Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas, 1500-1800 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas, 1500-1800 Victoria H. Cummins Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas, 1500-1800. By Allan Greer and Jodi Bilinkoff. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xxii, 317. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $26.95 paper. This volume is comprised of fourteen articles selected from papers presented at the conference "Colonial Saints: Hagiography and the Cult of Saints in the Americas 1500-1800," held at the University of Toronto in 2000. The conference grew out of the desire of editor Allan Greer, an expert on French Canada, to bring together researchers from throughout the Americas who shared his interest in "holy lives and representations of saintliness" (p. ix) in order to overcome the isolation imposed by "the barriers of language, discipline, and nationality" (p. x). Various essays address Spanish America, New France, Haiti, Brazil and New England while reflecting the disciplinary, topical, and chronological range of the conference papers. The book will be of particular interest to researchers specializing in the study of the saints and their cults, religious culture, and colonial culture in general. Scholars from the United States, Canada, and Latin America contribute essays. Most of the authors are historians, but the disciplines of art history and French, Spanish, and English literature are also represented. Selections are grouped into three general [End Page 187] thematic sections: "Cultural Mixing," "Holy Women, Holy Men," and "The Uses of the Sacred." Although not chronologically comprehensive for any area, the subject matter spans the sixteenth century to the end of the colonial period. The content is heavily weighted towards Spanish America, and the strongest representation in the book is for New Spain, treated in five articles, and New France addressed in four. Mexico is the only colony studied in all three thematic sections of the book. Like all collections of essays, this one lacks the cohesion of a monograph. While there are themes that repeat in many of the essays, there is little continuity even within each of the three broad thematic sections. The focus of place, time, topic, disciplinary methodology, and sources changes radically from article to article. Most specialists will want to read the work selectively, rather than as a whole. The volume is, however, extremely useful as an overview of the different methods of inquiry into questions of culture as well as the analysis and evaluation of hagiographic sources employed by diverse disciplines. The work also provides an introduction to themes and topics in the study of religious culture appropriate for advanced students and beginning researchers. It would make an excellent reading for a seminar class in cultural history. The articles demonstrate not only the rapid expansion of research into colonial religious culture in the last twenty years, but also the broader contributions of the study of saints and their cults to an understanding of colonial peoples and their worlds. The authors provide valuable insights into such issues as local religious practices, changing definitions of manliness and female virtue, and community formation and identity in the New World context. Presenting essays on New France and Haiti alongside Spanish and Portuguese America allows the reader to compare Catholic culture in competing New World colonies, while one article contrasts Puritan and Quaker notions of holiness and martyrdom to Catholic ideals. The book contains a brief bibliography of sources appropriate for students and beginning researchers. It focuses on works, mostly in English, addressing the cult of the saints and hagiography in Europe and the New World as well as some general works on Christianity in the Americas. Each individual article has detailed endnotes, which will serve the needs of researchers and other scholars. Victoria H. Cummins Austin College Sherman, Texas Copyright © 2006 Academy of American Franciscan History