Global Patterns and Local Adaptations: A Tipology of Jesuit Books of the Guarani Missions and their Circulation in South-America

WILDE, GUILLERMO

San Francisco

Simposio; International Symposium “Legacies of the Book: Early Missionary Printing in Asia and the Americas”; 2010

University of San Francisco

In 1700, the Jesuits produced the first printing press in the Rio de la Plata region. Over its twenty-seven years in operation in the Guaraní missions, the press printed more than twenty doctrinal and historic books. Only half of the books have been located in different libraries and archives throughout the world. Even though these works replicated European models and followed guidelines imposed by colonial civil and church authorities of the Virreinato del Peru, they also reflected adaptations to local cultures. Most of the books were translated into the Guarani language for the propagation of Christian faith among the Indians, such as the Martirologio Romano, by Dionisio Vazquez (1700), Sobre la diferencia entre lo temporal y lo eterno, by Euseb Nieremberg (1705), Flos sanctorum, by Pedro de Rivadeneyra (1704), or the Manuale ad usum Patrum Societatis Iesu…ex Rituali Romano (1721).             An exhaustive typology of the books printed in the Guarani missions does not exist. Multiple and undefined authorship and style, complicate such a task. Some of the works are of linguistic and “scientific” nature, such as the Vocabulario y arte de la lengua guaraní, composed by peruvian jesuit Antonio Ruiz de Montoya in 1640, and printed with revisions by father Paulo Restivo one century later. Other works such as a series of imprints by Buenaventura Suárez depict events, calendars, astronomic tables and almanacs. Such works are fundamental sources for the study of cultural adaptations of doctrinal concepts, the regimentation of time, and the production of historical traditions in non-western contexts. Recent findings suggest that these books used to circulate throughout the South American provinces of the Society of Jesús (Perú, Chile, Paraguay and Brasil) and were used in many different missional regions, such as Chaco, Chiquitos and Moxos. Some of the above mentioned books manifest, both in content and form, clues about the interaction between jesuits and native peoples. For example, specific annotations inform the reader about the dificulties of conversion and illustrations provide information about the cultural and environmental context of evangelization. In some cases, Guaraní themselves were the authors of printed texts and iconography. For example, Nieremberg´s book includes a set of engravings by Indian artists and Guarani cacique Nicolás Yapuguay wrote Explicación del catecismo and Sermones y ejemplos en lengua guaraní (1727).             In this paper, I have four goals. First, I establish a typology of books printed in the Jesuit missions by emphazing aspects of function, style and authorship. Second, I trace the Latin American circulation of these books and restrictions of their reading imposed by both the Jesuits and the Spanish Crown. Third, I analyze textual and visual  adaptation to local contexts and indigenous response as demonstrated in the books printed in the Guaraní missions. Finally, I make sugestions for comparative research on the role of imprints in Jesuit efforts of evangelization and cultural change in the missions. My source material includes primary source documents found in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Brazil, Spain and the United States over the last five years of my research.