From the cult of Saint Anne to the devotees of the Virgin of Guadalupe, from Saint Anthony who competed with Christ for popularity in Brazil, to Jesuits who mixed freely with shamans that talked with the gods, this exciting new anthology examines the conversion of the colonized. The essays examine how New World spirits transformed into Old World saints - for example, the spirit of love transfigured into the Virgin Mary - as well as the implications of the canonization of the first American saint. Colonial Saints illustrates the complex and intimate connections among confessional life writing, canonization, and the practices of the Inquisition. There was a dynamic exchange involving local agendas, the courts in Spain and France, and, of course, Rome. This bold collection clearly shows the interplay between slavery and spirituality, conversion and control, and the links between the sacred and the political.

Undocumented Saints follows the migration of popular saints from Mexico into the US and the evolution of their meaning. The book explores how Latinx battles for survival are performed in the worlds of faith, religiosity, and the imaginary, and how the socio-political realities of exploitation and racial segregation frame their popular religious expressions. It also tracks the emergence of inter-religious states, transnational ethnic and cultural enclaves unified by faith. The book looks at five vernacular saints that have emerged in Mexico and whose devotions have migrated into the US in the last one hundred years: Jesús Malverde, a popular bandido turned saint caudillo; Santa Olguita, an emerging feminist saint linked to border women's experiences of sexual violence; Juan Soldado, a murder-rapist soldier who is now a patron for undocumented immigrants and the main suspect in the death of an eight-year-old victim known now as Santa Olguita; Toribio Romo, a Catholic priest whose ghost/spirit has been helping people cross the border into the US since the 1990s; and La Santa Muerte, a controversial personification of death who is particularly popular among LGBTQ migrants. Each chapter contextualizes a particular popular saint within broader discourses about the construction of masculinity and the state, the long history of violence against Latina and migrant women, female erasure from history, discrimination against non-normative sexualities, and as US and Mexican investment in the control of religiosity within the discourses of immigration.

"Profiling Saints" follows and expands the papers presented at the homonym online international conference (December 2021), which focused on cultural, theological, artistic, and social aspects of models of sanctity and their importance in the modern world up to the post-revolutionary period. This volume aims thus to shed light on the cultural value of canonizations and models of sanctity as models of Christian perfection, including the role of iconography and artworks, in the broader context of modern, global Catholicism. The topics presented by the authors include veneration to, and canonization and representations of, saint theologians, missionaries, martyrs, mystics, and reformers, men and women. "Profiling Saints" looks at modern sanctity and saints from multidisciplinary perspectives, ranging from liturgy, theology, and Church history up to history of ideas, cultural history, history of emotions, and art history, and contributes to shed light on such a complex phenomenon of Christian history in its modern developments.

Mohawk Saint is the story of Catherine Tekakwitha, a Mohawk woman born at a time of cataclysmic change, as Native Americans of the northeast experienced the effects of European contact and colonization. A convert to Catholicism in the 1670s, she embarked on a physically and mentally grueling program of self-denial, aiming to capture the spiritual power of the newcomers from across the sea. Her story intersects with that of Claude Chauchetiere, a French Jesuit who became convinced that Tekakwitha was a genuine saint. Today Tekakwitha is considered the first Native American saint and has a wide following in the Americas.

Spaniards in the Colonial Empire traces the privileges, prejudices, and conflicts between American-born and European-born Spaniards, within the Spanish colonies in the Americas from the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries. Covers three centuries of Spanish colonial power, beginning in the sixteenth century Explores social tension between creole and peninsular factions, connecting this friction with later colonial bids for independence Draws on recent research by Spanish and Spanish-American historians as well as Anglophone scholars Includes some coverage of Brazil and British colonies

The French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) was home to one of the richest public theatre traditions of the colonial-era Caribbean. This book examines the relationship between public theatre and the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue—something that is generally given short shrift owing to a perceived lack of documentation. Here, a range of materials and methodologies are used to explore pressing questions including the ‘mitigated spectatorship’ of the enslaved, portrayals of enslaved people in French and Creole repertoire, the contributions of enslaved people to theatre-making, and shifting attitudes during the revolutionary era. The book demonstrates that slavery was no mere backdrop to this portion of theatre history but an integral part of its story. It also helps recover the hidden experiences of some of the enslaved individuals who became entangled in that story.

In May 1962, as the struggle for civil rights heated up in the United States and leaders of the Catholic Church prepared to meet for Vatican Council II, Pope John XXIII named the first black saint of the Americas, the Peruvian Martín de Porres (1579–1639), and designated him the patron of racial justice. The son of a Spanish father and a former slavewoman from Panamá, Martín served a lifetime as the barber and nurse at the great Dominican monastery in Lima. This book draws on visual representations of Martín and the testimony of his contemporaries to produce the first biography of this pious and industrious black man from the cosmopolitan capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The book vividly chronicles the evolving interpretations of his legend and his miracles, and traces the centuries-long campaign to formally proclaim Martín de Porres a hero of universal Catholicism.

DIVExplores the profound cultural transformations triggered by Spain's efforts to colonize the Andean region, and demonstrates the continuing influence of the Inquisition to the present day./div

A Brief History of Saints follows the rise of the cult of saints in Christianity from its origin in the age of the martyrs down to the present day. Refers to both well-known saints, such as Joan of Arc, and lesser-known figures like the ‘holy fools’ in the Orthodox tradition Ranges over subjects as diverse as the history of canonization processes, the Reformation critique of the cult of saints, and the role of saints in other religious traditions Discusses the relevance of sainthood in the postmodern era Two appendices describe patron saints and the iconography of saints in art.

Some writers present her as a representative of the symbolic order: invested with sacred powers and ultimate authority, she rebukes transgressors and negotiates their return to God's grace and lawful society."--Jacket.