12-13 May 2000
University of Toronto

The cult of saints and the writing of "sacred biography" was an Old-World cultural transplant which flourished on American soil, especially in the Catholic empires of Spain, France and Portugal. Established Christian saints were venerated, but so were genuinely colonial figures: martyred missionaries, visionary nuns, beatas and dévots. Some of these colonial saints were eventually canonized by the Church, others never achieved official status, even though they became the object of a cult following and the subject of a life narrative in the hagiographic mode.

In the narratives of religious exemplarity, scholars are discovering an important colonial literary genre. Hagiographic texts and artistic representations are providing rich material for the exploration of themes such as race, gender, collective identities and models of the self.

This conference is interdisciplinary and inter-American in conception. With colonial saints as its substantive focus, it brings together the perspectives of History, Literary Studies, Anthropology, Art History, Religion and other fields, while facilitating exchanges between researchers working on Spanish America and colleagues specializing in Brazil and French Canada.

PROGRAMME: Friday, 12 May 2000

HAGIOGRAPHY AND COLONIAL IDENTITIES

• New Sacred Foundations in the Colonial Andes, Kenneth Mills (History - Princeton, USA)
• Saints' Lives and Catholic community: The Uses of Hagiography in Seventeenth-Century New France, Julia Boss (History - Yale, USA)
• Cotton Mather and English Protestant Hagiography: a Reading of Magnalia Christi Americana, Lucia Bergamasco (Anglais - Paris-Nanterre, France)
• Saints and Vodou in the French and English Caribbean, Joan Dayan (English - Arizona, USA)

• The Relevance of Early Christian Sacred Biography to Missionaries in Colonial Latin America, Daniel Reff (Comparative Studies - Ohio State, USA)
• Ruiz de Montoya; Spiritual Conquest and Mysticism in Paraguay, Dot Tuer (History - Toronto, Canada)
• Holy Person and the Missionary Ethic in Spanish American Hagiography, Ronald Morgan (History - Biola, USA)

• Female Hagiography in Late Colonial Brazil: The Self-Life Writings of Soror Jacinta de S. José, Leila Algranti (História - Campinas, Brazil)
• Saints or Sinners? Self-Portraits by Colonial Latin American Women, Kathleen Ann Myers (Spanish and Portuguese - Indiana, USA)
• Iroquois Virgin: The Story of Catherine Tekakwitha in New France and New Spain, Allan Greer (History - Toronto, Canada)

Saturday, 13 May 2000

OLD WORLD SAINTS IN A NEW WORLD SETTING

• St. Anne and Maternal Archetypes in Colonial Mexico, Charlene Villaseñor Black (Art History - New Mexico, USA)
• Santo Antônio na América Portuguesa, Ronaldo Vainfas (História - Fluminense, Brazil)
• Los Santos patronos de los ciudades en el Mexico central -- siglos XVII - XVIII, Pierre Ragon (IHEAL, Paris III, France)
• Mexico's Santa Maria de Guadalupe tonantzin: The Making of a National Symbol, Mario Valdés (Ibero-American Studies - Toronto, Canada)

• San Palafox. Imagenes Metaforicas de una Santidad Cuestionada, Antonio Rubial Garcia (História -UNAM, Mexico)
• Saints, Ecclesiastical Organization and Religion in Brazil at the Beginning of the 19th Century, Guiherme Pereira das Neves (História - Fluminense, Brazil)
• Les visions de mère Catherine de Saint Augustin, hospitalière, François-Marc Gagnon (Histoire de l'art - Montréal, Canada)

• Mártires, Santos Confessores e Beatas no Brasil Colonial, Luiz Mott (Antropologia - Bahia, Brazil)
• Francisco Losa and Gregorio Lopez: Spiritual Friendship and Identity Formation on the New Spain Frontier, Jodi Bilinkoff (History - North Carolina at Greensboro, USA)
• Jean de Brébeuf: From Martyrdom to Sainthood, Paul Perron (French - Toronto, Canada)

Natalie Zemon Davis (Toronto, Canada)

All sessions take place in University College, Room 179 For more information please contact Pam Gravestock.