Prophets of a New Israel — Jesuit Rhetoric in the New World

A large quantity of manuscripts survives from the vast network of libraries established by the Jesuits across colonial South America, including many examples of a distinctive kind of Jesuit scriptural meditation. Although the social and economic influence of the Jesuits in South America has been well documented, no study has focused on the literary and theological aspect of these scriptural meditations, or the significant extent to which they reflect the cultural practices of the indigenous communities that the Jesuits were preaching to. Prophets of a New Israel focuses on a selection of representative examples (1585-1653) of this distinct sub-genre of Jesuit prose and its transformative character. This thesis accounts for accommodation strategies performed by the Jesuits at a literary level as they seek to integrate the New World into European consciousness and create a new and meaningful Christian rhetoric.