Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru

by Sabine MacCormack

Overview

Addressing problems of objectivity and authenticity, Sabine MacCormack reconstructs how Andean religion was understood by the Spanish in light of seventeenth-century European theological and philosophical movements, and by Andean writers trying to find in it antecedents to their new Christian faith.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691021065
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	06/06/1993
Edition description:	With a New afterword by the author
Pages:	516
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sabine MacCormack is Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History and Professor of Classics at the University of Michigan. She is author of Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (California).

Editorial Reviews

This volume provides a salutary reminder that the "New World" was not only encountered and conquered, but also explained, and explained in a way which revealed much about Europe.

The Times Higher Education Supplement - Stephen Nugent

This volume provides a salutary reminder that the "New World" was not only encountered and conquered, but also explained, and explained in a way which revealed much about Europe.
— Stephen Nugent

The Times Higher Education Supplement

This is a detailed and careful study of Inca and Andean religion from 1532 (the Spanish invasion) to about 1660 (when Inca religion had merged into ancestral Andean religion, but before Andean religion underwent massive change). It relies largely on Spanish accounts of native religion--a necessary limitation that MacCormack explicitly discusses. This permits focus on the religious experience of those invaded as perceived by and affected by the invaders. This book is an especially appropriate acquisition for academic and large public libraries in light of the quincentenary of Columbus's voyage.

Library Journal

"Sabine MacCormack's approach is important because almost all of what we know about Inca and Andean religion comes from Christians who, logically, were writing about things they did not believe.... This is a book that may force historians to reassess their documents from a more skeptical perspective, and a call for anthropologists to think twice before dismissing the historical records of their informants."

The New York Times Book Review

"This volume provides a salutary reminder that the "New World" was not only encountered and conquered, but also explained, and explained in a way which revealed much about Europe."—-Stephen Nugent, The Times Higher Education Supplement

From the Publisher