7 - Living with the Virgin in the Colonial Andes: Images and Personal Devotion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
Although deeply preoccupied with idolatry, Spanish missionaries saw religious images as effective tools of conversion in the Andes. This paper studies the dissemination of the cult of the Virgin Mary in the colonial Andes during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The discussion focuses on a Marian devotion, Our Lady of Copacabana, and explores its place in the shaping of Andean Catholicism. Studies of this devotion have centred on contemporary accounts of its origins and propagation, and on the artistic and technical characteristics of images meant for public worship. Through the study of personal inventories and dowries found in notary records, this paper focuses on images for personal devotion. I argue that the cult of the Virgin of Copacabana was at once profoundly Andean and cosmopolitan.
Keywords: conversion; race relations; body; silver; Peru; Andes;
The story of the first encounter between Europeans and Andeans, which ended with the capture of the Inca emperor, Atahualpa, in 1532, provides us with a wealth of material with which to think about the interaction between people, objects and religion. At their first meeting, a Spanish friar presented Atahualpa with a religious book, an object that did not capture the Inca's attention. For Atahualpa the book had no significance, since the Inca civilization had no alphabetic writing and therefore had no familiarity with this type of object. Associating sacredness with text was an operation entirely alien to the Andeans. Atahualpa, several accounts of this first meeting assert, was handed the book and, after a brief inspection, seemed to conclude that it was an inert and speechless and therefore meaningless, object, so he dismissed it and threw it on the ground. The Spanish, who knew as much about the Inca as the Inca knew about them, took offence at Atahualpa's failure to perceive the inherent value of the book, and responded with a brutal, unexpected attack against Atahualpa and his retinue. As a result, dozens of soldiers were slain, and Inca Atahualpa was made captive. Some months later, having paid the Spanish a huge ransom and after accepting baptism, the Inca was garrotted.
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- Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World , pp. 137 - 150Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019