Andrew Redden Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 1560-1750

Annotation

Redden uses a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the transcultural phenomenon of the devil in early modern Peru. He demonstrates that the interaction between the Christian and the Andean worlds was far more complex than any interpretation that posits a clear dichotomy between conversion and resistance would suggest. The study analyses historical sources such as missionary letters, inquisitorial trials, and chronicles written by commentators from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it also draws on theology, ritual and liturgy, as well as literature, art, ethnography and anthropology in order to attempt a portrait of a communal society that formed an integral part of the Hispanic world between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries.