The Spiritual World of the Spanish Conquistadors in the Light of Written Sources of the 16th Century

Abstract

The article draws on conquistadors’ own writings, as well as later chronicles that eventually stemmed from those, in order to examine the religious, spatial, geographic, and legal aspects of the worldview of America’s conquerors and argue about its distinct connection to the cultural outlook of the High Middle Ages and consequently about the import of mediaeval notions and institutions from the Old to the New World. I focus specifically on conquistadors’ religious views which are marked by the essential traits of the religiosity of the High Middle Age period, such as providentialism, belief in the supernatural powers intervening in all meaningful actions and deeds of the humans, locally colored cults of the Virgin, and last but not least, the perception of the struggle against Americas’ natives as a logical extension of the Crusades waged in the East and in Spain itself.