Savoirs croisés en contexte colonial, la gestation d’une nouvelle science. Le Florilegio medicinal (1713) du frère jésuite Juan de Esteyneffer
Abstract
Juan de Esteyneffer was a travelling physician and missionary in the network of missions of the Society of Jesus in New Biscay between 1699 and 1715. He wrote the Florilegio médicinal as a tool for missionaries to practice medicine, considered as an evangelization strategy.The study of lay brother Esteyneffer’s book enables to examine the role of the mission as a space of knowledge production and circulation, and as a privileged space for the exchange of knowledge between the Western and Amerindian worlds. More broadly, this study reflects on the role of America in the emergence of modern science and in the relationships between knowledge and empire-building. The scope of the Florilegio, which was republished many times, soon reached beyond the local context for which it was designed, becoming an integral part of a network of dissemination of knowledge and medical products over the Atlantic region, and even at a planetary scale. This vademecum was produced in a colonial context. It required knowledge of the other and about the other with the objective to appropriate new spaces. Knowledge was used to improve management, and to Christianize territories. This nevertheless involved the recognition of otherness and the value of a world otherwise considered “barbarian”.
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