Western Libraries' Jason Dyck awarded 2024 José Toribio Medina Award
Published on November 07, 2024
Jason Dyck, Teaching and Learning Librarian for the Arts and Humanities at Western Libraries, has been awarded the 2024 José Toribio Medina Award for his groundbreaking research on the works of the seventeenth-century Creole Jesuit Francisco de Florencia. This honour, given by the Seminar for the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of Latin American Studies through original research.
Dyck's meticulous 88-page preliminary study, praised for its comprehensive analysis and contextualization within contemporary Jesuit writings, earned him the Medina Award. The SALALM adjudication committee praised his work as "a laudable effort" that makes a 17th-century manuscript accessible to modern readers while serving as a model of scholarly excellence.
The award highlights Dyck's recently published book Vidas de los varones ilustres. El tercer volumen de la Historia de la Provincia de la Compañía de Jesús de Nueva España. The book is the first-ever transcription of the third volume of Florencia's provincial chronicle of the Jesuits in colonial Mexico.
A Creole Jesuit born in Saint Augustine, Florida, Florencia documented the Jesuit province of New Spain (Mexico) but was only able to publish the first volume during his lifetime. Dyck discovered the unedited manuscript of the third volume in the Jesuit Archives in Mexico City, featuring sacred biographies of 44 Jesuits from the early establishment of the Catholic order in Mexico during the 1570s. Over the course of five years, he transcribed 200 folios—totaling 400 manuscript pages—making the text accessible to researchers for the first time.
"The text allows scholars and students to study colonial religion, society, education, hagiography, urban architecture, libraries, and the history of the book, to name a few," said Dyck. "But most importantly, it's a fascinating window onto how a Creole (someone born of European ancestry in the Americas) developed an identity that was separate from the Spanish population on both sides of the Atlantic."
In addition to offering the most extensive biographical sketch of Florencia to date, Dyck's edition enriches the academic landscape with contextual tables comparing Florencia's manuscript to other colonial Jesuit works.
Beyond his most recent publication, Dyck's contributions as a Teaching and Learning Librarian, extend to working with faculty to provide instruction on the research process, designing instructional materials, and creating tailored assignments related to the library and research skills.
Before joining Western Libraries, Dyck taught a range of history courses at various universities in southern Ontario, focusing his research on colonial religion, missionary work, and sacred history in the early modern Spanish world.
He continues to explore these themes in a current project that focuses on the rare mention of Maria, an Indigenous translator for Gonzalo de Tapia, in Florencia's manuscript—one of the few references to her in existence.
