Sunday, January 4, 2009: 12:10 PM
Rendezvous Trianon (Hilton New York)
Despite the recognized importance of the Franciscans in the history of
Spanish America, we still know very little about their quotidian lives,
their thoughts, and their deeds. Our lack of knowledge is critical when the
friar was not involved in converting frontier Indians to the Catholic faith.
In this paper I concentrate on a friary, the College for the Propagation of
the Faith of the Saint Cross in Querétaro in the Bourbon era, when this
institution became paramount in New Spain’s northern expansion. Even though
only a few Queretaran friars went to the frontier missions, most of them
walked the dusty roads of New Spain to preach to the believers. I therefore
follow their paths, actions, and words in their ‘misiones populares’ or
popular missions among Catholics–Indians and non-Indians–in central New
Spain. As part of post-Tridentine Catholicism, these missions inspired a
Christian way of life to the masses of Catholics–old and new–that inhabited
the urban and rural areas of the Christian world, including both American
continents. I further suggest that popular missions among Catholics and
frontier missions to the ‘heathens’ were part of the same universal
enterprise for the salvation of all souls.
Spanish America, we still know very little about their quotidian lives,
their thoughts, and their deeds. Our lack of knowledge is critical when the
friar was not involved in converting frontier Indians to the Catholic faith.
In this paper I concentrate on a friary, the College for the Propagation of
the Faith of the Saint Cross in Querétaro in the Bourbon era, when this
institution became paramount in New Spain’s northern expansion. Even though
only a few Queretaran friars went to the frontier missions, most of them
walked the dusty roads of New Spain to preach to the believers. I therefore
follow their paths, actions, and words in their ‘misiones populares’ or
popular missions among Catholics–Indians and non-Indians–in central New
Spain. As part of post-Tridentine Catholicism, these missions inspired a
Christian way of life to the masses of Catholics–old and new–that inhabited
the urban and rural areas of the Christian world, including both American
continents. I further suggest that popular missions among Catholics and
frontier missions to the ‘heathens’ were part of the same universal
enterprise for the salvation of all souls.
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