Persuasion for a Pagan Audience: Rhetoric, Memory, and Action in Missionary Writing (2024)

Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico

Andrew Laird

Published:

2024

Online ISBN:

9780197586389

Print ISBN:

9780197586358

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Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico

Andrew Laird

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Andrew Laird

Andrew Laird

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Pages

43–78

  • Published:

    May 2024

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Laird, Andrew, 'Persuasion for a Pagan Audience: Rhetoric, Memory, and Action in Missionary Writing', Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico (New York, 2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 May 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197586358.003.0003, accessed 23 May 2024.

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Abstract

Latin treatises on missionary rhetoric from sixteenth-century Mexico exhibit a striking variety of attitudes towards native groups. Although Fray Bartolomé de las Casas affirmed the importance of peaceful teaching of the Christian faith, two Franciscans, Fray Juan Focher and Fray Diego Valadés, endorsed the principle of waging just war. The visual illustrations, the emphasis on the art of memory, and the presentation of the Aztec calendar in Valadés’ Rhetorica Christiana show how the author’s knowledge of classical literature determined his ideas of Mexican culture. Classical models and rhetorical theory also feature prominently in a first-hand account by Fray Cristóbal Cabrera of Vasco de Quiroga’s work in Michoacán, which narrates an encounter with an unconverted nomadic tribe. Chapter 2 consists of the following sections: I. ‘Rhetoric in the Christian tradition and humanist education’; II. ‘Teaching religion by peaceful persuasion: Fray Bartolomé de las Casas’ De unico vocationis modo (c. 1539)’; III. ‘Conversion by force: Fray Juan Focher and Fray Diego Valadés’; IV. ‘Fray Diego Valadés’ Rhetorica Christiana, 1579’: (i) ‘Conception and structure’, (ii) ‘Valadés’ visual illustrations’, (iii) ‘Art of memory in the Rhetorica Christiana’, (iv) ‘Valadés’ Mexican calendar’; V. ‘Conversion through action: Fray Cristóbal Cabrera, De solicitanda infidelium conversione, 1582’; and VI. ‘Conclusions’.

Keywords: art of memory, Cabrera, Cicero, calendar, Focher, Las Casas, Quiroga, rhetoric, Tacitus, Valadés

Subject

United States History

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Aztec Latin. Andrew Laird, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197586358.003.0003

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