Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New
Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New
Cambridge University Press | ISBN 0521600502 | 2005 edition | PDF | 296 pages | 3.1 MB
Cambridge University Press | ISBN 0521600502 | 2005 edition | PDF | 296 pages | 3.1 MB
"One thousand years apart, Christianity's rapid rise in Europe and in Mexico coincided with plague and social dislocation, but this was no coincidence. Crossing disciplines with apparent ease, Daniel Reff offers a fresh, erudite, and compelling explanation of how Jesuit missionaries in Mexico advanced their cause by echoing the rhetoric and strategies of early Christians." David J. Weber, author of The Spanish Frontier in North America and the forthcoming, Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment "Scholars have spent a generation abjectly recognizing that they cannot fully understand 'the other'. Now it is time to re-recognize that we are all members of the same species. In Plagues, Priests, and Demons we see that Europe in the first centuries AD and Mexico in the first post-Columbian centuries suffered similar pandemics and population crashes, and reacted similarly by accepting a new religion." Alfred W. Crosby, Professor Emeritus in American Studies, History and Geography, University of Texas at Austin