Description
Book SynopsisExamines how the Spanish monarchy managed an empire of unprecedented linguistic diversity, making only sporadic efforts to propagate Spanish during the sixteenth century. Challenges the assumption that the pervasiveness of the Spanish language resulted from deliberate linguistic colonization.
Trade Review“This book offers an exciting glimpse into the development of Spanish linguistic policy regarding conquered peoples in the early modern period on both sides of the Atlantic. It is a courageous undertaking, confronting the Spanish efforts to evangelize first the Arabic speakers devoted to Islam on the Iberian Peninsula and then come to grips with the multifaceted linguistic challenge of converting indigenous peoples in the Americas to Christianity.”
—John Schwaller,author of The History of the Catholic Church in Latin America
“This book will no doubt encourage scholars to test further the bird’s eye view of changing norms against the social history of Spanish in the Iberian and colonial overseas contexts, where multiple languages and cultures coexisted and transformed, and the hierarchies among them endured.”
—John Charles Colonial Latin American Review
“Wasserman-Soler’s book is a meaningful contribution to the religious history of the Spanish Habsburg Empire that works across the fields of early modern and Reformation studies, colonial Latin American history, and early modern transatlantic studies. His work suggests far greater continuity between Spain prior to 1492 and during the sixteenth century than previously postulated and argues against the dominant view that sixteenth-century officials dogmatically sought to spread Castilian as the language of the empire.”
—Allison Caplan H-LatAm
“Truth in Many Tongues is an important contribution to mission history because it situates Catholic missionary approaches to language and religious conversion in both Atlantic and local contexts. The book is another reminder that Spanish approaches to colonization were always shaped and transformed by the local peoples they encountered across the empire.”
—Jason Dyck Canadian Journal of History / Annales canadiennes d'histoire
“Truth in Many Tongues will be necessary reading for any study of language and religious conversion in premodern European and colonial contexts.”
—Stephanie M. Cavanaugh Renaissance Quarterly
“It provides a nuanced and welcome interpretation of clerical attitudes toward languages, theology, and indoctrination that enriches the field.”
—Rafaela Acevedo-Field Hispanic American Historical Review
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on the Text
Introduction
1. The Spanish Language and the Inquisition, ca. 1550–1600
2. Arabic and Spanish in Granada, ca. 1492–1570
3. Arabic and Romance in Valencia, ca. 1540–1600
4. Native Tongues and Spanish in New Spain, ca. 1520–85
5. Creating a Multilingual New Spain, ca. 1550–1600
Conclusion
Appendix: Linguistic Abilities of Franciscan Friars in Sixteenth-Century
New Spain
Notes
Bibliography
Index
