Encuentros y desencuentros con la frontera imperial: la iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús de Quito y la misión en el Amazonas (siglo XVII) by Carmen Fernández-Salvador

Abstract

Reviewed by: Encuentros y desencuentros con la frontera imperial: la iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús de Quito y la misión en el Amazonas (siglo XVII) by Carmen Fernández-Salvador Isabel Oleas-Mogollón Fernández-Salvador, Carmen. Encuentros y desencuentros con la frontera imperial: la iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús de Quito y la misión en el Amazonas (siglo xvii). Iberoamericana / Vervuet, 2018. 215 pp. ISBN: 978-84-16922-61-1. This book studies the seventeenth-century decorative program of the Jesuit church in Quito —mainly the paintings of Old Testament prophets displayed in the main nave— in connection to contemporary narratives about the missionary work of the Society of Jesus in the Amazon basin. Fernández-Salvador’s main argument is that both paintings and texts presented the Amazon as a marginal and barbarous place, and defined the city of Quito as the center of civility, religious virtue, and of spiritual and political authority. She also posits that images and texts framed Quito’s Jesuit college and its members as the legitimate leaders of the evangelizing enterprise. Her investigation ends in 1684, a year that witnessed the publication of Manuel Rodríguez’s detailed narrative of the Jesuit missions in the Amazon as well as the ending of the first Jesuit missionary campaign. This chronological boundary helps Fernández-Salvador focus mainly on the analysis of the Prophets, but seems forced when considering the Society of Jesus’s lingering views about its missionary role. Even so, the author’s careful examination of religious texts certainly supports her main thesis, and her novel interpretation of the Prophets’ iconography is a thoughtful addition to previous studies of Quiteño art. The book is organized in six chapters. The first two explain the historical and social framework for understanding the church’s decorative program mostly through the survey of seventeenth-century texts. Chapter 1 analyzes the written accounts surrounding the ceremonies of conversion that took place in Quito and that were led by the Jesuit community. These texts placed Quito and its Jesuit College at the center of the feats of evangelization. This discussion also allows the author to [End Page 174] present her main thesis: that Quito was considered as the Audiencia’s core of civility and spiritual leadership, while providing the Jesuit College with moral authority. Religious narratives defined the city’s geographical and conceptual boundaries, separating ordered and barbarous spaces and presenting the Amazon as a region waiting to be civilized. This idea is further elaborated in the second chapter which describes the role of Jesuit texts in defining the Society of Jesus as a virtuous institution and Quito’s population as an ideal Christian community. The third and fourth chapters study the decorative program of Quito’s Jesuit church. Chapter 3 places the building’s decoration in a global context, explaining its “international character” (79), which associated iconography with missionary work. This section also explains the evolution of the church’s decoration, which originally focused on the devotion of Christ and the role of the Jesuits as his followers, and later exalted Jesuit sainthood. Chapter 4, the most theoretical of the book, describes in detail the close connection between the Prophets and sacred rhetoric. By simultaneously explaining the ways in which sermons and religious texts directed and educated the gaze of the faithful, this section highlights the control that the Jesuits had over the audience’s devotional experience. It also proposes that Quito’s population was able to negotiate its identity through the collective experience of liturgy. The fifth and sixth chapters describe the role of the Society of Jesus in establishing and maintaining the order’s preeminence over the missions in the Amazon. Chapter 5 studies the Prophets’ background scenes alongside contemporary Jesuit literature and imagery and concludes that their references to martyrdom highlighted the precedence of the Jesuit order over the missions in the Amazon. Chapter 6 expands this discussion by describing the rivalry between the Society of Jesus and the Franciscan order both of which had claims over the formation of missionaries as well as the spiritual possession of the Amazon region. Although Fernández-Salvador...