Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New. By Daniel T. Reff. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii, 290. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $50.00 cloth; $21.99 paper.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New Cynthia Radding Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New. By Daniel T. Reff. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii, 290. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $50.00 cloth; $21.99 paper. This book offers the reader an engaging synthesis of "the rise of Christianity" in the comparative framework of two widely varying time periods and geographical regions. Daniel Reff provides a thematic point of entry into ancient and early medieval European history in combination with colonial Latin American history on one important theme: the development of Catholic missions directed to indigenous peoples in northern New Spain (Mexico). His central arguments establish the conditions of epidemic disease in the Mediterranean world and European mainland in the first millennium of the Common Era, paralleled by the demographic crises of early conquest Ibero-America that created the scenario for Christian evangelization. Secondly, Reff compares the narratives of early Christian writings and Jesuit missionary accounts to show that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century clerics deliberately emulated ancient Christian texts in order to bolster the legitimacy of their New World missions. This dual approach offers a novel text for discussion, and the varied secondary sources provide students and scholars alike with an informative and challenging bibliography. The brevity of the synthesis, however, does not allow the author to develop as fully as he might have either the narrative exegesis or the historical complexities of his subject. Furthermore, the paucity of citations from recent Mexican scholarship in archaeology and ethno-history for northwestern New Spain reflects missed opportunities to rethink some of the assumptions repeated in this study concerning transculturation, cultural responses to disease, and the power struggles inherent in the religious conquests of early Roman Catholicism and the Spanish-American colonies. Several points stand out for further discussion: Daniel Reff's suggestion that mortality rates among Christians was significantly lower than among pagans during the epidemics of late antiquity; his comparison of the Aztec and Roman empires, and the scant attention paid to the economic life and internal governance of the Jesuit missions of New Spain, in which the Indian cabildo played a major role. Similarly, Reff's history minimizes the violence of early conquest encounters through the prolonged Mixton and Chichimec wars of sixteenth-century northern Mexico as well as the destructive impact of forced labor drafts and the economic imbalances between subsistence and surplus production in the mission communities. The structure of his study, combining substantive historical events with the literary analysis of sacred narratives, raises intriguing questions concerning the methodology for interpreting different belief systems over time and space: how do we combine archaeological, historical and ethnographic evidences in ways that are not anachronistic or simplified? [End Page 494] Reff makes ample use of illustrative passages from the principal texts that inform his study, particularly Andrés Pérez de Ribas, Triunfos de Nuestra Santa Fé, and Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, supplemented by scholarly translations of early Christian writings and archival citations to the Jesuits' annual reports—the latter deposited in the Mexico City, Archivo General de la Nación. He argues, interestingly, that seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries in New Spain had more in common intellectually and theologically with early Catholic teachings, concerning Satan and the origins of sin, than with the comparatively harsher doctrines of the late Middle Ages and Counter-Reformation. Nevertheless, Jesuits repeatedly condemned native shamans as sorcerers and partners with the devil. Reff's conclusions underscore a basic paradox, namely that if, indeed, disease played a major role in the rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New, it was not explicitly acknowledged in the narratives of either period. This book opens a window to promising pathways in comparative history, leading us back to the sources that informed this study and provoking new questions for research and discussion concerning the intersections of intellectual and social history, agency, and the disjunctions of colonial conquests. Cynthia Radding University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico Copyright © 2007 Academy of American Franciscan History ...