“Apostles and men of learning”: Miguel Venegas, Andrés Marcos Burriel, and the Jesuit Vocation for Natural History
The transformation of the Empressas apostólicas (1739), a manuscript history of the Jesuits’ missions in Lower California written by the novo-Hispanic Jesuit Miguel Venegas, into the Noticia de la California (1757), a thoroughly revised version of Venegas’s original prepared by the Spanish Jesuit An...
Published in: | Journal of Jesuit studies |
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Main Author: | |
Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Brill
2017
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In: |
Journal of Jesuit studies
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IxTheo Classification: | CF Christianity and Science KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history KBQ North America KCA Monasticism; religious orders KDB Roman Catholic Church RJ Mission; missiology |
Further subjects: | B
California
New Spain
natural history
Enlightenment
Miguel Venegas
Andrés Marcos Burriel
Noticia de la California (1757)
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Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Verlag) |
Summary: | The transformation of the Empressas apostólicas (1739), a manuscript history of the Jesuits’ missions in Lower California written by the novo-Hispanic Jesuit Miguel Venegas, into the Noticia de la California (1757), a thoroughly revised version of Venegas’s original prepared by the Spanish Jesuit Andrés Marcos Burriel, provides a case study in how the enactment of the Jesuit ascetic ideal exercised on the Spanish-American mission frontier was closely linked to Enlightenment natural history and ethnography. Through an analysis of both works, as well as Burriel’s correspondence with his Jesuit confrères in New Spain, this article aims to demonstrate the underlying tension in eighteenth-century Jesuit writing between traditional, providential narratives and the skeptical, scientific discourse of secular natural histories. Burriel’s work, which was widely translated and disseminated throughout Europe, aimed to bridge these two discourses by employing the Society’s apostolic-ascetic vocation and global missionary network in the service of natural histories that would appeal to a secular reading public and inform Spanish colonial administration. |
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ISSN: | 2214-1332 |
Contains: | In: Journal of Jesuit studies
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/22141332-00401002 |