Angels, Demons and the New World

When European notions about angels and demons were exported to the New World, they underwent remarkable adaptations. Angels and demons came to form an integral part of the Spanish American cosmology, leading to the emergence of colonial urban and rural landscapes set within a strikingly theological framework. Belief in celestial and demonic spirits soon regulated and affected the daily lives of Spanish, Indigenous and Mestizo peoples, while missionary networks circulated these practices to create a widespread and generally accepted system of belief that flourished in seventeenth-century Baroque culture and spirituality. This study of angels and demons opens a particularly illuminating window onto intellectual and cultural developments in the centuries that followed the European encounter with America. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students of religious studies, anthropology of religion, history of ideas, Latin American colonial history and church history.

Author: Fernando Cervantes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 04/30/2013
Pages: 330
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780521764582

About the Author
Cervantes, Fernando: - Fernando Cervantes is Reader in History at the University of Bristol. He is the author of The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (1994).Redden, Andrew: - Andrew Redden is a Lecturer in Latin American History at the University of Liverpool. He is author of Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 1560-1750 (2008).