The cross and the serpent

by Nicholas Griffiths

Astride the ruins of the former Inca Empire, victorious Spaniards in the seventeenth century initiated a relentless and uncompromising assault on the Andean religious world. Native spiritual leaders did not submit without a struggle; they resisted persecution, adapting beliefs and rites to contest the dominance of Christianity in Peru's postconquest world. In this book, Nicholas Griffiths examines how Spaniards conceived religious repression and how Andeans responded to it throughout the seventeenth and well into the eighteenth century. Griffiths explores in detail the conceptual framework and methods used by the Spaniards to interpret native religion. The defenders of traditional Andean religion, its native priests, were identified with a powerful figure in Spanish demonology, the sorcerer, who was understood to be a charlatan and a trickster rather than a fearful ally of Satan. The Spaniards failed to perceive, and hence to challenge, the very real powers that these religious leaders