ECU Libraries Catalog

Empires of God : religious encounters in the early modern Atlantic / edited by Linda Gregerson and Susan Juster.

Other author/creatorGregerson, Linda.
Other author/creatorJuster, Susan.
Format Book and Print
Publication InfoPhiladelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, ©2011.
Descriptionix, 334 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Subject(s)
Contents The polemics of possession : Spain on America, Circa 1550 / Rolena Adorno -- Cruelty and religious justifications for conquest in the mid-seventeenth-century English Atlantic / Carla Gardina Pestana -- Religion and national distinction in the early modern Atlantic / Barbara Fuchs -- The commonwealth of the Word : New England, Old England, and the praying Indians / Linda Gregerson -- Catholic saints in Spain's Atlantic empire / Cornelius Conover -- A wondering Jesuit in Europe and America : Father Chaumonot finds a home / Allan Greer -- From London to Nonantum : mission literature in the transatlantic English world / Kristina Bross -- Dreams clash : the war over authorized interpretation in seventeenth-century French missions / Dominique Deslandres -- "For each and every house to wish for peace" : Christoph Saur's High German American Almanac and the French and Indian War in Pennsylvania / Bethany Wiggin -- Reconfiguring martyrdom in the colonial context : Marie de l'Incarnation / Katherine Ibbett -- Book of suffering, suffering book : the Mennonite Martyrs' Mirror and the translation of martyrdom in colonial America / Patrick Erben -- Iconoclasm without icons? The destruction of sacred objects in colonial North America / Susan Juster -- Spenser and the end of the British empire / Paul Stevens.
Abstract Religion and empire were inseparable forces in the early modern Atlantic world. Religious passions and conflicts drove much of the expansionist energy of post-Reformation Europe, providing both a rationale and a practical mode of organizing the dispersal and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people from the Old World to the New World. Exhortations to conquer new peoples were the lingua franca of Western imperialism, and men like the mystically inclined Christopher Columbus were genuinely inspired to risk their lives and their fortunes to bring the gospel to the Americas. And in the thousands of religious refugees seeking asylum from the vicious wars of religion that tore the continent apart in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these visionary explorers found a ready pool of migrants-English Puritans and Quakers, French Huguenots, German Moravians, Scots-Irish Presbyterians-equally willing to risk life and limb for a chance to worship God in their own way. Focusing on the formative period of European exploration, settlement, and conquest in the Americas, from roughly 1500 to 1760, "Empires of God" brings together literary scholars and historians of the English, French, and Spanish Americas around a common set of questions: How did religious communities and beliefs create empires, and how did imperial structures transform New World religions? How did Europeans and Native Americans make sense of each other's spiritual systems, and what acts of linguistic and cultural transition did this entail? What was the role of violence in New World religious encounters? Together, the essays collected here demonstrate the power of religious ideas and narratives to create kingdoms both imagined and real. -- Book jacket.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
LCCN 2010028882
ISBN9780812242898 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN0812242890 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Available Items

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks BR500 .E46 2011 ✔ Available Place Hold