The Memoirs of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier

by José Servando Teresa de Mier Noriega y Guerra

Book Overview

On December 12, 1794, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier preached a sermon in Mexico City that led to his arrest by the Inquisition. He was exiled to Spain--only to escape and spend ten years traveling throughout Europe, as none other than a French priest. So began the grand adventure of Fray Servando's life, and of this gripping memoir. Here is an invitation hard for any reader to resist: a glimpse of the European "Age of Enlightenment" through the eyes...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195106741
• ISBN13: 9780195106749
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

beauty and severity

An extraordinary book. One of Oxford University Press' 'Library of Latin America' series, translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane, here is a tome worthy of high praise. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier y Noriega (Mexico, 1763-1827), persecuted by the Inquisition for thirty years for his challenge to the colonial mentality and his willingness "to play an active role in movements of emancipation," Written in the Inquisitor's prisons, this is a topsy-turvy book where Europeans are the barbarians. Refreshing! De Mier was famed in his own time as a scholar and thinker, & indeed these 240 pages unsheathe a remarkable man, revealing with a novelist's succinct eye the true nature of the world and its passing, and our time in it. Impossible to overstate the beauty and severity of a spirituality in high bloom. Recommended.