Italian missionary since, according to his calculations, Lima and the College of Castro were located at the same longitude, separated by thirty degrees of latitude.107 Mascardi presented the data gathered in both locations simultaneously, although, because of some cloudy nights, this was not possible for every day during which the comet had been observed. 108 Mascardi offered this data for the speculation of astronomers and philosophers, performing the same gesture as Kircher: “Without a doubt these two phenomena will give material to the speculation of the astronomers; for the astrologists, however, there is the danger of transforming these celestial bodies in a manifestation of the divine word.”109 But even if Mascardi deferred the speculation about the comets to the astronomers, limiting himself merely to recording the data, his friend and collaborator Ruiz Lozano, who Mascardi introduced to Kircher as a peritissimus astronomus or expert astronomer, would not shy away from this task, using to that end the information supplied to him by the Italian Jesuit. To be sure, Mascardi was not the only informant who supplied Ruiz Lozano with credible data about the comet. As chief cosmographer, Ruiz Lozano also had access to the observations made by ship pilots and military officials. Besides Mascardi, Ruiz Lozano collected information from at least three other informants; two of them were pilots of merchant ships who recorded their own observations of the 1664 comet in their logs while sailing on the northern and southern extremes of the Peruvian coast, respectively; the third was “Captain Hernando de Ulloa, who lives in the city of San Marcos de Arica, a gentleman well versed in mathematics, who sent me some observations starting on the 11th of December, observations that conform with those reported by the two pilots aforementioned.”110 It was precisely this access to information that could be compared and contrasted, along with the data resulting from his own use of astronomical instruments, that allowed Ruiz Lozano to enter in a dialogue with current astronomical theories that sought to explain the origin of celestial phenomena such as comets and supernovas.



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The appearance of several comets and supernovas during the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, coupled with the use of better instruments— not least among them, the telescope—produced a veritable explosion of theories about both the composition of the skies and the production of new phenomena. Although these observations shattered the received belief in the incorrupti­bility of the heavens and their immutable nature, traditional Aristotelian doctrines, which explained the comets as meteorological phenomena produced in the upper section of the atmosphere, were still in place and were taught at Spanish universities well into the seventeenth century. However, most astronomers understood comets as superlunary occurrences, a fact that can be explained in part by the exchange of astronomical data by using global epistolary networks. The Spanish Jesuit Juan Eusebio Nieremberg commented that the coincidence in the data and calculations made during the sighting of the 1618 comet by observers in the Jesuit missions in Goa with those made by astronomers in Rome, Parma, and Antwerp demonstrated that the comet could not have been too close to the earth, since it would have been “impossible to observe, or at least not with such a coincidence, from provinces so far apart from each other.”111 Referring to the observation of the 1577 comet by Tycho Brahe, Ruiz Lozano discussed the implications of Brahe’s findings about the diameter of the comet’s head—findings made “with the finest of instruments, the most expensive, finely crafted, and bigger than any other ever seen.”112 Following Johannes Kepler and Christopher Clavius, Ruiz Lozano calculated that the comet observed by Brahe was twice as large as the atmosphere, and that it contained eight times more matter (Tratado, 10v). His calculations, therefore, disproved the Aristotelian theory that comets were meteorological phenomena originating from the condensation of the exhalations of the earth in the upper regions of the atmosphere, since “even if all the exhalations of the air, of the earth, and of the seas would condense, it still would not be enough matter to form a comet” (11). The 1664 comet observed in Peru confirmed the falsehood of this doctrine: “Applying these calculations to the repeated observations I made of our comet, I found that the diameter of its head was five minutes, and the length to the end of its tail was thirty degrees and ten minutes. . . . [If we calculate the amount] of air as in a sphere, and then in cubic units, we find that our comet contained more matter than the whole of the atmosphere” (11–11v). If comets contained more mass than the atmosphere, and sometimes even more mass than the whole sublunary world, then a new explanation for their origin had to be found. Furthermore, based on the calculation of the parallax for all of his forty-two observations of the comet, complemented by the calculations made by Ulloa in Arica and Mascardi in Chiloe, Ruiz Lozano concluded that the comet was located above the moon but beneath the stars (2). These calculations supported Kepler’s theory that comets were formed out of the exhalations of planets, not of the earth. As Ruiz Lozano explained, the Dutch mathematician Willebrord Snellius had proposed that

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the celestial bodies of the planets and the stars exhale or expel some sparks, some lights, some particles or atoms, not unlike those our sight sees in the sunbeams, and he thinks that these atoms wander and move around everywhere . . . [until] they condense, and become a body noticeable to our eyes in the very places where the stars exhale them and produce them, and once condensed they receive the light of the sun, that seems to affect them, so they acquire movement.113

Ruiz Lozano agreed with the fundamentals of this theory; namely, that celestial bodies did lose atoms and these atoms could then precipitate into a solid body. However, his calculations located comets squarely in the planetary sphere, and not in the immobile sphere of fixed stars. He sided, therefore, with Kepler, who thought that the exhalations of the fixed stars were responsible for the creation of supernovas, while comets could only be formed by the atoms lost by planets and the sun.114 Ruiz Lozano did not limit himself to testing experimentally the theories produced in Europe. His detailed calculations of the 1664 comet’s mass gave him enough data to advance his own ideas about the nature and function of the comets. Based on Snellius’s and Kepler’s ideas about the origin of the comets, Ruiz Lozano proposed that these phenomena could be interpreted as the mechanism used by the heavens to purge themselves of corrupted matter, just as “the seas with their constant movement purge themselves of any element foreign to their nature by pushing it to the shores” (22). The fact that the comet lost mass during its observable trajectory seemed to indicate to him that the light of the sun, which he thought to be responsible for the formation of comets’ tails, consumed the noxious matter forming the comets, purifying them in the process: “And maybe (just an idea of mine that I write here, whatever its merits) after the comet’s matter is purified, just as in the crucible once all the bastard lead is spent and consumed we are left with a small grain of gold or silver, so after the comet’s feces have been consumed and purged, all that is left is a star, either big or small, depending on the comet, that stays among the others in the firmament” (23). The rectilinear ascendant trajectory of most comets seemed to sustain this idea, leading them to ascend from the planetary sphere to that of the fixed stars once the sun had purified their matter (23). Ruiz Lozano’s theory allowed him not only to explain the disappearance of comets and the formation of new stars, it also allowed for an explanation of the noxious effects of the comets without resorting to the forbidden practice of judiciary astronomy. Since comets were formed by the impurities purged from the planetary sphere and their tails contained the noxious material that was lost because of the impact of solar rays, then a comet that was close enough to the earth to be visible would “perpendicularly spill its poison,” causing damage wherever it went (4). Although it may seem surprising that such a sophisticated analysis of the formation, movement, and demise of comets would come down to an explanation of their supposed character as heralds of cataclysms and disgraces, it must be remembered that early modern cometography was laden with such consid-



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erations. As Sara Schechner Genuth has described, the discourse about comets in the seventeenth century shared both what we would recognize as a scientific attitude toward comets as well as elements from popular lore deeply ingrained in the European consciousness. In particular, the belief in the negative effects that comets could herald, as bearers of dramatic change in the world, was incorporated even into the theories of those figures usually recognized as the founders of the scientific study of comets. Isaac Newton, for instance, agreed that God sent comets to herald the reformation of the world, the punishment of the wicked, and the vindication of the just.115 Although Newton hoped that his theory would help discredit the practice of vulgar divination, the only clear difference between his and popular attitudes toward comets was his belief that comets acted through natural causes and that their effects were global rather than local.116 Writing after the condemnation of Galileo and the inclusion of Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus in the church’s Index of Prohibited Books, Ruiz Lozano could not enter into the thorny issue of the probable orbit of comets, referring to their movement in the sky strictly as observed from Earth. However, his overall attitude toward comets was not all that different from the one held by the likes of Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley, inasmuch as he was trying to explain deeply held and timehonored beliefs about comets using observational data and contemporary mathematical analysis. For Ruiz Lozano, as well as for Newton, the evil provoked by the appearance of a comet could be explained by natural causes­—causes related to their origin and function as the cleansers of the planetary sphere. Just like Newton, Ruiz Lozano also hoped to weaken the grip that superstition about comets had over people by offering a rational explanation of their origin, behavior, and effects based on strictly observed facts.117 Ruiz Lozano’s Tratado de los cometas was the most visible outcome of his ­decade-long collaboration with Mascardi. The Tratado de los cometas clearly shows that in spite of Mascardi’s self-assumed role as a mere broker of information, the members of the communities of astronomers and naturalists active in South America by the middle of the seventeenth century did not shy away from analyzing the results of their own observations and advancing their own theories, even if they were contrary to the most commonly taught theories in Spanish and Spanish American universities.118 This was possible in no small measure thanks to the development of the Jesuit system of missions and colleges and the accumulation of texts in their libraries. Ruiz Lozano, for example, quotes a large number of European astronomers, whether to support his own points of view or to contradict their theories. Along with Kepler, Brahe, Copernicus, and Snellius, Ruiz Lozano uses extensively (and always approvingly) the work of Jesuit mathematicians and natural philosophers such as Clavius, Nieremberg, and Juan Bautista Telles. It is probable that Ruiz Lozano had access to this wealth of information through the holdings of the Jesuit libraries at the College of San Martin, where he had pursued his secondary studies, and at the College of San Pablo, which maintained one of the finest libraries in Lima. In fact, library catalogs from other South American colleges show a marked tendency to maintain relatively large

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collections of mathematical works along with literary and devotional works.119 The expansion of the Jesuit educational system in South America, as we saw in the previous chapter, with its constant flux of books into the Peruvian province, was of paramount importance to the development of mathematical and natural historical research in South America. Other features of the South American Jesuit network were also instrumental to the formation of these communities of naturalists. The mobility Jesuit missionaries and teachers such as Mascardi and Cobo enjoyed during their careers allowed them to forge long-lasting relations with local informants and other naturalists, be they members of the Society of Jesus or not. These relationships marked one of the most important features of the practice of Jesuit science in the seventeenth century; namely, its collaborative character. As Kircher’s epistolary shows, with its letters from over seven hundred correspondents from every corner of the world where the Jesuit order had a mission station, college, or residence, the Jesuit practice of exchanging information among all the provinces to foster a sense of unity in character, method, and purpose lent itself to becoming a formidable information-gathering system. As Steven Harris has noted, the combination of unique institutional structures such as a global educational network, the circulation of agents and personnel through that network, and the creation of high-profile research and educational institutions in Europe gave Jesuit Baroque science some of its most defining features.120 But, as we have seen in this chapter, even if missionaries such as Mascardi never forfeited their allegiance to the research agenda of their European mentors, they were nonetheless involved in the production of local knowledge in the colonies. Texts such as Ruiz Lozano’s Tratado de los cometas were the product of processes of circulation and accumulation of information, books, reports, and objects analogous to those enjoyed by Kircher, Nieremberg, and other Jesuit writers in Europe. The numerous books on natural, civil, ecclesiastical, and missionary history penned by the members of the Society of Jesus living and working in South America bear witness to this fact. Much like Ruiz Lozano’s, works such as Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias, Cobo’s Historia del Nuevo Mundo, and Rosales’s Historia general del reyno de Chile, to name but a few, were based on the facts and information furnished by members of the order working all over South America, as well as by members of the communities in which they worked, including native informants, as we have seen. In these texts, the South American Jesuits did not limit themselves merely to presenting the information gathered. Just like Ruiz Lozano, they also used this information to present novel and original theories to explain some of the most striking phenomena of the nature of the New World, to correct some of the misconceptions that were circulating in Europe, and to include American nature within the more general European theoretical frames. It is, then, to these texts that we now turn.

part iii

Natura ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam

Chapter 6

The Two Faces of Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias

O

n February 24, 1554, Ignatius Loyola wrote to Gaspar Barceo, Vice   Provincial of India, suggesting that he moderate his apostolic zeal for the sake of his own health. Along with this expression of concern for the missionary’s well-being (a belated concern, for Barceo had died almost six months before), Loyola sent him very precise guidelines regarding his communication with Rome. In these directions, Ignatius noted the curiosity that the nature of far-off lands provoked in the Roman nobles and church dignitaries to whom he sent copies of the letters he received from India: “Some principal gentlemen, that in this city read the letters from India with great edification, usually desire, or many times request, to see something written about the cosmography of those regions where our people are. [Therefore,] if there are any . . . things that seem extraordinary, such as animals or plants that are unknown or not known in such size, etc., give notice of them.”1 This information, remarked Ignatius, could be of great help in gaining the support of influential persons, since it could be used “as a sauce [to enhance] the taste of some curiosity, not a bad desire, that some men have.”2 Ignatius instructed Barceo to include this information either in his regular communications with the Jesuit superiors or in separate letters. Barceo had to be mindful that these letters were to be publicized, so he should avoid writing about the order’s internal affairs. In any case, if inappropriate information was included, it could be expurgated in Rome. What could not be missing was information about Indian nature, for “that cannot be supplied here.”3 Around this time, Juan de Polanco, secretary of the order, sent the same instructions to Manuel da Nóbrega, Provincial of Brazil.4 To be sure, Ignatius’s orders were clearly intended to satisfy the curiosity of noblemen in Europe in order to better attract patrons willing to support the fledgling order politically and economically. As Ignatius’s instructions to Barceo and Nóbrega show, the fact that the production and publication of research about the natural world could enhance the prestige of the order and its members did not escape the Jesuit superiors, particularly in a culture where the study of

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nature was quickly becoming part of the ethos of the nobility.5 But his request to the missionaries stationed overseas to observe and record natural phenomena can also be seen as a consequence of his belief in learning as an integral part of spiritual life, a view that had profound consequences for the development of the order. As I have discussed in previous chapters, although Ignatius’s original idea had been to found a preaching and missionary order, by the 1560s the growing importance the management of schools was acquiring for the Jesuits helped determine a particular relationship between the members of the order and the production and transmission of knowledge. Pedagogy forced the Jesuits to systematize their ties to the different scientific and philosophical disciplines in order to better teach these subjects in their schools and universities. As George Ganss noted in his classic study on Jesuit universities, Ignatius’s aim was to produce in students a carefully reasoned, philosophically grounded, Catholic outlook on life, which would enable them to become active members of society and positive leaders in their communities.6 The idea of a mutually informative relationship between scientific learning and Jesuit spirituality was enshrined by Ignatius in the founding documents of the order. The purpose of the Society of Jesus, as stated in the Constitutions, was “to aid our fellow men to the knowledge and love of God and to the salvation of their souls.”7 Philosophical study and research was considered an appropriate means to that end, both indirectly and directly. Indirectly, the study of philosophy would prepare the student to understand theological doctrines by equipping him with the necessary conceptual tools to deal with the complex treatment of some issues. This was the rationale behind the emphasis on the study of Aristotle’s Organum as a preparation for the study of Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, which by 1599—the year of the approbation of the Ratio Studiorum, the common syllabus for all the schools and colleges of the order—had become the sole textbook of theology used in Jesuit universities.8 But for Ignatius the study of philosophy was not only a preparation for the study of theology; the study of philosophy was helpful to the salvation of the souls in and of itself, as he stated in the same sentence: “The Arts [philosophy] or natural sciences dispose the intellectual powers for theology, and are useful for the perfect understanding and use of it, and also by their own nature help toward the same ends.”9 As long as one was careful to study philosophy and the natural sciences in a pious manner, stated Ignatius, and to do it for the greater glory of God and not for personal fame or recognition, then the study of science would be a service to God, comparable in God’s view to prayer and contemplation.10 Even if one never used the knowledge thus gained in any pastoral ministry, if done with charity and obedience—two of the main virtues for the Jesuits—the study of nature was pleasing to God. This view of scientific study as part and parcel of a peculiarly Jesuit form of spirituality had a profound impact not only on the production of knowledge in the European Jesuit colleges, it also influenced the way Jesuit missionaries in America understood their mission and shaped their pastoral strategies. As we have seen in this book, Jesuit missionaries working in Peru, Chile, and Paraguay



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resorted to the study of native pharmacopoeia in order to solve some of the problems posed by the evangelization of native peoples in a colonial setting. Others, such as Mascardi, devoted time and energy to astronomical research and the description of the geography and nature of the Southern Cone to satisfy the requests of senior members of the order. But the Jesuit study of South American nature yielded not only herbals to be used in the missions or a flux of epistolary exchange among the members of the Society on both sides of the Atlantic, the accumulation of information regarding the natural world amassed by the Jesuits during their two hundred years of presence in the Peruvian viceroyalty crystallized in the work of a handful of Jesuit writers who took the time to order and systematize the wealth of data obtained by numerous researchers and informants within and outside the Society. In the following chapters, I will examine some of these natural histories in order to describe both the relationship of these texts to the institutional contexts of the Jesuit missions and colleges, and the changing theoretical approaches to American nature the Jesuits underwent during their two centuries of presence in South America until their expulsion from the Spanish territories in 1767. The first natural history of America written by a Jesuit was also the most influential. In 1577, only nine years after the arrival of the first Jesuits to Peru, José de Acosta sent from Lima to Rome the manuscript of his treatise on missionary theory and practice, De Procuranda Indorum Salute. Five years later, Acosta sent for approval a brief treatise on American cosmography, De Natura Novi Orbis, with an explicit instruction to print it in the same volume with De Procuranda as an introduction of sorts to his missionary handbook. It would serve, as Acosta suggested to Mercurian, as a “sauce [to enhance] some tastes.”11 Acosta’s use of Ignatius’s metaphor was not innocent. Acosta was taking the Ignatian view of philosophy and natural sciences as a component of Jesuit spirituality one step further, linking the study of American nature directly to the evangelization of the native peoples. In the dedication to King Philip II of his 1589 joint edition of De Natura and De Procuranda, Acosta stated that he was moved by a double purpose to write those treatises. He wanted to investigate “with regard to science” those areas in which ancient philosophy was clearly becoming insufficient to explain American phenomena. As for his missionary treatise, he wanted to advance arguments that “illuminate the calling of innumerable peoples to the Gospels.”12 For Acosta these two different motives were one and the same, both serving the larger goal of fostering Andean evangelization: “If, as befits God’s ministers, we achieve a faithful and objective treatment of these matters, without a doubt great progress will be made toward the knowledge and veneration of Christ.”13 As I showed in Chapter 1, Acosta’s speculations about the origins of the American peoples in De Natura were intended to give a strong historical foundation to the claims advanced in De Procuranda, where he had argued that Andean natives were not only equipped to understand the Catholic faith, but indeed included in God’s plan for the salvation of humanity. But for Acosta the importance of philosophical reflection on the nature of America transcended its immediate use as a source

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of ammunition against those who believed the Amer­indians to be intellectually inferior. Acosta’s approach to natural philosophy was deeply rooted in Ignatian spirituality, as well as in the intellectual traditions that informed it. Acosta’s most famous and influential work, the Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590), presented not only a program of investigation but, also, limits as to what was considered legitimate for a Catholic researcher to investigate. This programmatic view of the role of natural history within the Jesuit enterprise in South America was rooted in a disciplinary hierarchy that anticipated later developments in Jesuit education, as reflected in the 1599 Ratio Studiorum. Moving between philosophical attempts to rationally explain some natural phenomena and an explicit rejection to any such attempt in other cases, Acosta aimed to define a clearly delimited field for Jesuit science—a field in which philosophical and scientific research was firmly subordinated to the pastoral and spiritual goals of the Society of Jesus. As we shall see in the remainder of this book, later Jesuit writers dealing with the nature of the New World would be defined, in one way or another, by Acosta’s disciplinary and methodological constraints, accepting some of his postulates while wrestling with others.

The Historia natural y moral de las Indias During the fall of 1587, Acosta returned to Spain after more than fifteen years of working to lay the foundations for the Jesuit missionary and educational enterprises in Peru. Although Acosta had requested to be allowed to return to Europe in consideration of his poor health, debilitated by the demands of his administrative responsibilities, the years following his return to Spain were filled with constant literary activity on his part.14 Among his most immediate concerns was to see his Latin treatises published. Although Acosta had sent a copy ready for the presses of De Procuranda to Mercurian in 1577, administrative and political problems had delayed its publication. Besides having to be approved by the reviewers of the Society of Jesus, the book had had to be submitted to the Council of Castile, which had been charged by a royal order in 1558 with the censorship of all books published in the realm.15 The council, in fact, objected to several passages in De Procuranda and demanded their removal before the book could be sent to the presses.16 The council gave its approval for publication on June 22, 1586; however, the book could not be published commercially until the beginning of 1589 because King Philip II did not sign the corresponding privilege until December 2, 1588. Before that, a small private edition had been printed by Guillermo Foquel in Seville to fulfill the most urgent commitments acquired by the Jesuits in the ten years it took to publish the work.17 Such a long delay between the council’s approval and the signing of the privilege was unusual, with the wait normally lasting less than a year.18 However, the fact that the dates coincide almost exactly with the judicial process opened by the Inquisition of Valladolid against the Jesuits



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Antonio Marcén, Francisco Lavata, Juan López Challer, and Jerónimo Ripalda may help explain the long wait between Acosta’s submission and the publishing of his treatise.19 Although in the beginning the four Jesuits were charged with obstructing the tribunal’s action, the inquisitors soon extended their investigation to the foundational documents of the order, expressing doubts about their orthodoxy.20 The Inquisition’s uneasiness with the Jesuits stemmed from the privileges the Holy See had given the order for prosecuting and punishing its own members internally. The inquisitors regarded this practice as a usurpation of the tribunal’s jurisdiction, a view shared by Philip II, who ordered an inspection of the Spanish Jesuits by an external examiner. At its root, it was the same problem that had prompted the clash between the Jesuits and Francisco de Toledo in Peru; namely, the relative independence the Jesuits enjoyed vis-à-vis the rights given to the Crown over the Spanish Church by virtue of the patronato real. The expurgations effectuated by the Council of Castile on De Procuranda suggest this conflict was the real cause behind the delay. Although most of the suppressed passages are limited to just a few sentences in which Acosta had harshly criticized the greed of the Spanish conquistadors and Crown officials, the cutting off of chapter 21 of book 6, “De privilegiis per Sedem Apostolicam datis in matrimoniis Indorum,” in which Acosta had made ample reference to the privileges granted by the pope to the Jesuit superiors to act as judges in cases of consciousness, seems to indicate this was the case. In spite of all the efforts deployed by General Claudio Aquaviva, the joint publication of De Natura and De Procuranda had to wait until Acosta’s arrival in Spain to finally materialize.21 Acosta returned shortly after the four Jesuits tried by the Valladolid Inquisition were acquitted, and the investigation on the orthodoxy of the Society’s founding documents ended. It is not unlikely that the same diplomatic and political skills that had served Acosta so well in his dealings with Toledo and Plaza in Peru also helped him see his works through to publication. Acosta acted as a mediator in the conflict, trying to find a middle ground between the interests of the Crown and the freedom Aquaviva demanded to govern his subjects.22 His performance probably helped to speed up the publication process of his Latin books and to secure the economic means to publish his Historia natural y moral de las Indias, which appeared one year later from the presses of Guillermo Foquel. Following the protocol of the sixteenth-century patronage system, Acosta included a dedication to King Philip II in his Latin treatises and dedicated the Historia to the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia, Philip’s daughter. The Historia natural y moral was a translation of the two books forming De Natura Novi Orbis, to which Acosta added another two books on natural history and three books detailing the customs and history of the Aztec and Inca peoples up to the Spanish invasion. The Historia quickly became the most authoritative description available of the nature and peoples of the New World. By 1610, the book had gone through fourteen editions, and it had been translated into Latin and several vernacular languages.23 This success has prompted modern critics to assign a capital importance to the Historia among the works of José de Acosta.

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He, however, always considered his missionary treatise to be the capstone of his intellectual enterprise. As we have already seen, De Procuranda was originally intended to be a stand-alone treatise, and De Natura was later included only as an introduction to the American environment in which the missionaries would have to work. The subordinate place of natural history with regards to missionology was explicitly kept by Acosta in the Historia. Although the Historia contained two books devoted to human history proper (the moral history), Acosta refused to write about the history of the Spanish conquest and subsequent colonization of the New World, partly because other works dealt with that subject but, also, because Acosta not only wanted to “give notice of what happens in the Indies, but to orient that information to the fruit that can be obtained from such things, that is to help those people achieve their salvation” (297). Acosta considered American natural and moral history to have a clear evangelical goal; in fact, the Historia was a necessary complement to the missionary treatise, which remained at the center of his agenda: “All this history is intended to inform about the natural and moral [history] of the Indies, so what is spiritual and Christian can be sown and tended, as is fully explained in the books we wrote: De Procuranda Indorum Salute” (Historia natural y moral, 297–98). Unlike De Procuranda, however, Acosta’s Historia natural y moral was not a technical treatise on the evangelization of the native Andeans. Written in Spanish and dedicated to a princess, Acosta hoped that his treatise would reach a courtly readership in position to support the Jesuit enterprise in Peru politically and perhaps economically. In his dedicatory note to the infanta, Acosta acknowledged that although his philosophical treatment of American nature could seem somewhat obscure and the subject of “barbaric peoples” unfit for a princess, they constituted an “honest entertainment” Acosta had put into the hands of Isabel, hoping to achieve through her an influence on Philip II himself: “And it may be that . . . if Your Highness shows pleasure [reading it], this little tract may be favored, so through such means the king our lord may wish to pass the time with the notice and consideration of the things and peoples that so affect his royal crown. . . . So with the account of what God Our Lord distributed and deposited of his treasures in those kingdoms, the peoples of those lands may be more favored and succored by those of this land” (53–54). The same topics are repeated in the general prologue, where Acosta urged his readers to use the knowledge they would gain by reading about the customs and history of the Amer­indians to help them persevere in the Christian faith (58). But he also added two other benefits possibly derived from his work, this time for the reader: “The end of this work is that by the knowledge of the natural works made by the most wise Author of all nature, the Almighty God be praised and glorified, for he is marvelous everywhere. . . . Besides that every one can obtain some fruit for himself, for no matter how lowly the subject, the wise man gets for himself wisdom, and from the vilest and smallest animals derives a very lofty consideration and the most useful philosophy” (58). To achieve these ends, Acosta presented his reader with what he considered to be a totally new kind of history of the New World.



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Although by the end of the sixteenth century, America was scarcely a novelty for European audiences, given the existence of several histories and more or less detailed descriptions of numerous regions of the continent, Acosta emphasized that “until now I have not seen any author attempting to declare the causes and reasons of these novelties and strangeness of nature, nor who makes a discourse and inquiry into this subject.” (57). Unlike other works about American nature published in Spain, from Fernández de Oviedo’s Sumario de la natural historia (1526) to the Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales (1565–1574) published by Sevillian physician Nicolás Monardes, Acosta claimed neither to limit himself to a mere description of American plants and animals nor simply to discuss their practical and economical usefulness for the Spaniards. Instead, the Jesuit strove to present his book as the result of a philosophical inquiry on the causes of the natural phenomena observed by the Europeans on the other side of the Atlantic: “Although the New World is by now not new but old, since so much has been said and written about it, I still believe that this Historia can be considered as something new, for it is part history and part philosophy, and because it deals not only with the works of nature but also with the works of freewill” (57–58). The Historia natural y moral aspired to be not only a description of the American natural phenomena but, also, their rational explanation. It was this philosophical outlook that helped secure the book’s standing among its contemporaries as the most authoritative natural history of the New World, much more than the accuracy of its descriptions or the novelty of the information; however, despite his stated commitment to philosophical explanation, Acosta did not offer a consistent treatment of nature. In fact, several times he stopped just short of denouncing the investigation of the causes of natural phenomena as an impious endeavor. As I will now discuss, this apparent inconsistency was a central feature of Acosta’s approach to the study of nature.

Natural Philosophy and Vana Curiositas The critical reception of Acosta’s Historia natural y moral has emphasized its ethno­graphic element over the natural philosophical sections of the book.24 However, both the editorial success of the Historia and Acosta’s insistence on presenting it as the first philosophical treatment of the nature of the New World point toward the centrality natural history had not only in the structure of the book but, also, for the goals of the Society of Jesus. In fact, it is in the philo­ sophical treatment of American nature where we can find the connection between Acosta and some of the more general Jesuit reflections on the relationship between scientific knowledge and spirituality. As noted above, the first two books of the Historia are literal translations of De Natura. Acosta warned his reader of this fact, declaring that these first books had been written in Peru, unlike the rest of the treatise, which had been penned in Spain. Although Acosta claimed this difference in the composition of the book

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could only be seen in the “way of talking”—that is to say, in the constant references to America as “here” in the first sections of his book and the references to America as “there” in the remainder of it—there is a more fundamental difference between these two parts (58, 145). As Fermín del Pino Díaz has noted, from book 3 on Acosta drops the speculative method he had used in those sections of the Historia that had been directly translated from Latin, and the book becomes more descriptive.25 This difference was partly due to Acosta’s desire to reach a wider readership by translating as faithfully as possible his Latin treatise, maintaining its more speculative and technical tone. But the difference between the sections written in Peru and those composed in Spain can also be seen as a consequence of Acosta’s avowed objectives as declared at the outset of the Historia and to the double meaning the word “philosophical” seems to have had for Acosta. As we saw in the previous section, Acosta declared both in his dedication to Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia and in the prefatory note to the reader that his goal in writing the Historia was to “declare the causes and effects of those novelties and curiosities,” particularly those American natural phenomena that “are outside of the philosophy received and practiced from antiquity” (57). With his work, Acosta wanted to give God due recognition for the wonders of his creation and help the natives obtain their salvation, but Acosta also aspired to give his readers an opportunity to improve their own condition by offering them a reasoned exposition of natural phenomena and objects from which they could obtain a “most useful philosophy.” Thus, Acosta’s concept of philosophy seems to encompass two different aspects: on the one hand, the problems American nature posed to the classical philosophical dogma (in particular to Aristotelianism) warranted an investigation based on the experience acquired during the first century of Spanish domination of America. In this sense, philosophy was for Acosta a systematic and rational investigation of natural phenomena; it was scientia in its Aristotelian sense. On the other hand, his suggestion that readers could derive useful lessons from the human and natural phenomena described in the Historia appealed to a different conceptualization of philosophy, one more akin to the humanists’ use of the term “philosophy” as the moral edification derived from the study of natural and human history. In the prefatory note, Acosta noted that classical philosophical doctrines could not give an adequate account of many of American nature’s particularities. In the Historia natural y moral, he strove to overcome these problems even from its first Latin redaction. However, for Acosta the fact that American nature did not behave in the manner predicted by classical theories, as the Spanish experience had made manifest, did not necessarily mean one had to dispose of the methodological underpinnings of classical philosophy—only of its conclusions. Acosta did not consider, as has been recently claimed by Cañizares-Esguerra, that America was an upside-down world, where nature behaved in opposite ways in regards to Europe.26 Instead, by applying the same methodological principles used for centuries to explain European nature to the American reality, Acosta was implicitly recognizing the essential unity of the world, much in the same way



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he had rejected any suggestion of a different nature of the Amer­indians as an irrational idea.27 This is probably nowhere more evident in the Historia natural y moral than in his discussion of the surprisingly moderate temperatures in the Torrid Zone. In an oft-quoted passage, Acosta remembered his crossing of the equator during his voyage to America: “Since I had read what the philosophers and poets say about the Torrid Zone, I was persuaded that when I reached the equator I would be unable to withstand the terrible heat; but it was in fact the opposite, for as I was crossing it I was so cold, that several times I had to stand in the sun to get warm. . . . And here I confess I laughed and mocked Aristotle’s meteors and his philosophy” (134). Although this brief anecdote has been read as an emblem of the demise of European confidence in classical texts and theories, and even as the Oedipal moment where the educated philosopher turns around and laughs in the face of his symbolic father, Acosta’s approach to the question of the habitability or not of the Torrid Zone and his attempts to explain its surprising climate clearly show that the methodology of Aristotelian science was not questioned by his American experience.28 As a brief examination of his treatment of the problem will show, Acosta’s confidence on the explanatory powers of classic philosophy survived his frigid crossing of the equator unscathed. The theory of the five climate zones had traditionally considered the area located between the tropics to be uninhabitable. Given its closer proximity to the sun than the other areas of the sphere and the angle in which the sunbeams fell on it, its temperature was believed to be too high for living organisms.29 After reviewing the arguments advanced by classical philosophers to support this conclusion, Acosta found their reasoning flawless: “They saw that the closer a region was to the south, the hotter it was. . . . From here they inferred as a logical consequence that that region so close to the south that the sun was constantly perpendicular to it, by necessity had to endure a perpetual and excessive amount of heat.”30 The daily experiences of ancient Europeans, who noted that as they traveled south temperatures rose (particularly in Italy and Greece), gave origin to an axiom whose validity Acosta did not challenge. The wrong conclusion of temperatures reaching unbearable levels around the equator was due not to the reasoning employed but, rather, to an insufficient amount of data. Only the experience of Portuguese and Spanish sailors had given enough evidence to prevent sixteenth-century Europeans from saying that the excessive heat in the Torrid Zone “was a definitive and mathematical conclusion” (85). The problem resided for Acosta not in the method of Aristotelian science but, rather, in its application to an insufficiently large set of empirical data. Acosta’s dependence on the Aristotelian methodology can be clearly seen in his own attempt to explain the excessive rains falling on the supposedly dry and hot Torrid Zone. According to him, it was precisely one of the defining characteristics of the Torrid Zone—its purported proximity to the sun—that could explain both its humidity and its temperate climate. Since the oceans in the equator were closer to the sun and, therefore, hotter than in other areas, their waters evaporated at a faster rate. The excess humidity in the air then condensed into rain

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because of the same heat that had provoked it in the first place. Acosta was well aware of the paradox that this argument entailed: “That the sun causes rain in the Torrid Zone for being too close to it, and that in other areas the sun causes rain for being too far from them” (131). But Acosta showed that this was a false problem by deriving a general principle from an everyday example: if you are roasting a piece of meat, explained Acosta, and you put it too close to the flames, the fat will melt and drip; however, if you move the meat farther from the fire and lower the flames, the meat will roast without dripping. As any cook can explain, the reason is that in the first case, the excessive heat will melt a larger portion of the meat’s fat—so much in fact that it cannot be consumed by the heat. The excess fat will thus condense and drip. But if you moderate the heat and remove the meat from the flames, the fire will not be able to melt so much fat and, whatever there is will be consumed by the heat before condensing (132). The same principle applies to candles, where if the wick is too long, the flame will be too far away to consume all the melted wax. The same variables (distance from the heat source and the amount of heat) could be used to explain the fact that the Torrid Zone was not only humid, but its rainy season occurred precisely during summer. By deducing a general principle from everyday experiences, and then applying it to a new problem, Acosta not only arrived at what seemed to him a satisfactory answer to the problem of the habitability of the Torrid Zone, he did so without renouncing the basic precepts of the Aristotelian method. Acosta’s reasoning, in fact, follows the same principles he had sketched earlier when refuting Lactantius’s opinion about the nonexistence of the Antipodeans, and is formally identical to the method used to achieve the classical conclusion regarding the Torrid Zone’s excessive heat and dryness. As Aristotle demanded in his Analitica Posteriora for any scientia, “The premises of demonstrated knowledge must be true, primary, immediate, better known than and prior to the conclusion, which is further related to them as effect to cause” (71b20). These premises can, and usually are, obtained from everyday experience: “Out of sense-perception comes to be what we call memory, and out of frequently repeated memories of the same thing develops experience; for a number of memories constitute a single experience. From experience . . . originate the skill of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science” (100a5 passim). Or, as Acosta reminded his reader, “What is common and ordinary, that is what makes the rule” (Historia natural y moral, 133). Starting from everyday experiences reduced to a single, universal description—the roasting meat, the burning candle—Acosta derived a necessary and evident axiom: closeness to excessive heat melts more matter than can be consumed. That axiom was then used as the premise from which to derive the correct conclusion about the Torrid Zone, correcting Aristotle while at the same time preserving his methodology. However, there is a fundamental difference between Acosta’s application of the Aristotelian method and that of the Greco-Roman philosophers. For Aristotle, the ultimate goal of scientia was to arrive at demonstrable necessary truths: “Since the object of scientific knowledge cannot be other than it is, the truth ob-



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tained by demonstrative knowledge will be necessary” (73a20). But for Acosta, “in natural and physical causes one must not ask for an infallible, mathematical rule.”31 Although this sentence can be understood as a reaction to the growing mathematization of natural sciences and, in particular, to the claims being advanced at that moment by Clavius and his circle regarding the equal validity of mathematical proofs vis-à-vis philosophical explanations, Acosta went further in articulating a general critique of science. His critique took issue both with the pretension to achieve a necessary and infallible knowledge about the natural world by purely rational means, and with the progressively limited role divine action had in scientific explanations as a consequence of the secularization of knowledge. Acosta’s sentence seems to correspond to his previous approval of the methodology classical thinkers had used to declare the Torrid Zone hot and dry. In fact, their logic had been so sound and their conclusion so consistent with the empirical evidence available to them that only the emergence of new data had allowed for its dismissal in Acosta’s time. The new discoveries had not been possible until “it was granted to the good fortune of our times [to sail] the Ocean Sea with great ease”; that is to say, until the discovery of the compass made inter­ oceanic navigation feasible.32 Acosta devoted a whole chapter in book 1 to the compass and the properties of the lodestone. Despite his claims in the beginning of the Historia natural y moral to have written a natural history that also strove to find the causes of the phenomena it described, Acosta refused to advance any single hypothesis to explain the properties of the lodestone or the perplexing fact that a magnetized needle would constantly point north: “Others may dispute and inquire into the causes of this marvel, and they may adduce as much as they want I don’t care what sympathies; contemplating these marvels I find more pleasure in praising the power and providence of the Supreme Maker, and I enjoy myself pondering his marvelous works” (101). Certainly, Acosta was familiar with the theories that circulated in the late sixteenth century to explain the magnetic properties of the lodestone, in particular those advanced by Giambattista della Porta in his Magia Naturalis (1558 and 1589); however, instead of refuting or corroborating della Porta’s theory on sympathies, as he had done with classical hypotheses before, Acosta engulfed himself in a meditation on the works of God and his plan for human salvation. Magnetism—and its most practical application, the compass—was an instrument of God and not a phenomenon to be explained. Although nobody knew for certain when the compass had been discovered, the conspicuous absence of any mention of it in classical sources suggested that its use was fairly recent. According to Acosta, the mysterious property causing a magnetized needle to point constantly north, therefore allowing sailors to keep course in the middle of the ocean, had been discovered only when God deemed it appropriate, in order to facilitate the discovery and subsequent evangelization of the New World: “Being ordered by the heavens that the Indies must be discovered, since they had been occult for so long, and since this [Atlantic] route had to be frequently traveled in order to bring so many souls to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, a reliable

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guide was also given by the heavens to those who had to make this travel, and that was the compass and the virtue of the loadstone” (102). Acosta’s refusal to theorize about the properties of magnetism and the working of the compass was due to the role he assigned to it in the divine plan for human salvation, in particular with regard to the native peoples of America. But this refusal was also related to his condemnation of human sciences: All I say is that I would gladly ask those wiseacres [bachilleres] that presume of knowing it all what is, if they can tell me, the cause of this effect, why some iron, after being rubbed with a loadstone, conceives such a virtue as to always point north, and this with so much dexterity that it knows the climates and the diverse positions in the world, where it has to remain fixed and where it has to tilt to one side, where to the other, for there is not a philosopher or cosmographer that knows it. And if we cannot find the reason of things such as this, that we see everyday, and that would be hard to believe if we did not see them so evidently, who can be so blind not to see the foolishness and nonsense that is to try to make ourselves judges attempting to subject to our reason divine and sovereign things? (103)

Such a radical indictment of human attempts to rationally explain the world might seem surprising, in particular when one considers that only a few pages earlier, Acosta had theorized at length about the structure of the universe and, a few pages later, embarked on an attempt explain the inconsistency between the theoretically predicted and the observed climate of the Torrid Zone. But Acosta’s mistrust of rational explanations has an ancient pedigree in European thought, belonging to a long-established tradition of Christian thought rooted in Augustine’s condemnation of vana curiositas. Although Augustine’s position with regard to human curiosity changed during his life, it was the inclusion of curiositas (the drive to know) within the catalog of vices in book 10 of the Confessions that exerted the deepest influence on Western thought, becoming the basis of the anti-scientific tradition of the Middle Ages.33 Augustine disapproved of intellectual curiosity inasmuch as he considered it concupiscentia oculorum—a lustfulness of the eyes. For him, intellectual curiosity was the spiritual equivalent of immoderate sexual desire. Just like the lust of the flesh, the pursuit of knowledge implied a satisfaction of the desire for desire’s sake, distracting human beings from the contemplation and adoration of God.34 To be sure, human curiosity could take many forms, most notably as the interest in magic and divination, the people’s morbid fascination with corpses, and monsters and freaks who were common features of fairs and circuses. But the intellectual pursuits of the most educated classes were not different from these, as Augustine remarked: “The lust to know cloaks itself with the name of knowledge and science,” thus giving curiositas the false appearance of a virtue.35 The Augustinian indictment of the sciences and, more generally, of curiositas was derived from the sin of pride, which could be discerned in the attempt to ra-



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tionally explain God’s creation. It was also related to Augustine’s view of secular learning as the mere indulgence of an appetite, as his comparison between lust and curiosity makes explicit. But in Augustine’s view the scientific study of nature also poised theological problems warranting its condemnation from a Christian standpoint. Astronomy—and, in particular, the calculation of the movements of celestial bodies, with its resulting predictive capacity—presupposed the existence of a regularity in nature and the necessity of the laws rationally deduced by humans. For Augustine, this meant imposing limits on God’s omnipotence and the freedom he enjoyed over his creation.36 Acosta’s assertions about the inconvenience to aspire to an “infallible, mathematical rule” in the natural sciences, as well as his condemnation of the proud behavior of those “who pretend to know it all,” originated in the Augustinian tradition of condemning curiositas. The refusal to explain the secrets of magnetism in the Historia natural y moral, with its implied accusation of the vana curiositas represented by any attempt to explain “the divine and sovereign things,” thus was rooted in the Augustinian indictment of human sciences and in the need to preserve God’s agency over the natural and human spheres so as to understand history as the gradual unfolding of his plan for salvation. The tensions generated by Acosta’s allegiance to the Augustinian indictment of curiositas are evident in the first two books of the Historia natural y moral. As Gregory Shepherd has noted, these books stand out from the remaining treatment of American nature in that their focus is the theoretical speculation about the structure and working of the universe.37 In them, Acosta even identified rationality with the divine light shared by all human beings: “There is in our souls a certain light from the heavens, with which we see and judge even the images and inner forms that we use to understand: and with that inner light we either approve or discard what [those images] tell us” (75). Although Augustine’s condemnation of vana curiositas does not mean an indictment of rational thought in itself, but of the pretension of explaining the world based exclusively on rational means, what interests me here is that Acosta’s identification of reason with the light insufflated by God into the human soul appears in the middle of a discussion about the cognitive processes through which human beings can achieve a more certain knowledge about the world. Following the opinion of the Jesuit commentators of Aristotle in Coimbra, Acosta stated that human minds never think without images. These images cannot be said to be in themselves true or false, or good or bad, since the imagination lacks the capacity to judge. It is only through our intellective faculty—that is to say, our reason—that we can arrive to a correct judgment about sensory phenomena: “From this it is clear that the rational soul is above all corporeal nature, and that the strength and vigor of truth resides in the highest place in man, and it can be seen how it shows and declares that this light, so pure, partakes from that first and most substantial Light” (75–76).38 How are we to understand this extremely positive view of human rationality with Acosta’s later condemnation of the foolishness and pride implied in any attempt to explain the world rationally? To answer this question, we must

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briefly turn to the evolution of Jesuit conceptualizations of the relationship between spiritual life and intellectual disciplines during the sixteenth century.

Disciplinary Hierarchies The letter Ignatius sent to Barceo shows that the observation and study of nature was encouraged by the Jesuit superiors almost from the outset of the Jesuit missionary enterprise in Asia and America. Ignatius’s reference to the curiosity of potential patrons about matters of natural history shows a much more positive valuation of intellectual inquisitiveness than that of Augustine or the ambivalent position toward scientific knowledge displayed by Acosta. Ignatius, in fact, seems to have distinguished between a vana curiositas and a legitimate desire to know. Undoubtedly, this distinction was motivated by practical considerations, in particular for the need to please potential patrons who were eager to learn about the wonders and marvels of faraway lands. But this distinction was also consistent with Ignatius’s anthropocentric view of the created world, as well as with the importance he assigned to the study of philosophy in the academic curriculum he was projecting for the colleges of the order. The distinction between two types of curiosity that Ignatius’s letter suggests was by no means exceptional. As the sixteenth century advanced, the word “curiosity” progressively acquired a more positive connotation than it had enjoyed during the Middle Ages.39 This positive valuation of curiosity was linked to the emergence of the virtuosi, noblemen devoted to the study of nature as an identifiable group in European courts.40 Curiosity began to be identified with a disinterested search for knowledge regardless of its practical applications.41 The intellectual curiosity displayed by the virtuosi distinguished itself, by virtue of the aristocratic values it embodied, from other types of searches for knowledge, particularly of knowledge sought after for practical purposes, as was the case among the artisan classes. Even when the virtuosi manifested an interest in the more practical aspects of knowledge—such as medicinal recipes, the making of automatons, or the construction of gadgets—they were attracted to these activities more as a pleasurable pastime than because of their intrinsic utilitarian value.42 But alongside this positive valuation of curiosity, there still subsisted an antiscientific current derived from the Augustinian condemnation of curiositas. This current was upheld especially among Scholastic philosophers and church theologians, but it was also variously illustrated in the immensely popular books of emblems. As Carlo Ginzburg has noted, the interdiction against investigating the arcana natura, or secrets of nature, was intertwined with the prohibition of investigating the arcana Dei, or secrets of God, during this period.43 By definition, the secrets of God were the body of knowledge that must be kept away from the prying eyes of humankind. Any attempt to uncover such secrets was in and of itself an act of pride, since it would amount to aspiring to know God’s mind.44 The investigation of the secrets of nature was associated by analogy with an attempt



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to uncover the arcana Dei, partly because of the continued anti-scientific tradition of the Middle Ages and partly because of the rising in the late fifteenth century of natural and Neoplatonic magic. The Renaissance Hermetic and Neoplatonic traditions originating in the writings of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), among others, soon aspired to establish themselves as legitimate alternatives to Aristotelian natural philosophy.45 Although these traditions were notable for their eclectic syncretism, they all shared a strong interest in the occult. Whereas in Scholastic philosophy occult qualities were opposed to the manifest ones (such as hot or cold) that were the concern of Aristotelian natural philosophy, as Pamela Long has remarked, Neoplatonic authors used the word occult to “refer to ‘hidden,’ or unseen, non-corporeal powers of the cosmos, forces that played a part in the complex hierarchy of spiritual entities that extended through multiple cosmic spheres.”46 The investigation of these occult properties replaced the notion of human beings as pious creatures contemplating the divine work for the idea of man as someone who strove to manipulate nature, seeking to draw power from the divine and natural order.47 It is not difficult to understand, then, why curiosity about the secrets of nature was easily associated with an illicit prying into God’s secrets. The desire to know the workings of nature had both a legitimate and an illegitimate aspect. The rejection of the latter had as much to do with its being an expression of the ultimate human arrogance as with its superfluous character. If God had not arranged for a certain type of knowledge to be accessible to human beings, then its investigation could not contribute anything to the salvation of souls or to the physical and material well-being of humankind. It is likely that Ignatius had this illegitimate curiosity in mind when he remarked to Barceo that the curiosity expressed by the virtuosi about Indian nature was not a negative one. By instructing his missionaries to report on manifest qualities of the natural world, such as the beginning of summer, the direction of shadows, and the variability of nature, Ignatius intended to cater to the interest of his potential patrons in the exotic and the marvelous, while at the same time implicitly disavowing reports on other aspects of nature that could be considered superfluous, vain knowledge—that is, that satisfied the mala curiosidad suggested in his letter. But where to draw the line separating legitimate knowledge from vana curiositas? For Augustine, such a line simply could not be drawn. Curiosity about the material world, even when it led the faithful to praise God in his creation, was always superfluous, inasmuch as it distracted the attention from the only thing relevant to the human condition, the knowledge of God and the salvation of the soul: “What, when sitting at home, a lizard catching flies, or a spider entangling them rushing into its web, often takes my attention? Is the thing different because they are but small creatures? I go on from them to praise You, Miraculous Creator and Arranger of all things, but this does not first draw my attention. It is one thing to rise quickly and another not to fall.”48 As Hans Blumenberg noted, if the intellectual curiosity about the material world was to be legitimized, it was necessary to free it from this characterization as a superfluous affair. It was necessary

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to justify curiositas by showing that its object belonged to the most important human concern, salvation. That presupposed that the competition between the concern of salvation and the need for knowledge could be resolved in a new conception.49 A brief review of some of the most important doctrinal and spiritual writings of Ignatius will help us clarify the way in which the Jesuits conceptualized the role of the world—and therefore, of its knowledge—in human salvation. One of Ignatius’s earliest and most famous texts, the Spiritual Exercises, gives us some keys to understand this role. Ignatius began to work on the Exercises probably around 1522, during his stay in the Catalonian shrine of Manresa. The text went through numerous rewritings and corrections until its final approval by Pope Paul III in 1548. For this reason, the final text can be considered not only as an expression of the mature thought of the founder of the Society of Jesus but, also, as the product of the experiences of the first members of the order, who were directed in the practice of the Exercises by Loyola. In its final version, Ignatius included a brief section entitled simply “Principle and Foundation.” In it, he spelled out the basis for the Jesuit ideal of active engagement with the world: Man was created for a certain end. This end is to praise, to reverence, and to serve the Lord his God, and by this means to arrive at eternal salvation. All the other beings and objects on the face of earth were created for the benefit of man [son criadas para el hombre], and to help him achieve that end for which he was created. From here it follows that man has to use them inasmuch as they help him to achieve this end, and must abstain from them if they prevent him from achieving this end.50

Unlike the monastic orders, the Jesuits were, from the outset, a religious order that demanded from its members an active participation in the world. Ignatius’s “Principle or Foundation” reinforces this idea, specifying the ways human beings should interact with the world—ways derived from a hierarchical notion of creation. The world was created for human beings, and must, therefore, be of help with achieving the end for which humans were created; that is to say, to save their souls through prayer and reverence to God. The “Principle and Foundation” expresses a profoundly Christian view of humankind’s purpose and its place in God’s salvific plan.51 In this anthropocentric view of the created world, human ability to distinguish between those creatures that can help achieve his or her salvation, and those that can impede it is paramount. In Ignatius’s view a proper knowledge of the world—including the natural world—was of fundamental importance in order to lead a truly Christian life. It is indeed in this sense that one must understand the ambiguous sentence in the Constitutions that stated philosophy and the sciences were useful “for the same ends by themselves,” discussed earlier. Unlike Augustine, Ignatius did not consider the contemplation and reflection about nature that led to the praise of God as a fault. For him, this was one of the ways in which Creator and creature were reunited in the sensory world. In part, this positive valuation of the relationship between man and the sen-



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sory world was a reaction to the negative concept of matter entertained by Martin Luther and John Calvin, itself derived from Augustine. To the Augustinian dismissal of matter, the Jesuits opposed a concept of the world based on the image of Christ as the link between the material world and God, just as Paul had proposed in his Epistle to the Colossians: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (1:15–16).52 Based on Christ’s humanity, Ignatius’s conceptualization of human beings and their relationship with the material world was derived from Paul’s definition of Christ as the visible manifestation of God. By virtue of his dual nature, Christ was the link between humankind and God, between the sensory, material world and the world of the spirit; for, as Paul remarked, “all things were created by him and for him” (Col. 1:16). Knowledge of the world and knowledge of nature is, then, knowledge of God. On several occasions Ignatius reminded his fellow Jesuits that the duty of men was “to search for God our Lord in all things.”53 Unlike the Augustinian vilification of curiositas, in the Jesuit view, based as it was on the Pauline imago Dei invisibilis, the study of the material world was not a distraction but a way to achieve spiritual knowledge and, thus, salvation. By resorting to Paul’s definition of Christ’s humanity as the connection between the material and the immaterial world, Ignatius repositioned curiositas at the center of the human concern for salvation. Intellectual curiosity toward the material world—the drive to investigate and understand the workings of nature—could not be considered a “lustfulness of the eye” akin to the lust of the flesh in its search of mere self-satisfaction; nor was it considered a distraction from what should be the exclusive human preoccupation, the knowledge of God, and of the means for salvation. On the contrary, it was precisely through knowledge of the world—of the beings and objects populating the world—that the individual could discover God in his creation and, thus, direct his or her efforts to gain personal salvation and to help others save their souls. However, this does not mean that the impulse toward knowledge could not be harmful for the Christian soul. As we have seen, Ignatius advised the Jesuit students to see the study of philosophy and natural sciences as an exercise in divine contemplation equivalent to prayer as long as they did it “wholeheartedly for the greater glory and honor of God.”54 This condition (that, in time, would become the motto of the Society of Jesus) warned of one of the dangers of curiositas about which Augustine had alerted his readers: the search for knowledge could easily lead man to become proud and arrogant, therefore driving him away from God and putting in risk his own salvation. In order to avoid this pitfall, Ignatius included at the end of the Spiritual Exercises a brief section titled “Rules for Thinking with the Church.” There, he laid out eighteen precepts that, in practice, presupposed subordination both of the contents and the modes of reflection about the world to Catholic orthodoxy, invoking the principle of obedience, the backbone of the Jesuit hierarchical conceptualization of the church: “All judgment laid aside, we ought to have our mind

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ready and prompt to obey, in all, the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, which is our holy Church Hierarchical.”55 Even if our senses tell us differently, the rulings of the church must be considered articles of faith, no matter if it declares as black what everybody can plainly see as white, “believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride, there is the same Spirit that governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls.”56 It was in virtue of this spirit of self-effacing obedience that Ignatius recommended in the “Rules” the study of positive and Scholastic theology to avoid any shade of error, “for the Scholastic Doctors, as they are more modern, not only help themselves with the true understanding of the Sacred Scripture and of the Positive and holy Doctors, but also . . . help themselves by the councils, canons, and constitutions of our holy Mother the Church.”57 Ignatius’s preference for Scholasticism in theological studies responded to a counter-reformation spirit at the base of the “Rules for Thinking with the Church.” The study of Scholastic theology was in fact needed “to define or explain for our times the things necessary for eternal salvation, and to combat and explain better all errors and all fallacies.”58 The importance of Scholastic theology, in particular of Thomism, would become more and more prominent for the Society of Jesus. The theological formation of Ignatius and his companions, given the diversity of the Parisian colleges at which they attended lectures, had an eclectic nature with a strong nominalist influence. In time, however, the Jesuits settled for Aquinas as their preferred author. This was due, in part, to the influence of Polanco (who had been educated in the Thomistic tradition) in the writing of the Constitutions, and to the liturgical and theological preeminence accorded to Aquinas that the first Jesuits found when they arrived in Rome.59 The movement toward a solid Thomistic position can be seen clearly when one compares two of the foundational documents on the pedagogy of the order, the 1558 Constitutions and the 1599 Ratio Studiorum. In 1558, Ignatius advised for the courses on theology the reading of both Testaments, the Scholastic theology of Thomas Aquinas, and Peter Abelard’s Sententiae, along with any text of positive theology the instructor deemed appropriate. But these were only general orientations, for Ignatius gave leeway for the Jesuit professors to choose a different author or even write their own textbooks if they felt their students would benefit more from them than from the suggested reading list, for a new author could be “better suited to these modern times.”60 This concern with giving Jesuit students the tools best suited to help them engage in the problems and issues they would find in contemporary societies—in particular those needed to counter the advance of Protestantism in Europe and to conduct missionary work overseas and in the Catholic backlands—was a watermark of the reflection on pedagogy of the early Society of Jesus. The Ratio Studiorum approved by Aquaviva in 1599 as the official syllabus for all Jesuit educational institutions worldwide was rooted in the particular syllabi designed for individual colleges, which reflected the experiences and needs of the different Jesuit provinces.61 The most important of these were the Ordo Studiorum, composed by



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Pedro Ledesma for the Roman College between 1564 and 1565, and the general Ratio Studiorum of 1596 and 1591. All of them, however, dealt only with the lowerdivision courses of grammar and rhetoric. It was not until 1599 when the Jesuits would have a unified program for studying philosophy and theology and, this time, the only textbook recommended was Aquinas’s Summa Theologica: “Our [professors] must follow absolutely the doctrine of Saint Thomas in Scholastic theology, and they must consider him one of us.”62 Although the Ratio Studiorum still gave theology professors some room to qualify Aquinas’s opinions—in particular, those that had gone out of vogue among contemporary theologians—the text of 1599 was much more normative than the Constitutions: the Summa had to be systematically read and explained in its entirety during the four years of theological studies in Jesuit universities and, unlike what Ignatius had advised, it was now the only required reading. The adoption of Aquinas by the Jesuits as “one of their own” can be explained by pedagogical reasons: The systematic approach taken by the Summa made it an ideal textbook for a complete introductory course in theology. But, along with teaching concerns, there were also doctrinal reasons for the movement of Jesuit theology toward Thomism. Aquinas’s attempt to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine coincided with the anthropocentric view of the world and the active engagement favored by the Jesuits. The basic assumption underlying the Thomistic synthesis—the compatibility between grace and nature, between reason and revelation—agreed well with the Jesuit conviction that pastoral activity could not depend on grace alone, and that it must use all means available to humans to work for the salvation of souls.63 Among these means was, as we have seen, the philosophical investigation of nature. The Jesuit preference for Thomistic theology also influenced their philosophical teaching. The rules for professors of philosophy in the Ratio Studiorum begin by quoting Ignatius on the direct and indirect usefulness of the study of philosophy for the members of the order. It then moves on to forbidding any hint of Averroism in the explanation of the Aristotelian doctrines, following instead Aquinas, of whom the professor “should always speak in the highest terms, following him every time it seems convenient and departing from him with reverence and as if unwillingly when his explanations are not too convincing.”64 During the four years of philosophy, students were required to read, through Aquinas’s lens, Aristotle’s Organum and his scientific treatises De Generatione, Physica, and De Caelo. At the end of the first year, the instructor had to introduce the Aristotelian definition and method of science, since the second year was devoted fully to the study of his physics. The importance given to Aristotelian scientific method and doctrines in the Jesuit syllabus was directly related to the Greek philosopher’s conceptualization of scientia and its goal. In book 2 of Physica, Aristotle defined what constituted scientific knowledge and the scientific modes of explaining natural phenomena: “Knowledge is the object of our inquiry, and men do not think they know a thing till they have grasped the ‘why’ of it (which is to grasp its primary cause). So clearly we too must do this as regards both coming

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to be and passing away and every kind of physical change, in order that, knowing their principles, we may try to refer to these principles each of our problems” (194b20–95a1). For Aristotle, the world was by definition intelligible, and scientia was the human effort to understand the basic principles that order it. The answer to this question was expressed in the form of the four causes he defined immediately following his definition of scientia: material, formal, efficient, and final. Each of them is a particular way to answer the question as to why an object is what it is. For Aristotle, the question of “why” was not a purely human question; as the possible answers to this question show, being all related to the form as the object’s inner principle of change, the “why” was an objective, knowable feature of the world. This definition implicitly postulates a relationship between human beings and the world. Humans are questioners by nature; they seek to understand why the world is the way it is. The world, on the other hand, reciprocates as if by “answering” these questions.65 It is here that we can begin to grasp the importance Aristotelian methodology had for sixteenth-century Jesuits. Aristotle’s scientia was not only the natural philosophy preferred both by tradition and the church; the Aristotelian manner of inquiry about nature, with its implicit link between the questioning mind and the answering world, was consistent with the Jesuit anthropocentric view of the world. In the Jesuit conceptualization, as expressed by Ignatius in the “Principle or Foundation,” the world was not only knowable, it was a human duty to know it in order to learn to use its objects to save himself or herself and to aid in the salvation of others. A world offering the answer to human questions in its visible (formal) features was amenable to being interpreted as a world created to help humans achieve the end for which they were created. Furthermore, in part because of this postulate, and in part because of the Aristotelian requirement of a true scientia to deduce its conclusions from universal and necessary premises, the goal of Aristotelian natural philosophy was neither to produce new knowledge about the world nor to discover new phenomena.66 On the contrary, the natural philosopher had to take as his starting point well-known and regular phenomena from which he could obtain universal principles or axioms by induction. From these principles, by a deductive process, the philosopher could then reason back toward the sensory phenomena manifesting them. These sensory phenomena could then be explained in terms of the function of their matter, the form matter takes, the agent promoting change, and the telos or finality of that change.67 Unlike competing methodologies of scientific inquiry striving to achieve a predictive knowledge of nature and to manipulate their processes for practical purposes, Aristotelian science strove to render the world intelligible, being interested in grasping the “why” of phenomena instead of the “how,” ultimately ascribing causation to the form instead of to the matter of things or to any “hidden” properties purportedly found in that matter.68 It was for this emphasis on the explanation of already known phenomena that Aristotelian science was so appealing to the Jesuits. On the one hand, the



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methods and objectives of Aristotelian natural philosophy established a methodological limit to human curiosity. If, as Aristotle insisted, the nature of things only revealed itself in its natural, unadulterated conduct, then the manipulation of objects would not lead to a better understanding of them; rather, it would interfere with the logical process of analysis.69 In practice, this meant a limitation on the study of nature. The Aristotelian definition of scientia excluded experimental procedures and the manipulation of nature to yield practical results or even artificial miracles, as promised by, for instance, the practitioners of the magia naturalis, one of the natural philosophies denounced by the church as superstitious and an example of vana curiositas.70 The presupposition implicit in Aristotle that the answers to the questions posed by human beings were readily available in the world for the mind to grasp in practice meant that the structure of the cosmos had inscribed, from its creation, everything knowable. The search for “hidden” or “occult” properties, then, was rendered not only futile, it was easily construed as one of those instances in which the world could drive human beings away from salvation, as Ignatius had warned, since the search for secret properties would mean going beyond what God had intended humans to know. Finally, the emphasis on the search for a final cause—a teleological explanation for natural phenomena that characterized Aristotelian science—offered ample opportunity to the Jesuit natural philosophers to “look in all things for God our Lord,” as Ignatius had insisted. As we shall now discuss, in the case of natural philosophers like Acosta, this meant in practice the deduction of a positive theology of sorts from the study of nature.

American Nature for the Greater Glory of God These two aspects—the exclusion of natural magic from the field of legitimate knowledge and the possibility of deriving a positive theology from the study of nature—are visible in Acosta’s systematic recourse to Aristotelian methodology and in his refusal to explain phenomena such as magnetism and the functioning of the compass, with his oblique attack on the most renown magus of his time, Giambattista della Porta.71 Occultist traditions such as alchemy and natural magic had represented during the Renaissance an effort to uncover occult knowledge and, thus, to achieve the manipulation of cosmic powers and hidden forces for human and often material ends in what Pamela Long has labeled a “positive technology.”72 Acosta, on the other hand, was more interested in the search for the causes of natural phenomena than in the mechanical or mathematical description of natural processes, the search of hidden properties that could explain them, or the immediate utility such knowledge could yield. It is precisely here we can locate the line dividing legitimate knowledge from vana curiositas in Acosta. The premises and objectives of magia naturalis and, more generally, of the search for the secrets of nature meant a displacement of the question about the causes

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of natural phenomena for the inquiry into the processes that could explain them and, more symptomatically, manipulate them. Della Porta, in fact, defined natural magic precisely as the practical side of natural philosophy.73 His theories about magnetism, for instance, were predicated on the existence of hidden forces (the sympathies scorned by Acosta), which could be used to produce “artificial ­miracles” for the benefit of mankind. The search for hidden properties, instead of the investigation of manifest qualities and properties favored by the Aristotelian methodology, implied an attempt to unlock the secrets of nature, an attempt assimilated by some in the sixteenth century into the search for the arcana Dei, as we saw in the previous section. To be sure, there was a place for occult phenomena in the Scholastic tradition. For Aquinas, as for other medieval philosophers, occult phenomena were effects in bodies and objects that could not be explained by the natural behavior of the elements forming them. Their causes had to be sought in the influence of the celestial bodies or in the action of separate agents (angels, demons, God).74 Aristotle’s De Caelo and Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos gave authority to the belief, widely held by Scholastic philosophers, that the incorruptible matter of the superlunary world, excelling that of the terrestrial world, had an influence on the latter. The influence of the superlunary world over the sublunar was cemented by Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle’s De Generatione. Averroes considered astral influence as so fundamental for generation and corruption that the disruption of the movement of even one star would bring on an end to the cycle of life and change in the terrestrial world. As Josep Puig Montada has remarked, once one accepts celestial movements as the agents of coming-to-be, any further explanation moves on the scientific level and can even move on the para-scientific.75 Averroist interpretations of Aristotle were resisted by the Jesuits and explicitly censored in the 1599 Ratio Studiorum. It is not surprising, then, that Acosta not only rejected such explanations, but mocked the medieval idea that angels or any other “intelligence” could be responsible for the movement of the stars.76 Natural magic, with its emphasis on the search for secret causes and occult forces, posed the risk of pushing the line that divided the natural from the super­ natural, secularizing the latter over which only the Catholic Church had jurisdiction until then.77 The use of talismans, incantations, and other means in attempts to tame these forces was condemned by theologians and church officials as demonic practices. Even in the case of magi such as della Porta, who explicitly rejected such practices as superstitious and sought to give rational explanations for occult phenomena, this very position could put them at odds with the church. In his unpublished Criptologia, for instance, della Porta claimed that super­stitions and demonic magic could reveal the most hidden and powerful secrets of nature. Although he did not deny the power of demons, he maintained that this power came from their perfect knowledge of natural forces. By experimentally testing necromancy while avoiding heretical incantations and rituals, it would be possible to discover the natural causes behind it for the benefit of mankind. As William Eamon has argued, such a position meant not only an assault on the



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church’s jurisdiction over the marvelous, it directly challenged the official mechanisms sponsored by the church against demons, such as exorcism.78 Although these examples show how the search for hidden properties could be conceptualized as the search for a form of causation in the Aristotelian fashion—thus supporting claims such as della Porta’s that natural magic was part of natural philosophy—there is a fundamental difference between both methodologies. Whereas the recourse to a natural, hidden force as the efficient cause of a phenomenon put the emphasis on the process itself, the Aristotelian methodology required that the efficient cause of an object or artifact be an agent; thus, for instance, the efficient causes of a son are his parents; the efficient cause of a sculpture, Praxiteles.79 A theory postulating a force such as sympathy to explain the attraction of iron ore to a lodestone could not be accepted in strictly Aristotelian terms, because it was formally different from the causal explanations required by the Greek philosopher. To put it another way, such an explanation would answer the question of how magnetism works—through the influence of a hidden force—instead of the question about the “why” of magnetism Aristotle had defined as the ultimate goal of scientific inquiry. For Aristotle, the question of why a house is cannot be answered by describing the building process but only through a reference to the agent who built it. Since, for Aristotle, science searches for an explanation of change and coming to be, in the Aristotelian description “a house is as it is because a builder built it” the emphasis is not located in the process but on the agent setting that process in motion. The efficient cause is not an account of how a phenomenon happens but, rather, a way to answer the question as to why it happens. Unlike natural magicians such as della Porta, Acosta did not consider human agency as the efficient cause of the scientific, medical, and technological discoveries allowing human beings to manipulate nature. Instead, Acosta maintained that we must not see in the discovery of practical applications of natural objects the result of an investigation about the processes of nature but, rather, God’s direct intervention in the world: It is worth considering that the things of great importance in nature have been discovered in most cases by chance and without planning, and not by human skill and diligence. Most of the beneficial herbs, most of the stones, metals, pearls, gold, the loadstone, amber, diamonds, and other such things, and also their properties and uses, it is true that have been discovered by chance events, and not by the industry and art of men. So it can be seen that the praise and glory for those wonders is due to God’s providence and not to the ingenuity of men. For what it seems to us as happening by chance was ordained by God after careful consideration. (Historia natural y moral, 106)

For Acosta, God is always both the efficient and the final cause of scientific discoveries. The inquiry about nature did not yield for him the positive technology to which alchemists, magicians, and the cultivators of the mechanical arts in gen-

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eral aspired. Instead, the investigation of nature led to a positive theology of sorts, in which natural history acted as a testimony of God’s direct action on Earth, revealing his presence and the unfolding of his plan for human salvation. Given this view of natural history, it is easy to understand why Acosta was not interested in the various explanations of magnetism or in finding the reason why compasses always point north. It was enough to realize that the capacity of the lodestone to communicate its “virtue” to the needle, allowing it to indicate the direction of the North Pole, ultimately came from “the power and providence of the Supreme Maker,” and that it had been revealed to humankind only when it was “ordered by the heavens that the Indies must be discovered” (102). Supporting himself with the authority of Gregory of Nazianzus, Acosta stated that reason had always to be subjected to faith, since reason “even in its own house cannot understand it all” (103). Reason alone was utterly insufficient to reach the truth, as it was evident in its failure to explain even the most common phenomena, such as the winds we feel blowing every day: “This is to show that if we understand so little of something that is so evident and quotidian for us, we cannot presume to know what is so high and hidden as the causes and motivations of the Holy Spirit, that in their greatness and purity sufficiently reveal themselves to us” (151). The study of nature was not an end in itself, since natural philosophy devoid of the help of revelation could never aspire to a total understanding of the material world. Instead, the rational study of nature was a means to an end; by showing us the limits of our own cognitive abilities, it revealed the greatness and majesty of God. As Ignatius had remarked, natural philosophy, if done with humility and to the greater glory of God, could indeed be a form of divine contemplation. In this sense, Acosta incorporated the propaedeutic conception of philosophy the Jesuits had adopted in their pedagogical methodology. Philosophy appears in the Historia natural y moral de las Indias as a step that can lead the reader—and the natural philosopher—closer to the knowledge of God. In the first chapter of book 3—that is to say, at the beginning of the new text written by Acosta in Spain for the Historia—he included a brief prologue for the remaining two books, which conclude his treatment of American nature. Here, he articulated a hierarchy of disciplines in order to achieve an ever more perfect knowledge of God, in essence following the progression of studies the Jesuits had adopted from the modus parisienses: All natural history is in itself pleasant, and for he who has his mind set on higher things, it is also useful to praise the Author of all nature. . . . He who derives pleasure from understanding the true facts of nature, that is so diverse and abundant, will have the satisfaction that history gives, and so much better history as the facts are not of men, but of the Creator. Who wants to go further to comprehend the natural causes of the effects will have the exercise of good philosophy. And he who raises his mind even higher, and looking at the Highest and First Architect of all these marvels, enjoying his wisdom and magnificence, we will say of him that he deals with excellent theology. (147)



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The tension between the indictment of curiosity and the rational speculation about the causes of natural phenomena is, thus, resolved in the final goal of knowledge. In line with the pedagogical tendencies of the Society of Jesus, Acosta saw historical and philosophical research as preparatory steps leading toward a proper knowledge of God. He considered that, unlike theologians, who were more concerned with the knowledge of God itself and therefore could not be blamed if they occasionally erred in some fine point of natural sciences, the natural philosopher must transcend the mere knowledge of physical phenomena to discover God’s imprint on his creation. For inasmuch as philosophers were looking for the causes of phenomena, they must raise themselves “with their minds to discover the sovereign author,” the origin of everything created (61). Knowledge for knowledge’s sake, on the other hand—the mere “desire to know new things”—distracted human beings from the knowledge of God, the only knowledge that should matter to them, making them instead focus on “the least useful,” the materiality of the world. It was this kind of investigation that did not lead through an orderly progression from the description of nature through philosophical analysis to the grasping of theological truths, remarked Acosta, that “we call curiosity proper” (147). It is in the role of natural philosophy as a preparation for the knowledge of God that we can find the second sense in which Acosta had used the adjective “philosophical” in the prologue of the Historia, as a source of moral teachings and lessons of positive theology. This sense is the one dominating books 3 and 4 of the Historia natural y moral. Unlike the first two books, here Acosta explicitly renounced the search for the causes of natural phenomena in order to concentrate on the description of nature instead: “If one had to write copiously about the natural things of the Indies, and with the speculation that things so remarkable require, I have no doubt that one could write a work comparable to those of Pliny, Theophrastus, and Aristotle. But . . . to do so would be contrary to my intent, which is only to record some of the natural things that I saw while I was in the Indies” (148). Unlike the first two books, which had a more Aristotelian bent, in these new books the description of American nature was closer to a Plinian treatment of it, focusing more on the relationship between people and their environment. Acosta was explicit about the aim of such a description: to make the reader ponder the infinite wisdom of “the Lord of the Universe and Omnipotent Author who handed out to each of the parts of the world he made his gifts and secrets and wonders, for which he must be adored and glorified for ever and ever. Amen” (296). Perhaps the best example of the contemplation of divine wisdom prompted by the nature of the New World is the reflection made by Acosta on the astonishing mining wealth of the continent, in particular of Peru. The unheard-of amounts of gold and silver found in the Inca Empire had an almost mythical status, and Acosta recalled the stories circulating in the Peruvian colony about the first conquerors fitting their horses with silver shoes, and how they could afford to pay over three hundred gold escudos for a wineskin (215). The fabu-

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lous amounts of precious metals mined every year in America, and above all the seemingly inexhaustible silver vein in Potosi, made all the more strange for European readers the apparent lack of greed exhibited by the natives who, even among those civilizations Acosta considered the most advanced on the continent (such as the Incas and the Aztecs), had given gold and silver purely ornamental value. The fact that the world’s largest deposits of gold and silver lay precisely in those lands where they were assigned almost no economical value should make the readers reflect on the infinite wisdom of God, since—as Acosta concluded—the extraordinary riches found in America were necessary for the preaching of the Gospel among the Amer­indians. To explain his point, Acosta likened America to an ugly girl: “What a father does with an ugly daughter, to endow her with a large dowry so she can marry, that is what God did with that strenuous land: he gave it a great wealth of mines, so it could find someone who liked it.” (212). American gold and silver conformed to the economy of salvation in its most literal sense: God had endowed America with unheard-of quantities of precious metals “so men would look for these lands, and would settle there, communicating in the process their religion and the cult of the true God to those who did not know him” (212). There was no need to speculate about the formation of the deposits, or about the influence of the land or the stars in the accumulation of precious metals in America. Simply knowing the efficient cause of such an accumulation (God) and its final cause (their role in the unfolding of the plan for human salvation) was enough to raise one’s mind to the contemplation and praise of the wisdom of God. The two senses of philosophy Acosta had touted in the introduction to the Historia converge in its objective to help the reader achieve a better knowledge of God. The systematic and speculative exploration of the American nature, based on the methodological principles of the Aristotelian scientia, had to serve as the springboard to a reflection on God’s wisdom, unraveling his plan for the salvation of humankind from the hints found in the natural world: “He who approaches the created things and reflects about them with this philosophy, can obtain a great fruit from his knowledge and consideration, using the created things to know and glorify the Creator. He who does not go further than an understanding of their properties and uses . . . in the end will fall in the snare and get entangled in the web that those things will become for him” (210). As we shall now see, although this primary objective was kept by subsequent Jesuit writers, the methodological underpinnings of Acosta’s method were in fact contested by some of them.

Chapter 7

The Irreducible Difference of America

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he influence of Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, Acosta’s book was quickly translated into all the major languages and became one of the most authoritative studies on the nature and cultures of the New World. During the eighteenth century, when other early colonial texts were being strongly criticized for what Enlightenment scholars perceived as their utter unreliability, Acosta’s Historia still retained some of its authority.1 However, this does not mean his work was universally acclaimed. Particularly in America, dissatisfaction with Acosta’s theories and methods motivated subsequent natural history, at least in part. Almost a half-century after Acosta, Bernabé Cobo carefully considered Acosta’s theories and line of reasoning, only to find them wanting. As we saw in Chapter 4, Cobo declared that he undertook the task of writing a new account of the nature and history of America motivated by what he considered to be the lack of accuracy and methodological soundness of all previous books devoted to the subject. His long American experience, enriched by the opportunities presented to him by his constant movement among different Jesuit colleges and residences in Peru and Mexico, led him to question the theories advanced by previous authors to explain American natural phenomena. As he remarked to his readers, living in America for almost fifty-seven years had allowed him to directly study the flora, fauna, and climate of the continent (Obras, 1:4). According to Cobo, this put him in an advantageous position in regards to the natural philosophers who contented themselves with mere speculation on American natural objects, no matter how diligently they did so. Cobo never mentioned Acosta directly, but one of his main targets in the Historia del Nuevo Mundo was precisely the speculative nature of many of Acosta’s answers to the problems posed by the New World. To be sure, Acosta did claim that his own experience was at the base of his reflections on America, but the fact is that he wrote two-thirds of his Historia natural y moral while in Spain and not in America, as he candidly informed his readers. Cobo, on the other hand, proudly announced he had composed his book



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piecemeal, writing about each region while residing in it “to better corroborate what I was writing, as someone who had the object in front of him [can do]” (Obras, 1:7). Although apparently circumstantial, this difference between the places of composition is suggestive of a divergent conception of America and its relationship to the Old World. As we saw in the previous chapter, for Acosta, even though America could give the impression of contradicting the philosophical doctrines of the ancients at first, on closer scrutiny its particularities could be explained following the same methods and premises used to study the Old World. In this sense, direct experience, although it did not hurt, was not necessary to speculate philosophically about its phenomena. Acosta may have laughed at Aristotle and his meteorology when crossing the Torrid Zone, but besides supplying the basic data, that crossing had very little bearing on his own explanation of America’s temperate climate. The same could be said of Acosta’s discussion of the causes of the astonishing mineral riches of the continent, or of his explanation of the animal and human occupation of the continent following the Universal Flood. For him, his years in America were more a source of authority and legitimacy as a writer than a source of firsthand information about its nature.2 This is evident, for instance, in his cursory treatment of American plants. Besides some praises of the almost infinite variety of vegetal species in America and their usefulness to human life, Acosta bluntly declared that he would not dwell on the subject for long because he did not remember all the plants he saw, nor had he seen them all. And even if he had, he thought it would be “tiresome” to describe all of them. Instead, the reader would have to content herself or himself with a “superficial and summary” description of a rather reduced number of plants. If the reader was still curious after this, there were excellent guides available for him or her to consult, such as Nicolás Monardes’s Historia medicinal or Francisco Hernández’s study of Mexican flora.3 In Acosta’s view, having been in America was not a necessary condition to theorize about its nature. Either stemming from direct contact with American reality or directly out of written reports, the information about specific American phenomena was only a point of departure for intellectual operations that could be carried out in any place at any time. For Cobo, Acosta’s method was utterly unsatisfactory, inasmuch as Cobo considered direct experience to be the cornerstone of any investigation of America. For him, America was a New World not only in a historical sense. Of all the names the Europeans had used to refer to the continent—Western Islands, West Indies, America—“New World” was the most fitting, “as is manifested in the things found in it, being all of them so new and strange and contrary to every doctrine of the ancient masters of philosophy and of the diligent examiners of the natural things” (Obras, 1:53). Confronted with such a new and problematic nature, only the direct experience of its natural objects could provide the basis for adequate explanations. For, as we shall see, in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo Cobo repeatedly affirmed that particular conditions always trumped any general principle applied in any place and at any time when dealing with America. Such a view of the uniqueness of America and the preponderance given to



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local conditions and particularities over generalizations naturally led Cobo to take issue with the explanations advanced almost sixty years earlier by Acosta. Whereas Acosta had systematically rejected any recourse to occult qualities or miracles as valid explanations of natural phenomena, Cobo—while accepting these limitations in principle—acknowledged that the problems posed by the climate, geography, flora, and fauna of America were too complex to accommodate purely rational explanations. Consequently, he rejected Acosta’s theories and tried to explain these phenomena by resorting precisely to the kind of explanations his predecessor had dismissed as superfluous. Thus, Cobo explained the climate of the tropics as a product of the influence of celestial bodies on the sublunary world; his explanation of magnetism was predicated on the notion of sympathies and antipathies that Acosta had so abhorred; and his explanation for the origins of American fauna was that angels had transported each animal from Noah’s ark to its natural place of residence, a procedure Cobo claimed was identical to and nothing more than a repetition of the biblical episode of Adam’s naming of animals. Ultimately, these differences between Cobo and Acosta stemmed from very different conceptualizations of the role played by knowledge of nature in human attempts to know God. While for Acosta, the study of nature could and should yield a positive theology, making explicit God’s salvific plan for humankind, for Cobo the marvels and wonders of nature were evidence of God’s omnipotence as expressed in the astonishing variety of species, objects, and environments found in America. Instead of attempting to tame the newness of America by inscribing it in well-known European patterns, Cobo sought to underscore the difference of the New World in all its bewildering variety, which for him revealed the infinite power and majesty of God. Whereas Acosta’s commitment to Aristotelianism in natural philosophy and his Augustinian view of history and the role of knowledge in Christian life directed him to search for commonalities between the Old and the New World, looking for general physical principles and common patterns of historical development, Cobo’s emphasis on the specificity of American nature and the variety of animal and vegetal species found in it manifest a strong influence of certain ideas developed by Thomas Aquinas. As a consequence, Cobo’s Historia del Nuevo Mundo displays a concern about the proper identification of native and introduced species running through his description of American flora and fauna—a concern consistent with both his claims of American uniqueness and with his theological and metaphysical ideas. In this chapter, I will contrast Cobo’s views with those held by Acosta, highlighting some specific problems presented by American nature, in particular the climate of the American tropics and the human and animal repopulation of the continent after the Universal Flood. In doing so, my aim will be to stress the competitive character of Cobo’s Historia del Nuevo Mundo in regards to Acosta’s natural history and the philosophical and theological differences lying beneath Cobo’s hostility toward Acosta’s theories. The final section of this chapter will show how these theoretical differences informed a view of America and its nature as truly colonial—a view

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peculiar to Cobo and largely absent from Acosta’s discussion of the nature of the continent. For, unlike Acosta, Cobo considered human agency and dominion over nature a central element in the makeup of America’s colonial landscape.

Experience and the Limits of Reason The difference between Acosta’s and Cobo’s methods is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the latter’s discussion of the theories explaining the habitability of the American Torrid Zone. This was a perfect starting point to underscore America’s uniqueness since, according to Cobo, most of the land conquered and settled by the Spaniards fell between the tropics; furthermore, the American Torrid Zone differed in temperature and precipitations not only with the other climate zones recognized by classical meteorology but also with other lands that were situated within the same climate band without belonging to America. This variety could not be explained by reference to a general principle applicable to, for instance, the portions of Africa and America that fell within the Torrid Zone, as Acosta’s method suggested; instead, Cobo considered that the difference “between some provinces and lands and others of the same Torrid Zone are born from the strange properties of this region” (Obras, 1:55). For Cobo, the classical argument that the proximity to the sun of the lands that lay on the equator and the angle at which light rays reached them produced excessive hotness and dryness was valid only as a general theoretical principle but failed to account for the observed facts and, therefore, had to be modified to take local conditions into consideration. It was precisely for this reason that the ancients failed to predict correctly the climate of the lands lying between the tropics, a fact made evident by Spanish conquest and colonization of the multitude of people who lived in America: “And so, because of the particular causes that affect this New World, of which the ancients had no knowledge, their opinion turned out to be false” (1:55). In Cobo’s view, several factors affected weather in the American tropics, moderating the high temperatures predicted by the Aristotelian general principle. The first of these was the land’s humidity. The abundance of rivers, lakes, swamps, and marshes found throughout tropical America made it one of the most fertile lands in the world. The fact that the rainy season was summer and not winter, as it was in Europe, also helped curb the high temperatures, “either because the clouds protect us from the torrid rays of sun . . . or because the earth and the air get damp and freshen up with the water” (1:55–56). But summer rains were not enough to explain the moderate temperatures of the Torrid Zone since, in some areas—such as the Peruvian coastal plains—it barely rained at all and temperatures were still bearable. This is where Cobo paused to present what he viewed as the greatest flaw in the classical theory of the Torrid Zone: its failure to take into account the difference in the amount of daylight received by the diverse regions of the Earth. In the equatorial regions, days and nights are roughly the same length, while the closer one moves to the poles, the longer the days are in summer. Fol-



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lowing this, although the proximity to the sun and the angle of the rays makes for hotter days on the equator, the shorter days and longer nights in practice mean reduced exposure to the sun and longer periods in which the air and the land can cool off. The final result is that summer days in the equator are not hotter than summer days in Andalusia (1:56–57). But this was a theoretical flaw of the general principle; since its effect was the same in every land located on the equator, it could not account for the variety of climates Cobo had observed between different provinces of tropical America: “Although the aforementioned reasons are common and general to the whole Torrid Zone, we still experiment such a diversity of climates that causes admiration . . . for . . . some people enjoy here a perpetual and mild spring, while others living in sight of them are shivering with cold, and yet others just a league away are scorched by the heat” (1:57). Cobo immediately shifted the burden of proof from general reflections based on geometrical and astronomical principles to his own experience in order to find an explanation for this phenomenon. He considered two main factors affecting the climate of neighboring areas. The first one, and the most important, was the presence or absence of cold winds. The influence of the winds as a moderator of temperature was evident in the Peruvian coastal plains he knew so well. Cobo did not advance any reasons for these winds; he simply limited himself to presenting their effects through a series of anecdotes. For instance, when the Jesuit procurator of Lima bought some cloth jackets for the African slaves who hauled wine from the vineyard the Jesuits had in Ica to the seaport of Pisco, Cobo had told him such warm clothing was unnecessary, since they had to travel through a hot area. The procurator replied that winter nights were so cold that the slaves needed those jackets in addition to a good fire to stay warm: “I found that so difficult to believe that I wanted to experience it for myself, and so, of the several times that I have walked from Pisco to Ica, in one occasion I joined the mule-boys in July, which is during the height of winter here.” That night, the southern wind blew constantly, forcing the mule-boys to light a fire. Even staying close to the fire, Cobo found himself so cold that he could not move his numb fingers (1:57–58). He experienced a similar cold when traveling from Payta to Lima during the month of September—springtime in the Southern Hemisphere—which convinced him that the cold was not seasonal, but a product of the ever-blowing wind from the south. Cobo claimed that other coastlines and inland locations in the Torrid Zone were hotter than the Peruvian coastal plains because they were not reached by this cold southern wind. The second cause that Cobo used to explain the cold nights and temperate days on the Peruvian arid plains was the extreme coldness of the Pacific Ocean along the Chilean and Peruvian coast. Unlike continents, where altitude was a factor in the temperature of a specific place, the oceans presented a constant distance between their surface and the center of the Earth. But, whereas the Pacific was warmer in other areas, in front of Peru its waters were so cold that one could not swim, and local inhabitants used the waters to keep the contents of pots and vessels cold (1:58). We now know that the Humboldt Current, which originates

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in the Antarctic and runs close to the shore in Peru, is responsible for the cold waters. Cobo, however, considered only the southern wind to be responsible for the lower sea temperatures, “something about which I have plenty of experience, for I have sailed twice to Peru from the other [northern] coast” (1:58). He made a specific reference to his voyage from Nicaragua in 1642, when he was returning to Peru after a decade of residing in Mexico. During the trip, he consoled passengers overwhelmed by the heat of Central America by telling them that as soon as they crossed the equator, the temperature would drop. In a passage that seems conceived to invite comparison to Acosta’s crossing of the Torrid Zone, Cobo wrote about how after the ship had crossed the equator, he found some passengers wrapped in blankets and complaining about the cold: “And so I told them: ‘Now you see how easy is for God to change the climate from one extreme to the other, since he does it only with a breeze’ ” (1:59). Instead of laughing at Aristotle and his meteorology—as Acosta reportedly had done—Cobo, the seasoned Jesuit traveler, found an opportunity in this not to cast doubt on a methodology he had already found of little use to explain America’s climate, but to give his fellow travelers (and the reader) a lesson in natural theology: “From this we can deduce God’s foresight [providencia] since he disposed things in such a way that fresh winds ordinarily blow and gust in this region of the plains, which, since they are directly under the sun and are only barren dunes that receive no water from the skies, needed [the winds] more than any other land in the Indies” (1:59). This sudden appearance of God’s foresight as the ultimate explanation for the climate differences in the American Torrid Zone does not preclude other types of explanation, as was usually the case in Acosta’s Historia natural y moral. Whereas Acosta invited the reader to admire and praise God’s power and foresight instead of looking for hidden forces and occult influences, Cobo conceded that the physical hypothesis he had so far advanced could not explain the difference in climates found in tropical America: “There must be other occult causes that we ignore that create such a great and marvelous difference of temperatures in the same climate” (1:59). Although these causes were almost impossible to investigate with any certitude, Cobo offered some possibilities: either the lands had some occult property, or the empyrean heavens exerted some unknown influence over particular lands, or maybe the influence of the aggregation of several things found only in some lands and not in others could help explain this phenomenon. In any case, Cobo remarked, the existence of some hidden cause was warranted by the fact this was the only way to resolve all the problems presented by other theories (1:59). This use of occult causes and hidden properties as the only way out of the logical conundrums presented by theories attempting to explain the mysteries and marvels of American nature can be clearly seen in Cobo’s refutation of Acosta on the baffling fact that summer, and not winter, is the rainy season in the tropics. Cobo noted that several authors had speculated about this phenomenon, advancing various theories: “But all [these theories] are easily disproved and taken apart; and I consider it to be much easier to refute someone else’s opin-



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ion than to find the true [cause] that can satisfy all the doubts and objections that could be posed” (1:62). Organizing his argument around a series of questions and objections, Cobo refuted two different but related theories about rains in the tropics without proposing in the end an alternative to explain them. One of these theories attempted to explain why it did not rain during winter, and the other why it was natural for rains in the Torrid Zone to occur in summer. The first theory stated that during winter, the winds removed moisture from the air, thus making precipitations unlikely. Unsurprisingly, the second one was the theory proposed by Acosta, according to which the cause of summer rains in the tropics was the same excess of heat that outside the Torrid Zone caused dry summers. For Cobo, both theories were untenable, as anyone with little more than just a cursory exposure to life in America would realize. Based on his experience “in both hemispheres,” but mainly in Peru, Cobo simply listed a number of places where rains could not be related to the presence or absence of winds. On the coastal plains, where the wind blows constantly, the mist constituting the sole form of precipitation there falls only in winter. In the Andes Mountains, where the same southern wind refreshing the coast also blows constantly, it rains during summer but not in winter. Finally, on the eastern slopes of the Andes, which are part of the Amazon River basin, it rains all year round, wind or no wind (1:62). The same method (namely, contrasting theoretical predictions with the actual conditions in specific places) helped disprove Acosta’s theory: “Why in the Torrid Zone has the sun this effect [producing rains] when its rays fall straight on the land and with more heat, and not in Andalusia and other European coasts in the months of June and July, when . . . the sun is more scorching than when it is in our zenith?” (1:62). Moreover, if—as Acosta had proposed—the proximity and the angle of the sun’s rays evaporate a greater amount of water than what can be consumed by heat, thus producing rains when it is directly over the tropics, then how can one explain why this effect could only be verified in summer when the sun passes directly over the Torrid Zone, but not in winter when, according to the geocentric model accepted by the Jesuits, the sun had to pass again directly over Peru (1:63)? The only piece of empirical confirmation Acosta had adduced for his theory—that in Peru it rains more frequently at noon when the sun is at the zenith—was simply not true, according to Cobo, who countered that “it rains also in the mornings and at any time, not less at night than during the day” (1:63). Being theoretically unsound and contradicted by empirical evidence, Acosta’s argument simply could not be accepted. But once Cobo had proven Acosta wrong, he had to admit that there was no rational explanation accounting for all the problems presented by the wide variety of climates in Peru. This is a situation that occurs time and again in the Historia del Nuevo Mundo. Cobo often found himself without answers once he had criticized previous theories, and was then forced to admit that short of a ­miracle, there was no way to explain the uniqueness of America: “What I feel in this problem [the summer rains in Peru] and in others equally pressing that we find at every step when we consider the strange and marvelous natural effects that we

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experience in this New World, is that no matter how much the human intellect tries and exerts itself in inquiring and finding their causes, it cannot understand them all, because many of [these causes] are secret and hidden to the senses” (1:63). The recourse to secret causes and extrinsic influences (such as the stars, which he had used to explain the diversity of climates within the Torrid Zone) marks one of the starkest differences between Cobo’s and Acosta’s approaches to the study of nature. Whereas Acosta sought to limit what was permissible to investigate within a Christian framework to those facts that could be rationally explained without having to resort to miracles, extrinsic influences, or secret causes, Cobo had come to the conclusion that one could find a satisfactory answer to the myriad of problems posed by the strangeness and uniqueness of the New World only by appealing to some secret property of the natural objects. In view of the failure of purely rational means employed by someone like Acosta, miracles, secrets, and astral influences had to be rehabilitated as valid explanations, lest one be forced to renounce any kind of understanding of the peculiar natural world of America.

An American Reading of the Book of Genesis Experience rendered Acosta’s theories about the Torrid Zone unsatisfactory for Cobo, but his dismissal of Acosta’s explanations was not predicated solely on the basis of specific episodes contradicting theoretical predictions. It also reflected deeper differences between Acosta and Cobo on some fundamental problems faced by early modern natural philosophers, such as the status of demonstrative proofs, the order of the created universe, and the understanding of the way in which God’s will manifested itself in his creation. The different approaches taken by Cobo and Acosta can be explained, at least in part, by the institutional development of the Jesuit order as reflected in the standardization of its educational program during the late sixteenth century. In his formative years, Acosta had been sent to Alcala de Henares to pursue advanced studies in philosophy and theology. As was customary in Spanish universities at the time, Acosta had been exposed to the theological doctrines of Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and the nominalist authors (a pedagogical method known as las tres vías, or the three ways of theology). The nominalist school was immensely popular in Alcala when Acosta was enrolled there, diminishing the importance of Thomism. In Alcala, the teachers of nominalism manifested a measure of distrust in the ability of human understanding to grasp the truths of faith, which was coupled with an effort to underplay the role of reason as a way to support theological conclusions.4 Although Acosta was heavily influenced by Aristotelian philosophy, his refusal to allow any type of rational explanations for certain phenomena such as magnetism can be seen as a result of his exposure to Alcala’s nominalism during his theology studies. This nominalist trait—along with others, such as his attempts to base his claims on positive theology—fit well with the Augustinianism that informed his



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rejection of vana curiositas and his understanding of God’s providence as the unfolding in time of the divine design for the world, and was a result of his eclectic formation as a theologian. Cobo’s education had taken place exclusively in Jesuit colleges in Peru. In all likelihood, he had attended lectures in Cuzco and Lima based only on Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, as was mandated by the 1599 Ratio Studiorum. Cobo’s rejection of Acosta’s theories; his rehabilitation of the hidden properties, occult causes, and superlunary influences as valid explanations for the operation of nature; and his understanding of God’s providence as manifested in creation ab initio, rather than unfolding in time—all come from a Thomistic basis. Although Aquinas is credited with one of the most influential attempts in Western intellectual history to bridge the gap between Aristotelian natural sciences and Christian theology, he sometimes followed a different path even when treating similar subject matters.5 When dealing with nature and natural processes in a philosophical context, Aquinas usually remained committed to the Aristotelian method, invoking internal principles to explain change and coming to be.6 But, on some key occasions, he departed from this commitment, instead developing distinctly non-Aristotelian arguments on which to base his positions. Perhaps one of the most important moments was Aquinas’s Five Ways to prove God’s existence in the Summa Theologica. Aquinas noted that the first and most manifest evidence of the existence of God is the argument of motion. In Aristotelian physics, change, and in particular motion, must be the result of an internal property of the moving thing—a realization of its potentiality into actuality.7 Aquinas, however, in spite of the Aristotelian terminology he used to discuss this problem, plainly stated that every moving thing must be moved by something outside of itself. Movement, in the first proof, is not the actualization of a potentiality by the object itself, but must come from a cause extrinsic to the object being moved: “For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to ac­tuality, except by something in a state of actuality.”8 Potentiality and actuality are mutually exclusive; a burning log is actually hot and potentially cold. In order for it to realize this potentiality, something else—such as a bucket of water— must actualize it, for it is impossible for one and the same thing to be moved and mover of itself at the same time. By denying natural objects the ability to change themselves, Aquinas was in practice forfeiting one of the fundamental premises of Aristotelian physics, substituting internal principles of change with a chain of external causes to explain movement in nature: “But this cannot go on to infinity, for then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover.”9 From God, the first and unmovable mover, all movement in the world originates, as in a falling row of dominoes set in motion by the flick of a finger, which remains unaffected by the change it created, while each piece is set in motion by the preceding one. Analogous arguments are made for efficient causes, in the second proof, and for necessary and non-necessary (that is, corruptible) beings in the third, since there can only be one necessary being causing necessity in all others.

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Thus, Aquinas’s proofs of God’s existence are grounded not in the principles of Aristotelian natural philosophy, but in a rather different view of the natural world, one closer to Neoplatonic conceptions such as the chain of being, and which presuppose the very existence of the God the article sets out to demonstrate. The best example of this swapping of Aristotle for the Neoplatonics comes in the fourth and fifth arguments. In the fourth argument, Aquinas derived all degrees of perfection found in things from God, the sum of all perfection. Since nothing can be said to be more or less perfect unless there is a point of comparison, there must be a being acting as the standard to which all comparisons can be referred: “There must be also something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.”10 Among those perfections of nature, one must consider order and harmony—or, as Aquinas put it, “the governance of the world.” The existence of purpose in the world is the subject of the fifth proof. Instead of deducing the orderly arrangement of the world and its purpose from the individual natures of things and demonstrating, in Aristotelian fashion, how they individually and collectively form a harmonious, ordered, and comprehensible whole, Aquinas opted for an external (i.e., not part of the natures of things) intelligence imposing order and purpose on nature: We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence, it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence. . . . Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.11

The subordination of all the efficient causes forming the causal chain postulated by Aquinas to one final cause (identified with God’s will and intellect) was made explicit by the Dominican theologian in the conclusive remarks of this article: “Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause.”12 In practice, this means a shift from the question about the efficient causes of phenomena to a question about their final causes; that is to say, from asking how something happens to asking why it is the way it is, exactly the substitution we see in Cobo’s final answer to the problem of summer rains in the Torrid Zone. The variety of temperatures and climates found between the Peruvian coastal plains, the Amazon basin, and the harsh winter of the Andes plateau would make agriculture and, therefore, human habitation impossible if it were not for rainy summers and dry winters, which moderated temperatures in the lowlands and ensured precipitations during the growing season in the mountains, while at the same time, “and in this God’s providence is no less manifest, the clouds protect and defend the cornfields from the frost . . . a danger God remedied by disposing the climate and its changes in such a way that between



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December and March [the growing season in the Andes] there is barely a night without cloudy skies” (1:64). As Stephen Gaukroger has noted, there was in the seventeenth century a non-Aristotelian development of the fifth proof that argued from the individual characteristics (if not natures) to an understanding of divine purpose in nature, a trend visible in Cobo’s work.13 After proving previous theories about tropical rain patterns wrong, Cobo could not advance an explanation for this phenomenon. Instead of searching for an efficient cause, Cobo settled for a final one, ultimately predicated in God’s foresight and in the benevolence he imposed on the created order: “And so I conclude this matter by saying that I cannot find any other reason for summer rains in the Torrid Zone except that it is convenient for its habitation” (1:65). Aquinas’s idea of a purposely ordered universe weighs heavily on Cobo’s Historia del Nuevo Mundo. At the outset of his book, Cobo noted that one of the arguments for the perfection of the universe was “the variety and distinction of the natures that it contains,” since the universe included “all degrees of being . . . as Saint Thomas teaches, for it encompasses the supreme genera in to which the being is divided; that is, the material and immaterial substances, and among the latter, the three hierarchies of angels, divided in nine choruses, and among the former, the six kinds of substances, in which every degree surpasses in nobility the precedent” (Obras, 1:10). The problem of being was the subject of one of the earliest treatises by Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia, written around 1256. Despite its early date, in this small book Aquinas developed one of the cornerstones of his philosophy, the doctrine of substance.14 As Cobo noted, Aquinas distinguished between two main types of substances: immaterial and material. Separate substances such as intelligences or angels and the First Cause are completely immaterial.15 They are simple substances in the sense they possess form alone, whereas material substances are composed of form and matter.16 Aquinas devised a hierarchy of substances based on the ways in which they can be said to have an essence. Since he had defined essence earlier as “what is signified through the definition of a thing,” the distinction between simple and composite substances was fundamental for this ordering of substances.17 This arrangement of substances in fact yielded an ordered universe, in which God was located at the apex and elementary matter at the bottom. Through the act of creation, God, the First Cause of everything in nature, endowed creatures with form and being. Such an argument could be easily construed as if Aquinas were making the case for emanationism, the doctrine according to which all substances originate immediately or mediately from the divine substance.18 But Aquinas made clear that created substances are different and contingent (non-necessary) in regards to the divine substance. Created substances are increasingly less actuality and more potenti­ ality the closer they are to matter. Aquinas’s hierarchical ordering of substances was not based on the origination from God’s substance; rather, it was based on the diminishing degrees of actuality they present. God, being a pure being and admitting no additions or perfecting, was pure actuality. Lesser immaterial substances, such as intelligences, inasmuch as they depended on God for their form

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and being, had a degree of potentiality. Human souls, given they are the substantial form of matter, are more potency than act. By the same token, given that the form of human beings is their immaterial soul, they constitute the pinnacle of the material world: “The elements are for the sake of the mixed body, the mixed body for the sake of living things: and of these plants are for the sake of animals, and animals are for the sake of man.”19 In this passage from the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas seems to be using a teleological view of nature quite different from Aristotle’s. Whereas Aristotle’s teleology was usually local, explaining particular structures in living organisms, Aquinas considered the whole of the created world to be ordered toward an end, the service of human beings.20 Furthermore, Aquinas’s benevolent purpose, as in the fifth argument of his proof of God’s existence, does not result from a consideration of individual natures of things, but is imposed from an external agent; it is the ordering of the created world by a prior and superior intelligence, a divine design. Both in his concept of an externally ordered and perfect universe and in his idea of a gradation of creatures in nature, there seems to be in Aquinas an echo of the Platonic God of the Timaeus.21 Nature, then, was made for human use. In Aquinas’s scheme, by virtue of its intimate association with matter, the human soul occupies the lower position in the scale of immaterial substances. But conversely, by being informed by an immaterial substance, human beings rule over the material world, being destined by their very nature to use it for their own ends.22 In this sense, Aquinas emphasized human agency in the exploitation of the material world as consubstantial with the human condition. Part of this agency was certainly the drive to know and understand the world, for it is through the use of creatures that humans increase their knowledge about them, and through the knowledge of creatures that humans can find uses for them.23 It was probably this Thomistic conception of the world Cobo had in mind when discussing the structure of the cosmos. Cobo, as we saw above, started by quoting Aquinas’s division of substances. Beginning with the four elements, Cobo described the universe in terms of the traditional arrangement of mixed elements, plants, animals and, finally, man, “compendium and cipher of all the perfections in which partake all corporeal natures of [the previous] kinds” (Obras, 1:10). Borrowing from Aquinas, Cobo noted as proof of this assertion the fact that all inferior genera were composed of numerous species, whereas human beings were the only species of its genus (1:10). Furthermore, human beings were paradigmatic in that their matter (the body) was informed by their form (the soul) in such a way that every organ helps the soul in its vege­ tative, sensitive, or intellective faculties (1:10). The same could be said of plants, animals and, in fact, of every kind of corporeal being, since each of them shows “how all things in the universe have their own ends, so that, if we consider it carefully, we will find that all the mixed elements, whether they have life or are lacking in it, are nothing more than a well-stocked warehouse and emporium that God liberally supplied with everything man needs for his service, maintenance, and pleasure” (1:12). In fact, for Cobo, as for Aquinas, this benevolent purpose of the world is what proves the existence of God.24 It is precisely in this idea of a pur-



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pose imposed by the divine intelligence on the created order from the moment of creation that we find one of the most radical differences between Cobo and Acosta. The idea of an order and a finality imposed on creation from the beginning by God was, of course, not alien to Acosta; for example, when comparing American corn to Old World wheat, Acosta had concluded, “And so, the Creator distributed his governance to every region, giving to this orb wheat, which is the principal sustenance of men, and to that of the Indies he gave corn, which after wheat has the second place in the sustenance of men and beasts” (Historia natural y moral, 247). Despite claims such as this, what permeates Acosta’s view of nature is not an order imposed from the beginning; instead, Acosta’s interpretation of nature and human history was heavily influenced by Augustine’s concept of history, in which God uses human events to manifest his revelation and express his will gradually in time. As we saw, for Acosta even scientific discoveries (such as the medicinal uses of plants, or technological advances like the compass) were not the product of human agency, but happened because God had ordained it so at the moment in history he considered appropriate (106). The progressive mastery of nature by humankind was one of the ways in which God’s salvific plan unfolded in time. In this sense, it is telling that whenever Acosta identified either a natural phenomenon (such as the magnetized needle pointing north) or a historical event (such as the Spanish discovery and subsequent colonization of America) as part of God’s unfolding plan, he consistently referred not to God’s will but to God’s providence as its final cause. In Acosta’s usage, providence does not seem to imply a direct intervention by God in human or natural affairs. As its etymology implies (Latin providentia, from providere, “to foresee”), providence refers to an act of God derived from his perfect knowledge of the past, present, and future. God’s providence manifests itself in contingent events, but it is prior to the event itself. It does not signal the irruption of the Divine Will in the contingent world but, rather, the unfolding of what God has planned from the beginning or, as Acosta put it, what God “ordained after careful consideration” (106). If Acosta could see evidence of God’s providence in the natural world and in the unfolding of human history, it is precisely because both domains follow regular, immutable laws based on general principles valid everywhere. Acosta summarized it by paraphrasing Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What it was, that is, and what will be is what it is” (419). Cobo, on the other hand, entertained a somewhat different notion of the impact of God’s foresight on creation, one not seeming so deterministic, and less dependent on the temporal dimension of creation than to its substantial structure. Put another way, for Cobo God’s foresight was less visible in the contingent events of history than in the making of the material world, a point he emphasized when lecturing on the providence of God to his freezing fellow travelers during their crossing of the equator. Immediately after his discussion of the role of substances in the universe, Cobo turned to a lengthy rendition of the creation of the world as recounted in the book of Genesis. Cobo justified this rather odd choice

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of topic for a natural history of America by claiming an exposition of the sequence in which things were created would cast light on the numerous problems and difficulties posed by American nature (Obras, 1:13). Some scholars have made too much of this declaration, claiming that Cobo’s natural history depended on the hermeneutics developed by the hexaemeral tradition.25 Be that as it may, what interests me in Cobo’s discussion of the creation story is the Neothomistic notion of providence that can be gleaned from it, and its importance as the proper framework for a discussion of American nature that his justification for these chapters implies. Cobo followed the traditional interpretation according to which the order in which God created the world established the hierarchical order of nature (1:14).26 Nature was, therefore, preordained in a particular way by God from the very beginning, following the blueprint already designed by the divine intelligence. But the universe was not the result of God’s intelligence alone: “His Highness gave this wonderful work or universe to light, a work that was already drawn in his divine mind, when and how it pleased his infinite goodness” (1:13). In good Thomistic fashion, Cobo distinguished between two moments in God’s mind before the creation itself: planning and doing. For Aquinas, God’s knowledge is perfect; therefore, it includes all possible things and events and their opposites alike. However, the world is not the sum of all possible beings but, rather, only of those actualized into existence. God’s knowledge of things only becomes actualized in creation when his will selects which beings remain merely possible and which had, have, or will have existence.27 Just like an artisan knows the object he will create before crafting it, God knows all things before they have come into being. But, also like an artisan, who can know how a thing is and not make it until he has decided to do so, divine knowledge alone is insufficient for the world to exist: “[God’s] will orders knowledge and things proceed from God’s knowledge when God has determined they will. God’s knowledge is causa rerum only with reference also to God’s will.”28 In his commentary on the story of creation, Cobo stated that although God could have created the whole universe in the same single instant in which he created time, he had decided nonetheless to spend six natural days making and perfecting it. Why God had decided to proceed sequentially instead of simultaneously was impossible to know for sure, but one could surmise that “it was according to reason that the Author of nature kept the same order and style in creating the world and in giving being to nature that he wanted to be proper and connatural to the same nature he was creating” (1:14). The biblical story of creation, then, inasmuch as it reflected God’s intentions, gave a solid foundation for understanding the ends toward which the world was created and the natural operations directing the created world toward that end. The end of creation, in Cobo’s view, was man, “for whose wellness and service all visible things created before him were ordered” (1:20). Human beings were created last; before Adam everything necessary to human life came into being, following the fundamental principle God, through the sequence of his creative acts, imposed on nature: “that in its operations and effects goes always from imperfection to perfection, and



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from what is less substantial to what is most substantial” (1:14). It must be noted that Cobo, following Genesis 1:1–31 closely, is only referring to the creation of the material world—that is, of the composite substances that for Aquinas were ordered to the service of man. Immaterial substances, such as angels, are barely mentioned by Cobo.29 It is in this sense that we must understand his statement that nature always proceeds from the less to the more substantial. The story of creation is limited to the creation of the material world—the world of composite substances. Following a rationale comparable to that of Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles, Cobo’s description of the creation emphasizes human beings as the immediate end of the visible world.30 Everything, from the separation of day and night, the topography of the continents, metals and minerals, plants and, finally, the diverse species of animals were created as “the [means of ] service and provision that God was preparing for man in this great house of the world” (1:19). Cobo’s inclusion of the biblical story of creation in the opening of his natural history fulfilled two important objectives. First, it emphasized the orderly nature of the created universe. The sequential creative act of going from simpler to more complex beings until reaching the climax with the creation of human beings, the highest composite substance, the “cypher of all [God’s] marvels,” brings to the foreground the structuring of the universe and its benevolent purpose (1:20). It stresses, then, God’s providence in the act of creation, not in the unfolding of events (as in Acosta’s work). God’s foresight had anticipated all the necessities of human beings and, therefore, devised a world able to provide for every need in order to facilitate human life. As we saw above, this argument will later be crucial for Cobo’s explanation of such phenomena as the variety of climates in tropical America. Second, by including the biblical account of creation at the outset of his book, Cobo underscored human agency and dominion over nature. Although God could have created the whole universe in a single instant, he had chosen to follow a logical order, an order reflecting the operation of the nature he was creating but, also, the sovereignty over nature entrusted by God to humankind: “The proper arrangement of the construction of this house that is the world required that the walls be built first, which are the bodies comprehended under the name of firmament, and only later be added what was necessary for its ornament and embellishment; and, finally, that its master entered it, for it was built for his use and comfort” (1:16). God’s providence had created a world suitable for human life, but he had also given humans the power and authority to make use of nature for their own ends. As we will now see, this idea informs some of the central concerns of Cobo’s Historia del Nuevo Mundo.

Angels in a New World For Aquinas, God, through his providence, governs and gives order to the universe and its functioning. In order to achieve this end, God employs mediators. Superior things govern and rule inferior ones. According to Aquinas, this delega-

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tion is not due to some weakness in God’s power: it is instead further evidence of God’s love for his creatures, inasmuch as he dignifies them by entrusting them with the government of things.31 In Question 110 of the Summa Theologica, “How Angels can act on bodies?” where he treated the problem of the movement of the celestial orbs, Aquinas, siding with the Platonists and the doctors of the church, affirmed that different spiritual substances were placed over material things. The explanation for this had not to do with the natures of neither angels nor corporeal bodies but, rather, with “the order of Divine wisdom, Who places different rulers over different things.”32 Once again, the emphasis is not put on a universe intelligible in and of itself, but in the imposition of a particular order by an external agent, who acted as its final cause. Elsewhere, Aquinas affirmed that celestial orbs were moved by intellectual substances, although without pronouncing whether these were intrinsic or extrinsic to the orbs.33 In any case, Aquinas decidedly affirmed that “the supreme [celestial] bodies are moved locally by the spiritual substances,” which he identified as angels.34 To Aquinas, the influence of secondary causes such as angels, heavenly bodies, or human beings as rulers of the material world is real but limited. They are subject to God’s providence by law, counsels, rewards, punishments, and grace. God provides, and others execute his orders.35 As Vivian Boland has summarized, “The administration of God’s plan requires creatures who participate actively in the execution of God’s providence.”36 It was this understanding of God’s providence that Cobo espoused throughout his Historia del Nuevo Mundo, and which explains some of his most startling disagreements with Acosta. A good example is the problem of the mobility of celestial bodies. For Acosta, there was no need to presuppose any extrinsic cause for the movement of the planets and stars, such as a particular category of angels charged by God with the task of moving the stars across the skies. Such an explanation would be acceptable only “if we give ourselves license to imagine whatever we want” regardless of any logical or scientific consideration, as did all those who thought “each star and planet is a body in itself, and that they are moved and carried by an angel in the same way that [an angel] carried Habakkuk to Babylon” (Historia natural y moral, 63– 64). For Acosta, the stars and the planets were not independent bodies, but were affixed to the hard orbs making up the heavens. Their movement was only apparent, being caused by the rotation of the spheres, which was natural and did not depend on any external mover. Cobo, while acknowledging the fact that the stars were immobile and their movement was due to the rotation of the heavenly spheres, did not accept that the movement of the celestial spheres could be explained by some internal property; each of the ten heavens must have been “assisted and moved by an angel, which were called by the ancient philosophers intelligences” (Obras, 1:27). This explanation would have made no sense to Acosta, who believed that such a dependence on an external will would preclude any rational explanation of the movement of the stars and planets by subjecting the movement of the skies to the whim of an intelligent and free-willing being. For



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Cobo, on the other hand, only the agency of angels, the conveyors of God’s will, could explain the regularity observed in the movements of heavens. To be sure, Acosta never denied explicitly the role of creatures as executors of God’s orders, but he limited this participation to human beings and natural objects; however, Cobo seems to have understood this participation as prominently including angels, heavenly bodies, and occult influences. It is for this reason that Cobo claimed that no matter how much it exerted itself, human intellect could never find an answer to all the problems posed by the natural world. We can only see the effects of natural operations, without ever being certain about their true causes. The deeper and more intimate experience we have of a natural phenomenon, the less we can find general principles rationally deduced by abstract speculation useful in reconciling all the exceptions to the rule experience presents to us. The rehabilitation of occult and supernatural causes to Cobo was, in fact, a logical necessity. This is plainly evident in his discussion of what for him was the most vexing problem of American nature; namely, the animal and human repopulation of the continent following the Universal Flood. As Acosta, Cobo began by affirming the literal truth of the book of Genesis, from where it became clear to him that the original settlers of the continent must have come from the Old World.37 After dismissing the most implausible theories, as Acosta had done, such as the navigational hypothesis and the ones identifying the original settlers of America as the lost tribes of Israel, the mythic inhabitants of the Atlantis, or Phoenician sailors, Cobo stated the only probable answer was the land bridge theory (2:32–33). Unlike Acosta, who had merely speculated about such a land bridge, Cobo claimed to have proof of the existence of a land passage between Asia and America, for during his stay in Mexico José de Moura Lobo had assured him of the physical continuity between Tartary and the northern part of America: “And thus I believe that from that last region of Asia where lay China, Tartary, and the Archipelago of Saint Lazarus, in which the Philippines are located, came to this land its first settlers” (2:35). A brief comparison of the physical and moral features of the Amer­indians with those of the Asian peoples further convinced Cobo that this theory was true. But if the land bridge theory proved valid for explaining the human population of the continent, it could not possibly explain the presence of native fauna in America. In fact, for Cobo (unlike for Acosta), there was no logical link between the two problems, since the enigma of the animal population was not limited only to the American continent; any explanation must also account for the presence of a distinctive native fauna in the different regions of the world, be it Old or New (2:36). It was precisely this condition that made Cobo doubt the validity of Acosta’s account for the distribution of the animal species after the Flood. For both Jesuits, the problem was not the presence of characteristic animal species in America but, rather, the complete absence of American animals in the Old World. Take the case of the most conspicuous and economically significant Andean mammal, the llama. After the Flood, the llamas had to have reached the Andes traveling from Mount Ararat. If such a long migration had actually happened,

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why were there no llamas remaining in the Old World? How could no trace of them whatsoever be found in Asia?38 Acosta had postulated that following their natural instinct and guided by divine providence, animals had probably migrated from Mount Ararat to the different regions of the world, settling wherever they found conditions suitable to their respective natures; populations living outside these favored areas had simply died out, leaving no extant individuals behind to attest their migrations (Historia natural y moral, 283). Although the animal capacity for migration as a logical explanation for the post-deluge distribution of the world fauna was widely accepted in the seventeenth century, this explanation presented two fundamental problems according to Cobo.39 First, if some climates and lands were more suitable to the nature of certain animal species and inconvenient for others, how could one then pre­ suppose a migration from a common center? Would that mean all animal species must have crossed through lands inadequate for their survival before reaching their final destinations? Since there is no climate or land suitable to all animal species, such a migration would have been impossible (Obras, 2:39). The second problem was the modern behavior of animals. Even if we admit that the animals, driven by their natural instinct, set out from the ark to search for other lands, “how, being still the same, have they become tired so many centuries ago and now are not as fond of walking as they used to be, but each species, being content with the province and region where they are born and raised, do not dare trespass its limits to enter and wander in some others?” (2:39). In short, the proposed migration of the American fauna through the land bridge was “an intolerable absurdity,” since it implied a contradiction between the observed facts and a hypothetical—and highly dubious—previous state of affairs. As in other instances, Cobo found it easier to poke holes in previous theories than to propose a solution to overcome all the objections presented by the evidence. Following his statement that the literal truth of the book of Genesis must be logically presupposed in any attempt to solve the problem, Cobo stated we must rule out any preternatural explanation for the origins of the human and animal populations of America: “The second presupposition is that we should not invoke miracles if we can do without them, because we are not investigating here what God could have done to populate the whole world, but what is in accord with the style of human affairs” (2:32). Although this statement appears to be an almost verbatim quotation of Acosta, it is found also in Cobo’s most relevant source for the interpretation of Genesis, Benedictus Pererius’s Commentariorum et Disputationum in Genesim (1589).40 In the opening of his book, Pererius had laid down four basic rules needed for a proper interpretation of Genesis. The first rule: Moses’s narrative of the creation of the world is plainly historical, not allegorical or figurative.41 The second rule was that one must neither adduce unnecessary miracles nor invoke the absolute power of God in exposing and explaining the book of Genesis.42 His other two rules—that one should not treat separately related problems, and that scriptural truth could not contradict what is evident in nature—also seem to have been operative in Cobo’s critical reading of Acosta.43



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Cobo’s solution to the problem of animal distribution was precisely the one Acosta had mockingly advanced as an example of sheer irrationality: “Once the Flood was over, God was careful to command the same angels to return [the animals] to the lands and places from where they had brought them [to Noah’s ark]” (Obras, 2:38).44 Cobo seems to have been well aware of the tensions raised by his solution to the animal population of America. He claimed that the carrying of the animals by the angels from Noah’s ark to America was nothing but the continuation of a much earlier miracle; it was not only the logical conclusion of the miracle by which, according to the church doctors, all the animal species had reached the ark in time before the flooding; it was, moreover, the same mechanism used by God to present all the animals to Adam so he could name them (2:38–39). As Cobo claimed in his preemptive defense to criticism, his solution followed his prerequisites; furthermore, it is in the development of this argument that Cobo relied more heavily on the first six days of creation he had included as the opening of his Historia del Nuevo Mundo than in any other section, where he claimed that when God created all plants, herbs, and trees during the third day, he did so by immediately placing each species in the region whose soil and climate were better suited to each of their natures. The same argument could be made for animals. Each genus and species of fish, birds, and land animals is so different that many of them cannot survive outside their regions of origin, as is proven by experience: “In conformity with this principle, we must concede that if today all the species of animals cannot live and multiply by natural means in the same climate and under the same constellation, then that has always been the case, and that they had never been together in the same place and territory by natural means” (2:39). Here, the operative expression is “by natural means,” but there are at least two instances in which scripture seems to indicate that all species of animals were together in the same location; the first is Adam’s naming of animals in paradise and, the second, the gathering of male and female exemplars of each species in Noah’s ark. These two moments must represent an unnatural occurrence; that is to say, a miracle. From the texts of Genesis 2:19 and 6:20, it is clear these events were willed by God, who “brought them [the animals] to the man to see what he would call them” and who informed Noah that the animals would come to him. According to the church doctors, the latter instance was achieved in the same way the animals were brought to Adam’s presence: “They were picked up and locked in the ark by the action of the angels.”45 It was then logical to assume, argued Cobo, that in either instance the return of the animals to their natural places also had been done by the same angels, who had been commanded by God to do so (Obras, 2:38).

Colonial Languages, Colonial Nature Cobo’s conflating of two different miracles—the way the animals were presented to Adam and the way in which they were gathered in the ark—as an explanation

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for the presence of an exclusively American fauna was more than an attempt to include the New World within the Christian master narrative of the creation. It also encapsulated some of the major themes in his description of American natural entities. By the seventeenth century, both the garden of Eden and Noah’s ark were frequently used as symbols of knowledge and human dominion over nature.46 Whereas in the garden of Eden, Adam was thought to have enjoyed a perfect encyclopedic knowledge of nature (a fact indicated by his giving to every creature its proper name), after the Fall, this knowledge was lost to humankind. Conversely, Noah’s ark was sometimes interpreted as the act by which God had restored—at least to a certain extent—human dominion over nature, not only entrusting Noah and his family with the rescuing of all animal species, but also making him tally, classify, and display every kind of animal within the confines of the ark. In this sense, Noah’s ark was as much a site of knowledge as the garden of Eden had been before the Fall: a place where the basic taxonomical operations of distinguishing, categorizing, and naming were carried out. In his 1675 treatise on the ark, for example, Kircher called it the first museum of natural history. Elsewhere in Europe, it was not unheard of for museums to be referred to as “arks.”47 It is in this context that we must understand Cobo’s identification of the way animals were both presented to Adam and brought to the ark with how they found their way back to America. More than simply attempting to include American natural history within the inescapable frame of the biblical narrative, Cobo’s recourse to angels as the carriers of animals underscored two fundamental themes in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo: One, the irreducible difference of American species who, incapable of living outside their natural environments, had to be returned to their natural places after the Flood by unnatural means. Two, the slow process of recovering knowledge about and dominion over nature made possible by the discovery and colonization of the American environment under the aegis of Spain. These two themes appeared intertwined in the opening of Cobo’s description of American natural objects: “I will proceed . . . to write about the most well-known and notable things that I have found are produced [in the Indies], both those that are common and belong to the same genera of the things in Europe and those that are particular and proper to this New World, of which we had no news in Europe before it was discovered by our Spaniards” (Obras, 1:108). The Spanish exploration and conquest of America had brought to the attention of European naturalists a new continent, and with it a wealth of unknown animals and plants, expanding human knowledge about nature beyond the limits that had constrained it for centuries. But along with a surplus of new information came problems of organization. Although it has been claimed that taxonomy was not a major problem for Renaissance naturalists at least until the last third of the sixteenth century, the classification of new species had been a problem for colonial writers almost from the beginning of the colonial period.48 As Cobo indicated above, one of these problems was related to the identification of species proper to the New World and those that are the same or similar to those



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found in Europe. For instance, in his Sumario de la natural historia (1526), the first description of American plants and animals published in Europe, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo systematically distinguished between species shared by the Old and the New Worlds and those belonging exclusively to America. Acosta also distinguished between these two groups, stating that the surest way to know whether an animal or plant common to Europe and America was native or introduced was to see if there was a name for it in the native language: “This rule I have found apt for discerning what things the Indians had before the Spaniards came and what they did not have. For to those things they had and knew, they gave a name; those newly received they also named, usually with the same Spanish names, although pronounced in their own manner” (Historia natural y moral, 279). In the Historia del Nuevo Mundo, Cobo shows the same preoccupation with distinguishing between native and introduced species, with one difference. What for Acosta had been a relatively unproblematic task was a basic taxonomic concern for Cobo: “[Regarding the subject of plants] we found a great difficulty that, even if it had no bearing in the previous book, in which we treated inanimate bodies, it will be present in everything we write from now on” (Obras, 1:154). The difficulty was to distinguish properly between those species living in America prior to the Spanish conquest and those introduced by the Europeans. The problem was compounded by the fact that the introduction of European plants had not been limited to domestic species, but included both wild and feral varieties of Old World plants. The fertility of the American soil, particularly in the humid and temperate tropics, had caused many plants originally intended for cultivation to escape human control, invading wide areas of the continent with such a success that “some people have come to think that they are not foreign and alien, but native to the land” (1:154). Besides the invasive character of many introduced species, many American plants and animals undoubtedly belonged to the same taxonomic groups found in the Old World, so it was very difficult to know if the common species had been brought from Europe or were autochthonous (1:154). Taxonomic concerns are at the center of Cobo’s description of American species, as can be seen by the importance he gave to zoological and botanical nomenclature. In the Historia del Nuevo Mundo, Cobo described over three hundred and fifty species of plants and, unlike most European naturalists, he included the Spanish name along with native denominations for most of them, often in more than one language.49 Cobo’s systematic incorporation of native names and traditions about plants (which he obtained from native informants) was directly related to his critical view of the imposition of European names based on perceived similarities between Old and New World species. Take the case of one of the most famous Peruvian plants, the granadilla or passion flower, mentioned by Acosta and popularized by an engraving included in Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Historia naturae, maxima peregrinae (1635), which prominently displayed the symbols of Christ’s passion in the granadilla flower. Cobo discussed the granadilla under the rather unusual name of apincoya, the Aymara term for the plant. However, both Acosta and Nieremberg had referred to it by the Spanish name,

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Nieremberg even keeping the Spanish spelling in his Latin text: “In the Peruvian mountains grows of its own accord the granadilla. This name was imposed to it by the Spaniards, on account of the similitude it has with our pomegranate.”50 Cobo, however, started with a description of the plant and its remarkable flower, discussing in detail its morphology to show how its different parts portrayed the crown of thorns, the nails, and the column of Christ’s passion. Only after this description did Cobo let his reader know the apincoya was “the flor de la granadilla, celebrated by many.” He also noted the plant was called tintin in Quechua, “but the Spaniards have given it the name of granadilla, because it has some resemblance to the pomegranate, although faintly so” (1:208).This criticism occurs frequently in the Historia del Nuevo Mundo. When discussing the cachun, known by the Spaniards of Peru as pepino de la tierra (literally, “cucumber of the land”), he commented that “its fruit bears no resemblance whatsoever to the cucumber, except maybe once in a while in its size and shape; and so I don’t know why the Spaniards named it pepino de las Indias, if not because they could not find any other fruit from Spain to which the cachun could be more properly compared” (Obras, 1:177). For Cobo, Spanish names based on purported resemblances between European and American natural entities only contributed to making taxonomy more confusing, and he therefore preferred to use native names whenever possible. For the same reason, he declined any attempt to identify the species he described with those mentioned by the ancient naturalists, a practice not uncommon among Jesuit writers such as Montenegro and Rosales: “I will not burden myself in trying to find if this or that thing is the same described by the ancient authors, such as Pliny, Dioscorides, and others, because I judge such practice to be a source of more obscurity” (1:156). Generally speaking, taxonomy is a way of rendering the variety of nature intelligible. To name a thing and locate it in its proper place within a classification system means to impose order upon nature, making explicit the conceptual links we assume exist in nature. During the early modern period, taxonomy was in part an enterprise aimed at knowing the nature of things and understanding the interrelationships making sense of them. 51 To call the apincoya “granadilla” because its fruit bears some slight resemblance to pomegranates, or to name a plant pepino de las Indias only because cucumbers are the only known plants with which it can be compared, violates this basic principle. Instead of mirroring the way natural entities are assumed to be ordered in nature, these naming acts imply a false connection between species, thus obscuring the fact—so important to Cobo—that American native species were radically different from European ones. For him, naming had to be a source of clarity regarding the proper origin of a species, making clear not only its native environment, but also signaling its very specificity. Cobo’s misgivings about Spanish naming practices in the New World were directly related to his goals in determining the provenance of the different species populating America. Brian Ogilvie recently claimed that “the research methods and goals of Renaissance natural history—above all, the documentation centers of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—did remove plants (and to



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a lesser degree, animals) from the ecological contexts in which they were usually encountered by folk.”52 Certainly, this trend is well documented in European intellectual history, culminating in the eighteenth century with Linnaeus’s Systema naturae (1735), which proposed a classification system of plants based solely on morphological features, particularly of the flower. But along with this totalizing trend seeking to systematize all species, we can also discern another trend in early modern European natural history, one in which the local and the particular had more importance. Instead of the standardization of botanical knowledge implied by the efforts of systematizers from Cesalpino to Linnaeus, many natural historians devoted their efforts to describing the local, including multiple names and traditions about plants that reflected their regional variation.53 Cobo’s work can be productively considered part of this trend, albeit on a much larger scale. Cobo’s insistence on local names, his dependence on local informers and, above all, his attempts to identify vernacular from introduced species and varieties are all part of the same effort to bring to the forefront the richness and variety of the indigenous environment—an effort akin to those naturalists and botany aficionados who were cataloguing and describing the flora, fauna, and mineralogy of their own backyards in northern Europe during roughly the same years. But it would be a mistake to identify Cobo’s endeavors squarely with the enterprise of contemporary local botanists compiling catalogs of plants found around towns and cities in Europe, for there is a definitive totalizing aspiration in Cobo’s description of American plants and animals. Not only was his geo­ graphical scope much broader than those of the naturalists devoted to describing European local and regional flora; the basic assumptions guiding Cobo were also more general and universal. Unlike other seventeenth- and eighteenth-­century colonial writers who focused on the local and regional, it would be difficult to ascribe to Cobo’s work what Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra has called a “patriotic epistemology”—an insistence on the exceptionality of the New World and its nature.54 Instead, Cobo’s insistence in determining the proper origin of a plant and his criti­cisms of Spanish naming practices are more expressions of some of the themes and motives I have underscored in this chapter, in particular the ecological specificity of natural objects and the uniqueness of America. Both of these ideas have ideological underpinnings in the orderly character of the universe espoused by Cobo and explicitly portrayed in his account of the creation of the world. As discussed above, Cobo (following Aquinas) emphatically made the point that the material world had been created for human beings. God’s foresight had anticipated every necessity human beings would have, and he had provided accordingly, arranging the world in such a way that any human need would be met; thus, on the third day of creation, after bringing into being the inanimate mixed bodies, God “dressed the earth with all genera of plants, both for the ornament and beauty of the same earth, as well as to prepare with them the sustenance of the animals he would create in the following days, and particularly for the sustenance of man.” The same hierarchical ordering of material substances identified by Aquinas (mixed bodies for the sake of plants, plants for the sake of

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animals, animals for the sake of humans) is expressed in God’s creative act, but for Cobo, this act was simultaneously general and place-specific, given the diversity of climates and soils making up the earth: “[And God] created them in the state, size, and perfection that each species’ nature required, in conformity with the quality of the region and climate in which he put them” (Obras, 1:17). Plants were created, among other things, to serve as fodder for animals, and animals were also created in their specific habitats, in agreement with their specific natures and the environmental conditions better suited to them—or, to avoid the anachronism, “God created them in the sites and climates that the condition of each species demanded” (2:37). The uniqueness of America was not an indicator to Cobo of its exceptionally benign nature or its beneficial climate, as it was for other Jesuit writers such as Ovalle or Rosales. Instead, it was an example of the variety of nature in general—a variety that was ultimately an expression of the power, foresight, and benevolence of the Creator. It is in this sense that the distinction between New and Old World species was for Cobo a valid descriptor—a useful taxonomic category—inasmuch as it reflected accurately the relationships between the different species, as well as between the species and their habitats in genetic relationships backed up by the authority of scripture. It reflected the order of the created world. This is the reason why it was so important for Cobo to adjudicate to each species its proper name, avoiding the confusion derived from quickly and unreflectively giving a new species a name like one from Europe. Not even the place indicator de las Indias (of the Indies) or de la tierra (of the land) could prevent this confusion, as his discussion of the cachun shows. Accordingly, he gave pride of place to native names, eschewing even widely accepted Spanish denominations such as the granadilla if he found them misleading regarding the origin of the plant or its true nature. Spanish names were a source of confusion, and Cobo avoided them every time they could lead the reader to a wrong inference about the object named. For instance, when discussing yerba mate, Cobo noted that its proper name was caá, and calling it an herb was plainly wrong, for it actually is a tree (1:272). But even native names could be misleading, a fact Cobo was painfully aware of. Acosta’s method had been simply to ask the natives if they had their own name for an animal or a plant, and then deduce from this whether it was a native or introduced species. Cobo did not find this method so straightforward, noting there were two problems with it: “First, not every thing that has a name in the tongue proper to an Indian nation must be judged only by that indication to be native to this land” (1:154). He noted that the Andean natives had Quechua words referring to things they had manifestly lacked before the conquest; for example, they used the term quispi for “mirrors” and quelcani for “writing,” transposing the meaning of the words they had respectively used to signify “transparent, crystal-like” and “to draw” to the new material and cultural realities brought on by colonization (1:154). The second problem was the inverse situation: one could not infer that an object had been introduced from Europe because it lacked a name in the local native language. The Spanish colonial expansion throughout the continent had



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fundamentally altered the environment. Spanish conquistadors and settlers had taken with them native plants and animals from one region of the continent to another (1:155). Trade and settler movements across colonial Spanish America had facilitated the propagation of vegetal species from one region to another— species that then became acclimated to local environment and cultivation techniques. This process, in turn, had produced varieties of the original crops in such a way to make it sometimes difficult to ascertain whether a particular plant was indigenous to a certain region, or even to identify it. But the Spaniards carried with them more than just seeds and plants. Another movable commodity rendered native languages unreliable as indicators of vernacular species. When discussing yams and sweet potatoes in general, Cobo started by noting their extended cultivation area: “The batata is a root very well known not only in all the Indies, but also in Spain” (1:166). Cobo distinguished three varieties of sweet potatoes: “One that retains the common name of batata, and which is better than the others . . . [and] a second one that grows in Peru, which we call camotes, and which occupies the second place in goodness. . . . The third variety of batatas is that of the Hispaniola Island called ages, and which the Spaniards call ñames [yams]” (1:166). All these different varieties had been domesticated independently by different native groups. What is remarkable in Cobo’s description, however, is not the geographical extension or even the possible cultural importance of sweet potatoes, but the names the different varieties had received. Batata, the general name covering all types of sweet potatoes, came from the Hispaniola Island. Of the other names, “in Peru, it is called apichu in the Quechua language and tuctuca in Aymara. The Spaniards call it camote, a name that comes from the Mexican [Nahua] language.”55 From Hispaniola, the center of the first waves of colonization, to Mexico, and from Mexico to Peru, imported names had replaced local words and regional expressions, so that the sweet potato indigenous to Peru had come to be known by a Nahua name. The colonization process had produced a movement between both species and the native words used to designate them. Cobo was aware of this problem, and therefore rejected the search for native terms as a definitive seal of in­dige­ nousness for plants and animals. Although his solution—asking the oldest natives he could find whether a plant or animal was autochthonous or not—was ultimately as questionable as those of previous researchers, his description of American flora and fauna and his criticisms of Spanish naming practices reveal an acute sense of the colonial character of the American natural world largely absent from previous works, whether American or European. New species had been introduced to Peru not only from Europe, but also from other regions of America in order to facilitate European life there. Native languages, although retaining their own words for traditional crops and plants, had also incorporated words from other Amer­indian tongues or had created new meanings to allow existing words to refer to new realities, as in the case of quispi for “mirror.” Colonization had changed not only the American landscape, it had also altered native languages and the knowledge about the natural world they reflected, which was

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no longer the traditional Andean natural space, but a colonial landscape that included horses, hens, pigs, apple trees, and cacao groves. Conversely, the Spanish language spoken by the settlers was also influenced by the altered colonial landscape, making it difficult even for Spanish-speaking readers in Europe to understand the references to the American natural world. Since the Spaniards regularly adopted indigenous names for plants and animals in their places of residence, the same species could be referred to by several different denominations in different texts, “which usually is the source of great confusion for those in Europe who read the accounts of the natural things from this New World; because as it happens, in different accounts written in different provinces the same thing is called by different names [and readers think] that those things written with diverse words are not the same thing” (Obras, 1:155–56). In this sense, Cobo’s inquiry into the origins of the species he set out to describe can be seen as more than just a taxonomic enterprise. Although he could never properly resolve the conundrums posed by the colonial character of nature and languages in America and, therefore, could not determine with any degree of certitude the origin of the different species he described, his systematic attempts to do so brought to the forefront precisely the effects the Spanish enterprise in America had in shaping the natural and linguistic landscapes of the continent. Cobo’s Historia del Nuevo Mundo was truly a colonial natural history, not only because it set out to describe the nature of Spain’s colonial possessions in America, but because it was the product of both institutional and intellectual colonial conditions. Institutionally, as I discussed in Chapter 4, Cobo’s researches into the nature and history of the New World were fostered and, to a certain degree, made possible by his access to the Jesuit network of colleges, residences, and missions, which granted him access to a variety of objects and, more importantly, informers from all over America. The tension between speculative researches about America and the inquiries he had conducted on the field naturally led him to criticize the conjectural explanations presented by Acosta, and it was also conducive to his insistence on the specificity of local conditions. As Luis Mi­llo­nes Figueroa has noted, for Cobo the natural world as a whole was made up of a multiplicity of spaces, each with their own properties and climates and, therefore, animals and plants suited to those conditions.56 The specificity of American plants and animals, and the land’s climate and topography, was only a part of the variegated yet ordered world God had created for human beings. To be sure, not all Jesuit writers shared this conceptualization of America’s difference. Some, like Acosta, sought to emphasize the commonalities between the Old and the New World, describing an American nature that followed the same general principles and laws as Europe’s. Others, such as Ovalle and Rosales, did in fact underscore the exceptionality of American nature. It is to these authors we now turn.

Chapter 8

Local Nature, Local Histories

I

n his 1643 update of Pedro Ribadeneyra’s catalog of Jesuit writers, Philippe   de Alegambe announced that Cobo had put together a history of the Indies   that would be published before long.1 A year earlier, Cobo had returned to Peru after spending a decade in Mexico; despite Alegambe’s announcement, it took him ten more years to finish his Historia del Nuevo Mundo. Cobo died four years later in 1657 without seeing his book in print, and it seems that neither the Peruvian Jesuits nor the superiors in Rome made any efforts to publish it. It is likely that Cobo’s continuous defiance of instructions to stop his research and devote himself to his pastoral and educational duties had something to do with his manuscript remaining unpublished.2 Whatever the reason, in the late eighteenth century Cobo’s manuscript was in Seville, where Juan Bautista Muñoz found it and had it copied for his own collection, a copy that would later be the basis of the first edition of the Historia del Nuevo Mundo, edited between 1890 and 1893 by Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, and reprinted in 1956 by Francisco Mateos in the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles. Although it was the only work penned by a Jesuit in South America capable of rivaling Acosta’s Historia in scope and philosophical insight, Cobo’s book remained unknown to his contemporaries and relegated to oblivion for over two centuries. Thus, despite its ambitious scope, the Historia del Nuevo Mundo had little influence on subsequent Jesuit natural histories of South America. But the greater emphasis on the specificity of the American natural world that Cobo’s book reveals can be seen as part of a major trend that developed in the natural histories written by the Jesuits during the seventeenth century. Although Cobo’s book was the last attempt by a Jesuit to create a totalizing description of America in the seventeenth century, other contemporary Jesuit writers took up their pens to write more restricted, regional histories. By and large, these books focused on the missionary enterprise of the Society of Jesus in South America, emphasizing the hardships and difficulties encountered by the Jesuit missionaries in isolated areas of the continent while showcasing their role in the political and economical suc

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cess of the regions in which they worked. More often than not, the Jesuits writers who took up the task of lending coherence and narrative form to the information and experience accumulated by the order did so following official instructions. Thus, for instance, Nicolás del Techo started to work on his history of the Paraguayan missions (which appeared in Liège in 1673) at the command of his superiors, who put all the papers and documents of the province at his disposal. Orders such as this did not come exclusively from Jesuit superiors. Sometimes, civil and political authorities requested the expertise of a particular Jesuit writer to compose a local or regional history. In the late 1620s, Luis Fernández de Córdoba, then Governor of Chile, started collecting papers and documents with the declared intention of commissioning the writing of a history of the realm. To this end, he bought the unfinished history left by one Domingo Sotelo Romay and, along with other documents, gave it to the Jesuit Bartolomé Navarro—who, however, failed to write the projected history. The project was forgotten until a royal directive instructed Governor Francisco Lazo de la Vega to arrange for a detailed description of Chile and its military and ecclesiastical history in 1633. Although Lazo de la Vega sent back to Spain short reports on these matters, he apparently commissioned Diego de Rosales, whom he had met during the voyage from Spain, to write a full-fledged history of Chile. Using the documents gathered by Fernández de Córdoba and supplementing them with information from the Jesuit archives housed at the College of Concepción, Rosales finally sent a first draft of his Historia general del reyno de Chile in the mid-1650s to Spain for approval.3 Rosales’s Historia general was more than simply a history of the conquest and colonization of Chile. Although his stated purpose was to perpetuate the memory of the conquerors and their deeds, Rosales in fact wrote a civil and military history that was also a panegyric to the missionary endeavors of the Jesuits.4 As I pointed out in Chapter 5, Rosales’s history has not survived in its entirety. Of the three volumes into which Rosales divided his book, only the first one— devoted to the natural and military history of Chile—is fully extant. Only fragments of the other two survive, the most significant as a holograph manuscript housed in the Chilean Biblioteca Nacional; however, from it and other contemporary sources we can get an idea of what the lost sections must have looked like. The holograph manuscript contains a draft of book 4 of the so-called “Spiritual Conquest.” It is structured as a series of biographies of all the Jesuit missionaries who worked in Chile from 1593 to approximately 1670. The other extant fragments of the “Spiritual Conquest” include an exposition of some of the Mapuche rituals and beliefs.5 It seems that the missing two volumes of Rosales’s book were not an ecclesiastical history, at least not in the sense implied by the 1633 royal directive that required a list of the bishops and the main ecclesiastical affairs that had happened during their tenures. Instead, Rosales’s narrative focused on the Jesuit missionary enterprise, a fact doubtlessly facilitated by his full access to the Jesuit archives in Concepción. Another Jesuit text— written by Ovalle, a contemporary and friend of Rosales—lends support to this interpretation. After dis-



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cussing the natural and military history of the realm, Ovalle devoted the section on ecclesiastical history in his Histórica relación del reyno de Chile solely to the missionary endeavors of the Society of Jesus. Ovalle explicitly presented his book as a preliminary work intended to give some information about Chile while the readers awaited the publication of a “general history of the kingdom of Chile that cannot take too long [to be published].”6 This was, without a doubt, the book Rosales was preparing. As several modern critics have commented, Ovalle depended at least in part on the information and drafts provided by Rosales, since Ovalle was writing while on an official mission in Italy and therefore away from the local archives of the Chilean Jesuits.7 That Jesuit writers such as Rosales and Ovalle considered the history of the order and the history of the conquest and colonization of Chile to be part of the same narrative was due to two factors. On a general level, the nature of Spanish rule encouraged a certain sense of independence among the different polities comprising the empire. What we refer to as “the Spanish Empire” was not an empire proper but, rather, a confederation of principalities and kingdoms held together by the person of a single monarch.8 Castile, Aragon, Naples, the Netherlands, and Portugal (between 1580 and 1640) all had different laws and political traditions the king was bound to respect. Inevitably, tensions arose between the centralizing impulses of the Crown and the different kingdoms, sometimes even becoming outright revolts, as in the case of Aragon in 1590 and Catalonia in 1640. The tensions between the Castilian center and the Spanish peripheries were also verified at the level of discourse. At least since the fifteenth century, there had been two different historiographical traditions in Spain: one that was highly centralized, concentrating on the deeds of the monarchs and their representatives, and another that sought to underscore the nobility, antiquity, and political relevance of the local and the city.9 These two traditions had an uneasy coexistence, with royal chroniclers constantly finding fault in local histories and local historians trying to counteract what they saw as an unwarranted centralism in official historiography. On the Peninsula, the production of local and municipal histories reached a peak during the first half of the seventeenth century, only to decline slightly in the next fifty years, although still remaining relevant for local elites. As Richard Kagan has noted, the rise of Spanish regional histories “defended and, in a way, helped both to create and sustain the forces of localism by arguing for the historical importance of the kingdom’s municipalities.”10 Although the American colonies were legally part of Castile, from very early on the colonists and settlers started referring to them by using a language similar to the diverse polities that comprised the Peninsula; thus, administrative divisions—either governorships or viceroyalties—were regularly referred to as reynos (kingdoms). Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra has remarked that their status as “kingdoms” was not merely symbolic or rhetorical: the Creole elites who controlled much of the land and economic production in the colonies enjoyed a considerable autonomy until the eighteenth century.11 Almost from the beginning of the colonization, the conquerors and their descendants aspired to become a landed

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nobility through the perpetuity of the encomienda grants. By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, however, it was becoming increasingly evident for Creole elites that the Crown was turning its back on them by phasing out the encomiendas and appointing Peninsular-born individuals to the highest colonial offices. At the same time, Creoles were starting to swell the numbers of the clergy, both as secular priests and as members of the religious orders. From these positions, the discursive practices of clerical Creoles in the seventeenth century focused on the regional, and attempted to transform colonies into “kingdoms.”12 These colonial texts underlined the mutually beneficial, reciprocal, or contractual relationship between the monarchy and the colonies, as did Peninsular regional historiographies.13 By exalting the position of their respective regions within the Spanish Empire, Creole writers were expressing and fostering an early patriotic sentiment. The second factor helping to explain the correspondence between local history with the history of the Society of Jesus has to do with the evolution of the administrative divisions of the order. Although the Jesuit Peruvian province origi­ nally had under its jurisdiction a territory comparable to that of the viceroyalty itself, the difficulty of exerting effective control in the more remote areas of the continent where the Jesuits were rapidly expanding soon brought on a series of administrative subdivisions. Thus, Paraguay became an independent province in 1607, and Chile became a semi-autonomous vice province, reporting first to Paraguay and, after 1625, to Peru, until it became an independent province in 1683. Quito also became a vice province in 1605, depending on Peru and spanning the territory of today’s Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. As it happened, in places like Chile, these new Jesuit administrative divisions coincided almost exactly with the political divisions of the Spanish Empire. Since each Jesuit province and vice province had their own colleges and novice houses, they came to depend more and more on local elites to replenish their ranks. Writers such as Ovalle often came from this new breed of home-grown Jesuits. Although devoid of the epistemological and theological preoccupations of Cobo and Acosta, Ovalle’s Histórica relación and Rosales’s Historia general del reyno de Chile were part of an important trend in Jesuit writings about nature in South America. As David Brading has shown, the texts produced by Creole clerics and academics during the seventeenth century—whether sermons, memoranda to the Crown, poems, or historical narratives—were informed by a rhetoric of Creole patriotism seeking to underscore the aptitudes, capacities, and birthrights of the conquistadors’ descendants.14 In this sense, texts such as those written by Ovalle and Rosales were an expression of a fledgling Creole identity, but one that was in fact included in a peculiar form of Jesuit propaganda. Alongside some of the classic themes of Creole defense of the patria and its inhabitants (which, in many cases, shared a thematic affinity with Peninsular chorographies), we also find in Ovalle and Rosales some peculiarly Jesuit aesthetic and scientific mental habits, such as a certain taste for emblematic representations and an interest for the marvels and wonders of nature and the moral meanings they reveal.15



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Their description of Chilean nature can be read as a “rhetoric of praise” in which the comparisons between local nature and the Old World was not intended to highlight the fundamental unity of the world, as Acosta had done, or the difference between Europe and America. Instead, we find in both Ovalle and Rosales a narrative construction of the inherent superiority of the Chilean climate, flora, and fauna vis-à-vis Europe and other regions of the New World. Using different methodologies, both writers focused on the local, forgoing the wider scope so important to Cobo and Acosta.

Nature and Jesuit Enterprises In 1641, the Chilean Jesuits sent Ovalle as their procurador (proxy) to Madrid and Rome. Ovalle was responsible for (among other things) elevating Chile to the status of an independent Jesuit province, and negotiating with the Spanish king and the Jesuit superiors for the authorization to bring back forty-six European Jesuits to the missions and colleges in Chile.16 Ovalle’s presence in Rome coincided with the Eighth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, which he attended as procurador. In order to fulfill his mission, Ovalle deployed an intense diplomatic agenda in both Spain and Italy. He obtained several interviews with the king of Spain, General Muzio Vitelleschi, and the pope, while cultivating the friendship of influential members of the order such as Athanasius Kircher, whom he met while lodging at the Roman College. In addition to all this diplomatic and lobbying activity, Ovalle also pursued an ambitious publication program in order to promote Jesuit achievements in Chile. He gave to the presses three works: the Relaciones de las paces de Baydes (Madrid, 1642), a brief account of the peace agreement celebrated between the warring Mapuche clans and the governor of Chile that highlighted the Jesuits’ part in brokering the truce; the Tabula Geographica Regni Chile (Rome, 1646), an annotated map of the realm dedicated to Pope Innocence X; and the Histórica relación del reyno de Chile, the first history of Chile ever to be published. The narrative structure of the Histórica relación clearly reveals its propagandistic aims. The text is divided into eight books. Ovalle devoted the first two books to a description of the geography and nature of Chile, the third to an account of Mapuche customs, books 4 and 5 to the Spanish conquest, and book 6 to the continued resistance of the natives. In the seventh book, Ovalle narrated “the means to peace attempted by Father Luis de Valdivia of the Society of Jesus in order to facilitate the preaching of the Holy Gospel . . . and in the final and longest [book] of all, the ways in which the faith had been planted and the progresses that has made and makes, particularly through the missions and ministries of our Society.”17 Moving from natural history to military conquest, and then to the evangelization of native communities, Ovalle’s narrative underscores Jesuit activities not just as the most meaningful set of actions and events in Chilean history, but indeed as the vantage point from which all meaning can

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be cast on the history of the realm. In the Histórica relación, nature and history are understood from a Jesuit standpoint. The description of the land and its resources, as well as the account of its settlement and colonization, is subordinate to the praise of Jesuit missionary activities and, ultimately, to the promotion of the Chilean Jesuits, the better to fulfill the mission entrusted to Ovalle. Ovalle’s description of Chile was informed by a patriotic rhetoric of praise in which the territory of the “kingdom” was not only defined according to its geographical features, but also suffused with the values common in other regional histories, be they Peninsular or American. The local and municipal histories that were achieving a peak in Spain precisely around the time Ovalle published his Histórica relación sought to endow the cities and localities that commissioned them with a noble and ancient history and to underscore their Christianity and their services to the Crown, while describing the city as an ideal and noble polity surrounded by a rich nature and a fertile countryside.18 Quoting Acosta at length, Ovalle claimed that the antiquity of Chile had to be derived from the origins of its native inhabitants, who had come to the land following the migration route described by the Jesuit provincial in his 1588 De Natura (Histórica relación, 79– 81). The native peoples had indeed produced noble, rich, and powerful kingdoms in America, such as the Inca Empire. But even with all their military might, the Incas had been unable to subdue the Chilean natives, who had defeated an army of fifty thousand Inca soldiers, a feat unsurpassed in pre-Hispanic America (84– 85). Furthermore, even though the Spaniards had swiftly conquered the great and powerful Amer­indian empires, they were unable to quell the rebellious Mapuche (83). If in Spain the noblest families traced their claims to nobility back to their forefathers’ defense of the kingdom during the Muslim occupation, then, argued Ovalle, the Mapuche feats on the battlefield earned them the right to make an analogous claim. For Ovalle, in fact, the Mapuche were “the Cantabrians of America, who, just as their European counterparts, deserve the title of nobility for the bravery with which they defended themselves from their enemies” (86). But although Ovalle described the Mapuche as a noble people, they were still barbarians “who in their revenge are notably cruel, inhumanly quartering the enemies when they can capture them, impaling them, tearing out their hearts, chopping them into pieces and smacking their lips with their blood, like beasts” (88). This ambiguity in the portrayal of the Chilean natives, depicted simultaneously as noble warriors and debased savages, was explained by the dual origin Ovalle attributed to the moral traits of the Mapuche. On one hand, their barbarism and excessive love of fighting (belicoso espíritu) was due to an excess of the choleric humor in their complexions. Choleric humor, or yellow bile, was traditionally considered hot and dry and, at least for some Spanish physicians, a hot complexion precluded the full use of the individual’s rational faculties (88).19 As choleric individuals, the Mapuche were prone to fits of rage that obscured their rational capabilities, prompting them to exact horrible acts of revenge on their enemies. But if their negative characteristics were due to a humoral imbalance in native bodies, their positive attributes such as nobility, bravery, physical strength, and their love



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of freedom and patria were derived from the generous nature of the land. Quoting a now-lost work by the Franciscan friar Gregorio de León, Ovalle noted that these attributes came from “the fertility of the land that, as he says, almost doesn’t need anything from abroad, to which it must be added that these people are born and raised with so much gold under their feet as it is found in it, and they drink from its waters, which run along its minerals, so they participate in all its good and generous qualities.” The beneficial influence of the stars and constellations that shone in the Chilean skies could also be considered a cause for these positive moral traits (83). This ambiguity between the claims of a benevolent influence of the natural environment on its native inhabitants and their description as inhumanly cruel barbarians was by no means unique to Ovalle. As Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra has shown, the tensions between the idealized description of America as a quasiparadisiacal land that exerted a beneficial influence over the people who inhabited it and the need to portray the Amer­indians as a phlegmatic race that needed to be forced to work were constants in the texts penned by the Creole elites in the seventeenth century.20 In the Histórica relación, however, native bodies appear dominated not by the sloth that would result from a phlegmatic temperament but, rather, by the rage and vengefulness derived from an excess of choleric humors. Not surprisingly for a member of a religious order known in Chile to oppose forced native labor, Ovalle presented the Mapuche as formidable enemies rather than indolent, lazy people who needed to be disciplined into work. In fact, the Mapuche described by Ovalle were hard-working people, if only in the arts of war, and their strong and powerfully built bodies bore witness to the strenuous physical preparation to which they were subjected since early childhood (88–89). Native bodies were thus a product of the exceptionally rich land in their positive attributes, while their moral flaws were due to a temperamental disposition. This conceptualization of native bodies and souls had one definite advantage for a propagandist of the Jesuit missions such as Ovalle: the humoral imbalance that gave the natives their raging character could be easily corrected by changing their habits, in particular through the adoption of a new diet; acculturation (and not war) would eventually erase their more barbaric customs while retaining their noble traits.21 The benefits of Chilean nature were not limited to native bodies, but extended to European settlers as well, who could find in Chile a natural environment even more suited to their complexions and lifestyle than that of Europe. Book 1 of the Histórica relación has the clear purpose of comparing Chile to Europe, a comparison from which the colony emerged as a place superior to the metropolis. Chile was “so similar to Europe that he who has lived in both lands finds no difference, except for the opposite seasons. . . . [Furthermore, Chile] has some properties that make it truly singular” (2). The mild climate (neither too hot in summer nor too cold in winter) and the extremely rare occurrence of lightning, hail, or of any kind of severe storm made life comfortable during all the seasons: “Not of less esteem is another good quality of this kingdom, and that is that there

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are no vipers, serpents, scorpions, toads, nor any other poisonous animals to be found, so a man in the countryside can sit down under any tree and roll around in the grass with no fear of being bitten.” Chile also lacked jaguars, ounces, and other big cats abundant in other areas of America (2). Neither fleas nor lice could be found in Chile, a fact made all the more surprising by the abundance of those insects—as well as poisonous animals and frequent thunderstorms—in neighboring Cuyo, just across the Andes. All these nuisances were kept out of Chile by the Andes Mountains, which “like a strong wall of this kingdom of Chile, are its last line of defense” (3). If Ovalle’s claim of the superiority of Chile to Europe could be a pill difficult to swallow for European readers, they should at the very least believe that there was no other land in America where they could enjoy life as if in the Old World: “In some, as Brazil, Cartagena, Panama, Portobelo, and other areas in the tropics, the heat is excessive throughout the year; in others, such as Potosi and the highlands of Peru, it is the cold; in others there are dry winters and it rains in summer, when it is hot; and yet in others there is no wheat, or wine, or oil; and in others where these goods can be found, there is a lack of the other fruits proper to Europe” (3). In Chile, on the other hand, the European settler enjoyed four distinct seasons, as in Europe, as well as all the fruits, vegetables, and products that are the staples of European cuisine. Given its temperate climate and bountiful nature, Chile appears in Ovalle’s narrative as an improved version of Europe—the only place in America where European bodies will find themselves at home: “From this, it follows, as many authors have remarked, and experience shows, the great likeness between the men, animals, fruits, and foods from Chile with those of Europe.” In fact, the only people who needed a period of adjustment were those who came from the tropical areas of America (4). Thus, in the Histórica relación, Ovalle gives a portrait of Chile as a privileged land blessed with a climate and an agricultural production that ensured the goods Europeans needed both in everyday life and in the divine cult (e.g., Mass and other forms of worship). Ovalle repeatedly emphasized the fertility and advantageous climate of Chile, and its disposition to reward with largesse the effort and work invested on it. Whether the plantings were of ornamental flowers or crops, the fertility of the soil and the mildness of the climate produced amazing results, so much in fact that “in many places one cannot distinguish uncultivated from cultivated fields,” and even those crops requiring special care from farmers in Europe grew in the Chilean fields with no human intervention, and so abundantly that cattle and horses were allowed to graze on them (5). Although Ovalle acknowledged that in Chile, some of the fruits native to Mexico or Peru did not grow, “the benefit of . . . all universal trees, fruits, seeds, plants, and meats from Europe corresponds to . . . this kingdom,” and grew in such large quantities that people left their orchard gates open for anyone to walk in and eat as much fruit as they wanted (55, 8). The generosity of the land was not limited to bountiful crops, but also extended to its mineral riches, especially the most sought-after commodity, gold. Quoting once again the lost history by León, Ovalle declared



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Chile could accurately be called a gold plank because it boasted of so many gold mines, it was pointless to try and count them all (9). Chilean nature appears in the Histórica relación truly as a cornucopia—a generous land blessed by God, distinguishing it from all other kingdoms and provinces of America (36). Perhaps the best illustration of the quasi-miraculous conception Ovalle had of the fertility and goodness bestowed by God over Chilean nature is found in his discussion of a true wonder spontaneously produced by Chilean forests, the cross-shaped tree found in Limache (near Santiago). The description of the tree is the subject of chapter 23, the last chapter in book 1. It follows a long discussion of Chilean trees and, therefore, functions as an exemplary ending to the topic and to Ovalle’s discussion of Chilean nature in general. The importance of the tree is underscored by the presence of an engraving (Fig. 1) and by its inclusion in the map Ovalle dedicated to Pope Innocence X the same year he published the Histórica relación.22 According to Ovalle, the tree had been found in 1636 by a service Indian who was looking for timber. A pious Spanish landowner from nearby Limache bought the tree and built a chapel to exhibit it, which was where Ovalle and the Bishop of Santiago saw it. The tree was truly a wonder, looking utterly artificial at first sight. Its branches did not spring from the trunk, but had grown to resemble “the arms of a cross made from a different log and affixed to this trunk” (59). Even more remarkably, on top of this seemingly artificially crafted cross was the shape of a human body “on which one can see clearly and distinctly the arms, that although fused to the cross, appear as if superimposed on it . . . and the chest and flanks [of a man] over the trunk in the same manner, showcasing the ribs, so one can almost count them, and the armpits, as if an sculptor had crafted it” (59). In fact, to Ovalle, the structure of the tree seemed to violate every principle postulated by “natural reason,” leaving him at a loss to explain the phenomenon (59). The importance Ovalle gave to the Limache tree (the only natural object to which he devoted a whole chapter) is mirrored by that of the miraculous rock found in Arauco that depicted with astonishing accuracy the Virgin with Christ in her arms, with which Ovalle concluded his section devoted to the Jesuit missions among the Mapuche (Fig. 2). As with the tree, the image of the Virgin was not the product of any artist, but a prodigious natural occurrence (393). This irruption of wonders marks one of the starkest departures from the Jesuit natural histories I have discussed until here. Whereas Acosta rejected the study of the singular in order to emphasize the regularities of nature and history as manifestations of the divine plan for salvation, and Cobo focused on a few conjectural miracles only as a way out of the logical conundrums presented by Acosta’s speculations, Ovalle’s portents are instead a direct manifestation of God’s will and function both as a narrative device to punctuate his natural, military, and missionary histories of Chile and as a heuristic mechanism to understand Chilean history and nature.23 Thus, when the Bishop of Santiago went to see the Limache tree, Ovalle noted that “he was awed and consoled to see such a great and new argument in favor of our faith, that, as it is just barely taking root in that

Cross-shaped tree found in Limache. Ovalle, Histórica relación. (Courtesy of the University of Connecticut’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.)

The miraculous Virgin of Arauco. Ovalle, Histórica relación. (Courtesy of the University of Connecticut’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.)

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New World, the Author of Nature wants the very trees to sprout and bear witness of [the Christian faith], and not in hieroglyphics, but with the true representation of the death and passion of our Savior, which was the only and efficacious method with which [the faith] was sown” (59). Natural causes being insufficient to explain the singularities of the portents, they became clear signs (not in hieroglyphics) of the God’s will to include America—and Chile in particular—within the economy of salvation. They became neither the subject of rational inquiry nor even (as in the case of the granadilla discussed by Acosta, Cobo, and Nieremberg) mere catalysts for the pious contemplation of God but, rather, celebratory signs of God’s approval of the missionaries’ work—a literal sign of the process by which the Catholic faith was taking root and blossoming throughout the land. To be sure, the emphasis on the wonders of nature was a common feature in early modern natural histories.24 In fact, Ovalle’s interpretation of the portents described in his book fit well within a hermeneutic tradition, which saw in wonders, portents, and prodigies signs of things to come based both on scriptural authority and a popular understanding of the marvelous as a harbinger of the future.25 As Mary Baine Campbell has noted, the early modern category of wonder can be understood “as a register . . . which embraces surprise, enjoys the excess and alteration which generate it, is constitutively open to the rewriting of the past as well as the future, the making of new worlds.”26 The marvelous, the portent, and the monster were all instances of awe-filling particularities, where the laws of nature were momentarily suspended to reveal an altogether different meaning, thus opening up to allegorical or symbolic interpretations. The wonder, then, could be used as a heuristic tool to gain knowledge of a transcendent sort about the physical and natural world—an approach to natural philosophy to which the Jesuits on both sides of the Atlantic were particularly inclined.27 It was precisely in the contemplation of portents that Ovalle’s “pious reader” could “admire the divine wisdom of our Lord, and his infinite prudence in the means and motives he has given us, even in natural and insensible things, to confirm our faith and to increase the piety and devotion of the faithful” (Histórica relación, 60). Prodigies and portents were a privileged site of knowledge. Ovalle’s description of Chilean nature is peppered with portents and exceptional events. For instance, he begins his discussion of volcanoes by singling out a particular eruption that happened on the lands of Aliante (a warring Mapuche leader) in 1640. The volcano spat out flaming boulders and the explosion was so violent, it was mistaken for cannon fire several leagues away. But this brief account was only meant to whet the reader’s interest, for immediately Ovalle stated that the eruption of the Aliante volcano would be treated in detail later, “in the account of the new subjection of those lands to our Catholic king, to whom they have surrendered, moved by this and other prodigies” (15). Similarly, in the chapter devoted to birds, Ovalle noted that although eagles are a common sight in the Chilean skies, Imperial eagles had been sighted only on two occasions, during the first Spanish expedition to Chile and “in the year 1640 when, as we shall see later . . . the rebel Araucanians surrendered their indomitable cervices [indómita cerviz]

Wonders and portents prefiguring the Baides peace talks. Ovalle, Histórica relación. (Courtesy of the University of Connecticut’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.)

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to their God and King, understanding this to be one of the signs of the divine will” (45). All these wonders are portrayed simultaneously in an engraving accompanying the chapter devoted to the Baides peace talks, a verbatim transcription of the pamphlet he had published in Madrid in 1642 (Fig. 3). The peace talks celebrated between Francisco López de Zúñiga, Marquis of Baides and Governor of Chile, and the leaders of the main Mapuche clans who had resisted the Spaniards were presented by Ovalle as the definitive ending of the century-long war for the control of the Chilean territory. The talks had a distinct Jesuit flavor. Among those in the marquis’s retinue were two Jesuits: Francisco Vargas, his confessor, and Diego de Rosales, López de Zúñiga’s private counselor and interpreter.28 Probably because of this strong Jesuit influence, the governor’s approach to the war in Chile had been closer to the defensive war championed by Luis de Valdivia than to the more aggressive strategy pursued by his predecessor, Fernández de Córdoba, who had declared the end of the defensive war strategy in 1626. On the contrary, López de Zúñiga considered the offensive strategy pursued until 1640 to be too costly, both in lives and economic resources. His insistence on sending missionaries to secure the peace among the recently pacified Mapuche instead of increasing the military presence in the area put him very close to Valdivia’s thesis. It does not come as a surprise that, given his avowed purpose to publicize Jesuit activities in Chile, Ovalle considered the Baides peace talks to be the climactic culmination of his historical narrative. As I discussed in Chapter 2, the implementation of Valdivia’s defensive war strategy was probably the most significant political action of the Jesuits in seventeenth-century Chile. Ovalle devoted book 7 of the Histórica relación to Valdivia’s efforts to implement the defensive war strategy. The political undertakings of Valdivia are thus the narrative link between the military and the missionary accounts in Ovalle’s book. Reinforcing this link, Ovalle’s account of the Baides peace talks comes exactly at the end of book 7, thus presenting López de Zúñiga’s negotiations as a return to the defensive war strategy and metonymically translating his success to the Jesuits. It is difficult to imagine a better subject for the Chilean procurador’s propaganda campaign than the peace talks. Their centrality in Ovalle’s efforts can be seen not only in the fact that he published a separate account of them, they are also prominently displayed in the Tabula Geographica, the map he dedicated to Innocence X. There, in the upper right corner, a large illustration shows the encounter between the Marquis of Baides and Antehueno (the Mapuche spokesman) under the eloquent caption, “Pax inter Hispanos et Indos” (Peace between Spaniards and Indians). In the background, lest anyone had any doubts about the real means by which this victory had been achieved, a group of natives are shown sacrificing a llama in front of a large cross. To contextualize the significance of this event properly, in the upper left corner there is another drawing depicting a battle between the Spanish and Mapuche armies, with the Latin caption, “The atrocious war between Spaniards and Indians that lasted one hundred years.”



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But if on his map Ovalle directly conveyed the importance of the peace talks by graphically depicting them, in the Histórica relación he chose to illustrate their significance by portraying not the peaceful encounter between the two leaders but, instead, the terrifying signs that had prompted the Mapuche to subscribe to a peace treaty. The caption explains the rationale for this election: all of the prodigies had been seen the preceding year by the natives and terrified them into surrendering to the king and accepting the Catholic faith. Although Ovalle did establish from the outset that this interpretation was not his own, but the explanation given by the “rustic” natives, his account of the prodigies depicted in the illustration was not an attempt to expose the superstitious nature of this understanding but, rather, to affirm the reality of the signs. Thus, for example, the clashing armies occupying the whole upper third of the engraving, where one can clearly see the Apostle Saint James leading the Spanish army against the fleeing Mapuche, was probably a graphic rendition of a true account given by the Mapuche of the reasons that moved them to sign the peace. We know from other chroniclers that the Mapuche carefully observed thunderstorms and the movement of the clouds in order to predict the outcome of a battle.29 But Ovalle did not mention this custom as an explanation for the portent; instead, he reminded his reader that apparitions of ghost armies were not infrequent in classical literature, and that a similar case could be found in the books of the Maccabees (Histórica relación, 302). Similarly, the eagles attacking the Indian villages in the background and the volcanic eruption depicted in the front had already been discussed by Ovalle in the natural history section of his book, thus proving they were facts. But by far the most important wonder depicted both in the engraving and in the accompanying narrative of the account is the monster that emerged from the volcano, riding the flood of waters flowing down its melting snowcaps. It is in fact because of the apparition of this monster that Ovalle had set apart the Aliante volcano eruption as a portent in book 1. As in the case of the Limache tree, Ovalle assigned a spiritual rather than natural meaning to the beast. He asserted that a pious contemplation of the creature—its head crowned by “several twisted horns, and uttering frightening howls and pitiful cries”—shows it to be the same beast described by John in the book of Revelations, which, according to the expositors of the scriptures represented the vices of gentility, idolatry, and dishonesty (303). The meaning of the prodigy was clear: “Thus, it seems we can hope that the time has come when, through the work of evangelic preachers, for whom these heathens now clamor, the divine mercy desires that this beast be cast out of the land that it has tyrannized, howling for seeing itself evicted and thrown out from its former domains, and the abyss will open its mouth and swallow it and consume it, tearing it apart with the teeth of its furious waves and burning streams” (303). Clearly, the preachers for whom the repentant Mapuche were clamoring were the Jesuits, and the means through which both peace and Christianity would be instituted in the land were the peace talks being conducted by Governor López de Zúñiga and his Jesuit advisors (303). Foretold by a constella-

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tion of portents and wonders, the Baides peace talks were depicted by Ovalle as the end of an era—one of constant warfare and struggle to conquest the Mapuche people—and the beginning of a time when the peaceful preaching of Christianity could take place. The close relationship between the approach taken by the Marquis of Baides to the Chilean war and the Jesuit strategy championed by Luis de Valdivia earlier in the seventeenth century, along with the important role played by the Jesuit advisors of the governor during the peace talks, made the signing of the treaty in 1641 the perfect event to emphasize the role played by the Jesuits in the success of the realm.

A Missionary Scientist Ovalle wrote the Histórica relación while in Rome, “deprived of the materials I needed for this enterprise, and far away from where I could get them.”30 Although Ovalle claimed to have seen most of the things described in his book, the fact is that he never worked in the missions among the Mapuche, and large areas of Chile such as the Chiloe Archipelago and Arauco were known to him only through secondhand reports, which forced him to resort to published sources to fill the gaps in his knowledge. He quoted extensively from the works of royal chronicler Antonio de Herrera; from the Collectiones peregrinatiorum in Indiam orientalem et Indiam occidentalem (1590–1634), published in twelve volumes by Theodor de Bry and his successors; from Jean de Laet’s Histoire du Nouveau Monde (1640); and even from Alonso de Ercilla’s epic poem La Araucana. However, his main sources came from Chile. Ovalle directly transcribed some of the annual letters sent by the Chilean Jesuits to Rome describing their missionary work among the Mapuche; similarly, his account of the peace talks between López de Zúñiga and the Mapuche leaders was based on “the originals that the father provincial of my province sent me to Spain, which were the same written down by the fathers of our Society that accompanied the royal army”; that is to say, Vargas and Rosales (301). Ovalle also depended heavily on the general history of Chile written by Rosales, who had apparently sent him an early draft of his book. Besides Ovalle’s announcement at the outset of his book that he was publishing it only while the reader awaited the completion of a general history of Chile, Rosales himself also made clear that Ovalle’s history was based, at least in part, on his own work.31 In fact, although the manuscript of Rosales’s Historia general del reyno de Chile was completed only in 1673—that is, more than twenty-five years after the publication of Ovalle’s book—the latter did not seem to influence Rosales, except for the few times he corrected Ovalle’s claims.32 Although both the Historia general and the Histórica relación discuss many of the same phenomena and even quote the same passages from the now-lost history by Gregorio de León, the twenty-four chapters Rosales devoted to the description of the geography and natural history of the realm encompass a much larger number of animals and plants than



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those described by Ovalle. By the same token, although both authors deal with some strange natural phenomena, such as the salt-producing plants found near Santiago and the view of lightning from above when crossing the Andes, Rosales made no mention whatsoever of the spectacular wonders described by Ovalle.33 Rosales’s description of the 1640 eruption of the Aliante volcano, for instance, although almost exactly the same as the one found in the Histórica, omits any reference to the monster so central in Ovalle’s account of the Baides peace talks.34 The difference in approach between Ovalle and Rosales was due to their different objectives as writers. Whereas for Ovalle, wonders and portents were ideally suited to promoting the success of Jesuit endeavors in Chile by lending them divine sanction, for Rosales they would only detract from the credibility of his own account. In fact, as we shall see later, one of Rosales’s main purposes while writing his natural history of Chile was not so much to divulge the success of Jesuit evangelical efforts (although this goal is evident in the second half of his book, the so-called “Conquista espiritual”). Instead, Rosales intended to counter what he believed were European misconceptions and outright slander against America and its peoples. To accomplish this, Rosales opted for a different approach to establishing the divine good will toward Chile, one in which the favoritism was not expressed in portents and outright miracles but, rather, in the nurturing and fertile nature of the land. This is not to say wonders are totally excluded from the Historia general. Curious natural phenomena—such as the pebbles found in the Puru creek that showed perfect crosses on their surfaces, or the fish bearing on its skull the signs of the passion, much like the granadilla—abound in Rosales’s description of Chile (1:214 and 299). But these wonders have a much more marginal function in the Historia than in Ovalle’s narrative. The more spectacular portents such as the Limache tree are absent or reduced to mere hearsay. Thus, the miraculous rock resembling the Virgin and child with which Ovalle closed his account of the Jesuit missionary endeavors, interpreting it as a sure sign of God’s support of the Jesuits, is presented by Rosales as no more than a story told by the Chiloe Indians to which he lent no credibility, and certainly no spiritual meaning at all (1:5). Rosales’s rejection of the more marvelous aspects of Ovalle’s narrative was a consequence of his philosophical formation and his extensive missionary experience. Born in Madrid in 1603 to a rich goldsmith, Rosales from an early age enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education. By 1618, when he enrolled in the philosophy courses at the University of Alcala de Henares, he had already had a thorough classical education and was well acquainted with Greek and Latin literature.35 In Alcala, Rosales studied the first three years of philosophy under Pedro de Aranda, but his entrance into the Society of Jesus in 1622 prevented him from graduating. Rosales did his novitiate at the Jesuit college in Alcala and later on in Madrid. By 1624, he professed his first vows as a Jesuit and was sent to the small college of Huete, in Cuenca; there, he taught Latin for two years, until the Jesuit superiors transferred him to the order’s college in Murcia to finish his studies of philosophy. Despite the fact Rosales had already completed three out of the

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four years required, he had to start the course anew. Between his years as a secular student in Alcala and his years as a Jesuit in Murcia, Rosales had completed seven years of studies in philosophy by 1628. That same year, Rosales was sent to the missions in Peru along with eleven other Jesuits. In Lima, Rosales enrolled at the College of San Pablo to study his first two years of theology; in 1630, he arrived at the College of San Miguel in Chile, where he completed his final two years, plus a class on Mapudungun. His academic training seemed to steer him toward a teaching career; in 1633, he was in Bucalemu teaching literature, and soon was offered a position to teach philosophy at San Miguel. As his friend Niccolò Mascardi would also do some years later, Rosales refused the offer and pleaded instead to be sent to the missions, claiming that working for the salvation of souls was the only reason that had moved him to come to America and learn the native languages. The Jesuit superiors obliged, and he was sent to Arauco and Buena Esperanza and, in 1647, to the newly founded mission of Boroa.36 In an act anticipating Mascardi’s efforts some twenty years later, in 1653 Rosales set out from Boroa to the eastern slope of the Andes, leading back a group of forty-four Puelches from the Nahuel-Huapi area who had been illegally enslaved by a Spanish raiding party.37 The great Mapuche uprising of 1655 put a tragic end to Rosales’s missionary career. As discussed in Chapter 5, the uprising completely disrupted the missionary endeavors of the Jesuits in southern Chile, which would not be resumed until 1664. During the rebellion, Rosales was trapped inside the Spanish fort in Boroa for almost a year, besieged by Mapuche forces who had cut off all the means of retreat by killing or stealing the garrison’s horses. Once the Mapuche rebellion subsided, Rosales went back to Concepción and was appointed rector of the Jesuit college there. From then on, missionary life gave way to his involvement in administrative duties and political affairs.38 In 1659, Rosales was elected vice provincial of Chile, a post he would hold until 1665. During these years, Rosales visited the whole province, including Chiloe and the Jesuit residence in Mendoza (on the eastern slope of the Andes). He also oversaw the resuming of the missions among the Mapuche, and from 1663 he served as calificador (consultant) for the Inquisition. He wrote two brief treatises condemning the enslavement of rebel natives in 1670 and 1672.39 He was chosen procurador of the Chilean vice province to Madrid and Rome in 1673, but old age and internal divisions among the Chilean Jesuits prevented him from going back to Europe. Rosales died on June 3, 1677. Despite this intense missionary and administrative activity, Rosales always found time for his scientific and historical research. The nearly two decades Rosales spent evangelizing the natives in southern Chile represented for him a unique opportunity to acquire an intimate knowledge of Chilean nature. As did many other Jesuit missionaries, such as Montenegro, Mascardi, and Cobo, Rosales carried instruments and books with him from mission to mission. Commenting on Rosales’s long career as a missionary, his contemporary the Jesuit Nicolás de Lillo noted that besides evangelizing throngs of natives, Rosales also took time to study the nature of Chile, “so that there is not an island in its seas, a



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rock in its mountains, a tree in its forests, a herb or flower in its meadows, nor a creek or river in its valleys that his curiosity has not registered.”40 Although Lillo’s praises for Rosales’s naturalistic zeal are certainly hyperbolic, to say the least, Rosales’s Historia general indeed shows a deep familiarity with Chilean plants and animals. Rosales described over one hundred trees, plants, and herbs, and close to fifty species of birds, land animals, and fish, which makes book 2 of the Historia general the most comprehensive natural history of Chile written before the eighteenth century. Most of the information recorded by Rosales came from a mixture of firsthand experience and written and oral reports, which he carefully checked against the existing European literature. For instance, Rosales took pains to identify Chilean fish with the species described by Conrad Gesner in his Historia animalium (1551–1558).41 Similarly, he tried to identify Chilean plants with those described by the Greek physician Dioscorides, probably using the Spanish translation and commentary published by Andrés Laguna in 1555.42 Rosales’s long years as a missionary gave him a different, more skeptical outlook on Chilean nature than what Ovalle could have gained from his residence in Santiago. For example, Ovalle had marveled at the rare apparitions of Imperial eagles in Mapuche lands, but Rosales rather dismissively clarified the matter. Although Ovalle gave no description of these rare birds of prey, Rosales understood him to be referring to the double-headed heraldic eagle of the Hapsburgs, but those eagles were not real: “The plain truth is that the Indians of Chile put on their houses some poles carved as two-headed eagles . . . but these are just two poles crossed over, on the tip of each an eagle head.” The natives did not know of Imperial eagles, nor had they ever existed in the land. The rumor Ovalle had heard (and that Rosales thought had been initiated by Justus Lipsius) was clearly an erroneous interpretation of a Mapuche custom the missionaries knew well.43 The missionary origin of the information about Chilean nature gathered by Rosales is perhaps best seen in his ample discussion of plants and herbs. Although Rosales did include a good number of trees and other plants notable either for their beauty or the quality of their timber, most of the plants included in the four chapters he devoted to Chilean botany had medicinal properties. As in the case of other Jesuit writers in seventeenth-century South America, most of the knowledge about the medicinal uses of plants recorded by Rosales came directly from native informers, a fact evident in the massive use of Mapuche names for most of the plants described; however, unlike other Jesuits (most notably those of Paraguay), Rosales underscored the native origin of the ethno­botanical information he was recording. The four chapters devoted to Chilean plants contain several stories and anecdotes regarding the gathering of this information. Thus, for instance, Rosales relates how in 1643 a Spanish patrol had entered the lands of the rebel chief Maquegua, whom they defeated after a difficult battle. A Mapuche soldier, Lienguenu, had been left for death on the battlefield and remained there for almost three days until a Mapuche party recovered his body. Taken to the house of Guaiquillanca, the natives had realized that Lienguenu was still alive. Guaiquillanca had then taken the bark of a tree called patagua, boiled

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it along with some chepica roots, and applied the resulting mixture to Lieguenu’s wounds for four days, saving his life. Once recovered, Lienguenu had gone to the nearest Spanish fort to try to free his wife, who had been captured in the raid, offering in return for her freedom the knowledge of the uses of the patagua tree to cure battle wounds and as counter-venom (Historia general, 1:226). The Jesuits had immediately set out to try these properties experimentally: “To better corroborate this admirable virtue, an experiment has been conducted, in which the juice of this bark is poured in a glass containing poison, and soon one can see the poison starting to boil with a remarkable agitation, not stopping until all the poison had gushed forth from the glass, and until all the poison is turned into foam, the mixture keeps boiling, and once it has expelled it, it ceases foaming and boiling” (1:226). Rosales considered the Mapuche “great herbalists” whose knowledge of the medicinal uses of plants far surpassed European pharmacopoeia. To describe all the plants used in Mapuche medicine would in fact require a new Dioscorides, and although Rosales’s description is the most complete list of vernacular medicinal plants we have from seventeenth-century Chile (comparable only to the great Paraguayan herbal compiled by Pedro Montenegro), he was well aware that his list was far from being exhaustive (1:232 and 250). Despite the cases in which information about the uses of plants was advanced quid pro quo by enemy warriors like Lienguenu, the acquisition of ethnobotanical lore in the Arauco missions was often a difficult process, not least because of the opposition presented by the machis, as we have seen in this book. Not surprisingly, Rosales did not once mention that knowledge about medicinal plants was the province of shamans; in fact, he accused them of being nothing more than murderers who used their mastery of plants to harm their enemies and to engulf the communities in endless cycles of revenge for their own profit (1:169). As was customary in most Jesuit texts of the seventeenth century, Rosales denied that the Mapuche shamans had any medical knowledge; as he warned his readers when describing shamanic rituals in which internal organs were seemingly removed from the body and put back in place, “sorcerers and physicians perform healings by the arts of the devil” (1:168). Rosales was not a neutral compiler of Mapuche pharmacopoeia; his work was guided by the cultural assumptions and values we have seen in other missionaries who devoted themselves to the study of ethnobotany in Spanish South America. The four chapters Rosales devoted to Chilean plants read, in fact, more like an herbal than a natural history proper. Most of his descriptions focused on the medicinal aspects of plants, indicating their more salient structural features, in order to facilitate their identification; their complexions and virtues according to the humoral theory; and the proper way to use them, with particular attention to the preparation and dosages needed to treat different conditions. Although no Jesuit herbals from seventeenth-century Chile have survived, Rosales’s description of Chilean flora was, for the most part, undoubtedly a transcription and synthesis of the medicinal knowledge obtained by the missionaries, soldiers, and settlers working and living on the frontier between Spanish and Mapuche territories.



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The Historia general was the visible result of the collaborative effort of many Jesuit missionaries during the seventeenth century—a synthesis of the information and knowledge about the land gathered by different individuals during a century of contact with the Mapuche people. The extant text of the Historia general, in fact, reveals part of this process. It seems that Rosales had completed a first version of his history shortly after the 1655 uprising. In a letter dated in 1658 and addressed to the general procurator of the Society of Jesus in Spain, Rosales lamented having sent the original manuscript of his work to Spain with another Jesuit who had “got it wet, and stained, and lost some booklets, and returned to me in that state. And the worst part was that he spent almost two thousand pesos that I had . . . in Seville to defray the publishing costs.”44 We know nothing else of this earlier redaction of the Historia, except that by 1658 Rosales had rewritten his book and was trying to find enough funding to publish it. Although this second version of the Historia general was apparently sent to Spain, it never appeared in print and Rosales continued working on his book for the rest of his life. The manuscript of the Historia general he left behind had been signed in 1673, but it was also accompanied by the required approvals made by civil and religious authorities, many of which were dated 1665 and 1666, thus suggesting a constant revision of the work by Rosales, who kept incorporating new data and information almost until his death.

A Rhetoric of Praise Largely based on the experiences of Jesuit missionaries in the land, Rosales’s Historia was a “parochial history,” as Chilean historian Mario Góngora defined it. In this sense, and in spite of their differences, Rosales’s Historia general and Ovalle’s Histórica relación belong to the same discursive formation. But if Ovalle’s book was intended to promote the Jesuit achievements in Chile—and to that end he marshaled not only whatever references to the land he could find in European authors, but also nature itself through his conspicuous use of wonders and portents—Rosales’s intention was far more polemical. Although Rosales’s writing of a history of Chile was probably commissioned by the civil authorities of the realm, his thorough discussion of Chilean nature and geography, which by far exceeded the rhetorical needs of a civil and ecclesiastical history, was directly intended as a response to the Dominican friar Juan de la Puente, who in his 1612 Conveniencia de las dos monarquías had asserted that the nature of America was prone to produce lesser, degenerate men, be they natives or Spaniards.45 De la Puente claimed that American constellations bred lasciviousness, inconstancy, and untruthfulness, a view not at all uncommon in the early seventeenth century. More incensing for Rosales, de la Puente also claimed that the soil of America was better for herbs and metals than for men because, even if those born in America were the direct descendants of the Spaniards, they had degenerated just as wheat sown in a poor soil yielded an inferior quality crop.

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To be sure, the view of American nature as somehow detrimental for human beings was becoming a common opinion among European writers by the seventeenth century. As Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra has shown, the traditional European view of the Indians as phlegmatic, inconstant, and lazy people prone to drunkenness and lasciviousness soon gave way to a negative view of the temperament and qualities of the land that would explain the vices and indolence of its native inhabitants.46 Still, de la Puente’s opinion was particularly harsh, and it certainly left a lasting impression on Jesuit scholarship about America. Almost a century after Rosales finished his Historia, the Spanish Jesuit Pedro Murillo Velarde (who spent some years working in Mexico) published his monumental Geographía histórica (1752), a vast description of the world in ten volumes. Although Murillo Velarde had a very low opinion of the Amer­indians—whom he considered a barbaric, uncultivated race of childlike, rustic individuals prone to lying and extremely lazy—he took issue with de la Puente, whose views he quoted at length only to criticize them.47 To admit de la Puente’s opinion, countered Murillo, would be “libelous to the Creoles, of whom I have met, or heard, many distinguished in letters, arms, judgment, prudence, and virtue.”48 Creoles, in fact, were good people who were intelligent and good-natured and made better public officers than most Spaniards.49 Rosales did not have such a low opinion of the Chilean natives as Murillo Velarde. To be sure, he did not idealize them, recognizing their fierceness and cruelty with their enemies, their tendency to drunkenness, and their reluctance to renounce polygamy, and he was frustrated by their resistance to Christianization, but he also admired their physical constitution and their political organization. The Mapuche, although lacking a head of government, did in fact govern themselves as a “democracy, which is a kind of popular government called imperium populare, since in treating any matter of some importance, they all gather, especially the chieftains, and come to an agreement on the proper action to be taken” (Historia general, 1:177). For Rosales, this form of government was a far cry from the total lack of political organization attributed to them by many Spaniards. Democracy, Rosales reminded his reader, had a long and distinguished genealogy, having been first instituted by the biblical Hebrews and then replicated by the Athenians: “And thus are governed all the republics . . . such as the Venetians, the Dutch, and even some that have a king and head of state, like the English people, in whose parliament noblemen and commoners come together. And so these Indians have their parliaments and gatherings for their own government” (1:177). For Rosales, many features of Mapuche social and political life were analogous to Roman and Greek customs; for instance, the toquis (military leaders) were comparable to Roman generals in both their emblems of authority and in their judicial powers. The boquibuy, a certain category of shaman, seemed to him comparable to the fetialis, the priestly class instituted among the Romans by Numa Pompilius, particularly in their ritual function of inaugurating war actions, and so on (1:178). In fact, Rosales considered it very probable that the Chilean natives



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had taken these and other customs, such as certain aspects of their burial rituals, directly from Greek and Roman culture (1:179). This rather surprising claim of a European origin for some aspects of native culture is nothing more than the logical corollary of Rosales’s theories on the origins of the Mapuche people. Rosales recognized that there was no agreement among scholars on the population of the American continent after the Flood. Although he acknowledged Acosta’s theory of the land bridge between America and Asia as the most widely accepted explanation, particularly among the Jesuits, he also noted that other competing hypotheses (such as the migration of the Lost Tribes of Israel, or a Northern European migration through Greenland to Labrador) could have equal claims to being true: “This is such a difficult and uncertain subject that, given how vast these regions of America are, one may think that not one but several different peoples came to populate it, and not by one but by many and diverse places” (1:10). Different Amer­indian peoples, then, could and probably had different origins. Following Fernández de Oviedo (who a century earlier had elaborated on the Spanish origin of the American natives based on Giovanni Nanni da Viterbo’s forgery of Berosus), it was clear for Rosales that the Mapuche were descendants of the primitive Spaniards: “These Indians of Chile originated, then, as it seems, from the Spaniards, who from the Hesperides Islands traveled to Brazil, and from there came and populated these provinces” (Historia general, 1:11).50 Rosales was careful not to mention the by-then discredited pseudo-Berosus, instead supporting his claim with the authority of Spanish historians such as Bernardo de Alderete, Gregorio García, Alonso de Madrigal (El Tostado), and Fernández de Oviedo (12). But the main reason for Rosales to resort to a discredited theory about the Iberian past and, more startlingly, the origin of the Chilean peoples, had to do with his thorough rejection of de la Puente’s opinions. It must be noted that Rosales did not deny the validity of the much more widely accepted theory of Acosta; he only applied the purported pre-Christian Iberian origin to the Mapuche and, by historical necessity, to the Brazilian Tupi, since perforce the primitive immigrants from the Hesperides Islands (identified with the Canary Islands) had to have crossed through Brazil to reach Chile. Rosales, in fact, gave Fernández de Oviedo’s theory a racial spin. Whereas for the sixteenth-century chronicler and naturalist, the Iberian origins of the native Americans implied the natural lordship (señorío natural) of Charles V over the peoples and lands of the newly discovered continent, for Rosales it also meant a racial continuity between Spaniards and Mapuche. The barbaric customs of the Chilean natives could be explained simply by the fact that at the time of their transoceanic crossing, the Spaniards were not as civilized as in recent times, but indeed “exceedingly rustic, rough, and fierce in war, and so their descendants inherited these features” (1:15). Their cultural development had been arrested because of their isolation from the motherland; their language had changed over time. But they were essentially Spanish. Their darker skin was due either to the sun or to their habit

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of smearing their bodies with horse fat: “In that part of Chile where the land is cold, there are white Indians, and in the Chono [Archipelago] I have seen them so white that they look like Spaniards. And next to the Magellan Strait, there are bearded white [Indians] so that if they were dressed in Spanish clothes, everybody would think them Europeans” (1:16). The troubling fact that some diseases such as smallpox seemed to afflict only those of native descent did not necessarily imply a radical difference between Indian and Spanish bodies. As the Bible shows, disease is one of the ways with which God punishes people, and the Mapuche “resistance to the faith is enough for God to send them this punishment” (1:191). For Rosales, Indian bodies were essentially the same as Spanish bodies. Their differences were merely accidental. Culturally, the Mapuche represented an arrested state of development, equivalent to that of the ancient Iberians who had migrated from the Hesperides to America. The similarities of many political and cultural traits of the Mapuche to those of the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans only served to confirm this European origin, while their indomitable love of freedom and land, their bravery and skill in battle, were unmistakably Iberian traits (1:15). It cannot come as a surprise, then, that this branch of the Iberian race had settled and flourished in Chile, and not in other areas of America, with the probable exception of Brazil. The land, in fact, had proved to be as amenable to their natural disposition as the Spanish motherland: “In all the kingdoms and provinces of these Indies there is neither a kingdom nor province that resembles Spain more closely in its climate and fertility than Chile” (1:188). Using the same tropes as Ovalle, Rosales went on to list all the ways in which Chile was a faithful copy—when not surpassing it—of Spain. The temperate climate, the refreshing winds blowing down from the Andes, the moderate winters, the extreme fer­tility of the soil (which generously multiplied the Spanish seeds planted in it), and even the absence of lightning, fleas, and lice are all extolled by Rosales (1:188, 189, 191–92, 199–200). Rosales also described Chile, just as Ovalle had, as one of “the richest provinces in gold discovered so far in America” (1:210). Chilean nature was so fertile and nurturing that men and beasts thrived: “Generally speaking, both men and animals enjoy a wonderful health in the kingdom of Chile, and if the disorderly and vicious life didn’t accelerate it, death would come late [for most of them]” (1:189). The benignity of the Chilean land applied to both Spaniards and natives: “The Indians who live where there is no war . . . spend their life in excellent health and they die at a very old age. They represent less age [than they have] because when their hair turns gray, they are already extremely old” (1:189). For both Spaniards and Mapuche, Chile was a most healthy and nurturing land—a place where their bodies could reach their full potential. Chile’s nature, geography, and climate were ideally suited to bringing out the best in its inhabitants. The fierceness and bravery of the indomitable Mapuche, being as they were the direct descendants of the Iberians, was incontrovertible proof that Europeans were not suffering any adverse bodily or moral effect on the land. On the contrary, Chilean nature prodigally gave them what their bodies



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needed to thrive. Even if the long and accomplished lives these Iberian-­American bodies were destined to have were thwarted by war and disease, Chile could boast of such a quantity of medicinal plants that “it exceeds many other [kingdoms], all these plants being most apt and efficacious for the conservation of life and for restoring a broken health.” The inhabitants of Chile, if only they knew all the plants and their virtues, “would not need apothecaries or medicines, for in the herbs . . . they have all they need” (1:231). Even the Andes Mountains, compared to which the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Apennines, and other European mountains were no more than pygmies or children, stood as a monumental testimony of the grandiosity of the realm and its inhabitants, in particular the Creoles (1:196). “There is no doubt,” concluded Rosales, “that a land capable of producing gigantic mountains, as the Andes range; gigantic men, as those that inhabit near the Magellan Strait; and Indians who are giants in bravery and deeds, would produce much more easily Spanish Creoles who are giants in bravery, character, and intelligence” (1:195).

R

osales’s Historia general del reyno de Chile and its predecessor, Ovalle’s   Histórica relación, were the visible products of decades of Jesuit work in Chile. Whether based on the reports and letters sent by the missionaries to Rome or in the direct transmission of information from the missions to the written page, both works synthesized and lent narrative coherence to the efforts deployed by numerous Jesuit missionaries and lay brothers to gather information about the nature and peoples of the places where they had been sent to perform their evangelical work. In this sense, both the Histórica relación and the Historia general encapsulate some of the main themes I have discussed throughout this book. They are the expression of the intimate knowledge of local nature gained by the missionaries working among the native populations of the realm. But as much as they are syntheses of the Jesuit presence in the land, they also embody some of the changes suffered by the Jesuit approach to natural philosophy during the century after Acosta’s writing of De Natura Novi Orbis. Although both Ovalle and Rosales sought to underscore the prominent political and evangelical presence of the Society of Jesus in Chile during the seventeenth century, thus, maintaining the centrality given by Acosta to missionary endeavors in the Jesuit agenda, both writers distanced themselves from the search for the causes of natural phenomena that had characterized both Cobo and Acosta, favoring a more descriptive and laudatory approach to the natural world. The insistence on the marvelous we find in Ovalle’s Histórica relación is probably the most dramatic departure from Acosta, who emphasized that natural philosophy should deal not with the particular or the extraordinary but, rather, with the way things normally occur in nature. Ovalle, on the other hand, understood marvels as manifestations of divine approval of Jesuit political activities. Unlike Acosta, for whom philosophical specu­lation led to theological truths, Ovalle, in line with contemporary developments of Jesuit science in the Baroque era, attempted to read God’s will not in the

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regularity of nature but in its wonders and marvels, which for him constituted the visible signs with which God had written the Book of Nature. At the same time, Ovalle emphasized the bountiful nature of Chile and its fertility, a trope that would be reworked along similar lines by Rosales, although with a more polemical intent. Reacting against the accusations against American humanity raised by de la Puente, Rosales took up some of the themes discussed by Ovalle—such as the extreme fertility of the land, its mineral riches, and the massive height of the Andes—to fashion a defense of the Chilean natives and, especially, of the Chilean Creoles. In this sense, they are examples of what modern scholars have described as the emergence during the seventeenth century of a proto-national identity or Creole consciousness in Spanish America. The promotion of the missionary successes of the Society of Jesus in Chile was coupled with the defense of the land against European misconceptions and slander; the historiography of the order dovetailed with the Creole trend of a patriotic historiography. Drawing upon the information accumulated in almost a century of missionary and educational activities within the realm, the fundamental themes and tropes conforming Ovalle’s and Rosales’s rhetoric of praise of the patria would be rehearsed again by the exiled Jesuits who took part in the polemic against European Enlightenment philosophers such as Cornelius de Paw in the second half of the eighteenth century. By then, however, the Jesuit presence in America was only a memory, and the Society’s members, forced into exile in Italy, had been absorbed by the church as mere secular priests. The 1767 royal edict of expulsion and Pope Clement XIV’s edict of suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773 put an end to two hundred years of Jesuit activity in America.

Epilogue

The Jesuit and the Armchair Philosopher

I

n 1767, King Charles III, following the precedent set by the Crown of Portu  gal and by France, signed a royal edict banishing the Jesuits from his do  minions. Almost overnight, Jesuit priests and lay brothers were forced to abandon their residences, leaving behind the majority of their possessions, except for their most indispensable personal belongings. All the lands and buildings owned by the order, as well as the contents of their houses and colleges—including their scientific instruments and the books housed in the Jesuit libraries— were expropriated by the Crown. The Jesuits were sent in exile to the papal states in Italy. The expulsion of the Jesuits from Catholic kingdoms is a complex issue that has received broad attention from historians. Different explanations have been advanced as to why the Bourbon rulers of Portugal, France, and Spain decided to banish the Jesuit order from their dominions. A mixture of populism on the part of civil administrators, who (at least in Portugal and Spain) sought to turn the Jesuits into scapegoats to divert public attention from internal problems, along with a deep-seated suspicion of Jesuit activities fueled by a strong anti-Jesuit propaganda originating in the 1614 libelous Monita secreta (written by Jerome Zahorowski, a dismissed Jesuit), seems to have played a part in the decision to expel them. European propaganda against the activities of the South American Jesuits, in particular, reached a peak during the first half of the eighteenth century, when Spanish and Portuguese works variously accused the Jesuits in Paraguay of hiding fabulous riches from the Crown and of usurping the king’s authority in the missions. In 1758, the Jesuit José Cardiel took up the pen and wrote a rebuttal of these accusations. In his Declaración de la verdad, Cardiel wanted to refute the accusations leveled by an anonymous Portuguese writer who had claimed that the Jesuits had become so powerful and entrenched in the Paraguayan missions that the only way the new treaty of limits between Portugal and Spain signed in 1750 could be enforced was by waging war against the priests.1 Accusations such as these dated back to the seventeenth century, lamented Cardiel, and the Jesuits

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had had to constantly rebuff claims that they had “taken for themselves the rule and power in these doctrines in the rivers Paraná and Uruguay, usually known as the Paraguayan missions, [and that] they extracted many treasures from gold and silver mines that they worked clandestinely for their own profit.”2 Despite defenses such as this, the Jesuits could not escape the tide against them, and by June 1767, copies of the banishment edict reached Buenos Aires. Before long, 2,267 Jesuits, many of them Creoles, were sent to exile in Europe, forced to leave family and friends behind and forbidden to maintain even epistolary contact with the colonies.3 The same year that the expatriated American Jesuits arrived in Italy, Cornelius de Paw’s Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains came off the presses in Berlin. Adopting certain ideas advanced by the French philosopher and naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), de Paw articulated a view of America and its peoples as thoroughly inferior to the Old World. Based on what he claimed was reliable information about the nature of the New World, de Paw concluded that its many volcanoes, propensity for earthquakes, climate, and even (as Buffon claimed) its paucity of quadrupeds and their comparative smaller size to the Old World varieties, demonstrated that America had suffered a cataclysmic event. This event—probably a flood, as Buffon had hypothesized—had turned what once was a continent inhabited by ancient civilizations and large animals, as evidenced by the fossil record, into an unhealthy miasma populated by puny mammals and emasculated peoples. Drawing on geological, medical, and biological discourses, de Paw argued that the excessive humidity America still experienced had produced animals and humans whose arrested development was evident in their small sizes and inferior intellectual and moral qualities. America was a damp, wet continent dominated by noxious vapors and an unhealthy climate that produced degenerated living creatures.4 The reaction of the American Jesuits to what they considered nothing but calumny and slander disguised as science was swift and forceful. A flurry of publications, aimed at refuting and exposing de Paw and his followers, came from the pens of the exiled Creoles. If the thesis of these European writers had already sparked a spirited dispute in Europe, the reaction of the exiled American Jesuits had “a profound effect on the subsequent course of the polemic,” heightening the debate and raising the flag in defense of their respective American patrias while creating lasting works that would in time be appropriated by the ideologues of the newly constituted independent Latin American republics of the nineteenth century.5 Why did the Jesuit exiles so actively participate in what Antonello Gerbi famously labeled as the dispute of the New World? As modern scholars have noted, love of patria and proto-nationalist sentiments, which had been brewing among the Creoles since the seventeenth century, undoubtedly played a large role in motivating their strong reaction.6 But I would like to suggest that, adding to the dismay they shared with other Creoles about the thesis of American degeneracy, the vehement and eloquent response to de Paw waged by Francisco Clavig-



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ero in his Storia antica del Messico (1780–1781) and Juan de Velasco in his Historia del reino de Quito (1789), to name but a few examples, were also products of their unique qualifications for replying to the arguments advanced by European armchair philosophers. Former Jesuits such as Clavigero, Juan Ignacio de Molina, and José Jolis were not only experts on the nature and lands of America; they were also intimately acquainted with the rich Jesuit tradition of observation, reflection, and writing about America I have been describing in this book. Although overtly written in the scientific idiom of the eighteenth century, the texts penned by the Jesuit exiles to refute the philosophers’ attacks on American nature and peoples in fact liberally borrowed information, tropes, and themes that had been developed by the Jesuits who lived and worked in America during the seventeenth century. Despite their apparent abandonment of old epistemological modes (most notably, Aristotelianism) and their boasting of new reading techniques, the texts written by eighteenth-century Jesuits living in Italy were deeply rooted in the intellectual tradition developed in America during the preceding two hundred years of Jesuit endeavors on the continent. Perhaps one of the clearer examples of this recourse to the Jesuit tradition is the work of Juan Ignacio de Molina. Born in 1740, Molina belonged to the last generation of Creole Jesuits educated in colonial Chile. His career followed the familiar pattern we have seen in this book. In 1752, he was sent by his family to study at the Jesuit college at Concepción, where he decided to enter the Society of Jesus in 1755. He then moved to Santiago and later on to Bucalemu to spend his novitiate. In 1761, he enrolled in the philosophy courses at the College of San Miguel, and after completing them was sent to his native Talca to teach lowerlevel humanities at the Jesuit school. In 1766, he was back in Santiago studying theology, but his studies were interrupted barely a year later when the expulsion decree was read to the Chilean Jesuits on August 26. All of the members of the Society of Jesus in Chile were gathered to the seaport of Valparaiso and shipped to Peru at the beginning of 1768. During the trip, Molina’s notebooks containing his observations of the nature of Chile, which he had been compiling since his stay at Bucalemu, were confiscated by military personnel. After a long voyage, the Chilean Jesuits finally reached Italy in 1769, settling in the town of Imola, not far from Bologna. There, Molina successfully passed his theology exams in 1770 and became a fully professed Jesuit priest, but his career as one would not last long. In 1773, Pope Clement XIV, caving to the pressure of the Bourbon rulers, published the edict Dominus ac Redemptor, by which the Society of Jesus was suppressed. All the former Jesuits became secular priests, and were forced to earn a living. In 1774, Molina moved to Bologna, undoubtedly attracted by its university, where he would remain working as a private tutor for the city’s youth until his death in 1829.7 In Bologna, Molina became an active participant in intellectual circles and established lasting epistolary relations with other European naturalists. In 1776, he gave his Compendio della storia geografica, naturale e civile del regno del Chile to

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the presses. Molina never acknowledged his authorship of this work, probably because it was written while he was deprived of his notebooks; however, a stroke of luck allowed him to recover part of his materials when Ignacio Huidobro, a former classmate in Santiago who had not joined the Society of Jesus, showed up in Bologna carrying them.8 Armed with his newly recovered notes, Molina set out to update and enlarge his Compendio, and in 1782 he published his Saggio sulla storia naturale del Chili (this time, signed), which was translated into several European languages and helped cement Molina’s reputation as a naturalist, to the point that even such a reputable scholar as Alexander von Humboldt went down to Bologna to consult with him.9 In 1787, Molina published a book devoted to the civil history of Chile. In 1810, he published a revised edition of the Saggio, and in 1821 his disciples published a selection of the public lectures he had delivered at the Academy of Sciences of the Bolognese Institute, where he had been accepted as a member in 1802. The Saggio was a remarkable achievement. “In the present day,” began Molina, “Europe turns all its attention toward America, wishing to know with erudite curiosity the diversity of its climates, the structure of its mountains, the nature of its fossils, the shape of its vegetables and its animals, the languages of its inhabitants—in sum, all that to which its attention can be drawn in those regions.”10 Molina’s text delivers discussions on all those topics, cladding his analysis in the mineralogical terminology of the second half of the eighteenth century and following the Linnean system in his classification of Chilean plants and animals. But his main goal was more than simply writing a scientifically up-to-date natural history of Chile. From the outset, Molina wanted to refute the anti-American theses defended by Buffon and, especially, Cornelius de Paw: “Those readers that have news of the Philosophical Researches about the Americans written by M. Paw may marvel to see an American country described so differently from what that writer wants them to believe about all the regions of that great continent. But, what are we to do? Am I to misrepresent the truth to avoid exposing myself to the sarcasm and indecent mockery Paw hurls at any person who opposes his strange ideas?” (Compendio, xv). Paw, in fact, had never been to America, nor could he vouch for what he described. Even worse, he willfully refused to acknowledge those reports that could contradict him, or misrepresented them to accommodate their claims to his preconceived ideas about America, as he had done with Amédée-François Frézier and Hernando de Ulloa, cherry-picking only those statements that denied the Creoles full use of their intellectual capacities (xv).11 His method was nothing but a gross generalization, assuming that one tribe, one tiny island or town stood up as representative of the whole continent. Such a method, contended Molina, “could be approved neither by reason nor philosophy,” and the resulting text was as fantastic and far from reality as if de Paw had written a book about the inhabitants of the moon (xvi–xvii). But in spite of all the acquaintance with the latest developments in botany, zoology, meteorology, and mineralogy displayed by Molina, as evidenced by his



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frequent quotations from Louis Feuillé and his use of the taxonomical systems developed by Linnaeus, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, and Mathurin Jacques Brisson, the Saggio remained firmly anchored in the Jesuit tradition of the seventeenth century. Among the sources Molina mentions for the Saggio were the histories written by “Ovalle, Friar Gregorio de León, the one written by Santiago Tesillo, the history composed by Melchor del Aguila, and an anonymous summary published in the Italian language the year 1776,” the last the unsigned Compendio he had published six years before (Compendio, viii). In his defense of Chile against the accusations of degeneracy raised by Paw, Molina took up not only the tropes of the rhetoric of praise that had been developed by Ovalle, but also its language. “The kingdom of Chile,” he informed his reader at the outset of the Saggio, “has been especially and carefully endowed by Nature, [who,] sustained and favored by the delicacies of its climate, has prodigally given [to Chile] its best gifts, while exempting [the land] from all the incommodities that usually accompany them in other places” (Compendio, iii). Chile was, in fact, the garden of America, comparable only to Italy as the only place in the New World where one could find in abundance everything a European could wish to enjoy a comfortable life: “The kingdom of Chile is one of the best countries in all America, because the beauty of its skies and the constant benignity of its climate, that seems to agree on purpose with the fertility and richness of the soil, make it such a pleasant mansion, that it has nothing to envy of any of the happiest regions of the globe” (iv, 15). As Ovalle had done almost a century and a half earlier, Molina emphasized the mild winters and summers, the absence of violent thunderstorms, and the protection given to Chile by the Andes mountains, which kept damaging winds on the eastern side, over Cuyo and Tucumán (16, 17, 24). The mild Chilean weather was, according to Molina, especially suited for Creole and European bodies. With the nostalgia of every exile, Molina noted that nobody in Chile would willingly move to another country: “This predilection is not based only in the natural inclination of men to their countries, but is based on the effective merits of that kingdom, so endowed by nature with a fertile soil suitable for all kind of crops, and enjoying a climate that, being sufficiently cold and hot in the respective seasons, is overall very healthy” (36–37). The fertile nature and healthy air of Chile allowed human bodies to develop to their full natural potential. In a passage reminiscent of Rosales’s rejection of de la Puente’s accusations, Molina commented that anyone who did not lead a dissolute life could expect to live a long and productive life, there having been several cases of individuals living well beyond a hundred years (377). His own family could serve as an example, since his grandfather had lived to be ninety-five and his greatgrandfather had reached the ripe age of ninety-six (378). Molina himself would in time become living proof of the longevity he ascribed to Chilean Creoles, dying at the age of eighty-nine. The Chilean natives were also examples of the benefits bestowed on its inhabitants by the climate and fertility of the land. Those who lived in the valleys and coastal areas were as tall as the Europeans and were so robust

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and strong, they revealed themselves as indefatigable when they decided to work (382). Significantly, Molina claimed that the natives born and raised in the valleys located deep inside the Andes Mountains were, “like all other creatures living in those mountains, bulkier than usual” (383). Following a trope apparently initiated in the now-lost work of Gregorio de León and developed by Ovalle and Rosales during the seventeenth century, Molina linked the height of the Andes Mountains and their mineral wealth with the fertility and benefic features of the Chilean land: the tall and imposing Andes, which run along Chile like a protective wall, bestowed riches to the country while keeping at bay the noxious animals and meteorological phenomena that plagued the rest of the continent (24, 40– 41). Couched in a language rather different from that used by his seventeenthcentury predecessors, Molina’s conceptualization of the influence of the Andes mountain chain remained essentially the same: “The salts and other fertilizing substances that are distributed from those mountains throughout the country by means of their natural vehicles, air and water, are in all likelihood the cause of the constant fertility that all intelligent persons admire in that land” (52–53). As Ovalle and Rosales had done, Molina described Chile as a most fertile land, where cattle was left alone to graze anywhere they wanted and herbs grew higher than rams (130–31). Perhaps the influence of seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries and writers is nowhere as clear as in Molina’s discussion of Chilean medicinal plants. When introducing the subject, Molina directly paraphrased Ovalle’s encomium of native pharmacopoeia and his complaints about the machis’ reluctance to share their knowledge of medicinal plants: Plants, especially of the herbaceous kind, form the bulk of the pharmacy of those Chileans who still persist in the errors of paganism, and their physicians, called machi and ampive, are expert herbalists who possess by tradition the secrets of a large number of medicinal simples, useful for all kinds of diseases, with which they perform every day marvelous healings, and although they hide [from the Spaniards] what they know in this subject, whether because of hatred of the conquering nation or because they want to be needed, they had nonetheless over the years revealed the medicinal virtues of many trees and over two hundred healing herbs. (155)

Although Molina claimed to have identified over three thousand new species of plants during his herborizing excursions in Chile (a wealth of information he had lost when his notebooks were seized by Spanish military personnel), his description closely follows Ovalle’s and, particularly, Rosales’s. He described approximately the same number of plants as Rosales had included in his Historia general, and focused on some of the same plants that had caught the attention of his predecessors, such as the cachanlahuen, the quinchamali, the patagua, and



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the salt-producing plants of Lampa.12 To be sure, Molina’s descriptions are more detailed, less prone to supporting his claims of medicinal properties through the use of anecdotal information, and in some cases discuss the uses of the plants for fairly different conditions than those recommended by Rosales. But the fact is that his description of Chilean plants overall betrays its missionary origin in both the number and kinds of plants discussed and in the almost exclusive focus on their healing properties. It must be remembered that Molina decided to write the Saggio—expanding his previous Compendio—only when he recovered part of his notebooks, thus regaining access to more detailed information about Chilean nature, as he himself acknowledged (ix). Modern readers have for the most part taken Molina’s claims to have personally inspected everything he talks about in his book at face value, assuming the notes Ignacio Huidobro returned to him contained the results of his naturalistic excursions. But it is also probable that among the recovered papers there had been a good deal of reading notes taken by Molina from manuscripts housed at the College of San Miguel. We know for sure that Molina was acquainted with Rosales’s manuscript, for he mentioned it in a bibliography of Jesuit writers.13 We also know that during his years as a philosophy student in San Miguel, Molina worked as an assistant to the librarian, where he must have had opportunities to examine the archives of the Jesuit Chilean province.14 The fact that Molina described in detail the flora, fauna, geography, peoples, and climate of areas of Chile in which he never set foot but which had had an active Jesuit missionary presence since the seventeenth century (such as Arauco and Chiloe) seems to support this idea. The intellectual production of the Creole Jesuits exiled in Italy was enormous; I have only scratched the surface here. In doing so, my aim has been less to show the depth and variety of their responses to the negative image of America championed by the likes of de Paw, and more to suggest the extent to which these exiles were indebted to the intellectual tradition forged by their Jesuit predecessors in the seventeenth century. The works of exiled Jesuit writers like Molina were the culmination of nearly two hundred years of Jesuit scientific and missionary activity in South America. This long tradition of Jesuit reflection and writing about the peoples and nature of America, initiated by Acosta in the 1570s and lasting until the end of the colonial period (Molina published a revised edition of his Saggio in 1810, when independence movements were starting up in Spanish America), was the product of the missionary and educational ministries carried on by countless Jesuit priests and lay brothers since the order’s arrival in Peru in 1568. As we have seen throughout this book, the practical and ideological challenges faced by generations of Jesuit missionaries in the diverse human and natural landscapes of Spanish South America fostered practices of knowledgegathering in the missions in order to overcome the difficulties presented by shamans, colonial officials, and an often hostile environment. At the same time, the institutional features of the order (particularly its commitment to education and its efficient postal system) allowed the circulation of the information thus gath-

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ered and the forging of lasting collaborative relationships between Jesuits stationed on both sides of the Atlantic. Variously engaged in pedagogical, evangelical, scientific, and political endeavors, the members of the Society of Jesus became one of the most influential intellectual communities of the colonial period. The profound influence the Jesuits had in eighteenth-century European debates about America was nothing less than the irruption of a centuries-old South American Jesuit tradition of colonial scholarship in the European Enlightenment milieu.

Notes

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the author’s own.

Notes to the Introduction 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10.



For early accounts of the discovery and spread of cinchona, see Jarcho, Quinine’s Predecessor, 1–11; for Badus, see 1–3, 36–37. Jarcho, Quinine’s Predecessor, 3–4. Ibid., 4–9. Cobo, Obras, 1:274. In the brief chapter Cobo devoted to cinchona bark, he made no reference to the countess’s cure by means of it—an event he could not have missed, since he was in Peru during those years. For the distribution of cinchona bark in Europe through Jesuit institutional networks, see Harris, “Long-Distance Corporations,” 289–90. On the role played by Lugo in the introduction of cinchona to Europe, see Jarcho, Quinine’s Predecessor, 14–17. The drug was also known in Italy as pulvis cardinalis or pulvis de Lugo (17). See, for instance, the essays collected in O’Malley, Jesuits and Jesuits II, and Feingold, Jesuit Science. Harris’s article “Jesuit Activity in the Overseas Missions” is one of the few exceptions to this trend. See also the volume edited by Millones Figueroa and Ledezma, El saber de los jesuitas, which appeared precisely to ameliorate this situation. Pimentel and Cañizares-Esguerra have pointed out the disparity between the amount of Spanish scientific production in the early modern period and the attention it has received from scholars. See Pimentel, “Iberian Vision,” and Cañizares-Esguerra, “Iberian Science.” For a general assessment of this situation, see Deans-Smith, “Nature and Scientific Knowledge.” Despite recognizing a growing awareness among scholars of the importance of Spanish contributions to natural history, Ogilvie refused to include Spanish naturalists in his discussion of early modern natural history (Science of Describing, 24). O’Malley, First Jesuits, 200. Loyola, Constitutions, 361. Martín, Intellectual Conquest of Peru, 20.

229

230 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Notes to Pages 4–16 Harris, “Mapping Jesuit Science,” 224–25. On this issue, see Baldwin, “Pious Ambitions.” O’Malley, First Jesuits, 370–71. See MacCormack, “Grammar and Virtue.” For Barzana as the foremost linguist in the Jesuits’ first years in Peru, see 579–80. For the use of Juli as a language school, see 582. See Cobo, Obras, 2:464–70. Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 147.

Notes to Chapter 1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

Levillier, Gobernantes del Perú, 4:32. O’Malley, First Jesuits, 374. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 1:122. For the rise of pedagogy as the main ministry of the Society of Jesus, see O’Malley, First Jesuits, 200. Martín, Intellectual Conquest of Peru, 11–12. Vargas Ugarte, Historia, 1:51–53. On the roundtables about practical moral issues, see Martín, Intellectual Conquest of Peru, 53–54. See Andrien, “Spaniards, Andeans, and the Early Colonial State in Peru,” especially 121–24. For a general account of early colonial Peru, see Hemming, Conquest; for the events leading to the nomination of Toledo as viceroy, see 383–91. Levillier, Don Francisco de Toledo, 80; 109–12. Levillier, Gobernantes del Perú, 4:115. Rowe, “Incas,” 156; Hemming, Conquest, 395. Hemming, Conquest, 393; Wightman, Indigenous Migration, 12–14. Matienzo, Gobierno del Perú, 48. For Toledo’s tax reform, see Escobedo Mansilla, Tributo indígena en el Perú, 54–63. The social upheaval that the reducciones, with their associated reassessment of tributes and enforcement of the mita, brought upon native communities has been discussed by Wightman, Indigenous Migration, 15–25; see also Garrett, Shadows of Empire, 25–34. The royal patronage (patronato real de las Indias) was the sum of all the Crown’s rights and obligations over the American church. It was institutionalized in 1508 by Pope Julius II’s Universalis ecclesiae regimini. This bull granted the Spanish Crown the right to build and endow cathedrals and parochial churches in America, to found convents and monasteries, and the right to designate all church officials. The bull has been published in Levillier, Organización de la Iglesia, part 2, 38–40. Levillier, Gobernantes del Perú, 4:111. Málaga, Reducciones toledanas en Arequipa, 40–41. Matienzo, Gobierno del Perú, 4:5, 8, 9, 17, 108, 112–13. For the police and judicial powers taken up by the doctrineros, see 29, and also Rowe, “Inca,” 188–89. For some figures on the sometimes exorbitant tributes demanded by the priests, see Hemming, Conquest, 361. Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, 2:538. Levillier, Gobernantes del Perú, 4:112. Secular priests are religious professionals who are not associated with any order. The effective imposition of the patronato real was one of the main tasks of Toledo during his tenure as viceroy. A summary of his constant conflicts with the bishops



21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Notes to Pages 16–19

231

and the religious orders on this issue can be seen in Levillier, Don Francisco de Toledo, 121–26. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 1:395. Ibid., 1:390 and 396. The avoidance of Jesuit political involvement during the inspection was, of course, an impossibility since they had to confess and provide spiritual guidance to the viceroy and his officials. For the often-difficult distinction between Jesuit political and religious activities, see Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought, 56– 63. Loyola, Constitutions, 588. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 1:396. After the Jesuits abandoned the Huarochiri doctrina in 1572, Toledo wrote to King Philip: “The priests of the Society of Jesus have abandoned the doctrines entrusted to them and refuse to take care of any other [Indian parishes] as I have told you and in my opinion, although [the Jesuits] are useful in the cities, there are so many preachers and so many monasteries [in the cities] and there is such a dearth of them among the Indians . . . [that] I think in no way should there any religious order allowed to remain [in Peru] if they do not take care of the Indians” [Los clerigos de la Compañia han dexado las dotrinas de que se avian encargado y no quieren tomar ninguna otra como tengo rreferido y dicho mi parecer que aunque hazen provecho en las ciudades en ella es tanta la dotrina que sobra y la multiplicidad de monesterios y entre los yndios tanto lo que desto falta y ha faltado . . . [que] por ninguna via me parece que obiese aca rreligion que no se encargase destos yndios] (Levillier, Gobernantes del Perú, 5:409). Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 1:542. Ibid., 1:543. Plaza repeatedly wrote to Mercurian from Seville, voicing his concerns: “What I want to know is about the main question regarding the [Spanish] lordship and universal dominion over those kingdoms, because this [issue] being clear, everything else is easily answered. And although I can see a number of reasons to give [Spain] a just title [over America], and I have tried to know them, until now I have not been able to find someone to [answer my questions] to my satisfaction” [En lo que yo deseo satisfacción es en el punto principal del señorío y dominio universal de aquellos Reinos, porque estando éste llano, todo lo demás es fácil de allanar. Y aunque yo veo que ay muchas causas que dan justo título, yo las he procurado saber, y hasta aora no he hallado quien enteramente me satisfaga] (Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 1:648). This doubt appears repeatedly in the letters Plaza sent to Mercurian during 1573 and 1574. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 1:632–33. This brief summary of Acosta’s childhood and early career is based on Burgaleta, José de Acosta, 3–31. Acosta, De Procuranda (Mateos), 8. Ibid. The Peruvian Jesuits did not have a unified position regarding the reform undertaken by Toledo. While some of them, like Bartolomé Hernández, favored the reduction of the scattered native population into towns and believed the doctrinas were indispensable to achieving the evangelization of the Andean peoples, other Jesuits like Luis López and Blas Valera were at odds with it. López even denied the rights of the Spanish Crown to rule Peru and called for the immediate withdrawal of all Spaniards from the land. The condemnation of López by the Inquisition on charges of moral

232

34.

35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Notes to Pages 19–21 turpitude and the disciplinary actions undertaken by the Society of Jesus against Valera effectively silenced the more radical voices of the order, implicitly favoring the opinion of the majority that had been reflected in the Provincial Congregation of 1576. Bartolomé Hernández’s opinion can be found in Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 1:461–75. For the chapters written by López against the colonial rule of Peru, see Sancho Rayon and Zabalburu, Colección, 94:472–86. On Valera, see Hyland, Jesuit and the Incas. The inquisitorial process against López can be read about in Medina, Historia del tribunal, 1:99–108. Under interrogation, López declared his text against the colonial government was written at the request of Plaza, “so if they both returned to Spain and to Rome they could help this land [advising] the pope and the king about those things that need to be remedied” [a fin de que si fuesen los dos a España y a Roma pudiesen ayudar a esta tierra con el Papa y con el Rey en las cosas que paresce que tenian nescesidad de rremedio] (quoted in Medina, Historia del tribunal, 1:108). On the differences of opinion regarding the level of state intervention on Andean affairs between Ondegardo and Matienzo, as well as on the bigger influence of the latter on Toledo’s idea of the reductions, see Duviols, La destrucción, 310–17. Matienzo articulated his views in his Gobierno del Perú (1567). Ondegardo conducted a series of inquiries on Andean religion and culture whose results were reported in two long memoranda written in 1571: Los errores y supersticiones de los indios, and more notably the Relacion de los fundamentos acerca del notable daño que resulta de no guardar a los indios sus fueros, where Ondegardo expresses his views with regard to the colonial government of the Andean population. Acosta’s description of Inca religion and customs was largely based on Ondegardo’s writings (Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 374). Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:59–60. For the minutes of the First Congregation, with the complete intervention by Acosta, see 2:57–86. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:59. Ibid., 2:60–61. In his report to Mercurian, Plaza noted at least eight reasons to reject the doctrinas. His recommendation was to reinforce instead the itinerant missions, consecrated by the Constitutions as the missionary method best suited to the character of the order. He conceded, however, that as long as Toledo was in office, the acceptance of the doctrinas was unavoidable. To prevent further clashes with Toledo, he suggested accepting and keeping the doctrina of Juli (Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:155, 157). Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:62. Ibid., 2:93. Vargas Ugarte, Los Jesuitas del Perú, 11; Burgaleta, José de Acosta, 45. For the functioning of Juli as a training center in native languages, see MacCormack, “Grammar and Virtue,” 587–88. Lopetegui, El padre José de Acosta, 210. In De Procuranda Acosta discusses causes that could justify waging war against the Indians (book 2, chapters 2–7), the taxation of native communities (book 3, chapters 6–10), and personal service and forced labor in the mines (book 3, chapters 17–18). He also discusses different colonial officials, specifically regarding the qualities they should possess and the duties they should fulfill: governors (book 3, chapters 4–5); corregidores (book 3, chapter 23), encomenderos (book 3, chapters 12–15), and parish priests and missionaries (book 4, chapters 2 and 6–10).

43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49.

50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62.

Notes to Pages 21–26

233

Acosta, De Procuranda [1596], 122–23. Duviols, “La represión del paganismo andino,” 203. MacCormack, Religion in the Andes, 147–48. A summary of the Andean belief system and Inca attempts to systematize it can be seen in Ramirez, To Feed and to Be Fed, 60–62. For the negotiations between the Inca attempts to impose a state religion and the ethnic groups’ demands to maintain their traditional huacas, see 64–65. Rowe, “Incas,” 183–86. See also MacCormack, Religion in the Andes, 141–49, for a discussion of the survival and transformation of local regional cults in face of Christian evangelization. Mills provides a thoughtful discussion of the fluidity of Andean religious conceptions and the incorporation of Christian elements into local practices and beliefs in the face of the successive attempts on forceful conversion during the seventeenth century; see “Limits of Religious Coercion.” Hemming, Conquest, 305–7. On Taqui Onkoy, see Castro-Klarén, “Discurso y transformación”; Stern, Los pueblos indígenas del Perú, 93–122, MacCormack, Religion in the Andes, 181–86, and Silverblatt, Modern Inquisitions, 192–97. Ondegardo, Informaciones acerca, 82. On Andean religious cults as based on myths of origin and the identity of ethnic groups, see Rostworowski, Ensayos de historia andina, 212, and Ramírez, To Feed and to Be Fed, 60 and 224–26. For a discussion of examples showing the survival of native religious traditions in the face of repeated extirpation campaigns during the seventeenth century, see Mills, “Limits of Religious Coercion.” Medina, Historia del tribunal, 1:90. See pages 62–96 for the proceedings of the inquisitorial process against Francisco de la Cruz, who was burned at the stake in 1578 on counts of necromancy and heresy—in particular, for maintaining that Gabrielico, the illegitimate son he had fathered, was destined to become the savior of the Peruvian natives and later on the pope of a new church that would replace the old one. Lisi, El tercer concilio limense, 124–27. Acosta, De Procuranda [1596], 116 passim. Additional citations in the text. Matienzo, Gobierno del Perú, 48. Ibid., 20, 69–70, 82–83. Acosta, De Procuranda [1596], 346–47. Ondegardo had articulated this position in his 1571 memorandum; see Ondegardo, Informaciones acerca. Acosta, De Procuranda [1596], 357. For Acosta’s hopes for his missionary treatise, see Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:288. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:399. For the constant delays in the publication of De Procuranda, see Lopetegui, El padre José de Acosta, 215–25, where he suggests that the conflict between the Inquisition and the Spanish Assistance of the Society of Jesus played a role in this delay. (An Assistance is an administrative unit within the Jesuit order comprising several provinces.) Astraín’s account remains the best summary of the dispute between the Jesuits and the Spanish Inquisition (Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en la asistencia de España, 3:368–401). Lopetegui, El padre José de Acosta, 221. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 3:291. Acosta’s letter to Aquaviva where he stated his editorial wishes for De Natura is now lost. Acosta, De Natura, 16–17. Augustine, City of God, book 16, 9.

234 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

Notes to Pages 26–33 On this point, see Pagden’s thoughtful discussion of Acosta’s line of reasoning (Fall of Natural Man, 154). Acosta, De Natura, 42. Additional citations in the text. Acosta, De Procuranda [1596], proemium, 117–20. In his 1590 Historia natural y moral, Acosta further explained the differences between the Chinese and Japanese civilizations on the one hand and the Aztecs and Incas on the other by comparing their writing systems. Although the Asian and Mesoamerican systems did not amount to true writing, according to the Jesuit, since they were not meant to represent speech but rather concepts or things, Acosta considered the Chinese and Japanese systems as slightly superior because, in some cases, their characters could adopt phonetic values (378–81). Acosta, De Procuranda [1596], 213–18. Ibid., 218. Ibid., 493–94. See also Baciero, “La promoción y evangelización.” It must be noted that Acosta did believe that the Europeanization of the natives should be limited only to those aspects needed for the teaching of the Christian doctrine (De Procuranda [1596], 347). For a useful discussion of Acosta’s ideas in comparison to other Peruvian Jesuits, see Helm, La misión católica, 152–56. Acosta, De Procuranda [1596], 575–77. For descriptions of the Jesuit doctrina in Juli, see Vargas Ugarte, Historia, 2:58–64, and Albó, “Jesuitas y culturas indígenas.” Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:227. Ibid., 2:151. Ibid., 2:279. Vargas Ugarte, Historia, 1:116. Ibid., 1:113. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:273. Albó, “Jesuitas y culturas indígenas,” 291. Vargas Ugarte, Historia, 1:61. In his visita report of 1576, Plaza left brief but insightful sketches of the strengths and weaknesses of every member of the Society in Peru. For Barzana, see Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:118–19; for Bracamonte, 118; for Martínez, 139; and for Medina, 140. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:280–81. Ibid., 2:253. Ibid., 2:273 and 275. Ibid., 2:68. Ibid., 2:619. Ibid., 3:289. Maldavsky, “Problematic Acquisition,” 606. For Acosta’s activities at the Fifth General Congregation, see Pinta Llorente, Actividades diplomáticas, 97–114. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 2:227. Mateos, Historia general de la Compañía de Jesús en el Perú, 2:401. Ibid., 2:406. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 4:62. Ibid., 5:709.

94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

Notes to Pages 33–38

235

The 1612 book was an augmented and corrected second edition of Bertonio’s previous Aymara grammar published in Rome in 1603. On Bertonio’s work as a grammarian and lexicographer in Juli, see MacCormack, “Grammar and Virtue.” MacCormack, “Grammar and Virtue,” 587. On Valdivia, see Chapter 2. On the Jesuit systematization of the Guarani language, see Melià’s fine study, La lengua guaraní. I am borrowing the term “contact zones” from Pratt. See Imperial Eyes, 6–7. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 4:45. Loyola, Constitutions, 340, 351, and 361. For a history of the Moxos missions, see Block, Mission Culture on the Upper Amazon; on the reduction model, see 55–77. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 8:137. Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 297–98. On Acosta’s natural history, see the discussion in Chapter 7.

Notes to Chapter 2 1. 2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Juan Sebastián, letter of introduction for the first Jesuits sent to Chile, 1593. BNSFM 95, fol. 1. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 337. For a brief account of the establishment of the Society of Jesus in Chile, see Hanisch Espíndola, Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Chile. The most authoritative—if overly apologetic—history of the Chilean Jesuits is Enrich’s Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Chile. For the arrival of the first seven Jesuits, see 1:18–36. The long list of founders, co-founders, and benefactors of the Jesuit College of San Miguel is a clear indicator of the vested interest of the citizens of Santiago in having a Jesuit college. A list of all the contributions made by the neighbors can be seen in “Documentos sobre la fundación del Colegio Máximo de San Miguel,” 1593–1685, ANSFJ Chile (335) 124, fols. 1–120v. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 338. Ibid. For the native and African sodalities directed by the Jesuits, see Valenzuela Márquez, Las liturgias del poder, 152–54. For a good example of the level of Hispanization achieved by the native population of Santiago, see the collection of native wills compiled by Retamal Ávila, Testamentos de indios en Chile colonial, 1564–1801. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 338–39. For a brief overview of these texts and a comparison with other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century vocabularies, see Zapater, La búsqueda, 69–101. Lisi, El tercer concilio limense, 129. The assistants to the council agreed upon a text for a catechism, and decreed that it should be translated into the different Amer­ indian languages, 124. Following these decrees, Valdivia published his Mapudungun grammar and catechism in 1606, and his catechism in the Allentiac and the Millcayac languages in 1607. For the bibliographical history of Valdivia’s catechisms, Schuller’s “Discovery of a Fragment” is still the best source. For the linguistic work of the Jesuits working in Peru, see MacCormack, “Grammar and Virtue”; for the work of Jesuit missionaries on the Guarani language, see Melià, La lengua guarani.

236 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

Notes to Pages 38–41 Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 19:112. The fair complexion and blond hair of the Chonos was also documented by Diego de Rosales in “Conquista spiritual,” fol. 187. Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 19:111. Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, 1:28. Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 372. O’Malley, First Jesuits, 228–29. Acosta, for instance, used extensively the annual letters sent by members of the Society working in India, China, and Japan in order to establish comparisons between the Asiatic cultural and religious institutions and what he saw as their Mexican and Peruvian counterparts. See Historia natural y moral, 330–31, 334, 352– 53, and particularly 378–87, where he compared the writing systems of the Chinese, Japanese, Nahua, and Inca peoples. Shapiro, “From Tupã to the Land without Evil,” 129, and more generally for the Jesuit use of Tupi-Guarani mythology and religion to explain Christian concepts. Probably the best-known case of this interaction between Christian teachings and local culture in the Jesuit missionary methods is the so-called Chinese rites controversy—that is to say, the European polemic over Jesuit permissiveness toward the practice among the Chinese neophytes of Confucian rites in honor of their ancestors among. There is an abundant literature on the Chinese rites controversy. For a general overview of the main historiographical trends on the subject, see Mungello, Chinese Rites Controversy. For the Dominican position, as opposed to the Jesuit conceptualization of Confucian rites as civil and not religious in meaning, see Cummins, Question of Rites. More recently, Brockey has argued that the Chinese rites controversy had little bearing on the actual development of the China mission, being a debate conducted mainly in Europe; see Journey to the East, 104–7. After the expulsion of the Society of Jesus in 1767, the Franciscan friars who took over the missions among the Mapuche people were appalled to see the extent of Jesuit Christian instruction; see Foerster, Jesuitas y mapuches, 267. Landaburu and Kohn Longarica, “La medicina de las misiones jesuíticas,” 59. Citarella, Medicinas y culturas, 265–66, and especially 294–308; Gumucio, Hierarchy, Utility, and Metaphor, 16–17. Valdés Bunster, El poder económico, 42–43. For the prohibition of members of the Society to study medicine, see Loyola, Constitutions, 452. For the Jesuit pharmacy at the College of San Pablo in Lima, see Martín, Intellectual Conquest of Peru, 97–118. When the Jesuits were expelled from Castilian territories in 1767, several cities complained that they would lack proper healthcare without the Jesuit apothecaries. In Chile, the Jesuit lay brother Joseph Zeiter was allowed to stay until 1771, since there was no suitable replacement for him as apothecary. See Meier, “Los jesuitas expulsados de Chile,” 430. Rosales, Historia general, 1:231. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 6. On medical practitioners in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Chile, see Vicuña Mackenna, Médicos de antaño, 21–26. Rosales, “Conquista espiritual,” fol. 18. Foerster has noted that, in addition to the perception of baptism as a deadly spell, the Mapuche reluctance to accept the



25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Notes to Pages 41–46

237

sacrament was linked to the importance of the güi or ritually donated name in the Mapuche culture and social structure. After baptism, the neophyte had to give up his or her güi and adopt a Spanish name, a fact that upset the relations of kinship ritually sealed by the donation; see Jesuitas y mapuches, 258. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 381. Rosales, however, gives 1637 as the year in which the Jesuits started seeing this change of attitude toward baptism (“Relictos,” 76). Ovalle, Histórica relación, 386. Ibid., 407. “And when he had cast out the devil, the dumb spoke” (Luke 11:14). On the different functions of the South American shamans, see the classic work by Eliade, Shamanism, 323–24. In Paraguay, the authority of the paies (shamans) could sometimes overlap with the authority of the mburuvicha (political leaders), further aggravating the conflict between paies and missionaries. See Roulet, La resistencia de los guaraní, 83–88. For the importance of healing in the legitimacy of the machi in present-day Mapuche communities, see Citarella, Medicinas y culturas, 200–208. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 5–6. Ibid., 6–7. Among present-day Mapuche, the knowledge of medicinal plants and their use for particular diseases is achieved both through a process of formal apprenticeship and through revelations during dreams and shamanic trances. See Bacigalupo, La voz del kultrún, 77. Citarella has noticed that “the information given to the machi by the spirits is individualized and personalized for the patient being treated at that moment. Even if another patient exhibits the same symptoms, the medicine prescribed can be different if the disease has a different cause” [la información que recibe la machi de sus espíritus es individual y personal para el enfermo que atiende en ese momento. Aunque exista otro paciente con los mismos síntomas, el lawen puede variar si la enfermedad tiene otra causa] (Medicinas y culturas, 277). Citarella, Medicinas y culturas, 205. Olivares, Los jesuitas, 45. Ibid., 46. This brief biographical sketch is taken from Pinto, “Frontera, misiones y misioneros en Chile,” 45–46; see also Zapater, La búsqueda de la paz, 19–37. Valdivia, Copia de vna carta, 89v. For a well-documented summary of these abuses, see Korth, Spanish Policy, 22–39. Ferrando Keun, Y así nació la Frontera, 122–28. Ibid., 151. Ibid., 96–102. Enrich, Historia de la Compañía de Jesús, 1:229. The complete speech can be seen on 228–30. Korth, Spanish Policy, 117–29; Foerster, Jesuitas y mapuches, 132–37. Acosta, De Procuranda [1596], 214. For the full development of Acosta’s argument, see De Procuranda, book 2, chapters 2–4 and 12–14. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 374. For a history of the indios amigos and their legal recognition by Spanish authorities at the beginning of the seventeenth century, see Ruiz-Esquide, Los indios amigos, especially 22–30; for the various efforts made to force them to live in Spanish-style towns, 65–67.

238 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

Notes to Pages 47–54 Rosales, “Conquista espiritual,” fol. 91. Pinto, “Integración y desintegración,” 26–27. Rosales, “Conquista espiritual,” fol. 43. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 394. Olivares, Jesuitas en la Patagonia, 86. Ibid. On the Jesuit practice of locking away native shamans and priests in the Juli and Cercado doctrinas, see Albó, “Jesuitas y culturas indígenas,” 307. Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 19:33. Valdivia, Nueve sermones, 71. Additional citations in the text. Rosales, Historia general, 1:190–91. Ibid., 1:191. This brief account of Mapuche medicine is based on Citarella, Medicinas y culturas, 129–73. For a similar typology with slightly different terminology and a focus mainly on the therapeutic uses of plants, see Gumucio, Hierarchy, Utility, and Metaphor, 63– 64 and 110–21. There is some disagreement among scholars regarding the level of medical specialization among the Mapuche before the nineteenth century. Citarella considers traditional the distinction between machi or shaman, lawenchefe or expert in herbs, and ngütanchefe or specialist in bone fractures and other traumas (Medicinas y culturas, 145). Bacigalupo, on the other hand, notes that in more isolated communities the only medical practitioner is the machi, and she assumes, therefore, that the different levels of specialization are a consequence of prolonged contact with Western society and medical practices (La voz del kultrún, 109–17). For modern examples of natural disasters seen as wenu kutran, see Citarella, Medicinas y culturas, 153. The same description of Christ’s actions can be found in the third sermon. Valdivia, Nueve sermones, 17. For the continuity of the Apostolic tradition down to the Jesuit priests, see Valdivia, Nueve sermones, 20. On this issue, see the fine account by Cervantes in Devil in the New World, especially 5–39. I will deal with this issue more in depth in the next chapter. For a discussion on contemporary debates regarding the purportedly demonic origin of Nahua botanical knowledge, see Pardo, “Contesting the Power to Heal” For the role of the kalku in present-day Mapuche communities, see Citarella, Medicinas y culturas, 154–62. Herckmans’s glossary has been published in Schuller, El vocabulario araucano de 1642– 1643. For the machi entry, see 8. Clastres, Land-Without-Evil, 20–29. Gumucio, Hierarchy, Utility, and Metaphor, 62–63. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 363. Rosales, “Conquista espiritual,” fols. 219–20 and 335. Ibid., fol. 375. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 374; Rosales, “Conquista espiritual,” fols. 91–92. Rosales, “Conquista espiritual,” fol. 100. Ibid., fols. 107–8.

75. 76.

77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92.

93. 94. 95. 96.

Notes to Pages 54–59

239

Ibid., fol. 108. Citarella identifies the boquibuy as the healer or shaman that participates in curative rituals (Medicinas y culturas, 67–68). Elsewhere, Rosales defined the boquibuy not as a ceremonial figure but as “the devil’s priests,” and described them as having great political and religious influence among the Mapuche (Historia general, 1:44–45, 178). Ovalle, Histórica relación, 386. Pardo, Origins of Mexican Catholicism, 115. Council of Trent, Canons and Decrees, 92–93. Ibid., 91. On this point, see the discussion by Myers, Poor, Sinning Folk, 172–75. Council of Trent, Canon and Decrees, 93. Lea, History of Auricular Confession, 1:368; see also Myers, Poor, Sinning Folk, 163–64. For a suggestive discussion, see Klor de Alva, “Sahagun.” On the use of the physician/patient simile by different ecclesiastical writers to describe the confessor/penitent relationship, see McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, 44–46; see also Thayer, “Judge and Doctor.” Jerónimo de Nadal considered the triple role of father, judge, and physician to be the fundamental feature of the ideal Jesuit confessor; see Burrieza Sánchez, “Los ministerios de la Compañía,” 121–22, and O’Malley, First Jesuits, 140–41. Valdivia, Confessionario breve, 17–18. Ibid., 17. Burrieza Sánchez, “Los ministerios de la Compañía,” 123, and especially Maher, “Confession and Consolation,” 186–200. For a general description of confession handbooks, see Lea, History of Auricular Confession, 1:370; for a more recent account, see Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 198–205. Valdivia, Confessionario breve, 20. The use of poisons and abortifacients was asked in the section devoted to violations of the fourth commandment (Valdivia, Confessionario breve, 24–25). The use of plants and herbs to concoct love philters was asked in the section related to violations of the sixth commandment (27). Canon law allows for the use of interpreters or sign language when there is a communicative gap between priest and penitent, such as in the case of deaf people, or when the two parties speak mutually unintelligible languages (Barton, Penance and Absolution, 136). Despite this fact, Acosta recommended against the use of translators when confessing native neophytes, making the case instead for the learning of native languages by the parish priests (De Procuranda, book 6, chapter 13). On this point, see the detailed account in Lea, History of Auricular Confession, 1:413– 50. The council’s decree regarding annual confession and the sacramental seal can be seen in Foreville, Latran I, II, III et Latran IV, 357–58. Lea, History of Auricular Confession, 1:440. Lea comments on a memorandum brought to the Holy Office in 1590, in which some Spanish Jesuits complained that their superiors made use of information acquired through confession to make relevant decisions regarding the internal government of the order. History of Auricular Confession, 1:457, with a partial transcription of the memorandum in note 1. In 1645, the Jesuits of Cordoba, Argentina, were accused by some Franciscan friars of violating the sacramental secrecy of confession by publicly

240

Notes to Pages 59–64

discussing the sins and using what they had learned in the confessionary as moral examples in their sermons. Diego de Borja, Report on the Jesuits of Cordoba and Tucumán, 1646. ANSFJ Argentina 194, fols. 18–18v. 97. Lea, History of Auricular Confession, 1:439–40. 98. Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 19:103, 99. Rosales, “Conquista espiritual,” fol. 221. 100. Ibid., fol. 181. 101. Ibid., fol. 69. 102. Rosales, Historia general, 1:169; Techo, Historia, 2:335.

Notes to Chapter 3 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

Luis Pacheco, 1649, “Medios para mejor dotrinar a los Yndios de las Reduçiones propuestos por el padre Luis pacheco Viçe Prouinçial de la Compañia de Jesus de çhille al Sr. gou[ernador] d. Martin de Mojica,” 1649. ANSFJ 93, section 1, fols. 150– 150v. Góngora’s “Vagabundaje y sociedad fronteriza en Chile” is the classic study about wandering in the Chilean borderland. The formation of a borderland society in southern Chile has an extensive literature. For an evaluation of the different lines of inquiry into this subject, see Parentini, Introducción a la etnohistoria mapuche, 59–100. For the instability of the indios amigos and their frequent change of sides, see RuizEsquide, Los indios amigos, 43–56. For the establishment of the Society of Jesus in Paraguay, see Armani, Ciudad de Dios y ciudad del sol, 58–95; Carman, Lost Paradise, 27–50; Gálvez, Guaraníes y jesuitas, 108–55; and Ganson, Guarani, 31–51. The Mission (1986), directed by Roland Joffé and starring Robert de Niro and Jeremy Irons. There is abundant literature about the bandeiras. From the Portuguese side, several modern historians consider their activities a legitimate reaction against the Spanish penetration of Portuguese territories: see Cortesão, Raposo Tavares, and Goes, Navegantes, bandeirantes, diplomatas, 58–77. Spanish and Spanish American historians, of course, are less prone to a positive view of these incidents: see Furlong Cardiff, Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, 47–55, and Rouillon, Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, 256–72. For the formation and use of Guarani militias by the Jesuits, see Bruxel, Los treinta pueblos Guaranies, 37–42. Techo, Historia, 4:71–73. For a modern description of a ñembo’e ritual, see Reed, Prophets of Agroforestry, 108–11. Techo, Historia, 2:224, 3:177–80, 4:70–73. Jesuit missionaries sometimes resorted to physical punishment as a way to meet the challenges posed by the shamans, 2:221–22, 3:6–17. Techo, Historia, 3:333; see also Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, 76v. Techo, Historia, 3:333; see also Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, 75v–77. Today, the ñimongarai is considered one of the most important ritual ceremonies of the Chiripá-Guarani; see Reed, Prophets of Agroforestry, 113–15, and Bartolomé, Orekuera Reyhendu, 77. Techo, Historia, 4:322.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Notes to Pages 64–68

241

Muratori, El cristianismo feliz, 90. Techo, Historia, 3:48. Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 20:210–11. For the importance of technological and agricultural exchanges in winning over the Guarani chiefs, see Ganson, Guarani, 35. In 1639, Ruiz de Montoya bluntly recognized this fact: “We buy their good will at the price of a metal wedge” (Conquista espiritual, 64). Jarque, Vida prodigiosa, 1:234. For Ruiz de Montoya’s activities in Paraguay and in Spain on behalf of the Jesuit missions, see Rouillon’s Antonio Ruiz de Montoya. Techo, Historia, 4:205. “Hacía oficio de labrador para ayudarles en sus sementeras; de médico y cirujano para curarlos en sus achaques, sangrándolos por su mano y aplicándoles diferentes remedios que le enseñaba el Divino Amor” ( Jarque, Vida prodigiosa, 1:234). The use of the confessional to obtain information regarding Guarani culture was acknowledged by Ruiz de Montoya himself. Commenting on the candor with which the natives confessed every week, he remarked that the natives freely advanced information about their lives before the reductions: “Nor do they refrain from telling what they did in their infidelity, which, although not the proper matter of this sacrament, their regret for having done is edifying” [Ni dexan de manifestar lo que en su infidelidad hizieron, que si bien no [es] materia deste Sacramento, su dolor de auerlos cometido edifica] (Conquista espiritual, 64v). Techo provides another example: “Father Pedro Romero . . . experienced the protection of the Virgin: he suffered from an ulcer that drained corrupted pus and he was already losing his forces, all medicines being useless . . . but he put on his wounds the leaves of some plant found by chance, and soon after the ulcers were gone” [El Padre Pedro Romero . . . experimentó la protección de la Virgen: padecía un cáncer del que manaba pus corrompido y ya las fuerzas le faltaban, siendo inútiles todas las medicinas…más acaeció que se puso en la llaga las hojas de cierta planta hallada por casualidad, y al poco tiempo el cáncer desapareció] (Historia, 2:344). Thus, for instance, the annual report corresponding to the year 1614 notes that an epidemic was stopped by Father Juan de Salas, who concocted a medicinal syrup with which the ailing natives were treated. Nothing is said about the ingredients or the way of preparing this medicine (Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 20:22). Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 20:88. Sepp, Viagem às missiões jesuíticas, 116. For the life of Bassauri, see the annual report of the years 1628 to 1631 in Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 20:432–34. Montenegro examined some seeds wrapped by Torres in “Libro primero,” 580. On Torres’s list of medicines, see Cignoli, Médicos y boticarios misioneros, 40. I am following here the useful distinction between knowledge and information made by Burke in Social History of Knowledge, 11. On Ruiz de Montoya’s depiction of the devil’s agency in his Conquista espiritual, see Ordóñez, “Reason and Utopia,” 306–12. Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, 9. Ibid., 9v. On Guarani traditional concepts of disease, see Cadogan, “Síntesis,” 21–35.

242 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

Notes to Pages 68–72 For the mythological origins of Guarani pharmacopoeia, see Bartolomé, Orekuera Royhendu, 115–19. The standard compilation of Guarani myths is Nimuendajú’s Los mitos de creación y de destrucción. For the mythical donation of medicines, see 165. Métraux, “Guaraní,” 3:92–93. The presence of twins as culture heroes is common in South American mythologies. For an informative overview, see Métraux, “Twin Heroes.” For Guarani versions of the myth, see 116, 118–21. Some researchers, such as Bartolomé, identify the pochy with the spirits of the forest; see Orekuera Royhendu, 113–15. Cadogan, “Síntesis,” 30–31. Reed, Prophets of Agroforestry, 115. Nimuendajú, 55: This fact may explain why, to the astonishment of the missionaries, the Guarani came out of the forests in large numbers during epidemics to solicit baptism. In fact, it is not unlikely that the Guarani assimilated the healing use of the ñimongarai into the Christian naming ritual, trying then to acquire a new (Christian) identity to escape from the devastation brought about by the European diseases for which they lacked any natural defenses. For the voluntary submission to baptism at times of epidemics, see Techo, Historia, 1:160–61. On the Guarani perception of the Jesuits as a more powerful brand of shaman, see Shapiro, “From Tupã to the Land without Evil.” Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 20:669. Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, 9–9v. Columbus, La carta de Colón, 48. See Cervantes, Devil in the New World, 8–17. For a cogent analysis of the interpretive changes regarding Amer­indian cultures and devotional objects that led to the conceptualization of indigenous spiritual beliefs and practices as idolatry, see Gruzinski, Images at War, 7–29. Motolinía, Historia de los indios de la Nueva España, 127. Castañega, Tratado de las supersticiones, 29–30. Ibid., 26. Stuart Clark has shown how pervasive the idea of inversion was in early modern European culture, and its relevance for the conceptualization of demonic witchcraft; see Thinking with Demons, 69–93. Motolinía, Historia de los indios de la Nueva España, 125. For the doctrinal shift implied by the attribution of heresy to acts, and not merely to opinions, see Boureau, Satan the Heretic, 11–39; for a discussion of devil-worship accusations against the Cathars and the Knights Templar, see Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 52–59 and 83–98, respectively. Castañega, Tratado de las supersticiones, 23. Ibid. For the development of the notion of the demonic pact, see Boureau, Satan the Heretic, 68–92. Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, 18. Boureau, Satan the Heretic, 60–63. In 1320, Pope John XXII summoned a group of experts to discuss witchcraft and demonic invocations as heretical acts; see 14–25. Castañega, Tratado de las supersticiones, 33–34. Ibid., 30. Ibid., 28.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

Notes to Pages 72–79

243

Boureau, Satan the Heretic, 61. Castañega, Tratado de las supersticiones, 35. For Olmos’s treatise and its dependence on Castañega’s work, see Cervantes, Devil in the New World, 25. For a thoughtful comparison between Acosta’s views on idolatry, and the more Thomistic treatment of the same phenomenon advanced by Bartolomé de Las Casas, see Cervantes, Devil in the New World, 26–33. On Rio’s life and influence, see Maxwell-Stuart’s introduction to his partial translation of the Disquisitionum (Martín del Rio, 1–23). Rio, Disquisitionum, 3. Additional citations in the text. This judicial approach was apparently the norm in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Spain. Theologians, on the one hand, accepted the fact that diabolism existed, but following the recommendations of its lawyers, the Inquisition was reluctant to treat witchcraft as a serious offense, requiring extensive inquiries into the facts before deciding that an offense was due to actual demonic intervention and not merely to ignorance and superstition; see Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 271–76, and Pérez, Spanish Inquisition, 79–85. Writing in 1631, amidst the witch-hunt frenzy going on in Germany, the German Jesuit Friedrich Spee acknowledged the different approach to witchcraft taken by the Spaniards, bitterly stating, “Certainly the Italians and Spaniards, who by nature seem to be more prone to speculating on these matters and clearly see how a large crowd of innocent people would also be carried off if they copied the Germans, rightly abstain and entrust to us alone the duty to burn” (Cautio Criminalis, 52). Aquinas, On Evil, 493. Rio, Disquisitionum, 386. Escobar de Corro, Tractatus, 6. Techo, Historia, 1:336. Ibid. Compare this description with some of the examples adduced by Kramer and Sprenger in Malleus Maleficarum, 136–39. Similar descriptions of the paies’ actions can be found in Ruiz de Montoya’s Conquista espiritual, where Guarani shamans are depicted trying to cast deadly spells on the missionaries, but the devil acknowledges that his powers are not enough to dispose of the Jesuits (14v). Techo, Historia, 1:336. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 386. Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 20:266–67. Ibid., 20:267. However, this is not to say they could completely control the Guarani’s recourse to traditional ways of worshipping, particularly outside the missions; see Ganson, Guaraní, 39. Sepp, Viagem às missões jesuíticas, 140–41. Ravigni and Leonhardt, Documentos para la historia argentina, 20:687. Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, 55. Ibid., 67v. Ibid., 64–64v. Sepp, Viagem às missiões jesuíticas, 140. Cignoli, Médicos y boticarios, 45. Cardiel, Declaración de la verdad, 248–49.

244 79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

Notes to Pages 81–96 Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, 3v–4. This conceptualization was not peculiar to the seventeenth-century Jesuits but, rather, a common European attitude toward native cultures; see Schiebinger, Plants and Empire, 81. Temkin, Galenism, 15–18. At least since the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, Spanish apothecaries had also been required to meet a minimum standard of theoretical training set by a common reading list; see García Ballester, La búsqueda de la salud, 624–26. Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, 29. Ibid., 29–29v. For a brief but well-documented overview of the development of this belief, see Vigneras, “Saint Thomas, Apostle of America,” 82–90. Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, 32v. Shapiro, “From Tupã to the Land without Evil,” 127–28. For the donation of manioc, see Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, 31v; for Tupa as the Christian monotheist concept taught by Thomas, see 33v. Montenegro, “Libro primero,” 175.

Notes to Chapter 4 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Loyola, Constitutions, 278. Ibid., 170. Ibid., 268. Ibid., 78–80. Wright, God’s Soldiers, 3–7. For the importance of Francis Xavier as an inspiration among European novices, see Selwyn, Paradise Inhabited by Devils, 95–110. O’Malley, First Jesuits, 200, 239. Barry and Doherty, Contemplatives in Action, 14–15. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 339. Ovalle’s second and third classes of Jesuit ministries also made colleges their operative centers. The second class consisted of the itinerant missions into the countryside surrounding a city, in which the Jesuits went out for the day to preach and administer the sacraments, returning to their college to spend each night. The third class were longer itinerant missions, in which two Jesuits traveled for a period of two to three months around a more extensive area entrusted to a specific college; see Ovalle, Histórica relación, 358–59. For a more general discussion of the missionary utility of these procedures, see Acosta, De Procuranda, book 5. “Documentos sobre la fundación del Colegio Máximo de San Miguel,” 1593–1685. ANSFJ Chile (335) 124, fol. 3. Querejazu Calvo, Historia de la Iglesia católica en Charcas, 103. Góngora, Studies in the Colonial History, 188. Diego de Torres, annual report from the Province of Paraguay, Chile, and Tucumán, 1611. ANSFJ Argentina 187, fol. 222. Martín, Intellectual Conquest of Peru, 20, 24–25. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 33. For the public discussions of the so-called cases of conscience in Jesuit colleges, and



18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Notes to Pages 96–101

245

the progressive importance of these roundtables for the colleges and the communities of which they were a part, see O’Malley, First Jesuits, 144–47. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 1:99, 109. Ibid., 1:129, 141. Cobo, Obras, 2:425. For an overview of private libraries in Peru, including information about their sizes and holdings, see Hampe Martínez, “Diffusion of Books and Ideas in Colonial Peru” and Bibliotecas privadas en el mundo colonial. For a description of the library holdings based on the catalog made by Crown officials in the aftermath of the Jesuit expulsion, see Martín, Intellectual Conquest of Peru, 85– 96. Egaña, Monumenta Peruana, 1:694. Ibid., 1:696. Lima, as the viceregal capital, was a distribution center of books not only through the religious orders but also through commercial networks; see the discussion of two book orders sent to Potosí and Chile by the book dealer Tomás Gutiérrez in 1626 and 1640 in Leonard, “Pérez de Montalbán, Tomás Gutiérrez, and Two Book Lists.” “Memoria de lo que el Pe P[rocurador] Xpual de Ouando a de Hazer Por el Collegio de Guam[anga],” 1613. ANSFJ Perú 372, fol. 326. O’Malley, First Jesuits, 215. The modus parisiensis was the course of studies, teaching method and rules used at the University of Paris, where Ignatius and the first Jesuits had studied. Valdivia to Alonso Mejía, 1597. BNSFM 305, fols. 183–183v. Paulo V, “Bula otorgando el derecho de conceder grados a los alumnos de los colegios de la Compañía en América,” 1613. ANSFJ Perú 373, fol. 322. The degree of licenciatus, or licentiate, is an intermediate degree between that of bachelor and master granted by certain European universities. Paulo V, “Respuesta a la consulta del 13 de junio de 1613 sobre el derecho a otorgar grados en los colegios de la Compañía.” ANSFJ Perú 373, fol. 321. In Chile, the Real Audiencia rejected the papal bull, which prompted a legal battle between the Jesuits and the Dominicans over the right to found a university and grant degrees; see “Relacion de lo que ha pasado acerca de los Grados entre la Comp[añía] y los P[adres] de sancto Domingo en chille,” ca. 1624. ANSFJ 93, section 1, fols. 114–15. There is no agreement among scholars regarding the exact year in which the College of Cordoba became a university. Levene, following Juan Garro, gives 1614 as the year in which the college was given university status (“Las universidades de Indias”). Other historians, such as Furlong Cardiff, favor 1622, since the constitutions of the university written by Provincial Pedro de Oñate were dated that year; see Furlong Cardiff, Historia social y cultural, 1:280. O’Malley, First Jesuits, 200. Vargas Ugarte, Historia, 2:107–8. Hanisch Espíndola, Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Chile, 17; Ganson, Guaraní, 31 and 53. Cobo’s biography has yet to be written. These paragraphs are based on the short overview of Cobo’s life published by Mateos in 1957 (“El padre Bernabé Cobo”). Cobo, Obras, 2:197. Cobo’s history remained practically unknown until its publication in three volumes by Marcos Jiménez de la Espada between 1890 and 1893. For a brief but thorough

246

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

Notes to Pages 102–17 overview of its editorial history, see the introduction by Mateos in Cobo, Obras, 1:xxxix–xli. I discuss Cobo’s and Acosta’s approach to the study of American nature in the third part of this book. For a comparison between Acosta’s Historia and Cobo’s natural history, see MacCormack, On the Wings of Time, 161–63. Cobo, Obras, 1:6. Additional citations in the text. Cobo, Obras, 1:3. Ibid. For the use of eyewitness authority as a source of legitimacy among early colonial writers, see Pagden, European Encounters, 51–88, and “Ius et Factum” for the importance of the historiographical and juridical traditions. On the construction of eyewitness authority in colonial texts, see Adorno, “Discoursive Encounter.” Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 58, 145. Additional citations in the text. On the introduction of the twelve new constellations from the Southern Hemisphere by Keyser and Houtman, see Ridpath, Star Tales, 9–10. For the use of celestial atlases and star catalogs in the descriptions of the skies made by American writers, see Cañizares-Esguerra, “New Worlds, New Stars.” Cobo mentioned the use of the cross-staff in his description of the Southern Cross (Obras, 1:29). He also referred to how a native craftsman built for him a telescope “as good as any brought from Italy” (1:134). On the early adoption of the telescope by European astronomers, including Jesuit practitioners, see Van Helden, “Telescope.” Ondegardo, Informaciones acerca, 3–4. Bauer and Dearborn, Astronomy and Empire, 104. Ondegardo’s works present numerous textual problems that complicate both the exact attribution of several works and their dating; see Pérez Galán, “Notas.” See the list of Andean stars and constellations compiled by Urton, At the Crossroads, 96–105. Cobo, Obras, 1:xxvii. On the recurring flooding problems of Mexico City during colonial times, see Hoberman, “Technological Change” and “Bureaucracy and Disaster.” Hoberman, “Bureaucracy and Disaster,” 214. Hoberman, “Technological Change,” 406. Cobo, Obras, 1:xxxiv. Olsen, Slavery and Salvation, 55. Cobo, Obras, 2:425.

Notes to Chapter 5 1. 2. 3.

For the Society of Jesus as a transnational corporation, see Harris, “Jesuit Scientific Activity,” especially 71–73. On the importance of the transmission of information from the overseas missions to the European Jesuits’ scientific production, see the work of Harris, in particular “Confession-Building,” “Mapping Jesuit Science,” and “Jesuit Scientific Activity.” See Latour’s Science in Action for a definition of centers of calculation (232–43). For a discussion of the action-network theory and its application to early modern Jesuit scientific practice, see later in this chapter.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Notes to Pages 117–24

247

Rosales, Historia general, 1:201. Ibid. On Kircher’s readership in America, see Findlen, “A Jesuit’s Books,” and Kramer, “ex ultimo angulo orbis,” especially 359–64. These paragraphs about Mascardi’s early life are based on Rosso’s “Nicolò Mascardi,” 10–15. For Agostino Mascardi’s activity in courtly academies during the first half of the seventeenth century, see Biagioli, Galileo Courtier, 263–65. O’Malley, First Jesuits, 205. Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 142. Ibid., 146. O’Malley, First Jesuits, 234. Lattis, Between Copernicus and Galileo, 32. For the Jesuit debate on the scientific status of mathematical disciplines according to the criteria set forth by Aristotle, see Dear, Discipline and Experience, 36–46. For the strategies employed by Clavius and his circle to obtain recognition within the Roman College, see Gorman, “Scientific CounterRevolution,” 49–77. Lattis, Between Copernicus and Galileo, 24. Ibid., 182–86. Ibid., 187 and 203. Biagioli, Galileo Courtier, 276. Findlen, “Last Man,” 21; and Possessing Nature, 82–83 and 164–65. Hanisch Espíndola, El historiador Alonso de Ovalle, 77. Rosso, “Nicolò Mascardi,” 14. Hanisch Espíndola, El historiador Alonso de Ovalle, 84 and 92. Mascardi 1653, fol. 110; Rosso, “Nicolò Mascardi,” 15. Rosales, “Vida apostólica,” 198. Coninck to Kircher, July 20, 1653. APUG 567, fol. 136v. Rosales, “Vida apostólica,” 198. Ibid. Ibid., 203. Ibid., 204, 208. Leiva, “Araucanía,” 146. Goicovich, “Entre la conquista y la consolidación fronteriza,” 322. Enrich, Historia de la Compañía, 1:602–9; Rosales, “Vida apostólica,” 208; Rosales, Historia general, 1:159, 278, 487. Goicovich, “Entre la conquista y la consolidación fronteriza,” 322–23. Rosales, “Vida apostólica,” 206. Ibid., 207. Ibid., 208. Ibid., 209–10. Ibid, 214. Rojas, Reyes sobre la tierra, 39. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 428. Hanisch Espíndola, La isla de Chiloé, 12–14. Rojas, Reyes sobre la tierra, 40–41. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 428.

248 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

Notes to Pages 124–31 Rosales, “Vida apostólica,” 215. Ibid. Ovalle, Histórica relación, 429. Rosales, “Vida apostólica,” 216. Rosales, Three chapters, 83. Hanisch Espíndola, La isla de Chiloé, 94. Rosales, “Vida apostólica,” 221; Rosales, Three chapters, 83–84. For a good summary of all the stories circulating about the Ciudad de los Césares, and a review of the expeditions undertaken to find it, see Estellé and Couyoudmdjian, “La Ciudad de los Césares.” Rosales, Historia general, 1:32. Mascardi, “Capitulo de carta que ba con esta por donde se reconoce ay esperança de q[ue] se descubra la tierra que llaman de los cesares,” May 29, 1669. ANSFJ Perú 415, fol. 35v. Ibid. Mascardi to Kircher, in Italian. APUG 566, fol. 217v. Ibid., fol. 218. Ibid., fol. 218v. Rosales, “Vida apostólica,” 235. Rosso, “Nicolò Mascardi,” 9, 13–14. The “Conquista espiritual” did not survive in its entirety the dispersal of the autograph manuscript of the Historia general. Only book 4, which contains the biographies of about forty missionaries, has survived; it is currently housed in the Salón Medina of the Biblioteca Nacional in Santiago, Chile. The biography of Mascardi, preserved in a different manuscript, belonged in all likelihood to this group. Anadón has also published sections of what appears to be a different book of the “Conquista espiritual,” dealing with Mapuche beliefs and rituals; see Rosales, “Relictos,” 59–84. Mascardi to Kircher, June 1, 1653. APUG 567, fol. 110. Ibid.; Hanisch Espíndola, El historiador Alonso de Ovalle, 97. Mascardi to Kircher, n.d. APUG 566, fol. 220v. On the use of Jesuit informants by Kircher, in particular regarding the Consilium Geographicum, the plan to reform geography entrusted to him by Vitelleschi, see Gorman, “Angel and the Compass.” Gorman, “Angel and the Compass,” 242. Cited in Furlong Cardiff, Entre los tehuelches, 173. Quoted in Gorman, “Angel and the Compass,” 242. Mascardi to Kircher, n.d. APUG 566, fol. 218v. Ibid. See also Mascardi to Kircher, APUG 565, fol. 185v. On Stansel, see Casanovas and Keenan, “Observations of Comets,” and Ziller Camenietzki, “Baroque Science,” and “Celestial Pilgrimages.” Kircher, “Lectori Beneuolo,” 1667. APUG 560, fol. 78v. “Non enic mathesis alta in hac provincia.” Mascardi to Kircher, February 7, 1661, APUG 562, fol. 71. Coninck to Kircher, July 20, 1653. APUG 567, fol. 136. Ibid., fol. 135. Ibid.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98.

99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

Notes to Pages 131–35

249

Coninck to Kircher, July 31, 1655. APUG 567, fol. 137v. Ibid., fol. 136v. Ibid., fol. 137v. Furlong Cardiff, Historia social y cultural, 3:137, 425. Loyola, Obras, 583. Martín, La conquista intelectual, 82. Coninck to Kircher, July 20, 1653. APUG 567, fol. 136v. Cobo, Obras, 1:134. Vargas Ugarte, Ensayo de un diccionario, 198. Rosales, “Vida apostólica,” 211. Ibid. Mascardi to Kircher, February 7, 1661. APUG 562, fol. 71. Ibid. Mendiburu, probably based on a portrait of Ruiz Lozano found at the University of San Marcos in Lima, assumed that he had been born in the viceregal capital; see Diccionario histórico biográfico del Perú, 7:112–13. More recently, Ortiz Sotelo has uncovered a wealth of documents about Ruiz Lozano, giving us a much fuller and accurate picture of his life; see “Francisco Ruiz Lozano.” This brief biographical sketch of Ruiz Lozano is based on the information provided by Ortiz Sotelo. Ruiz Lozano, Tratado de los cometas, fol. 1v. Ibid., fol. 34v–35. Mendiburu, Diccionario histórico del Perú, 6:380. Founded by the guild of sailors, the hospital provided instructional, medical, and charitable services to its members. Mascardi to Kircher, March 14, 1666. APUG 564, fols. 89–90v. APUG 564, fols. 159–159v, and APUG 564, fols. 161–161v. Mascardi to Kircher, “Observatio Cometarium,” March 14, 1666. APUG 564, fol. 89. “Ex ultimo habitatis orbis angulo.” Mascardi to Kircher, March 14, 1666. APUG 564, fol. 89. See also Coninck to Kircher, “Ex ultimo pene orbis angulo,” July 20, 1653. APUG 567, fol. 135. Mascardi to Kircher, APUG 564, fol. 89v. For the importance of epistolary exchange in the establishment of an international community of naturalists in the sixteenth century, see Ogilvie, Science of Describing, 77–82, and Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 335–36. On Kircher’s correspondence, see Fletcher, “Astronomy” and “Medical Men.” For the Jesuit use of frequent correspondence as a means to achieve the unity and centralization of the order, see O’Malley, First Jesuits, 62–63. For the centralization of the government as one of the most salient features of the Society of Jesus, see Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought, 24. Harris, “Mapping Jesuit Science,” and “Confession-Building.” On the action-network model, see Latour, Science in Action, 219–32. Harris, “Mapping Jesuit Science,” 224–25. Mascardi to Kircher, “Observatio Cometarium,” March 14, 1666. APUG 564, fol. 89. The letters that form the base of this dispute have been published in Gambaro, Astronomia e techniche, 44–102. Gorman, “Angel and the Compass,” 251–53. Mascardi to Kircher, n.d. APUG 566, fol. 220v. Ibid.; Gorman, “Angel and the Compass,” 251.

250

Notes to Pages 136–46

106. Mascardi to Kircher, “Observatio Cometarium,” March 14, 1666. APUG 564, fol. 90v. 107. Ibid., fol. 89v. 108. “Die 3 Jan. hora 10 post merid. uidi Cometa circa medium oris Ceti [. . .] Eodem die in Vrbe Lima uisus est Libera altitud[inem] mend. 79 grad. 10 m.” Ibid. 109. Ibid., fol. 90v. 110. Ruiz Lozano, Tratado de los cometas, 24v. 111. Nieremberg, Obras filosóficas, 3:313. 112. Ruiz Lozano, Tratado de los cometas, 10v. Additional citations in the text. 113. Ruiz Lozano, Tratado de los cometas, 11v–12. 114. Ibid., 12. 115. Schechner Genuth, Comets, 154. 116. Ibid., 218. 117. Ruiz Lozano, Tratado de los cometas, 17. 118. Ruiz Lozano was not the only seventeenth-century writer in the Americas to adopt such a modern position. For an informative discussion about the debates on comets in the British and Spanish colonies in America, see Johnson, “Periwigged Heralds.” 119. See, for instance, the catalog of the library of the Jesuit College of Cordoba (Echenique, Catálogo de la librería Jesuítica). 120. Harris, “Jesuit Scientific Activity,” 71.

Note to Part III

Natura ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam: Nature to the greater glory of God (Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam is the Jesuit motto).

Notes to Chapter 6 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Loyola, Obras, 865. Ibid. Ibid. Leite, Monumenta Brasiliae, 1:519–20. Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 302–305; Findlen, Possessing Nature, 40–41. Ganss, Saint Ignatius’ Idea, 54. For a brief but thorough discussion of the Jesuit motives for embracing education and the ways in which they conceptualized the relationship between pedagogy and their own pastoral aims, see O’Malley, First Jesuits, 200–242. Loyola, Constitutions, 446. I follow the 1984 edition of the Ratio Studiorum published in Beltrán-Quera, La pedagogía. For Aquinas’s Summa Theologica as the textbook to be used in the theology course, see 131. For the study of Aristotle’s Organum, see 145. Loyola, Constitutions, 450. Loyola, Obras, 587–88. “[S]alsa para algunos gustos,” quoted in Lopetegui, El padre José de Acosta, 221. Acosta, De Natura, n.p. Ibid. Burgaleta, José de Acosta, 43. Moll, De la imprenta al lector, 89–90.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

Notes to Pages 146–56

251

For a list of the suppressions, see Lopetegui, El padre José de Acosta, 219, and Acosta, De Procuranda (Pereña), 1:21. Two copies of this private edition are extant. One is housed in the library of El Escorial, and the other in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio-Emmanuele in Rome. Acosta, De Procuranda (Pereña), 1:27. Moll, De la imprenta al lector, 12. Astraín’s summary of the conflict between the Society of Jesus and the Spanish Inquisition remains the best. Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en la asistencia de España, 3:368–401. Astraín, Historia de la Compañía de Jesús, 3:381. For a summary of Aquaviva’s attempts to see De Procuranda published on time, see Lopetegui, El padre José de Acosta, 222–24. On Acosta’s role in the conflict between the Crown and the Spanish Jesuits, see Pinta Llorente, Las actividades diplomáticas, 34–44. For a list of the editions of Acosta’s Historia, see O’Gorman, Cuatro historiadores de Indias, 245–47. On Acosta’s critical reception, see Cañizares-Esguerra, “Iberian Science,” 96–97. Pino Díaz, “La Historia natural y moral de las Indias como género.” See also Shepherd, Exposition, 63. Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors, 120. For Acosta’s efforts to include the Amer­indian within a global history of human salvation, see Chapter 1. For an interpretation of Acosta’s anecdote as an example of the overcoming of textual authority, see Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts, 2. MacCormack has also assumed the brush aside of the Aristotelian conclusions about the Torrid Zone implied a rejection of the theory, although she also acknowledges that “elsewhere, Acosta found the ancient way of viewing the material world to be still valid” (On the Wings of Time, 154). Romm, Edges of the Earth, 128–30. Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 84. Ibid., 133. Ibid., 85. Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 310–11. For a brief summary of Augustine’s condemnation of human curiosity and its identification with magical and scientific practices, see Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 60–66. Augustine, Confessions, 140. “Curiosa cupiditas nomine cognitionis et scientiae palliata.” Ibid. Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 319. Shepherd, Exposition, 63. On Acosta’s discussion of human ways of knowledge, see MacCormack, Religion in the Andes, 277–78. Bouwsma, Waning of the Renaissance, 69. For a nuanced history of the valuation of curiosity from Greek writers to the late sixteenth century based on the influence of travel and travel-writing in the legitimization of curiositas, see Peters, “Desire to Know.” Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 224–26. Burke, Social History of Knowledge, 26–27.

252 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

Notes to Pages 156–65 Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 306. Ginzburg, “High and Low,” 32–36. Burke, Social History of Knowledge, 83–84. Mulsow, “Ambiguities”; Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, 143–62; Yates, Giordano Bruno, 447–49. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, 143. Yates, Giordano Bruno, 144. Augustine, Confessions, 141. Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 345. Loyola, Obras, 161–62. Meissner, Ignatius Loyola, 91. Baffetti, Retorica e scienza, 79–80. Loyola, Obras, 608. Ibid., 471. Loyola, Obras, 235. For Jesuit obedience and its importance both in the organization of the Society of Jesus and in its political thought, see Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought, 24–28. Loyola, Obras, 237. Ibid. Ibid. O’Malley, First Jesuits, 247–48. Loyola, Obras, 474. Julia, “Généalogie de la Ratio Studiorum,” 116–17. Beltrán-Quera, La pedagogía, 131. O’Malley, First Jesuits, 249. Beltrán-Quera, La pedagogía, 145. Lear, Aristotle, 26–27. Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences, 3–6. Lear, Aristotle, 53. Ibid., 28–36. Lindberg, Beginnings of Western Science, 53. For church opposition to natural magic, see Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 195. Natural magic was associated to other forms of magic, including demonic magic; see the discussion of Rio’s demonology in Chapter 2. On della Porta, see Shumaker, Occult Sciences in the Renaissance, 109–20, and Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 195–221. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, 144. On the utilitarian aims of natural magic, see also Yates, Giordano Bruno, 144, and Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 194–95. Shumaker, Occult Sciences in the Renaissance, 111–12; Grant, History of Natural Philosophy, 171. Grant, History of Natural Philosophy, 173. Puig Montada, “Aristotle and Averroes,” 22. Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 63. Ashworth, “Catholicism and Early Modern Science,” 149. Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 206–10. Lear, Aristotle, 32–33. Praxiteles was the best known of ancient Greek sculptors.



Notes to Pages 169–83

253

Notes to Chapter 7 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Cervantes, Devil in the New World, 26. On Northern European distrust of early Spanish sources on America during the eighteenth century, see Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write, 13–44. For experience and eyewitness authority as the main sources of legitimacy in early colonial writing, see Adorno, “Discursive Encounter,” and Pagden, European Encounters, 51–68. Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 263. On the teaching of the three ways of theology in sixteenth-century Spanish universities, particularly of nominalism in Alcala de Henares, see Andrés, La teología española, 2:77–78. For Acosta’s theological studies in Alcala and the popularity of nominalism and realism during the 1560s, see Burgaleta, José de Acosta, 18–19. McKeon, “Philosophy and Theology,” 396. In the development of this argument, I am heavily indebted to Gaukroger’s discussion of Aquinas’s non-Aristotelian demonstration of God’s existence; see Gaukroger, Emergence of a Scientific Culture, 130–32. “All the things mentioned [those which exist by nature] present a feature in which they differ from things which are not constituted by nature. Each of them has within itself a principle of motion and of stationariness” (Aristotle, 192b12–15). Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part 1, question 2, article 3. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Gaukroger, Emergence of a Scientific Culture, 132. Colish, Medieval Foundations, 299. Aquinas, On Being and Essence, 34, 35, and 51. Ibid., 54. Ibid., 34. Taylor, “Aquinas,” 228, and more generally for the dependence of Aquinas’s First Cause on the Neoplatonic tradition transmitted via Arabic compilations such as the Plotiniana Arabica and the Liber de Causis. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3:46. See, for example, Aristotle, 687a14–23. Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being, 78. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3:47. Ibid. Cobo, Obras, 1:13; Boland, Ideas in God, 260. See, for instance, Millones Figueroa, “La historia natural.” Millones Figueroa, “La historia natural,” 86–87. Boland, Ideas in God, 254; Craig, Problem of Divine Foreknowledge, 123. Boland, Ideas in God, 250. Following the influential Commentariorum et Disputationum in Genesim (1589) written by the Jesuit theologian Benedictus Pererius (one of his main sources for interpreting the biblical story), Cobo somewhat artificially located the creation of angels in the first day, along with the Empyrean heavens. Cobo, Obras, 1:14; Pererius, Commentariorum, 1:85.

254 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

Notes to Pages 183–94 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3:152–53. Boland, Ideas in God, 267. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part 1, question 110, article 1. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3:48. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part 1, question 110, article 3. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3:191–92. Boland, Ideas in God, 267. For Acosta’s theory on the population of America, see Chapter 1 of this book. Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 282; Cobo, Obras, 2:40. Browne, Secular Ark, 10–13. Acosta, Historia natural y moral, 97. Despite their common rejection of preternatural explanations, Pererius was not a source for Acosta. Acosta articulated this prerequisite first in the manuscript of De Natura Novi Orbis, which he sent to Rome for preliminary approval on 1583. In fact, Pererius was one of the two reviewers who granted approval for the book to be printed; see Lopetegui, El padre José de Acosta, 220–23. Pererius, Commentariorum, 1:7. Ibid., 1:8. Ibid. Compare to Acosta: “Certainly, we are not to think that there was a second ark of Noah in which men could have arrived to the Indies, much less that some angel brought the first settlers carrying them by the hair, as they did with the prophet Habakkuk” [Cierto no es de pensar que hubo otra Arca de Noé en que aportasen hombres a Indias, ni mucho menos que algún Ángel trajese colgados por el cabello, como al profeta Abacuch, a los primeros pobladores de este mundo] (Historia natural y moral, 97). Cobo, Obras, 2:38. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place, 51. Several scholars have argued the biblical narrative of the Fall, interpreted as the loss of an original and perfect natural philosophy, motivated early modern projects of scientific advancement and reform of knowledge. For a thoughtful review of some of these topics and a critique of previous approaches, see Harrison, “Original Sin.” Findlen, Possessing Nature, 91. See Prieto, “Classification, Memory, and Subjectivity.” Moreau, “Le Père Bernabé Cobo et la nomenclature botanique,” 196. “In Peruanis montibus sponte nascitur granadilla. Nomen hoc imposueru[n]t Hispani, ob similitudinem quam cum nostris malogranatis habet” (Nieremberg, Historia naturae, maxima peregrinae, 229). Dear, Intelligibility of Nature, 39–40. Ogilvie, Science of Describing, 229. For a well-documented study of this “localist” trend in early modern natural history, although restricted only to northern European naturalists, see Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous; for Linnaeus’s reaction to local researches, see 166–72. See Cañizares-Esguerra, “New World, New Stars.” For a discussion of the ways in which this idea can be seen in Jesuit writings, see Chapter 8. Ibid. Millones Figueroa, “La historia natural,” 95.



Notes to Pages 195–206

255

Notes to Chapter 8 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

Alegambe, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Societatis Iesu, 55. For Cobo’s problems with the Jesuit superiors in Peru and Rome, see Chapter 4. For the history of the manuscript, see Hanisch Espíndola, “El manuscrito.” Rosales, Historia general, 1:1. These fragments have been published as Rosales, “Relictos.” “[L]a Historia general del Reyno de Chile que poco podra ya tardar” (Ovalle, Histórica relación). Anadón, in Rosales, “Relictos,” 13. Pagden, Spanish Imperialism, 3; Kamen, Philip of Spain, 242. See Kagan, “Clio and the Crown.” Kagan, “Clio and the Crown,” 95. Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation, 12. Brading, First America, 298–300. Kagan, “Clio and the Crown,” 95. Brading, First America, 293–313; Cañizares-Esguerra has replaced the term “rhetoric” with “epistemology.” However, in this chapter, I will stay with the concept of a “rhetoric of praise” since, unlike the texts written by Acosta or Cobo, there are no truly epistemological concerns in the writings of Ovalle and Rosales. See CañizaresEsguerra, How to Write, 206–10. Ashworth, “Catholicism and Early Modern Science”; Findlen, Possessing Nature, 33, 40, 81, 92–94. Hanisch Espíndola, El historiador Alonso de Ovalle, 51–52. Ovalle, Histórica relación, n.p. Additional citations in the text. Kagan, “Clio and the Crown,” 89. On a hot complexion precluding the full use of an individual’s rational faculties, see San Juan, Examen de ingenios, 257 passim. Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation, 83–84. On a change of diet as the best way to correct a humoral imbalance, see Galen, On the Natural Faculties, 183. The Tabula Geographica is a different map than the one Ovalle included at the end of the Histórica relación. Much larger, and accompanied by a large amount of text, only two copies have survived. For a description of the map, see Wroth, “Alonso de Ovalle’s Large Map.” Fischer, “Para leer la historia eclesiástica,” 39; Adorno, Polemics of Possession, 196–98. Wonder as a psychological state produced by the marvelous was a cornerstone of the representational systems of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance; see Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, 19 and 22–23, and Bynum, “Wonder.” The most complete history of intellectual attitudes toward wonder from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment is Daston and Park’s Wonders and the Order of Nature; for wonders as impossible to ignore by seventeenth-century naturalists, 219. “Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders,” John 4:48; see also Niccoli, Prophecy and People. Campbell, Wonder and Science, 3. Ashworth, “Catholicism and Early Modern Science,” 157; Findlen, Possessing Nature, 92.

256 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Notes to Pages 208–24 Barros Arana, Historia jeneral de Chile, 4:355–59, and Foerster, Jesuitas y mapuches, 182–83. Rosales, Historia general, 1:163. Ovalle, Histórica relación, n.p. Rosales, Historia general, 1:109. See, for example, Rosales, Historia general, 1:324. On the salt-producing plants of Lampa, see Ovalle, Histórica relación, 35, and Rosales, Historia general, 1:213 and 239; on the crossing of the Andes, Ovalle, Histórica relación, 14, and Rosales, Historia general, 1:201. Rosales, Historia general, 1:204. These paragraphs on Rosales’s life are based on Hanisch Espíndola, “La formación.” Rosales, Historia general, 3:372. Ibid., 3:433. See Hanisch Espíndola, “El manuscrito de la Historia general de Chile,” 73–75. Ibid., 74. Rosales, Historia general, 1:lxiii. Ibid., Historia general, 1:298–99. Ibid., 1:223, 234, and 239. Ibid., 1:9–10. Rosales to Alonso de Villalona, 1658. ANSJ 93, fol. 94v. Neither Hanisch Espíndola nor Góngora seem to have been aware of this letter and, therefore, assumed Rosales set out to work on his history in 1656 when he was rector of the College of Concepción; see “El manuscrito” and Góngora’s introduction to his 1989 edition of the Historia general. Rosales, Historia general, 1:194. Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation, 64–65. Murillo Velarde, Geographía histórica, 9:48–49; on Murillo Valverde’s description of the native peoples, 9:37–38 and 45. Ibid., 9:49. Ibid., 9:50. On Fernández de Oviedo’s thesis, see Historia general y natural de las Indias, 1:17–20; Gerbi, Nature of the New World, 272–73; and Bolaños, “Historian and the Hesperides.” On Nanni da Viterbo and his historical forgeries, see Grafton, Worlds Made of Words, 74–75, and Bring Out Your Dead, 44–50.

Notes to the Epilogue 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Cardiel, Declaración de la verdad, 161–62. Ibid., 163. Wright, God’s Soldiers, 187. On Buffon and Cornelius de Paw’s writings about America, see Gerbi, Dispute, 3–34 and 52–79; Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write, 45–48. Gerbi, Dispute, 189–91, 194; Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write, 261. Gerbi, Dispute, 189. This brief biographical sketch is based on Jiménez’s El Abate Molina, still the best biography of the Chilean Jesuit. Jiménez, El Abate Molina, 146.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Notes to Pages 224–27

257

For a list of contemporary translations of Molina’s Saggio, see Rodolfo Jaramillo’s translation in Molina, Ensayo sobre la historia natural de Chile, 356–61; on Molina’s correspondents and visitors, see Jiménez, El Abate Molina, 168–71. Molina, Compendio, iii. I quote from the 1788 Spanish edition of the Saggio, not to be confused with the anonymous 1776 Italian Compendio. Additional citations in the text. See also Brading, First America, 431. On Molina’s claims to have identified such a large number of new species, see Compendio, 129. See Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna’s introduction to his edition of Rosales, Historia general, 1:vi. Jiménez, El Abate Molina, 83.

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University Press. Pardo, Osvaldo F. 1999. “Contesting the Power to Heal: Angels, Demons, and Plants in Colonial Mexico.” In Spiritual Encounters: Interactions between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America. Ed. Nicholas Griffiths and Fernando Cervantes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 163–84. ———. 2004. The Origins of Mexican Catholicism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Parentini, Luis Carlos. 1996. Introducción a la etnohistoria mapuche. Santiago: DIBAM and Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros Arana. Pérez, Joseph. 2005. The Spanish Inquisition: A History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pérez Galán, Beatriz. 2000. “Notas sobre las ediciones de la obra de Polo de Ondegardo.” Edición e interpretación de textos andinos. Ed. Ignacio Arellano and José A. Mazzotti. Frankfurt and Madrid: Vervuert/Iberoamericana. 33–47. Peters, Edward. 2001. “The Desire to Know the Secrets of the World.” Journal of the History of Ideas 62.4: 593–610. Pimentel, Juan. 2001. “The Iberian Vision: Science and Empire in the Framework of a Universal Monarchy, 1500–1800.” Osiris 15:17–30. Pino Díaz, Fermín. 1999. “La Historia natural y moral de las Indias como género: Orden y génesis literaria de la obra de Acosta.” Paper presented at “Perú Hoy: Primer Congreso Internacional de Peruanistas en el Extranjero,” Harvard University, April 30. www.fas.harvard.edu/~icop. Pinta Llorente, Miguel de la. 1952. Actividades diplomáticas del padre José de Acosta. Madrid: Consejo de Investigaciones Científicas Jerónimo Zurita. Pinto, Jorge. 1988. “Frontera, misiones y misioneros en Chile: La Araucanía, 1600–1900.” In Misioneros en la Araucanía, 1600–1900. Temuco: Ediciones Universidad de la Frontera. ———. 1996. “La integración y desintegración de un espacio fronterizo. La Araucanía y las Pampas, 1550–1900.” In Araucanía y Pampas: Un mundo fronterizo en América del Sur. Ed. Jorge Pinto. Temuco: Ediciones Universidad de la Frontera. Puig Montada, Josep. 1996. “Aristotle and Averroes on Coming-To-Be and Passing-Away.” Oriens 35:2–34. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. Prieto, Andrés I. 2009. “Classification, Memory, and Subjectivity in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Sumario de la natural historia (1526).” MLN 124.2: 329–49. Querejazu Calvo, Roberto. 1995. Historia de la Iglesia católica en Charcas (Bolivia). La Paz: Conferencia Episcopal Boliviana. Ramírez, Susan E. 2005. To Feed and Be Fed: The Cosmological Bases of Authority and Identity in the Andes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Reed, Richard. 1995. Prophets of Agroforestry: Guaraní Communities and Commercial Gathering. Austin: University of Texas Press. Retamal Ávila, Julio. 2000. Testamentos de indios en Chile colonial, 1564–1801. Santiago: Universidad Andrés Bello. Ridpath, Ian. 1989. Star Tales. Cambrige: James and Clarke. Rojas F., Gonzalo. 2002. Reyes sobre la tierra: Brujería y chamanismo en una cultura insular;



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Index

Abelard, Peter, 160 accommodation, 5, 6, 30, 39, 47, 91, 236n15 Acosta, José de and acceptance of doctrinas de indios, 4, 19– 20, 29, 34 and accommodation, 6 De Natura Novi Orbis (see De Natura Novi Orbis) De Procuranda Indorum Salute (see De Procuranda Indorum Salute) and First Provincial Congregation, 4, 19 and Francisco de Toledo, 19, 20, 21, 24 Historia natural y moral (see Historia natural y moral) influenced by Ondegardo, 19, 24, 110, 232n34 influence on Valdivia, 46 as mediator between Inquisition and Crown, 147 participation in Third Council of Lima, 22 participation in trial of Francisco de la Cruz, 22 and Juan de la Plaza, 4, 17, 19 travels in Peru, 19 visit to Juli, 29–30 See also Cobo, Bernabé de; experience; Juli; natural history; population of America; Toledo, Francisco de Acuña y Cabrera, Antonio de, 122 Adam, 26, 32, 171, 182, 187–88 Adamo, Giuseppe, 121, 125 Aguila, Melchor del, 225 Aguilera, Hernando de, 44 Alderete, Jerónimo de, 217



Alegambe, Philippe de, 195 Amaru, Topa, 22 Anchieta, Joseph de, 33 Andean peoples astronomical traditions of, 110 continuing worship of huacas, 21 history of, 102, 108, 200 as incapable of Christianization, 22, 145 neo-Inca state of Vilcabamba, 21–22 skill in legal issues, 23 Taqui Onkoy, 22 Viracocha, 86 Antehueno, 208 Antepangui, 47 anti-Jesuit propaganda, 221–22. See also Society of Jesus Aquaviva, Claudio, 25, 32, 34, 100, 160, 174 Aquinas, Thomas on angelic nature of demons, 75 anthropocentrism of, 180, 183 and divine knowledge, 182 and the five ways to prove God’s existence, 177–78 influence on Cobo, 179–84 influence on Jesuit philosophy, 160–61 and Neoplatonism, 177, 180, 184 and occult phenomena, 164 on providence, 183–84 and sacramental seal, 59 on secondary causes, 184 on substance, 179–80, 191 Summa Theologica as Jesuit textbook, 144, 161 Aranda, Martín de, 48

275

276

Missionary Scientists

Arauco, mission of, 46, 48, 60, 122, 212 Arequipa, 6, 19, 108, 109, 230 Argentina, 7, 33, 92, 98, 118, 125, 126, 127, 129 Argüello, Sebastián, 125 Aristotle concept of scientia, 150, 152–53, 161–62, 168 De Caelo, 164 importance for Jesuits, 144, 162–63 and Jesuit commentators in Coimbra, 155 as limiting curiosity, 163 and natural philosophy, 157 and physical change, 177 rejection by eighteenth-century Jesuits, 223 Astorga, Francisco de, 122 astronomy Andean traditions in, 110 Augustinian condemnation of, 155 Cobo on, 109–11 comet of 1664 (see comet of 1664) and comets as bearers of disgrace, 138–39 Kircher and, 118, 128 Mascardi’s observations, 127–28 observatories in South America, 131–32 at Roman College, 119–20 theories about comets, 137–38 use of instruments in, 109, 120, 128 Atienza, Juan de, 32, 95 Augustine concept of history, 171, 176, 181 condemnation of astronomy, 155 and existence of antipodeans, 26 and vana curiositas, 154–55, 157–59 Averroism, 161, 164 Ayerbe, Florián de, 113 Aztec, 70 Badus, Sebastianus, 1 bandeirantes, 63, 240n5. See also Paraguay baptism, 41, 73 of children, 47–48 high-profile baptisms, 41 only in articulo mortis, 47 regarded as lethal spell, 41, 47–48, 236n24 of three machis, 41 (see also machi) Barceo, Gaspar, 143, 156, 157 Barra, Jerónimo de la, 123 Bartholomew. See Ruiz de Montoya, Antonio Barzana, Alonso de, 6, 30, 31, 32 Bassauri, Diego, 66 Bayer, Johann, 109 behetrías, 28, 47 Bellarmine, Robert, 97, 120

Berrío, Antonio de, 99–100 Bertonio, Ludovico, 33, 34, 235n94 Bío Bío River, 44, 46, 53, 62, 122 Blumenberg, Hans, 157 Boland, Vivian, 184 Bolivia, 15, 34, 86, 95, 98, 101, 107 Bologna, 121, 223, 224 Bonaventure, 59 boquibuy, 54, 216, 239n76 Borgia, Francis, 3, 14, 16, 37, 94, 119 Boroa, Diego de, 65, 66 Bracamonte, Diego de, 31 Brading, David, 198 Brahe, Tycho, 137 Brisson, Mathurin Jacques, 225 Bucalemu, 92, 98, 121, 127, 128, 132, 212, 223 Buena Esperanza, mission of, 46, 121–23, 132, 212 Buenos Aires, 40, 97, 126, 222 Buffon, Comte de. See Leclerc, Georges-Louis Cabrera, Luis Jerónimo de, 103 Cadogan, León, 68 Caldera de Heredia, Gaspar, 1 Calvin, John, 159 Canisius, Peter, 93 Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge, 150, 191, 197, 201, 215, 255n14 Cardiel, José, 221 Castañega, Martín de. See Tratado de las supersticiones Castillo, Juan del, 64 Cebicos, Juan, 113 centers of calculation, 117, 134, 136. See also Latour, Bruno Cesalpino, Andrea, 191 Chacón, Luis, 123 Charles III (king), 221 Chile, 2, 6, 7, 9, 61, 91, 92, 94, 95, 98, 99, 121, 198 abuses of encomenderos in, 44–45 as borderland society, 62 constant warfare in, 42 defensive war strategy, 45–46 first Jesuits in, 36 indios amigos, 46, 47, 60 (see also missions) isolation from political centers, 36, 45 killing of three Jesuits in Elicura, 41 Mapuche resistance outliving the Spanish empire, 45 Mapuche uprising of 1598, 44, 45, 122



Index

Mapuche uprising of 1655, 122–23, 131, 132, 212, 215 professional army, 45, 46, 62, 122 Chillán, 122–23 Chiloe Archipelago, 38, 123–24, 129 China, 93 Chono peoples, 38, 124 Chucuito, 107 Chuquisaca, 19, 90, 95, 97, 131 cinchona, 1–2, 6. See also quinine Ciudad de los Césares, 125–26 Clastres, Hélène, 52 Clavigero, Francisco, 222–23 Clavius, Christopher, 3, 34, 99, 119–20, 137, 139, 153 Clement XIV (pope), 220, 223 Cobo, Bernabé de anthropocentrism of, 180–81, 182–83 astronomical observations of, 131–32 and drainage of Mexico lake, 113–14 early life, 6, 99–100 education, 100–101, 177 Historia del Nuevo Mundo (see Historia del Nuevo Mundo) La fundación de Lima, 101, 102–3, 114 influence of Pererius, 186 and José de Moura Lobo, 112–13, 185 and personal experience, 105, 107–8, 169, 170, 173–74, 175, 185, 169 problems with Jesuit superiors, 112, 114, 115, 116 and providence, 174, 176, 178–79, 181–83, 184, 191 research method, 8, 99, 103–5, 106, 140, 203, 212 Thomism of, 171, 179–84 travel to Mexico, 111–14 use of informants, 106, 107–11, 189 use of institutional network, 7, 92, 99, 103, 106, 111–12, 114, 118, 194 voyages in Peru, 101 See also Acosta, José de; epistolary networks; experience; informants; population of America; providence; Torrid Zone colleges, 3 becoming universities, 96–98 of Cartagena, 115 in Castro, 123, 125 Chuquisaca, 95 colegios convictorios, 95, 100 of Cordoba, 98, 245n31 of Huamanga, 97



277

libraries of (see libraries) of Messina, 3, 93 network of, 6, 94 in Orvieto, 120 and public roundtables, 14, 96 Roman College (see Roman College) of Saint Francis Xavier, 95 of San Martín, 100, 133 of San Miguel, 37, 44, 45, 49, 59, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 98, 212, 223, 227 of San Pablo, 3, 14, 96, 97, 100, 115, 212 used to finance missionary enterprises, 91, 95 used to recruit novices, 91, 95, 100 and vecinos’ expectations of Jesuits, 95, 235n3 Colombia, 198 Columbus, Christopher, 70 Comentale, Pedro, 131 comet of 1664 Mascardi on, 133–34 Ruiz Lozano on, 135, 138 Stansel on, 136 communion, 70, 73, 78 Concepción, 54, 121, 122, 123, 127, 131, 133, 196, 212, 223, 256n44 confession, 31, 49, 53, 73, 78, 94 agency by penitent in, 55 akin to judicial process, 55 as communicative interaction, 55, 56 confessional as contact zone, 56 general confession, 57 as mechanism of social control, 60, 79 sacramental seal, 58–59, 239n96 used to obtain ethnobotanical information, 54–58, 65, 241n19 Confessionario breve (Valdivia) constitution of communicative roles, 56 questions about native healing rituals in, 57 and turning penitents into informants, 58 Coninck, Jean Raymond, 131–32, 133, 134 Conquista espiritual del Paraguay (Ruiz de Montoya), 67 Bartholomew and Thomas Apostle in America, 85–86 and Guarani ethnobotanical knowledge, 81– 82 and Guarani mythology, 67–68, 85, 86 Constitutions, 16, 20, 92–93, 158 and Jesuit mobility, 93 and prohibition to undertake curacy of souls, 16 and purpose of Society of Jesus, 144 and teaching of philosophy, 160

278

Missionary Scientists

Copernicus, Nicolaus, 139 Cordoba, 98 Corpus Christi, 73 Council of Trent, 5, 56 Counter-Reformation, 93 Creoles. See criollos criollos defense of, 215 and patriotic historiography, 8, 198, 201 proto-national identity of, 9, 197–98, 220, 222–23 and rhetoric of praise, 8, 199, 225–27, 255n14 See also Molina, Juan Ignacio; Ovalle, Alonso de; Rosales, Diego de Cruz, Francisco de la, 22, 233n50 curuzuyaras, 66, 83, 84, 85, 87 duties, 79 as informants, 79, 80 selection of, 79 supervision of, 67, 79–80 Cuzco, 16, 19, 21, 29, 44, 97, 98, 101, 131, 132, 177 Della Porta, Giambattista, 153, 163, 164, 165 demonic pact, 72–73, 74, 76 explicit pact, 72 hidden or implicit pact, 72 See also demonology demonology, 52, 74 Amerindian practices as diabolism, 52, 60, 67–70, 73–74 Aquinas on, 75 capabilities and power of demons, 75 Cathars and Knights Templar accused of, 71 concept of execraments, 70–71, 73–74 demonic magic, 74–75 demonic pact (see demonic pact) diabolical church, 71–72 difficulties in identifying true demonic magic, 75 European debate on witchcraft, 69–70 as interpretive task, 70, 71, 242n43 invocations of, as heresy and idolatry, 71 and medieval Inquisition, 72 See also Rio, Martín del; Tratado de las supersticiones De Natura Novi Orbis (Acosta), 7, 35, 106, 200, 219 and existence of antipodeans, 26 and first inhabitants of America, 26–27, 186, 217 as introduction to De Procuranda, 25, 145



refutation of classic and patristic cosmography in, 25–26 De Procuranda Indorum Salute (Acosta), 4, 6, 20–24, 35, 37, 91 acculturation, 23 as center of Acosta’s project, 148 classification of non-European cultures in, 27–28, 46, 234n66 criticism of Peruvian situation, 21, 232n42 delay in publication, 25, 146–47 evangelization in colonial settings, 28, 39 inclusion of Amerindians in divine plan, 23 incompetence of secular priests, 28 influence of, 115 learning of native languages, 23, 28, 31 methods of effective evangelization, 23–24, 25, 28 natives’ intellectual capabilities, 21, 23 preservation of native social structures, 24 role of army, 46 superiority of European culture, 24 devil as Añan, 68 antagonizing of priests in reductions, 67, 69, 243n65 in demonological discourse, 70–73, 75–76 and native medicine, 80–83, 87, 214 Poyas’ lack of belief in, 126 and shamans, 41, 47, 51–52, 53, 239n76 as simia Dei, 71 See also demonic pact; demonology Dioscorides, 214 dispute of the New World, 222–23, 224–25, 227–28 Disquisitionum Magicarum (Rio), 74–76 on ambiguity of natural magic, 74–76 on capabilities of demons, 75 and demonic magic, 74 and demonic pact, 74–75, 76 and three types of magic, 74 as unofficial Jesuit position on demonology, 74 See also demonic pact; demonology doctrinas de indios, 3 abuses of doctrineros, 15 Borgia’s rejection of, 16 Jesuit acceptance of, 4, 16, 20, 29, 34 Jesuit refusal of, 13 Juli as language school, 6, 31 Santiago del Cercado, 20, 98, 100, 238 Toledo’s insistence on, 3, 5, 13, 17 See also Juli



Index

279

Dominicans, 30, 36, 37, 38–39, 98, 245n30 Durán, Diego, 39

Frézier, Amédée-François, 224 Fuente y Villalobos, Francisco de la, 122

Eamon, William, 164 Ecuador, 1, 198 education. See pedagogy El Dorado, 100 emanationism, 179 encomenderos, 15, 29, 45, 197–98 Enríquez de Almansa, Martín, 34 epistolary networks Cobo’s use of, 7, 112, 115 evaluation of distant informants by, 135–36 Kircher’s use of, 120, 128–29, 130, 134, 140 role in constituting local scientific communities, 34, 98, 117–18, 131, 134 Escobar de Corro, Juan, 76 ethnobotany, 39, 49, 56, 58 Christianized by the Jesuits, 85, 86–87 and Cobo’s use of native informants, 189, 192–93 Guarani donation myths and, 67–68, 69, 86 incorporated into Western medical practice, 67, 78, 81, 83 Jesuit suspicion about, 66–67, 69, 82, 84 Mapuche knowledge of plants, 40, 42, 59, 60 resemantization of, 67, 80, 84–85 Rosales as source, 213, 214 silence about information source in, 65, 81 used to marginalize shamans, 60, 70 viewed as demonic, 67, 69, 74, 77, 85 experience, 1, 25–26, 83, 84, 117–18, 150, 202 in Acosta, 27, 106, 151, 169–70 in Aristotle, 152 in Cobo, 105, 107–8, 169, 170, 173–74, 175, 176, 185 in Ovalle, 210 in Rosales, 212–14

Galen, 83 Galilei, Galileo, 120, 131, 139 Gallardo, Francisco, 125 Ganss, George, 144 García, Gregorio, 217 García de Castro, Lope, 14 Gaukroger, Stephen, 179 Gerbi, Antonello, 222 Gesner, Conrad, 213 Ginzburg, Carlo, 156 Gomera, Count of, 107 Góngora, Mario, 215 González, Roque, 64. See also Paraguay Gorman, Michael, 128 Greece, 151 Gregory XV (pope), 98 Guaiquillanca, 213 Guaman Poma, Felipe, 16 Guarani, 33, 34, 40, 77, 80, 82, 86 and bandeirantes, 63, 240n5 conception of illness, 68–69 donation myths, 67–68, 69, 81, 85, 86–87 idea of soul, 68 mythology, 68 naming ceremony (ñimongarai), 64, 67, 240n10, 242n35 ritual nocturnal gatherings (ñembo’e), 64 viewed as lacking medical knowledge, 66–67, 74, 81, 83–84 See also paies Gutiérrez de Carvajal, 125

Fernandes Sardinha, Pero, 39 Fernández de Castro, Pedro, 44 Fernández de Córdoba, Luis, 196, 208 Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo, 7, 105, 149, 189, 217 Ferrufino, Juan Bautista, 38, 39, 40 Feuillé, Louis, 225 Ficino, Marsilio, 157 Foquel, Guillermo, 146, 147 Fourth Lateran Council, 59 France, 4, 221 Franciscans, 112, 236, 239n96 Francis Xavier, Saint, 93, 127, 244n5

Halley, Edmund, 139 Harris, Steven, 134 herbals, 39–40, 78–80, 82–87, 145, 214 Herckmans, Elijah, 52 Heredia, Pedro Miguel de, 1 heresy, 71, 72 Hernández, Bartolomé, 231n33 Hernández, Francisco, 106, 170 Herrera, Antonio de, 103 Historia del Nuevo Mundo (Cobo), 1, 99 and astronomy, 109–11 and bezoar stones, 107 and biblical story of creation, 181–83, 187 as collaborative enterprise, 114, 116, 140 and colonial nature, 171–72, 193 comparison to Acosta, 101–4, 219 editorial history, 101, 195

280

Missionary Scientists

Historia del Nuevo Mundo, continued and ethnobotany, 192–93 and God’s omnipotence, 8 and granadilla, 189–90, 203 and human agency, 183 and mining, 107–8 and native languages, 8, 192–94 and occult causes, 8, 171, 174–76, 177, 185 and peopling of America, 8, 185–87 and quinine, 1, 229n4 refutation of Acosta by, 8, 169, 171, 175 structure, 102 on taxonomical problems, 188–92 and Torrid Zone, 172–76, 178–79 See also Acosta, José de; epistolary networks; experience; informants; population of America; providence; Torrid Zone Historia general (Rosales), 9, 40 as collaborative product, 140, 215, 219 commissioning of, 196 description of medicinal plants in, 9 differences with Ovalle’s approach, 211 and herbals, 214 as most comprehensive natural history of Chile, 213 on origin of Mapuche people, 216–17 and Juan de la Puente, 9, 215–16, 225 rhetoric of praise in, 9, 199, 218–19, 220 and shamanic medicine, 213–14 as source for Ovalle, 210 use of Mapuche knowledge in, 40, 59–60 view of Mapuche people, 215, 217–18 and wonders, 211, 213 Historia natural y moral (Acosta), 7, 35, 140, 195 ambiguity of, 149, 198 and Aristotelian methodology, 9, 151–53, 203 and Augustinian concept of history, 181 comparison to Cobo, 101–4, 194 composition of, 106, 149–50 critique of science in, 153–54, 167 defining a delimited field for science, 146, 176 description of native religions in, 73–74 on double meaning of philosophy, 150, 167, 168 and experience, 169–70 and granadilla, 189–90, 206 influence of, 7, 74, 146, 147, 169, 200, 227 on magnetism, 153–54, 165 and Peruvian mining riches, 167–68 and positive theology, 7, 165–67 and propaedeutic conception of philosophy, 166–67

and providence, 153, 165–66, 181, 183 rejection of natural magic in, 163, 164 on scientific discoveries, 165 on secondary causes, 184 and taxonomical problems, 189 theory of cognition in, 155 on Torrid Zone, 151–52 and vana curiositas, 7, 154–55, 167, 177 Histórica relación (Ovalle), 9, 219 ambivalence toward Mapuche people, 200– 201 description of Jesuit ministries, 94 on experience, 210 and Limache tree, 203–6 relationship to Rosales, 196–97, 210 rhetoric of praise, 199, 200, 202–3, 218, 220, 226 signs preceding the Baydes talks, 206, 207 (illus.), 209–10 structure of, 199–200 on superiority of Chile to Europe, 201–2 on wonders, 9, 203–6, 215, 219–20 history, 9, 19, 28, 94, 107, 114, 116 and Augustinianism, 155, 181 centralized vs. local, 197 local, 196, 198, 200 of missions, 67, 127, 140, 195–96 of native peoples, 35, 51, 101, 102, 147, 148 sacred, 26, 27, 31, 93, 102–3, 104 Hospital de marineros del Espíritu Santo, 133, 249n91 Houtman, Frederick de, 108 Huamanga, 97 Huidobro, Ignacio, 224, 227 Humboldt, Alexander von, 224 Hurtado de Mendoza, García, 96 idolatry, 38, 209, 242, 243. See also demonology Ignatius. See Loyola, Ignatius Imola, 223 India, 20, 86, 93 informants, 6–7, 91, 106, 107–8, 140 evaluating reliability of, 135–36 Kircher’s use of, 117, 128–29 native informants (see native informants) Rosales’s use of, 213 Ruiz Lozano’s use of, 136 See also curuzuyaras Ingaipil, 48 Innocence X (pope), 199, 203, 208 Inquisition medieval, 72



Index



Spanish, 146–47, 212, 231, 233n58, 243n60, 251n19 Isabel Clara Eugenia (princess), 147, 148, 150 Italy, 1, 3, 4, 132, 151, 220 James (apostle), 209 Japan, 20, 27, 28, 93 Jarque, Francisco, 65 Jesuits. See Society of Jesus Jiménez de la Espada, Marcos, 195 Jolis, José, 223 Juli Acosta’s visit to, 29–30 approval by Plaza, 29 authority of curacas at, 30, 47 and forceful indoctrination of native priests, 48 function as college, 32, 33 Jesuit acceptance of, 20–21, 232n37 as language school, 6, 31–32, 44, 106 as model for later missions, 33, 34, 37, 39, 62 as not belonging to any encomienda, 29 observatory at, 131 organization of communal work, 30 printing press at, 33 as probation house, 91–92, 98 religious life at, 31 as test of Acosta’s method, 29 use of quipus, 31 See also Acosta, José de; missions Julius II (pope), 230n14 Kagan, Richard, 197 kalku, 52. See also machi Kepler, Johannes, 137, 138, 139 Keyser, Pieter, 108 Kircher, Athanasius controversy with Riccioli, 135 correspondence with Mascardi, 7, 92, 121, 127, 128, 130, 132, 133 and Noah’s Ark, 188 plan to reform geography, 128, 129 as professor of mathematics at Roman College, 3, 99, 119–20, 199 reception of works in America, 117–18 use of informants, 117, 118, 128–29, 134, 135–36 Kramer, Heinrich, 72 Lactantius, 26, 152 Laguna, Andrés, 213 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 46

281

Latour, Bruno, 117, 134, 136. See also centers of calculation Lavata, Francisco, 147 Lázaro, Domingo, 121, 123 Lazo de la Vega, Francisco, 196 Leclerc, Georges-Louis (Comte de Buffon), 222, 224 Ledesma, Pedro, 161 León, Gregorio de, 201, 202, 225, 226 libraries, at colleges, 96 list of books for, 97 and procurator for the West Indies, 97 Libro primero de las propiedas y virtudes (Montenegro), 82–87 Christianized ethnobotanical information in, 85 and experimentation, 84–85 and Guarani ethnobotanical knowledge, 83, 84–85 and macagua, 82 and native informants, 82, 84 Lienguenu, 213–14 Lillo, Nicolás de, 212–13 Lima astronomical observations in, 131, 134, 136 Cobo’s description of, 101–3 Jesuit arrival in, 3, 14, 94 Jesuit college in, 16, 96, 115, 133, 139, 177, 212 Linnaeus, Carolus, 191, 225 Lipsius, Justus, 213 Loaysa, Jerónimo de, 111 Long, Pamela, 157, 163 López, Luis, 231n33 López Challer, Juan, 147 López de Zúñiga, Francisco, 208, 209 López Ruiz, Juan, 60 Loyola, Ignatius beatification of, 101 belief in learning as part of spirituality, 144, 158–59, 161–62, 166 and curiositas, 143, 156–57, 159, 163 and education, 33, 119, 245n26 original idea for Society of Jesus, 2, 92–93, 94 preference for Scholasticism, 160 Spiritual Exercises (see Spiritual Exercises) Luca, Francesco de, 119, 132 Lugo, Juan de, 1–2 Luther, Martin, 159 macagua, 81, 82 MacCormack, Sabine, 33

282

Missionary Scientists

machi, 40, 48, 77 ambiguity of, 53 baptism of, 41 demonization of, 41, 51–53, 54, 214 denunciation of baptism as lethal spell, 41, 47–48 influence on native communities, 41, 49, 54, 62 role as healers, 40, 50, 238n59 secrecy about healing techniques, 42, 237n32 See also baptism; shamans Madrigal, Alonso de (El Tostado), 217 Magellan Strait, 125, 126, 129, 130, 133, 218, 219 magic demonic magic, 71–76 and Guarani medicine, 68 and Mapuche medicine, 51, 52, 54, 60, 62 natural magic (see natural magic) Neoplatonic magic, 157 See also demonic pact; demonology Mapuche, 118 admapu, 51 attempts at reduction to towns, 62 attitudes toward baptism, 41, 47, 236n24 boquibuy, 54, 216, 239n76 concept of disease, 51 described by Ovalle, 200 indios amigos, 46, 47, 54; change of sides, 47, 48, 62 knowledge of plants, 40, 42, 59, 60 küme, 51 political structure, 47 Puren Mapuches, 54 resistance against Spanish conquest, 2, 36, 37, 45; 1598 uprising, 44, 45, 122; 1655 uprising, 122–23, 131, 132, 212, 215 ulmen, 47, 48, 54 weküfu, 52 Maquegua, 213 Marcén, Antonio, 147 Martínez, Diego, 30, 31 Mascardi, Agostino, 118, 130 Mascardi, Niccolò, 2, 92, 135, 140, 145, 212 astronomical observations by, 127–28, 132 balanced scientific and missionary life of, 127 at Buena Esperanza mission, 121–22, 132 in Chiloe, 123, 124–25 and Ciudad de los Césares, 125–26 collaboration with Ruiz Lozano, 133, 134, 139 correspondence with Coninck, 131



correspondence with Kircher, 7, 118, 127–28, 130, 132, 133 death of, 127 description of Magellan Strait, 129–30, 133 early life, 118–19 frustration with Chile’s intellectual climate, 129, 130 as Kircher’s student, 120 and local scientific communities, 134–36 manufactured instruments, 133 among Puelche and Poyas, 126–27 surviving 1655 Mapuche uprising, 122–23, 131 See also astronomy; Kircher, Athanasius; Ruiz Lozano, Francisco Mastrillo Durán, Nicolás, 78 Mateos, Francisco, 195 mathematics, 3, 4, 86, 119–20, 129, 130 Matienzo, Juan de, 14, 19, 24, 232n34 Maule River, 122, 123 Mazeta, Simón, 70 Mbororé, 63 medicine cost of European medicines, 40 disciplinary aspect of medical care, 66–67, 77–79, 80, 85, 87 Hippocratic-Galenic medicine, 80, 83 importance of native healers, 40, 41 incorporation of ethnobotanical knowledge, 39–40, 49, 60, 66, 67, 80, 81, 83, 84–85 lack of regulation in Chile, 40 missionaries as medicine men, 41, 60–61, 64–65, 78, 79 ritualized character of native medicine, 54, 66, 81 secrecy about information sources, 65, 81, 82–83 shamanic medicine viewed as demonic, 67, 76, 85 shamanic medicine viewed as a scam, 61, 66–67 sin as causing diseases, 50 used to gain legitimacy, 42, 64 as vain observance, 80–81 See also ethnobotany; missions Medina, Francisco de, 31 Mejía, Alonso, 97 Mendoza, Cristóbal de, 86 Meneses, Francisco de, 122 Mercurian, Everard and De Procuranda, 25, 145, 146 high hopes for San Pablo, 3, 96, 97



Index

instructions to Juan de la Plaza, 17 opposition to doctrinas de indios, 4, 20, 29, 232n37 and Plaza’s concerns, 17, 231n28 Mexica, 70, 73 Mexico, 6, 7, 38, 70, 111–14, 174, 195 Millones Figueroa, Luis, 194 missionaries attempt to gain access to ethnobotanical information by, 49 conflict with shamans, 42, 47–48, 60–61, 64 Francis Xavier as model missionary, 93, 244n5 limiting natives’ recourse to traditional healing, 49, 60–61, 76, 77, 80 as medicine men, 41, 50, 51, 60–61, 64–65, 78, 79, 123 sermons preached to Mapuche, 49–53 uneasiness with native medicine, 69, 74, 79 See also ethnobotany; medicine missions, 35, 92, 95 as contact zones, 33, 38 difficulty of establishing mission, 40–41 history of, 195–96 itinerant missions, 14, 19, 34, 44, 46, 49, 62, 94, 122, 124, 232n37, 244n9 in Mapuche territories, 42, 46, 47, 121–23; evangelization of amigo communities, 47, 54, 60 as mechanisms of social control, 49, 85, 87 and native informants, 33, 34, 40, 42 in Paraguay, 62, 86 as research centers, 33, 34, 39, 144–45, 213 See also Arauco; Buena Esperanza; Chile; informants; medicine Molina, Juan Ignacio, 7 Compendio, 223–24 continuing seventeenth-century Jesuit tradition, 225–26 early life, 223 and medicinal plants, 226 refutation of Cornelius de Paw, 224–25 rhetoric of praise, 225–27 Saggio, 224–26 and San Miguel library, 227 See also criollos Monardes, Nicolás, 106, 149, 170 Monita secreta (Zahorowski), 221 Montalbán, Diego de, 48 Montemayor, Jerónimo de, 121, 123 Montenegro, Pedro, 66, 82–87, 190, 212, 214 Clemente as main informant of, 83–84

283



Libro primero de las propiedas y virtudes (see Libro primero de las propiedas y virtudes) Moscoso, Juan de, 53 Motolinía, Fray Toribio de Benavente, 70–71 Moura Lobo, José de, 112–13, 185. See also Cobo, Bernabé de Moxos, 34 Mujica, Martín de, 62 Muñoz, Juan Bautista, 195 Muratori, Ludovico, 64 Murillo Valverde, Pedro, 215 Nadal, Jerónimo de, 93, 239n85 Nahuel-Huapi, Lake, 125, 126 Nanni da Viterbo, Giovanni, 217 Naples, 100 native informants, 6, 33, 34, 40, 42, 79, 80, 84, 87 Cobo’s use of, 107–111, 189 and confession, 56–58 effacement of, 65, 81, 82–83 identity of, 42, 59 nurses in Paraguayan reductions as, 66 suspected of diabolism, 66–67 See also informants natural history, 7, 39, 99, 104, 115 in Acosta, 148, 165–67 centrality to goals of Society of Jesus, 149 as collaborative enterprise, 114, 116, 145, 227–28 institutional conditions for, 92, 105 local, 191, 195 as part of ethos of European nobility, 144 used to enhance prestige of Society of Jesus, 143 and wonders, 203–6, 215, 219–20 (see also wonders) natural magic, 74–76, 157, 163–65 as demonic practice, 164 and manipulation of nature, 163–64 as opposed to Aristotelianism, 164 as vana curiositas, 163 See also magic natural philosophy, 3, 7, 105, 146, 157, 164, 165, 219 Navarro, Bartolomé, 196 Nazianzus, Gregory of, 165 Neculgueno, 47 Newton, Isaac, 139 Nicaragua, 112, 174 Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio, 34, 137, 139, 189–90, 206 Niezu, 64

284

Missionary Scientists

Noah’s Ark, 26, 27, 171, 187–88, 254n44 Nóbrega, Manuel da, 143 nominalism, 160, 176 Nueve sermones en lengua de Chile (Valdivia) Christianizing of Mapuche categories of illness, 51 concept of sin, 49–50, 59 machis as kalkus, 52–53, 61, 75 shamanic medicine as sin, 50, 51–52 observatories, 131–32 occultism Acosta’s rejection of, 163, 171 and Cobo, 8, 171, 174–76, 177, 185 in Hermetism and Neoplatonism, 157, 163 in Scholastic tradition, 164 as vana curiositas, 163 Ogilvie, Brian, 190 Oliva, Gian Paolo, 119 Olivares, Miguel de, 42, 47–48 Olmos, Andrés de, 73 Oñate, Pedro de, 245n31 Ondegardo, Polo de, 19, 22, 110, 232n34 Orinoco River, 100 Oruro, 108, 134 Osorio, Jerónimo, 97 Ovalle, Alonso de, 7, 8, 40, 41, 52, 59, 60, 77, 94, 196, 213 Histórica relación (see Histórica relación) knowledge of Mapuche pharmacopoeia, 42 and missions in Chiloe, 124 proto-national identity, 8, 198 Relaciones de las paces de Baydes, 199, 208 in Rome, 9, 117, 120–21, 199, 210 Tabula Geographica Regni Chile, 199, 203, 208, 255n22 See also criollos Ovando, Cristóbal de, 97 Ozores, Pedro, 107 Pacheco, Luis, 62 Páez, Esteban, 100 paies, 63, 69, 76 authority of, 237n28 demonization of, 66–67, 77, 85 naming ceremony (ñimongarai), 64, 68, 240n10, 242n35 opposition to Jesuit missionaries, 64 and pochy-related illnesses, 68, 242n32 See also Guarani; shamans Paraguay Jesuit province of, 34, 91, 98, 198



Jesuits accused of hiding riches in, 221–22 number of Jesuits working in, 99 observatories in, 131 reductions (see reductions, of Paraguay) Thomas Apostle in, 86–87 use of native informants in, 6, 39–40, 61, 83, 85 Pardo, Osvaldo F., 55 Paris, 93, 97, 160, 166, 245 patronato real, 15, 16, 147, 230n14 Paul (Apostle), 159 Paul III (pope), 93, 158 Paul V (pope), 98 Paw, Cornelius de, 9, 220, 222, 224, 227 pedagogy importance for Jesuits, 93–94, 98–99, 144 modus parisiensis, 97, 166, 245n26 Ratio Studiorum (see Ratio Studiorum) Peñafiel, Alonso de, 112 Peredo, Ángel de, 122 Pererius, Benedictus, 97, 186, 253n29, 254n40 Perlín, Juan, 101 Peru, 3, 48, 70, 92, 94–95, 99, 121, 223 clandestine weapon factories in, 22 first Jesuits in, 3, 14, 91, 227 neo-Inca state of Vilcabamba, 14, 21–22 See also Andean peoples Philip II (king), 145, 146, 147 Philip III (king), 98 Philippines, 98 philosophy, 3, 7, 9, 14, 25, 35 and mathematics, 119, 136 as means of salvation, 144 teaching of, 96–98 Picón, Martín, 31 Piñas, Baltasar, 36, 44 Pino Díaz, Fermín del, 150 Plaza, Juan de la and Acosta, 4, 18–19, 147 doubts about Spanish presence in America, 17, 231n28 and Juli, 29, 32, 33 opposition to doctrinas, 34, 232n37 Pliny, 167 Polanco, Juan de, 3, 99, 143, 160 Pompilius, Numa, 216 population of America, 8, 26–27, 185–87, 216– 17. See also Acosta, José de; Cobo, Bernabé de Porter Casanate, Pedro, 123, 133 Portugal, 18, 197, 221 Potosi, 15, 19, 97, 107, 108, 131, 168, 202 Poyas, 118, 126, 129



Index

Pozo, Alonso del, 47, 123 protestantism, 93 providence in Acosta, 153, 165–66, 181, 183 in Aquinas, 183–84 in Cobo, 174, 176, 178–79, 181–83, 184 Ptolemy, 109, 164 Puebla, 112 Puelche, 125–26 Puente, Juan de la, 9, 215–16, 217, 220. See also Rosales, Diego de Puig Montada, Josep, 164 quinine, 1–2, 6, 229n4 Quito, 97, 98, 198, 223 Raleigh, Walter, 100 Ratio Studiorum, 144, 146 and Averroism, 164 evolution of, 160–61 and teaching of philosophy, 161–62, 166–67 Thomas Aquinas in, 161 See also pedagogy reductions, of Paraguay based on Juli’s model, 62 disciplinary aspect of medical care, 66–67, 77–78 history of, 67, 196 institutionalization of medical care in, 77–79 Loreto, 78 martyrdom of Roque González, 64 natives leaving, 64 nurses, 66, 78 (see also curuzuyaras) perceived success of, 62–63 raided by bandeirantes, 63 of Santos Mártires at Caaró, 78 of Santo Tomás Apóstol, 69 Sodality of Our Lady in, 78 See also Paraguay Republic of Letters, 129, 130 Ribadeneyra, Pedro, 195 Ribera, Juan, 46 Riccioli, Giovanni Battista, 3, 34, 121, 133, 135 Rio, Martín del, 74, 80 Disquisitionum Magicarum (see Disquisitionum Magicarum) Ripalda, Jerónimo, 147 Rodríguez, Alfonso, 64 Rodríguez, Diego, 133 Rodríguez del Manzano, Francisco, 121 Roman College, 2, 99, 117, 118, 161 as astronomic research center, 120, 134

285

mathematics in, 119–20 See also colleges Rome, 9, 25, 60, 97, 121, 129, 131, 137, 143, 160, 199, 219 Rosales, Diego de, 2, 7, 8, 40, 42, 46, 50, 60, 122, 190, 226 as biographer of Mascardi, 121, 132 and “Conquista espiritual,” 127, 196–97, 248n59 correction of Kircher, 117 early life, 211–12 Historia general (see Historia general) missionary activities, 212 and native informers, 213 participation in Baides peace talks, 208 proto-national identity, 9, 198, 22 scientific research, 212–13 See also criollos; herbals; Ovalle, Alonso de; wonders Rueda, Dionisio de, 60 Ruiz del Portillo, Jerónimo, 14, 16, 19, 94, 96 Ruiz de Montoya, Antonio, 33, 69, 75, 78, 81 Conquista espiritual del Paraguay (see Conquista espiritual del Paraguay) as physician, 65 Ruiz Lozano, Francisco, 133, 249n88 and Mascardi, 134, 139 Tratado de los cometas (see Tratado de los cometas) use of informants, 136, 137 use of Jesuit libraries, 139–40 Sahagún, Bernardino de, 38, 39 Salvador (Brazil), 130 Sandoval, Alonso de, 115 Santiago, 36, 44, 95, 203, 211, 213, 224, 235n3 Santo Domingo, 100 São Paulo, 63 Schechner Genuth, Sara, 139 Scotus, John Duns, 176 Sebastián, Juan, 32 Second Lima Council, 111 Sepi, Giorgio di, 129 Sepp, Antonio, 66, 70, 83 Seville, 17, 96, 99, 126, 131, 195, 215 shamans, 41 ambiguity of, 52–53 demonization of, 51–52, 54, 57, 60–61, 63, 66, 67, 69, 76–77, 85 as frauds, 61 influence on communities, 41, 49, 80 opposition to missionaries, 41, 42, 64, 214

286

Missionary Scientists

shamans, continued preaching against baptism, 48 ritual secrecy, 42 wide range of functions, 41 See also machi; medicine; missions; paies Shepherd, Gregory, 155 sin, 49–51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 71, 77 confession of, 55 (see also confession) as disease in Valdivia, 50 Snellius, Willebrord, 137, 139 Society of Jesus, 2 administrative divisions, 198 conflict with Dominicans, 98, 245n30 and exchange of information, 6, 39 expulsion of, 4, 39, 99, 145, 220, 221–23 first arrived in Peru, 3, 14, 91, 227 fourth vow, 93 and lack of manpower, 3, 94, 99 learning as spiritual practice of, 3, 34, 144, 158–59, 161–62, 166 missionaries, 3, 4, 5, 6, 14, 91, 94, 95 and native languages, 33, 37–38, 91–92 and natural philosophy, 3, 4, 7 and network of colleges and missions, 6, 91, 92, 94, 99, 105, 106, 114, 116, 140, 212 and obedience, 3, 93, 128, 144, 159, 160, 252 official recognition of, 3 Oriental missions, 20 and pedagogy, 3, 5, 91, 93–94, 99, 144 propaganda against, 221–22 prosecuted by Spanish Inquisition, 146–47 and rotation of individuals, 6, 91, 92–93, 94, 98, 99, 106, 116, 140 and Thomism, 160 training of novices, 3, 39 and urban ministries, 2, 91 way of proceeding, 5, 17, 36, 94 See also Aquinas, Thomas; colleges; Dominicans; epistolary networks; Loyola, Ignatius; missions; pedagogy Solórzano y Pereira, Juan de, 101, 114 Sotelo Romay, Domingo, 196 Sotomayor, Simón de, 123 Spain, 6, 45, 106, 146, 169, 188, 190, 197, 200, 218, 221, 243n60 Spanish Empire, 197 Spee, Friedrich, 243n60 Spiritual Exercises, 57, 100 and active engagement with the world, 158 and Christ’s dual nature, 159



and “Rules for Thinking with the Church,” 159–60 See also Loyola, Ignatius Sprenger, James, 72 Stansel, Valentin, 130, 136 Suárez, Francisco, 97, 119 taxonomy, 188–92. See also Linnaeus, Carolus Techo, Nicolás del, 63, 64, 70, 76, 196 telescope, 109, 120, 131, 132, 246n46 Telles, Juan Bautista, 139 Tertullian, 71 Tesillo, Santiago, 225 Texcatlipoca, 70 Theophrastus, 167 Third Council of Lima, 6, 22 Thomas Apostle. See Ruiz de Montoya, Antonio Tiawanaku, 101 Toict, Nicolas du. See Techo, Nicolás del Toledo, Francisco, 97, 119 Toledo, Francisco de (viceroy of Peru) and Acosta, 19, 20, 21, 24 career as government official, 14, 34 conflict with Jesuits in Peru, 3, 13, 37, 91, 95, 96, 147, 231n25, 232n37 insistence on doctrinas de indios, 3, 5, 13, 17, 30, 230n20 and patronato real, 15, 16, 147 and reducciones, 15, 17, 24, 232n34 See also Acosta, José de; doctrinas de indios; Peru Torrellas, Pedro de, 60 Torres, Diego de, 38, 49, 95, 98 Torres, Domingo de, 63, 66 Torrid Zone in Acosta, 151–52 in Cobo, 172–76, 178–79 Tournefort, Joseph Pitton de, 225 transubstantiation, 70 Tratado de las supersticiones (Castañega), 70–72, 73 concept of execraments in, 70–71, 72 demonic pact, 72 diabolical church, 71–72 influence of, 73 on magic as heresy and idolatry, 71 (see also demonic pact; demonology) Tratado de los cometas (Ruiz Lozano), 134, 140 against popular beliefs about comets, 139 discussion of Brahe’s theories in, 137 on formation of comets, 138



Index

Trinidad, 100 Tucumán, 82, 98, 225 Ulloa, Hernando de, 136, 137, 224 University of San Marcos, 96 Urban VIII (pope), 118 Valdivia, Luis de Confessionario breve (see Confessionario breve) defensive war strategy, 45–46, 48, 122, 199, 208, 210 and justice of native war against Spaniards, 44–45 and Mapudungun, 33, 37, 38 and Millcayac and Allentillac languages, 33, 38 Nueve sermones en lengua de Chile (see Nueve sermones en lengua de Chile) as rector of College of San Miguel, 44, 97–98 See also Chile; confession; missions; Ovalle, Alonso de; Rosales, Diego de Valera, Blas, 231n33 vana curiositas and Acosta, 154–55, 177 and arcana Dei, 156–57

287

and Augustine, 154–55 and Ignatius Loyola, 156, 159 and natural magic, 163 Van Zyll, Otto, 131 Vargas, Francisco de, 208 Vecci, Horacio, 48 Vega, Gabriel de, 37, 44 Venezuela, 198 Vera, Domingo de, 99–100 Verdugo, Juan, 125 Villarroel, Diego, 125 virtuosi, 156, 157 Vitelleschi, Muzio, 111–12, 114, 115, 199 witchcraft, 69–75. See also demonic pact; demonology wonders, 9, 203–6, 215, 219–20. See also natural history; Ovalle, Alonso de; Rosales, Diego de yerba mate, 67–69, 80, 81, 85–87, 192 Yupanqui, Titu Cusi, 22 Zahorowski, Jerome, 221 Zeiter, Joseph, 236n20