Biography

Bento Machado Mota is an early modern historian specializing in the tension between religious missions among natives from the Americas and early modern thought. After completing his Ph.D. at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, he was affiliated with the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico and received a scholarship at the John Carter Library at Brown University. Bento Machado Mota has shared his research in various institutions, such as King’s College London, Durham University, and the Universidad Nacional de Rosario in Argentina. His broader research interests include the history of religious missions, atheism, scholasticism, indigenous history, skepticism, and the global Renaissance.

Project Summary

Atheism in the early modern era is often perceived as exclusively a European phenomenon. However, some historical sources from the 16th century indicate that some people were considered atheists before contact with the Old World. These reports challenged the Ciceronian principle, which posits that every nation, no matter how savage, possesses at least an idea of God. This contradiction between this important philosophical-theological axiom and the experience sparked debates among missionaries, theologians, and philosophers of the 16th and 17th centuries. Firstly, it drew comparisons between atheism among ancient Greeks, seen as "individual," and the atheism attributed to certain peoples of the Americas, viewed as characteristic of an entire "nation." Secondly, it elicited questions about the omnipresence of God in all people and His desire for universal salvation. Thirdly, it led to discussions not only about the absence of God but also about the lack of any type of belief. These debates intersected with other significant discussions of the 16th century, such as the salvation of philosophers, the universality of Sybils, and the distinction between unbelief and atheism, crucial topics in the realm of skepticism. This project aims to investigate how missionary accounts, describing pre-Columbian peoples as unbelievers, impacted and shaped theological and philosophical debates about atheism within the global Renaissance context.