The first contact of Andean culture with the Christian faith took place over 450 years ago in 1532. One hundred and thirty years later, around 1660, there was the tacit assumption that the Church was established in the Andean region. In its evangelisation of the region the Church opted to use the vernacular languages, of which Quechua, the language of administration of the Inca empire, was predominant. The thesis examines the Church's appropriation and use of the Quechua language, and the resultant appropriation of the Christian faith by the Andean people in terms of their total understanding of reality, in which language, semantic categories and spatial concepts played a key role. After exploring in chapter one the nature of the culture clash involved as a result of the Conquest, the Spanish and Inca language policies are examined in chapter two. This is followed by a consideration in chapter three of the Church's option for the vernacular and its outworking in the Third Lima Council of 1582-3. Chapter four analyses the life of the emerging colonial Church in the setting of the Indian parish, especially religious texts, and raises the issues surrounding the ambivalent role played by the indigenous language. The contours of the indigenous response are traced in chapter 5, prior to a concluding chapter which summarises the subversive role of the vernacular with regard to the Church's orthodoxy. It also points to its effect on Andean cultural history. In conclusion questions are raised of the implications of this for our understanding of past and present in the Andes, for the expression of the Church's view of indigenous religion, and ultimately of the relationship of truth and freedom.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:657853 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Mitchell, William |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/30525 |
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