Event Explores Rare 18th-Century Guaraní Manuscripts and Indigenous Christianity

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Shawn Austin (left) and Leonardo Cerno

The University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections Division will host a presentation titled "Spiritual Exercises for the Guaraní-Christian Soul: Two Rare Eighteenth-Century Indigenous-Language Manuscripts" from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 6, in the Special Collections Classroom (MULN 135). The event is free and open to the public.

The presentation will be given by Leonardo Cerno, Fulbright Scholar in Residence, and Shawn Austin, associate professor of history. Cerno is among the world's leading experts on the colonial variant of the Guaraní language and on modern Guaraní-Spanish bilingualism in South America. Together, he and Austin are currently co-teaching Indigenous Communities and Languages in Spanish and Portuguese Lowland South America, 1500-1800, a course examining the complex linguistic and cultural histories of Indigenous peoples during the colonial era. 

In recent decades, scholars have deepened our understanding of how evangelization shaped Indigenous communities across the Americas through close study of Indigenous-language documents. Research has revealed that evangelization in Ibero-America produced diverse Indigenous "Christianities" rather than a single colonial faith.

An unusual example of this process arose in the Jesuit missions of the Río de la Plata region, where Guaraní-language texts were created to teach the Jesuit "spiritual exercises" to devout Indigenous people. University Libraries recently purchased digital copies of two rare manuscripts from the Hispanic Society in NYC, making them available online. These texts offer unique insights into this intersection of Jesuit spirituality and Guaraní expression.

Cerno and Austin will discuss the content and significance of these manuscripts, exploring how they reflect a distinctly Guaraní form of Christianity that blended local traditions with global religious practices.