E-Books →Sacred Habitat Nature and Catholicism in the Early Modern Spanish Atlantic

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 nature allowed pious Catholics to reconnect with their religious traditions and enabled them to apply their beliefs to a foreign land.
Sacred Habitat presents a fresh perspective on Catholic renewal. Scholars of religion and historians of Spain, colonial Latin America, and early modern science will welcome this provocative intervention in the history of empire, science, knowledge, and early modern Catholicism.