# Guardians of Idolatry: Gods, Demons, and Priests in Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón's Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions - Hardcover

by **Viviana Díaz Balsera** (Author)

In 1629, Catholic priest Hernando Ruiz de Alarc n produced the _Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live among the Indians Native to This New Spain_ to aid the church in its abolishment of native Nahua religious practices. The bilingual Nahuatl-Spanish _Treatise_ collected diverse incantations, or _nahualtocaitl_, used to conjure Mesoamerican deities for daily sustenance and medical activities. Today this work is recognized as one of the most significant firsthand records of indigenous religious practices in postconquest Mexico. Yet, as Viviana D az Balsera argues in _Guardians of Idolatry_, the selection process for the incantations recorded in the _Treatise_ reflects two sites of agency: Ruiz de Alarc n's desire to present the most flagrant examples of Nahua "demonic" practices, and Nahua efforts to share benign nahualtocaitl in order to preserve their preconquest traditions while negotiating with colonial Christian hegemony.

_Guardians of Idolatry_ offers readers a rare, in-depth look at the nahualtocaitl and the native cosmogonies, beliefs, and medical practices they reveal. Through close reading of four incantations--for safe travel, maguey sap harvesting, bow-and-arrow deer hunting, and divination through maize kernels--D az Balsera shows the nuances of a Nahua spiritual world populated by intelligent superhuman and nonhuman entities that directly responded to human appeals for intercession. She also addresses Jacinto de la Serna's _Manual for Ministers of These Indians_ (1656), an elaborate commentary on the _Treatise_.

_Guardians of Idolatry_ tells a compelling story of the robust presence of a unique form of Postclassic Mesoamerican ritual knowledge, fully operative one hundred years after the incursion of Christianity in south Central Mexico. Together, Ruiz de Alarc n's _Treatise_ and de la Serna's _Manual_ reveal the highly sophisticated language of the nahualtocaitl, and the disparate ways in which both colonizers and resilient indigenous agents contributed to the conservation of Mesoamerican epistemology.  

**Number of Pages:** 224

**Dimensions:** 0.85 x 9.52 x 7.84 IN

**Publication Date:** November 01, 2018

## Details

- **Price:** 81.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 81.00 USD | In stock |

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- Guardians of Idolatry: Gods, Demons, and Priests in Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón's Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions - Hardcover

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