Augustine and the Amerindian in Seventeenth-Century New France

Abstract

It may appear absurd to link a thinker of Christian antiquity with the peoples of early modern North America. The Bishop of Hippo (354–430) was not particularly interested in evangelization beyond the Mediterranean world. While he encouraged the proselytization of the tribes of North Africa, Augustine rejected the possibility of “New Worlds” as “on no grounds credible” for lack of scriptural warrant. His achievement, some thousand years before Columbus, was to provide the authoritative account of religious conversion as well as the intellectual foundations for Christian spirituality. This legacy was not well suited, however, to deal with problems raised by contact with “new” peoples of the Americas. It had little to say about the “nature” of these “savage” peoples as well as the prospects for their conversion. Augustinian theology emphasizes relations between God and self, in contrast to the approach identified with Thomas Aquinas, which asserts the possibility of finding God in the world and propels inquiry in that direction. Augustine's sense of the corruption of fallen humankind and the powerlessness of nature without God would appear to discourage any but the most morbid interest in New World peoples.