Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


osu1236636966.pdf (443.49 KB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Discerning Dreams in New France: Jesuit Responses to Native American Dreams in the Early Seventeenth Century

McMurtry, Deirdre C.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1236636966

Abstract Details

2009, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, History.
Recent scholarship on the seventeenth-century Jesuit-Amerindian encounter in New France has emphasized the cultural disruptiveness and loss of the various native groups as a result of the missionary project. Crucial to understanding this loss of traditional Amerindian culture, however, is a parallel understanding of the cultural and intellectual forces coming from Europe which shaped and often restricted the Jesuits’ attitudes toward native customs. Examining the first fifty years of the cross-cultural encounter through the lens of dream interpretation, this paper argues that the Jesuits made several adjustments to their initial assumptions and responses toward native dreams. Although the Jesuits originally denounced all native dreams as superstitious, the advent of native convert dreams forced the Jesuits to recognize the placement of at least some native dreams within traditional Christian categories of visions and miracles, even though some of these dreams retained characteristics which they condemned in traditional native dreams. Over time, however, the Jesuits’ accommodating policy drew criticisms from competing missionaries. Because the dispute centered on events in China rather than Canada, the acceptability of convert dreams was resolved first by a silence on the issue in public records and later by a retraction of the papal condemnation of the Chinese Rites ruling and certain accomodationist practices. Ultimately, the issue of dreams reveals the deep tensions faced by the Jesuits in evaluating and accepting practices, even in part, that did not fit precisely into orthodox categories during a period when the Catholic Church, an institution that, like many other European centers of power, strove to buttress their institutional authority and to reduce the varieties of acceptable worship and belief in the face of enormous expansion in intellectual ideas and varieties of cultural practices around the world.
Dale K. Van Kley (Advisor)
Matt Goldish (Committee Member)
Alice Conklin (Committee Member)
127 p.
European History; History; Native Americans; Religion; Religious History
Jesuits; Canada; New France; Amerindian; Native American, missions; Catholic Church; dream; mysticism; Aristotle; Chinese Rites; Propaganda Fide; seventeenth century;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • McMurtry, D. C. (2009). Discerning Dreams in New France: Jesuit Responses to Native American Dreams in the Early Seventeenth Century [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1236636966

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • McMurtry, Deirdre. Discerning Dreams in New France: Jesuit Responses to Native American Dreams in the Early Seventeenth Century. 2009. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1236636966.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • McMurtry, Deirdre. "Discerning Dreams in New France: Jesuit Responses to Native American Dreams in the Early Seventeenth Century." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1236636966

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1236636966
3,372
© 2009, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.