20.10.2021

Tübingen Historian receives Albert C. Outler Prize

American Society of Church History honors Laura Dierksmeier’s book about community service by indigenous religious groups in early modern Mexico

Dr. Laura Dierksmeier has won the 2021 Albert C. Outler Prize of the American Society of Church History for her book “Charity for and by the Poor: Franciscan-Indigenous Confraternities in Mexico, 1527-1700”. The Albert C. Outler Prize annually honors the best book that illumines the diversity of global Christianity, issues of Christian unity and disunity (doctrinal, cultural, institutional), and/or the interactions between Christianity and other religions, in any period and area of the history of Christianity. In her work, the early modern historian of the Collaborative Research Centre Resource Cultures at the University of Tübingen describes new insights into the role and organization of indigenous confraternities in colonial Mexico. 

The ubiquitous Franciscan-established confraternities for Indigenous members were an essential pillar of society, for example during epidemics: They ran hospitals, orphanages, offered banking services to the poor, paid to release debt prisoners, and buried the dead. 
For her study, Dierksmeier searched through court records, last wills, missionary correspondence and church records in archives in Mexico, Spain, the USA and Germany.  She concludes that these religious community networks became an essential institution to support the population during epidemics, to integrate the various indigenous groups from the former Aztec Empire, and to protect indigenous self-government, at least in religious areas.

It is noteworthy that group leaders were elected by majority vote and held office for a fixed period, until the next election. Unlike other colonial institutions, fraternities often had a dual leadership, i.e. two leaders who acted as mutual control bodies and who shared responsibility. Unlike the Spanish officials, the brotherhoods made fewer distinctions between race, gender, social status, and physical ability. Even black slaves could, with the permission of their owners, join and lead confraternities. Dierksmeier documents also cases of indigenous female leadership. 

About the choice of title, Laura Dierksmeier says: "With the title 'Charity for and by the Poor', I wanted to emphasize the active role that the needy played within and through the fraternities that empowered them. Fraternities not only provided assistance to the poor, but also, and above all, encouraged the poor to improve their own material existence and that of others, thus negotiating their own social identity. Religious brotherhoods developed into institutions that helped people to move from being purely passive recipients of aid to active agents of self-help, who in turn were able to help others. 

The American Society of Church History concludes: “Dierksmeier’s Charity for and by the Poor embodies excellence in historical scholarship into the diversity of global Christianity that the Albert C. Outler Prize celebrates.”

Contact:

Dr. Laura Dierksmeier
University of Tübingen
SFB 1070 ResourceCultures
laura.dierksmeierspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de