José de Acosta’s «De procuranda Indorum salute»

Gregory J. Shepherd holds a PhD in Hispanic literature from Georgetown University. As an Assistant Professor, he currently teaches Latin American literature, culture and language, instructional methodology, and assessment strategies at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. Shepherd has published a book and several articles on historical treatises, autobiographical narratives, and epic poetry from the colonial period in Latin America by authors as diverse as José de Acosta and Alonso de Ercilla. His current research focuses on hybridity in Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios and technology integration in teacher education models.

«In recent years there has been a growing interest in Jesuit history. José de Acosta, the most important missionary theorist in all of Latin American colonial history, is still a relatively unstudied figure in the English-speaking world. Thanks to Gregory Shepherd, we now have at hand a comprehensive study of ‘De procuranda Indorum salute’, Acosta’s principal guide for missionaries in Latin America. Shepherd lays out the historical context for understanding ‘De procuranda Indorum salute’ and analyzes the key themes and sources that inspired the Jesuit author. Acosta’s most important contribution to mission practice was his call for missionaries to treat the Indians as human beings. According to Acosta, the worst enemies of evangelization were the evangelizers themselves: their avarice and greed contradicted their own message. In this sense, Acosta was both a humanist and a realist.Shepherd’s study of ‘De procuranda Indorum salute’ is a guide to understanding not just Acosta but Jesuit spirituality of the period. This exhaustive guide will open up many doors to understanding the intellectual forces which competed for the attention of sixteenth-century missionaries and which drove the entire evangelization process in Latin America.» (Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J., Professor of History, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru)

• Contents: Context for Evangelization: Crisis and Reform in the Peruvian Viceroyalty – DPI’s Prologues: Expressed Intentions in the Dedicatoria and Proemio – Intertextuality: Tracing DPI’s Geneology of Discourse.