Abstract

RUBIO HERNANDEZ, ALFONSO. Private Libraries in New Granada. Presence and Significance of the Religious Book. Anu. colomb. hist. soc. cult. [online]. 2013, vol.40, n.2, pp.27-47. ISSN 0120-2456.

The article discusses the permanent presence of the religious book as an instrument for Europeanization that dominated colonial life in New Granada. Its ideological significance was related to the crystallization of a theological worldview, the determination of a hierarchical social structure, and the formation of a bourgeois mentality that adopted aristocratic conventions. Despite the intellectual shift toward the scientific book, proposed by the enlightened elite, the presence of the religious book never ceased to be important among the traditional social classes and wealthy individuals, who had started out as encomenderos and hacienda owners and became small or big merchants. The documentary source used for the analysis is a representative sample of postmortem inventories, mainly from the private sphere of clergymen, bureaucrats, and large hacienda owners at the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th centuries.

Keywords : New Granada; libraries; books; clergy; bureaucracy; hacienda owners.

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