What Did Natural History have to do with Salvation? José de Acosta Sj (1540–1600) in the Americas

2010 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 144-168
Author(s):  
Simon Ditchfield
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
New World ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Botanic Gardens ◽  
Old World ◽  
Christian Conversion ◽  
Palatine Hill ◽  
Jose De Acosta

At the southern foot of the Palatine Hill in Rome, a little more than one hundred metres due west of the triumphal arch erected by the emperor who is associated more than any other with the Christian conversion of the Old World — Constantine the Great – there stands another arch. Relocated from its original position at the eastern foot of the Palatine, more or less directly across from the biggest remaining ruin in the forum — that of the Basilica of Maxentius — it formed the monumental entrance to one of the most important botanic gardens in sixteenth-century Europe — the Orti farnesiani, which were given their definitive shape between 1565 and 1590. I propose that this second arch has reason to be considered as occupying a similar symbolic significance for the conversion of the New World.

Renaissance Influences in English Colonization

1976 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 73-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.B. Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
New World ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
New Material ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
First Time ◽  
Humanistic Tradition

THE New World of the sixteenth century grew directly out of the Old not merely in a physical but in an intellectual sense. The men of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, who found the new lands overseas, were educated in a humanistic tradition which made the classical past, especially the Roman past, alive and relevant to them. Consequently, there is an element of continuity in the thinking about the discoveries and the problems they presented on the basis of older intellectual concepts, which continues to influence much of the thought of the sixteenth century about cosmography, natural history and about the planting of colonies in lands unknown to the ancients. It is astonishing how Ptolemy remained the standard bearer of the new discoveries: maps of the New World and other novel areas, added to his Geography for the first time in 1513, continued to proliferate in edition after edition until by the later sixteenth century the original maps and text had been so overlaid with new matter that they bore even less relationship to the original than the first issue of Gray's Anatomy has to the current edition. It was much the same with Pliny: the Natural History remained the starting point for New World and Asiatic botany and zoology throughout the sixteenth century. Oviedo in 1526 paid his respects to the master before suggesting that genuine novelties could now be added to his text: well before the end of the century Pliny too had been swamped in new material, though his text was also retained intact.

Racism As We Sense It Today

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 1737-1742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Mignolo
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
The Andes ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The One ◽  
Jose De Acosta ◽  
Opening Up

The research that I reported in the darker side of the renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (1995) was driven by my desire and need to understand the opening up of the Atlantic in the sixteenth century, its historical, theoretical, and political consequences. How was it that coexisting socioeconomic organizations like the Ottoman and Mughal sultanates as well as the incanate in the Andes and the tlahtoanate in the Valley of Mexico were either inferior or almost absent in the global historical picture of the time? I became aware, for example, that people in the Valley of Mexico living in the Aztec tlahtoanate, whether in conformity or dissenting, were compared—by the Spaniards—with the Jews. The comparison was twofold: on the one hand, the Indians and the Jews were dirty and untrustworthy people; on the other hand, the Indians in the New World may have been part of the Jewish diaspora. So, the comparison got in trouble, because Indians and Jews may have been the same people. The Jesuit priest José de Acosta, in his Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1589), asked whether the Indians descended from the Jews, addressing a question that was on everybody's mind. He dismissed the possibility of the connection, because the Jews had had a sophisticated writing system for a long time while the Indians were illiterate (in the Western sense of the word). Jews liked money, Acosta pointed out, while Indians were not even aware of it; and while Jews took circumcision seriously, Indians had no idea of it. Last but not least, if Indians were indeed of Jewish origin, they would not have forgotten the Messiah and their religion.

The Genoese in Seville and the Opening of the New World

1962 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Pike
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The Other ◽  
Old World ◽  
Economic Sphere ◽  
History Of ◽  
Subsequent Opening

The turning point in the history of the Genoese merchants in Spain was the discovery of America and the subsequent opening of trading relations with the new continent. From then on, their ascent to economic predominance in Spain paralleled that nation's emergence as the dominant power of the sixteenth-century world. Fortune gave Spain two empires simultaneously, one in the Old World, the other in the New. Spain's unpreparedness for imperial responsibilities, particularly in the economic sphere, was the springboard for Genoese advancement. Strengthening and enlarging their colony in Seville —after 1503 the “door and port of the Indies” —the Genoese prepared to move across the Atlantic in the wake of Columbus.

Partnership and Profit in the Early Andean Trade: The Experiences of Quito Merchants, 1580–1610

1979 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Super
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
South America ◽  
New World ◽  
Old World ◽  
The Andes ◽  
International Trading ◽  
World Economic

Quito was an international trading city in the late sixteenth century. It was one of several commercial centers strung along the Andes that aided in the adaptation of Old World economic techniques to New World resources. By the 1580s, agricultural and manufacturing surpluses had helped Quito emerge as a dominant trading center in western South America, second only to Lima and Potosí.

Evangelization of the “New World”: An Old World Perspective

1992 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Casiano Floristán ◽  
Michael Keefe
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
New World ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Old World ◽  
World Perspective

The theological and political context of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain and Portugal must be taken into account if one wants to understand the motivations and methods of the first missionaries to the New World. Rather than an evangelization, therefore, we need to speak of a catechization of the indigenous peoples of America, even though this process, and the abuses that followed, came under constant critique throughout the colonial era.

Questioning Thunderstones and Arrowheads: The Problem of Recognizing and Interpreting Stone Artifacts in the Seventeenth Century

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 482-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Goodrum
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
New World ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
European Contact ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Close Relationship

AbstractFlint arrowheads, spearheads, and axe heads made by prehistoric Europeans were generally considered before the eighteenth century to be a naturally produced stone that formed in storm clouds and fell with lightning. These stones were called ceraunia, or thunderstones, and it was not until the sixteenth century that their status as a natural phenomenon was challenged. During the seventeenth century natural historians and antiquaries began to suggest that these ceraunia were not thunderstones but ancient human artifacts. I argue that natural history museums, European contact with the stone-tool using peoples in the New World, and the close relationship between natural history and antiquarianism were critical to this reinterpretation of ceraunia. Once these objects were recognized to be ancient artifacts they could be used to investigate the earliest periods of human history from sources other than texts.

The Spanish Entrada: A Model for Assessing Claims of Pre-Columbian Contact between the Old and New Worlds

1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-166
Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Feder
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Culture Contact ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Old World ◽  
American Southeast

The vast majority of evidence marshaled by those who support scenarios of the pre-Columbus, pre-Viking discovery, exploration, and settlement of the New World has been epigraphic. Virtually no archaeological evidence has been presented in support of such claims. Here, the historically documented, early sixteenth-century Spanish exploration of the American Southeast is used as a model for the kind of archaeological evidence to be expected for such exploration and culture contact. It is suggested that unless and until similar evidence is forthcoming for an eariler presence of Celts, Libyans, Chinese, or other visitors from the Old World, their visits remain unproved.

The Civilian Contribution of the Spanish Royal Engineers, 1500–1800

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Buisseret
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Santiago De Cuba ◽  
Cartagena De Indias

Rather neglected until recently, Spanish military engineers now have been studied in detail revealing that the Habsburg and Bourbon kings, from small beginnings in the sixteenth century, sustained an exceptionally large number of military engineers in the 17th and 18th centuries – over 600 in Europe and over 100 in the New World. Trained in mathematics, surveying, architecture and cartography they built a limited number of great forts, usually to defend strategic ports like Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Portobelo, and Cartagena de Indias. However, fortification was hardly necessary in the major capitals far from coastlines so their greatest, most enduring, achievements lay in cartography, road and water engineering, town planning and architecture.

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