Abstract
Drawing upon her work on the emergence of indigenous Christianity in colonial Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, Verónica A. Gutiérrez provides readers with an overview of the current historiography on native ritual, resilience, and resistance to the introduction of European Catholicism in sixteenth-century Mexico. Offering rich insight into the relationship between native peoples and Christianity in New Spain, her essay challenges the dominant Eurocentric narrative about passive or fatalistic native peoples, details the various forms of resistance emerging in the wake of colonial rule, outlines indigenous resilience in responding to the Catholic practice of appropriating local sacred sites, and reveals the close association, strategic alliance, and genuine friendship often forged between friars and native peoples.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout this essay, I use “Viceroyalty of New Spain,” “New Spain,” and “colonial Mexico” interchangeably.
- 2.
The Franciscan bishop, fray Martín Sarmiento de Hojacastro, would consecrate the new church on April 3, 1552. See Ignacio Cabral, Arquitectura religiosa en San Pedro Cholula, Puebla (Puebla: Universidad de las Americas-Puebla, 1994), 1, and Francisco de la Maza, La ciudad de Cholula y sus iglesias , Vol. IX, Es-tudios y fuentes del arte en México (México, D. F.: Universidad nacional autónoma de México, 1959), 62.
- 3.
For the origins of Cholula’s tribute woes, consult Archivo General de las Indias (AGI), Mexico 1088, Legajo 1, Folio 74, dated May 13, 1538.
- 4.
In 1519, Charles I of Spain was consecrated Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. For details of Cholula’s tribute assessments and deferments from 1543 to 1556, see “Tasación de Chilula, 1556,” (AGI, Patronato, legajo 182, ramo 2) in Sobre el modo de tributar los indios de Nueva España a Su Majestad, 1561–1564 (México, D.F.: José Porrúa e Hijos, Sucs., 1958), 82–84. See also Archivo General Municipal de Puebla (AGMP): Actas de Cabildo, Vol. 4, Foja 310v and AGMP: Actas de Cabildo, Vol. 5, Foja 61f.
- 5.
See “Carta al Emperador de los indios de Cholula, 1552” (AGI, Audiencia de México, 94). Francisco González-Hermosillo notes that Charles V granted Cholula an indigenous cabildo by royal decree on October 27, 1537, in appreciation of indigenous aid to Hernando Cortés during the Sack of Tenochtitlan and in recognition of its ancient splendor. Unfortunately, he does not cite his source. See “Macehuales versus señores naturales. Una mediación franciscana en el cabildo indio de Cholula ante el conflicto por el servicio personal (1553–1594),” in Gobierno y economía en los pueblos indios del México colonial, ed. Francisco González-Hermosillo (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional del Antropología e Historia, 2001), 117.
- 6.
The date Cholula received city status continues to confuse scholars. Whereas some sources indicate that, in 1537, the king simultaneously granted Cholula the rank of city and a cabildo (see fn 5 above), in this letter the cabildo requests city status in 1552, for which they thank the king in a follow-up letter dated October 12, 1554. Fray Francisco Morales Valerio, OFM, PhD, the leading expert on Franciscans in Cholula, disputes this, insisting the 1537 date is an eighteenth-century fiction. See “Franciscanos y sociedad colonial en Cholula, Siglo XVI” (paper presented at the American Society for Ethnohistory Conference, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2018). For the second letter—in which the cabildo thanks the king for bringing Christianity and repeats its request to be relieved of tribute obligations due to the poverty of Cholula’s native inhabitants—see AGI, Papeles de Simancas, Est. 59, Caja 1, Lec. 3 (Libro de Cartas). Significantly, Cholula would be one of only nine ciudades de indios (indigenous cities) in the colonial period alongside twenty-one ciudades de españoles (Spanish cities). In contrast, Madrid, the capital of Castile since 1561, would remain a Villa (a lower ranking distinction) for centuries.
- 7.
Franciscans would have taught Christianity and alphabetic script to Cholula’s indigenous nobles, who were not the only indigenous community to compose such a letter. For a 1554 Nahuatl letter to Charles V from the cabildo of Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City) and a 1563 Spanish letter from the nobles of Xochimilco to Philip II, see Matthew Restall, Lisa Sousa, and Kevin Terraciano, Mesoamerican Voices: Native-Language Writings from Colonial Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan, and Guatemala (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 64–71; for a 1560 Nahuatl letter from Huejotzingo addressed to Philip II, see James Lockhart and Enrique Otte, Letters and People of the Spanish Indies, Sixteenth Century, Cambridge Latin American Studies (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 163–172.
- 8.
Elsewhere I argue that Cholula’s cabildo is capitalizing on its Mesoamerican status as a regional ritual center and locus of political and spiritual influence, given that prior to European arrival, local tlatoque (indigenous rulers) sought counsel from the priests at Cholula’s famed Quetzalcoatl Sanctuary and participated in a legitimation ritual prior to assuming leadership in their home polities. See Verónica A. Gutiérrez. Converting a Sacred City: Franciscan Re-Imagining of Sixteenth-Century San Pedro Cholula (PhD Dissertation, UCLA, 2012: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/56h8453h).
- 9.
Local Franciscans maintain a close relationship with Cholula’s native cabildo in the sixteenth century, convening an emergency meeting in 1553 to resolve a conflict between elites and commoners. See “Ordenanzas y capítulos que han de guardar los principales y macehuales de Cholula (26 de octubre de 1553),” Newberry Library Ayer Collection, ms. 1121, fs. 355r-161r. For more on the relationship between the Franciscans and the native Cholulteca, see Verónica A. Gutiérrez, Converting a Sacred City as well as “Social Justice for a Sacred City: Franciscans and the indios de servicio of Cholula” (paper presented at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Bruges, Belgium, 2016). In chapter three of Annals of Native America: How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), Camilla Townsend details an endearing intellectual friendship between an indigenous noble, don Mateo Sánchez, and a Franciscan, fray Francisco de Toral, affectionately nicknamed Toraltzin (Nahuatl honorific suffix).
- 10.
For two edited collections examining local variations of religious expression, see Martin Austin Nesvig’s Local Religion in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006) and Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole’s Religion in New Spain (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007). More recent scholarship includes Davíd Tavárez’s Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Colonial Latin America (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2017).
- 11.
See especially Charles Dibble, “The Nahuatilization of Christianity” in Sixteenth Century Mexico: The Work of Sahagún, ed. Munro S. Edmunson (Albuquerque: U. of New Mexico Press, 1974), and Louise Burkhart, The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996).
- 12.
During my main research years in Cholula (2004–2009) information at the Great Pyramid site appeared in Spanish, English, and Nahuatl; during a recent visit in May 2019, plaques posted around the ruins presented information only in Spanish and English. For a brief overview of the effects of Christianity among native communities throughout Mesoamerica, see Verónica A. Gutiérrez and Matthew Restall, “Mesoamerican Religions: Colonial Cultures,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition (Macmillan Reference, 2004): 5914–22.
- 13.
Paternalistic attitudes of indigenous “children” originated in the colonial period, especially after the initial phase of euphoria faded following fragmentary success of the evangelizing project. This devolving attitude culminated when the 1585 Mexican Provincial Council—convened to implement the reforms of the Council of Trent (1545–1563)—labeled native peoples “rudes,” a Latin theological term indicating persons incapable of comprehending more than the rudimentary elements of religion. Historian Stafford Poole has masterfully outlined this phenomenon in “The Declining Image of the Indian among Churchmen in Sixteenth-Century New Spain,” Indian-Religious Relations in Colonial Spanish America, ed. Susan E. Ramírez (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989). He argues that an important, often-overlooked factor in this process was the Catholic Reformation, whose proponents denigrated human capacities and emphasized law, regulation, and good order.
- 14.
James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 445.
- 15.
The governor, Diego Velasquez, was not himself authorized to conquer or settle, being merely a deputy of the hereditary Admiral of the Indies, Diego Colón, son of Christopher Columbus. In addition to exploring the coast, Cortés had been tasked with trading and searching for shipwrecked Spaniards; he rescued the Franciscan Jerónimo de Aguilar on the Island of Cozumel, who served as his first interpreter. See J.H. Elliot’s introductory essay, “Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V,” in Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico. Translated by Anthony Pagden. Revised ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), xi–xxxvii.
- 16.
During that time, Cortés legitimated his treasonous activity by founding a town, La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, and had the municipal officials name him alcalde mayor (chief magistrate), justicia (chief Justice), and captain of the royal army. Cortés officially began his march toward Tenochtitlan on August 16, 1519, from the nearby altepetl of Cempoala, accompanied by 400 Iberians and 1000 Cempoalan allies (Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico, xix–xxii).
- 17.
Saint Hippolytus, a third-century Roman scholar who wrote in Greek, was the first anti-pope. He reconciled with Rome before being martyred (www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Hippolytus-of-Rome).
- 18.
Not all contemporary Europeans shared this sentiment, with one of the most famous examples being Cortés’ Iberian chaplain, Francisco López de Gómara, who wrote in 1552: “The greatest event since the creation of the world (excluding the incarnation and death of Him who created it), is the discovery of the Indies.” Historia de la Conquista de México [1552] appears in English as Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary. Translated by Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964). Francisco López de Gómara produced this panegyric to Cortés without ever traveling to the New World.
- 19.
In 1522, Pope Adrian VI issued the papal bull, Exponi nobis feciste, also known as the Omnímoda, granting the mendicants extensive powers to preach, found churches, and administer sacraments in the New World, indeed, to use any means necessary to convert native peoples if a bishop were absent or a two-day journey away. See Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico: An Essay on the Apostolate and the Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain, 1523–1572. Translated by Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 22. New World friars functioned as virtual bishops at a time when European mendicants were not associated with parishes and required episcopal license to preach. For a detailed discussion of the effects of this bull in New Spain, see Robert Padden, “The Ordenanza de Patronazgo of 1574: An Interpretive Essay,” The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History 12 (1956).
- 20.
Pedro de Gante, reportedly an illegitimate relative of Charles V, famously founded San José de los Naturales in Mexico City. By all accounts, he was well loved by the Texcocana people, who mourned his death in 1572. For a succinct overview of his contributions in New Spain, see Francisco Morales, OFM, “Fray Pedro de Gante. Libro de colores es tu corazón,” in Misioneros de la primera hora. Grandes evangelizadores del Nuevo Mundo. ed. Romeo Ballán, (Lima: Editorial “Sin Fronteras” 1991), 75–81. Available online in the Enciclopedia Franciscana (www.franciscanos.org/enciclopedia/pgante.html).
- 21.
The Twelve represent the first official delegation approved by both papacy and Crown. Two important documents penned by the Franciscan Minister General, fray Francisco de los Ángeles Quiñones, illuminate the context of this enterprise: the Castilian “Instruction” (dated October 4, 1523; feast of St. Francis) addressed to leader fray Martín de Valencia, outlines how to conduct the business of New World evangelization, and the Latin “Obedience” (dated October 30, 1523) addressed to the Twelve, binds them in holy obedience to this mission. For an excellent analysis of these foundational Franciscan documents, see Steve Turley’s Franciscan Spirituality and Mission in New Spain, 1524–1599: Conflict Beneath the Sycamore Tree (Luke 19:1–10) (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014). Officially commissioned by fray Francisco de los Ángeles Quiñones on January 25, 1524 (feast of the Conversion of St. Paul), the Twelve arrived at Veracruz in May and Mexico City in June, where Cortés’ warm welcome astonished local Nahuas. Cortés had written to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V specifically requesting Franciscans because they were austere, learned, and would not ask for money.
- 22.
As an example, see the final chapter of Camilla Townsend’s Annals of Native America, which discusses two late seventeenth-century Nahua brothers don Manuel de los Santos Salazar and the younger, don Nicolás Simeon, who become ordained priests. For more about this family, see Peter Villella, “Indian Lords, Hispanic Gentlemen: The Salazars of Colonial Mexico,” The Americas 69, no. 1 (2012): 1–36.
- 23.
This term belies the conflict between the mendicant orders over territory, indigenous neophytes, and pastoral practices that continued throughout the colonial period.
- 24.
Translated as The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico: An Essay on the Apostolate and the Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain, 1523–1572.
- 25.
This literature is rich and deep, beginning with Mexican scholar, Miguel León-Portilla’s study of Nahua reactions to evangelization: “Testimonios nahuas sobre la conquista espiritual,” in Estudios de cultura náhuatl 11 (1974): 11–36. Certain scholars, such as J. Jorge Klor de Alva in “Spiritual Conflict and Accommodation in New Spain: Towards a Typology of Aztec Responses to Christianity,” (The Inca and Aztec States, 1400–1800: Anthropology and History, ed. George A Collier, et al., Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982: 345–366), and Louise Burkhart in The Slippery Earth contend that the friars ultimately failed to introduce Christianity to New Spain. Prolific Mexican historian and Franciscan friar, Francisco Morales Valerio, challenges such analyses. Of his many publications, see especially “The Native Encounter with Christianity: Franciscans and Nahuas in Sixteenth-Century Mexico” (The Americas, Vol. 65, No. 2, Oct., 2008, 137–159). For a similar interpretation, see also the work of art historian and Jesuit priest, Jaime Lara’s City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004) and Christian Texts for Aztecs: Art and Liturgy in Colonial Mexico (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008).
- 26.
The most significant were Alexander VI’s Inter caetera (1493), Eximae devotionis (1493 and 1501), and Julius II’s Universalis ecclesiae (1508), which granted universal patronage over the church in the New World to the Iberian monarchs, including the right to present candidates for ecclesiastical office and the right to collect tithes. See J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). See also Robert Padden, “The Ordenanza de Patronazgo of 1574: An Interpretive Essay” in The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History 12 (1956). The kingdom of Portugal received similar privileges from Pope Calixtus III in 1456.
- 27.
See J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain: 1469–1716 (New York: New American Library, 1963), 102.
- 28.
For this section I rely on John M. D. Pohl’s introduction to Exploring Mesoamerica. Places in Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
- 29.
In The Nahuas After the Conquest, distinguished ethnohistorian and Nahuatlato (Nahuatl interpreter), James Lockhart discusses how the Nahua’s highly developed religion lent itself easily to the introduction of Christianity. See especially page 203.
- 30.
Though Robert Ricard touches upon this topic in The Spiritual Conquest, Osvaldo Pardo elaborates in The Origins of Mexican Catholicism: Nahua Rituals and Christian Sacraments in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).
- 31.
Motolinía took his very name from the Nahuatl word for “poor person,” which he overheard the Nahuas murmuring when they encountered him and his companions in their tattered habits. Toribio Benavente Motolinía. History of the Indians of New Spain [1541]. Translated by Francis Borgia Steck O.F.M. (Washington DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1951).
- 32.
The best treatment of the devil’s influence in colonial Mexico is Fernando Cervante’s The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
- 33.
Nahuas referenced writing as in tlilli in tlapalli, “the black ink, the colored pigment,” but mainly meant “black and red.” Black ink alone was more indicative of war paint or markings for sacrifice, but together, red and black ink became the term for writing. See Camilla Townsend, Annals of Native America: How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 2. For a more detailed treatment of indigenous writing, see Elizabeth Hill Boone’s Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000).
- 34.
Friars deliberately situated many of these conventos on raised earth in order to highlight their sacred nature. Personal communication, Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, March 26, 2018.
- 35.
For a few examples of resistance and the Mexican Church’s response, see Susan Schroeder’s edited volume, Native Resistance and the Pax Colonial in New Spain. Linguistics and Culture (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998).
- 36.
Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest, 206.
- 37.
Most colonial conventos would have had two to five resident friars, though mendicant training centers, like Cholula, might have on occasion up to twenty friars in residence. For a chart enumerating friars in the conventos in the Bishopric of Tlaxcala in 1585, see Appendix A in Verónica A. Gutiérrez, Converting a Sacred City, which I modified from Pedro Oroz, Gerónimo de Mendieta, Francisco Suárez, and Fidel de Jesús Chauvet, Relación de la descripción de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio: que es en las Indias Occidentales que llaman la Nueva España: hecha en el año de 1585 [1585]. Nueva ed. México D.F.: Imprenta Mexicana de Juan Aguilar Reyes, 1947.
- 38.
In Franciscan establishments, for example, Nahua artisans carved the five wounds of Francis in the Escutcheon of the Order as a dot within a dot, denoting chalchihuitl, or preciousness. Tlacuilos also carved blood from the wounds with featherlike qualities, placing the implements of piercing inside the “sack” of the fifth wound, much like the implements of Mesoamerican auto-sacrifice would be placed into a sacred vessel. Personal communication, Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, March 26, 2018.
- 39.
Personal communication, Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, March 26, 2018. As previously stated, Mesoamerican springs served as portals to the underworld enabling communication with the divine.
- 40.
Rather than paint in red and black, traditional Mesoamerican colors, tlacuilos used only black on white walls, replicating the European prints that served as their models, transposing the images as if they were pressing the print against the wall. Personal communication, Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank. March 26, 2018.
- 41.
One of the best resources for nonspecialists desiring more knowledge about the blending of indigenous cultures into the art and architecture of the Americas is the growing collection of videos available at SmartHistory (smarthistory.org/tag/new-spain/), which has paired with Khan Academy to offer essays and videos geared toward high schoolers exploring the Viceroyalties of New Spain, Peru, and Granada. See also the foundational work of Manuel Toussaint, George Kubler, and John McAndrews, as well more recent scholars such as Jaime Lara, Samuel Edgerton, Eleanor Wake, and Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank.
- 42.
The so-called Tridentine reforms are products of the Council of Trent (1545–1563), an ecumenical meeting convened by the Roman Catholic Church in response to the Protestant Reformation. Several New World prelates attended the sessions of Trent.
- 43.
Whereas some colonial Mexican clerics feared native peoples might worship the indigenous imagery, ideas, or deities embedded within convento art, by the late sixteenth century others believed the friars had failed in their evangelizing efforts and repurposed the space for other didactic applications. For an analysis of how convento mural programs differed along the northern frontier, see Robert H. Jackson’s Conflict and Conversion in Sixteenth Century Central Mexico: The Augustinian War on and Beyond the Chichimeca Frontier (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
- 44.
Today preserved in France’s Musee d’Auch, its plumes retain much of their brilliance after nearly 500 years. Featherworks were highly prized in the early colonial period. For an excellent overview, see Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank’s “Featherworks: The Mass of St. Gregory” (www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-americas/new-spain/viceroyalty-new-spain/a/featherworks-the-mass-of-st-gregory).
- 45.
Amanteca were revered precontact specialists. In Tenochtitlan, they lived in Amantla, their own neighborhood, today known as the Barrio de San Miguel Amantla in Azcapotzalco, one of sixteen municipios (municipalities) in Mexico City.
- 46.
Teopantlaca derives from teopan (god-place) and tlacatl (people), hence, people-of-the-god-place, or church people, meant more for educated Christians than those who attended or worked in a church. Townsend, Annals of Native America, xvii and 63.
- 47.
In this school, students lived in community, wore cassocks, and studied Latin, reading, writing, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, music, art, indigenous medicine. Robert Ricard tells of an indigenous graduate so familiar with Latin he conversed easily in this foreign tongue on his deathbed with his confessor. See Ricard, Spiritual Conquest, 221–223.
- 48.
See especially Mark Christensen, Translated Christianities: Nahuatl and Maya Religious Texts. Latin American Originals (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), Elizabeth Hill Boone, Louise Burkhart, and David Tavárez, Painted Words: Nahua Catholicism, Politics, and Memory in the Atzaqualco Pictorial Catechism (Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archeology Number Thirty-Nine. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2017), and Jonathon Truitt, Sustaining the Divine in Mexico Tenochtitlan : Nahuas and Catholicism 1523–1700 (Academy of American Franciscan History/University of Oklahoma Press, 2018).
- 49.
The Florentine Codex remains a rich resource for studying fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Nahua (especially Mexican) culture and history. Sahagún labored on this project from 1545 until his death in 1590, the proper name for which is Historia universal de las cosas de Nueva España. As Camilla Townsend remarks, “highly educated by world standards… [these young indigenous aides] envisioned themselves as existing in relation to other peoples of the globe” (Annals of Native America, 110). Peter Villella argues that colonial indigenous intellectuals partnered with creoles to develop modern-day neo-Aztec Mexican identity. See Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
- 50.
Historian Miriam Melton-Villanueva identifies this system as fiscalía. See The Aztecs at Independence: Nahua Culture Makers in Central Mexico, 1799–1832 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016).
- 51.
Native salaries did not compare to the wages received by choir members in European-serving parishes.
- 52.
Modern renditions of these organizations exist today in Mexico.
- 53.
Caring for images and sweeping the temple were Mesoamerican traditions.
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Gutiérrez, V.A. (2019). Indigenous Christianities: Ritual, Resilience, and Resistance Among the Nahuas in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. In: Barreto, R., Sirvent, R. (eds) Decolonial Christianities. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24166-7_6
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