Light of Egypt, Shining from Within: The Tercero Cathecismo (1635), Fr. Gregorio de Movilla, and the Timucua from La Florida

Abstract

Abstract: This article focuses on a little-known Timucua visual catechism, the Tercero Cathecismo , which appeared in a 1635 imprint co-authored by the Franciscan Gregorio de Movilla and unacknowledged Indigenous linguists. The Tercero Cathecismo provides a unique lens through which to explore a series of cultural exchanges and negotiations that highlights the complexities, heterogeneities, and subtleties of the Indigenous-missionary experience during the seventeenth century in La Florida. The Tercero Cathecismo is a particularly engaging instance of this experience because it comprises a synthetic, multilayered hieroglyph image explicitly produced for and with the Timucuas in mind. Designed to be traced in the sand, the earth, or on any available piece of paper, this highly reproducible image incorporates European iconographic codes that blend with Native American ones, although in a context of unequal relationships of power. The encoding capaciousness of the hieroglyph enabled primal images from both the European and the Native American worlds to come together. Consequently, its complexity, power, and importance as a vibrant field of cultural crossings is best appraised when approached from a multifocal, multidisciplinary perspective, in which both sides are considered, even if the Timucua side can only be cautiously approached as a hypothesis.