Sacred Habitat : Nature and Catholicism in the Early Modern Spanish Atlantic

Known as a time of revolutions in science, the early modern era in Europe was characterized by the emergence of new disciplines and ways of thinking.Taking this conceit a step further, Sacred Habitat shows how Spanish friars and missionaries used new scholarly approaches, methods, and empirical data from their studies of ecology to promote Catholic goals and incorporate American nature into centuries-old church traditions. Ran Segev examines the interrelated connections between Catholicism and geography, cosmography, and natural history-fields of study that gained particular prominence during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-and shows how these new bodies of knowledge provided innovative ways of conceptualizing and transmitting religious ideologies in the post-Reformation era.Weaving together historical narratives on Spain and its colonies with scholarship on the Catholic Reformation, Atlantic science, and environmental history, Segev contends that knowledge about American natur