An Atlantic Institution

Author(s):  
David Rex Galindo

This chapter discusses the historical context under which the Franciscan colleges developed and evolved in a time when secular forces had halted mendicant expansion in Spain and its empire, with emphasis on their internal organization and how they fit within the broader hierarchical structure of the Franciscan Order. It first provides an overview of the Franciscan plan to convert the Spanish Atlantic world before explaining how the colleges are governed and how the apostolic brotherhood is regulated. It then examines how the eighteenth-century colleges emerged as a new missionary vanguard to lead the Franciscan evangelism in Spain and Spanish America. Their strong commitment to conversion (internal and external) and soteriological responsibility, combined with certain innovations brought to the Franciscans, enabled the propaganda fide institution to grow in rapid fashion. The chapter also highlights the conflict with provincias and rivalries both internal and external to the propaganda fide communities.

Author(s):  
David Rex Galindo

For 300 years, Franciscans were at the forefront of the spread of Catholicism in the New World. In the late seventeenth century, Franciscans developed a far-reaching, systematic missionary program in Spain and the Americas. After founding the first college of propaganda fide in the Mexican city of Querétaro, the Franciscan Order established six additional colleges in New Spain, ten in South America, and twelve in Spain. From these colleges Franciscans proselytized Native Americans in frontier territories as well as Catholics in rural and urban areas in eighteenth-century Spain and Spanish America. This is the first book to study these colleges, their missionaries, and their multifaceted, sweeping missionary programs. By focusing on the recruitment of non-Catholics to Catholicism as well as the deepening of religious fervor among Catholics, the book shows how the Franciscan colleges expanded and shaped popular Catholicism in the eighteenth-century Spanish Atlantic world. This book explores the motivations driving Franciscan friars, their lives inside the colleges, their training, and their ministry among Catholics, an often-overlooked duty that paralleled missionary deployments. It argues that Franciscan missionaries aimed to reform or “reawaken” Catholic parishioners just as much as they sought to convert non-Christian Native Americans.


Author(s):  
Kathryn L. Ness

Setting the Table: Ceramics, Dining, and Cultural Exchange in Andalucía and La Florida explores issues of cultural exchange and identity among eighteenth-century Spaniards and Spanish Americans via the archaeological remains and documentary evidence form Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, and St. Augustine, Florida. These lines of evidence indicate that there were substantial and similar changes to dining practices on both sides of the Atlantic almost simultaneously. As a result, this book takes the stance that early modern individuals from Spain and Spanish America were developing and expressing a distinct Spanish-Atlantic identity that was neither wholly Spanish nor wholly Spanish-American but rather combined new ideas and goods from an increasingly global network while also maintaining some Spanish traditions. Although archaeologists have researched Spanish colonial sites in Florida and the Caribbean for decades, only two projects have adopted a trans-Atlantic perspective, and this work is the first to use this approach with eighteenth-century sites. Additionally, it is the first book to conduct a detailed study of Spanish ceramic vessel forms and their possible uses and meanings for the users. As a result, this project sheds new light on the Spanish Atlantic and calls into question several existing interpretations of life in Spanish Florida as well as foodways in both St. Augustine and Spain.


Author(s):  
Kathryn L. Ness

This chapter concludes Setting the Table and summarizes the argument that individuals on both sides of the Atlantic were participating in developing a Spanish-Atlantic identity that amalgamated Spanish heritage with new ideas and goods from other parts of Europe, Asia, and the Americas. It emphasizes that Spain and Spanish America were closely connected as late as the eighteenth century and that Spanish Americans continued to look to Spain as a model for fashion and culture. The chapter argues that data from the St. Augustine sites suggest that traditional interpretations of status and displays of Spanish identity need to be reevaluated in light of changing fashions in eighteenth-century Spain and the similarities between eighteenth-century Spanish and Spanish-American sites. It also contends that the transition away from traditional stews and the possible adoption of French culinary techniques by middle class Spaniards and elite Spanish Americans calls into question previous hypotheses regarding the impact of French culture on Spanish society after the advent of the Bourbon dynasty in 1700. Lastly, it considers other directions and ways in which this study could benefit those studying other parts of the Spanish empire.


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