Person and God in a Spanish Valley: Revised Edition

by William A. Christian Jr.

Overview

A classic twentieth-century work in the anthropology of Catholicism

Person and God in a Spanish Valley is a moving portrait of how individuals and communities in a remote, mountainous valley of northern Spain relate to the divine. In the late 1960s, anthropologist and historian William A. Christian, Jr., conducted groundbreaking fieldwork in the Nansa Valley, one of the most devout regions of Spain. With sensitivity and uncommon insight, Christian describes the complex system of shrines, devotions, and pilgrimages that existed in the region for centuries, and recounts the disruption of the valley’s traditional way of life as young priests from urban centers arrived carrying a more modern, Vatican II version of Catholicism. Person and God in a Spanish Valley places Catholic faith and practice within a broader history of agrarian politics and reform in northern Spain, and stands as a landmark work of modern anthropology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691214757
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

William A. Christian, Jr., is a religious historian and independent scholar. His books include Moving Crucifixes in Modern Spain, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, and Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (all Princeton).

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“William Christian has given us an extremely sensitive study of man, religion and society in a valley in Northern Spain. . . . The reader somehow experiences the passing of the generations and the centuries, the succession of priests with different views, each a representative of the Catholicism of his time, the propagation and then institutionalization of ever-changing forms of worship, and the tension set up between innovating priest and conservative community. . . . A truly admirable book. Not only will it be of value to students of the subject, it should also give them much pleasure.”—Emanuel de Kadt, Religion

Editorial Reviews

"[This book] successfully straddle[s] the interests of the religious or theological specialist and those of the social scientist . . . William Christian has given us an extremely sensitive study of man, religion and society in a valley in Northern Spain."

Religion

"[This book] successfully straddle[s] the interests of the religious or theological specialist and those of the social scientist . . . William Christian has given us an extremely sensitive study of man, religion and society in a valley in Northern Spain."—Religion

From the Publisher