A Sermon a Day Keeps the Demon (and the Dutch) Away

A notorious extirpator of idolatries in early 17th century Peru, father Francisco de Ávila dedicated his latter years to writing one of the lengthiest books of sermons in Quechua and Spanish, the Tratado de los Evangelios (1648). Besides his pastoral and doctrinal concerns, the sermons reveal a conception of native’s production of knowledge and the role of writing in evangelization, that put this secular priest at odds with his contemporaries and his own native parishioners of the Huarochirí province.

Laura Leon Llerena, Northwestern University, Donald L. Saunders Fellow.