Description
Book SynopsisThe first complete English translation and annotated study of Bartolomé de Las Casas's 1552 Confesionario. Explores its history and its guidelines for confessors administering the sacrament of confession to conquistadores, encomenderos, slaveholders, settlers, and others who had harmed indigenous peoples.
Trade Review“David Orique has done a great service by providing a very readable and useful translation of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s 1546 Confesionario.”
—Patrick J. O’Banion Catholic Historical Review
“Fr Orique has rendered a considerable service to students of sixteenth-century Spain with this edition.”
—Alastair Hamilton Heythrop Journal
“A welcome addition to the burgeoning field of Lascasian studies. Recent scholarship on Las Casas’s works has been characterized by expanding the canon to include lesser-known texts. The volume under review exemplifies this trend.”
—Raúl Marrero-Fente Renaissance Quarterly
“This is an important and long overdue work. David Orique’s study of how Bartolomé de las Casas used confession as a tool in his long struggle for justice for the indigenous people is compelling and faithful to the historical record. This is a major new source on one of the principal elements in the evolution of modern human rights, in which Las Casas was the central actor in the long sixteenth century.”
—Lawrence Clayton,author of Bartolomé de las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas
Table of ContentsContents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Las Casas’s Road Map to Temporal Justice and Eternal Life
1. “I, Bartolomé de Las Casas or Causas . . .”:
An Encounter with Temporal Justice’s Rough Terrain
2. “I Absolve . . .”: A First Brush with the Eternal Flames of Hell
3. “I Guarantee . . .”: A Passage to Heaven or a Ticket to Hell
Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Confesionario: “I Mandate Justice . . .”; The Last Fork in the Road to Heaven or Hell
Bibliography
Index
