ABSTRACT
There are many meanings of poverty. Poverty may seem universal, but as a culturally coded, embodied condition its meaning varies across different contexts. Poverty in its different forms has plagued the Americas since the Spanish conquest, but the implications of the encounter between different cultural meanings of poverty has rarely been considered. Christianity invested poverty with theological and political meanings and this was developed by the mendicant Orders, especially the Franciscans, throughout the Middle Ages. The Franciscan Order developed a unique doctrine of poverty, which incorporated beliefs and practices of humility and obedience and valorized the suffering body. This chapter explores the Franciscans’ attempt to translate their doctrine of poverty in the Americas using text, bodily gestures and postures, and performances. It surveys the Franciscan encounter with Amerindian beliefs and practices and considers the ways in which meanings of poverty were transformed through the process of translation.
