The Invention of Savage Society: Amerindian Religion and Society in Acosta's Anthropological Theology
2013; Routledge; Volume: 40; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01916599.2013.808411
ISSN1873-541X
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American history and culture
ResumoSummaryThe problem of converting the Amerindian world to Catholicism was given a radically new solution, both at a theoretical and a missionary level, by the Jesuit Acosta: since American societies were of a completely different nature to Mediterranean ones, the preaching of the Gospel, too, had to be different from the classical approach. He gave a new definition to both preaching and American societies, especially the latter's religion and social organisation. Acosta's approach to American sauvagerie was pioneering; he conceptualised ideas that had never been thought of before. There existed societies which were neither barbarous nor political (like the empires of Incan Peru and Aztec Mexico), which nonetheless had social organisation. With regard to their religious life, Acosta maintained that cult and belief without faith was not a sign of atheism, but of an early form of religion. These two reassessments gave rise to a new image of the savage society, which attained enormous success, even outside the missionary world. Fitting the theological structure into the secularised theories of radical enlightenment, both Locke and Hume had recourse to the ethnologic aspects which Acosta had set out.Keywords: AcostaSociety of Jesusmissionsreligionsavage societysecularisation AcknowledgementsEnglish translation by Giuseppe de Riso.Notes1 Quoted in Claudio M. Burgaleta, José de Acosta, S.J., (1540–1600): His Life and Thought (Chicago, IL, 1999), 21, 163. See also León Lopetegui, El padre José de Acosta sj, y las misiones (Madrid, 1942); Jérome Thomas, ‘L'évangélisation des indiens selon le jésuite Acosta dans le De procuranda Indorum salute (1588)’, Cahiers d'études du religieux: Recherches interdisciplinaires, 10 (2012), http://cerri.revues.org/942 (accessed 15 May 2013). All translations are by Giuseppe de Riso unless otherwise indicated.2 Martín María Morales, A mis manos han llegado. Cartas de los PP. Generales a la Antigua Provincia del Paraguay (1608–1639) (Madrid, 2005), 10.3 Martín María Morales, ‘Los comienzos de las reducciones de la provincia del Paraguay en relación con el derecho indiano y el instituto de la Compañía de Jesús. Evolución y conflictos’, Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 67(133) (1998), 3–129 (6).4 In Acosta's opinion, the Spaniards in America were ‘las hezes por la mayor parte de España’; see Morales, ‘Los comienzos de las reducciones’, 13, note Footnote53.5 The problem still persisted in the eighteenth century; see David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven, CT, 2005).6 1 Cor. 15:46.7 Guillermo Wilde, Religión y poder en las misiones de Guaraníes (Buenos Aires, 2009).8 See Caroline A. Williams, ‘Opening New Frontiers in Colonial Spanish American History: New Perspectives on Indigenous-Spanish Interactions on the Margins of Empire’, History Compass, 6 (2008), 1121–39.9 Giuseppe Piras, Martin de Funes S.J. (1560–1611) e gli inizi delle riduzioni dei gesuiti nel Paraguay (Rome, 1998), 49–50.10 José de Acosta, De promulgando evangelio apud barbaros: sive de procuranda Indorum salute (Lugduni,1670), III, chapter xvii, 215 [hereafter the order for references to this and other works using the same format will be given as book (III), volume (if necessary), chapter (xvii), and page (215)].11 Acosta, De promulgando, III, xvii, 218.12 Acosta, De promulgando, IV, xi, 299.13 Acosta, De promulgando, II, xi, 127.14 Antonella Romano, ‘L'expérience de la mission et la carte européenne des savoirs sur le monde à la Renaissance: Antonio Possevino et José de Acosta’, in L'Europa divisa e i nuovi mondi. Per Adriano Prosperi, edited by Massimo Donattini, Giuseppe Marcocci, and Stefania Pastore, 3 vols (Pisa, 2011), II, 159–69.15 Acosta, De promulgando, II, xii, 128.16 Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge, 2004).17 Felipe Castañeda, ‘La cruz y la espada: filosofía de la guerra en Fransisco de Vitoria’, Historia critica, 22 (December 2001), 27–50.18 See Annabel S. Brett, Changes of State: Nature and Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law (Princeton, NJ, 2011), 14–15 and chapter 1.19 ‘Si los bárbaros, tanto los jefes como el pueblo mismo, impiden a los españoles anunciar libremente el Evangelio, […] pueden éstos predicarles aun contra su voluntad y entregarse a la conversión de esta gente, y si fuere necesario, por esta causa aceptar o declarar la guerra’; see Francisco de Vitoria, Relectio de Indis o Libertad de los indios (Madrid, 1967), III, xi, 89.20 See Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y el Perú en el siglo XVI (Lima, 2005).21 Henry Bernard-Maitre, ‘Le p. A. Sánchez, missionnaire des Iles Philippines (1542–1593) et la lettre du p. Acquaviva sur l'oraison (6 mai 1580)’, Revue d'ascétique et de mystique, 17 (1936), 61–89.22 Manel Ollé, La empresa de China: de la armada invencible al Galeón de Manila (Barcelona, 2002); Serge Gruzinski, L'aigle et le dragon: démesure européenne et mondialisation au XVIe siècle (Paris, 2012); Girolamo Imbruglia, ‘The Jesuit Made in China. An Encounter of Empires: Spain, China, and the Society of Jesus, 1586–1588’, in Journey to the Ends of the World: Michele Ruggieri and Jesuits in China, edited by Eugenio Lo Sardo, Antonella Parisi and Raffaele Pittella (in press).23 John P. Doyle, ‘Two Sixteenth-Century Jesuits and a Plan to Conquer China. Sánchez and Acosta: An Outrageous Proposal and its Rejection’, in Rechtsdenken: Schnittpunkte West und Ost. Recht in den gesellschafts- und staatstragenden Institutionen Europas und Chinas, edited by Harold Holz and Konrad Wegmann (Berlin, 2005), 265; Michela Catto, ‘Una crociata contro la Cina. Il dialogo tra Antonio Sánchez e José de Acosta intorno a una guerra giusta al Celeste Impero (1587)’, Nuova rivista storica, 93 (2009), 425–48.24 Michele Ruggieri, Atlante della Cina, edited by Eugenio Lo Sardo (Rome, 1993).25 Nicolas Standaert has explored the relationship between the Society of Jesus and China in this direction. See Nicolas Standaert, Le rôle de l'autre dans l'expérience missionnaire à partir de la Chine: l'identité jésuite façonnée par les Chinois, in Tradition jésuite: enseignement, spiritualité, mission, edited by Etienne Ganty, Michel Hermans, and Pierre Sauvage (Brussels, 2002), 115–37; Nicolas Standaert, ‘Jesuits in China’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits, edited by Thomas Worcester (Cambridge, 2008), 169–85.26 José de Acosta, ‘Parecer sobre la guerra de la China [15 March 1587]’, in Obras, edited by Francisco Mateos (Madrid, 1954), 333–34.27 José de Acosta, De temporibus novissimis libri quatuor (Rome, 1590), I, xviii, 33.28 Marcel Bataillon, ‘Evangelisme et millénarisme au Nouveau Monde’, in Courants religieux et humanistes à la fin du XVIesiècle, edited by Maurice Nédoncelle, (Paris, 1956), 25–36.29 In Colección de documentos inéditos para la Historia de España (Madrid, 1889), XCIV, 473.30 Alain Milhou, ‘El manuscrito jesuíta mesiánico de Andrés de Oviedo dirigido a Francisco de Borja (1550)’, Caravelle, 76/77 (2001), 345–54.31 Alain Milhou, ‘Du pillage au rêve édénique. Sur les aspirations millénaristes des “soldados pobres” du Pérou (1542–1578)’, Cahiers du monde hispanique et luso-brésilien, 46 (1986), 7–20.32 See Burgaleta, Acosta, 35–52. The narrative is too apologetic and does not explain the dramatic questions at stake.33 Marcel Bataillon, ‘La herejía de Fray Francisco de la Cruz y la reacción antilascasiana’, in Etudes sur B. de las Casas (Paris, 1965), 309–24.34 Acosta, De promulgando, V, iii, 354.35 ‘de celeritate Iudicii definire’; see Acosta, De temporibus, I, iv, 6.36 ‘si enim non ita evenerit, incipiunt homines adventum Domini non tardum putare, sed nullum’; see Acosta, De temporibus, I, iv, 6.37 J. H. Elliott, ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’, Past and Present, 137(1) (1992), 48–71.38 Juan López de Velasco, Geografia y descripción universal de las Indias (Madrid, 1971).39 See John M. Headley, ‘Spain's Asian Presence, 1565–1590: Structures and Aspirations’, The Hispanic American Historical Review, 75 (1995), 623–46.40 Girolamo Imbruglia, ‘Un impero d'età moderna: la Compagnia di Gesù’, in Le problème de l'altérité dans la culture européenne: anthropologie, politique et religion au XVIII et XIX siècles, edited by Guido Abbattista and Rolando Minuti (Napoli, 2006), 159–78.41 José de Acosta, ‘Proemium [Introduction]’, in De promulgando, unnumbered, but equivalent to pages v–viii. See also Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man (Cambridge, 1982), 146–200; Sabine MacCormack, Religion in the Andes (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 249–80.42 Acosta, ‘Proemium’, in De promulgando, v–viii.43 Acosta, ‘Proemium’, in De promulgando, v–viii.44 Acosta, ‘Proemium’, in De promulgando, v–viii.45 Acosta, ‘Proemium’, in De promulgando, v–viii.46 Acosta, ‘Proemium’, in De promulgando, v–viii.47 Acosta, ‘Proemium’, in De promulgando, v–viii.48 Paolo Broggio, La teologia e la politica (Florence, 2009), 89; Monique Mustapha, ‘Sur un texte retrouvé: le père José Acosta et la querelle De Auxiliis’, Annales de la Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de Nice, 23 (1982), 209–16.49 Louis de Molina, Liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione, et reprobatione Concordia ad nonnullos primae partis D. Thomae articulos (Lisbon, 1588), 40.50 Michael J. Gorman, ‘Molinist Theology and Natural Knowledge in the Society of Jesus, 1580–1610’, in Sciences et religions: de Copernic à Galilée (1540–1610), edited by Antonella Romano and Catherine Brice (Rome, 1999), 234–54.51 See Louis de Molina, Utrum infideles sint compellendi ad fidem, in Juan de la Peña, De bello contra insulanos intervención de España en América […] Posición de la corona (Madrid, 1982), 351–69.52 Compare with the Spanish text: ‘El segundo es de behetrías, o comunidades, donde se goviernan por consejo de muchos, y son como concejos. Estos en tiempo de Guerra eligen un capitan’; see José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Seville, 1590), VI, xix, 430. The Latin text uses ‘promiscue turbatim’.53 José de Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the East and West Indies 2 vols (London, 1880, first published in 1604), VI, xix, II, 426.54 Acosta, Natural and Moral History, VI, xi, II, 410.55 ‘We call behetría because they do not have lord’; quoted by Sabine MacCormack, ‘Ethnography in South America: The First Two Hundred Years’, in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, edited by Bruce G. Trigger and others, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1996–2000), III, part 1, 124. For more on ‘la ausencia de obediencia a una figura política’, in behetrías, see Guillaume Boccara, ‘Etnogénesis mapuche: resistencia y restructuración entre los Indígenas del Centro-Sur de Chile (siglos XVI–XVIII)’, The Hispanic American Historical Review, 79 (1999), 425–61 (427). See also Nelly R. Porro Girardi, ‘El trasplante de las behetrías a Indias’, in Derecho y Administración pública en las Indias Hispanicas: Actas del XII Congreso Internacional de Historia del Derecho Indiano (Toledo, 19 a 21 de octubre de1998), edited by Feliciano Barrios Pintado, 2 vols (Cuenca, 2002), II, 1377–89.56 In the dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spain, behetría means either ‘group that elected their own rulers’ or ‘a condition of disorder and confusion’.57 MacCormack, ‘Ethnography in South America’, in Cambridge History of Native Peoples of Americas, edited by Trigger and others, 125.58 Juan D. Montoya y Guzman, ‘Un cronista por la gobernación de Popayán: Cieza de León y su crónica del Perú’, Historia y sociedad, 11 (2005), 133–64.59 Pedro Cieza de Leon, La crónica del Perú (Madrid, 1947), 409–10. See Ana R. Portugal, ‘História e historiografia do Ayllu Andino’, Historia y sociedad, 14 (2008), 69–94.60 Cieza de Leon, La crónica del Perú, 410.61 Cieza de Leon, La crónica del Perú, 366.62 Cieza de Leon, La crónica del Perú, 437.63 Cieza de Leon, La crónica del Perú, 389.64 Cieza de Leon, La crónica del Perú, 403.65 See Laura Amman, ‘Bernardino de Sahagún, José de Acosta and the Sixteenth-Century: Theology of Sacrifice in New Spain’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 12(2) (2011). doi:10.1353/cch.2011.0017; Jonathan Sheehan, ‘The Altars of the Idols: Religion, Sacrifice and the Early Modern Polity’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67 (2006), 649–74; Jonathan Sheehan, ‘Sacrifice Before the Secular’, Representations, 105 (2009), 12–36.66 Cieza de Leon, La crónica del Perú, 411.67 Cieza de Leon, La crónica del Perú, 414. See Marianne Mahn-Lot, ‘Les Incas vus par Cieza de Léon au milieu du XVIe siècle’, Revue historique, 285 (1991), 321–36.68 Bartolomé Clavero, ‘Behetría, 1255–1356. Crisis de una institución de señorío y de la formación de un derecho regional en Castilla’, Anuario de Historia del derecho Español, 44 (1974), 201–342 (240). See also Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, ‘Behetrías’, Anuario de Historia del derecho Español, 1 (1924), 158–336. On Albornoz's thesis, see Louis Martínez García, ‘Los pactos de benefactoria en la formación de la red feudal leonesa y castellana (siglos X–XII)’, Historia, 70 (2010), 325–58 (333 and following).69 Sabine MacCormack, ‘Memory and Time in Golden Age Spain’, History and Memory, 4(2) (1992), 36–68 (41). See also Thomas F. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2005), 165–69.70 See Carlos Estepa Díez, Las behetrías castellanas, 2 vols (Valladolid, 2003), I, 44–45, 64 and following. On its relationship with the royal power, see Díez, Las behetrías castellanas, I, 221 and following.71 Antonio Moreno Ollero, ‘Una behetría de “mar a mar” en el siglo XVI’, Anuario de estudios medievales, 19 (1989), 731–41 (732).72 Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, España, un enigma histórico, 2 vols (Buenos Aires, 1962), II, 403 and following.73 Clavero, ‘Behetría (1255–1356)’, 266, 290, 333.74 Acosta, De promulgando, II, viii, 112.75 See Sabine MacCormack, On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain and Peru (Princeton, NJ, 2007), 164.76 Acosta, Natural and Moral History, I, xxvi, I, 72.77 Cicero, De inventione, I, 2; Cicero, Pro Sestio, XLII, 91.78 Acosta, Natural and Moral History, VII, iii, II, 454–3.79 Peter N. Miller, ‘Taking Paganism Seriously: Anthropology and Antiquarianism in Early-Seventeenth-Century Histories of Religion’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 3 (2001), 189–209 (193).80 Acosta, Natural and Moral History, V, xxvii, II, 371–72.81 For a useful discussion about the relationship between superstition and atheism, see Philippe Borgeaud, Aux origines de l'histoire des religions (Paris, 2004), 33–39.82 ‘ils ne confessent, ni adorent aucuns dieux célestes ni terrestres et par conséquent, n'ayans aucun formulaire ni lieu député pour s'assembler afin de faire quelque service ordinaire, ils ne prient par forme de religion ni en publique, ni en particulier’; see Jean de Léry, Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil, autrement dite Amerique (Geneva, 1594), 230 and following, 239, in the chapter entitled Ce qu'on peut appeler religion entre les sauvages Américains.83 On diabolism, see Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven, CT, 1994).84 See Philippe Borgeaud, ‘Religion romaine et histoire des religions: quelques réflexions’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 5 (2003), 119–30 (126–27).85 Acosta, Natural and Moral History, V, iii, 301–02.86 On the Jesuit approach to religious belief ‘without faith’, see Edoardo Viveiros de Castro, ‘Le marbre et le myrte: de l'inconstance de l’âme sauvage’, in Mémoires de la tradition, edited by Aurore Becquelin, Antoinette Molinié, (Nanterre, 1993), 365–431; Sabine MacCormack, ‘Gods, Demons and Idols in the Andes’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67 (2006), 623–48 (639–40).87 See Guy G. Stroumsa, A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, MA, 2010), 16–18 and passim.88 See Guy G. Stroumsa, ‘John Spencer and the Roots of Idolatry’, History of Religions, 41 (2001), 1–23; Carina L. Johnson, ‘Idolatrous Cultures and the Practice of Religion’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67 (2006), 597–622; Jonathan Sheehan, ‘Thinking about Idols in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67 (2006), 561–71.89 Acosta, Natural and Moral History, V, vi, II, 312.90 Debora Kuller Shuger, The Renaissance Bible (Berkeley, CA, 1994), chapter 1.91 Acosta, De promulgando, II, ix, 177. Emphasis added.92 Jonathan Sheehan, ‘Sacred and Profane: Idolatry, Antiquarianism and the Polemics of Distinction in the Seventeenth Century’, Past and Present, 192(1) (2006), 35–66 (37).93 Vittorio Frajese, ‘La superstizione’, in Le categorie della Controriforma: politica e religione nell'Italia della prima etaÌ moderna (Rome, 2011), 313–28.94 Girolamo Imbruglia, ‘Dalle storie dei santi alla storia naturale della religione. L'idea moderna di superstizione’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 101 (1989), 35–84.95 Acosta, De promulgando, IV, ix, 290.96 Acosta, De promulgando, IV, xi, 300.97 Acosta, De promulgando, V, iii, 362.98 Acosta, De Promulgando, V, iii, 360.99 Acosta, De promulgando, V, iii, 360.100 Roberto de Nobili faced the same difficulty of explaining faith to the Indian elites through miracles.101 Pedro Ribadeneira wrote on Ignatius: ‘the greatest miracle in my judgement is that God the Father elected the father [Ignatius] to institute, govern and expand a Society that amongst Catholics and heretics, and among the infidels, in such a short time has reaped so much fruit in the world. And the miracle is so great and so manifest that if the other miracles were to be lacking, this one alone should suffice to know and esteem the sanctity that God gave to this father’; see Pedro Ribadeneira, Flos sanctorum (1599–1610), 2 vols (Milan, 1618–1621), II, 27. See also Jodi Bilinkoff, ‘The Many “Lives” of Pedro de Ribadeneyra’, Renaissance Quarterly, 52 (1999), 180–96.102 Acosta, De Promulgando, II, xvi, 140.103 Roberto Bellarmino, ‘Tertia controversia generalis. De reparatione gratiae per Iesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Quae tre principales continet, quarum prima est, de gratia et libero arbitrio […] de iustificatione & bonis operibus generatim […] de bonis operibus in specie’, in De controversiis christianae fidei adversus huius temporis Haereticos (Venice, 1602), II, viii.104 Franco Motta, Bellarmino: Una teologia politica della Controriforma (Turin, 2005), 469.105 Diego Ruiz de Montoya, ‘Disputatio inchoandi iustificationem per vires naturae, absque illustratione et inspiratione supernaturali, et possibilitas obtinendi gratiam, qua concordi ratione conveniant in barbaris remotis, a quqacumque notizia supernaturalium mysteriorum’, in Commentarij, ac. Disputationes ad quaestionem XXII. Et bonam partem quaestionis XXIII ex prima parte s. Thomae. De Providentia praedefiniente, ac praebente praedestinationis exordium (Lyon, 1631), 308, 320. See also Sven K. Knebel, Wille, Würfel und Wahrscheinlichkeit: Das system der moralischen Notwendigkeit in der Jesuitenscholastik, 1550–1700 (Hamburg, 2000).106 Diego Ruiz de Montoya, ‘Disputatio’, in Commentarij, 317–18.107 Girolamo Imbruglia, ‘Le Lettere provinciali e la critica di Pascal all'idolatria gesuita. Tra propaganda e opinione pubblica’, in L'Europa divisa e i nuovi mondi, edited by Donattini, Marcocci, and Pastore, II, 217–29.108 ‘where the missionaries had understood that the only way of converting savage peoples was first transforming them into human peoples (on ne pouvoit guere espérer de convertir les Sauvages, qu'en les humanisant auparavant)’; see Antoine Arnauld, La morale pratique des Jésuites, in Œuvres, 42 vols (Paris, 1775–), XXXIV, 702.109 Antoine Arnauld, Première Denonciation sur le peché philosophique, Œuvres, XXXI (1780), 34.110 ‘Il faut donc qu'ils [the Jesuits] avouent, que leur nouvelle théologie ne se peut soutenir, qu'en renversant les plus communes vérités de la Religion chrétienne, que l'on apprend aux enfants dans leur Catéchisme’; see Antoine Arnauld, Première denonciation sur le peché philosophique, in Œuvres, XXXI, 34–35.111 ‘Dicuntur nimirum sine ratione vivere, non quod nulla omnino, sed quod non recta ipsis insit ratio; sic et sine religio dicuntur, non quod nullam, sed quod non veram colunt’; see Johan Fabricius, Opuscula varia (Heidelberg, 1688), 199. See also Sergio Landucci, I filosofi e i selvaggi (Florence, 1972), 220–23.112 Réné Tournemine, ‘Réflexions sur l'athéisme attribué a quelques peuples par les premiers Missionnaires qui leur ont annoncé l'Evangile’, Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire des sciences et des arts”, better known as Mémoires de Trevoux, janv. 1717, art. VI, 37.113 ‘Ne cherchez point dans ces sauvages une connoissance de Dieu conforme à celle des Théologiens, étudiez vous à déterrer celle que la nature leur a donné, et vous ne les prendrez pas pour des Athées. […] On n'est pas athée pour oublier Dieu, pour douter de Dieu, pour s'efforcer de n'en point croire; on est athée quand on s'est convaincu qu'il n'y a point de Dieu, il n'y a donc point d'athée, il n'y en a jamais eû’; see Tournemine, ‘Réflexions sur l'athéisme, Mémoires de Trevoux, January 1717, VI, 37.114 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, edited by Peter Laslett (New York, NY, 1965), section 102, 379. On Locke, see also Fermín del Pino-Díaz, ‘La Renaissance et le Nouveau Monde: Acosta, jésuite anthropologue (1540–1600)’, L'Homme, 32(122/124) (1992), 309–26 (313).
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