Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New (Paperback)

Daniel T. Reff

ISBN 10: 0521600502 / ISBN 13: 9780521600507

Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005

About this Item

Paperback. Drawing on anthropology, religious studies, history, and literary theory, Plagues, Priests, and Demons explores significant parallels in the rise of Christianity in the late Roman empire and colonial Mexico. Evidence shows that new forms of infectious disease devastated the late Roman empire and Indian America, respectively, contributing to pagan and Indian interest in Christianity. Christian clerics and monks in early medieval Europe, and later Jesuit missionaries in colonial Mexico, introduced new beliefs and practices as well as accommodated indigenous religions, especially through the cult of the saints. The book is simultaneously a comparative study of early Christian and later Spanish missionary texts. Similarities in the two literatures are attributed to similar cultural-historical forces that governed the 'rise of Christianity' in Europe and the Americas. This comparative interdisciplinary study of the rise of Christianity in the late Roman Empire and in colonial Mexico reveals that epidemic disease undermined pre-Christian societies, contributing respectively to pagan and Indian interest in new forms of social and religious life. Christian clerics and monks in early medieval Europe and, later, Jesuit missionaries in colonial Mexico, reacted by introducing new beliefs and practices and accommodating indigenous religions as well. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780521600507

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New (Paperback)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521600502
• ISBN 13: 9780521600507
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

This comparative interdisciplinary study of the rise of Christianity in the late Roman Empire and in colonial Mexico reveals that epidemic disease undermined pre-Christian societies, contributing respectively to pagan and Indian interest in new forms of social and religious life. Christian clerics and monks in early medieval Europe and, later, Jesuit missionaries in colonial Mexico, reacted by introducing new beliefs and practices and accommodating indigenous religions as well.

About the Author

Daniel T. Reff is Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. He is an anthropologist and enthnohistorian who has done research in northern Mexico, the American Southwest, Spaink and Portugal. He is the author of several articles on colonial Mexico in such journals as American Anthropologist, American Antiquity, and Ethnohistory. He is the author of Disease, Depopulation, and Culture Change in Northwestern New Spain, 1518–1764 (1991). He has been a resident scholar at the School of American Research and is the recipient of major research grants as well as a University Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.