Psychomachia Iniana

• Spaniards from the Hapsburg era expected miracles to flow from the power of holy images rather than the relics of holy men and women
• Special sanctuaries were constructed to house these miraculous images
• All Jesuits were committed to alife of spiritual combat 

Winged and Imagined Indians

• Viceroyalty of Peru parallels with the case of New Spain in the process of transition from paganism to the full ecclesiastical integration of the Indians
• Weight of past generally felt alongside a strong sense of vindication and resistance- influenced the images towards the adoption of roles that are more relevant to a climate of violence and social tension
• Iconographical initiatives in Peru that are regressive or restorative devices- marked an impact that manage to transfer onto the images of the Divinity the old Inca symbols of power and sacrality
• Visual image becomes mental image- Indians seen how Spanish paint angels then confirmed saw them just like that

Angels and demons in the conquest of Peru

• Conquest of New World by Spanish forces was the last great European religious crusade
• Conversion of the native peoples to Christianity was envisaged by the Spanish monarchy- seeking to renew the ideals of the age of the apostles 
• Through Flemish engravings visual models of angels with Hebrew names and individual attributes were filtered through to indigenous artists- harquebus-bearing angels
• Angels made up a veritable army of benevolent and saving powers that became particularly effective during human injustices, the world's apostasy of abandoning God, and the imminent cataclysm and the glorious restoration of the Kingdom of Yahweh
• Through the angels God intervened directly in the government of the universe and in the life of every living thing
• Incas did not know about angels only knew about devils called cupai
• Devil appear in shape of a mastiff or devouring dog- sixteenth century these dogs were brought to Peru to make war on the Indians- evil use of a bloodhood attributed to an invention of the devil

Satan Is My Nickname

• 1531 Francisan friars in Mexico introduced Nahuatl-language theatrical productions on Christian religious themes
• Indigenous peoples responded more readily to participatory and performative modes of devotion
• Angels and demons never main characters- intervene in the lives of human characters who are at the center of the plots
• Two main types of Angelic intervention 1) heraldic- angels making announcements, offerings, encouragements, and carrying messages 2) moral interventions carried out by guardian angels assigned to human characters in morality plays
• Demons and angels regular visitors in the world- may appear in recognizable forms with wings, horns, tails
• Indigenous defendants blame devil for inciting their bad feelings and criminal inclinations
• Plays show a world where superhuman forces are deeply involved in human affairs

How to See Angels: the Legacy of Early Mendicant Spirituality

• Any presence of indigenous cultures in Christian practices was seen as dangerous and corrupting
• Difference between what was accepted and what was not was more often a difference that reflected social context rather than doctrinal truth
• Mendicants saw God as the creator of both the natural and the supernatural- could only create the natural in view of and in relation to the supernatural
• Mendicant-  one who practices mendicancy (the practice of begging, as for alms) and relies chiefly or exclusively on charitable donations to survive
• Importance of angels relationship with humanity in the act of worship is second nature in early evangelisation sources
• In these documents angels appear as perfectly logical inhabitants of the universe
• St Augustine- time itself could not have come into existence without angels-one society of humans and angels
• Nahuatl- a member of any of various peoples of ancient origin ranging from southeastern Mexico to parts of Central America and including the Aztecs.
• Nahuatl writings often associate angels with birds often explicitly tropical birds 
• "Many of the explanations of the creation and nature of angels, and of their fall and consequent emergence of demons, were carefully placed by the Mendicants in the context of explanations about the nature of the native deities"
• Implication that the native deities had to be connected with the fallen angels or devils
• Nahuatl writings- angels are often associated with birds- particularly tropical birds
• Sacramental mind set- supernatural world in which angels lived could become present in time and space
• Angels could not be objective- they could not be experienced unless humans felt themselves to be in communion with them in the act of praise
• Mendicants- only way to see angels was by being with them sharing a community with them
• Angels also a reminder that humans were more than flesh and blood
• Mary the 'Oueen of Angels'- difficult to picture her without the company of angels
• Angels integration of the natural and the supernatural- home in both the visible and the invisible worlds- guided the development of each individual and each community in holiness

Demonios within and without

• Augustinian missionaries convinced that regional ancestral divinities were part of an elaborate demonic playground
• Study of hybridic forms of the New World evidence suggest that the devil was actively appropriated within or partly within ancestral indigenous logic
• Hieronymites- a member of a congregation of hermits named after St. Jerome.
• Demons depicted- a lion, a bear, and a beautiful women
• santa maria de guadalupe de extremadura
• "here are the extreme sufferings and difficult tests chosen by God but which the devil and his hordes are called upon to administer"
• Ocana "commonly compares the appearance of native peoples who are outside the Hispanicising, urban environment (like Lima, Potosi, Cuzco, Arequipa) to devils"

The Devil in the Old World

• Renewed attention to the demonic in part because of the important role of the preternatural
• Preternatural-that which appears outside or beside the natural. In contrast to the supernatural, preternatural phenomena are presumed to have explanations that are unknown.
• The devil was suspected to play a role in many of the extraordinary deviations from the normal course of nature- investigations of the preternatural and demonology closely related

Spanish demonology and anti-superstition

•  Superstition provided a link between elite conceptions of the devil and an extensive catalog of popular rituals and techniques
• Superstitious practices had no casual force in the nature world and were not sanctioned by could-effects realized could only be produced with the aid of demons
• St Augustine of Hippo insisted that the symbols, talismans, incantations and gestures employed in such superstitious practices signified an intention to enter into a pact with the devil himself'
• Distinction between truly miraculous effects produced by God and seemingly supernatural ones produced by demons through the manipulation of natural causes
• Ignorance of natural mechanisms led to the attribution of any poorly understood event as a divine intervention or the agency of spirits

Medical Humanism

• Physicians dedicated to recovering Greco-Roman medical knowledge
• Allies in the identification and eradication of superstitious practices
• Natural forces at blame rather than demonic interventions

Preternatural Philosophy

• Thomas Aquinas argued that the supernatural consists in “God’s unmediated actions”; the natural is “what happens always or most of the time”; and the preternatural is “what happens rarely, but nonetheless by the agency of created beings"
• Only God had the power to disregard the laws of nature that he has created, but that demons could manipulate the laws of nature by a form of trickery, to deceive the unwary into believing they had experienced real miracles
• The emergence of early modern science- concept of the preternatural refereed to strange or abnormal phenomena that seemed to violate the normal working of nature, but which were not associated with magic and witchcraft