Francis Alive and Aloft: Franciscan Apocalypticism in the Colonial Andes

Abstract

The seventeenth century opened with a bang, literally. In the year 1600, on the first Friday in the season of Lent, sometime between noon and 3:00 PM (that is, at the hour of the accustomed Lenten penitential processions), the Peruvian volcano of Huaynapudna began a protracted series of explosions and eruptions. It was the largest recorded volcanic eruption in the Western Hemisphere, greater by far than that of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, or Mount St. Helens in 1980, and only slightly smaller than the colossal eruption of Krakatoa, Indonesia, in 1883. The event sent both Christian Spaniards and neo-Christian Indians searching for answers to apocalyptic questions. On that same Friday, February 18, 1600, several other violent earthquakes leveled buildings nearby.