Religion in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: A Guide to Aztec and Catholic Beliefs and Practices [New ed.] 1316518388, 9781316518380

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                  -              Religion in Sixteenth-Century Mexico explores the development of religion as transferred from Spain to Tenochtitlan. The religious world of both Aztecs and Spanish Catholics at the time of encounter was organized through large- and small-scale community, family, and personal devotions. Devotion expressed through cults was the single most salient aspect in the transfer of Catholicism to New World people. This book highlights the role that ideas such as afterlife, apocalypticism, iconoclasm, Marianism, resistance, and saints played in the emergence of Mexican Catholicism in the 16th century. The larger Atlantic world context, as seen in the regions of Iberia, Anahuac, and “New Spain,” or central Mexico from Zacatecas to Oaxaca, is explored in detail. Beginning with an extensive historical essay to contextualize the pre-contact period, the bulk of this volume contains 118 separate keywords each with three comparative essays examining Aztec and Catholic religious practices before and after contact. Cheryl Claassen is Research Professor of Anthropology at Appalachian State University. Laura Ammon is Associate Professor of Religion at Appalachian State University.

Religion in Sixteenth-Century Mexico A Guide to Aztec and Catholic Beliefs and Practices Cheryl Claassen Appalachian State University

Laura Ammon Appalachian State University

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781316518380 doi: 10.1017/9781009000383 © Cambridge University Press 2022 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. isbn 978-1-316-51838-0 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For our partners, Marilyn and Randy

Contents

List of Figures

page xii

List of Tables

xvi

Acknowledgments

xvii

migrants, mendicants, and mary: anahuac to new spain 1 2 3 4

The Scope of This Survey Aztec Religion Spanish Catholicism of the 15th Century Creating New Spain

1 1 6 26 43

keywords *A Adultery Afterlife Altar Ancestor Angel Apocalypse Arrow Astrology Astronomy *B Baptism Bee Bell Bird Birth Blood Bloodletting Blue Body: Human Bone

65

65 66 68 69 70 73 75 77 79 83 83 85 87 88 90 92 94 96 97 100

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Contents

*C

102

Calendar Cave Celibacy Cemetery Children Communion Conception Confession Confirmation Conversion Cosmos Covenant Creation Cross Crucifix Cult *D Dance Day Death Decapitation Deer Deity Embodiment Demon/Monster Devil Divination/Magic Divorce Drunkenness *E Eagle East Effigy Equinox *F Fasting Fate Feast Fertility Flower Food Free Will

102 104 107 108 108 109 112 113 117 117 120 125 127 131 134 135 138 138 140 142 147 147 148 150 154 156 159 159 163 163 164 165 165 166 166 167 168 171 173 177 179

Contents

*G Garden Gift God Gold *H Head Healing Heart Heaven Hell Human Sacrifice *I Image/Idol Incense Incorruptibility Insect *K Knot *L Landscape: Urban and Rural Laziness *M Marriage Mary Medicine Monastery Moon Morals Morning Star Mother/Mary Mountain Music *N Naming *O Offering Omen Original Sin

ix

180 180 180 181 181 183 183 183 186 188 188 188 191 191 196 197 197 200 200 202 202 206 208 208 211 211 211 211 212 213 213 216 219 223 223 226 226 227 227

x

Contents

*P Paradise Patron Penance Pilgrimage Prayer Priest Procession Purity *Q Quadripartite World *R Rain Red Relic Religious Architecture Religious Instruction Religious Labor Rock *S Sacred Bundle Serpent Sex Shrine Sin Skull/Head Slave Sodality Sodomy/Homosexuality Song Soul Speech Spring/Well Star Stone Suicide Sun Supreme Deity Sweeping *T Text Theater

228 228 230 234 236 241 243 247 251 254 254 258 258 258 259 262 268 271 273 275 275 277 279 281 282 283 285 289 292 294 294 297 298 299 302 302 302 305 308 309 309 313

Contents Thorn Tree Tripartite Spirit/Trinity *U Underworld/Hell Upperworld *V Venus Vestment Virginity Vision/Omen *W Warrior/Soldier Water Weeping White Witchcraft Women

xi 315 316 320 322 322 324 325 325 327 330 331 336 336 344 346 348 349 351

Appendix I Aztec Feast Cycle Appendix II Persons of Note in Europe and Mexico

355 357

Glossary References

362 365

Index

385

Figures

1 Iberian Peninsula kingdoms in 1453. page 4 2 Cultures of Mexico discussed in text. 7 3 Teotihuacan center, looking north from the Pyramid of the Sun on the east side of the Avenue of the Dead to the Pyramid of the Moon. 8 4 Facade of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan. Quetzalcoatl is emerging from the underworld through a feathered portal wearing a Tlaloc/Cipactli warrior mask. At this moment, the Fifth Sun begins. 9 5 Basin of Mexico lakes and cities in 1519 with dyke in Lake Texcoco. 13 6 Tenochtitlan in 1519 with causeways and islands in Lake Texcoco. 14 7 The main ceremonial precinct in the heart of Tenochtitlan. 2015 model. The Templo Mayor is in the center background; the circular temple of Ehécatl/ Quetzalcoatl is in the center. Above is the topographical setting of Tenochtitlan. In the back right is a model showing the remodelings of the Templo Mayor. 17 8 Anahuac in 1519 with history of Aztec tributary additions. 20 9 Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue. left: Tlaloc ceramic sculpture. 24 10 Hieronymite Monastery of Santa Maria de Guadalupe, Caceres, Spain, founded in the 12th century. 30 11 The Rosario hermitage in La Antigua, Veracruz, perhaps the first constructed in New Spain. Location named for the Virgin of Antiquity, patron of Seville. 34 12 Spanish Virgins important for 16th-century Spaniards in Spain and New Spain. 35 13 Council of Trent by Pasquale Cati da Iesi (Museo del Palazzo del Buonconsiglio, Trent). 42 14 Route of Cortés and allies in the conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521). Along this route the first baptisms, cross erections, and masses were performed. 44 15 The Camino Real, connecting secured Catholic towns, mines, and ranches with royal charters. Distance from Mexico-Tenochtitlan to Zacatecas was secured in the 16th century. In 1610 the road was extended from Zacatecas to Santa Fe, New Mexico. 50

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List of Figures

16 Dominican symbol in the cloister patio at Santo Domingo Yanhuitlán, Oaxaca. 17 Wash basins at the ex-convento Santa Catalina de Siena, Oaxaca, Oaxaca. 18 Converted native elite representing dioceses. 19 The Spanish town center in Tlaxcala, Mexico. 20 A tlatoani embracing Christianity. Section from Blazon of Tlacopan approved by Carlos V in 1565. The missing segment in the globe refers to the unfinished conversion. 21 Angels on the facade of Nuestra Señora de la Natividad in Tepoztlán. 22 Astrology in the Body. Left: Bauernkalender fur 1563 woodcut. Right: Codex Rios, ca. 1562. 23 Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. 12th century, Monreale Cathedral, Sicily. 24 Wheel-mounted bells. 25 The five wounds on the body of Christ are reduced to five squares in this 1495 flag of Portugal. 26 The seven caves of Chicomoztoc and their clans. Eleven ancestors fill the upper caves and nine fill the lower caves. 27 The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was built by Constantine over the grotto where Jesus was born and dedicated in 339. The grotto shrine is depicted here in Luigi Mayer’s 1810 Views in the Ottoman Dominions. 28 The cosmos as depicted in Peter Apian’s Cosmographia (Antwerp 1539). 29 The Great Chain of Being from the Rhetorical Christiana (Valades 1579). 30 Codex style cross-in-hills and Franciscan knotted cord. The Franciscan cord runs above the moralistic saying. Mural located in San Juan Bautista cloister, Cuauhtinchan, Puebla. 31 16th-century cross in Taxco, Mexico. 32 Burial (left) occurred for some people, while others, including the Tlatoani, were bundled and cremated. 33 Grotesque style on ceiling of building in Assisi, Italy. 34 Demons flee the Aztec temple in Tlaxcala. 35 Soothsayers predict (above) and ritual specialists cast kernels for divination (below). 36 Philippus Jacobus’ T-O World Map, circa 1503. 37 Offering of aquatic animals excavated from the Templo Mayor, Templo Mayor Museum. 38 Santa Maria del Tule, Oaxaca, sited between sacred ahuehuete trees. Women still come here to rub the branches on their bodies for fertility. 39 Floral painting in the 16th-century cloister at San Cristobal monastery (now Divine Savior), Malinalco, Morelos. 40 A sweat lodge used by pregnant women, the sick, and people in sexual trysts.

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52 53 55 56

63 72 78 84 88 93 105

106 122 130

132 133 143 153 154 157 165 172 174 176 184

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List of Figures

41 Priests bring bowls of human blood to pour over image of Mictlantecuhtli. 42 Cochineal-infested nopal pads at a cochineal farm in San Bartolo Coyotepec, Oaxaca. 43 Virgin de los Remedios as Virgo lactans in Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See, Seville, Spain. 44 The two pyramids at Teotihuacan mimic the sustenance mountains behind them, and eclipse the mountains as one walks northward becoming sustenance mountains themselves. 45 The shrine of Santiago de Compostela and the sacred mountain Pico Sacro. 46 Depiction of Tlalocan in a wall mural in barrio Tepantitla, Teotihuacan. 47 Cholula Pyramid (the “hill” in this photo) was dedicated to Quetzalcoatl. The Virgin de los Remedios church built in the 1500s sits atop this earthen mound. 48 Pilgrimage routes into and through Iberia. 49 Ruins of the double pyramid of Tlatelolco now overshadowed by the ex-Franciscan Church and college of Santiago Tlatelolco, once the home of Colegio de Santa Cruz. 50 Procession routes through Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the 16th century. 51 Four world quarters with their respective gods and trees. In the center is Xiuhtecuhtli, the Sun god. The five sections form a cosmic quincunx. 52 Cloister yard at Monreale, Sicily, divided into quadrants, each with a different tree species, and with a center tree. 53 Stone reliquaries for royal dead at Quiahuiztlan, Veracruz. 54 Habit and cord of St. Francis, Assisi, Italy. 55 Ceremonial center of El Tajín, Veracruz. Stepped pyramids are attributed to the Feathered Serpent cult. 56 Atrium yard in foreground, open chapel (left half ), and church (center) of the Dominican mission San Pablo y San Pedro, Teposcolula, Oaxaca. 57 A sacred bundle (center) in the 15th-century Codex Borgia, 36. 58 Skull and crossbones over a door at the Assumption of Mary Cathedral, Cuernavaca, with Adam’s skull appearing at the base of the cross. 59 Well shrine at Templo del Pocito, Tepeyac, Mexico City. 60 Aztec (night) sun stone with President Porfirio Diaz providing scale, in 1910. 61 Imagining the interior of the temple of Huitzilopochtli. Theodor de Bry, Americae, nona et postrema pars (1602). 62 One page of the Protestación de Fe from the Catecismo Indocristiano 078, showing images of Jesus, place names, and hellmouths.

192 199 215

217 219 229

237 239

248 249 255 256 260 261 263 266 276 285 300 303 306 312

List of Figures

63 Jesse tree of Saint Dominic (founder of Dominicans) on the ceiling of the Santo Domingo Church, Oaxaca City, Oaxaca. The tree originates in the body of Dominic de Guzman and grows upward to connect him to Mary holding Jesus. 64 Unfired clay statue of Mictlantecuhtli on a throne at the El Zapotal site, Veracruz. 65 Diptych of Santiago Matamoros in the Museo Santo Domingo, Oaxaca, Oaxaca.

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Tables

1 Timeline for the development of Aztec religion and empire 2 Timeline of events for history of Christianity in Spain 3 Timeline of events for 16th-century New Spain

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page 27 43 48

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is the work of a village. Our partners, friends, librarians, and colleagues near and far have all contributed to the completion of this volume, and we are deeply grateful. For countless hours staring at church ceilings, climbing stone steps at ruin sites, navigating the Mexican countryside in search of adventure, Laura is forever grateful to her partner, Randy. We cannot forget the patience our traveling companions in Mexico 2018 showed as we raced from site to site: Pat Beaver, Robert White, Edwina Smith, Nancy Sigmon, Randy Reed, and Marilyn Smith, we thank you. For friendship and an unending willingness to listen, Laura wishes to thank Mark Cronan, Melody Mooney, and Ozzie Ostwalt. Much of her research would not have been possible without the support of Evelyn and Michael Cronan, who provided their Los Angeles Condo for Visiting Scholars as sabbatical refuge and writing nook. Our students, from the study abroad class where this project was first formulated through the Fall 2018, 2019, and 2020 Latin American religions classes, made this a better project with their engaged responses and careful reading. We learned from our students and we are grateful. For work above and beyond the call of duty with preparing images and investigating copyright, we thank Agnes Gambill, Head of Scholarly Communications, and Adam Sheffield of ASU’s Digital Scholarship & Initiatives, both at Appalachian State University Library. Generous support was also provided by the Department of Philosophy and Religion, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Appalachian State University Center for Academic Excellence Writer’s Retreat. We thank Molly Bassett and Karen Jo Torjesen for their support very early in the project, listening to the concept, reading our preliminary drafts, and offering thoughtful responses and advice on how to proceed. We turned to Randy Reed’s biblical studies knowledge on many occasions. Monica Dominguez Torres provided Figure 50, and she, David Tavárez, Barbara Mundy, Anthony Aveni, Kathryn Renton of the Getty Library, and John Schwaller provided feedback on small sections and took time to answer our questions. A big part of that village are the scholars of this subject, whose writings are essential and will be for decades to come. We have relied particularly heavily on Louise Burkhart, Elizabeth Boone, Jaime Lara, Inga Clendinnen, and Alfredo López Austin. Robert Ricard xvii

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Acknowledgments

was an early influence, as was Karen Bassie-Sweet. Cheryl wants to add thanks to Marilyn Smith for the years they’ve spent exploring Mexico and for enduring these five years of writing – and all the other writing and library time over the decades. She also wants to thank the clever people who made this research so much easier – the creators of and contributors to wikimedia.

Migrants, Mendicants, and Mary Anahuac to New Spain

Relatively few of the friars’ innovations were entirely new to the Mesoamericans. It was because of such things as their own crafts and writing systems, their tradition of sumptuous temples as the symbol of the state and the ethnic group, their well-developed calendar of religious festivities and processions, their relatively high degree of stability and nucleation of settlement, that they could quickly take to similar aspects of the Spanish heritage. (Lockhart 1992:4)

1 the scope of this survey This study presents details on many religious elements of both Aztec and Spanish practices in the 15th Century before their contact and then in the first century of Spanish culture in New Spain. There are already excellent studies of 16th-century Spanish Catholicism and of the religion of the Aztecs. Histories of Catholic missions have mapped the processes of evangelization in New Spain with each of these fields of investigation committed to methodologies of its guild. Yet these studies also end up presupposing an “insider” and “outsider.” We undertake an investigation that attempts to give each “side” an equal voice. In this introductory essay we build an overview of late medieval / early modern Catholicism and the pantheism of central Mexico, the organization of Mexica society, and Spanish governing and ecclesiastic superstructure; visit the conquered city of Tenochtitlan; and explore the native and missionary experience in the first century of the conquest, 1519 to 1600. Dozens of key concepts are then detailed in the second part of this work. The 118 keyword entries do much to show native and Spaniard perspectives on each topic and to highlight the agency of each during the 16th century. A word here about “religion.” Our focus is not exclusively on “belief,” though it is impossible to talk about cultic practices without the spectre of belief haunting our entries. Our work is influenced by David Chidester’s definition of religionas an arena of human activity marked by concerns of the transcendent, the sacred, the ultimate – concerns that enable people to experiment with what it means to be human” (Chidester 2005). Religion is a human attempt to place oneself in the world, often in relation to supernatural beings. The relationship between belief and practices is multifaceted and often recursive. In light of that, the relationships expressed in these “concerns of the transcendent” are cultural 1

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products that influence all arenas of human life. This understanding facilitates the comparative, cross-cultural approach we develop in the keyword entries. A further influence on our approach to religion stems from David Carrasco’s analysis of ceremonial life in Tenochtitlan that demonstrates the Aztecs were oriented toward the sacred, producing culturally and politically meaningful activities (which we refer to as ritual and/or cultic activity) and institutions that continually reinforced their relationship with the sacred (Carrasco 1999). The Aztec use of sacrifice, including human sacrifice, was central to “their beliefs about how the cosmos was ordered” and an “instrument of social integration that elevated the body of the ruler and the potency of the gods” (Carrasco 1999:3). Following Chidester and Carrasco, we recognize that religion is an anthropological category, a cultural expression that permeates human thought and action, and we recognize its problematic colonial legacy. For 16th-century indigenous people and Europeans alike, the supernatural required devotion, supplication, and sacrifice. Using this conception of religion has implications for assessing common categories. The keywords that we highlight in this book spotlight cultic practices. Devotion expressed through cults (e.g., surrounding Mixcoatl or the Immaculate Conception) is the hallmark of pre- and post-conquest Mexico and of Spain. In fact, the cultic organization of both religions at this time of encounter, we believe, was the single most salient aspect in the transfer of Catholicism to New World people. Small-scale community, family, and personal devotions were the mode of operation in both cultures with significant impact in the economic system of both. Both cultural systems revered bones and relics, shrines, and the pomp that accompanied feast days. The term “cult” is loaded in the 21st century, usually associated with religious movements that are beyond the comfort zone of modern society. However, in the realm of religious practices, particularly in the centuries we are examining, cults and cultic devotion recognized the supernatural in persons, objects, and places beyond institutional control, and were products of local devotion across multiple arenas, from cities, guilds, clans, and individuals. “The sacred is not a stable lexicon with universal correlations; it is produced through intensive, on-going and extraordinary attention, through processes of interpretation, attending to minute detail, which are always overdetermined in their proliferation of meanings” (Chidester 2012:8). It is this proliferation of meanings that we explore in the following pages. Mesoamerica was a macroregion of diverse groups, a world system, with all of the social groups linked through trade, politics, theology, and religious practice (Kellogg 2011:153; Smith 2014). For this discussion we have chosen to focus on the ethnic groups encompassed with the cultural geography term “Anahuac” (or anahuatl, disk surrounded by water), that region of tribute-paying peoples conquered after 1473 by the Mexica, who were the infamous occupants of the island city of Tenochtitlan in highland central Mexico. The Mexica were one of several lineages known as Aztecs, people who traced their origins to a watery place called Aztlan, most of whom were living within Anahuac. Much research has been focused on the Mexica, for they and other groups within Anahuac – Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Tlaxcaltecs – created a large corpus of historical and divinatory texts before and after the Spanish arrived, before and after their final leader, Quauhtemoc. Many groups spoke languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family, most notably Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica and other Nahua tribes and used by

1 The Scope of This Survey

3

administrators in conquered towns. The similarities in religious beliefs and practices among these groups can be seen in the “International Style” and shared symbol sets used in calendrical and religious life that permeated a vast area of central and southern Mexico after the 12th century (e.g., Boone and Smith 2003). The Mexica were recognized by the Spaniards as “people much like themselves” (Boone 1994:19). Spaniards compared Anahuac’s cities to Rome and Venice and their destruction to Jerusalem. The two cultures shared political structure, urbanism, agricultural development, kingship, state religion, writing, and many ritual practices, most significantly the practice of religion in cults led by celebate priests in temples. Furthermore, contemporary scholarship points to the importance of the Mexica Aztec worldview for the development of Mexican Catholicism, particularly during this first century when natives speaking various languages were congregated by missionaries into settlements and addressed through the Mexica language of Nahuatl. Nevertheless, much of what is said from the native perspective would ring true if the focus of our work were on Totonacas, Zapotecas, Otomis, or Huastecs. Many authors have commented on the pan-American cosmovision that resulted in thousands of cultures spread over thousands of miles of the New World having very similar ideas about the cosmos and how to interact with the supernatural. We specify Spanish Catholicism because, as the 15th century drew to a close, Spanish Popes, the conclusion of the Reconquista, and the awarding of the New World mission to Spanish royalty left a mark on early modern Catholicism that is often distorted toward the negative despite the importance of Spain in the preservation of Catholic relics, Catholic resistance to Protestant reforms, the earliest debates about slavery and human rights, and nascent development of modernity (see Mignolo 2008). Convivencia, the particular social situation of tolerance in the multireligious, multicultural world of Spain, involved Jews, Christians, and Muslims living sometimes in close proximity. While always a relationship between unequals, of two minority religions often living with a majority religion, convivencia “embraced a complex web of social, economic, political, and familial relationships” that brought religious worldviews closer together in ways not seen in other European countries (Poole 2006:15). While convivencia “ended” in 1502 with the conquest of Granada and then the forced baptism or expulsions of the remaining Muslims in Spain (Jews had been expelled in 1492), both Fernando II and Carlos V issued proclamations that “Islam would remain legal in Valencia and the other kingdoms of Aragon” (Hamann 2020:39 ftn 82). The year 1469 marks the union of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon (Figure 1) and the start of the Spanish monarchy through the marriage of Fernando and Isabella. With the January 1492 defeat of the Muslims in Granada, and the annexation of Navarra in 1512, “the Spanish monarchy obtained the territory that nearly corresponds to the present holdings of Spain [Navarre, Castile-León, Aragon, Portugal, and Granada] and further pursued centralization under the Castilian initiative” (Matsumori 2019:19; (Figure 1)). This consolidation, coupled with the success of the Reconquista, provided Spain a privileged position to further expand its boundaries. For nearly one hundred years after Columbus’s fateful landing in Hispaniola, no other European country founded colonies, let alone established missions, in the New World

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Figure 1 Iberian Peninsula kingdoms in 1453. (Image and permission provided by TimeMaps Ltd.)

(with the short-lived exception of the French colony in La Florida). The educational foundation of many of the early missionaries and Spanish officials in the New World is found at the University of Salamanca in Castile-León, the third-oldest university in Europe and the first university in the Hispanic world. This institution shaped Augustinian, Dominican, Franciscan, and eventually Jesuit missionaries and their ideas about conversion and religious accommodation. Salamanca’s theological influence was felt throughout the evangelizing enterprise (Matsumori 2019). Lastly, we focus on Spanish Catholicism because Protestantism and other reform movements of the 16th century did not find fertile ground in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition managed to keep early Protestant incursions into the Peninsula at bay, and by the mid-century, Felipe II restricted both visitors from and Spaniards who wanted to go to Protestant lands. Through the 16th century, Spain remained both militantly and Inquisitorially Roman Catholic and housed many of Europe’s relics preserved from Protestant iconoclasms. The information assembled here can be used to address a number of topics of concern to contemporary scholars: knowledge creation in New Spain; indigenous resistance; the malleability of religion; the mechanisms of mestizo/creole religiosity; and the role of religion in the expansion of empire among others. This project also sheds light on the ways that the indigenous people negotiated Christianity, themselves appropriating, accommodating, and assimilating Catholic religious elements. This material helps clarify the role that religion played in the emerging modern/colonial world-system at its birth in the 16th century. Our approach exposes agency on the part of individuals in these groups, illuminating the process of continued creative blending by agents of both religions in the encounter. As the conquest advanced and Christianity became part of the fabric of colonial life, a new Catholicism developed, much as it had in 4th-century Ireland or 9th-century

1 The Scope of This Survey

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Germany. By focusing on the first 100 years of contact in the New World, we are able to trace some of that development. What we believe to be key to understanding the religious encounter is the cult-based structure of both religions, facilitating both accommodations and substitutions. This exploration not only adds to our knowledge of both Aztecs at the time of the conquest and early modern ecclesiastical strategies and practices but also increases our understanding of the pliability of religion and the mechanisms of mestizo/ creole religiosity (Gruzinski 2013). Our work is not about interrogating the category or status of “conversion” for indigenous people nor is it about determining a valid expression of Christianity. Rather, along with Graham (2011), we are willing to say that if the individual thought she was a Christian, then we will accept that. Religion’s role in the expansion of empires and the colonial encounter, particularly for those studying Mesoamerica, is traditionally understood as either the underlying motivation for the expansion of Europe into the New World (convert natives) or overt justification for expanding empires through God-given rights to possess land and resources based on Genesis and a Christianization of Aristotle’s formulation of natural law, which in 16th-century juridical discourse was the principle of command and obedience (Matsumori 2019; Mignolo 2008). The idea of comparative religion arose in the 16th century when Europeans attempted to integrate into their understanding of “religion” the beliefs and practices of peoples discovered in New Spain, looking for signs of nascent Christianity within the religion of indigenous peoples (Ammon 2011). What our study does is add nuance to the ways scholars think about the plasticity of religion in this particular contact zone, highlighting the ways Mexica and Spaniards made religious meaning in a period of cultural conflict and transformation. Missionizing practices, Christian understandings of natural law, the role of slaves, and what constitutes barbarism are important factors, but these ideas encompass neither the variety of religious worldviews nor the symbols and metaphors that make those religious worldviews meaningful. While the natives were under pressure to become Christian, the Spanish and native understanding of that term and what it might mean to “be” a Christian is not clear (Graham 2011). Many studies of the first century of Spanish colonization focus on mission strategies or theological treatises in order to explore the challenge of communication and conversion. But the task of converting someone of one culture, language, and cultic allegiance into a different culture, language, and cultic allegiance was incredibly complex. Language was a significant issue, precisely because the cultural system was so multifaceted and the nodes of religiosity so many. We illuminate many opaque and seemingly minor elements in the communication of one religion to the practitioners of another particularly in the keywords section as well as the major points there and in this essay. One cannot fully grasp the extent of Indio-Catholic thought in 1599 expressed in “Catholic” architecture, art, or cults without a background in the symbolism and spiritual potential residing in the animals, plants, topography, and sky of Mexico and for native peoples. For this reason, our exploration of religion in 16th-century Mexico includes topics that rarely appear in scholarship about Christianity. These differences in the acknowledged spiritual potential of the physical world mean that some concepts recognized by the Mexica that are minor or insignificant in mendicant Catholic Spain take on

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new potential for accommodation, understanding, or inquiry. Some examples of these keywords are bee, blue, cave, insect, mountain, spring, and tree. But a study of Catholicism that overlooks the long history of these very same elements, particularly as it was practiced in 15th-century Spain, will also miss many points of important interaction in the missionizing process. In other words, what we examine here are symbolism and metaphor, important in both cultures and suffused with meanings not necessarily shared yet potent ingredients in the shape and structure of their religious lives that laid the groundwork for connection between the two cultures. It is clear to us that all scholars would be greatly served by a reference work that brings religious information together from both Spanish and Aztec cultural milieus when assessing the nature, success, and effect of conversion. Our reading of the history of these two world religions is that both were fluid rather than fixed, each incorporated elements of religion from conquered peoples. It is our opinion that what developed in the 16th century in New Spain was a Catholicism infused with elements far beyond the Iberian core. Historically, Christianity has appropriated, borrowed, recast, and innovated through cultural encounters, from Norway to Ireland to Germany, leading to culturally distinctive forms of a tradition that, while locally specific, is also globally connected. If we can be permitted to distill part of what that global connection might mean to a Roman Catholic on the eve of the 16th century – beliefs in Jesus, Mary, God, the Devil, original sin, the immaculate conception, penance, baptism, confirmation, charity, efficacy of saintly intercession and relics, purgatory and Hell – then it can be asserted that there were thousands of natives of Anahuac who were Catholic at the close of this century. Scholars have erred in thinking that there was one Catholicism, although this was certainly the goal of the Inquisition, the Vatican, and many councils. We turn now to an overview of the history of both religious systems and the first century of their interaction.

2 aztec religion Although the various Aztec groups can be identified as far back as the 12th century, their deities, creation stories, temple shrines, feasts, and other ritual components of their religion are much older than that (The Glossary contains some Nahuatl words and deities to assist the reader).

2.1 The Ancient Foundation of Aztec Religion Two key elements of Mesoamerican religion were pyramids and human sacrifice. Earthen mounds/pyramids first appeared 6,000 years ago on the northern Gulf of Mexico coastal plain in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, with the most significant ceremonial center, Poverty Point (1800 BCE–1100 BCE), in northern Louisiana. Human sacrifice is documented as early as 8,000 years ago in the Ohio Valley with numerous cases of four and five people violently killed in one grave uncovered over the next 4,000 years and, then again, from 1,000 to 500 years ago. The early mass graves seem to be indicating an ancient observance of a hunt god rite with elements quite similar to that surrounding the

2 Aztec Religion

7

Figure 2 Cultures of Mexico discussed in text. (Mexico States Blank map created by Yavidaxiu used under Creative Commons SA 4.0 license. Annotated by C. Claassen) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/ index.php?curid=4851727

cult of Mixcoatl/Camaxtli, one of the oldest of Mesoamerican deities (Claassen 2015). Remarkably, the story of Mixcoatl and Itzpapalotl and their acts of Creation are laid out in numerous rock art panels found along the Rio Grande (Figure 2) dating as early as 4,000 years ago (Boyd 2016).

2.1.1 Olmecs Unlike the earlier ceremonial cult centers of pyramids and mounds on the northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico, pyramids in Mesoamerica (Mexico City southward to Honduras and El Salvador) were associated with urbanism, state government, monocropping, and markets – characteristics archaeologists call civilization. Some 3,000 years earlier than the Chichimec migrations, civilization appeared on the Gulf of Mexico coast in the modern Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco (Figure 2). The Olmecs, as the first civilization is known, deployed the plaza-temple complex with pyramids as mountains and astronomical alignments, and had monolithic sculpture, markets, priest-kings descended from Underworld deities, and three successive city-states with a class society. The Olmecs assembled astronomical observations into two calendars and invented the ballgame; employed deity embodiment (teixiptla) in rituals; recognized a rain god, a maize god (with characteristics like the Aztec’s Centeotl), and death god, as well as a sky serpent and earth serpent deities, and jaguar and caiman as earth lords; practiced

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bloodletting (probably for rain calling); developed an origin story about their emergence from the watery underworld; and conducted rituals in caves. Late in their history, their scribes were using a proto writing system. They faded from view around 500 BCE, but before that they had forged “a powerful, unitary religion that had manifested itself in an all-pervading art style” (Coe et al. 2019:89). Olmec religious beliefs and practices are obvious among the Maya cities in the Yucatan, on the Pacific slope in Guerrero, and in later city-states that appeared at Monte Alban (Oaxaca), Cuicuilco, and Cholula followed by Teotihuacan.

2.1.2 Teotihuacan The huge urban center of Teotihuacan (Figures 2–4) is located in the northeastern sector of the Basin of Mexico. This urban ceremonial center appears to have been sited for its surrounding mountains, the diggable soil, and a greenish-gold obsidian outcrop. Aztec legend told that when the Gods were banished from paradise (Tamoanchan), they reconvened in This World at Teotihuacan, to start the Fifth Sun. Saburo Sugiyama (2019) now believes that a single individual founded and initially controlled Teotihuacan. By the 3rd century, following a master plan, all of the monuments at the site had been built. Using the 260-day, 365-day, and 580-day (Venus) calendars, and a standard unit of 83.0 centimeters, the northern half of the center (defined by a rechanneled stream that cuts the city into halves) was laid out using the solar calendar, while the southern half of the main precinct was devoted to Venus. The two

Figure 3 Teotihuacan center, looking north from the Pyramid of the Sun on the east side of the Avenue of the Dead to the Pyramid of the Moon. Numerous temples and housing compounds lie on either side of the avenue. Model on display in the Museo de Teotihuacan 2008. (Photo by Wolfgang Sauber used under Creative Commons License 2.0, rendered in black and white and cropped) https://commons .wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4202249

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Figure 4 Facade of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan. Quetzalcoatl is emerging from the underworld through a feathered portal wearing a Tlaloc/Cipactli warrior mask. At this moment, the Fifth Sun begins. (Photo by Arian Zwegers used under Creative Commons SA 2.0 license, rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Teotihuacan,_Citadel,_Temple_of_the_Feathered_Serpent_ (20686669345).jpg#/

huge pyramids dedicated to the sun and to the moon in the northern sector aligned with the eastern and northern cardinal points. The Pyramid of the Sun was surrounded by a moat visualizing the concept of water mountain or altepetl and was erected over an artificial tunnel ending in an artificial cave. The Pyramid of the Moon, an artificial “sustenance mountain,” mimics the natural Cerro Gordo that is directly behind it (see Figure 44) and apparently was dedicated to a mother goddess. The Pyramid of the Moon was remodeled six times. The Temple of Quetzalcoatl (Figure 4) and its enclosure, the “ciudadela” (numerous connected platforms forming a quadrangle), were located in the city’s southern sector. This temple covered an artificial cave and tunnel containing numerous Venus images and offerings. Mass graves were positioned around the base of the temple at the cardinal points. The males sacrificed were foreigners while the women were locals. Many men were buried with warrior items and the images of snakes on the facade of the temple have Tlaloc warrior masks (Coe and Koontz 2013:112–113). By the middle of the 4th century a program creating craft-specific barrios with aqueducts and latrines housing artisans from throughout Mesoamerica was underway. Murals in all barrios and on most civic buildings conveyed essential information about

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the patron deities and indicated that religion was practiced in cults. A colony in modern Zacatecas, called Alta Vista, situated along a trade route and at a jade source is known (Townsend 2019:23). At its peak in the 5th century, 125,000–200,000 people lived within Teotihuacan, while the surrounding Basin of Mexico was nearly empty of settlements (Coe and Koontz 2013). Field and chinampas agriculture, tribute, and the obsidian trade as well as pilgrims supported the city. Contemporary centers had ball courts and glyphs, although ball courts have not been found at Teotihuacan. Documented in the ruins of Teotihuacan are many elements of later Aztec religion. Concepts such as snake mountain, pyramids as sustenance mountains, the Tlaloc cult, a Chalchiuhtlicue cult, Xipe totec cult (Flood n.d.c), and a Feathered Serpent cult all with a large priesthood are found here. Venus, goggle-eyed Tlaloc, warfare, tribute, slavery, craft barrios, four city sectors, human sacrifice, heart receptacles, and murals are present, as is the important religious association of Tlaloc with Quetzalcoatl and both with warfare (Townsend 2019). Many of these items and motifs, as well as Teotihuacan pottery, were scavenged by the later Aztecs and incorporated into architecture and offerings. After 650, the hegemony of Teotihuacan was broken by internal strife and neighboring opportunistic Chichimecas. In the post-Teotihuacan era (700–1100), it was the Feathered Serpent religion that tied together a wide swath of Mesoamerica. West Mexican concepts and symbols embellished shrine centers from central Mexico eastward to the Yucatan linked physically by trade and pilgrimage routes. The earliest of these shrine centers were the central Mexican city of Cholula and possibly El Tajín in Veracruz. Secondarily, shrines at Xochicalco and Cacaxtla – both fortified with walls and ditches – in central Mexico and Uxmal in the Yucatan were developed. Many of the towns in the Mixtec region of southern Puebla were founded with Quetzalcoatl sacred bundles or reference to ancestral ties to this Feathered Serpent as recorded in the Codex Nuttall (Ringle et al. 1998). Ringle et al. (1998) attribute the attraction and spread of the Feathered Serpent cult to the emphasis on the Feathered Serpent’s role in creation (of this Sun, of the earth, of humans), his role in the founding of the 260-day calendar, and the role both played in political legitimation. Military alliances and influence from pilgrims, traders, and mercenaries contributed to its spread as well. The practices associated with this version of the cult invoked Venus/Tlaloc/Feathered Serpent warfare, the Feathered Serpent as wind deity, and human sacrifice, through worship principally at stepped pyramids (coatepetl snake mountains) and round wind deity (coiled snake) temples. Sacred bundles, pulque drinking, the ballgame, cipatli or earth/Tlaloc warfare masks, and skull racks were also highlights of religious practice. Jaguar and eagle warrior societies were present by the 8th century. Symbols of the cult – known as the International style and symbol set (Boone and Smith 2003) – were a shield with three darts, a bloodletter, two staffs, a fire stick, broad-brimmed hats, feathered circular banners, twinning snakes and ollin glyphs, friezes with skulls, incised jade beads/tokens, a human face emerging from a maw, and a descending god/Venus image. A 50 percent decrease in pyramids by 850 indicates a religious consolidation period. The arrival of the Nahuatl-speaking Tolteca-Chichimecas in central Mexico between 850 and 1100 led to greater political stabilization (Ringle et al. 1998). They occupied seven regions to the east of the Basin and in the Basin, unified by

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their cult center in Cholula dedicated to Quetzalcoatl. Their city of Tula became an important pilgrimage shrine as well.

2.1.3 After Teotihuacan The descendants of the elite and priestly lineages in Teotihuacan had mixed with influxes of hunter gatherers from north of the Basin known as “real Chichimecas” and closer farming Chichimecas (Nahuatl-speaking hunting-gathering and agriculture groups), as well as Nonoalca from Puebla state (south of the Basin) and other people from the Veracruz coast, to become a group known to history as the Toltecs (Kellogg 2011:154). Toltecs were glorified among the later Aztecs as great traders, with sophisticated rulers and astronomers, growing huge ears of maize and many colors of cotton. They worked obsidian and may have established trading centers to the north at Casas Grandes/ Paquime in Chihuahua and even into Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. In their capital, Tula, a conflict between the Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca cults (the latter a cult perhaps no older than 900–1100 [Smith 2014:31]) led to discord and the exodus of the Quetzalcoat cult and its reputed priest, also called Quetzalcoatl. He was said to have gone eastward, from which direction he would eventually return, to have killed himself on a pyre, and to have been resurrected as Venus in its Morning Star form. Because of the architectural and symbolic similarities between Tula and Chichen Itza, the Mayan Yucatan city, Toltecs have long been thought to have colonized this city. Archaeologists have recently reevaluated the stratigraphy at Chichen Itza to verify the northern sector’s contemporaneity with Tula and reexamined a stone disk found in the Caracol structure that bears a date of 929–932. “In its upper register are six Toltec warriors, richly clad, standing around a smoking, hourglass-shaped brazier . . . the headdresses of two of the figures bear the sign for Tollan . . . and two are associated with a feathered rattlesnake” (Coe et al. 2019:191) marking the introduction of the Feathered Serpent cult to Chichen Itza. The final leader at Tula was Huemac, who abandoned the city under duress during Chichimec and Nonoalca conflicts. He established a new capital to the south of Tula in the central Valley of Mexico at Chapultepec Springs by 1168 and died there in a cave. Stragglers stayed in Tula another fifteen years and observed a New Fire ceremony (Coe and Koontz 2013). Toltec descendants occupied Tenayuca in the Basin of Mexico under the leader Xolotl around 1244 (Coe et al. 2019:209) The solar calendar used by the Aztecs was attributed by them to the Toltecs but it is far older. The solstice and equinox celebrations observed in Tenochtitlan in 1519 did not align date-wise with either of the solstices or equinoxes that year, but do align by date to those events in the years 680–683, suggesting that these veintenas incorporated into the Aztec feast cycle began late in the Teotihuacan era (Graulich 1981). Calendrics of this era used a starting year of One Rabbit, 778 (Dieterle 2005), but projected time backward over a prior 52-year cycle, pinpointing the birth of the Fifth Sun in 726. Quetzalcoatl was born on day 7 Wind, referring to Venus in its evening star phase on October 3, 726, the first 7 Wind day of the first year of the Toltec calendar. A New Fire ceremony occurred on October 9, 779.

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There were several notable religious developments during the Toltec era. Child sacrifices to a rain-god began in 1122. They absorbed the Ixcuiname goddess cult (also known as the Cihuateteo cult) from the east coast Huastecs, including its human sacrifice by arrows in 1162 (Malmstrom 1997:216). Its adoption was said to have caused the political split in Tula (Nicholson 2001). Twelve of the twenty day names in the Aztec solar calendar occur as glyphs in Tula (Coe et al. 2019:188). And, according to Mexica accounts, it was Quetzalcoatl, the historic leader, who introduced penance by fasting and bloodletting from ears and tongue (LaFaye 1987:140). The first double pyramid (see Figure 7) of many that would later dot the Aztec domain (Matos Moctezuma 2002:57) was built at Tenayuca by Toltec descendants some time before 1299.

2.1.4 The Nahuatl Migrants As was evident in the demise of Teotihuacan, hunter-gatherer groups occupied the periphery of these large cities in northwestern, central, and Gulf coastal Mexico and began moving into the Basin sometime after the 6th century. Teotihuancanos did not speak Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica and most other Aztecs. Nahuatl speakers had penetrated no farther south than Tula (Figure 2) prior to its fall. Motifs in stone at the city of Xochicalco, Morelos, indicate Nahuatl speech conventions there after 1100 (Townsend 2009:40–41). The language was then brought into the Basin of Mexico (Figures 2 and 5) by the Tolteca-Chichimeca and Aztec migrants (Smith 2012). The Aztecs were a group of Chichimec hunter-gatherer lineages claiming an origin on an island in Lake Aztlan – possibly the Bajio area around Guanajuato, or somewhere in the US southwest. At least seventeen different groups of migrants left Aztlan or nearby Chicomoztoc in three waves, as documented in various codices (Smith 2012:37). The earliest Nahuatl speaking migrants may have arrived in the Basin around 1160, and over several more decades, the Acolhuaque, Tepaneca, Culhuaque, Chalca, Xochimilca, and others arrived. They settled in the Basin at both ends of the lakes (Figure 5). Subsequently, more Nahuas arrived and settled outside the Basin proper: the Tlahuica (Morelos), Tlaxcalteca (Tlaxcala), Huexotzingos (Puebla), Matlatzinca (Toluca), and Malinalcos (Morelos). The third wave left Aztlan in 1111 or 1168, and arrived at the northern end of the Basin around 1250. They were the Mexica, later builders of Tenochtitlan and the focus of Cortés’ entrada. The Mexica were further splintered into Tlatelolcos, Tenochca, and Amecameca. Mexicas first settled in two places on the western shore of the lakes and then on an island in the lake. Otomi were present in the Basin by 1250 (Coe et al. 2019:209). When the Spanish encountered the Aztecs in 1520 they were intensive agriculturists living in their various city states – Tenochtitlan (Figures 5 and 6), Tlaxcala, Tetzcoco, Chalco, Xochimilco, Amecameca, Atzcapotzalco, etc. – enmeshed in complex state politics. The few Spanish and their thousands of native allies, including other Nahuatl speaking groups, would subdue all of them. Various Aztec origin stories – recorded in some twenty postquauhtemoc codices for the Mexica alone (Boone 1994:30) – speak of an oracle-mandated and priest-led southward migration that included extended – and edifying – contact with residents along the route to the promised land. López Austin (2015) reduces many of the various migration

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Figure 5 Basin of Mexico lakes and cities in 1519 with dyke in Lake Texcoco. (Image by Yavidaxiu used under Creative Commons SA 4.0 license, rendered in black and white by C. Claassen) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9263087

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Figure 6 Tenochtitlan in 1519 with causeways and islands in Lake Texcoco.

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stories to a few key, repetitive characteristics while asserting that the rampant confusion and contradictions found in accounts were intentional and designed to elevate the status of the particular lineage: there is a patron deity who tells a small group of founders to follow him on a search for a promised land; there are representatives of these patrons (teixiptla), guards and servants of this patron act as oracles; sacred bundles have carriers who alone can handle them; guides execute the deity’s commands and often follow a nahualli (animal form of the spirit, often an eagle) of the patron deity. They cross a body of water at the beginning of their trek. All of the elements identified by López Austin are found in the Mexica Aztec migration stories. They left the island of Aztlan as migrants following priests carrying a sacred bundle. The most important place along the migration route of the Mexicas was Mount Culhuacan, which in several other codices is conflated with Chicomoztoc. Along the way, every 52 years the migrant Mexica performed the new fire ceremony (their first one was held in 1090), demonstrating that they were using both the 365-day and 260day calendars. The Mexica migrants soon splintered. One faction was that of the priestess/sorcerer Malinalxóchitl, which traveled west of the Basin and on to the location of today’s town of Malinalco in Morelos. Another split occurred between a second priestess – Coyolxauhqui and her group – and the main body of Mexicas, preserved as a story set in mythic time. This story is that of the pregnancy of Coatlicue, living on Mount Coatepec (another snake mountain), that drew the wrath of her daughter Coyolxauhqui. With the aid of her 400 brothers, Coyolxauhqui attempted to kill Coatlicue only to be surprised by the instant miraculous birth of her brother Huitzilopochtli, who killed his sister on the mountaintop, rolled her body off the mountain, and banished his brothers’ souls into the night sky. This story was later reenacted with each human sacrifice on top of pyramids dedicated to Huitzilopochtli in several city-states. The reduced group of Mexica continued on to Tula, then, at the northern edge of the Basin, turned west to continue down the western shore of Lake Tetzcoco (Figure 5). They tarried awhile at Tenayuca and then moved further south to Chapultepec Springs to settle for 25, maybe 45, years (accounts vary). Their residence in this coveted spot was challenged first by the Malinalli faction, who they defeated, and then by a coalition of Tepaneca and Culhuacanos – Nahuatl speaking descendants of Toltecs with the patron Mixcoatl – who defeated them in 1299 (Crónica Mexicayotl). Eventually, the Mexica were granted residence on a lava flow called Tizaapan, intermarried with the Culhua residents, and “soon began styling themselves ‘Culhua-Mexica’ . . . and in some measure as ‘Toltec’ descendants” (Townsend 2009:58). They would be driven off. Hiding in the swamp in 1325, a priest of Huitzilopochtli dove into Lake Tetzcoco, and returned to report to chief Tenoch that he had spoken with Tlaloc and they had been granted permission to settle on the island on which they were camping. His vision of a cactus with an eagle perched on top (Huitzilopochtli himself ) to signify their promised land manifested the next day as did other signs of their journey’s conclusion, such as red and blue water flowing from a spring. “In fact, all of these signs were prefigured in foundation myths of earlier peoples” (Townsend 2009:60).

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As a result of this history, Mexica religion seems to have grown from sacred bundles/ teixiptla, cave rituals, fasting circles, deer sacrifices (probably related to Mixcoatl cult), and oracles to incorporate numerous new deities. Toltec deities incorporated by the Aztecs were the quinametzin, giants from the Second Sun; Mayahuel, whose body became the maguey plant; Tezcatlipoca, honored by the Aztecs as a god of the earth, moon, and fates and brother of Quetzalcoatl; Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, lord of the dawn; Xolotl, twin or dog nahualli of Quetzalcoatl; and the creator couple, Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl (probably older than Toltecs). Chalchiuhtlicue, an ancient goddess of the Basin lake region, may have been adopted from the Toltecs (Arnold 1999:48) along with Chicomecoatl, a Toltec agricultural goddess, who was paired with Centeotl and became the consort of Tezcatlipoca (Coulter and Turner 2000), and the Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina cult that originated in the Huastec region. The name for the first woman, Oxomoco, is also Huastec. The goddess Xochiquetzal (who eventually merged with the Tlazolteotl cult) came from the Tlalhuicas living in Morelos. Sometime during their migration, or once established in the Basin, Mexicas adopted the Tlaloc cult and its feasts.

2.2 Theological Developments 1325–1519: The Creation of a State Religion One of the first acts of settlement on the island was to build a temple now known as the Templo Mayor, into which the Mexica placed the sacred bundle the four priests had been carrying throughout the years of their wandering (possibly that of Huitzilopochtli but perhaps it was Mixcoatl’s bundle). Around it, ten clan leaders laid out a settlement in four sectors in 1325 and called the place Tenochtitlan for their chief Tenoch. Another social rift led to the founding of a second city just to the north of Tenochtitlan in the marsh, that of Tlatelolco (ca. 1345). Their respective twin pyramids honored Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc in Tenochtitlan (Figure 7), and Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca in Tlatelolco (see Figure 49) (Boone 1989). The Mexica were increasingly engaged in the politics of their neighbors from 1325 to 1426 as mercenaries and allies in various Basin of Mexico feuds between city-states and their (often) half-sibling leaders. Richard Townsend (2009:63) thinks that both the nascent Mexica polity and the more developed Acolhua polity were significantly influenced by the Tepaneca in religion and military organization. The Tepanecas allowed the Mexica to wage warfare in Toltec descendant communities along the southern lakeshore and to levy tribute. Under the eye of the Tepaneca, in 1375 the Mexicas (Coe and Koontz 2013:195) chose as their first speaker, or “tlatoani,” Acamapichtli. Tlatoani responsibilities included important religious duties for the worship of fertility gods such as Tlaloc and ancestral heroes such as Huitzilopochtli (Townsend 2009). It was in 1426 that the Mexica track toward regional dominance became apparent. Supported by their acquisition of Tetzcoco as tribute payer, and maddened by the assassination of their tlatoani Chimalpopoca (1417–1426) by a new Tepaneca tlaltoani, Tenochtitlan’s new leader Itzcoatl refused to submit to Tepaneca and began building alliances with other basin altepeme. Tetzcoco’s exiled tlatoani agreed to return and lead a force, as did other embittered leaders around the Basin; they were eventually victorious. The Tepaneca tlaltoani was sacrificed by heart extrusion before the assembled eagle

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Figure 7 The main ceremonial precinct in the heart of Tenochtitlan. 2015 model. The Templo Mayor is in the center background; the circular temple of Ehécatl/Quetzalcoatl is in the center. Above is the topographical setting of Tenochtitlan. In the back right is a model showing the remodelings of the Templo Mayor. (Photo by rosemania used under Creative Commons license 2.0, rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4953252

(Huitzilopochtli) and jaguar (Tezcatlipoca) warriors of the Mexica and the simply clad warriors of Tetzcoco and then, as befitted a tlaltoani, his body was bundled and cremated (Townsend 2009:74). The three polities involved in this victory then divided the lands of the Tepaneca and tributees among themselves and formed the Triple Alliance. Tlacopan gained control of the western basin, Tetzcoco gained the eastern basin as well as Acolhua and Chichimec communities, and the Mexicas gained the southern Toltec and northern Chichimec Basin towns. Leaders dispensed the vast majority of acreage so acquired to their families and selves, and barrios received a parcel of land for maintaining their temples and cults. Warfare would now become the principal way that landholdings and tribute wealth would increase. Huitzilopochtli was elevated into the group of major deities of the Basin and the defeated warriors were used to construct causeways to Tenochtitlan (Figures 6 and 7) (Chipman 2005:14–15). The office of cihuacoatl (internal affairs director) was separated from that of tlatoani (state affairs director) in 1417 with the appointment of Tlacaelel, brother of the new tlatoani Chimalpopoca and the following tlatoani Moteuczoma Ihuilcamina. Tlacaelel

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acted as city director and king’s advisor for about 50 years spanning four Mexica speakers (Schroeder 2016). In the 1430s, Tlacaelel had warriors seize and burn the codices of those groups the Mexica defeated along the southern lake shore, then all Mexica codices as well, and ordered the rewriting of Mexica history to claim descent from the Toltecs. This new history of the Mexica included the words of the deity Huitzilopochtli promising to guide them to the perfect place and then to win them dominion over all the people who would lavish all the wealth of the world on the Mexica leaders (Townsend 2009). To assert their Toltec claims, the Mexica copied friezes, atlantids, chacmools, standard bearers, warrior figures, name glyphs, and colonnaded halls from Tula (Kristan-Graham and Kowalski 2011:30) (The Toltec glory in arts, calendrics, humanities, and politics and the belief that Cortés was the returning Quetzalcoatl now appear to have been a thing of Aztec myth and Franciscan opportunism [e.g., Kristen-Graham and Kowalski 2011]). Prior to the rise of the emperor Itzcoatl and the defeat of the Tepaneca of Azcapotzalco, Huitzilopochtli was at best a minor god . . . With their rise to power, the Mexica began to transform him into a solar/celestial divinity. Huitzilopochtli came to share a similar set of powers and attributes with Tezcatlipoca, and eventually he became almost interchangeable with the sun god, Tonatiuh. (Schwaller 2019:155)

Following a plague of locusts in 1446, flood in 1449, and four years of famine from 1450 to 1454, Tlacaelel elevated Huitzilopochtli and his mother Coatlicue to equal status with the Toltec creator deities, especially Quetzalcoatl, demoting the sun god Tonatiuh and hunt god Mixcoatl. The feast of Panquetzaliztli changed from a celebration of Quetzalcoatl’s birth and victories to that of Huitzilopochtli’s birth and victories. Tlacaelel elaborated on the blood thirst of Huitzilopochtli, pronouncing the need for a continuous supply of food to keep the Sun on its cycle and greatly increasing the number of sacrificial victims needed (Chipman 2005:15). But not just any captives would do. The bodies of civilized men of Tepeaca, Calpan, Tecalli, Cuauhtinchan, and Cholula were far preferable to rude or barbaric men from other places. Ingham (1986:109) sees in these changes the spiritual defeat of Quetzalcoatl, the farmer’s god (also ejected from Tula and Teotihuacan), by Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca, the gods of the nobility, “a charter for conquest, human sacrifice, and dominion of warrior nobles over farmers and artisans.” Tlacaelel also gathered and sent a party of sixty priests and diviners northward to look for Aztlan, the Mexica island homeland. Somewhere north of Tula, a supernatural being turned them all into birds, they flew to Aztlan, and they spoke to an old man who led them to the abode of Huitzilopochtli’s mother (Coatlicue), to whom they gave rich offerings. In return, she uttered a prophecy that the Mexica would be conquered. The party then returned to Tenochtitlan and relayed the prophecy. Moteuczoma Ihuilcamina was elected tlatoani in 1440, ruling until 1469. He and his counterpart tlatoani of Tetzcoco, Nezahualcóyotl, along with Tlacaelel, undertook the building of shrines and construction of ceremonial centers throughout their territories. Moteuczoma I ordered modifications to the plaza in front of the Sun Pyramid at Teotihuacan (Townsend 2009:37). This new ritual platform, located in the middle of the Avenue of the Dead, was the scene of ceremonies commemorating the creation of the Fifth Sun.

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Military victories continued under the tlatoani Axayacatl. First came the subjugation in 1473 of Tlatelolco, then Toluca in 1475–1476, but then came a loss to Tarascans in 1478 (Townsend 2009). The Aztecs adopted the Xipe Totec cult during the reign of Axayacatl (1469–1481) (Pauls 2006), placing it in the “Flaying of Men” feast. After 1500, tlatoani Ahuitzotl expanded the number of Aztec ceremonial centers with projects at Tepoztlán, Malinalco (both just southwest of the Basin), and Calixtlahuaca in the Toluca Valley to the west. A temple hewn out of bedrock in Malinalco begun in 1501 asserted victory over their Malinalli cousins. This temple complex was used for eagle warrior initiations and for bloodletting rites of local leaders to seal a pact with the earth deities (Townsend 2009:106). At nearby Tepoztlán, a temple was built on the top of a stony projection marking the incorporation of the local cults to the goddess Mayahuel and god Ome Tochtli in 1502. The feast cycle was engraved in stone there (Brotherston 2005). At Calixtlahuaca, a circular temple-platform was built for ceremonies directed at Ehecatl/ Quetzalcoatl and supplied with an idol of the deity wearing a bird-bill mask (Townsend 2009). The expansion of the empire spread these and other cults (and Nahuatl) throughout Anahuac.

2.3 Aztecs 1502–1519 Aztec social organization was probably a moiety social arrangement of clans grouped together into earth/water (female) and sky (male) divisions with corresponding patron deity cults expressed in politics, ceremonies, marriage, and economy. From Spanish-era documents we learn that the moieties may have been embedded in the political division of tlatoani – ordained by Huitzilopochtli (sky) – and the official known as cihuacoatl, woman snake, filled by a man. One scholar believes that the city’s founder, chief Tenoch, came from the male “spear house” calpulli and worked with another chief of the “female place of command” (Townsend 2009:61, 142). The Mixtecs of Puebla and Oaxaca also had moieties but populated the feminine side of political offices with real women officials (Sousa 2017). Each of the quadrants of Tenochtitlan were atlepeme themselves – Moyotlan, Teopan, Atzacoalco, and Cuepopan – separated by causeways and a main street (Mundy 2015:57; Figures 6 and 52). Each altepetl was further subdivided into calpulli, essentially lineages (people having a common ancestor) with occupational specialties and particular cults. Farmers were assigned agricultural land to work, inherit, and pay taxes on by their calpulli leaders, while the warriors and nobles gained private land and tributees through battlefield bravery and strategic marriages. Nobles began using non-calpulli labor, quickly creating a landless social class. The landless people may have formed new cults and, given the practice of groups to incorporate newcomers and their cults, as rural people moved into Tenochtitlan minor cults should have increased within the city. Farmers had cults that did not focus on sun, war, and elite validation (Huitzilopochtli) but focused on the agricultural/fertility deities, using the tonalpoualli and the Feast cycle (Appendix I) in various forms. The empire was organized into inner and outer zones for tribute collection. Eleven resource centers were located around the Basin proper and eleven outposts controlled the

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flow of goods from the four provinces along with sixteen more outposts, for a total of thirty-eight tribute districts. Each province had a head town: Atotonilco, Taxco, Chalco, Cuauhtochco. Textiles, paper, honey, wooden bowls, salt, shells, and varnish were paid every nine feasts in Ochpaniztli and Tlacaxipehualiztli; regalia, gold, jade, maize, and beans once a year in Etzalcualiztli; and metal items, copal, and timber quarterly, based on the Matricula Codex (Brotherston 2005). On the eve of the Conquest, the Aztec realm of Anahuac (Figure 8) is estimated to have encompassed some 11 million people, 400+ towns and communities, and an area equal to that of Spain, France, and England combined (Carrasco and Sessions 2011); Tenochtitlan itself may have had 300,000 persons in 60,000 households (Coe and Koontz 2013:200). The Mexica tlatoani sitting at the head of government was Moteuczoma II, whose reign began in 1502. Moteuczoma II was a deeply religious man who made pilgrimages to Teotihuacan multiple times to consult oracles living in a cave under the Pyramid of the Sun, and frequently consulted diviners in Tenochtitlan. He maintained multiple wives and their children, concubines and their children, palaces, temples, zoo, gardens, and armies. He was addressed in a unique language. In his requisite pre-installation military endeavor, his troops subjugated large portions of modern Guerrero and the Xoconochco region of

Figure 8 Anahuac in 1519 with history of Aztec tributary additions. (Photo by Kaidorderivative modified by Rowanwindwhistler used under Creative Commons SA 4.0 license, rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45525295

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modern Chiapas (Figure 8). Other acts of his caused social upheaval inside Tenochtitlan. He attempted to undermine calpulli cults by relocating artisans into his court and farmers onto the lands of nobles. He decreed that all palace staff be from noble families. Moteuczoma II shared the apocalyptic expectations of prior kings, which foretold the violent end of Mexica dominion, and he suspected that the end could come during his reign. He also decided to delay the New Fire ceremony from 1506 until 1507 (which was later blamed in part for the military defeat of the Aztecs in 1521). He knew well the protocol for confronting a god and sent splendid gifts to the coast to honor and satiate the being who stepped ashore in 1519.

2.4 Aztec Religion in 1519 Ancient and pervasive in Mesoamerica were the philosophical underpinnings of (1) divine energy, or teotl, (2) a maize–human continuum, and (3) a covenant with the deities. The fundamental belief in Mesoamerican (even all America) religion was that of teotl. Teotl, as unpacked by Maffie (2014), is perpetual movement, recombining, renewing, and transmitting energy. Teotl coursed through the cosmos in dual or inamic pairs, whose partners struggled with each other, such as day/night, birth/death, male/female, creation/ destruction. Teotl was encapsulated by a wide variety of vessels called ixiptla or teixiptla such as a seed, paint, bark, hide, the human body, and deities. Material was enlivened by teotl as well. The plethora of deities in Mesoamerica was the result of a belief that aspects of teotl coalesced in patterned ways as well as ethnic differences in names for these vessels. Teotl itself was a process, not an entity, “the weaving and the woven” (Maffie 2014:13). Time captured cycles of teotl. The three largest cycles of time were human time, active gods’ time during which the calendar was generated, and the most ancient, the transcendent time of the gods in Omeyocan, a time of silence (Carrasco and Sessions 2011:66). Both periods of the gods continued during human time. Smaller cycles of time were those of Venus, the sun (year and day, equinoxes, Feasts), the moon, the Pleiades, the human lifespan, veintenas, and trecenas. Aztec religious practice was directed at the renewal of these essential cycles. Obviously, cycles intersected occasionally, providing yet another obligation and opportunity to bring about renewal, and indicated their perpetual becoming. Because the deities controlled time and infused time units with potential, “it was crucial that events happen at the right time” (Boone 1994:115) and the creation of calendars was essential for this end. The solar calendar was based on 360 days of the solar cycle divided into veintenas, each 20 days long, followed by five days during which bad winds blew and all people hid inside to avoid contact with the women monsters who descended to earth. This calendar was that designed by the Toltecs and with the same day signs as those used by the Mixtecs. Each veintena was the period of feasting devoted to particular deities, feasts that were the focus of the Aztec state religious apparatus. Another calendar was the tonalpoualli, the divination calendar, divided into twenty groupings of trecenas, thirteen named days documented in the colonial-era Codex

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Borbonicus (Mexica) and prequauhtemoc (before the last Mexican tlatoani) Codex Borgia (from Cholula). Each day was divided into halves, overseen by a deity. This calendar was consulted by midwives to read the fate of a birthdate and other ritual specialists for determining the best time to undertake any activity. It was also used in timing calpulli small cult activities and feasts. A third sacred calendar was the 52-year cycle at the conclusion of which the New Fire ceremony was held. This Fifth Sun was slated to end violently at the conclusion of one of these cycles. Maize was the primary food in Mesoamerica. The era of farming was initiated by Quetzalcoatl some 5,200 years ago according to the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Remains of the beings of the Fourth Sun were brought out of the earth to the sky realm of Tamoanchan, as seeds grow, and then to the goddess Cihuacoatl who ground them into flour on a metate with a mano exactly as she would process maize kernels. It is said that maize and humans were created simultaneously in the beginning of the Fifth Sun. Because they share a common origin, because they are twins, maize and humans have the same life cycle and body shape. The tassel on the mature cob is called “hair” and the plant has “arms” and “feet”. Plants are young and fresh in the springtime and dry and old in the fall just as humans are in their life cycle. The maize field is rectangular as is the house, the earth, and the safe space created by the gods for humans. The gods gave humans yellow corn and white corn, blue corn and red corn with which they could make offerings, giving of their bodies for its creation. People, then, reciprocate providing the food for the gods in the form of human blood and hearts and honor the sacrifice of the gods with remembrance ceremonies. Curiously, images of maize deities are absent in Central Mexico until the Late Postclassic period, the first being Centeotl (giver of maize, cotton, chia, camotes) and two other youthful male gods, Xochipilli and Macuilxóchitl (Miller and Taube 1993:109). Xilonen (female) was tender maize, Centeotl sacred maize, Chicomecoatl (female), old maize and seed. All were celebrated in state feasts held between late February and early September. For all Mesoamericans, elite religious practice involved honoring the covenant made with a patron deity and to the creator, fertility, and sacrifice deities. It was important not to forget the debt humans owed the gods at the proper time in the proper way in the proper places in order to insure earth’s continuation and a deity’s patronage, although the wars and captive taking in many cases was motivated more by political struggles (Townsend 2019). State and altepetl cults and their priests were regulated by the Feasts calendar (Appendix I). Lineage/calpulli and individual devotions were controlled also by the flow of the divination calendar (tonalpoualli) and were performed when circumstances dictated, as well as by scheduled increase and thanksgiving rituals. For the farmer, midwife, artisan, and market vender religion “probably never was a doctrinaire system; rather, it is more the result of direct personal experience of the supernatural in dreams [and visions] for the commoners], [and] in states of religious ecstasy, hallucinogen-induced trances, and altered states of consciousness” for the ritual specialist (Knab 2006:1). The Aztecs were pantheistic (Maffie 2014), believing in multiple manifestations of divine energy, known as deities; 1,600 deities existed at the beginning of the Fifth Sun.

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The dozens of named deities resulted from several factors – male and female duality in each domain, the custom of clans to give their own name to a deity, and the many facets of teotl. Scholars have ordered and reordered these deities by theme, by domain, by ethnic group, etc. For instance, Carrasco and Sessions (2011:50) see three themes for deities: creation, fertility, and sacrifice (also Mundy 2015:42). Townsend (2009) organizes the major cults into domains of primordial creators, fate, sky, wind, fire, earth, water, vegetation, land of the dead, and finally, culture heroes, naming fifty deities. Clendinnen (1991a) lists twenty-five deities. The state-run feasts honored thirty-two deities plus the ancestors and the mountains (Appendix I). Huitzilopochtli was commemorated in only three of the annual feasts and even more curious is the near total absence of this deity in any physical form in the Templo Mayor offerings and adornments or elsewhere in Anahuac (Boone 1989). The deities attributed with creation and fertility are tangled. The “Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas and Codex Telleriano-Remensis indicate that Xochiquetzal (female) and Seven Flower (male) were the Aztec creator couple Tonacacihuatl and Tonacatecuhtli” (Bassie-Sweet 2008:196). Other creator gods were Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Xiuhtecuhtli, and Tlaloc. A case has been made that Tezcatlipoca was the supreme Aztec deity (Saunders and Baquedano 2014; Schwaller 2019:155). His cult was adopted in areas inside and outside of Anahuac and was present among the Toltecs (Coe et al. 2019:178) as the all-powerful, arbitrary master of human destinies using his powers of darkness, jaguars, and magic; he was a great sorcerer. All of the Mexica tlatoani were teixiptla of Tezcatlipoca (Mundy 2015). Xiuhtecuhtli was the fire god, god of the cooking hearth in every home, of the fire burning in temples, at ball courts, and in palaces, and of the New Fire Ceremony. His role in human sacrifice was large (Carrasco and Sessions 2011:51). His female counterpart was Chantico. Creator deities were thought to be manifestations of specific mountains (Bassie-Sweet 2008) such as Matlalcueye who lived in a volcano near Tlaxcala, and Tlaloc at Mt. Tlaloc on the eastern side of the Basin. These sustenance mountains were vessels holding water and seeds. The animating teotl of a deity was captured through other vessels, as well, particularly the human body, idols, paintings, and vestments, all teixiptla of teotl. The two deities most often depicted/honored in the state-sponsored feasts, during the eighteen veintenas (Appendix I) were Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue, both of them ancient fertility deities. Tlaloc (Figure 9, left) was god of celestial water – gentle rain and snow, and killing hail and frost. His home was on a Mount Tlaloc, in Tlalocan, the origin of rain and the storehouse of maize and seeds. His shrines and the sacrifices to him were conducted on hundreds of mountain tops around central Mexico in multiple veintenas, and are so even today. Tlaloc was assisted by helpers, the four tlaloques, each controlling one of the four types of celestial water. Tlaloc was specifically remembered in seven of the eighteen veintena feasts and in several other all-patron feasts (Appendix I). In the Ceasing of Water feast (Atl Caualo), infants and young children were carried in processions on litters and then sacrificed in various elevated locations. The Little Vigil planting rituals (Tozoztontli) were held in the fields in early April. The Great Vigil (Huey Tozoztli) rites

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Figure 9 Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue. left: Tlaloc ceramic sculpture. (Templo Mayor Museum; photo by Ivan Peres used under Creative Commons SA 4.0 license. Image rendered in black and white and cropped) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tlaloc_Vasija.jpg. Right: Chalchiuhtlicue stone sculpture. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City)

blessed all seeds. Maize stalks were dressed and incensed. In the Eating of Maize-bean Porridge feast (Etzalcualiztli) commoners provided and ate the porridge while hearts and jewels were offered by the elite to Tlaloc and the lake waters. In the Feast of the Mountains (Tepeilhuitl), seed paste mountains were made and sacrificed as were five human teixiptla of mountain gods. In the latter half of December came the Descent of Water (Atemoztli) feast, during which Tlaloc was honored with more paste mountains made by commoners and then shot by priests before being eaten. Finally, the cycle concluded with a feast again honoring Tlaloc, the Rebirth (Izcalli) marked by the offering of tamales, stretching of children, pruning of maguey, feeding of fire, and presentation of the children at the local temple. Chalchiuhtlicue (Figure 9, right), the goddess of terrestrial water and freshwater, also dwelled in Tlalocan where these waters were stored. The veintenas dedicated specifically to Chalchiuhtlicue were the Ceasing of Water, Little Vigil, Great Vigil, Eating of Maizebean Porridge, and Rebirth (see earlier and Appendix I). She could withhold water causing drought or punish with flooding. She was present in the ahuehuete trees at springs, and in rivers coming down volcanoes and out of caves. People who drowned went to Tlalocan to serve her (Sahagún 1950–1982:2:151). Newborns and the dead were washed in her freshwater (Durán 1971:267). Chalchiuhtlicue had many other manifestations and functions. As the deity Cihuacoatl “Snake Woman,” whose name was given to the second most powerful position in Mexica

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government, she was linked to the earth, birth, agriculture, and conquest (Townsend 2009:75). As the Earth Mother, she was known generically as Tonan, Toci, and also as Greenery Arrives for Regeneration. Durán (1971:221) equated Chalchiuhtlicue, Chicomecoatl, and Xilonen (tender ear of green corn). Bassie-Sweet (2008) sees Toci (Grandmother), Teoteo Innan (mother of the gods), Tlalli Iyollo (heart of earth), and Temazcalteci (grandmother of the sweat bath) as the same deity, perhaps three ages of one goddess. Under all of these names, she had cults of “devotees in all the districts of Tenochtitlan, who worshipped her in temples as well as at domestic altars in their homes” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:176). Toci’s primary temple was at Tocititlan, a “hermitage, outside Tenochtitlan . . . in front of the Cihuateocalli, the Divine Women’s House. [Cihuacoatl] was worshiped in the temple of Huitzilopochtli in Tenochtitlan. However, she had a more sumptuous temple called Tlillan dedicated to her in Xochimilco, where she was the patron goddess” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:183). In addition to these two deities and their cults, dozens of other cults were maintained inside and outside of Anahuac, particularly those of the Feathered Serpent/Venus/ Quetzalcoatl, lunar-earth goddesses, Xipe totec, Ome Tochtli, and Huitzilopochtli. In fact, the most innovative part of Mexica religion was the cult of Huitzilopochtli – the fleshless one – the other cults having existed long before the Mexica. The history of this cult before 1450, when Mexica history was rewritten to claim his patronage as the sun/war god, is lost. The feast of Panquetzaliztli was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and appears to have been a remaking of the life story of Quetzalcoatl. Rites for these cults were scheduled in the state-maintained feast cycle, presented in Appendix I. This 360-day cycle of veintenas can be found in the Codex Borgia, implying its existence in Cholula in the 1460s (Milbrath 2007), and several of the individual cult rites can be traced back to Teotihuacan (Milbrath 2000). “The same sequence of Nahuatl festivals was recorded in a number of cities throughout the Aztec domain, as well as those in the independent province of Tlaxcala and in Oaxaca at Teotitlan del Camino” and among the Otomi with some variation in starting dates (Milbrath 2007:171). In the hands of the Mexica, the feast cycle was an amalgamation of different ethnic feasts. Brotherston (2005) states that the the mountain cults existed in the Basin prior to the arrivals of Nahua immigrants, that the pole ceremony capping the events of the Great Feast of the Dead was Otomi in origin, that the focus on water birds during Quecholli reflects Chichimec ritual, and Panquetzaliztli was, obviously, Mexica in focus but probably not in origin (For detailed information on each feast, see Arnold [1999]). In addition to these annual feasts, every eight years over eight days, the ancient rites of Atamalcualiztli honoring Xochiquetzal and Quetzalcoatl/Venus were observed. Every 104 years it would coincide with the New Fire ceremony.The Mexica New Fire ceremony, adopted from the Chichimecs, was held every 52 years, the first one observed by the Mexica in 1090 and the last one in 1559 under cover of the funeral services conducted for Carlos V (Brotherston 2005:11–13). It typically occurred during the nemontemi or last five days of the solar year. On the eve of the first day, household goods, idols, and hearth stones were discarded into the lake and replaced with new items; streets and houses were swept; and all household and temple fires were extinguished. In Tenochtitlan, an honored captive was led to the top of Citlaltepec/Huixachtlan Mountain on the east side of Lake

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Tetzcoco and his heart was extruded when the Pleiades appeared overhead. In the opened chest cavity, priests drilled a fire and the spark derived was carried by runners to Tenochtitlan and the Templo Mayor. From there, runners carried an ember to each town, then on to hamlet temples from which citizens gathered an ember to ignite home fires. Failure to kindle the ceremonial flame would spell the end of this Sun and the descent of the women monsters who would devour all beings. By 1519 then, Aztec religious practice consisted of eighteen veintena feasts sponsored by the state, centering on the Templo Mayor and its ceremonial compound in Tenochtitlan (Figure 7) but also observed in the major altepeme around the lake. To those observances were added individual altepetl cult feasts; separate schools for elite and common children in altepeme centers that taught prayers and lore; temple cults; cult centers with pilgrimages (e.g., Cholula, Chalma, Tepoztlán); shrines (e.g., Mt. Tlaloc, Tepeyac, numerous ahuehuete trees, springs); field and home rituals; healing, dream, divination specialists; and a large priest cohort. Shrines/temples, prayers, and offerings provided the remembrance demanded by the deities. A tremendous proportion of market and tribute economic activity conducted throughout Mesoamerica produced, moved, and sold the regalia of priests, leaders, and warriors, processional décor, and the offerings. Aztec religion was shaped by ideas far older than the Mexica and by migration through foreign territories. The covenant between the beings of this world and the other worlds was one of reciprocity and fragility, either partner easily disappointed by the other. The trajectory of Aztec religious history was one of greater state investment and control; greater human sacrifice and warfare; and greater expenditure of resources to stave off the expected apocalypse. Table 1 offers a summary of the development of Aztec religion and empire.

3 spanish catholicism of the 15th century Prince Fernando of Aragon and Princess Isabella of Castile married in 1469 though both Castile and Aragon maintained their own laws after this unification. As Queen of Castile (1474) and King of Aragon (1479), they ruled nearly four-fifths of the Iberian Peninsula (Figure 1). This joint rule signified the end of Iberia as a polity, as both Navarra and Portugal had recovered their respective territories from Al-Andalus in the prior century (Matsumori 2019). In 1492, Fernando and Isabella defeated the Muslims in Granada, completing an eight century-long struggle to retake the peninsula. Believing that religious uniformity was essential, they established the Spanish Inquisition in 1480 to purge Spain of heresy, especially among the Conversos, Moriscos, and Catholic clergy. They issued a decree requiring all Jews to convert to Christianity or leave Spain, and soon after, sponsored Columbus’ first voyage to the West Indies. Alexander VI’s Bulls of Donation in May 1493 named them “Católicos,” establishing the Monarquia Hispanica, solidifying the end of Muslim rule in any part of the peninsula, and dividing the New World between Portugal and Spain. King Carlos I of Spain (r. 1516–1519) became Holy Roman Emperor Carlos V in 1519 and ruled until abdicating to son Felipe II (1556–1598). Carlos was intent on creating an empire that supported Catholicism. The grandson of Isabella and Fernando, he was

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Table 1 Timeline for the development of Aztec religion and empire 6000 BCE

human sacrifice evident in Ohio River Valley

5000 BCE

domestication of maize in Guerrero/Oaxaca

4000 BCE

earthen platform mounds on northern Gulf coastal plain; maize becomes a staple food

3113 BCE

start date for Mexica, Maya, and Olmec calendars

1000 BCE

Olmec cities, Olmec and Mayan earthen platform mounds, mass graves, ball courts on Gulf plain

500 BCE

end of Olmecs

200 BCE

city states of Cholula, Monte Alban, Cuicuilco; many others in Maya region

0 (Start of the Common Era)

Itzpapalotl creation story documented in Pecos River rock art

200

construction underway at Teotihuacan

648

first use of Chichimec calendar; Chichimec exodus from Chicomoztoc

650

demise of Teotihuacan megapolity; New Fire Ceremony depicted at Xochicalco sometime between 650-900

680–683

evidence of solstice and equinox ceremonies later found among Aztecs Feasts

700s on

increased presence of a Feathered Serpent cult

726

projected birth of the Fifth Sun according to Toltecs

778

compilation of the Toltec calendar

900–1100

origin of Tezcatlipoca cult

950

Toltecs in city of Tula

1090

first Mexica New Fire Ceremony, in year 1 Rabbit

1100

Toltec founding of Culhuacan, chinampas town in Basin,

1122

beginning of child sacrifices to rain god

1162

Toltecs adopt Ixcuiname (Cihuateteo) goddess cult from the eastern Huastecs including arrow sacrifice

1168

Toltec leader Huemac abandons Tula (or 1156), moves to Chapultepec in Basin of Mexico; Mexica migration from Aztlan begins

1215

Mexica leave Tula area

1226

Acolhua Aztec leader Xolotl moves group into Basin of Mexico

1230

Tepanec Aztecs are in Basin of Mexico

1250

Otomis in Basin of Mexico

1257

Mexica Aztecs in Basin of Mexico Mexica live among and serve Culhua Toltecs as mercenaries

Migrants, Mendicants, and Mary

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Table 1 (cont.) 1299

first highland double pyramid at Tenayuca

1325

Mexica settle on island in Lake Tetzcoco, begin building Tenochtitlan

1345

Mexica split from Tlatelolca; founding of Tlatelolco

1323

Mexica sacrifice a texiptla, wife of Huitzilopochtli

1375

Acamapichtli becomes tlatoani of Mexica

1417

offices of tlatoani and cihuacoatl separated

1426

Mexicas defeat Tetzcoco

1427

defeat of Tepaneca; Triple Alliance formation

1430s

Toltec groups’ annals destroyed, Mexica history rewritten

1450s

human sacrifice greatly increased in Tenochtitlan as Huitzilopochtli’s role is elevated in theology to Sun god

1469

4th enlargement of Templo Mayor and construction of House of the Eagle Warriors; circular stone of Coyolxauhqui carved, emplaced

1470s

Xipe Totec cult adopted by Mexicas

1479

carving of the Sun Stone

1501

construction of ceremonial centers at Malinalco, Tepotzlan

1502

Cult of Ome Tochtli (pulque) adopted from Tepoztlán, Morelos

1507

Mexica New Fire Ceremony

1519

Cortés lands at Yucatan

1521

Quauhtemoc surrenders to allied native–Spanish force

raised in Flanders. During his lifetime he collected the titles of King of Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia; Emperor; Duke of Milan; and Duke of Burgundy (including most of the provinces of the Low Countries), ruled through his aunt Margaret of Austria. He organized the Spanish empire to produce wealth, maintained strong relations with the Church, and stopped the advance of Ottoman Turks at Vienna and Tunis. During his reign, Spain, along with Portugal, dominated sea trade, world exploration, and conquest. He established the Council of the Indies, a body concerned with religious practice and doctrine as well as economics, and with the Pope organized the Council of Trent. Carlos abdicated the monarchy and retired to an Hieronymite monastery in Yuste, Extremadura, in 1556. Thereafter, Felipe II received the Kingship of Spain and its territories, Sicily (called “Sicily and Jerusalem”), Naples, and later the Philippines. During the reigns of these two men Spanish Catholic missionizing would expand to encompass all of the Indies, all of Mexico, Central and South America with the exception of Brazil, the Philippine Islands, southern China, India, and the southern tier of the modern United States.

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3.1 The Institutional Church Despite a centralized hierarchical structure to the beliefs, practices, and clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, there was often a great variety of local practice and belief throughout Medieval Europe. Roman Catholic clergy of the Middle Ages and later were organized into “the Regulars” (many of whom were in mendicant orders), the seculars, and the laity. Among the Regulars were men and women in Orders ranked as 1st Order (men) and 2nd Order (women), some of which were monastic or cloistered, and others of which lived among the laity, begging and preaching. The 3rd Orders, known as Tertiaries, were developed for pious, often wealthy laity who continued to live in society. Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians, mendicant orders which did not have assigned churches or parishes, were first confirmed in the 1200s. These orders were chartered to exemplify poverty, to preach against heresy and heterodoxy, and to assist the secular clergy (Ozment 1980). In Europe, it was the Franciscans who did much of the preaching of the gospel in rural and isolated areas and the Dominican Preachers taught doctrine. There was great variety across the two dominant orders and their competition, intrigue, and theological disagreements shaped Spanish Catholicism. Primary among their disputes was the role and interpretation of Aristotle and his Islamic commentators in Christian theology (Ozment 1980). The seculars were priests who were not members of an order but rather were the men who tended the daily needs and education of the laity from a parish church. Multiple parishes were organized into dioceses headed by a bishop, under the direction of an archbishop, who oversaw several dioceses, and then ultimately answering to the Pope, the head of the Church, located in Rome. Archbishops and bishops, largely drawn from the seculars, worked out of cathedrals, and generally the Popes were derived from this pool. Parish priests depended on the laity for their physical sustenance, provided by tithes, wills, and confraternities. Fees were levied by Bishops and extracted from the tithes and were subject to egregious mismanagement (Peterson 1993). Few funds were provided by the church hierarchy for village churches, which were considered by the locals to belong “emphatically to the parishioners” and as such the ornaments, altarpieces, images, and chalices were all supplied by the laity (Hamann 2020:203). Monasteries were supported by lands, tribute money, fees for certain services, and donations made in individual wills, contributions by members and by wealthy, even royal, supporters (Turley 2014). One of the sharpest divides between secular and religious but also between the Franciscan, Augustinian, and Dominican Orders had to do with financing. For Franciscans in particular, monetary support was a source of contention given their pledge of poverty. Augustinians and Dominicans interpreted their vow of poverty in a different fashion and as a result had often more elaborate churches, monasteries, and material comforts, though still quite modest. The laity living in parishes typically belonged to sodalities known as confraternities, dedicated to specific cultic practices. In Spain, nearly everyone belonged to at least one confraternity, “including the unemployed, service workers and widows, who are normally excluded from guilds” (Flynn 1989:10). Some were male only, some female only, and others were mixed. The confraternities were responsible for processions; maintaining

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Figure 10 Hieronymite Monastery of Santa Maria de Guadalupe, Caceres, Spain, founded in the 12th century.

shrines and supporting the veneration of local saints (Starr-LeBeau 2008); caring for orphans; and staffing hospitals for the sick. Above all else, they saw to the burial of their members and requisite prayers. Extremadura’s Guadalupe monastery (Figure 10) enjoyed the support of several confraternities, including one devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe and one devoted to the Holy Eucharist, though by the mid-16th century the most popular confraternity was that devoted to the Passion of Christ (Starr-LeBeau 2003). These groups encouraged contrition, penance, and more frequent communion, offered relief from religious anxiety, diffused social strife, and kept peace in towns and rural areas. Much of lay and diocesan religious practice revolved around mandatory church feasts. Growing out of the early 13th century, the Feast of Corpus Christi, a devotion solely to the Eucharist, was instituted by Pope Urban IV and became quite popular with both Franciscans and Dominicans (Thibodeau 2006). By the middle of the 14th century, nearly all of Europe practiced a public procession of the Eucharist. This feast became a model for other processional practices, greatly influencing all other relic veneration (though the hierarchy maintained that the Eucharist itself was not a relic). Other feasts included the fifty-two Sundays, as well as celebrations of five events in Mary’s life and seven or more events in Jesus’ life. All of these dates precluded ordinary labor the evening before and the day of the celebration. Fasting and prayer were required

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at those times. In addition to these days, there were fasts/feasts associated with personal and town saints’ days. Individuals and towns made vows to a saint in expectation of protection by that saint and saintly intercession with Jesus, Mary, and/or God. All totalled, in the 16th century, citizens of Toledo had ninety-two required feast days, in Cuenca ninety-four days, and in Sigüenza eighty-eight days (Christian 1981b:175). Four aspects of Catholicism in the 15th century and early 16th century directly impacted the message and practice introduced into New Spain in the 16th century. These are the doctrine of purgatory and devotional and cultic activities for the dead, including indulgences; the growth of the Cult of the Virgin Mary; apocalypticism connected with Franciscan Millennialism and Cabala; and the 16th-century reform movements and the Council of Trent response known as the Counter Reformation, though many of the changes pre-date the Council’s sanction.

3.2 Purgatory The idea of a purification of Christian souls from any lingering, unconfessed sin before being in the presence of God in Heaven is present from at least the 2nd century in the works of the Alexandrian church fathers Clement and Origen. A century and half later, Augustine argued in City of God that prayers by the living were efficacious for the souls of the dead on their journey to heaven (Augustine 2009). Purgatory appears in various artistic and literary forms throughout the Middle Ages, significantly in a 14th-century illuminated manuscript known as the Breviary of Charles V (not to be confused with Carlos V). In the illuminated manuscript, “[t]wo large angels are pulling two souls up toward Heaven, and only the feet of these souls remain in the fire. Eleven heads represent a host of souls in purgatory of varying social conditions (we recognize a pope, a bishop, etc.), all immersed in the flames” (Le Goff 1984:368). None were exempt from the purification of purgatory (with the possible exception of Crusaders who had been granted a plenary indulgence by Pope Urban II in 1099). Vivid representations of the fate of the soul were found in songs, stories, and legends, inspiring Christians to engage in charitable works while living for the support of their deceased family in purgatory (and on their deathbeds for themselves, though this was somewhat regulated). In the Siete Partitas (1252), Alfonso X (r. 1221–1284) set guidelines for the amount Spaniards could give as charitable bequests in order to keep landed Christians from “willingly handing over entire estates to charity in exchange for the assurance of salvation” (Eire 1995:235). By the 15th century, most Spanish believed the dead entered into the afterlife through Purgatory where the soul was gradually cleansed of lingering and unconfessed sins. Heaven was not considered attainable for those who rejected Christianity (Jews, Muslims, and pagans) and almsgiving focused more on relatives’ purgatorial fate than on general support for the poor or the parish churches. As a doctrine, Purgatory was formally further clarified for Roman Catholics at the Council of Florence (1438–1455) just a few decades prior to Columbus’ voyages. The role of cultic practices for the dead, not only to support the dearly departed in purgatory but also to offer some relief for an individual facing their inevitable demise, underwent a profound transformation in the 16th century. Charity was considered one of

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the pillars at the gates of heaven (the other being masses) and had always been part of one’s Christian duty. The possibility of exploiting indulgences meant one could “literally buy one’s way into heaven – improve one’s chances of ever getting there – through almsgiving” despite whatever regulations had been established to limit that abuse (Eire 1995:232). It was here that the Protestant reformers hit the hardest, claiming that humans could never purify their souls through works but have only faith and hope for salvation as a gift from God before they died. This attack on purgatory, charitable bequests, and indulgences dramatically threatened Catholic death practices and resulted in even more grandiose funerals and wills after the Council of Trent verified all elements of practice (Eire 1995). By the end of the 16th century, through mandatory wills, the Spaniard was expected to pay for at least ten masses to be said after death toward reducing one’s time in Purgatory, and many people willed enough goods or cash to the Church to buy many more prayers and masses (thus supporting thousands of priests), even into perpetuity. Fearful that the cash would be insufficient or their memory would be lost to the succession of parish priests, family members were pressed into the priesthood and family chapels were built.

3.3 The Virgin Mary It is an understatement to say that honoring Mary, the mother of God, played a significant role in European Catholicism. This is more apparent when discussing her presence throughout the Iberian Peninsula. From discoveries of her image at Montserrat (1203), her revelation as La Antigua after the siege of Seville (1248), to the Guadalupe Monastery in Extremadura (1381), Mary was preeminent. Widespread devotion within the Marian cult included feasts celebrating Mary’s life, particularly the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary into heaven. This is further evidenced by the establishment of shrines, reports of visions, apparitions, and the discovery of miraculous objects. William Christian found 177 chapels (public, devotional centers outside of parish churches) in Spain in the 16th century dedicated to Mary (Christian 1981b:70–72). Many of these chapels or shrines were erected after Mary appeared to ordinary people in a seemingly ordinary landscape in remote places across Spain. As though waiting for the right moment, Mary revealed herself to Christians in order to restore public devotion. Mary’s role as the most important human person in the divine drama of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection was the site of tremendous theological creativity and conflict regarding the state of her own relationship to sin. The Virgin’s status as one free of the taint of Original Sin, humans’ inheritance from Adam and Eve, was a point of friction between Franciscans and Dominicans. The question is not whether Mary was without sin herself when she became the Mother of God but rather the timing of that sinless state. Franciscan theology focused on how Mary was prepared to be the ideal mother of God from the moment of her conception without sin in her mother Anne (Rubin 2009a). This theology, that Mary was herself conceived without sin, is known as The Immaculate Conception (limpia concepción). The Franciscan monastery of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios at Rábida celebrated the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as early as 1273.

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This theological proposition is now the dogma known as Immaculatist, and was advocated by the Franciscans throughout the Middle Ages. The minority report came from the Dominicans, equally devoted to the Virgin, who appeared to their founder Dominic de Guzman. The Dominicans, led by Thomas Aquinas, were Maculatist, meaning that they found a theological solution to the question of Mary’s relationship to Original Sin by arguing that she was cleansed of Original Sin at the Annunciation and, because of Christ in the womb, Mary was cleansed of all other sins (Stratton 1994). Therefore, Mary did not have to be born free of original sin in order to be the sinless mother of God. Despite Dominican Thomas Aquinas’ refined theological arguments, however, the Franciscan concept of the Immaculate Conception grew in popularity among the laity. Medieval Franciscans actively promoted the feast, and the Immaculate Conception was first officially celebrated in Spain by John I of Aragon in 1394. Mary’s Immaculate Conception remained a significant theology in Spain, and its popularity in artistic representations indicates a place of prominence for devotion to this belief (Stratton 1994). The Dominicans continued to oppose it until the 19th century when it was defined and accepted as the true dogma at Vatican I (1869). The Immaculate Conception would become a major feature of Marian devotion in the New World as part of the Marian cults. As Isabella I considered supporting the proposed trip to the Indies, Christopher Columbus waited at the monastery of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios at Rábida. Columbus was a strong supporter of the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception and carried this devotion with him on his first voyage. Sailing in the ship he named Santa Maria, he believed himself to be serving Mary (who was leading him as the Star of the Sea) as an apostle. Mary’s sinless role and bodily assumption make her the ideal conveyor of human prayers; as Jesus’ mother she “intercedes before the Son and the Son before the Father” (Martínez 2010:231). Mary participated in all phases of Jesus’ life – from childhood to crucifixion and resurrection, and her place in the divine family shaped her identity as coredeemer in the Middle Ages, a role that was amplified in theology, song, and art. Franciscan devotions and mysticism focused on Christ’s humanity, suffering (Francis receiving the stigmata supported this emphasis), and his redemptive death, connected with Mary’s participation and shared suffering in all aspects of Christ’s humanity. Through Mary’s acceptance of the divine will that crucified her son, her love shown for Christ on the via dolorosa, and her embrace of the cross, her suffering was understood as a parallel passion. The devotion to Mary as co-redeemer is prominent in the court of Alfonso X (1252–1284). The image of Mary as co-redeemer is also present in depictions of the last judgement where Mary, kneeling next to the figure of Christ showing the five wounds of the passion, bares her breast that fed him as an infant (Martínez 2010). Another significant component of the Marian cult is devotion to the rosary. Dominican legend claims that Mary herself appeared to the founder of the Order, Dominic Guzman (1170–1221), and taught him the rosary prayers (even though the first documented use of the rosary comes 200 years after Dominic’s death) (Rubin 2009a). In 1460, the Dominican Order sent the monk Alaine de Rupe throughout Western Europe to preach the Rosary. The first Confraternity of the Rosary was founded in 1475 in Cologne and in Venice in 1480 (Rubin 2009a). The rosary would become extremely popular in

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New Spain as all Dominican churches had a chapel devoted to the rosary and attendant confraternities. The Feast of the Most Holy Rosary (October 7) was made obligatory by Pope Gregory XIII in 1580. Not only providing succor, Mary provided military assistance in the reconquest, conquering pagan and Moorish space through hidden, forgotten, and found images (Remensnyder 2014). As an example, the mosque in Seville, built to replace a smaller much older 9th-century mosque, was constructed from 1172 to 1176, with completion of the minaret in 1198. After the siege of Seville in 1247–1248, Our Lady of Antigua was revealed to Fernando III (~1199–1252). He received a vision during prayer to Our Lady of Kings that the Lady of Antigua was in Seville waiting for him and would be revealed after his victory. As he toured the conquered mosque, a wall miraculously turned to glass, revealing La Antigua. After this revelation, Our Lady of Antigua became a conquistadora, the first image to enter mosques converted to churches. Columbus and Cortés made a pilgrimage to La Antigua before their respective voyages. Among the very first hermitages built in New Spain was that at La Antigua, Veracruz (Figure 11). She is now the patron of Panama (Figure 12). Another Marian miracle story points to an early Christian community who buried a statue of Mary near the Guadalupe River in the state of Extremadura when the Moors invaded in 714. The miraculous rediscovery of this black Madonna statue in 1381 led to the

Figure 11 The Rosario hermitage in La Antigua, Veracruz, perhaps the first constructed in New Spain. Location named for the Virgin of Antiquity, patron of Seville. (Photo by Air Villanueva used under Creative Commons SA 3.0 license. Image changed to black and white) https://commons.wikipedia.org/ wiki/File:Elrosario1.jpg

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Figure 12 Spanish Virgins important for 16th-century Spaniards in Spain and New Spain. Upper left: Valvanera (image in the monastery of La Rioja). (Photo by Muro de Aguas used under Creative Common SA 3.0 license. Image changed to black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Virgen_de_Valvanera.jpg#/; Upper right: Mercy/Merced sheltering Columbus and natives by Alejo Fernandez 1535 (retablo in the Real Alcázar of Seville); Lower left: La Antigua (retablo in the Cathedral of Seville). (Photo by Jose Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro used under Creative Common SA 3.0 license. Rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/ w/index.php?curid=25342691; Lower right: Juquila (image resides in the Marianita Church, Mexico City). (Photo by C. Claassen)

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establishment of a Hieronymite monastery near the discovery site. Hieronymites are followers of Saint Jerome, the first translator of the Jewish scriptures to Latin, and many of those monks were Conversos and scholars. The monastery was devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1389 (Figure 10). This shrine was second in significance only to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela (see Figure 45) (Hernández 2014). Through their association with the Virgin, those monks enjoyed royal recognition. It was at this monastery that Queen Isabella I and King Fernando II signed the documents that authorized the first voyage of Christopher Columbus. On the second voyage in 1493, Columbus named an island Guadipea for Guadalupe (Guzauskyte 2014). After surviving fierce storms during the second return voyage Columbus made a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine and also to the shrine of Santa María de la Cinta in Huelva. Monks from the Guadalupe monastery were sent to Hispaniola in 1516–1517 to assay the claims made by priests that natives were being brutalized by encomenderos. Franciscan monks who hailed from Extremadura shepherded Mary’s miraculous appearance on Tepeyac Hill north of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1531, although devotions to her were small during the 16th century (Wilson 2004). Marian shrines, founded for apparitions and miraculous images of the Virgin, were important to Columbus, Cortés, and other men of the age. From at least 1484 Christopher Columbus enjoyed close relations with noted Franciscans and was himself a 3rd Order Franciscan (Lara 2014). The shrine at Rábida, home to the cult of Nuestra Senora de los Remedios, remained significant to many aspects of the early voyages to the New World. The Pinzón brothers, captains of the other two boats from that first voyage, are buried there, and later, Hernán Cortés, Gonzalo de Sandoval, and Francisco Pizarro prayed there; the latter two are also buried in this Franciscan monastery. The conquistadors to New Spain carried several small virgin statues (some of whom were characteristically colored black): Remedios/La Conquista (Rábida Spain – Franciscan), Valvanera (Rioja, Spain – Benedictine), Dolores (or Seven Swords – Franciscan), Soledad (Dominican), Merced (Mercedarian – Cataluña, Spain), La Antiqua, and Guadalupe (Figure 12). Several of these “saddle” images were given to native leaders or hidden during the conquest, later to be found. Important shrines developed around each find (Kroger and Granziera 2012). Other images were brought from Spain by missionaries over the next five decades, such as Our Lady of Juquila in 1552, which is important today in Oaxaca.

3.4 Millennialism/Apocalypticism In nearly every Christian era there have been both apocalyptic and millennial movements. For the apocalypticists, the end of this world will come with the return of Christ described in the book of Revelation. Christ, with a host of Archangels, will destroy all the enemies of God and establish the 1,000-year reign of God on earth. After that destruction, all the righteous will live in the New Jerusalem, center of the kingdom of God. Apocalyptic-minded early Christians drew hope for the overthrow of an unjust regime and establishment of a paradise from the gospel of Mark and the book of Revelation. Predictions of the return of Christ and how to interpret the signs presaging that return are part of the fabric of Christian history from the 2nd to the 21st century.

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Parallel to that interpretation of the book of Revelation is a millennial interpretation that suggests Christ will return after a thousand years of peace and prosperity has been realized here on earth. Prior to that return Christians may live in a millenial kingdom, as the Apostles did in the Primitive church described in Acts 2:41–47, where all humans live in harmony, their needs met, worshipping God and preparing the world for his return. These two threads of world-transforming theology met in the New World.

3.4.1 Joachim de Fiore and the Spiritual Franciscans There is a great deal of scholarly debate over how influential to consider Joachim de Fiore (~1130–1202), but it seems undeniable that his influence on Spiritual Franciscans and the viri espirituales [spiritual men] colored a prominent swath of the tapestry of medieval and early-modern millennialism and apocalypticism. Bernard McGinn’s (1998) overview of early Christian apocalyptic writing incisively situates Joachim’s millennial–apocalyptic theology within the larger tradition of apocalyptic thinking in the history of Christianity. He traces the threads of Joachim’s interpretation of Revelation, highlighting Joachim’s differences and divergences from Augustine and the Scholastics on how to best interpret the complicated book of Revelation. Joachim’s prophetic understanding of history led him to predict the coming Millennium, which he placed in a third age, that of humanity, an age he believed he would see come to fruition. His threefold interpretation of history remained influential well into the 17th century and is as follows: first, the Age of the Father found in the Hebrew Bible and the world of the Israelites superseded by the Gentiles/Christians; second, the Age of the Son that established the power of the Church in the world and which he believed was ending; and third, the Age of the Holy Spirit, directly on the horizon and ushering in a world of contemplation and peace for a thousand years. Joachim’s third age posited a coming pre-Antichrist millennial age of monastic dominance for all Christians led by two groups of Regulars – one of preachers, the other of hermits – before the final defeat of the Antichrist (see McGinn 2001:5). Joachim predicted Jerusalem’s return to Christian rule and the dominance of a mendicant Christianity – predictions that found new resonance for Joachimites, living through the momentous changes of the late 15th century. The expansion of the Christian World both to the East and the West of Rome led to a vision of the dawn of a new age for Christendom. Part of Joachim’s approach to interpreting the book of Revelation was to emphasize poverty as the clear marker of the coming Age of the Spirit and the viri spirituals as the leaders of ecclesiastical renewal. Franciscans understood the New World discoveries and Christian expansion in the 16th century to be the end of a golden age of the Church (Joachim’s Second Age), as all the peoples of the world would soon be converted. They hailed the discovery of the Americas as one of the signs of the millennial age and the perfect moment to realize their millennial church-age (McGinn 2001), the ideal place to establish their model of poverty and piety. “Franciscan documents of the [early 16th century] called for ‘two nations’ or ‘independent republics,’ one of natives and the other of colonists, in order to quarantine the [pre-fall of Adam] Indians from the epidemic of sin that would contaminate their precontact purity” (Graziano 1999:164).

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The practice of poverty by the Franciscans was strict, even by monastic standards: one pair of shoes, no access to money, not even through an intermediary, questing for alms. The Spiritual Franciscans, the viri spirituals, took this austerity to a new level, rejecting even the use (as opposed to ownership) of objects, housing, and community. “The Spirituals espoused poor use (usus pauper), that is, a life of absolute destitution either as vagrant preachers with total material insecurity or as hermits” (Canning 2018:257). These disputes over which interpretation of poverty was the most Christ-like had been an issue for the entire Order since the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). In addition to hostility from some popes, mendicants had been struggling with resistance from other Orders who did not embrace their strident approach to poverty. The mendicants, particularly the impoverished Spiritual Franciscans who considered themselves the true followers of Christ, were outraged by the increasing wealth of the Catholic Church, particularly under the influence of Pope Julius II (1503–1513), who exploited the practice of indulgences to an extreme. Hotly debated and steadily regulated by councils, indulgences were being exploited in order to finance the palatial Basilica in Rome. This extravagant papal Basilica and other profligate projects in Rome contributed to the mendicants’ belief that the Church had lost its sense of the importance and value of poverty and gave fuel to Martin Luther and other reformers. Fourteenth- and 15th-century Joachimists maintained the position that the Church was corrupt – so much so that the Antichrist would rise through the Church, ultimately attaining a position at the top of the hierarchy. Many of the mendicants, and the Franciscans in particular, were concerned about the kinds of wealth both given to and used by the Church through the 14th and 15th centuries, fearing the corrupting influence of extravagance on the hierarchy and the laity. The notion that a pope would be the Antichrist and members of the Church would collaborate with him was one of many Joachimite ideas that were later picked up by Martin Luther and adopted by Protestants. In the New World, the Franciscans found people who were not caught in what they saw as the trap of European decadence and wealth. Indigenous peoples were naturally poor and thereby naturally closer to Christ. The possibility for building a new Christendom with potential (mendicant) converts added to the millennial fervor that so energized the Franciscans in the New World. Apocalyptic zeal was not the sole province of wandering priests. There were apocalyptic influences at the Spanish court, such as the presence of Sor María de Santo Domingo, who was affiliated in different ways with both Franciscans and Dominicans. She was a prophet who “delivered sermons-in-trance, underwent ecstatic crucifixions, and even claimed she was Christ” (McKendrick and MacKay 1991:93–94). Her prophetic pronouncement that Fernando II was the Last World Emperor, known as the Encubierto (The Hidden One) and Murcielago (the Bat), who would not die before “conquer[ing] the Holy House of Jerusalem and the whole world” was well known (McKendrick and MacKay 1991:97). The Last World Emperor was a Spanish legend with Joachimite roots, connecting this secular ruler with the Angelic Pope who would lead the world into the reign of Christ after the conversion of all the people in the world and the reconquest of Jerusalem. From a much different angle, Christopher Columbus also contributed to an atmosphere of apocalyptic expectation based in the Old World. He understood himself to be

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part of a larger story, one that involved the reconquest of Jerusalem, made possible by the wealth discovered by the New World and realized by the Last World Emperor, Fernando II. Something of an exegete himself, Columbus used Joachim de Fiore’s interpretations to understand biblical prophecies. This interpretation fueled Columbus’s belief that he was chosen to play a part in the transformation of the world into the Kingdom of the Returned Christ (Avalos 1996). The mendicants, the conquistadors, and Columbus understood that the return of Christ was tied to both the conquest of Jerusalem and the expulsion of Muslims from that (shared) holy city. Additionally, Peninsular Christians saw the fight with the Muslims of Al-Andalus as a key component for a Christian route to and recovery of Jerusalem, the goal of the Mediterranean-wide conflict between Christians and Muslims (O’Banion 2012) (Bernal Diaz del Castillo would compare Tenochtitlan’s destruction to that of Muslim-occupied Jerusalem [Burkhart 2010:74]). A New Jerusalem was on the minds of Peninsulars and colonists alike. There is one other strong thread from the medieval Franciscan apocalyptic school that figures prominently in the New World endeavors: Bonaventure’s identification of St. Francis as the Angel of the Sixth Seal following Joachim de Fiore’s prophecies (Lara 2014). This distinctively Franciscan piece of apocalyptic theology was the idea that spiritual men, particularly poor Franciscan mendicants, were going to lead the world into the reign of Christ and that Francis himself would be the “Angel of the Sixth Seal” from Revelation 7:2 who commands the Angels not to harm the sea or the trees before a mark has been placed in the “servants of God” (Lara 2014). Bonaventure identified Francis’ stigmata as the seal of God and as such the greatest example of a true follower of Christ, the worthy leader of the spiritual men who would serve the new Earth under Christ’s rule. Joachim and his followers’ theological formulations reached well into the 16th century, woven into the millennial and apocalyptic expectations of many crusaders and conquistadors, as well as rulers, priests, and the laity.

3.5 Cabala Beginning in the 13th century, the Cabala (also spelled Kabbalah and Qabbalah), a collection of esoteric Jewish mystical texts probably written in Iberia, was expanded by Spanish Cabalists in Catalonia and Castile. Questions had arisen over what knowledge could be gleaned from Hebrew teachings about the Old Testament in the Christian context from the second century onward. The Hebrew language, the Talmud, and Judaic history were undeniable aspects of a shared religious heritage for Judaism and Christianity, and, through convivencia, were possibly more prominent in the Spanish world than in other parts of Europe. The Cabala’s particularly Judeo-Christian apocalyptic and mystical movement arose alongside Medieval Marian devotion in southern France and Northern Spain. The Cabalistic texts and related explications of the Hebrew scriptures focus on a symbolic interpretation of reality, seeking mystical union with God and, in Christian hands, seeing the Virgin Mary as the female nature of God (Shekinah). Some aspects of the Cabala are prophetic, while others are more mystical; many of the texts focus on the transcendent possibility of union with God, and establishing a divine society, though the

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Cabala is neither systematic nor necessarily theologically coherent. In Iberia, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all were aware of the Cabala, and it was often synthesized with other forms of knowledge such as astrology and philosophy. As the political and social crises of the 15th century on the Iberian Peninsula intensified, Christian interest in the apocalyptic aspects of Cabala expanded and spread. The Cabala and its Christian theological interpretations circulated from the University of Salamanca to Germany and Italy with clear connections to both Spanish Dominicans and Franciscans. The Hieronymite Monastery of Guadalupe in Extremadura (Figure 10) was occupied by Conversos, monks who added to early modern knowledge of Judaism and the Cabala. This monastery and its Cabalistic connection was central to Columbus and his apocalyptic expectations, to Cortés and his missionizing expectations, and to the role of the Virgin(s) of Guadalupe on both sides of the Atlantic. In the hands of Franciscan and Dominican interpreters, the Cabala’s prophetic bent informed predictions for the role of Carlos V (r. 1519–1558) to become the next Solomon or a new David who would cleanse corruption from the Church, evangelize the world, and promote scriptural studies with new Cabalistic methods (Swietlicki 1986). The hope for the Last World Emperor among apocalypticists has a long history, though the idea of a Spanish monarch as the Last World Emperor had been circulating in Spiritual Franciscan circles only since the mid-15th century. Franciscan Cabalists such as Pietro Galatino (1460–1540) wrote extensively about hope that Carlos V would be the monarch who aided the Angelic Pope in uniting the Christian world. Galatino’s contemporary, Augustinian Egidio da Viterbo (1472–1532), also employed the Cabala in his Joachimist apocalypticism and shared Galatino’s hopes that Carlos V would bring an age of renewal for humankind. “The imperial reign of Carlos V, the sack of Rome, the discovery of the New World, and the adoption of Cabala by Christians were all seen as indications of a new order that would restore the ancient customs and beliefs” (Swietlicki 1986:24–25). This use of the Cabala is in an important sense new in this century and was considered a sign that all divine secrets would be revealed in an enlightenment that would transform the Church (Wilkinson 2007). Carlos V also admired the various Cabalistic writers and had in his court another supporter of both Christian Cabala and church reform, Cardinal Bernardino Carvajal (1456–1523), a converso. The millennialism and apocalypticism of the 15th and early 16th centuries lost steam in the later 16th century, despite tumultuous New World encounters. From Luther’s 1517 theses in Wittenberg to the mid-century Council of Trent, demands for reform from the level of Pope all the way down to parish priest dominated European Christianity and overtook the millennial and apocalyptic fervor. In addition, a new kind of historicism developed in the Catholic Church, led by the Spanish Jesuit Alphonsus Salmeron (1515–1585). He is one of the first Catholic theologians to argue for the historical context of the book of Revelation. This historical approach was further developed in a commentary on Revelation by another Spanish Jesuit, Luis de Alcázar (1554–1613), whose contextual approach to Revelation was adopted by 17th century Roman Catholic theologians (Lehner 2014). While these interpretations did not exclude the possibility of prophecy or the importance of the current age of the Church, they did indicate a lessening of the millennial and apocalyptic ardor that had shaped the early 16th century. Increasing

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historicism led to the prohibition of millennial and apocalyptic works, including authors such as Gerónimo de Mendieta whose work Historia eclesiástica indiana was suppressed until the nineteenth century because of its "unsound," millenarian, Joachimite ideas (Martínez 1980:189). The return of Christ, which seemed imminently possible in 1500, was by 1600 something to hope for in the distant future.

3.6 Reforming the Church Calls for and efforts at Church reform had occurred throughout the preceding centuries but one such movement came to a head in 1517 when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses highlighting soteriology (among other kinds of reform) by calling for the abolishment of indulgences and the salvation they promised to those in Purgatory. Quickly, other reformers called for the destruction of icons in Western European churches. The first wave of Protestant reform early in the 1520s led to a widespread iconoclastic zeal even as Luther argued for the value of images as teaching aids. As Catholic images were being destroyed in central and northern Europe, Spanish missionaries were carrying out their own iconoclastic purges in the Americas, replacing native sacred images with the (Protestant-excoriated) Catholic ones. And, while there were supporters, converts, and even a few martyrs to the Protestant cause, the identity of Spanish Catholicism was not impinged. No Protestant churches were established in Spain before the 19th century (Grijp 1999). The Church soon moved to address the crisis caused by the reformers. Pope Paul III (r. 1534–1549) appointed new men to the College of Cardinals, and then created a Papal Reform Commission to study the abuses in the Church. He called for a general council that met in Trent beginning in 1545, and centralized the Inquisition in Rome, creating the Holy Office for the Propagation of the Faith. He also officially recognized the Order of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1540. The report of the Papal Reform Commission (1537) stated that all the abuses in the Church hierarchy (simony, concubines, absenteeism, etc.) stemmed from the secularization of what should be a spiritual office, i.e., dispensing spiritual benefits (church offices, dispensations, etc.) for financial or political gain. These widespread practices contributed to lay anticlericalism that had direct effects on the Church – people stopped leaving bequests and voluntary gifts, though such wills and bequests were required of Spaniards beyond the end of the 16th century (Cameron 1991; see earlier). The Council of Trent 1545–1563 was the most significant Catholic Church council for the development of global Catholicism prior to Vatican II. Attendees included four popes, numerous cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and priests from across Europe. These delegates upheld every important doctrinal issue criticized by reformers. The Council insisted on two sources of church authority (scripture and tradition) and reaffirmed previous rulings of popes and councils. The council affirmed seven sacraments, including marriage and extreme unction, against the Protestant argument for only three, or even two. The Council further clarified the role and meaning of confession as penance, though it also confirmed that Eucharistic wine was strictly forbidden to the laity. Delegates reiterated the belief that the Mass repeated Christ’s sacrifice and the consecrated wine and bread

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became the very substance of Christ’s body. They reaffirmed the stricture against clerical marriage, and endorsed indulgences, the veneration of saints, relics, and sacred images (Ozment 1980). The Council reaffirmed many theological concepts that would be of continued significance in the New World, such as the cleansing benefit of alms and charity, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the use of images, though there were new requirements for portraying the Holy Family; for example, no more Virgo Lactans (see Figure 43) or nudity. Importantly for the New World, the authorities at Trent mandated that religious texts be taken out of the hands of natives, and that religious instruction, mass, and the Bible be presented only in Latin. At the turn of the 16th century, the New World was viewed as an opportunity to right many of the wrongs of the Church and to purify Catholicism of pagan influences. After the Council of Trent (Figure 13), New Spain was a testing ground for the reforms enacted there. Table 2 summarizes the preceding material and Appendix II lists notable persons with dates.

Figure 13 Council of Trent by Pasquale Cati da Iesi. (Museo del Palazzo del Buonconsiglio, Trent). (Image by Laurom used under Creative Common SA 3.0 license. Rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8465486

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Table 2 Timeline of events for history of Christianity in Spain 711

Muslim conquest of Iberia

1123

First Lateran Council

1172–1198

Seville Mosque completion

1209

Franciscans founded

1215

Fourth Lateran Council

1216

Dominicans founded

1244

Augustinians founded

1248

Reconquest of Seville

1252–1284

Siete Partitas of Alfonso X

1389

Virgin of Guadalupe Monastery founded in Extremadura

1438–1455

Council of Florence

1453

defeat of Constantinople by Ottomans

1478–1534

Spanish Inquisition

1492

Defeat of Moors at Granada (January); end of Caliphate; end of Reconquest; Expulsion of Jews (April) Landfall in New World (October)

1513

Laws of Burgos

1517

Martin Luther’s 95 Theses

1545–1563

Council of Trent

4 creating new spain Most of the indigenous groups Cortés came in contact with as he moved westward across Mexico (Figure 14) saw the Spanish as potential liberators from Aztec oppression and, after several demonstrations of cannon, arquebuses, crossbows, and horses, these groups quickly saw the Spanish as allies. Even more to the point of our inquiry is the native American belief that gods were more or less powerful than one another (see earlier). One was always better off soliciting the favors of the most powerful deity as a patron. As the Spanish demonstrated their might, native groups saw the Christian God, Jesus, and Mary as more powerful than their own deities and often eagerly adopted these supernatural beings, and actively learned the rituals required to curry favors. Along the route, the allies engaged in skirmishes and the Spanish destroyed idols, baptized women destined to be concubines, and erected crosses. After entering Tenochtitlan as guests, ambushing many of the highest ranking men and priests, and fleeing the city one night, hundreds of thousands of Indian allies and the Spanish returned on foot and by water to put the island of Tenochtitlan under siege on

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Figure 14 Route of Cortés and allies in the conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521). Along this route the first baptisms, cross erections, and masses were performed. (Image created by Yavidaxiu used under Creative Commons SA 3.0 license, rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/ index.php?curid=5462076

May 13, 1521. Among the first moves was to break the ceramic water pipes that supplied freshwater to the island (Mundy 2015:72). To move the newly built ships into place on the lakes surrounding Tenochtitlan, a dyke was broken that held back the salt water, flooding the chinampas gardens. Several documents state that the “fierce” Tenochca resisted the allied forces for all of one day but the Tlatelolcas fought on for 80 days and sheltered the Tenochca tlatoani Quauhtemoctzin (also spelled “Cuauhtemoc”). Tlatelolca women defended the market for ten days, taking prisoners (Terraciano 2010:31). On August 13, 1521 Quauhtemoctzin surrendered and commanded all Tenochca to evacuate the city, resulting in a stream of people crossing the causeways for three days and nights. As there was no water and no food, even the Spanish left the island. The Tlatelolcas, however, for their bravery, were told by the Spanish that they could return to their homes on the north end of the island (Mundy 2015).

4.1 Mexico-Tenochtitlan Gradually, natives and Spaniards returned to the island. Three years after the surrender, Cortés was directing the rebuilding of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. By 1524, a grid plan was implemented centering on the former Templo Mayor ceremonial precinct and using the stones from those buildings (Mundy 2015). Spanish houses followed the grid while the new native houses did not (see map in Kubler 1947). Tlatelolco (see Figure 49), never one of the four altepeme of the city proper, was given the patronage of Santiago, no doubt in honor of their warriors (Mundy 2015). The four Tenochtitlan altepeme, now known as parcialidades, were given Catholic patrons by the newly arrived Franciscans, those of the main churches in Rome, becoming San Juan (Letran) Moyotlan, San Pedro y Pablo Teopan, San Sebastián Atzacoalco, and Santa María [la Redonda] Cuepopan, all

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established in 1524 (see Figure 50). Santa Maria Cuepopan was the smallest of the four parcialidades and home to the city’s Otomi neighborhoods. The Zapotec community was ministered to by the church of Santo Domingo, which lay adjacent to Cuepopan. Despite political defeat, Spanish rebuilding, and Catholic missionizing, “a number of preHispanic Mexica monuments – including ones that proclaimed the cosmic centrality of the Mexica state – were publicly visible in Mexico City into the seventeenth century” (Mundy 2015:18). A central church and trades training school, the Chapel of San José de los Naturales, was founded by Pedro de Gante, and two huge daily markets operated. San José de los Naturales was the site of the “funeral rites for Carols V, the welcoming for Viceroy Luis de Velasco in 1550, and autos-da-fé of the Inquisition . . . In addition, dozens of smaller chapels would come to be built throughout the indigenous city and may have replaced local shrines maintained by the pre-Hispanic [calpulli]” (Mundy 2015:116). Both church and civil governments were quickly established. Details on persons of note (Spanish and native) can be found in Appendix II.

4.2 Spanish Government Hernan Cortés directed developments in New Spain until 1528. During that time, he remodeled the city; awarded land and tribute obligations (encomiendas) to conquistadors (encomenderos); defended himself before the Crown; championed the Franciscans; appointed non-noble native governors; introduced the growing of wheat; started mining in the Taxco, Guerrero area; oversaw numerous new entradas to the north and west of Mexico-Tenochtitlan; and himself marched into Honduras (1524–1526), during which time he killed Quauhtemoc and several other native nobles who had been forced to accompany him (He was said to have been highly suspicious of the native nobility). To eclipse Cortés’ power in New Spain, Emperor Carlos V created the Audiencia in 1526 appointing Nuño de Guzmán as governor, a ruthless, greedy man who failed to remit royalties from the new colony, which brought about the dissolution of the First Audiencia. The 2nd Audiencia lasted from 1530 to 1820. The Audiencia answered to the King and consisted of viceroy-governor-president, eight judges for civil cases, four for criminal cases, and two attorneys (one for each side), a bailiff, and other officials. An additional Audiencia of Galicia was formed in Guadalajara in 1546. Complaints by native communities were directed to the Audiencias if solutions were not forthcoming at lower levels. Audiencias were divided into Corregidores. The Corregidor heard and settled disputes between Nahuas and Spaniards and received tribute and labor on behalf of the crown delivered by Nahua officials. “It was here in the Nahua countryside that local Nahua and Spanish imperial authorities met and negotiated many of the formal terms of Spanish rule” (Horn 1997: 67). The smallest unit of government was the cabildo, or town council. Each council held meetings and recorded the minutes of those meetings. In 1524 Emperor Carlos V created the Council of the Indies. The Council regulated many aspects of life in New Spain, from the location of churches and what was to be

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taught to what kind of crops could be grown. It appointed the first viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza (1535–1580), who assisted in the founding of the college of Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco. After the conquest, prior status as a tlatocayotl (realm, kingdom) was the criterion for Spanish recognition of a native government seat, each of which was designated a Spanish jurisdiction subjected to an encomienda with parish status and was to be governed locally by the cabildo, overseen by a governor. The governor of a Nahua cabildo was an innovation that had no counterpart on the Spanish municipal council (Horn 1997). “Drawing on both indigenous and Spanish practices, Nahua municipal government reached its height in the mid-sixteenth century – indigenous structures of authority were still in place: commoners obeyed nobles’ directives to deliver tribute and join in public labor duties, and nobles served the Spaniards as intermediaries” (Horn 1997:44–45). Tlaxcala, because of extreme loyalty to the Crown, paid tribute directly to the Crown but in most cases a community paid tribute to an encomendero or the Audiencia and often complained of abuses. Constraints and obligations placed on what the landholders and the clergy could do in these new lands had been initially constructed by Pope Alexander VI’s Bulls of Donation (1493), which set the parameters of expansion and rights of conquest for Spain. The subsequent Laws of Burgos (1512) established new rights and responsibilities for the Spaniards in colonies. The Laws of Burgos, directed at encomenderos in Hispaniola and Jamaica (promulgated by Bartolomé de las Casas and brother priests), provided some guidance for missionaries and encomenderos in New Spain for about 25 years. Spaniards were authorized to transplant Indians onto their farms and obligated to build lodges and churches for them, outfit the church with “a picture of Our Lady and a bell with which to call the Indians to prayer time,” attend church with them each evening to “make sure they cross themselves and sing several hymns,” and examine the Indians “every two weeks and teach them what they don’t know: the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Articles of Faith. Any encomendero that does not do this properly will be fined six gold pesos” (Hussey 1932:310). The landholder was also obligated to share in the construction of a larger church and take “his Indians” there each Sunday for Mass. The priests were obligated to staff the farm churches if they collected tithes from the landholder. Churches were also required at mines and to be staffed for Sunday mass. Married Indian women were not to be required to work in the mines, were not to work after the fourth month of pregnancy, and were to be allowed to nurse for three years (Hussey 1932:324). Priests must go to sick Indians, confess them for free, and bury them with a cross near the church. Finally, the sons of chiefs were to move into church boarding houses for instruction in reading, writing, and Catholicism from age 13 to 19, after which they were to be sent home as teachers. At least one commoner boy was to be selected by the landowner to learn to read, write, and teach the other male children. Four further points were published the next year, including a specification that the Indians were free to go after two years of service for, by then, they would be Christian

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and capable of self-government. Native peoples were to be allowed to continue their sacred dances (Hussey 1932)! The Sublimis Deus bull of 1537 decisively resolved that Indians could not be enslaved based on their rationality and full humanity. The New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians were issued in 1542 by Carlos V following complaints and calls for reform of encomiendas. This led to significant changes to the encomienda structure: extant encomiendas, all future encomiendas, and indigenous slavery were abolished, with freedom granted immediately to enslaved Indians. It remained legal to enslave belligerent peoples, an attitude that was easily provoked by the conquistadors moving through northern and southern Mexico over the next several decades. Although thousands of Indians were liberated as a result of the New Laws, many encomenderos resisted the new order, and even in cases where the order was obeyed, native liberation was short-lived. While new encomiendas were forbidden, that system was replaced with the repartimiento – temporary grants of labor given to the viceroy and the Audiencia members – which began to function in the 1550s and continued for roughly the next 75 years (Horn 1997:100–101). Repartimientos were distinct from the slavery system of the encomienda in that a person was not “owned” but it was still a system of forced labor. Quickly, central Mexico was divided into three repartimientos, “each under the jurisdiction of a juez repartidor. Because Spanish officials sought pre-conquest precedents for the organization of labor on such a large scale, the districts followed major ethnic divisions – the Acolhuaque, the Tepaneca, and the Chalca – the same groupings [once] used for imperial labor by the authorities of Tenochtitlan” (Horn 1997:101). Encomenderos, such as Cortés’ two sons, advocated unsuccessfully for their rights to keep their encomiendas and native slave laborers. After the conquest, the native governors of the parcialidades were expected to pay money for labor and tribute, as documented in the map Genaro García 30 (Mundy 2015:156) dated to 1553–1554. It also records the gifting practices (vessels, embroidered borders, etc. to each other and commoners) of the elite during several feasts. “The maintenance of this feasting culture was crucial for the social adherence of the city’s native elite, at the same time that it was increasingly taxing to the shrinking tributary base” (Mundy 2015:160). Spanish elites, church officials, encomenderos, and repartimientos steadily “took away the land outside the cities and commanded the labor of the commoners” (Mundy 2015:157). By mid-century, the governors in the Basin were on a salary and were deprived of commoner labor (Mundy 2015:157–158). The conquest of Tenochtitlan was the first of many conquests staged during this century as the Spanish attempted to secure trade and communication routes to resources. The sequence of these entradas outlines the sequence of Catholic diffusion through Mesoamerica (Table 3) and the establishment of Spanish governance systems such as the repartimientos. By 1598, when Oñate crossed the Rio Grande, the military actions had resulted in a string of pacified or new Catholic towns constituting the Camino Real (Figure 15).

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Table 3 Timeline of events for 16th-century New Spain 1519

Cortés begins entrada

1520

Subjugation of Veracruz (Totonacas), much of Puebla (Nahuas), and Tlaxcala (Nahuas)

1521

Subjugation of Tenochtitlan, Xochimilco, Tlatelolco, Tetzcoco; 100,000 Mexica die of smallpox; first shrine with Spanish Virgin of Guadalupe on Tepeyac Hill; book burning in Tetzcoco

1522–1526

Conquest of Oaxaca

1523–1527

Conquest of Guatemala

1524

Arrival of Franciscans; meeting with native nobles and Franciscans; Founding Council of the Indies (Spain)

1525

Arrival of Dominicans; start of enthusiastic church building; founding of San José de los Naturales (Mexico)

1527

Appointment of first Bishop (Franciscan Zumárraga); sacking of Rome by Charles V; start of conquest of Yucatan

1528

End of the Cortés era; transition to second Audiencia; Michoacán diocese created

1530

Vasco de Quiroga arrives in Mexico as Archbishop; conquest of Michoacán and Jalisco area begins; Cuernavaca census undertaken

1530s

Arrival of regular nuns/sisters

1531

Virgin de Guadalupe appears to Juan Diego at Tonantzin’s shrine Junta Eclesiástica

1532

Viceroyalty begins

1533

Arrival of Augustinians; founding of College at Tlatelolco

1534

Cambridge University Press founded

1535

Founding of diocese of Oaxaca (Antequera)

1536

Three Juntas Eclesiásticas about ordination of and tribute from natives.

1537

Sublimis Deus bull

1539

Founding of diocese of Michoacán; first printing press arrives; book burning in Tenochtitlan by Zumárraga; Junta Eclesiástica, concludes in 1540.

1540–1542

Mixton War

1541

“First” Franciscan martyr – Juan Calero; Junta Eclesiástica

1542

“New Laws” published outlawing native slavery; Coronado’s expedition into modern New Mexico, Oklahoma

1544

Junta Eclesiástica considered the New Laws

1545–1548

Salmonella enterica (typhoid) epidemic kills 15 million natives

1546

Junta Eclesiástica of bishops of México (Zumárraga), Guatemala (Maroquín), Oaxaca (Zárate), Michoacán (Vasco de Quiroga), and Chiapas (Las Casas) results in founding of diocese of Guadalajara. Junta discussed congregation of Indians, tithing of the Indians, the establishment of the Apostolic Inquisition and the right of asylum in the churches. Discovery of silver in Zacatecas.

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Table 3 (cont.) 1545–1563

Council of Trent; confession is form of penance, marriage confirmed as a sacrament, forbids Eucharist wine for laity.

1545–1590

Interviews conducted for “Florentine Codex” by Sahagún and native men.

1547

Appointment of first archbishop Franciscan Zumárraga

1548

Foundation of archdiocese of Mexico and the Audiencia of Guadalajara

1550

Royal mandate barred all Spaniards (except clergy) from living in Indian towns.

1550–1590

Chichimec–Spanish conflict

1553

Arrival of archbishop Montúfar (Dominican)

1555

1st Mexican Church Provincial Council; order to build hospitals in all towns

1556

Carlos V abdicates to Felipe II; establishment of Inquisition

1557

End of primarily adult baptisms, start of primarily infant baptisms

1559

Funeral for Carlos V and a New Fire ceremony with Atamalcualiztli ceremony held simultaneously in Tlatelolco

1563

Catholics’ Counter Reformation underway

1564

Tribute reevaluation; head tax implemented in Mexico City resulting in a riot; Franciscan doctrinas to be turned over to seculars

1565

2nd Mexican Church Provincial Council Establishment of the Manila–Acapulco shipping route

1566

Cortés’ sons arrested for plotting government overthrow

1570s

Slaves from Africa arrive in Veracruz port

1571

Formal establishment of the Inquisition, natives exempted. Christian victory at Lepanto (Greece)

1572

Arrival of Jesuits; end of “primitive” church era; arrival of 3rd Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras.

1574

Ordenanza del Patronazgo gives crown dominion over Orders and gives seculars the control of parishes; grants priests a salary.

1577

King Felipe II sends out questionnaires to all municipalities

1580s

End of era of fortress church building

1581

Mendieta says Franciscans will no longer be responsible for sacraments, teaching, or visiting pueblos; hermitages to be built.

1583

All doctrina towns now have a hospital

1585

3rd Mexican Church Provincial Council; retraction of native access to liturgy, doctrine; latin masses mandated

1588

Mestizos allowed into priesthood

1590

Established Fronteras de Colotlan at end of Chichimec war

1591

First settlement of Tlaxcaltecas in northern town of Colotlan

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Table 3 (cont.) 1598

Oñate crosses the Rio Grande into New Mexico; Camino Real extended northward from Durango; bodies of the martyrs from Japan returned to Mexico; how they died painted on cloth hung in San José de los Naturales church.

1603

1.08 millions natives left

1609

End of Church orchestrated indigenous resettlement efforts

1610

Approximately 20,000 indigenous people live in Mexico City. They are now a minority ethnic group.

1640

Parish churches now in the hands of secular priests

Figure 15 The Camino Real, connecting secured Catholic towns, mines, and ranches with royal charters. Distance from Mexico-Tenochtitlan to Zacatecas was secured in the 16th century. In 1610 the road was extended from Zacatecas to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

4.3 Catholic Church Governance In gratitude for the discovery of the New World, in 1493 Pope Alexander VI authorized the Spanish to evangelize the inhabitants of those lands discovered by Columbus. Traveling with Cortés from the Yucatan peninsula were Bartolomé de Olmedo, priest and friar of Mercy [Mercedarian], as chaplain of Cortés’ expedition and Jerónimo de

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Aguilar (1489–1531), a Franciscan friar born in Écija, Spain, shipwrecked on the Yucatan coast, and found living among the Maya when Cortés landed. Olmedo contradicted several of Cortés impulses to put up crosses, tear down images, and hold mass, arguing that all would be profaned by the incomprehension and involuntary participation of the natives. The strategy of evangelization for the native missions, enunciated in the Laws of Burgos, also functioned as a kind of Christian urban planning. First, friars established monasteries with attached churches, including schoolrooms in native towns where the doctrine would be taught. These towns were called “doctrinas.” The second step was then to build churches in nearby towns – called “visitas” – that a friar would visit one or two Sundays a month. Doctrinas and visitas received the patronage of a saint reflected in new town names. The focus was on the conversion of native elites who would set an example for their communities and bring their subjects to the missionaries. As prescribed by the Laws of Burgos, elite male children were taken from their homes and boarded in the doctrina schools with the goal of producing lay workers for the Church and further influencing the conversion of non-elites. All of the indoctrination was to be done in native languages. Hospitals were also to be built where rotating groups of natives would learn Christian charity through work. Not all friars would be missionaries – some were administrators, such as Martín de Valencia (1474–1534) one of the first Franciscans in New Spain. Cortés was partial to the Franciscans, believing them to be the best examples of Christian living. Five Franciscans were already in New Spain before 1524. Two Franciscans had come on entradas as chaplains, and three Flemish friars had arrived in 1523, including Fray Juan de Tecto, guardian of the main Franciscan monastery in Ghent and confessor to Carlos V himself, and Pedro de Gante, well known to history. They took up residence in Tetzcoco. The first official delegation of twelve Franciscan missionaries arrived in 1524. In July 1524, Martín de Valencia summoned all seventeen friars to Mexico City for a 15-day retreat, after which they distributed themselves into one house in Mexico-Tenochtitlan and three houses to the southeast of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in Tlaxcala and Puebla: Tlaxcala, Huexotzingo, and Tetzcoco (Turley 2014:57). Franciscans owned twenty monasteries by 1531 (Ricard 1966:122). Roughly speaking, based on modern state lines, in the 16th century the Franciscans worked in the Basin of Mexico, Puebla, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Hidalgo, Veracruz, and Michoacán, and then New Galicia after 1530 (Crewe 2019; Ricard 1966). In 1559, eighty Franciscan houses had thirty friars and eighty more friars would arrive in the next decade. The Dominicans moved into Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1526, establishing a base with the Santo Domingo church and monastery. In 1539 three Dominicans traveled with Hernando de Soto into Florida and were modestly successful. Dominican Francisco de Vitoria argued in Spain against native slavery, and brothers Bartolomé de Las Casas and Julián Garcés, bishop of Tlaxcala, and others petitioned the Pope for native advocacy roles. In 1542 Las Casas and Luis Cancer moved to the Maya area in Guatemala, while other Dominican houses sprang up in modern Oaxaca state. The Dominicans established a mission corridor from the Basin of Mexico through Puebla, southward into the Mixteca region in the northwestern corner of Oaxaca. By 1562 the Dominicans had 40 houses with 210 friars but in 1599, there were 70+ Dominican priories in the Oaxaca area alone (Figure 16). They frequently assigned the patronage of Maria and Domingo to their churches.

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Figure 16 Dominican symbol in the cloister patio at Santo Domingo Yanhuitlán, Oaxaca. (Photo by Lsalgador82 used under Creative Commons SA 3.0 license rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28217892

The Augustinians started missions in 1533 in southern New Spain, moved into Veracruz, then Hidalgo the next year, Michoacán in 1602, and were in Zacatecas by 1613 (Giffords 2007). By 1562 the Augustinians had 40 houses with 212 friars (Dierksmeier 2018). The Augustinians gave communion much more readily to Nahuas than to Otomis, believing the Otomis to be of inferior intelligence (Ricard 1966). Later Orders to arrive in New Spain in this century were the Jesuits, Carmelites, Mercedarians, and women of various Orders. The Jesuits, following official establishment in 1540, immediately sent missionaries to the New World, arriving in La Florida first (Saint Augustine) in 1565 and staying until high casualties caused them to withdraw in 1572 (Milanich 1999). Some men arrived in New Spain that same year with a mandate from Felipe II particularly to teach the Spaniards in Mexico, as well as to teach a formal Spanish curriculum to “promising and aristocratic Indians and Mestizos” in Mexico City (Liss 1973:328). From the start, Jesuit schools were in high demand by Spaniards and criollos (American-born Spanish). Jesuit residential colleges included those of San Pedro y San Pablo and San Ildefonso in Mexico City, and San Francisco Javier in Tepotzotlán. Outside of Mexico City, the Jesuits concentrated on northern Mexico with missions, colleges, and schools for educating elite criollo men. But Jesuits were interested in native religious education also, advocating the production of texts in Nahuatl and actively evangelizing the northern frontier late in the 16th century. The Company would pick up the Franciscan Millennial project with indigenous people in their South America reducciones during the 17th century.

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Although a Mercedarian was among the first priests in the New World, not until 1537 did the Mercedarians arrive in any substantive number – and then to work among the Maya of Chiapas and Guatemala. Carmelite men arrived by 1586 and stayed in central New Spain building convents and churches. Women’s orders took a bit longer to get a foothold in the New World. Franciscan women, as Poor Clares and Discalced Sisters, came to New Spain in the 1530s and founded seven convents (Figure 17). In Puebla from 1568 to 1604 seven more women’s convents were founded for the peninsular families migrating to New Spain (Tello 2013). A community of Hieronymite nuns was established in Mexico City in 1585, living in the convent of San Jerónimo y Santa Paula. Eleven Carmelite nuns arrived in Veracruz in 1585. In 1595 the Carmelites had a hermitage of the Limpia Concepción in Guadalajara (Orozco 1970:2:40). Four Dominican nuns of the Order of the Rosary arrived in Oaxaca City in 1568 and construction on St. Catalina de Siena monastery in town began in 1578. These ascetics and most other orders of women did not work with the native population in this century (Ramos 2012:6). Since there were only two to three friars in each doctrina they spent very little time together as one was always traveling, so, periodically, meetings of the Regulars were called. A Junta Eclesiástica in 1536 attended by the bishops of Mexico City, Hispaniola, and Tlaxcala resulted in procedures to be observed in all baptisms of adults. All adults were to be instructed and exorcised, and anointed with chrism and oil, but only four

Figure 17 Wash basins at the ex-convento Santa Catalina de Siena, Oaxaca, Oaxaca. (Photo by C. Claassen, with permission of Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, Mexico)

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adults of both sexes needed to be treated with the use of candles, cloaks, and salt, offering both the modifications championed by Franciscans and some structure desired by their detractors. The Junta specified that Indians “were not to burn copal, nor to keep fires burning through the night, or in the daylight hours before the churchyard crosses. And they were to give up their private oratories and idols, which ‘every Indian had’” (Clendinnen 1990:115). The Junta also specified when and where Indians could dance. The Junta Eclesiástica of 1546 in Mexico City with bishops Zumárraga, Quiroga, las Casas, and visitador Sandovál mandated that in order to be eligible for the Eucharist the person must fast and be able to distinguish between ordinary bread and sacramental bread. The First Mexican Church Provincial Council held in 1555 established norms for education and life of the clergy, the administration of sacraments, whether Religious could perform marriages, and the building of missions by Orders without permission from bishops. It established detailed guidelines to restrict the free use of native songs and dances in order to avoid confusion between Christian and pagan practices (Cervantes 2013:83) and stimulated a second iconoclastic fever. It also ordered the building of hospitals in every Catholic town. The Second Mexican Church Provincial Council of 1565 discussed how to implement the decisions of the Council of Trent (see Section 3.6). The Third Mexican Church Provincial Council, held in 1585, focused on native pastoral care (establishing a common catechism, systematizing rites, practices, and liturgy), forced labor, and the morality of the war against the Chichimecs. It banned the adorning of saints with stars, but it soon deteriorated into a struggle between parish priests and the orders. This Council ordered both long and short catechism books to be written and then translated into indigenous languages by local bishops but those products did not receive royal approval until 1621 (Christensen 2013:62). By the middle of the 16th century, the missions had been apportioned into dioceses. These dioceses were Tlaxcala, established in 1525 then moved to Puebla in 1542, MexicoTenochtitlan in 1530, Antequera (Oaxaca) in 1535, Michoacán in 1536, Chiapas in 1539, and Guadalajara in 1548. An archdiocese was formed in 1546 centered in Mexico City (Figure 18). The Inquisition also had its role in governance of both the Church and the state. The institution began in New Spain under the Bishopric of the Franciscan Zumárraga in 1536 to bring an end to idolatry. This phase ended abruptly in 1543 when the Crown ordered changes in the bishop’s powers, particularly releasing the natives from scrutiny and jurisdiction of the Inquisition. There followed a limited episcopal inquisition during which the bishop had inquisitorial powers to maintain the purity of the faith, protect the sacraments, and battle against heresy. Archbishop Alonso Montúfar (Dominican) actively exercised this power and centralized the five Mexican dioceses in his court. In 1571 the formal Inquisition began under Dominican purview. Montúfar dedicated most of his efforts to the prosecution of Protestants and crypto-Jews throughout Central Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Yucatan (Tavárez 2011). This emphasis was a clear departure from the idolatry eradication policies of his predecessors.

4.4 Religious Life and Conflicts Missionizing in New Spain brought copious spiritual challenges as well as numerous political conflicts to the friars. How would they affect conversion, further the

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Figure 18 Converted native elite representing dioceses. Below the elite are listed their corresponding bishoprics and kingdoms (left to right) of Guatemala, Chiapas, Coixco, Michoacán, Xalisco, Culhuacan, Tetonango, Tlaxcala, Panico, and Oaxaca. (Historia de Tlaxcala 1570s; permission and image provided by University of Glasgow Library, Archives and Special Collections)

revitalization of Catholicism, get recruits, live with the seculars, negotiate differences in catechism between the Orders, and hold the doctrina system together?

4.4.1 Delivering the Message The Mexican terrain is steep and broken with few navigable rivers and was occupied by groups of over 100 languages living in canyons, hillsides, mesa tops, lakes, and sea shore. To facilitate parish life (indoctrination, mass, confession, marriage, burial, and confraternities), and to alleviate the need for the small number of missionaries to cover huge distances, a plan described in the Laws of Burgos was implemented. That was to congregate natives into significant or convenient existing towns or, in the absence of such, to found new towns, although the King granted natives the right to live wherever they chose. In a number of cases old towns were burned so that natives were forced to move (Townsend 2019:147). The southern Spanish town pattern of plaza with church, treasury, and government offices and administrator’s homes located on the plaza was instituted (Figure 19). Town building was codified further by King Felipe II via the Laws of the

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Figure 19 The Spanish town center in Tlaxcala, Mexico. (Historia de Tlaxcala 1570s; permission and image provided by University of Glasgow Library, Archives and Special Collections)

Indies signed in 1573, composed of 148 ordinances to aid colonists in locating, building, and populating settlements. To achieve this reorganization quickly, the Orders “employed” native artisans, permitting them to build, sculpt, and paint the buildings in often elaborate ways. Wake (2010) attributes the decorative programs and large fortress churches to “the growing trend toward ostentation among the regular orders, or early competition between them and the secular priesthood to show success in the conversion mission” (173); Ricard (1966) speaks of the shock and awe needed to win the minds of the native converts, and others propose that there was competitive building/decorating between native towns (McAndrew 1965:129) as there had been between altepeme with their pyramids and temples in prequauhtemoc times. Franciscans claimed to have built forty towns on the floor and slopes of the Basin of Mexico by 1537 (McAndrew 1965:122). Some new towns were founded after 1580 by relocating Tlaxcalan families to help pacify the Chichimecs. Importantly, a mandate of

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1550 by the King barred all Spaniards (except the clergy) from living in Indian towns, even limiting the amount of time they could stay in such a town to three nights. Monasteries were built in doctrina towns with churches and quarters attached, a walled grassy exterior atrium adjacent to the church (see Figure 56), and occasionally a stage. This yard was where thousands of Indians gathered for mass, sermons, doctrine lessons, plays, and processions. Ricard (1966) called hospitals “one of the most ingenious devices for making Christian ideas a part of daily life” (161). Cortés endowed the first hospital, Hospital of the Immaculate Conception, also known as the Hospital de Jesús, in Mexico City, which was run by Regulars (and where Cortés’ body has been placed in the wall behind the altar of the church). The crown established the Royal Indian Hospital in Mexico City in 1553. Hospitals were established not only to ease the native’s suffering but to teach charity, humility, and contemplation as these spaces were quiet zones. Strict rules governed clothing, and prayers. The Franciscan and Augustinian facilities were built by natives, materials bought with their alms, and staffed entirely by natives, always in the form of an Immaculate Conception confraternity. Women rotated a week at a time as nurses, cooks, and maids and dealt with any guests, as these places were also inns and retreat locations. The 1555 order to build hospitals in all towns was reportedly accomplished in all doctrina towns by 1583 (Ricard 1966:155). Vasco de Quiroga’s (1477–1565) utopian experiment utilized the hospital concept to create Laguna de Santa Fe, an Indian Republic in a remodeled native town. This community was much larger than other hospitals and was an attempt at a self-sufficient Indian settlement with little to no European contact beyond Quiroga himself. The confraternities in Quiroga’s utopian experiment were modeled on existing indigenous guilds (Verástique 2000). Friars created positions of maestros and fiscales as paid positions in rural towns for their monastery school graduates. Nahua fiscales maintained records, taught doctrine, baptized near-death infants, and oversaw burials and prayers for the dead. Native aides traveled on Saturdays out from Mexico City to instruct on Sundays (Christensen 2013:72–75). Elite native male graduates instructed people in the villages in the doctrine and younger boys were used to spy on their parents and neighbors. Indigenous had to deal with the Church in the person of the parish priest, its vicars, and a flock of fiscales, sacritans, beadles, and cantors who constituted a little band of indigenous personnel attached to the clergy, indispensable intermediaries between the Indian and the ecclesiastical institution. Whether the priest was present sporadically or not, the Indian fiscal and his acolytes controlled the life of the parish. (Gruzinski 1989:15)

The missionaries of central Mexico conducted their work in Nahuatl language. Just as Latin was the language of the Church in Europe and was carried well beyond Rome by missionaries and priests, so was Nahuatl, the lingua franca of New Spain, also carried well beyond its regional use in 1519. The majority of priests learned Nahuatl in Spain before arriving in New Spain. In some cases, rituals and instruction were done in other languages – Otomi, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Maya. The Council of Trent, however, would dictate the cessation of rituals, texts, and education in native languages. The injunction against translation of the bible into indigenous vernaculty was problematic for a number of reasons. Some priests went ahead with limited translation in

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hopes of indoctrinating their new parishioners. “How Catholicism was presented to the Nahuas and Maya, and what version of the religion the natives received largely depended on the preferences of their instructors, and the religious texts they composed and used” (Christensen 2013:3). Differences existed among approved confessional manuals, testaments, catechisms, as well as the use of unpublished texts (uncensored) both within an Order and between Orders. Various juntas, the Inquisition, and the Council of the Indies all involved themselves in censorship and approval of religious texts. Attempts to use the printing press to force conformity in message failed (Christensen 2013:10).

4.4.2 Political Problems for the Mendicants Within the first 30 years of the mission work, the Franciscans, Augustinians, and Dominicans were at odds with one another over several issues related to the sacraments – when and how to baptize, the need to cover all the possible sins in confession, giving or withholding communion, visiting the dying, and what constituted a proper Christian education and differing theological perspectives in various books of doctrine and confession. Some of these disagreements stemmed from beliefs about natives’ potential to embrace the word of God or live a lifestyle approved by the Church. The Orders also disagreed about the costs and decoration of churches, and the need for native tithing to support the Mendicants, support strictly forbidden by the rule of St. Francis for Franciscans. Apart from these issues the missionaries were entangled in several other significant negotiations during this century in New Spain. They were being pressured by encomenderos to deploy Indian labor in mines, farming, transport, and labor (Graham 2011; Kubler 1948). Franciscan vows called for seclusion, poverty, and prayer, yet time to do so was impossible to find given their charge to convert Indians and minister to those converts (Turley 2014). They were pressured by the seculars and some archbishops to hand over the parish work to seculars (Ricard 1966). Several of the Indian communities attempted to secede from doctrinas by building their own, unstaffed, churches (Crewe 2019). The so-called mendicant problem was advanced by the encomenderos who needed Indian labor for mining, farming, trades, and transport and felt entitled to it by the Laws of Burgos. Many mendicants, but certainly not all, prevented such labor. Augustinians were less obstructionist but Franciscans saw the path to the coming millennium paved with the carefully if quickly saved souls of the natives, protected from the perversions of European decadence, and with what was fundamental to their originality intact (insofar as it did not contradict Christianity) (Baudot 1995). Kubler pointed out that the Mendicants, particularly the Franciscans, gradually lost the support of the encomenderos in Mexico because they waited too late to attempt a compromise (1948:18–21). The differences between life in a monastery in Spain and life in New Spain were extreme. The Franciscan lifestyle was one of obedience, study, prayer, poverty, and retreat, following Francis through, “a pattern of active days spreading the word and contemplative nights in a remote location” (Turley 2014:15). To do the mission work in New Spain, the Franciscan friars were permitted relaxation of the rule of Francis, and

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subordination of the elements of asceticism to activity but a stricter variety of spirituality than allowed in Hispaniola was mandated, “the discalced (barefoot) variety, the very spirituality practiced by Saint Francis himself” (Turley 2014:35). As the depth and breadth of the mission task became clearer, the temporary changes of Franciscan practice threatened to become permanent. Some were disheartened by the work and returned to Spain or took their missionary zeal to Asia and the Pacific; some left the order, yet others, though fewer, took up the new patterns and practices with energy. What seems to have appealed to those who did come to the New World was the emphasis on a life of good works by Francis, the harsh conditions, and the potential for martyrdom. In the 1560s it was necessary for the Franciscans to close nearly a dozen monasteries and there was talk of needing to close them all because they could not be staffed. Missionaries were also dying along with their indigenous neophytes. Six of the closed monasteries were in the disease-riddled lowlands where many friars died (Turley 2014). “To save the order, Mendieta proposed in 1581 that all [Franciscan] friars in New Spain needed to recapture their commitment to recollection and withdrawal. This return to the way of St. Francis would begin with the building of hermitages near the principal towns and monasteries. They would no longer be responsible for sacraments, teaching, or visiting pueblos” (Turley 2014:149). Neither the Dominicans nor the later Jesuits had the same focus on prayer and eremitic lifestyle (Turley 2014). Archbishop Montúfar, who resented the independence of the Mendicants, heard complaints of their cruelty, and saw that their missions were failing, demanded that the Mendicants turn over their doctrinas and visitas to secular priests and that tithes should be collected from the natives to pay the salaries of parish priests. The Mendicants responded that the seculars were incompetent, ignorant, greedy, knew no native languages, and were only interested in living in cities. Furthermore, the Indians had no money to pay tithes. It took the Ordenanza del Patronazgo of 1574 to assert the king’s control over the clergy, both mendicant and secular. It guaranteed parish priests a salary and a permanent position – finally elevating seculars over regulars. Eventually, Franciscans did concede jurisdictions to the secular priesthood but that process was not complete until 1640. The conquest of the Aztecs and of much of Anahuac was finished, at least to Cortés satisfaction, in 1521 but the conquest of the groups beyond Anahuac to the south and north would take another century. Almost immediately, southern military expeditions were launched into Oaxaca (1522), Guatemala (1523), the Yucatan (1527), and Honduras (1530), each taking several years to achieve pacification. Northern campaigns trotted into the modern states of Michoacán and Jalisco in 1530, and limped out with backlash that required troops and forts into the next century. Open rebellion was not the only expression of resistance to the new politics and religion. Some indigenous people refused to help build a church or hospital, told blasphemous jokes, and spread ancient information on healing, the calendar, etc. Catholic priests were cast as demons, shape shifters, dead men, child murderers, and sexually avaricious. Elites substituted slave or commoner children for their own in the mission schools, and hid their children to keep them from baptism and schools. When a saint’s day coincided with the feast of an “idol,” Durán wrote, “they mix in songs from their pagan past and in order to hide their wicked deed they start and end with God’s

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words . . . lowering their voices so as not to be understood, and raising them at the beginning and end when they say ‘God’” (Durán 1967:1:236). Regardless of the Order, it seems that the strategy of the early missionaries was to allow native rituals if ritual drunkenness and other mind-altering substances were omitted. Little else of native religious practice – the offerings of food, live animals, feathers, incense, embroidered mantles, song and dance, and flowers – was deemed problematic for Christian devotion. Ultimately, Wake concluded that “the form and being of the Indian sacred was recreated, reenacted, and ultimately summoned to the Christian arena” (Wake 2010:75).

4.5 the close of the century Native conformity to Spanish and Christian lifestyle was, of course, the goal of the missionaries. In many cases, particularly among elite Nahua families, by mid-century, there were appearances of this conformity. Infant baptism was the norm after 1557; their parents had grown up as Catholics. Natives were living in gridded towns, calling each other by Christian names, going to services, and participating in confraternal activities. Elite persons were also writing wills and filing lawsuits. Both types of documents show us that elite native families, including women, understood very quickly how to work the new system and they had numerous successes doing so. In fact, while much of the stateorchestrated cultic practices were eradicated by the Spanish very quickly, much of the farmer’s ritual practice was unmolested. The 1570s mark the end of the so-called Primitive Church era, encompassing the demise of Franciscan Millennial hopes for “the restoration of the golden age, the construction of a Christian utopia, and the recuperation of Eden” in New Spain (Graziano 1999:165; Ricard 1966). By 1574 “the evangelization of New Spain was largely complete, and the friars’ work had shifted predominantly toward pastoral care and administration of indigenous parishes” (Turley 2014:127). After 70 years of instruction, were the natives Christians in 1599? Sahagún doubted it, saying that the indigenous people had made Tonantzin, Toci, and Tlaloc into Saint Mary, Saint Anne, and Saint John, and then honored them in the traditional, pre-Christian way. Many friars despaired in the last decades of the 16th century, believing the Indians incapable of becoming Christians. Certainly, no native man was permitted ordination between 1524 and 1820. Many contemporary scholars see the Mexica, Otomis, Wixarikas, and all others to have successfully duped or mollified or escaped missionaries, while retaining, in secret or under their noses, ancient religious practices (i.e., Wake 2010). Continued population decline among the natives greatly discouraged the missionaries as did mandated reforms that prohibited the use of Nahuatl. At least thirteen epidemics hit Mexico in this century from 1521 to 1599, involving smallpox, measles, plague, hemorrhagic fever, mumps, typhus, and influenza (Crewe 2019; Prem 1992). Only 1,375,000 natives remained in New Spain in 1595 from what were once 22 million or more. Sahagún’s (1950–1982) lament is particularly poignant, It seems to me the Catholic Faith can endure little time in these parts. One thing is that the people are becoming extinct with great rapidity, not so much from the bad treatment

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accorded them as from the plagues God sends them . . . For in the more than forty years that I have preached in these parts of Mexico, that in which I and many others with me have insisted most is to place them in the belief in the Holy Catholic Faith by . . . pictures, as well as sermons, by plays, as well as by conversations, experimenting with the adults and with the children. [. . .] And now, in the time of this plague, having tested the faith of those who come to confess, very few respond properly prior to the confession; thus we can be certain that, though preached to more than fifty years, if they were now left alone, if the Spanish nation were not to intercede, I am certain that in less than fifty years there would be no trace of the preaching which has been done for them (12:100).

Many churches lovingly and voluntarily built by natives in the 1530s–1550s were abandoned by the 1590s, lacking any significant native population to preach to or to tend to the church. The reforms sent out by the Council of Trent (e.g., Latin Mass) also displaced Indian participation in building, decorating, processing, praising, and even hearing the new religion in significant ways. There was no point in insisting on native language texts or mass or withholding Spanish language education. The growing Spanish population, living in cities and on haciendas, needed their own missionizing. The combined effect of epidemics, migrations, doctrinal education, and the substitution of local lineage rulers with elected officials had weakened or dissolved the prequauhtemoc collective symbolic orientations in many Nahua communities by the end of this first century (Tavárez 2011). At the turn of the 17th century there were “between 200,000 and 250,000 Spaniards [in] the Indies . . . joined by nearly 100,000 enslaved Africans” (Earle 2012:13). In 1605 there were but 1.08 million Indians in New Spain (Tavárez 2011) and virtually none in the Indies. The next century would bring veneration of Mary’s sacred heart, much more attention to the Virgin of Guadalupe, greater activity on the part of the Inquisition, new Orders, and a profusion of Mary and Jesus images, churches, and (new) saints cults in all cities. The philosophical difference underpinning Native American religion (for here we can move well beyond the central Basin of Mexico) and that of the Spaniard – farmer or missionary – was profound. For the Native American, reality was ever changing, mutable, becoming, interdependent. Teotl was not hierarchical, not an omniscient nor legislative intellect (Maffie 2014:22). For the Spaniard, the real was immutable, fixed, filled with beings, defined in parts and pieces, and compartmentalized. Yet the similarities between the two religious philosophies are also striking and were, no doubt, sources of confusion for native peoples and for missionaries. Both religions had deities who were sacrificed and resurrected. The single most important temporal cycle at play in 16th-century evangelization was that encapsulated in the Apocalypse, the end of the period of Christ’s absence from earth. But so was staving off an apocalypse the governing principle for the Aztecs. Each day, week, and year cycle in the Christian calendar and in the Aztec calendars had its religious ceremonies, cultic practices, and looming end. Both groups saw these rituals as renewal rituals. Teotl was precisely the concept underpinning the recognition of saints and that of the Trinity. The religious structure of these two world religions was quite similar as well. Both state religions were conducted with a formally educated, celibate priesthood operated through temples and shrines. Local religion evidenced tension with and independence from the State, engaged in by vendors, farmers, craftspeople, and heads of households. The landscape

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was filled with locally important, even personally important, deities, manifesting special places, burial areas, and community networks that elicited particular religious practices. In both states, manifestations of the divine were worshipped through cults. Cults had voluntary members, priests who were educated in the esoteric and historical knowledge of the cult, and rituals organized and undertaken by the members. These cults had shrines, paraphernalia, and even real estate in the form of roofed space and agricultural fields providing sustenance for the priests, images, and rituals. The spiritual conquest of New Spain, and the New World in general, had its best success in the realm of theological change and its least success in the eradication of any form of cultic practice. In that arena we see an intricate reworking of native and Catholic cultic practices through this and the next four centuries. The friars of Anahuac communities “managed to content themselves with an Indian Christianity that was hardly orthodox; the Nahuas, on the whole, were able to become just Christian enough to get by in the colonial social and political setting without compromising their basic ideological and moral orientation” (Burkhart 1989:184). Christianity, like all other religions in the world, is malleable, subject to the pressures, struggles, joys, and sorrows of humans. The process that Burkhart describes “is not an exception, but instead has been the rule of the Christianization process since the first century A.D. the idea that there exists an authentic or orthodox Christianity . . . is a relative mindset, not a reality” (Graham 2011:78). Restall (2003:74) says that there were “variations right down to the level of the individual . . . natives accommodated and understood Christianity and its place in their world in ways that we are only beginning to grasp.” Religions are alive, fluid and our attempt here is to follow that flow. What did Christianity offer to the native? Schroeder thought that much about it was familiar, its buildings, pomposity, and theater closely resembled many of their Precontact practices, and the Church’s social welfare programs were intended to serve everyone. Thus, the Nahuas had access to education (elite boys that is), hospital care, orphanages, and safe houses for young girls, and cofradias [that] allowed a veneer of Christian piety and duty when Nahuas were actually doing most of what they wanted to do anyway. (Schroeder 2010b:3–4)

Christianity has also been said to have offered to Mesoamerican groups new sodalities that cross-cut kin and increased their access to powerful spirits/ancestors through saints’ cults (Graham 2011). It appears to us, the authors, after completing this project, that the Mexicas’ view of reality – ever changing, mutable, becoming, interdependent – well describes Catholicism throughout its history. Catholicism was too, ever changing, ever becoming, in each new location, and in each new century. It would seem that it was the Spaniard who was deceived, thinking that reality and their religion was immutable, fixed. Echoing the epigraph from Louise Burkhart (1988) and James Lockhart (1992:4), after 1521 both religions continued to do what they had been doing for centuries – becoming. As we bring this essay to a close, there are two points that we wish to raise about scholarship directed at this crucial historical era. These are the role of native women and men in missionary work, and the impossibility of separating religion and society.

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Begging for scholarship is the role of native peoples, particularly the elite and their children, in bringing the new religion to kin and communities. The earliest religious dramas employed elite families as actors, Domínguez Torres (2013:169) argues, in order to show them as exemplars of superior, Christian behavior and as collaborators in the missionizing effort, a happy relationship expressed in Figures 18 and 20. Caciques, cacicas, and tlahtohqueh with their extensive kin networks were some of the earliest converts and they in turn convinced/ordered their followers to convert. In a 1580 illustrated codex, Diego Muñoz Camargo (~1529–1599) “claims that indigenous leaders helped the emperor ‘to win and conquer the whole roundness and machinery of this New World’” (Domínguez Torres 2013:144). For instance, tlatoani Don Antonio Cortés Totoquihuaztli commemorated his own embrace of the new religion in his design of the Tlacopan blazon approved in 1564 (Figure 20) (although it is possibly that of his tlatoani father, Totoquihuaztli) (Domínguez Torres 2013). The incomplete evangelization of New Spain is indicated by the incomplete orb in Figure 20. The first natives to be baptized in a town were usually the women – elite and slave – before being given as concubines to the Spanish. Elite leaders may have converted more people than did the missionaries. Second, the elite native boys trained in mission schools returned to their communities as teachers, cantors, and fiscales (Trexler 1982). They were empowered to offer all sacraments except for the death bed confession. They also served as spies for the friars eager to stamp out idolatry. Another arena we point out is that of the Christian neophytes, particularly of Tlaxcala but other Aztec communities in the Basin as well, who were used as settlers in the Chichimec region, the Yucatan, and Honduras to secure trade routes and convert the newly defeated natives. They built churches, conducted Catholic rites, and influenced non-Christian Indians by example and through marriage. Muñoz Camargo himself tutored Seminole peoples brought to

Figure 20 A tlatoani embracing Christianity. Section from Blazon of Tlacopan approved by Carlos V in 1565. The missing segment in the globe refers to the unfinished conversion. (Image used with permission of Fundación Casa de Alba, Madrid)

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Mexico-Tenochtitlan and he led a group of Tlaxcaltecans north into Chichimec country to form a settlement. The second point we wish to make is that the separation of religion and society is impossible. We highlight Elizabeth Graham’s (2011) insight, “I am not the first to criticize the idea that religious proselytizing and the idea that saving people’s souls under Christianity is somehow an issue that can be separated from territorial expansion, economic gain, and the spread of Castilian culture” (40). Mónica Domínguez Torres (2013) likewise argues that Christianization cannot be separated from warfare nor chivalry and warrior ideals of the 15th and 16th centuries. The idea that religion is somehow separate from culture is found in the problematic colonial history of the very category of “religion” (Smith 2004). A more thorough theorizing of the intricate weave of culture and religion is needed, particularly with this century as the focus. New Spain can provide a fruitful field for further decolonizing the category “religion” – questioning normative assumptions that accompany any use of the term by exploring various indigenous voices as best as can be done. How the term is defined often sets the arena of study, and that defining must be done with an intention that recognizes the possibility of undermining any previous understanding of “religion” itself. This will deepen and further contextualize our understanding of humanity beyond the strictures of the categories born in the colonial world (Nye 2019). The spiritual, material, military “conquest” of Mexico was by itself insufficient to create the 17th-century culture of New Spain. That creation required the weaving together of religious conceptions, cultic practices, cultural strategies, disease, environmental degradation, and constraints on both the colonized and the colonizer. Our work attempts a first step at outlining that tapestry. We offer the following 16th-century summary of events in New Spain (Table 3), relevant to 16th-century religion in Mexico and the key concepts to be presented next. In the pages that follow, we discuss 118 keywords for understanding the cosmology and cultic world of the Aztecs in 1519, the practice of Christianity in Spain in 1519, and the efforts to fuse the two worldviews from 1521 until 1600. To do so we have striven to choose culturally neutral words/terms and when that was not possible we have privileged the native perspective in choice of keyword. We believe that the keyword approach lays bare the creative blending of modern Catholicism in Mexico, a blending greatly facilitated by the shared organization of religious practice into cults. These cults are fading away in the 21st century as modern life is increasingly experienced in cities, away from nature, and in non-agricultural pursuits.

*A

adultery 15th-century Central Mexico: Adultery was thought to disrupt the individual, society, and cosmos but was wrong only when the woman involved was married (López Austin 2010:31). Punishments differed according to the rank of the adulterers, and whether or not the besmirched husband was murdered. The offending man in one case was banished to the frontier to live in a fort because he had not killed the husband (Douglas 2010:152). When a husband was murdered, the adulterers were killed. Noses of the offending couple might also be cut off (Douglas 2010) or they could be stoned. In a speech recorded by Sahagún (1950–1982:6:102) a noble mother says to a daughter, “do not know two men . . . never at any time abuse thy helpmate, thy husband. Never at any time, never ever betray him.” Concubinage was common among the elite in Mesoamerican cultures. Concubines were daughters gifted from one royal family to another although lower class families might give a daughter to a tlatoani. If the tlatoani had no heirs via his primary wife any child born of a concubine would have royal blood. 15th-century Spain: Metaphorically, adultery was unfaithfulness to God (Powell 2009:9). Doctrinally, adultery is a sex act where at least one of the persons is married to a third person. This requirement distinguishes adultery from fornication – sexual relations between unmarried people – also viewed as a sin. Anal sex also constituted the sin of adultery, even between spouses (Boswell 1980). The New Testament definition of adultery includes a wronged wife, yet women were more harshly condemned and punished if they were caught in an adulterous situation. An adulterous woman would be subject to public scorn, could lose her dowry, and could be cast from her home and even her town. Adulterous men were fined and could suffer social consequences, such as shunning or banishment. In some congregations adulterers were seated separately in the church as a form of public shaming and penance. Families were tainted by the sins of adulterers. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) was inconsistent in his writings even within his most influential work Summa Theologiae in his application of “nature,” “natural,” “sin,” “innate,” and “lust” and thus in his condemnation of adultery (Boswell 1980:318–331). The Siete Partidas of Alfonso X permitted Castilian men one concubine and extended some inheritance rights to resulting children (Purvis 2013). Concubines could sign contracts and own property until concubinage was prohibited by the Council of Trent in 1563. 16th-century New Spain: The missionaries attacked the native custom of multiple wives and of concubines. An emphasis on the one-spouse Christian marriage was the primary means of eradicating these sources of adultery. Elite native men were forced to

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choose one wife to marry in a church ceremony. Stoning of adulterers, although used in Spain, was not a punishment used in New Spain (Burkhart 2001a:34). Under Castilian law the Siete Partidas applied to New Spain, thus permitting a man one concubine in the New World until 1563. Ironically, in the early decades many noble class Indians drew the ire of missionaries for concubinage. The first recorded act of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Mexico was in 1522, against an Indian accused of concubinage. Six other trials this century concerned the charge of concubinage, two women and seven men among the accused (Klor de Alva 1991). There are records that some caciques moved their village as far away from the religious centers as possible in order to continue this and other practices disapproved of by the missionaries. The wives left behind in Spain worried about adultery on the part of their husbands. There were statements and suggestions in the news that came back to the peninsula that the American climate encouraged immoral behavior (Earle 2012:89). Indeed, adultery was rampant in Spanish America and church officials made surprise home visits to ferret out these couples. “If both parties were unmarried but of unequal social position . . . little or no attempt was made to encourage them to marry. Neither church nor state supported ‘unequal’ marriages later in the century” (Powers 2005:128). See also celibacy, marriage, sex, sin, virginity

afterlife 15th-century Central Mexico: Death was the passage from this world to the disorderly underworld. The geography of the afterlife for the Aztecs consisted of several destinations for the soul: the region of women dying in childbirth, the region of warriors, Mictlan, Tlalocan – determined by the cause of death. But significantly, reincarnation, primarily through name and physical likeness, was anticipated. The dead descended through the nine-layered underworld in a four year journey to Mictlan, the Place of the Fleshless Ones, a frightful, cold place, the deepest level of the Most Holy Earth. Early in their history the Mexica placed Mictlan to the north of Chicomoztoc but once in the Basin, the land of the dead lay to the southeast, in the lowlands (Brotherston 2005:43). Each year of the descent, to aid the deceased, gifts were offered by the living. “Material gifts, including slaves, articles of clothing, jewelry and adornments, weaponry, and food . . . sustained and protected individuals as they endured the four-year, obstacle-filled journey [to Mictlan]” (Hosselkus 2011:30–31). Once the offerings were delivered in Mictlan, the soul and the living ceased their related actions. Souls of men who died the glorious death of sacrifice as warriors were those who went to the eastern sky to accompany the sun as it emerged from the East cave every morning to its zenith for four years. When their mission was completed, they “returned to earth in the glorious (and innocent) form of butterflies and hummingbirds, to dance endlessly in the sun, sipping the nectar of the flowers” (Clendinnen 1991a:179). At noon each day the women warriors of the western skies, those who died in childbirth, the Tzitzimimeh, met the men warriors to take over escort duties. They “deliver[ed] him into the hands of the people of Mictlan” (Clendinnen 1991a:179).

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Those who died by drowning, from watery diseases, or lightning strikes and children who died before weaning were destined to serve Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue in Tlalocan as tlaloques. The souls of babies returned to the garden of Tonacatecutli to suck on a breast of the Tree of Sustenance until called to repopulate the 6th (next) Sun. 15th–16th-century Spain: For medieval Christians the geography of the afterlife – heaven, purgatory, hell – was securely tied to the life lived on earth. Roman Catholics believed they died in a state of spiritual imperfection and were not granted immediate entrance to heaven. The accumulation of sin is related to the pleasure of living – eating, drinking, and sensuality. In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas wrote that greater fault (i.e., sins beyond original sin) deserves “greater punishment.” For Aquinas, the severity of after-death punishment for baptized sinners would correspond in torment to the pleasure of the sin. Dante further elaborated a set of popular religious beliefs about the afterlife when he wrote the Purgatorio. Purgatory was imagined to be multilayered, a temporary holding place where one’s soul was cleansed of sin (Rabin 2009). Under the guidance and watchful eyes of the clergy various tools for navigating the next stage of life while awaiting Christ’s return and the resurrection of the dead were offered: Christ’s sacrifice, the intervention of the saints, and acts of confession and penance, and indulgences. The process of dying could also provide possibilities of lessening one’s purgatorial burden. “A good death meant suffering or agonizing sufficiently long to obtain the repentance and pardon of sins” (García de León 2006:52). To minimize the time spent and the pain experienced in purgatory Christians prayed for help from the Virgin, saints such as Gertrude and Teresa, and relied on objects like the cord of Francis, the escapulario of Ramon, or the belt of Nicholas Tolentino. After death, prayers said by the living for the deceased (and their own eventual death) were directed at minimizing the time in purgatory. The emphasis on prayers and alms for the dead reinforced the idea of purgatory and was ultimately instrumental in the development of indulgences. Prayers, masses, pilgrimages, and good acts earned indulgences that could be “spent” to shorten one’s time in Purgatory. With that goal in mind, the Christian Spaniard was expected to pay for at least ten masses to be said after her or his death and many people willed enough goods or cash to the Church to buy many more. This expectation bolstered the need for a large number of clergy (Eire 2013a:10). “The dead were just as demanding of attention as were the living, haunting not just people’s memories and imagination but their calendar, purse, and estate” (Eire 2013a:11). 16th-century New Spain: Hell was presented by the missionaries as “a perpetual prison” (Pinilla 2013:14) and many paintings showed souls in Hell shackled or being tortured by monstrous figures, the actual experience of many natives at the hands of both the Church and State. The native infant’s soul, who prior to this had gone to a paradise where it awaited rebirth, now went to a limbo of the unbaptized from which it was never freed. Where most native people spent four years in one place or another after death being tended to by their families, Catholics could expect to spend an eternity in a waiting place with a never-ending obligation to the dead for the living. Access to the upperworld for the native’s soul was still restricted to all but those who died a martyr’s/ warrior’s death.

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Indulgences were earned from the Catholic Church during one’s life and even after death to shorten one’s time in Purgatory and quickly became essential for ideas of salvation. Therefore, when the Spanish government prohibited the sale of indulgences in native towns this prohibition was ignored to some extent. “[A]gents of the Santa Cruzada offered indulgences in native towns, sometimes announcing the sale with great pomp and circumstance that could include bands of trumpeters and other musical instruments” (Christensen 2016:180). Indulgences were promised to those who performed a prayer round to Mary that was written by Pedro de Gante in 1553 (Burkhart 2001a:120). A 1572 Nahuatl text (Burkhart 2001a:32–33) documents indulgences granted to members of the Rosary confraternity. A song in the Cantares Mexicanos, written in this century (Bierhorst 1985), reflects on native life under Spanish/Catholic rule and alludes to the afterlife: Where are we going? We came only to be born. Our home is beyond: In the home of the defleshed ones. I suffer: Happiness, good fortune never comes my way. Have I come here to struggle in vain? This is not the place to accomplish things. Certainly nothing grows green here: Misfortune opens its blossoms. See also ancestor, cosmos, creation, death, paradise, soul, underworld

altar 15th-century Central Mexico: Every Mexica house had an interior shrine with a few cult images and offerings on an altar (Boone 1994:112). Portable altars were often stone boxes with iconography of Tezcatlipoca (Smith 2014). “Emphasis on small platforms built in the centers of cities was a key innovation of Aztec urban planning . . . plac[ing] them in key locations within the urban epicenter to define public spaces for ceremony” (Smith 2014:24–25). These low platforms might have stairs up one side or be aligned. At the site of Teopanzolco, Morelos, eight altars of variable shape and size are aligned to the west side of the main pyramid. One contained a collection of ninety-two skulls (Smith 2014). Low mountains near communities served as altar mountains for the making of offerings and rituals to the taller, farther mountains. In the Mexica feast of Panquetzaliztli, priests prepared mountaintop altars with fir branches and bloodlet there (Harris 2000:85). 15th-century Spain: The altar is the holiest part of the church, a place of sacrifice and the representation of the table at the Last Supper (Giffords 2007:235; Taylor 2003). Iberian Christians used a variety of altars made of stone, earth, and metal with stone and earth altars occurring both inside and outside of churches (Powell 2009:14). Stone altars often

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refer to the sacrificial role of altars in Old Testament rituals and wood altars emphasize the role of the last supper (Taylor 2003). Cathedral altars, on the other hand, were “the equivalent of the inner sanctuary and Ark of the Covenant” (Brading 2013: 249–250). That altar usually would be a single piece of stone. Until the 13th century most parish churches had only one altar, unadorned and situated between the clergy and the people, where the worshipers placed their offerings and the clergy conducted communion. On the altar could be found the monstrance, tabernacle (housing wafers), and oil (chrism). Mandatory above the altar were a silver dove and a crucifix. A lamp was hung or placed on every altar when the Blessed Sacrament was present, beginning in the 16th century (Giffords 2007:232). Medieval priests often carried their altars. “[I]f a priest was on a journey or in a place where there was no permanent church, he had to use a stone table or slab consecrated by a bishop; this practice became embedded in . . . the twelfth century” (Graham 2011:225). Permanent altars had a base supporting a stone table or “mensa” with a recess and linens to cover the altar. Top-heavy tall Gothic altars of the 14th–16th century were moved to the back of the church for safety reasons and many relics moved to the front of the church. Other relics were “placed in a hollow space within the altar, sometimes known as a ‘grave’”(Bartlett 2013:445). Ex-votos or homemade images of thanks, often illustrating a miracle or apparition, were put on altars. Side altars (and chapels) evolved as daily masses and private masses were incorporated into the liturgical traditions. 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures utilized raised altars as focal points. Church altars were highly decorated for mass, Epiphany, Palm Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Corpus Christi, and Christmas Eve. Altars were well lit, and they and the floor before the altar were adorned with tapestries, greenery, mint, and candles (Ricard 1966:176). Both cultures also used portable altars. In northern New Spain, side altars/chapels were rare because of the paucity of priests or confraternities to care for them (Giffords 2007:229). Excavations of mid–16th-century churches in the Maya village of Tipu, Belize, indicated a masonry bench, 2 meters north–south by 1 meter east–west, set against the rear (east) wall of the sanctuary. The bench, which at one time stood somewhere between 50 and 70 centimeters high, almost certainly served to support a portable wooden altar base, which the friars or clerics would have carried with them to visitas. On the altar base would have been set the portable altar, or ara, a “small, hard, rectangular stone slab, about 12 by 14 inches . . . which symbolically represented Christ, and was the holiest part of the altar” (Graham 2011:225). These consecrated small slabs and paraphernalia were carried from visita to visita in locked chests. See also cross, offering, religious architecture, rock, shrine, tree

ancestor 15th-century Central Mexico: “Ancestors” were a subset of the dead, those lineage and altepetl founders and their offspring, and respected ritual specialists. Still older ancestors existed from the prior four Suns. Perhaps most significant among these were the quinametzin, the giants of the Second Sun, builders of the pyramid of Cholula. Mesoamerican people also saw in the diminutive size of birds and insects creatures

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created long ago. In Aztec codices, ancestors were people who wore skin clothing and hunted deer. An official history of the Mexica was devised by Tlacaelel that claimed new links to the Toltecs as ancestors of the Mexica (Chipman 2005:14–15). Sexual relations with other ethnic groups were considered bad for the offspring and confused the patron deities and ancestors. 15th-century Spain: In general, “ancestors” were earlier generations of Israelites and specifically, the “founders of the nation: Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel” (Powell 2009:17). God’s patronage was promised to these ancestors and their descendents while at the same time warning that their sins could lead to the punishment of their children (Exodus 20:5, 34:7; Numbers 14:18). Blood purity concerns in this and earlier centuries underpinned concern with documenting one’s ancestors. Spaniards had become obsessed with lineage. Discovering a Jewish or Muslim ancestor had consequences for marriage, eligibility for office, entrance into the priesthood, and emigration to the New World. The statutes of Limpieza de sangre functioned to exclude Conversos and Moriscos from any official offices, and deprived “the conversos of their rights as Christians, no matter how sincere the conversion” (Poole 1999:363). During the 16th century, sanctions and penalties for those whose lineage was not purely Christian increased, enforced by both the Church and various sodalities. 16th-century New Spain: Both groups offered veneration to a subgroup of the dead. Missionaries were ever watchful for references to Aztec ancestors, moving quickly to eliminate those references while at the same time venerating relics of Catholic saints. Reflecting continued concern with ancestry, Cortés’ children, borne by both Spanish and native women, and those of other conquistadors, were relegated to an inferior social and legal position behind the influx of “peninsulares,” who came to New Spain from Spain and assumed political and religious roles. If ancestry could not be traced to Old World families, political, religious, and other official roles were not attainable (Martinez 2008). Martinez (2008:267) suggested that the view of Indian blood as “impure” occurred after the demise of the effort to train native priests at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in the late 1530s coupled with the decline in frequency of high ranking Spaniards’ marriage to high ranking native women through this century. It was also the case that indigenous communities adopted the Spanish criteria for “native” and soon barred from office mixed bloods. “In indigenous communities ‘local caciques [rulers] and principales were granted a set of privileges and rights on the basis of their pre-Hispanic noble bloodlines and acceptance of the Catholic faith’” (Martinez 2008:270). See also bone, cave, cosmos, cult, death, fertility, naming, offering, relic, rock, sacred bundle, star

angel 15th-century Central Mexico: Lividity on a corpse in the region of the shoulder blades manifests as two whitish “wings” giving rise to the idea of the soul leaving the body as a winged being (Furst 1995). This idea was surely confirmed by the many winged insects that hatch in and hover about a corpse. Birds, butterflies, flies, and beetles are strongly

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associated with the yolia soul, which attaches to bone and returns annually during the Days of the Dead. The mural at a Teotihuacan barrio depicts Tlalocan filled with many moths, probable human souls and potential templates for angels. 15th-century Spain: Angels were central to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim beliefs in Iberia. “Angels praise God, serve as messengers to the world, watch over God’s people, and are sometimes instruments of God’s judgement” (Powell 2009:17). Archangels were Michael/Miguel, Gabriel, and in the apocryphal literature Raphael and Uriel. There were said to be nine choirs of angels, the highest ranking being the Seraphim followed by Cherubim. Maimonides (1135–1204) reasoned that the angels were natural forces or powers with human faculties (Feldman 2005). Writers during the era of the early church warned against the elevation of angels to the status of Jesus. Miguel was the most popular of the angels, was venerated in all three Iberian cultures, and was patron of the Holy Roman Empire. He was created before humans, a warrior in heaven who was the first to choose the side of God in Lucifer’s rebellion. Miguel fought a dragon, inflicted plagues on Egypt, parted the Red Sea, and guarded souls. The association of Archangel Miguel with souls resulted in a Western European image of Miguel holding scales, weighing the dead in the presence of the Devil, beginning in the 12th century. Thus his image and name were appropriate in cemeteries and other places of death (Bartlett 2013:165). His military role gradually superseded other aspects of his cult. Miguel played a special role in the Franciscan order. Francis was on a 40-day fast in honor of Miguel when Christ appeared to him, flying aboard the cross, to give Francis the stigmata. Franciscan missionaries saw Miguel as the special emissary of Christ to the Order. The other archangels received increasing attention at the end of the Middle Ages. Raphael’s cult was growing in England. Gabriel had a liturgy recorded in several Spanish breviaries in the 15th century. Both Gabriel and Miguel had significant roles in the annunciation, the holy birth, and Mary’s assumption in addition to their more militaristic roles in the conquest of the Moors, and as heralds of the return of Christ. 16th-century New Spain: The first twelve Franciscan missionaries to New Spain were keen to “explain the creation of the angels, the revolt of Lucifer, the part played by the devils and the good angels, the creation of the world and men” (Ricard 1966:87). Various catechisms used angels to present the origins of objects, prayers, and practices, and to explain the creation of heaven and of earth. Zumárraga sought to equip his neophytes with a realistic awareness of sharing the created world with angels and of making their way towards God in their company, precisely so as to give them a more inclusive sense of the kind of community they belonged to as creatures and to prepare them for sharing in the heavenly community that belonged to them alongside the angels. (Cervantes 2013:75)

Jerónimo de Mendieta, who fought to keep the indigenous free from the corrupting influences of the Spaniards, saw the natives as a “genus angelicum, a new type of exemplary spiritual beings who, in the history of salvation, would serve to compensate for the innumerable impure souls that had been condemned from the Fall to the Reformation” (Cuadriello 2013:226).

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Figure 21 Angels on the facade of Nuestra Señora de la Natividad in Tepoztlán. Sun, moon, and stars can be seen above the door. An apocalyptic Mary is standing on an upturned crescent moon flanked on the left by St. Dominic and on the right by St. Catherine of Siena elevating her heart. (Photo by L. Ammon; used with permission of Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, Mexico)

In general, most Catholics believed angels were companions for humans (Figure 21). The Spanish reasoned that fallen angels and demons also had been present with the Indigenous people in the form of their native gods (Cervantes 2013:82). But for the Aztec and other natives in New Spain, there can be little doubt that angels mimicked tlaloque. Explicit examples were documented by Diego Muñoz Camargo (1529–1599) in his The History of Tlaxcala (Muñoz Camargo 1986 [1581–1584]:152). Ponce de Leon, a “secular priest at Zumpahuacan, also noted the associations between angels and tlaloque made by his parishioners” (Wake 2010:207). Native sculptors occasionally showed an angel with conventions applied to Tlaloc (snakes or fangs) painted in vivid blue, the color of both Tlaloc and Miguel. Angels were inscribed on the new colonized landscape as well. The city of Puebla’s full name is “Puebla de los Ángeles” as christened by Motolinía. “By naming the Metropolis for the Angels, he may well have been alluding to the new and growing cult of the seven mystic archangels, whose ‘ancient’ image had been discovered [in a grotto] in the Spanish colony of Palermo, Sicily only a few years earlier” (Lara 2004:104–105). In a database of patron saints assigned in the first 70 years of missionizing, the senior author found at least twenty-seven churches given to the patronage of archangel Miguel, mostly Franciscan in origin. Three churches were dedicated to San Gabriel, including the Franciscan fortress church begun in 1529 in Cholula. See also bird, creation, cosmos, paradise, patron, soul, underworld

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apocalypse 15th-century Central Mexico: The knowledge of the cataclysmic endings of the four previous Suns or era and the predicted violent ending of the Fifth Sun, weighed on every Aztec citizen. The destruction of Tula, home of the Toltecs and northeast of the Valley of Mexico, was an apocalypse known to all Aztec nobility. In each of these apocalypses the beings the gods had created to worship them failed to honor the gods appropriately, warranting their destruction. The ending of each 52-year cycle was a night when this Fifth Sun might end. All Aztec communities spent months storing food and provisions in case disaster struck the day after the cycle finished. The Tzitzimimeh, monstrous female forms who lived in darkness, awaited the time when both humans and gods could not keep the world alive, and then they would attack and destroy humankind. The successful kindling of the new fire kept these women monsters at bay for another 52 years. Coatlicue, Huitzilopochtli’s mother, announced to a delegation of Mexica priests that when her son returned to his mother’s mountain the Aztecs’ dominion would end. Keeping him satisfied with blood was to keep him from returning home. Aztec elite may have fostered the prediction that a Toltec man-god called Quetzalcoatl would return to the realm to reclaim this territory and resume rulership, also putting an end to Aztec dominion. Many scholars now claim that this story was made up by Cortés or a missionary (e.g., Townsend 2019:94–96). 15th-century Spain: The “Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ” was the only example of apocalyptic literature to be canonized into the New Testament, although there are many other examples of this genre to be found in apocryphal literature. Augustine of Hippo’s (354–430) teaching on apocalypticism and his interpretation of the book of Revelation cautioned that predictions are often not correct and thereby disappointing. He discouraged reading contemporary events, such as the 410 fall of Rome to the Vandals during his lifetime, as events described in Revelation. In Book 20 of City of God, Augustine also made a sharp distinction between resurrection of the soul and resurrection of the body, emphasizing that the bodily resurrection will only come with the return of Christ at an unknown and unknowable time. The First Crusade, 1099, sparked a new firestorm of apocalyptic thinking and also brought Christianity and Islam into wider contact throughout Medieval Europe (though Muslims and Christians had been in close proximity in the Holy Land for over 300 years at that point). Jerusalem came back into sharp focus for European Christians. Spain occupied a specific and unique place in the crusade ideology, believing that their proximity to Al-Andalus (Iberia) meant they were continually engaged in crusade. Spanish Jews were as likely to be anticipating the end or at least a transformation of the world as were Spanish Christians. The Sephardic Jewish philosopher and scholar Maimonides (1135–1204) drafted a plan for rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple, hoping for the advent of the Messiah. Both Jews and Christians in Spain studied the Cabala searching for clues suggesting the arrival of the reign of the Messiah (Jews) and the return of Jesus (Christians). These expectations were pervasive in the late medieval era and early Renaissance and even received Papal decrees calling for the final holy war, complete with plenary indulgences. Pope Pius II was a Cabalist and in 1463 “issued the bull Ezekielis

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calling for a final holy war [to reclaim Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire]. In 1500 Pope Alexander VI repeated the call” (Lara 2004:59). There were many apocalyptic influences at the Spanish court during the 15th century. Sor María de Santo Domingo (see essay), a beata at King Fernando II’s court, prophesied that a Spanish king (if not Fernando II then Carlos V) would be the Last World Emperor. The Last World Emperor was a powerful component of the Spanish and Franciscan apocalyptic tradition and connected Spain, Jerusalem, and the New World as key components of the coming return of Christ. Early modern European painters often presented the birth of Jesus amid the ruins of Rome or other settings in the pagan past (Hamann 2008), signaling an apocalypse for the prior people. Apocalypticism was a potent motivator for many Spaniards from Christopher Columbus to Hernán Cortés to the Franciscan missionaries whose zeal led them to believe in the possibility of being the last earthly generation. Columbus’ apocalyptic expectations were present in his desire to sail to India and an integral part of his writing after 1481 to the end of his life (Avalos 1996). Columbus uniquely saw himself as the agent of God and Mary, prophesied by Joachim de Fiore (see essay), to bring about the conditions necessary for the return of Christ (“apocalypse”) and the beginning of the thousand years in which He would reign on earth (“millennium”) (Avalos 1996). The basic elements of Columbus’s apocalyptic expectations included the appearance of an emperor-messiah, the conversion of all people in the world to Christianity, the final recovery of the Holy Land from the “infidels,” the advent of the Antichrist, and the second coming of Christ. Also shared by others in Spain was his belief that Christ’s second coming was imminent, no more than 150 years away. Columbus told King Fernando II that the wealth generated by the New World would fund Ferdinand’s conquest of Jerusalem, making him the Last World Emperor. Some friars believed converting (or at least baptizing) as many indigenous people as possible would actually prompt Jesus to return. Unlike ancient and contemporary apocalypticism, the apocalypticism invoked by Columbus and his Spiritual Franciscan contemporaries viewed the return of Christ not as an escape from the present through an act of God in God’s own time but as a reward that could be initiated by human action such as expelling Muslims and Jews from Christendom, recapturing Jerusalem, and fulfilling the Great Commision by spreading the gospel to all humanity. 16th-century New Spain: Both groups knew of apocalypses and expected another. However, it should be noted that the Aztecs used sacrificial practices to forestall the end of the world, where Christians, particularly Spiritual Franciscans, actively sought to hasten its coming. The arrival of the Spanish was understood by Aztec priests as marking a new Sun era (Hamann 2008). It was similarly understood by the missionaries as marking a new era for Christianity. Mendieta (1525–1604) described the discovery of the New World in apocalyptic terms, depicting Cortés as Moses separating the Old World from the Promised Land (Restall 2016). The apocalyptic motivation of the first missionaries was manifested in several tangible ways. Patronage of San Juan the Evangelist or San Juan Letran was perhaps the most obvious sign of this motivation but San Miguel had a role as well. The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe of Extremadura, a “praying Madonna, standing on the moon and

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encircled by a large halo or aureole, was developed from medieval illustrations of the Apocalyptic Woman and can be traced back to the tenth and eleventh centuries” (Stratton 1994:19). An iconographically similar subject, “la Virgen del Apocalipsis’ always included the serpent as a part of the allegory but omitted the personal attributes of Mary and the rosary” (Giffords 1974:49). St. Francis, via the Franciscans, had a pivotal role in the New World, built on the references to him in Franciscan apocalyptic circles as the Angel of the Sixth Seal, indicated by the stigmata Christ gave him (Lara 2004). This apocalyptic reference gives the churches with devotion to San Miguel erected in this century new import as well as those named for Francisco. One of the most significant architectural expressions of the sixteenth-century expectation of apocalypse still standing are the posas at San Andrés Calpan, outside of Puebla, founded in 1548. The posas detail the theology of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ along with a statue of Francis receiving the stigmata, weaving Francis into the biblical account in line with a popular Franciscan apocalyptic theology developed by Joachim de Fiore (see essay). See also calendar, divination, fate, paradise, vision

arrow 15th-century Central Mexico: Bow and arrow technology is no older than 1,500 years in North America. It was rapidly adopted by hunter-gatherers. The hunt god, Mixcoatl, may have been the first to use arrows when he shot the goddess Itzpapalotl in her deer form. Arrows were included in his sacred bundle as was a stone blade deriving from her fractured body. Conquest was a prominent meaning of arrows in Aztec iconography (Olivier 2007:292) shown as arrows piercing people or piercing toponyms. Four arrows with shield was a motif associated with the war god Huitzilopochtli. Xolotl, as Evening Star, is shown in codices with an arrow projecting from his mouth, prepared to shoot the sun. Red-striped arrows were associated with the god Tezcatlipoca, and two of his arrows were heavily guarded in the city of Tlaxcala, used as auguries before and during battle. Three arrows piercing a shield was the symbol of the Feathered Serpent cult. When taking a territory, arrows were shot in four directions (Olivier 2007). Arrows were known to seek their target (Townsend 2019:24). An ancient arrow cane dice divination “game” is documented but poorly understood. In the annual Flower Feast honoring Xochipilli, the teixiptla carried an arrow-impaled heart. An arrow-like sign “piercing” a central eye or face, such as in the Aztec calendar stone, probably indicated the completion of five Venus cycles (Klein 1975:11). In one state ceremony, an elderly priest, who had fasted for 80 days, emerged wearing the clothing of Camaxtli/Mixcoatl and withstood a barrage of arrows shot over his head, “an apparent symbolic sacrifice” (López Austin 2015:155). Arrow sacrifice was introduced to the Toltecs through the Ixcuiname, the goddesses who died in childbirth, and the cult’s priestess from the Gulf of Mexico lowlands and adopted by Zapotecs, Aztecs, and Maya (Callaway 1990). Four times a year, a victim was tied to a scaffold, a tree, or a cross and shot from four directions by four priests dressed like gods. The arrows may have been metaphorical sperm or seed or the sun. Children

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were referred to as “the flakes, the chips,” and the stone points on arrows were known by the name “Itzpapalotl” (Andrews and Hassig 1984:105) giving stone points a fertility reference (Furst 1995:175). Harris (2000:79) maintains that the arrow sacrifice conducted during the Ochpaniztli feast reenacted the high loss of life once suffered by Mexica warriors as they fled the Culhua warriors. In addition to arrows, there were longer darts, launched by the handheld atlatl (throwing board) another “important symbol of warfare and magical power. Most of the important Aztec gods were sometimes shown holding atlatls or darts. . . . with snake designs or associated with serpents. . . . [A]tlatls were also elaborately decorated with feathers, and associated with birds of prey” (Whittaker 2009:1). When a warrior died away from his land, comrades went to find the body and burn it there. They returned to his home with “an arrow belonging to [him], and gave it to the members of his house, and they prepared and decorated it, and considered it an image of the deceased, and, adorned with the insignias of the sun, they burned it” (Motolinía 1971:307). 15th-century Spain: Metaphorically, “arrows” represent martyrdom, intense religious experience, plague, words from an evil tongue, sudden calamities, lightning, or children. Arrows are associated with St. Sebastian, a saint whose miraculous story of surviving being shot with arrows and then preaching to Emperor Diocletian before being clubbed to death is attributed to Ambrose of Milan (340–397). While Sebastian’s triumph over real arrows led to his appeal to the many archer and crossbow confraternities of the 15th century, his survival was even more symbolic, for he triumphed over spiritual arrows as well, those sent by the devil. Among the spiritual arrows shot by the devil were plagues, leading to St. Sebastian’s role in the combat against plague. The explanation for the rainbow as a sign of God’s pledge not to destroy the world by flood again lies in the Old Testament, where the rainbow appears as an archer’s bow (Genesis 9:12–13, Lamentations 2:4 and Habakkuk 3:9–11). In those passages, God’s bow releases arrows of lightning and thunder earthward. God’s promise means he will hang up the bow (Powell 2009:332). Arrows were used in divination (belomancy). Arrows might be marked with symbols and particular feathers, then tossed or shot or drawn from a quiver to derive an answer. Another practice was to mark three arrows with the phrases, God orders it me, God forbids it me, and the third would be blank – the arrow drawn determined the course of action (Chambers 1728:96). Three arrows piercing the heart of Augustine (and thus the emblem of the Augustinians) and of Teresa of Avila signified intense religious experience. Seven arrows pierce the heart of Mary, corresponding to her seven sorrows. 16th-century New Spain: Meanings for arrows overlapped between the cultures in several ways: as children, in arrow sacrifice, in symbols using a pierced heart. The rite of Izcalli (January 19–February 7), one of the times an arrow sacrifice was performed, spanned the feast date for San Sebastian (January 20). San Sebastian “enjoyed a following in sixteenth-century Taxco [Guerrero state] where he may have represented a colonial replacement for the pre-Conquest god Xochipilli” (Vargas Lugo 1982:185). There was a chapel to him on the western side of Oaxaca City in the 16th century (now covered by the 17th-century church devoted to the Virgin of Solitude).

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Callaway argues that reliefs of the arrow sacrifice along with Mixtec dates are carved into two sides of the atrial cross of Topiltepec, Oaxaca. On one face of one arm is a scene of the arrow sacrifice with the victim dressed as Xipe Totec. “As the flayed god he was the supreme penitent and personification of victimization. Parallelling St. Sebastian, he was tortured and scarred with arrows and therefore associated with disease, especially diseases of the skin and eyes” (Callaway 1990:213). Recalling that St. Sebastian was invoked during pestilences in particular, the association between the two is logical. She also believes that the nails of the passion, at least in this century, may have been seen as the arrows of the arrow sacrifice. See also divination, healing, heart, witchcraft, Venus

astrology 15th-century Central Mexico: Astrology is the belief that stars and other celestial phenomena affect one’s life. Since the universe was made of light and heavy essences, and human bodies contained both, movements in the sky affected all living forms. In addition, all of the planets were deities (Aguilar-Moreno 2006) and all deities had characteristics derived from celestial observations. For instance, Xochiquetzal, a lunar goddess of love, may have been a “whore” because the conjunction of the moon and sun never lasts very long and the moon can be seen near other planets throughout the year (Milbrath 2000). These different deities – star, planets, moon – and phenomena such as clouds, rain, and comets were assigned to different levels of the upper world. The cycles of time represented by the movements of the sun, moon, Venus, various constellations, and their intersections with one another as well as their appearances in the cardinal points and quadrants were the basis of both astrology and astronomy. These cycles of time, one aspect of teotl, could be good or bad, right or wrong. Right time was a unit whose outcome could be reliably predicted, such as years named 1 Flint, or the moment a Venus cycle concluded. Each cycle came to a conclusion with dread and ritual preparation. The powers of the individual days, named and numbered, were codified in the tonalpoualli 260-day cycle, the most important astrological instrument among the Mexica and other peoples of Mesoamerica. Each day imparted a particular character, fate, and human name and was presided over, from noon to midnight, by a deity, a lord of the night. A midwife could be expected to help secure a good fate for a newborn by either delaying or inducing labor or concealing the true birth date. The baby could also be given its first bath on a more auspicious day but both the bath and the birth had to fall within the same 13-day period. People sharing a birth date, often given as their name, had much in common as did days and years with the same name. Nezahualpilli, tlatoani of Tetzcoco, was said to be a great astrologer who “invited other stargazers to his palace to exchange knowledge about the heavens” (Carrasco and Sessions 2007:2). Moteuczoma II was also said to have been something of an astronomer. 15th-century Spain: It is difficult to separate astrology and astronomy in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. Following Plato, all matter was considered to be alive, possessing a soul and intelligence of its own (Willard 2015). As this idea was Christianized, learning about the stars meant learning about their creator. Until the late

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18th century, astronomy and astrology were considered two complementary components of the same discipline. God’s design for the universe was encoded in all of creation, which worked together with Grace for the salvation of all creation, part of which was revealed by the planets and stars. “Aquinas and Albertus Magnus both found that astrological predictions were compatible with God’s absolute power and human free will. Therefore astrology was largely tolerated by the Church in the late Middle Ages and used by emperors and kings” (Boudet 2005:62). Astrology provided a way of categorizing people and their attributes based on planetary affiliation, designating professions, class, and group, which reflected and affirmed cultural and social norms and expectations. Scholastic theology held that astrological signs could be used to reveal the nature of humans in a particular group or occupation. Astrology was a “science” that showed how planets and celestial spheres influenced and affected humans, though using astrology to predict individual fates was considered theologically suspect. Ideas about influences of astrology were conveyed through “house books,” a kind of Almanac. This new type of handbook contained medical advice, and calendrical and astrological knowledge, usually ordered after the year’s progression (Blume 2004:546). The adoption of learned astrology took “into account a great number of celestial parameters and forming a clearly organized and hierarchical system of knowledge . . . at a time when translations from Arabic to Latin were providing astronomical instruments to place in horoscopes the position of the planets, ascendants and astrological houses, and were giving the basic rules of the ‘judgments of the stars’”(Boudet 2005:61). Aderlassmannchen were images of the human body with zodiac signs linked to various parts (Figure 22) used medicinally for blood letting. Zodiac signs were also given

Figure 22 Astrology in the Body. Left: European body with corresponding zodiac signs (Bauernkalender fur 1563 woodcut). Right: Body with corresponding Aztec day signs (Codex Rios, ca. 1562).

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Christian affiliations such as Aries, the Lamb of God; Gemini, the New and Old Testaments; and Leo, Resurrection. Jews and pagans were saved by the water poured by Aquarius. Constellation maps were important in this century. Additionally, these maps were often combined with astronomical calculations for eclipses and equinoxes, and these calculations with their attendant predictions followed Ptolemaic astronomy (Shamos 2013). Even the fiery apocalyptic 15th-century Florentine preacher Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) acknowledged the power of the stars in human affairs, observing, “‘everything here below is subjected, in its actions and its properties, to the influx and government of stars, and above all of planets, which are the noblest among the celestial bodies’” (Shamos 2013:435). This is a prime example of the microcosm–macrocosm analogy that governed much of the mentalité of early modern people. There was a close connection between astrology and summoning spirits or demons. Heavenly bodies and the souls of the dead were the chief tools of the necromancer’s trade, so any practitioner worth his [sic] salt had to know not only the names and innate qualities of each and every spirit and demon but also the precise moment (time and date) at which to fulfill the necessary conditions to lure them into his magic circle. (Tausiet 2014:40)

There was also a dependency on the “elections (or catarchic astrology) [for dealing] with the forecasting of undertakings and the choice of proper times for initiating actions” (Boudet 2005:63) from the day to found a city to the day best for bleeding a patient. 16th-century New Spain: The processes through which planets and fixed stars transformed water, earth, fire, and air, and ultimately human temperament and complexion, affected all the colonists, indigenous peoples, and the mestizos and mulattoes who were part of the colonial world. While not a theory of race, astrology was used to support a kind of class or caste-like system based on complexion and constellations. “Astrology was part of the obvious mental landscape of every learned individual in the early modern world, regardless of religion or country of origin” (Cañizares-Esguerra 1999:36–37). The 16th century saw developments in astrology in the New World, with numerous works by Acosta, Las Casas, and Cardenas all arguing in one way or another that the stars overhead in Mexico influenced everything from the landscape to the weather to the character and complexion of the indigenous and of the transplanted Spaniards. Even the native body was marked with solar signs (Figure 22 right). Universities in New Spain had chairs in medical astrology and the influences of the stars were credited with both positive and negative treatments (Cañizares-Esguerra 1999). See also astronomy, calendar, day, divination, feast, moon, star, sun, Venus

astronomy 15th-century Central Mexico: Today scholars consider the Maya the most advanced of the American astronomers. A close second might have been the Toltecs who, although they adopted much of the Venus and tonalpoualli sky lore from other groups, themselves recorded remarkable calculations and observations. An example of the naming of gods based on astronomical events should suffice to illustrate this skill. The goddess

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Itzpapalotl, also called 4-flower and 4-flint, was named by the Toltecs for an event involving the star cluster we call the Hyades that occurred on May 9, 727. “Hyades set with the sun for the year at the very same time that the moon, precisely when it was exactly full, rose achronically with the sun” (Dieterle 2005:1.2.2). The solar and sidereal years were the basis of the Feast cycle and the Mexica mathematical precision for these two “years” exceeded that of either Julian or Gregorian mathematicians: 365.242 for the solar year and 365.256 for the sidereal year, the former slipping 4 minutes every day (Brotherston 2005:28). Carefully watched for astrological purposes were the movements of individual stars, constellations (especially Ursa Major, the Pleiades, Scorpio/Sagittarius), planets (Venus and Mercury in particular), the Milky Way, the ecliptic, eclipses, sun, and moon. Thousands of temples and shrines had astronomical (star, solar, lunar) alignments and ceremonial centers were laid out with respect to celestial referents. Astralisms, Venus, and the sun and moon were watched by calendar priests using formal observatories that were as varied as subterranean shadow chambers (e.g., Teotihuacan, Xochicalco) and nonsquare stone buildings with slotted windows (e.g., Monte Alban). Stones embedded in buildings in many towns of Anahuac created sundials and provided sighting lines to the distant horizon for marking equinoxes and solstices as well as the passage overhead of stars. 15th–16th-century Spain: Much of the astronomy known by Iberians after 1300 came from Islamic and Judaic sources that built on Ptolemy. Since both Judaism and Islam were dependent on lunar calendars, studying the stars and planets as well as their movements was essential for religious practices. Jews and Muslims shared knowledge, ancient records of celestial events, and their own research across Iberia (Morrison 2016). Christians benefitted from this research and worked some of the information into their own theology and calendars. “All these astronomical tables [utilizing] . . . spherical trigonometry [were] mainly an Islamic creation: all the trigonometry Copernicus knew was Islamic” (Samsó 2005:65). Medieval people saw no conflict with comets and eclipses as both natural events and signs from God. For all three monotheistic traditions eclipses were signs and portents of transitions and were considered auspicious, requiring special prayers. By the beginning of the 13th century, the Christian “rediscovery” of Aristotle had overwhelmed the intellectual world. Following Aristotelian metaphysics, Christian theology now understood the celestial region to be filled with incorruptible ether. The planets and stars were made of it, as were the spheres in which they were embedded and which perpetually carried them around with a uniform, circular motion. “Because it was generally regarded as fitting that a noble being should influence a less noble being, it was universally believed that the essentially Incorruptible and unchanging Celestial region necessarily influenced and dominated the incessantly changing terrestrial region” (Grant 2005b:363). While most of Aristotle’s ideas about the cosmos were acceptable to Christians, some were not, such as his conviction that the cosmos and the earth are eternal – without beginning or end. In effect, Aristotle rejected the idea that the world was created, and his views implied not only a denial of the Divine creation of the world in six days, as described in Genesis, but also a denial of the basic Christian belief in the eventual

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destruction of the world. Although Christians were obligated by faith to accept these basic tenants, many of them also accepted Thomas Aquinas’ argument that it is logically possible that God could have created an eternally existent world, that is, a world without a temporal beginning. But few believed this idea (Grant 2005a). Beginning with Copernicus (1473–1543), who proposed a heliocentric model, then Kepler’s (1571–1630) development of laws of planetary motion, and Brahe’s (1546–1601) disproving of the solid spheres idea, the 16th century is as important for modern astronomical modeling as it was controversial for its time. However, challenges to the idea of the earth going around the sun continued through the seventeenth century. Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was burned at the stake and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) spent much of his life under house arrest for this idea. The boundaries between astrology and astronomy were fluid in the early modern period. Magic, medicine, alchemy, astrology, and astronomy were permeable and fluid fields of knowledge. Neoplatonic theological/philosophical systems, such as those advanced by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), further blurred these distinctions, seeing affinity and alignment in the stars and the zodiac. Along with medicine, magic, and the microcosm–macrocosm analogy, early modern people saw astrology and astronomy as “fundamentally integral, conjoined parts of theoretical speculation on essence, existence, nature, and cosmos” (Byrne 2015:4). By the seventeenth century the disciplinary lines that we use were settling in place, starkly dividing astrology from astronomy and faith from science. 16th-century New Spain: Observations by Jesuit José Acosta (d. 1600) exemplify the developing understanding of southern hemisphere astronomy. He observed that one could see the stars much more clearly in the New World, including the Milky Way, which the Spaniards called “the way of Santiago” and there were “other dark and black parts” of the sky only visible in the New World (Acosta 2002:18–19). He noted a comet that appeared in New Spain in 1577 from November 1 to December 8, adding that it must have been accompanied by “some angel or intelligence” that traveled with it across the sky. “We also observe that it had a third and very special movement in the Zodiac toward the north, for after several nights it was closer to the northern signs” (Acosta 2002:113–114) demonstrating the direct correlation and connection between astrology and astronomy at this time. In 1535 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo offered an illustration of the Southern Cross and wrote that those who “lived under the influence of this constellation were condemned to toil and suffer” (Cañizares-Esguerra 1999:41). Carlos V had made a representation of the Southern Cross the main emblem of the coat of arms he granted to Oviedo for his Natural History. Sailors did not find the Southern Cross as dependable as the North Star, and “the best pilots” continued to use their astrolabes and the sun to set courses and direction (Acosta 2002:24). While Franciscans taught astronomy as part of the quadrivium to young nobles of both European and Indigenous heritage, natives caught observing the skies were thought to be returning to pre-Christian religious practices and as a result, native astronomy was suppressed. Wake believes that the numerous 16th-century buildings with one or two embedded and incised prequauhtemoc (before the last Mexican tlatoani) stones allowed

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the first generations of Christianized Indians to continue to observe solar, lunar, and astral phenomena. It was also standard practice to build a church on the foundation of a Mesoamerican temple, thus perpetuating ancient astronomical alignments rather than the standard eastern orientation of churches (Wake 2010). See also astrology, calendar, day, moon, naming, star, sun, Venus

*B

baptism 15th-century Central Mexico: Washing a newborn was observed by Aztecs a few days after birth. A midwife placed a basin of water on a mat, laid out instruments appropriate to the sex of the baby (Codex Mendoza), and then walked counterclockwise around the basin talking. Pouring the water (or pulque) of Chalchiuhtlicue (Townsend 2009:163) over its head the midwife said “thou who art a harmful thing, leave him and go thy way; get thee far from him, for at this moment he begins a new life; he is reborn; he is purified again; our mother the water gives him form and engenders him anew” (Sahagún cited in Ricard 1966:32). Next the baby was massaged and presented four times to the sky. This bathing carried off the filth of the parents’ sexual act (Sullivan 1982:22). Children ran through the neighborhood yelling out the name of the newborn, and a feast hosted by the parents with gifts followed. This ceremony brought the infant into the world of humans. A second ceremony occurred in the spring after the infant’s birth with bloodletting and a symbolic roasting of the infant to be “food for the cosmos” (Lara 2008). These ceremonies completed the process of becoming human for the child. 15th-century Spain: Baptism was a necessity for any Christian. Significant is the combination of water and word, with attendant stages of “exorcism, anointing, blessing of the water, and parental participation. In the middle ages baptism did not convey immediate salvation nor did it remove the effects of Original Sin incurred in the Fall” (Pelikan 1978:113). Rather, it starts the individual on the path to Christian maturity. Baptism was considered so important that it did not matter who performed it as long as it was conveyed in a sacramental way. Although Jesus was submerged when baptized by John the Baptist (Figure 23), water from fonts was commonly poured over the infant in European churches. For several centuries the norm had been the baptism of infants. The priest exorcised the infant to expel unclean spirits, making him or her a catechumen (probationary status of an adult preparing to receive baptism); the sponsors answered questions based on the creed; the infant was then stripped and either sprinkled, or plunged into the baptismal font three times, symbolically referencing the Trinity. The infant was then clothed in white and given communion with wine. If a bishop was present, the catechumen might be confirmed as well. In a festival that followed, gifts were given to the child and the mother (Lynch and Adamo 2013:287–288). In Spain, adult converts to Christianity, known as neophytes, came primarily from the Jewish and Muslim populations. The adult had to be baptized by a Bishop, demonstrate knowledge of the faith and a willingness to receive baptism, and show remorse for personal sins (Canon Law 4:1:1:Chapter 3). Converts from the Muslim and Jewish traditions were required to have “godparents” as witnesses to their baptism after a voluntary conversion and possibly three more witnesses at the sacrament so that the 83

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Figure 23 Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. 12th century, Monreale Cathedral, Sicily. (Photo by C. Claassen)

neophyte could not deny or reverse the “conversion” (Lara 2008). The sponsor’s role was to assist the new Christian in the practices of faith. 16th-century New Spain: The administration of baptism – by submersion or from a font – was a source of debate and rancor both within the Franciscan Order and between Franciscans and the other orders in New Spain. The acrimony, detailed in Pardo (2006:26–48), was over the extent and content of pre-baptismal instruction as well as when and how the actual ceremony could be modified. Augustinians were opposed to baptism before serious instruction. Bishop Zumárraga was concerned that the conflicts between the Orders not become common knowledge to prevent natives from confusion about what constituted the baptism sacrament in light of modifications that were practiced at different missions. The correct procedure with water was for the priest to wet one catechumenate at a time, yet given the hundreds and at times thousands of Indians frequently assembled for baptism, an aspergillum was used to sprinkle the crowd in many instances (Pardo 2006:33). Early Franciscans performed mass baptisms of adults, often exceeding a thousand at a time. A census taken in the 1530s in Morelos (Cline 1993) indicates that a low percentage of children and adults had been baptized (those with Christian names) by Dominicans. The Junta of 1539 resulted in somewhat more uniform procedures for baptisms of adults. [I]n the future, except in cases of urgency, the regular ceremony of the church should be employed, at least including four things: 1) that the water be properly sanctified; 2) that each[convert] be catechized and exorcised; 3) that salt, saliva, el capillo, and candle be used at least for two or three of the group being baptized together; 4) that oil and chrism be used. (Braden 1930:231)

The attendees also established the dates for baptisms as Easter and Pentecost. Once the procedure was established, the content of the instruction was, in the hands of the Franciscans, more fluid than other Orders would tolerate. The problem of content

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was put to the Council of the Indies in 1539 and resolved by Francisco Vitoria, Prime Chair of Theology at University of Salamanca. He and several coauthors opined in 1541 that to baptize an improperly educated individual was a form of coercion that could not be condoned. Instruction of the Indian was to include doctrine and Christian customs based in the Gospels, meant to replace heathen customs. To further impose uniformity in the ritual, a manual was prepared in 1544 for adult baptism. The shared concept of a tainted infant held by both cultures, due to parental sex, or Original Sin, was remarked on by several of the early missionaries in New Spain. The instruction was meant to distinguish the two rites. In 1541, prior to baptism, the natives in New Galicia (north-central Mexico) were “asked to believe in a single God, Creator of heaven and earth, and Creator of man, soul and body; original sin; the divinity of Jesus Christ; heaven and hell; good and bad angels; and the recognition of themselves as subjects of the Pope and the Emperor” (Ricard 1966:84). Still not convinced of the Indians’ preparedness, the First Mexican Church Provincial Council of 1555 “forbade the baptism of adults who were insufficiently instructed and not legally married, and who had not completely and definitely abandoned idolatry, or made restitution of what they may have unjustly kept” (Ricard 1966:83–84). Yet the Franciscans, ever convinced that modified baptisms were compliant with the sacramental requirements, continued to baptize whenever and however they saw fit (Pardo 2006:37). Baptism was more than a ritual sacrament when conducted in New Spain (Pardo (2006:25–26). Baptism forged new social alliances through godparentage, modeled on Spanish practice of patronage. These New World fictive kinship relationships were typically between a high ranking native and a Spaniard. Baptized individuals had Spanish names and, if elite, received Spanish clothing. Baptism also created family and parish records extending the annals-keeping of the nobility. Significantly, once baptized a person was tied to the Spanish crown and that bond was mutual, at least theoretically. This mutual bond resulted in petitions by natives for protection from the Crown as sovereign subjects (Yannakakis 2007). Baptism might have been seen by some natives as a voluntary commitment to a tributary relationship and they would have avoided it. Others may have seen it as a way to secure some protection from the excesses of colonial exploitation, a way to preserve family lineages, homes, and communities in a time of radical social transformation (Crewe 2019). In spite of the Crown’s eagerness to secure the Indians’ loyalty, veteran Nahua allies living in Villa Alta complained to the Audiencia in 1591 that they were not allowed baptism at the font of that church (Yannakakis 2007:239). The first phase of the mission effort was said to end around 1557, as few adult natives remained to be baptized. Child baptism marked the second stage (Pardo 2006:46). See also afterlife, demon, marriage, naming, purity, water

bee 15th-century Central Mexico: When the Chichimecs of Cuauhtinchan left Chicomoztoc at the request of the Toltecs of Cholula (Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca), “bees swarmed out of the cave and landed on the Toltecs’ spears” (Boone 2007:41). They were bees because “Wild bees, as Sahagún’s informants told him, live underground, as did the

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preemergence, pre-Nahuatized Chichimecs” (Wake 2007:215). Chichimecs were the “buzzers,” “suckers,” and “stingers” of the insect world (Sahagún 1950–1982:11:5:11) and the stinging mercenaries for the Toltecs. The Cuauhtinchantlaca were led to Cholula by a priest on whose staff sat one of these bees (Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2). The shield used to show the defeat of the enemies at Cholula in that Codex had a bee image. The professional Aztec bee gatherer spoke of bees, saying “they are making themselves into gods” (Andrews and Hassig 1984:94). Indeed they serve people. And they “do not want worries,” meaning that the bee seeker should not pursue bees when upset or bothered, but only go in peacefulness. The Melipona beecheii bees, known as ko’olel kab or xunan kab “lady bee,” were thought to be female and the beekeeper, their husband. The beekeeper hollowed out logs for hives; some had as many as two hundred log hives. “Honey is harvested four times a year (March, April, May, and November) following the major blooming periods of certain plants . . . Rituals for the consecration of the apiary and protection of the bees are similar to house and cornfield ceremonies” (Bassie-Sweet 2008:191). Mexica beekeeping focused on honey collection. Honey was used to sweeten atoli and pulque. It was/is used medicinally, parboiled with herbs (Christensen 2016:203–205). Wax was used to cast metal. 15th–16th-century Spain: An early Christian allegory compared the work of the small number of Christians to that of bees and to Christ as the husband of the Church. The beehive was considered to be the model of the state in the Middle Ages, a symbol of monastic perfection, and an exemplar of labor and cooperation. “Since, according to ancient legend, the bee never sleeps, it is occasionally used to suggest Christian vigilance and zeal in acquiring virtue” (Ferguson 1959:5). The beehive was a metaphor for the community of the faithful. Beeswax was required for Easter candles, and the bee thus labored for Christ. The human heart was also thought to be like a wax tablet that could be erased and reinscribed by Christ (Domínguez Torres 2013:91). Bees (almost always gendered female) were thought to reproduce without coitus and therefore embodied the ideal of chastity and virginity. Medieval theologians equated Mary with bees because “like her, it brought forth its young without sin” (Griffiths 2007:101–102). Mary’s association with bees also extended to their wax for both brought/bring light into the world. Bees, and women as bees, were models for women teaching women and for the wise woman. Groups of women might be referred to as a “swarm.” Theological knowledge and verbal eloquence are associated with honey. The beehive is symbolic of St. Ambrose, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Heloise for their theological grandiloquence, their sweet talk. Bees living in an oak tree revealed the location of the image of the Virgin and Child known as the Virgin of Valvanera to a thief-turned hermit in Rioja, Spain. 16th-century New Spain: Bees and their hives continued to carry the symbolism of labor, organization, sweet talk, and good work. Both cultures acknowledged the delicate nature of bees. But the focus was no longer on honey as it had been in prequauhtemoc times, rather now it was on wax for liturgical candles. “[B]ecause they make the wax that is to burn before God, they deserve to be treated with reverence”

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(Andrews and Hassig 1984:94). In spite of a complaint from the New World that beeswax was difficult to come by, a request to substitute tallow candles was denied. Apparently, most of the beeswax produced in Campeche was sent to central Mexico. The heart of natives, said Sahagún, was a heart of wax (Domínguez Torres 2013:91). Several towns in Guanajuato incorporated bees and hives in their town shields, such as San Francisco del Rincon Guanajuato referencing ancient origin stories. Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón recorded in the next century the “method of witchcraft” used to find beehives in the wild. In this incantation, bees are referred to as “uncles,” “the superiors among other spirits,” and the “Tollantzinco people” (Andrews and Hassig 1984:94). See also bird, insect, laziness, morals, virginity

bell 15th-century Central Mexico: The sister of Huitzilopochtli, Coyolxauhqui, whose name incorporates the word for bell, is shown with metal bells on each cheek. Rattles might be construed as a type of bell, as might striking or blowing a conch shell. Among the Purépecha, copper bells made via the lost-wax method were used in rituals from 650 to 1200. Two gold bells were found as offerings in the Templo Mayor, Stage 2. In the feast of Teucilhuitontli, dedicated to the salt goddess, a teixiptla wore on “her ankles golden bells or rattles, and on her calves were ocelot skins also adorned with bells. . .directly linked her with water, moisture” (Arnold 1999:105). 15th-century Spain: Ringing bells “call and encourage the faithful, rout evil spirits, and quell storms . . . the sounding of a bell is the word of God, its hollow is the mouth of the preacher, its clapper his tongue” (Giffords 2007:325). Handbells were used in choirs, a communion bell was rung by the priest, small tintinnabulum were used in dormitories, and large “campaña” bells hung in church towers. Bells rung at sunset elicited Hail Marys from the faithful. “Each bell has been baptized and named, and is a member of the Christian community”(Foster 1960:158), the namer referred to as the bell’s godparent. Discoveries of medallions and statues with bells are recounted in the founding of shrines to Saint Bridget in Brugel, and Saint Mary the Egyptian in Luciana (Christian 1981b:76). 16th-century New Spain: Three types of bells most often listed in church inventories of northern New Spain in this century were the large campaña, handbells, and wheelmounted bells (Figure 24) (Giffords 2007:211). Wake (2010:129) references Nutini’s Tlaxcalan information that the people “understood the harmonious tones of church bells as a collective welcome for the dead who had acted as intermediaries with the masters of the sacred water-mountains Matlalcueye and Cuatlapanga” (Nutini 1988:151). Church bells seem to have become associated with water and water-mountains, for in the colonial codices they were usually painted blue (Wake 2010:129). Bells made audible a new daily schedule. Bell ringing and Hail Marys were substituted for drum beating at dusk each night and bells were rung at other set times of the day. A code of rings was employed to announce the death of a man or woman or child or cleric (Giffords 2007:211).

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Figure 24 Wheel-mounted bells. (Photo by C. Claassen)

The huge market of Tenochtitlan had an entire square devoted to bells for sale, suggesting “their extensive use as sonic elements for dress or perhaps for music in processions” (Mundy 2015:93). See also blue, day, music, water

bird 15th-century Central Mexico: The animating yolia soul took the form of flies, butterflies, beetles, and birds. Specifically, the souls of rulers became precious birds, the souls of unweaned children sucked nectar from the blossoms of a great tree like hummingbirds, and sacrificed warriors became hummingbirds after four years of serving Huitzilopochtli. Augury with birds is documented in the tonalamatl, which divided the days of each trecena into halves and indicated a god with an associated bird. Thirteen in number, these birds of the day were the Hummingbird, grey Hummingbird, dove, quail, raven, owl, butterfly, eagle, turkey, Great Horned Owl, Scarlet Macaw, Quetzal, and Parrot. These thirteen Fliers were referenced in the Feast of Quecholli and are evident in Olmec iconography (Brotherston 2005:16). The Grandparent creator gods had their birds: for her the cardinal, hummingbird, turtle dove, and probably sandpipers (“chichin-bacal”). The Earth goddess Tlazolteotl’s name incorporates the word for “quail,” “a bird associated with the earth and fertility” (Sullivan 1982:7). Ritual specialists who were

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shapeshifters most often transformed themselves into birds (Martel Díaz-Cortes 2004) and deities often changed into eagles. Quetzalcoatl/Venus had firebirds. Birds were dramatically incorporated into the feast of Etzalcaliztli. It began with priests traveling to the northern shore of Lake Tetzcoco to harvest heron-leg reeds. They camped at the lake’s edge for four days and splashed nude in the water making different water bird calls (speech) to emulate their role as intermediaries between tlaloques and humans (Arnold 1999:97). One of the migratory birds of focus during these rites was the “water splatter” or sanderling (Calidris alba), thought to come to the valley from Anahuac, the Aztec homeland. In contrast to these water birds, turkeys were used to ransom clumsy people taken as captives during the feast of Etzalcaliztli. Turkeys were from the dry land, were incapable of flight, and were servant birds, resident in the countryside, not migrants. 15th-century Spain: For the biological reason noted previously, souls were thought to depart as birds, particularly doves. Other birds were Christian symbols of various characteristics, good and bad. Among the good birds were cock, crane, turtle dove, eagle, goldfinch, goose, domestic falcon, lark, peacock, pelican, phoenix, sparrow, stork, and swallow, while evil birds were blackbird, wild falcon, owl, partridge, raven, and woodpecker (Ferguson 1959:1–29). Jesus spoke of birds of little value as precious to God (Luke 12:6–7; 24), including the turtle dove (his mother brought an offering of turtle doves to be reinstated in the temple), and as birds of God’s providence (Matthew 6:26). The most important bird in Christian mythology is the dove, which appears at the baptism of Jesus, and at Pentecost; it is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. Owls, however, had a more sinister symbolism. Their call was thought to indicate imminent death; frequently, owls replaced Satan in Christian art (Peterson 1993). The use of birds for auguries and divination was prohibited and denounced by the Church throughout Europe starting in the 7th century (Pelikan 1978:23). 16th-century New Spain: Jesus, Mary, and angels were incorporated into Anahuac in bird form. Opposite views on the nature of hummingbirds surely caused discord. The Holy Spirit dove was understood by many as the nahual of Jesus, yet it is probable that in this century, this dove became the implantor of tonalli into Nahua babies as Ometeotl had done and is now documented among some Nahua communities (Haly 1996:546). The association between Mary and tropical birds is present in Nahuatl writings as well as in church paintings. “In a ‘prayer of the joy of the Virgin Mary after giving birth to her precious son’, she is described in the company of ‘the precious nobles of heaven, the roseate spoonbills, the sacred angel spoonbills’” (Cervantes 2013:81). The flowery heaven described in the native written Psalmodia Christiana of the second half of the 1500s contained “flowers, trees, and birds representing, ‘in a sacred way,’ women, men, and angels, respectively” (Burkhart 1992:95). In the Christmas song in that collection “birds carry the day” (Burkhart 1992:95), From heaven came various precious troupials, trogons, sacred spoonbills, . . . it seems that they were angels! They went chirping like flutes of quetzal-green jade. They went resonating like precious bells, the various birds, the precious birds, the birds of spring, the angels . . .

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The flowery troupial, the chachlaca, the emerald toucanet, the turquoise-browed motmot. Fine, fine was their song, that the angels were intoning . . . All the rest of the various precious little birds of heaven came flying like quetzal feathers, went saying in song: ‘may there be peace here on earth’

In the Cantares Mexicanos song-poems, elite natives become birds and butterflies on death, as do Spanish ecclesiastics! They all “depart for a water lake-paradise called the ‘Flower Shore,’ where they will ‘sip jade-water flowers’. There they might possibly join legendary figures of the native past, transformed into golden orioles, troupials, or quetzals” (Wake 2010:206). Tamoanchan, the paradise of the 13th level of heaven, was thought to lie geographically in the tropical zone and the association of Mary with tropical birds seems to be an accommodation of this idea. Early modern representations of the Assumption included small-winged angels surrounding Mary. Furst (1995) suggests that native beliefs about birds and souls as birds facilitated the adoption of angel iconography into native art. When Durán asked an informant “why not just sacrifice birds instead of humans?” the response was that birds were suitable offerings by commoners and poor people. Such an answer recalls the offering of two turtle doves by Mary at the Temple. But, Durán got his wish it would seem. The European chicken quickly became the main source of blood for blood offerings. Feather mosaics and feather dance regalia for mitotes continued to be made in this century. Feather workshops are recorded into the 1570s in Mexico City. The Franciscans’ home church of San Francisco in Mexico City was built atop Moteuczoma’s aviary (Mundy 2015). See also angel, bell, divination, eagle, flower, insect, paradise, soul, weeping

birth 15th-century Central Mexico: New life was known to come from the Most Holy Earth, while the heat necessary to animate the baby came from the creator grandparents or from Tezcatlipoca. “[W]hen babies were conceived they were dropped [they fell in droplets] [from heaven]; their souls came from there; they entered into their [mother’s] wombs” (Sahagún 1950–1982:10:169). Few of the Mesoamerican goddesses were impregnated or birthed in the human way. Huitzilopochtli burst from his mother’s side fully armed, and other deities emerge from jade navels (Miller and Taube 1993:46) or exploding flint knives. The Mixtecs’ codices also indicate unhuman births for lineages. “One or another ancestor was miraculously born from a tree, a river, or the earth” (Furst 1982:208). The Cihuateteo, five goddesses who died in childbirth, ascended to the western sky to accompany the weakening sun each day to its death. Human mothers who died in childbirth could anticipate a similar afterlife. Midwives performed abortions or advised a pregnant woman on herbal solutions. In cases of crisis, the mother’s life was of greater concern than that of the foetus. A midwife would use a special obsidian knife to remove the foetus vaginally (Clendinnen 1991a:176). To aid the mother during birth, hair and the bones of monkeys and/or eagles were

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burned. Immediately after childbirth, all visitors to the household rubbed their joints with ashes to close off entry points to the power of Cihuacoatl (Clendinnen 1991a), a Cihuateteo. Upon delivering the baby, the midwife shouted war cries to honor the mother for having fought a good battle, for having become a warrior who had ‘captured’ a baby. The midwife then spoke to the baby, as if addressing an honored but tired and hungry traveler, exhorting it to rest among its parents and grandparents, and telling it of the transitory nature of life. (Townsend 2009:162)

Meanwhile, many guests arrived. Aunts and grandmothers spoke praises to the midwife. Reverence for the mother and, especially, for the infant were frequently expressed. Weaving and spinning were synonymous with pregnancy and birth. A spindle whorl grew fat with thread (child), and a weaving (using back-strap loom) was tied to the woman’s waist and emerged outward from there. At the other end was a cord that was cut (birthed) when the weaving was finished (Schaefer 2002). 15th-century Spain: Catholics have their own legacy of sacred women figures who became impregnated without sexual activity: Anne’s birth of Mary (the Immaculate Conception), and then Mary’s birth of Jesus. Equally miraculous must have been the claim that Mary’s hymen stayed intact through the birth of Jesus. “Her precious body did not tear, did not open. He just came forth from inside her” (Burkhart 2001a:59). In Medieval Christian theology, the crucified Christ gave birth to the Church through the wound on his side (Lara 2008:246). During labor, the mother might hold amulets, pray, or hold/wear gemstones – “sard,” magnet, coral, jasper – or a girdle. Saints appealed to in Spain for pregnancy and birthing issues were Domingo de Silos, Joaquin, Silvia, Filomena, and Margarita of Antioch. Her attendants might rub her thighs with rose oil or a poultice of eagle’s dung or ivory, or give her a drink of vinegar and sugar. The umbilical cord was potentially an element in witchcraft, so it was usually burned. Women were not permitted to return to the church until a cleansing period passed (e.g., 40 days) (Gilbert 2020). 16th-century New Spain: Burkhart (2001a:53) points out that Catholic doctrine of Mary’s ascension was an inversion of Nahua doctrine about which women ascended to the sky. Where Mary, who had a painless, bloodless, successful birth, ascended to heaven for it, the Cihuateteo had bloody, pain-filled deaths during birth for which they were rewarded with a place in the Western Sky. Burkhart might well have pointed out that Jesus and Huitzilopochtli both “just came forth” from their mothers. The Nahuatl texts of the late 16th century translated by Burkhart (2001a) offered hiding places for native thoughts and practices around fertility rites. Then as now, the Church strove to prevent abortions. In one morality play of this century, St. Francis was interrupted by witches (midwives who performed abortions), who were dragged off to hell. The Spanish birthing saints rarely appear in New Spain at this time. In the next century, as many as half of baptized children were registered as illegitimate, with the highest proportion among castas and lowest among native people (Powers 2005:133–134). Fathers could legitimize a baby at birth for full status or “recognize” them for partial status.

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See also baptism, cave, celibacy, children, conception, fertility, marriage, mother, virginity

blood 15th-century Central Mexico: Blood was the home of both the animating yolia soul and particularly the heated tonalli soul (Furst 1995). Blood was precious, like jade was precious, and was food, like maize was food, exemplified in the use of the same Mixtec word for blood and for maize (Furst 1982:219). Because of the sacrifice of the Quetzalcoatl in the creation of humans in this the Fifth Sun – he let blood onto the ground up bones of the ancestors – and in the suicidal sacrifice of the gods to solve the problem of two suns that did not move, humans had a blood debt to the gods. “Debt,” or “tribute,” was most often used to describe blood offerings – either those daily lettings or blood lost on the battlefield or sacrificial stone. “Only in those two places did the individual wholly and completely pay his or her ‘debt’” (Clendinnen 1985:85). Copious blood came from priests, kings, citizens, and captives whose bodies were bled and often sacrificed for this debt payment. Eagle warriors poured their blood over statues of Mictlantecuhtli inside the Eagle House at Tenochtitlan. Priests of several cults were notoriously covered in matted blood and also poured their blood over images (see Figure 41). Royalty was expected to do a great deal of bloodletting in the state cults. On the night of kindling the New Fire, all the populace let blood (Boone 1994:103). In spite of the seemingly insatiable need for blood to keep the sun revolving, not all blood was of equal value. Most sought after was the blood of victims from the five nearby city states with “quality” people, those living in the cities of Tepeaca, Calpan, Tecalli, Cuauhtinchan, and Cholula. Least desirable was the blood from the barbarian tribes, the Chichimecas and the Huastecas (Chipman 2005:16). Blood from animals was also an important source for offerings, although human blood brought greater honor to nobles. 15th-century Spain: Other than a few human sacrifices prevented or completed, Old Testament blood offerings came from cattle, goats, and sheep. Human blood in the New Testament is most notably that of Jesus but the harlot in Revelation (17:6) drinks the blood of martyrs (Ingham 1986:7). Instead of real blood, the doctrine that the host (Eucharist) was the “true blood and body of Christ,” was the most important of the sacraments in the late Middle Ages supplanting baptism (Pelikan 1978). This transition, with its focus on the suffering and sacrifice of Christ, is tied to the Fourth Lateran Council’s (1215) mandate for the Feast of Corpus Christi and the belief in the efficacy of the blood from Jesus’ wounds as well as from the elements of the host itself. Meditations on the Eucharist often focused on Christ’s humanity (Bynum 1982). Many miracles were reported of Eucharistic bread bleeding or turning into the figure of Christ. Relics of Christ’s blood became the focus of many new cults (Bartlett 2013; Bynum 2002:689). The power of the blood from the stigmata (the wounds of Christ) was central to the spirituality of the Franciscans, as Francis was blessed with the five wounds of Christ (Figure 25). “In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries churches which displayed the divine blood found powerful defenders in the Franciscan order, which had espoused the cult of the Passion of Our Lord since its inception” (Sumption 1975:46).

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Figure 25 The five wounds on the body of Christ are reduced to five squares in this 1495 flag of Portugal. It is said that from the wound in his side the Church was born.

Medieval physiology taught that blood in the veins was the location of the soul (Lara 2008:246). “Blood was thus equated with spirit” (Bynum 2002:706). It was also fertile, curative, and intoxicating. Breast milk was understood as processed blood (Bynum 1982:132). Blood was also a sign of the destruction of the body. Blood in the veins was only the site of a pure or impure genealogy. Blood purity captured the attention of Church and State in Spain and spawned pogroms, crusades, and persecution of the Jews (Bynum 2002). Jewish and Muslim converts were potential heretics because their blood was impure. This status was initially considered to have been a contaminant for only two generations, so that the initial converts’ grandchildren would be free of the taint. However, after the 1530s there was no restriction on the search for potential heretical ancestors and family members (Martinez 2008). 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures located the soul in blood and valued blood as a gift offering. Both cultures concerned themselves with quality of blood in ancestry. From their first days in Tenochtitlan, Cortés and the other conquistadors were appalled at the sight and smell of blood on steps, walls, idols, and priests. Acosta (2002) writes “an infinite amount of human blood was shed in every way in honor of Satan” in Mexico (297). This bloodshed was quickly quelled. Within the century, “copious blood became commonplace in artistic representations of Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion” (Hughes 2010:44). Hughes (2010) argues that rather than calling to mind Jesus’ suffering, bleeding “actually suggested to the Indians, more than anything else,

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Jesus’ status as a priest rather than as victim, or indicated his royal power rather than his defeat and death” (74). In keeping with the blood purity concerns of Spain at this time the first Viceroy, Mendoza, appointed native nobles as governors of the tribute cities and parcialidades/ calpulli. Cortés had feared noble leadership for its rebellion potential and thus appointed non-noble governors (Mundy 2015:101). As the number of Spanish–Indian unions increased, the issue of “Spanish” blood purity became more pronounced throughout the 16th century. For example, a Spaniard was denied a civic post in Mexico because his wife had one Indian grandmother, although all her other grandparents were Spanish (Martinez 2008). The religious origins of the Indians were the topic of much speculation in this century. One popular theological solution was that these people were the lost tribe of Israel and, therefore, at least by blood, possibly Jewish. This possible tainted heritage made the character of offspring from mixed Spanish–Indian relations suspect. “Native ancestry was thus not explicitly treated as a source of impurity, but the religious status of indigenous people was nonetheless starting to function as an excuse to exclude them and other colonial categories from certain offices and posts” (Martinez 2008:209). See also bloodletting, healing, human sacrifice, penance, purity, red

bloodletting 15th-century Central Mexico: Bloodletting was underway at least by Olmec times, 3,000 years ago. Two thousand five hundred years later, a debt to the deities motivated the practice. In the Codex Mendoza, several deities have a red smear on the face, in front of the ear, indicating their bloodletting. To pay the blood debt owed the deities, bloodletting was performed during ceremonies, often in temples by priests, kings, queens, and commoners at prescribed times by piercing cheeks, earlobes, tongues, elbows, penises, and shins. Pain and suffering were not the goals but simply the generating of blood food. Bloodletting was very important in Templo Mayor imagery, which Klein (1987) sees as part of accession iconography of the Aztec rulers. During the New Fire ceremony, the citizenry took to their rooftops to watch the night sky and to bloodlet from their ears and then splatter the blood in the direction of the fire on Hill of the Star mountain (Carrasco and Sessions 2011). In the Codex Magliabechiano, tongue piercing is shown in Toxcatl veintena (f.32v). Penis-piercing occurred in Etzalqualiztli veintena (f.33v), as a fertility rite. Teixiptla and others destined for sacrifice in the mature corn rite of the Xipe Totec feast were scratched to bloodlet, as was the tethered warrior in the gladiatorial rite (García 2015). The housewife was expected to bloodlet daily from her earlobe and on the day 4 Movement women and children were to let blood from their ears to nourish the sun. Variation in bloodletting implements is recorded in codices. Maguey spines and bone awls were readily available but “coral and stingray spines were luxury commodities and therefore probably restricted to the ruling classes” (Wake 2010:48). Codices depict gods holding implements they will use for bloodletting – the maguey spine, the bowl and paper

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used to catch the blood – relevant to 16th-century imagery of the instruments of Christ’s Passion. Prequauhtemoc confessions and penance also required bloodletting. “[T]he tongue was pierced for verbal offenses, the eyelids for visual offenses, and the arms if someone had been physically weak,” although this varied by region (Wake 2010:fn28 p. 268). Acosta (2002:2:339) seems to have documented a prequauhtemoc practice of community processions while flagellating with knotted ropes. 15th–16th-century Spain: Voluntary bloodletting can be found in Christian images of the female pelican pecking herself to feed her babies, a longstanding symbol of Christ and his presence in the Eucharistic wine (Ferguson 1959; Lara 2008). Bloodletting through selfinflicted wounds during the 14th century brought comparisons with the blood of martyrs and that of Christ as well as with their suffering. On April 12, 1507, Barcelona “held an elaborate procession to found a chapel to the plague saint, Sebastian. In the procession walked a man dressed as Saint Sebastian, his clothes pierced with arrows, and after him a group of children in shirts and barefoot, flagellating themselves” (Christian 1981a:220). Flagellant confraternities were absent in Spain until 1520. By 1544, flagellating Brotherhoods of the Blood of Christ (populated by adults) were a regular part of penitential processions, at least in Barcelona, the motivation being the opportunity to share Jesus’ suffering and to hope for the remission of sins. A few decades later flagellants were processing on Holy Thursday and Good Friday (Christian 1981b:185). Bloodletting was also part of medieval medicine. Disease was believed to be a result of a problem of bodily fluids. This bloodletting required consultation of astrological charts for the best times to allow the blood to be released. 16th-century New Spain: Atrial crosses of New Spain and this century are unique in the depiction of the instruments and symbols of the passion – sword, scourge, cross, ladder, pieces of silver, nails, hammer, pincers, sun, moon – easily recalling for the Nahua the numerous depictions of deities with bloodletting implements – the maguey spine and paper. Bloodletting was advocated by missionaries and actively pursued by many native penitents in New Spain. Physical pain was a way to imitate the suffering of Christ and was prescribed to shut down the senses of the overly sensual native (Domínguez Torres 2013:96–97), although pain had never been the point of native bloodletting. “Scourging in particular seemed to them a very meritorious thing, and the penitents were frequently disappointed when the confessor did not impose it . . . many of them, especially at Tlaxcala, adopted the custom of scourging themselves every Friday in Lent, and during droughts or epidemics” with only a few objections because of the history of bloodletting (Ricard 1966:121). Louise Burkhart (1989) points out that while bloodletting with thorns was “idolatrous,” flogging oneself with horsehair rope was “devotional” (144). Clendinnen (1990) suspects (123) that the attraction for natives of flagellation lay in competition between confraternities and towns, while the bloodiness of the Mexican crucifixes and other Jesus images has been interpreted as evocative for native peoples of their own suffering under colonialism. See also astrology, blood, body: human, healing, human sacrifice, offering, penance, thorn

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blue 15th-century Central Mexico: Blue not only indicated the color of celestial water and sky; it was also the color at the center of a fire, the color of Tlaloc, the blue Tezcatlipoca, and Huitzilopochtli. Tlaloc, the rain god, and Mount Tlaloc, his home, were nearly always indicated with blue coloration even when in ceramic form. Tlaloc was shown attired in turquoise blue seated on a blue-gray hill glyph (Wake 2010:110). Huitzilopochtli was usually depicted with blue cotinga feathers (Boone 1989) or with blue striping on his body. Blue stripes were applied to the faces, legs, and arms of the slaves pitted against warriors in the Panquetzaliztli feast (Harris 2000:86–87). The Aztec tlatoani wore a blue diadem. The Toltec leaders reportedly dressed in blue, commemorating water (Graulich 1981). Significant cosmological pairings were made with red and blue coloration. The double pyramid and crowning temples of the Templo Mayor honored Tlaloc (painted blue) and Huitzilopochtli (painted red). Blue water and red fire together constituted the sign for war. One of the signs that the Mexica had arrived at their promised land was the presence of two springs, one running blue, and the other red. 15th-century Spain: Blue signified Heaven, truth, hope, spiritual love (Giffords 2007:327), and heavenly love (Taylor 2003). From the 6th century onward, a mature Mary was dressed in dark blue vestments with gold ornamentation. Images of the adult Virgin of Perpetual Succor is dressed in a deep blue cloak. With increased emphasis on the Immaculate Conception in Iberia, a younger Mary was favored, wearing a light blue robe with white tunic underneath (de Barrios 1997). Blue is prescribed in Spain for the Mass of the Immaculate Conception. Other saintly figures were also depicted in pale blue tunics or cloaks. In paintings of the Holy Trinity, the Son “is either clothed in a blue robe or in red with a blue mantle, symbolizing heaven and divine love” (Giffords 1974:40). “The blue robe [of San Antonio de Padua] is common in paintings in Franciscan houses in this century . . . Spanish Franciscans commonly adopted blue robes for their singular devotion to the immaculateness of the Virgin, and not until after a papal decree in 1897 did brown become the universal color for Franciscan habits” (Giffords 1974:69). The archangel Miguel and Santiago were also depicted in light blue robes. 16th-century New Spain: Mary’s traditional blue cloak over a red robe “echoes that sacred combination of colors in the prehispanic world. Blue and red are the colors of the source of life . . . they are the colors of the life-bringing rain deities and of the maguey plant” (Wake 2010:209). But they also signified war. Light blue for water, for church bells, and for Mary was used in native-produced maps and codices. “Most colonial native mapmakers chose red or blue (or tonal variations such as pink, orange, mauve, or red-brown and turquoise or pale or deep blue) to color their churches . . . [This coloring] leaves little doubt that they were intended to correspond directly with . . . prehispanic temples and thus the concept of the water-mountain proper” (Wake 2010:128). A blue Tezcatlipoca of the night and the blue vestment worn by San Miguel, as well as the warrior status of both, are the explanations offered for the selection of San Miguel as patron to the community of Ixmiquilpan (Aguilar and García 2012).

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Blue from indigo or its mixture with white clay was used in the Florentine Codex illustrations for things precious: the sky, turquoise, royal accoutrements, and primordial water (Kerpel 2014:45). As the Franciscans’ blue robes deteriorated they had natives unravel the threads, dye them in the readily available indigo dye, and weave them into new blue robes (McAndrew 1965:39). See also bell, red, water, white

body: human 15th-century Central Mexico: Mesoamerican peoples thought that the structure and function of the human body reflected much in the universe. For example, the human life cycle was likened to the temperature changes of the day, the seasons of the year, the movement of light through the four quarters of the world, and particularly to the growth cycle of corn. The body could be known as “Chicomoztoc,” the name of the seven caves of Mexica origin, because it had seven orifices. The three strata of the cosmos were linked to the three regions of the human body: upper heavens to head and the tonalli soul, lower heaven tied to the heart and the yolia soul, and the Most Holy Earth to the liver and the ihiyotl soul (Montellano Ortiz 2006). The universe and humans had two kinds of matter, light and heavy. Gods were formed entirely of light matter, while humans had both. The heavy matter was the source of fertility, sexual activity, and death. Because the human body was linked to the universe, astronomical events affected it (Montellano Ortiz 2006). The skeletal architecture of people living in the Fifth Sun was the result of Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl descending into Mictlan, collecting jade bones, accidentally dropping them, and thus creating differentsized humans (Velasquez 1945). Healing of different body parts was tied to the use of a corresponding animal in ritual and to bloodletting, recorded in the Codex Rios 54r (although it is possible that this convention is of a postquauhtemoc origin), as seen in Figure 22 R. Another such image is visible in Mexicanus 1, page 12. The Aztec left foot was equated to a jaguar, a creature of the female, wet, night, forest complex; the right foot was connected to the deer of men and day; the penis, a snake; the vagina, a cave. Equated in dozens of settings, including ritual prescription, was a concept set including right, dry, day, east, eagle, male, head, bone; and their opposites: left, wet, night, west, foot, female, flesh. The head was situated in the past, the trunk in the present. The feet, by virtue of their constant contact with the Most Holy Earth, source of new life, were situated in the future. The senses were ordered hierarchically. Touch, hanging the lowest on the body, was the least important sense while hearing and sight were high on the body and the more important senses (Furst 1995). The three souls found residence in different parts of the body. The arm of a woman who died in childbirth could paralyze all who saw it, and possession of the femur of a royal ancestor showed one’s right to rule, and the corpse passed soul sickness to the living. The hair/scalp and skin bundled teotl. The gift of perception, hidden sight, was a magical force obtained through initiation. The eyes exuded heat that could be withering. For this reason, those individuals with

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excessive heat (priests, menstruating or pregnant women, warriors, widow/ers, kings, older individuals) removed themselves from public spaces and avoided crops and weapons. Their gaze was avoided (Furst 1995). Among commoners, “[c]asting one’s eyes to the ground was a way to show respect, to acknowledge the blinding sun-like sacrality radiating from nobles and gods” (Hamann 2020:108). A person shown dead had closed eyes. “Pre-conquest Mexicans had slight inclination to represent the human body. Their gods shared only a vestigially human basic architecture, typically being compilations of symbolic forms identified through the diagnostics of regalia and conventionalized gesture, not any nuance of feature or glance” (Clendinnen 1990:129). The deities were shown with legs, trunks, arms, and heads but they could shape-shift, and did not age. When humans were depicted, proportions were skewed. Nevertheless, the Mexica concept of the perfect body was used to select people for sacrifice: those chosen for sacrifice to the sun were to be of fair face and hair. The teixiptla for Tezcatlipoca had to be trained and pampered for a year before being sacrificed. Some of the criteria applied in his selection were, he was like something smoothed, like a tomato, like a pebble, as if sculptured in wood; he was not curly haired. . . he was not of enlarged eyelids, he was not swollen cheeked. . . he was not of downcast face, he was not flat-nosed: he did not have a nose with wide nostrils. . . he was not thick-lipped, he was not gross-lipped, he was not big-lipped, he was not a stutterer. . .his teeth were like seashells. (Sahagún 1950–1982:2:67)

15th-century Spain: Old World conceptions of the body and the universe overlapped, seen in ideas and metaphors for the temporal divisions of day or year, of the human lifespan, and particularly of Mary’s life. Christians, however, were not particularly concerned with the body, more so with the soul. While the Bible cast the body in a favorable light as a means of activity (1 Corinthians 6:20, 2 Corinthians 5:10) and house of a single soul, the body was also simultaneously connected to the seven deadly sins. Augustine proposed that lust was grounded in the body, not in the spirit. The female body was the site of much of the sin committed by humans, particularly lust and fornication. Women’s impugned physical weakness led to their impugned spiritual weakness. Food and climate also made the Spanish body, the individual and collective Spanish character. In the humoral system, four humors required balancing but resulted in an individual’s character and health status. The male Spaniard’s body was hot and dry, underlying masculinity, while women and men in some other European and Asian cultures had bodies moist and cold, very feminine. The stars overhead had their impact on the body and its well-being. A body in the wrong geography could change to more or less masculine, more or less balanced, more or less industrious (Earle 2012), which becomes a source of great anxiety regarding criollos (Spaniards born in New Spain). Medicine in this century linked the constellations of the zodiac to different parts of the body (Figure 22L). Spaniards believed the body communicated and signified social status. Honor, for instance, was centered in the head. “Men and women conveyed their respect for others by

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bowing their heads in the presence of persons of higher stature and their superiority by holding their heads high” (Lipsett-Rivera 2007:70). Burials of saints’ bodies joined earth and sky and created powerful points for contacting the divine. “It was not long before body parts, as well as whole bodies, began to be revered . . . a concentration on body parts, detachable and moveable, is a distinctive feature of the Christian cult of the saints” (Bartlett 2013:101). By the 15th century, this partitioning had moved to the body of Christ, reducing his body to just the wounds. “The crucified figure disappears, to be replaced by hands, feet, and heart” (Bynum 2011:196) or a quincunx of the five wounds, a symbol not only employed by Franciscans but the focal point of the flags of Portugal (Figure 25). 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures brought to their meeting nearly identical bodily metaphors derived from cosmology and a reverence for blood. Both cultures had a similar hot/cold understanding of the body and the cosmos (but with different causes). Both cultures robbed graves for body part relics as both believed that powers were held by and transferred through body parts, bones, and other items in contact with a powerful body. Bartolome de las Casas, who wrote extensively about humoral theory in his Apologética historia, believed that Spaniards were choleric and thus fierce, while Amerindians were phlegmatic and thus docile (feminine) because of their different diets. The differential death rate in this century between native and Spaniard, Earle (2012:4) argues, was explained by the obviously inferior native body – and thus explicitly connecting racial identity grounded in physicality rather than in religious identity. Spanish writers noted that Mexicans, unlike Spaniards, were rarely bald but lacked beards, had few stomach complaints, didn’t suffer internal stones, and had exceptional eyesight (Earle 2012:20). “For many colonial observers, the Indians were ‘naturally’ well suited for penitential discipline. . . . [T]hey observed that Indians were not hindered by a sense of personal modesty . . . [and] the Indians ‘did not have as delicate flesh as others do’ and were consequently better able to sustain and tolerate the lashings” (Hughes 2010:63–64). The missionaries brought a new conception of pain and vulnerability to pain with their penitential practices. The Nahuatl word for body adopted by some missionary scholars was “monacaio,” a woman’s flesh, but employed by them to mean the whole body. Molina and Sahagún wrote that sacred marriage (Church marriage) gave the body of each partner over to the other partner, as a possession (Burkhart 2001b:93). Prequauhtemoc cultic religious organization predisposed Mesoamericans to be open to the ideas of intervention of the saints and the power of bodily fragments. Christian bone relics were just as powerful as had been the sacred bundle bones. Looking directly at powerful individuals or deity embodiments, including the Eucharist, was considered disrespectful by natives. But priests accused indigenous Christians of contempt (at best) or blasphemy for averting their eyes from the Host. “From a traditional Mesoamerican perspective, looking away from the Host at the moment of transubstantiation was a way to honor its power, to acknowledge the blinding presence of ‘Jesus, the sun’” (Hamann 2020:108). The bodies of several of the original twelve Franciscans and several in the second wave of missionaries did not decay, including Martín de Valencia and Juan Calero. They

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reportedly showed no decay even decades after their deaths and multiple exhumations (Ahern 2007; Trexler 2002). Even two Christian Nahua women’s corpses were found incorrupt (Burkhart 2001a:99). “To see an incorruption was to see heaven” (Trexler 2002:318). Incorruptibility was certainly a new concept. “Immolations on pyres, skeletal versions of Underworld deities, belief in ihiyotl/rot/putrefaction, practice of cremation all suggest that incorruptibility – if it was a prehispanic concept – would have been just as miraculous for a Mexica viewer as it was for a Spaniard” (Cruz González 2014:102). See also astrology, bloodletting, bone, crucifix, deity embodiment, fasting, fertility, food, heart, human sacrifice, image/idol, penance, relic, religious labor, sex, skull/head, slave, speech, suicide, vestment

bone 15th-century Central Mexico: In Aztec accounts, women and men are created from the bones of the beings extinguished at the end of the Fourth Sun and fetched from Mictlan by Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl’s headpiece had a bone in it, perhaps one of those he retrieved from Mictlan. Mayahuel was the Aztec lunar goddess of the pulque cult, the virgin goddess killed by Quetzalcoatl and buried. From her bones the maguey plant grew (López Austin 2015:161; Wake 2010). Huitzilopochtli was said to lack flesh, with only bones showing. The staff of office and the green and black capes of leaders during their induction ceremonies had skull and crossbone motifs showing the auspices of Huitzilopochtli (Bassett 2015:169). One of the three souls, yolia, is known as bone soul. Possessing the skull, mandible, or femur of an ancestor or enemy was to wield a particular kind of power. Yolia animates the body and attaches to the bones of the dead. Whether as cremains or flesh burial, disturbing the bones dislodged the yolia, which then moved about the world of the living causing problems. “Distinguishing bone from flesh mattered to the Aztecs: it was a preoccupation in many ceremonies . . . the interred bones of the Aztec dead were offered collective commemoration as the forefathers in the domestic ritual of Izcalli and as paradigm hunters in the festival of Quecholli” (Clendinnen 1985:80, 82). Ashes or bones were key items in sacred bundles. The cremains of Itzpapalotl were bundled and carried by Mixcoatl, and bones of Huitzilopochtli were wrapped in Huitzilopochtli’s sacred bundle. Tezcatlipoca sent his femur to his priests in Tetzcoco for his bundle (Bassett 2015:179). At the beginning of the Aztec migration from Aztlan, the goddess Itzpapalotl left the cave of Chicomoztoc brandishing the lower leg of (probably) Tezcatlipoca (Olivier 2007). In the battle mural at Cacaxtla, a man holds a femur while victims and captives languish on either side of him. When a captive was sacrificed, the thigh bone was stripped of flesh, placed with the warrior’s jacket, and displayed in the courtyard of the captor as a venerated object (Clendinnen 1985). Femur rasps were “played” exclusively at the funerals of men who died on the battlefield (Bassett 2015:19). “Bones produced fright in those who discovered them, a reaction observed by the conquistadores when, digging through some terrain, they found vessels containing the bones of a ‘giant [Pleistocene-era mammal?] that terrified the native laborers. The bones

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of those whom Fray Francisco Núñez de la Vega called ‘nahualistas’ were deposited in caves and made the object of offerings” (López Austin 2015:137). 15th-century Spain: Cardinal Newman once said “what’s a saint? . . . ’a bundle of bones, which fools adore’” (Bartlett 2013:99). The veneration of the bones of martyrs began very early in the tradition, with 2nd- and 3rd-century martyr stories offering accounts of bones taken to and from catacombs (Chidester 2000). Medieval Christians would steal bone relics from other churches, arguing that God must have wanted that relic in its new place or the heist would have failed. These bones were valuable in more ways than just spiritually. Local veneration, pilgrimage, and dedication by other confraternities could increase the prestige and income of a parish community, priest, or bishop (Chidester 2000). The bones, hair, or teeth of a saint were thought to hold the powerful faith of the deceased. Prayers to these special dead were considered efficacious, as the saint, so much closer to God, Jesus, and Mary, would then pray for the supplicant in heaven. Bones, fabric fragments, and other saints’ possessions also worked miracles for Christians still on earth through the spiritual power lingering in the physical remnant. There was also a lucrative market in saints’ bones throughout the Middle Ages. Bones of Peter, Paul, and other early Christian martyrs were brought to Europe by crusaders. Possessing a whole saint was rare, as the head might be removed and enshrined elsewhere (Bartlett 2013:268) or traded away. 16th-century New Spain: The flow of osseous relics must have intrigued the Nahuas, who themselves were being castigated for any retention of ancestor worship. Bone relics were on display in the largest churches “[a]nd it was always emphasized that the power of these bodily fragments was just as great as that of the whole body” (Bartlett 2013:101). Inhumation also brought a new awareness of bone, as did cemeteries, a new concept as well. Encounters with these bones must have been frequent for native grave diggers. See also ancestor, body: human, death, relic, sacred bundle, skull, soul

*C

calendar 15th-century Central Mexico: “The importance of calendrical calculations cannot be overstated; they are extraordinarily ancient and have permeated all aspects of life for centuries . . . all the diverse beings living in the cosmos live for particular spans of time that can be calculated calendrically” (Read and Gonzalez 2002:28–29). Calendars appeared as early as 500 BCE in the Olmec lowlands. The Toltecs and Maya (Dresden Codex) both developed calendars as early as 648 (Brotherston 2005:72) or 726 (Dieterle 2005). Brotherston (2005:16) puts the foundational date of the Chichimec calendar in 632/648 when First Woman and First Man were given the responsibility of the feasts and the year count (Annals of Cuautitlan/Codex Chimalpopoca). The Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec calendars projected time back to 3113 BCE (Brotherston 2005). The Feathered Serpent cult, which began several centuries later, placed great emphasis on the calendar that had been generated by the gods. Graulich (1981) puzzled over the failure of several feasts to culminate on solstice and equinox days. He found that if one places the 20th day of the veintena on the actual day of the solstice or equinox, the day aligns with those solar events in 680–683 (Graulich 1981:58), showing their development at least by that time. The solar calendar (xiuhpōhualli), the Feast Cycle using the sidereal year (both marking days in veintenas), and the 260-day tonalpoualli divination calendar (with 20 trecenas) were three important cycles of time for commoners and priests, although the solar calendar was the “norm in classic Mesoamerican texts (Olmec, Maya, Toltec)” (Brotherston 2005:12). The solar year was calculated as 365.242 days, with a slightly longer sidereal year of 265.256 days around which the Feasts revolved. These cycles were recorded in the 1479 circular “Sun Stone” and the 1538 Boban calendar wheel (Brotherston 2005) but were more frequently found in rectilinear arrangement. There were also 80-year cycles, the all important 52-year cycle or “round” (xiuhmolpilli), and 104-year cycles (52  2). Annual to multi-year Venus cycles determined many events, from the length of each of the Five Suns to sacredness of the numbers 8 and 13, and possibly the Feast cycle (Milbrath 2007). The tonalpoualli was the oldest calendar, passing down from Olmec, and that calendar most often consulted by citizens for any question about whether to do or not do many types of activities – whether a good or bad fate awaited one. This calendar may well have dictated patron deity feasts for calpullis (López Austin 2015:69). But time, history, began even before 3113 BCE. Through the Codex Telleriano-Remensis we learn that the era of hunters and gatherers, initiated by Tezcatlipoca in the Teotleco veintena, lasted 12,800 years, followed by a 5,200-year long era of maize granted by Quetzalcoatl in the veintena Tlacaxipehualiztli, ending in the era of Mexica empire and city (Brotherston 2005). 102

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Time captured teotl. Because the deities controlled time and infused time units with potential, “it was crucial that events happen at the right time” (Boone 1994:115). Right time meant that types of action occurred on the same day or year in the annals. The year 1 Flint was such a “right time” for big beginnings and endings: it was the year the Aztecs left Aztlan, the year they held their first New Fire, the year Tula collapsed, the year Mexica founded Tenochtitlan, and the first year of their empire. A unit of 52 years was similarly significant and foundational to the Aztecs. The time from leaving Aztlan (1168) to founding their empire in 1376 was 52 years  4, the exodus of Chichimecs from Chicomoztoc until the empire’s founding was 52  14, etc. (Brotherston 2005:72). In addition to almanacs, several authors speak of sight lines (Broda 1982; Wake 2010) between rain mountains and Aztec shrines. Embedded stones in 15th-century temples offered sun “targets” or sundials creating quadrants that facilitated calendar calculations. 15th-century Spain: The medieval calendar consisted of overlapping “components: the solar day and year, lunar month, the natural seasons, and artificial divisions (such as the reign of a king)” (Eagleton 2005:109). The lives of saints were fundamental divisions of the solar year. There were additional ways to mark time, such as the Roman system of Kalends, Nones, and Ides and the continuous Italian system of day number with month name (e.g., 24 July). The Holy Roman emperors and the popes in the Middle Ages dated their official documents within the Roman system, as did many chroniclers and historians (Bartlett 2013). By the middle of the 14th century, the continuous marking of time was the norm. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII mandated a new calendar to realign the solstice and equinox dates that had slipped because the previous Julian calendar did not accurately compensate for leap years. With the correction imposed by Gregory XIII (anyone who rejected it was to be excommunicated) the summer equinox in 1583 occurred once again on June 20th. Felipe II of Spain adopted the calendar that same year (impacting Spain, Portugal, and Italy/Sicily) and it was in use in Spain’s overseas colonies by 1584. The new calendar, which would skip 10 days, was instituted in October because of its minimal number of saint’s feasts. This correction meant that October 4/5 was followed by October 14/15 in 1583 (Aveni 2017). All saints’ feast days remained on the same date but better aligned with their pagan history of solar and lunar events. 16th-century New Spain: Both religions were framed by solar-dominated calendrics and both systems were rooted in the same extremely ancient observations of the celestial rhythms and agricultural cycles, resulting in their overlapping festivals and economic use (scheduling tax collection). Both made periodic corrections to their respective calendars. Eleanor Wake proposed that the presence of embedded prequauhtemoc stones in 16thcentury church exterior walls continued to facilitate the calculation of the ancient ritual calendar. One can still find floral arrangements of five petals, decorative motifs on door jambs in grouping of 6+5 (sky phases of the zodiac) or 6+7 (13-day count), and other items “arranged in sequences that permit simple mathematical permutations. Still others are highly complex, offering possible computations of sidereal and synodic cycles of the planets” (Wake 2010:239).

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The adoption of the Gregorian calendar meant that the Christian dates became much better aligned with celestial events. The Gregorian calendar also brought Aztec feasts into better alignment with many Catholic feasts (Table 2). Given that the last day of each Aztec feast period was the day for staging of the focal ceremony, several feasts now ended on or very near significant Catholic feasts, giving missionaries and secular priests more opportunities to usurp those festivities for Catholic ends and more concern that the natives were backsliding. The announcement of the new calendar prompted the remarkable native-authored Codex Mexicanus made in 1583, which compared the Julian calendar and its alignment with the stars and the Aztec calendar, documenting the lost 12 hours of time since 1521. In this case and in several others, the mathematical sophistication and the reckoning back to 3113 BCE and even 12,800 years ago, reportedly shook the faith of some missionaries (Brotherston 2005). See also astrology, astronomy, cosmos, day, feast, quadripartite world

cave 15th-century Central Mexico: The ritual use of caves has filled books (e.g., Bassie-Sweet 1996; Brady and Prufer 2010), but suffice it to say that the mouth of a cave was often likened to the maw of the earth monster deity, the speleothems to teeth and sex organs, the passageways as roads into and through the Most Holy Earth, winds escaping as holy wind, and interior water as the purest water on earth (Bassie-Sweet 1996). All of the significant creation places in Mesoamerican lore were caves. For the Mexica these were Chicomoztoc (Figure 26), the origin place, Colhuacan (place of grandparents), Teocolhuaca (place of divine ancestors), Tamoanchan (house of birth), and Cincalco (house of maize) and each was represented by a four-petal flower. Tlalocan, home of Tlaloc and storehouse of grains, was another cave inside of Tamoanchan, accessed through a long passageway that ended in a pool of water. Two or more of these caves were recreated at Teotihuacan before 100 CE and then the pyramid of the Sun and the Temple of Quetzalcoatl built atop them. The Mixtecs originated in the caves of Achuitla, and placed the masked funerary bundles of their kings in a cave (Miller and Taube 1993). The Wixarikas’ sacred cave on Cerro Quemado is where the sun was born and also where the gentle fertile rains of the east originate (Boyd 2016:61). Each day the sun emerges from this and numerous other eastern caves and dies in various western caves. Because of the container associations, caves were and are symbolically interchangeable with uterus, vase, grave, and cupped hand. Every mountain was thought to have a cave receptacle. From caves came clouds of moisture and into caves went water spirits, keeper of the animals and spirit helpers, as well as the souls of the dead, making them fitting places for offerings and petitions for rain and fertility. They were good places for the disposal of the bodies of community founders, important ritual specialists, and some sacrificial bodies. In the feast of Tlacaxipehualiztli, paper banners were put at cave mouths for rain calling, and in the feast of Tozoztontli, the bodies of the nine children sacrificed to Tlaloc were deposited in a cave (Arnold 1999).

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Figure 26 The seven caves of Chicomoztoc and their clans. Eleven ancestors fill the upper caves and nine fill the lower caves. Tovar manuscript (Image provided by John Carter Brown Library)

Because various spirits lived in caves only a ritually prepared priest would dare enter. Caves were sought out by the migrating Chichimecs for temporary placement of their sacred bundles (see Figure 57) and oracles resided in several caves (e.g., Olivier 2007). 15th-century Spain: Cave use is hundreds of thousands of years old in Asia, Europe, and Africa, often marked with elements of ritual practice (e.g., Dowd 2015). The natural history of caves creates a common set of characteristics across the hemispheres – temperature differentials, winds, moisture and mist, speleothems, sounds, total darkness, etc. – that evoked strong emotions. In the Bible, caves served as homes, refuge, and burial loci. Significantly, the Protoevangelium of James specifies that Jesus was born in a cave and today, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem preserves this cave (Figure 27). Caves were the customary place to keep animals. Byzantine texts say the Holy family also lived in a cave. The body of Jesus was placed in a cave, which became the site of resurrection. Mary Magdalene retreated to a cave in southern France after Jesus’ death. Early Christians in Antioch (Turkey) sought refuge in artificially dug caves and warrens of the Cappadocia region. The Augustinian Order originated in the caves and hermitages of the Egyptian desert (Perry 1992:59) and Francisco de Paula lived in a cave and founded the Order of Minims, or Hermits of Saint Francis (Giffords 1974:73, 87). Caves were also places of Catholic veneration in the 15th century. Several apparitions of Mary in Spain (Christian 1981b) occurred in caves and became shrines, most notably the Virgin of Montserrat in Catalonia, and the Virgin of Candelaria in the Cueva de

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Figure 27 The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was built by Constantine over the grotto where Jesus was born and dedicated in 339. The grotto shrine is depicted here in Luigi Mayer’s 1810 Views in the Ottoman Dominions. (New York Public Library Digital Collection)

Achbinico (1497) of the Canary Islands. The disciples carrying the corpse of Santiago had to deal with a dragon living in a cave on Pico Sacro. 16th-century New Spain: Surely it was not lost on the native peoples of the New World that the Catholic’s preferred ritual place was inside dark cavernous stone spaces, and that similarly, ritually prepared priests were the ones to conduct the ceremonies inside those places. Although tour guides today in several places say that the Indians were afraid to go inside of a church for fear of attack, giving rise to open chapels, it may be more accurate to say that the fear was aroused by the native understanding of caves as dens of deities and wind spirits and thus the cavernous form of Spanish monastery churches. Several songs in the Cantares Mexicanos refer to churches as “cavern-house.” Wake (2010) documents numerous ways in which 16th-century churches continued to be viewed by the native audience as cavern houses, including drawing conventions that showed enlarged church doors, blue church interiors, jaguar skin motifs and flower doorway motifs, and a facade with two eyes and mouth. In a continuance of Catholic tradition, the missionaries also sought out caves and rockshelters for their own penitential practices.The Augustinian missionary Antonio de Roa became a hermit living in a cave in Metztitlan, which drew pilgrims after his death (Hughes 2010). It was to a cave near Amecameca that Fray Martín de Valencia went for flagellation, prayer, and meditation (Braden 1930) still visited today (García de León

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2006:40). The most famous rockshelter adopted and adapted by Catholics in New Spain is Chalma. One of several adjacent shallow rockshelters, it housed a sacrificial stone and image to the god of caves, Oxtoteotl, a manifestation of the black Tezcatlipoca, long before the Conquest. At some – disputed – year in the 16th century, Augustinians destroyed the image and substituted a black crucifix. It is still a significant shrine. Artificial cave construction has been documented since Teotihuacan, where tunnels and caves were dug before the erection of the pyramids, the Mixtecs were digging caverns for burial at Contact. “[T]he Nudzavui [Mixtec] hollowed out domed tombs in the ground under their houses. A number of these subfloor tombs were excavated in the 1930s and 1940s . . . five centuries after being sealed. The spaces were conceptualized as human-made caves. Bats were sacrificed in some of them, and actual caves were used elsewhere in the Mixteca to house especially famous ancestors . . . described in 1546” (Hamann 2020:215). Neither solitude nor escape was a typical motivation for a native person to enter a cave. Ritual specialists were the people who entered and ritual participation was the reason non-specialists would enter such a dangerous realm. See also death, landscape, mountain

celibacy 15th-century Central Mexico: Abstinence from sex and from flavorful food was practiced by ritual specialists in order to build up inner heat, the power necessary for engaging with spirits and deities during ritual. The same was true for hunters and fishers before pursuing these animals and for ballplayers and warriors before engagement (Furst 1995). The Sun chose those who were virgins, thus pure, to die in battle and serve him in his eastern realm. The rain gods likewise chose pure people to whom to give the watery diseases that would bring them into Tlalocan (Burkhart 1989:51). Women lived chaste lives while serving a temple. If they broke their vows of chastity during their year of service, they were immediately put to death. These youths . . . decorated the temples, maintained the temple fires, and burned incense to the gods, while the maidens of penitence cleaned and watered the temples, prepared the food for the gods and priests, and spun and wove the clothing for the idols and temple. (Bassie-Sweet 2008:234–235)

The penalty for sexual relations by High priests, “whether Mixtec, Nahua or of any other people . . . was death” (López Austin 2015:157). 15th-century Spain: Stories abound of ascetics and saints who took vows of celibacy in order to demonstrate mastery over their bodies and to imitate Christ’s pure and sexless life. However, becoming a priest or entering service in the church was often a duty for sons, many of whom did not feel a call to follow Christ’s sinless life. Priestly marriage and concubinage was widespread and generally part of the medieval world. In various parts of Spain, “shrine keepers were expected to be celibate and wear a costume but, in Castile, shrine keepers were merely caretakers” (Christian 1981b:107). Celibacy for men in orders was reaffirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). The issue of priestly celibacy was debated by the Council of Trent (1545–1563) in light of the

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Reformation’s permission for clergy to marry and the marriage prohibition was upheld. Sex would distract the European man from total service, they reasoned. Nevertheless, Church records are full of clergy who solicited sex through the confessional, from altar boys, and within cloisters. 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures expected celibacy from priests. Burkhart (2001a:24) pointed out that native parents, like Mary’s parents, pledged their daughters to a temple and their required celibacy further mimicked the biblical family. At least one writer observed that “many of [the Indian women] led most virtuous lives and preferred virginity to marriage” and that the convents were a refuge for many widows and young women who secluded themselves there (Ricard 1966:233). A lifetime of celibacy for the Holy married couple as doctrine must have been quite strange to the natives of Mexico. Or perhaps it might have been reasonable that Mary, at least, “had to remain in a state of permanent ritual abstinence” (Burkhart 2001a:24). There was, however, the issue of Jesus’ younger brother, James the apostle. See also marriage, priest, sex, sin, virginity

cemetery. see death. children 15th-century Central Mexico: As the child grew, it was expected to honor its parents and ancestors by listening, doing all that was commanded, and staying nearby (Sahagún 1950– 1982:10; Trexler 1982). Punishments for misbehavior could be harsh – including holding the child’s face over burning chilis. By age three, girls were learning to cook and weave and boys were carrying water. By age seven, boys were carrying heavier loads, net fishing, and gathering reeds, and girls were spinning thread. Craft lessons for boys and girls were underway by age ten. By age fourteen, boys and girls were attending schools. Children aged five to seven were those sacrificed to Tlaloc during several veintena feasts. Their fate was sealed if they had two cowlicks or were born on a day that indicated sacrifice. Children of nobles were preferred in these rituals (Arnold 1999). In the Atl Caualo feast, lavishly adorned children were carried on decorated litters to seven different sacrificial places. Each child was renamed with the place name before killing. In the Tozoztontli ceremony, nine children were sacrificed and buried in a cave. 15th-century Spain: The age of reason was established as seven years old, after which time a child could confess and be confirmed (Pardo 2006). Before seven, a child was not to be given the bread or wine. Children who died before baptism went to limbo from which they were never released. The rite of baptism made one an adopted child of God (Powell 2009:63) and the concept “children of God,” also marked the adoptive relationship. Neophytes, also known as catechumens, were individuals who converted to Catholicism as adults, usually Muslims and Jews. Spiritual growth was expected for any Christian and confirmation, communion, and penance were sacraments that furthered this growth, from neophyte to mature Christian.

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A puritanical reform movement condemning cleric corruption, exploitation of the poor, and numerous other vanities and vices as well as sodomy was preached by Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican in Florence in the 1490s. He used orphan boys as active soldiers, constituting a “Mediterranean model of saintly child evangelists” to confront and harass those people who defied Savonarola’s strict code (Trexler 1982). 16th-century New Spain: At least one author has claimed that the New World conversion program relied heavily on the use of the children of the native nobility (Trexler 1982). Perhaps based on the demonstrated strategy of Savonarola in Florence, the Laws of Burgos specified the separation of the children from their noble parents. Children were housed in the missions, educated in Catholicism, and acted as choir, maids, porters, grave diggers, and beggars on behalf of the friars. The process involved the boys bonding with the friars with a devotion that eclipsed their feelings for their own fathers and mothers, living in the mission housing until either their parents converted or they left for marriage. Wives for these boys were picked by the friars and land allotments were given as presents (Trexler 1982). “The first boys the Twelve Apostles sent out were, in fact, two young relatives of the fallen Montezuma” (Trexler 1982:123). The toughest boys were sent to disrupt heathen feasts, engage in street attacks, enter homes looking for idols, and burn temples. They even raped, lynched, and murdered native parents and priests and were themselves murdered in a few cases by their own parents. To honor these boy Christian soldiers, the friars instituted a feast day for the boys, the day of Holy Innocents. The epidemics of the 1520s killed a high proportion of children and frail adults, leaving a ballooning healthy adult population that well served Spanish economic goals. However, “within 15 years, there were vastly more dependents than before . . . by the early 1540s, the native population was probably as large or larger than it was immediately after the Conquest” (Hassig 1994:154). Much of what these adults produced was needed for their families, resulting in a deteriorating economic situation for their new overlords. When one man was jailed for his failure to pay a newly levied tax in 1564 he said from his cell to the tax collector that what little money he did have was needed for his children. “And do you serve only your children?” he was asked by the collector. “Whom if not my children? Our Lord gave them to me,” he answered (Townsend 2019:173). Most of the surviving adults in central Mexico had been baptized such that the era of child baptism began in the 1550s. The attitude of the Spanish Crown and of the Mexican Catholic Church, however, was that Indians were perpetually neophytes, their understanding of the theology always that of children. This status became official Mexican Church language at the Third Mexican Church Provincial Council (1585). Yet unlike this status in the Old World, in New Spain it meant that natives were barred from communion by both Franciscans and Dominicans. See also birth, communion, mother, religious instruction, tree

communion 15th-century Central Mexico: Archaeological remains suggest consumption of human body parts have occurred for over 3,000 years. Eating flesh by Aztecs is depicted in

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codices (e.g., Florentine Codex) and took place in a highly charged religious context during three religious feasts. Priests were the consumers among the Tarascans, while Mexica priests, merchants, and warriors consumed their own captives after ritual sacrifice. Rarely did the populace at large eat human flesh (Boone 1994). Many of the victims were teixiptla at the time of their death. Eating that person’s flesh equated to eating the flesh of that deity. Eating peyote and morning glory seeds also equated to eating those deities. Underlying this eating was the idea that the gods fed people and people, in turn, fed the gods. Most famous among the eaten teixiptla were those in the guise of Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, and Quetzalcoatl. “[B]ones” of dough, representing the flesh and bones of Huitzilopochtli, were placed before the dough image and consecrated with “songs and dances as the flesh and bones of Huitzilopochtli” (Braden 1930:72). There followed human sacrifices, dismemberment of the image, and distribution of pieces. They believed that it was the body of the god that was passed out and it was received with great awe, fear, and weeping according to Acosta (2002). Children ate sacrificial tamales that “had changed into the flesh of Tezcatlipoca” (Braden 1930:72). 15th-century Spain: From its earliest days, Christianity has celebrated a communal meal commemorating Jesus’ last supper. The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) gave accounts of this meal and in 1 Corinthians (11:23–26 and 33) Paul writes that it was passed on to him. He gives directions for how the Christians at Corinth should share this meal. In the 6th century, Pope Gregory made several significant liturgical reforms, including introducing the concept of transubstantiation, or the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharistic bread and wine. By the late Middle Ages, both the theology and the practice of the communal meal had become more elaborate, with Eucharistic miracles as a standard trope throughout European Christianity, particularly as part of the Feast of Corpus Christi. The host, paraded through the streets in the new feast of Corpus Christi or lifted up at the altar in its round white wholeness, became increasingly the symbol of a church menaced by Jews, infidels, and heretics; in miracle story after miracle story, it dripped miraculous blood not only to demonstrate the doctrine of real presence to those of faltering belief but also to accuse those who violated community or mores – women who conjured with it, Jews who desecrated it, heretics who denied its reality as the flesh of God. (Bynum 2002:690)

The moment of the transubstantiation of the Eucharistic wafer was the most anticipated aspect of the mass, a moment when one could witness a miracle and be in the presence of God. A common accusation against Moriscos, Conversos, and later indigenous converts was that they averted their gaze during the elevation of the host and thus were insincere in their conversion (Hamann 2020). The sacrament of communion was also known as “of the altar,” “the gift,” and “sacrifice.” Communion was thought to strengthen one’s spiritual life and move one toward spiritual maturity. It was administered usually at Easter and only after confession, and frequently only the Priest was permitted to partake of the Eucharistic wine. Elaborate containers for the unconsecrated hosts became common features in larger churches this century. These ornate jars, known as pyxes, were often gilded or carved from ivory.

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Franciscan tradition credits Francis with the origin of this practice, although Pope Gregory VII wrote about it in 1079. The monstrance, a container for the elevated host, (bread and wine) developed in the 14th century and was modeled on reliquaries. 16th-century New Spain: According to Ricard, Tarascans [Purépecha] were the first to be given Holy communion. As was the case with several of the other sacraments, communion was a widely debated topic among the orders. Were the Indians too recently converted, or too heathen? Several key Franciscan friars argued that the host should only be given to those of commendable spiritual and moral character or else the host would be defiled. At question was whether the Indians were true Christians in spite of the fact of their baptism. Dominicans, for example, offered communion regularly to some converts they identified as having more reverence for the sacrament, and only at Easter or when gravely ill for others (Lara 2008). Later, Jesuits wanted to give communion frequently and first right after baptism, though this practice did not become common. The Augustinians were most open to giving Indians communion and gave it much more readily to Nahuas than to Otomis, believing the Otomis to be of inferior intelligence (Lara 2008; Ricard 1966). When it was given the preparation was strident. In addition to confession and penance, recipients must “know the articles of the Trinity of the Persons; the unity of the divine essence; the incarnation and passion of the Son of God and how he himself is in the Sacrament of the Altar . . . listen to the divine Mystery, [and] come to communion as clean as possible” (Ricard 1966:123). Bishop Zumárraga believed that all the baptized should be given communion. The 1546 junta in Mexico City specified that the person eligible for the Eucharist must fast and be able to distinguish between ordinary bread and sacramental bread. This latter stipulation, too, became a point of contention. Subsequently, Pope Paul III ordered that Christian Indians be given communion (Braden 1930), as did Felipe II in a letter to the Archbishop in 1578 and as did the Council of the Indies. Regardless of the sacramental status of Eucharist and papal commands to administer this and the other sacraments, “in general the Franciscans only admitted to Communion a handful of Indians, having chosen to focus more on other sacraments deemed more urgent for the overall conversion of the population as revealed in a report penned in 1571” (Pardo 2006:137). A 1573 tract written by the teacher of Theology at the University of Mexico, Augustinian Pedro de Agarto, severely chastised those priests who withheld this sacrament, calling them the sinners (Pardo 2006:141). The adoption and spread of glass monstrances in which the host was kept led to the worship of and devotions to the host itself both in Europe and the New World in this century. Confraternities developed in Mexico City and Puebla around the host, and the members, often the elite natives, were those few individuals who were permitted to partake (Pardo 2006:139). Thus, two classes of native Christians were created by the Franciscans and adopted by the Dominicans – those who did not receive communion and those who did. Beyond the question of access to communion for native Christians, the frequency of communion was a highly charged topic, beginning with the Reformation, as was the nature of the host – was it the real presence of Christ or not? Daily communion was observed by some sectors of Spanish Catholicism and was subjected to Inquisitorial exam.

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Several individuals were tried (alumbrados, beatas) and several books promoting frequent communion were banned (Pardo 2006:153). Infrequent communion was seen by the hierarchy as enhancing its sacredness. The source of the communion bread introduces the question of the “ordinary bread” – specifically whether Indian parishioners donated the bread for communion as had been the case in Western Europe through the 14th century [Doeswyck 1962:53] and whether that bread was generally wheat or corn. Lara (2008:128) gives an account of a Nahautl catechism with a translation of Our Father containing the phrase “our daily tortillas” that refers to the Eucharist as “little white tortilla.” By the 16th century, all hosts were round. The Council of Trent in 1562 officially condemned the practice of giving the laity wine in communion even at Easter, allowing it only for the celebrant priest. This restriction was a reaction to Protestant reformers who denied the truth of transubstantiation. See also blood, bloodletting, deity embodiment, drunkenness, healing, sacrifice, sodality

conception 15th-century Central Mexico: Female deities conceived in miraculous ways, particularly through feathers coming in contact with them (e.g., mother of Huitzilopochtli; mother of Tepozteco in one version), through spit into the palm (e.g., Blood Woman), or through jade pebbles lodging in them (e.g., mothers of Quetzalcoatl and Tepozteco). For humans, fertility and birth timing were concerns of midwives. Pregnancy and life in the womb was spoken of in terms used to describe the planet Venus. Nahuas thought that multiple ejaculations were necessary in order to nurture the fetus (Burkhart 2001a). 15th-century Spain: In Old Testament tradition, divine births had to overcome some obstacle. In that tradition, “miraculous conceptions overcome the obstacle of sterility or old age (Anne, Mary’s mother), not virginity . . . The story of Mary’s virginal impregnation really has no precedent in Judaic tradition” (Burkhart 2001a:23). The Immaculate Conception – referring to Anne’s pregnancy, the mother of Mary and thus Mary’s own birth – was an open controversy between Franciscans and Dominicans throughout the 12th and 13th centuries. The idea was most vociferously resisted by the Dominicans, leading to bitter contention and subsequent theological quarreling with the Franciscans over Mary’s sinlessness. The maculatist position, held by Dominicans, argued that Mary had been conceived in original sin but had been sanctified by Jesus in the womb and was thereby pure at his birth. The immaculatist perspective, which was formulated by Franciscans, held that Mary had been preserved from sin in Anne’s womb by the merits of Christ’s death and resurrection, even though those events had not occurred at the time of Mary’s conception (Lara 2014:38). The immaculatist position was dominant in Iberia and was favored by the Spanish Crown (see essay). Spaniards of this century knew that the soul was emplaced 40 days after conception for a boy and 80 days after for a girl (Burkhart 2001a). This delay presented a problem for explaining the Immaculate Conception of Mary and then that of Jesus but was resolved with the reasoning that these two individuals had been placed whole (i.e., ensouled) in their mothers.

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16th-century New Spain: Because of the favor the Immaculate Conception of Mary enjoyed in Iberia, the Immaculate Conception of Mary by her mother Anne was the “most widely venerated advocation of Mary” in the New World colonies and was most pronounced in areas missionized by Franciscans and Augustinians (Burkhart 2001a). However, this veneration does not appear to have been expressed very often in town or convent patronage. In a database of 416 church patrons assigned in the 16th century assembled by the authors from the Enciclopedia de los Municipios of 1987, only 4 percent reference the Immaculate Conception: 6.8 percent of those founded before 1541, 2.7 percent founded 1541–1561, 9.6 percent founded 1562–1580, 6 percent founded 1581–1600, and 0.01 percent founded in this century but without further date information. We suspect that instead of this patronage for churches and towns, it was most frequently given to hospitals and barrios. Large numbers of people were attracted to various confraternities with this advocation. The popularity of Jesus’ conception and birth in patronage can likewise be tracked. If advocations to Jose, Joaquin and “Jesus Concepcion” are considered, these amount to 4.6 percent of churches founded before 1541, 4.2 percent of those founded 1541–1561, none of those founded 1562–1580, and 9 percent of those founded 1581–1600. An additional 4.8 percent had no date other than “16th century.” See also bee, birth, children, fertility, mother, virginity

confession 15th-century Central Mexico: Aztecs had private confessional events twice a year when a person went alone to a quiet place in the home, the mountains, a spring, or the temple to express sadness or regret before a cult deity (Mendieta 1971:II:132). Aztecs also underwent guided private confessions with a specialist who practiced divination. The date for the confession was usually during the feast of Ochpaniztli. The penitent swept the house, bought a new reed mat, made the confession, burned copal, and bloodlet as ordered by the priest. “In some cases as many as four hundred thorns were to be passed through the tongue, before pardon was granted” (Braden 1930:70). The confessor was to hold the information secret. Public confession was performed in a temple in front of the goddess Xochiquetzal, during her veintena, or before the goddess Tlazolteotl, once in a lifetime (Kroger and Granziera 2012). “In front of Xochiquetzal’s image, people pierced their tongues, once for each of their sins. A priest collected all the thorns and threw them into a fire. Afterwards, the penitents took a ritual bath and ate Tzoalli, maize dough with maguey honey, which represented the body of the goddess” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:213). A prayer of confession to Tlazolteotl or possibly Tezcatlipoca was recorded by Sahagún (1950–1982:6:29–30): And now, O master, O our lord, O lord of the near, of the nigh, as the commoner hath troubled thee, as he hath offended thee, will perhaps thy fury, thy anger, be placated, be turned? May [the pardon] of the common person be complete, be achieved? Because he taketh fright, he sigheth when he turneth to himself, when he reflecteth upon, when he

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Ricard (1966:32) points out that while the Aztec and Christian rites of confession were very similar, the failures precipitating the confession were quite different – only required by drunkenness and sexual irregularities for the Aztecs. It was also used when facing death and during purification rites by the Maya (López Austin 2010:33; Miller and Taube 1993). “The drunkard who confessed escaped the penalty [death or beating] and was subjected only to a religious penance. . . . Sin was not a spiritual blemish that stained the soul, but was simply a kind of poison that had invaded the body through the exercise of a physiological function, and one eliminated it” (Ricard 1966:32). Confession was known among the Zapotecs and Totonacs, and other groups (Ricard 1966). Confession by Yucatec Maya adults was a feature of child purification rites (Miller and Taube 1993:66). 15th-century Spain: Confession before a judge/a priest was the means to the sacrament of penance. Confession was required before entering a shrine and was expected before starting a pilgrimage (Sumption 1975:143–144). It was mandatory before communion, which was required once a year and sought out when sick and on the death bed. “Confraternities . . . encouraged penance, confession, and communion as a means of resolving individual religious anxieties” (Starr-LeBeau 2008:339). The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) required annual confession by all Christians. Franciscan Duns Scotus radically departed from those theologians who focused on contrition in confession, favoring the role of the absolution. Written confessions were frequent in Europe. Through the use of confession indulgences, writs allowing the Christian to choose to change their confessor (the Bull of the Holy Crusade known in Spain as the bula de la cruzada and originated in the Fourth Lateran Council), and the various manuals in use, Spaniards had a more flexible relationship to contrition and subsequent penances than did other Western Christians. In particular, the bula de la cruzada affected the practice of confession in Spain, giving it a character distinct from most of the rest of Europe. Also common in pre- and post-Tridentine Spain, the use of confession manuals directed at both lay and religious readers encouraged the penitent to discuss and theologically dispute the nature of the sin and prescribed penance with the confessor (O’Banion 2005:344). Evidence suggests that early modern Spain saw not only an increase in women religious, who were required to attend confession once a month, but also that lay women were more likely to go to confession at the prescribed times yearly. Despite this, many of the confession manuals disregarded women or failed to mention them at all. O’Banion concludes that Spanish theological engagement in the confessional came from a more sophisticated laity, which in turn required the priesthood to be able and willing to encounter and work with these theologically literate members of their congregations. 16th-century New Spain: Christian confession was first introduced in 1526 (two years after evangelization began!) by Franciscans in Tetzcoco as a weekly event, each session preceded by an examination of knowledge of Christian doctrine and a reminder of the “three conditions required for the remission of sins: repentance, acknowledgment, and restitution” (Ricard 1966:116).

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The preparation ordinarily given the Indians was, first, an examination as to their knowledge of the doctrine; the Pater Noster; Ave Maria; Creed, Salve Regina; the fourteen articles of faith, the commandments of God, and the five of the church; the seven mortal sins and the general confession . . . Next they were taught the necessity and efficiency of the sacrament of penance by which sins were forgiven and the sinner made right with God (Kroger and Granziera 2012:234–235).

Finally, they were advised about past penances, and had to attend a reading of which acts were sinful before confession. Formal marriage and marriage to one woman were also requisites. Differences between the confessional procedure of Franciscans and those of Augustinians were described by Ricard as “methodical” vs. “more expeditious.” For instance, in one village, the Augustinians mandated confession over four Sundays for the four barrios and gave collective absolution of the less grave sins and then heard individual confessions for sins of gravity (Ricard 1966:117). As noted previously, the Franciscans required much knowledge of these differences in confessional procedure across geography, and religious orders created much rancor and discussion. The confessors were expected to be familiar with treatises on cases of conscience, the native language of the penitent, and knowledge of those cultural practices, all points which fueled the defense of friars as confessors rather than secular clergy. Confessional manuals were mandated and prepared using familiar pictographs to stimulate memory and recognition of sins. “On the morning of confession day [Sunday] the priests read the natives a list of all sins that man can commit” (Ricard 1966:116). Motolinía requested written confessions to handle large crowds of penitents. Written confessions were outlawed in 1602 by Papal decree. The Council of Trent clarified the role and meaning of confession as penance. Perhaps the greater concern for missionaries was whether the native Christian was actually remorseful or contrite at confession, a demand that gained importance through the century. It was equally surprising and perplexing for the missionaries that, even knowing their sins, Indians often failed to show regret for their sins. Should they be absolved then? Were they capable of confessing properly? Contrition, it was argued, was the single most important distinction between confessional behavior practiced before the coming of Christianity and that practiced by Christians. The measure of contrition was often read through gestures and tears due to the language barrier, particularly with native women who were less often bilingual. Intentionality became a sharp focus point for confessors (Starr-LeBeau 2008). Since Nahuatl was the lingua franca both before and after the Conquest, records indicate that Nahuatl speakers (native and bilingual) could confess twice a year but Otomis, for instance, only once a year in Morelos state when a priest who spoke Otomi could be present. Lent became the one mandatory confessional date. Pardo (2006:113) asks how the confessor came to determine when an individual was fit to confess when neither spoke a mutual language? Interpreters were often used but the presence of this third party obviously violated several points of Christian theology surrounding confession. The words of confession changed during this century, mandated by Pope Pius V in his 1570 Missal. Instead of praying for forgiveness from brothers and a few saints, one was

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now to pray to father and all of the saints: “I confess to Almighty God, to the Blessed Mary ever Virgin, to Blessed Michael the Archangel, to Blessed John the Baptist, to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the Saints, and to you, Father” (Doeswyck 1962:56). Confessions gave friars a close look into indigenous beliefs and customs, allowing them to target specific behaviors in the effort to forge a “moral subject rooted in the notions of conscience and individually” (Pardo 2006:80). The challenge was reshaping the indigenous understanding of sin because “for the Nahua, corruption/sin/disorderliness was the sin itself, whereas for Christians, corruption was the cause or effect of sin” (Starr-LeBeau 2008:407). The dozens of confessional manuals written, published and unpublished, introduced a great deal of variety into the confessional experience and reflected the curiosity of the priest. Molina’s Confessionario Breve had 180 questions, while Alva’s had 52. Questions asked of a native noble were different from those asked of a woman commoner (Christensen 2013). Molina’s Breve (1565) has a list of confession questions for men and women that shows remarkable differences. Men were asked about whether they called on the devil or sought the advice of a sorcerer. In contrast, women were asked whether they worked on Sunday or bathed with men at the public baths or if they did not come to church because they were ashamed of the clothes they had to wear. These questions were in both Nahuatl and Spanish and also covered the commandments, sacraments, and doctrines of the incarnation and trinity (Canfield 1968), as well as indoctrinating European gender roles and expectations. On the point of how many times a person had committed the sin, which was necessary for each confession, the Tarascans were noted for inability to answer, while the mathematically sophisticated Aztecs could give a number (Ricard 1966:120). Molina updated his Confessario Mayor (1578) to clarify which feast days were mandatory for natives, deceptive practices at the market, admonishing priests that the natives should show tears when they confess (Canfield 1968). Pettazzoni (1926) surmised that the Aztec confessional practice facilitated the adoption of the Catholic confessional practice. “The friars . . . explained in great detail the differences between the [Christian and Native confessions]” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:213). It was a great surprise to the missionaries that the Indians were quite fond of confessing, and were far more willing to do penance than were the Spaniards. “The worst trouble these Indians gave,” according to Motolinía, “was in the confessions, for they appeared at all hours of the day or night, in the churches or on the roads, so that the whole year became a Lent” (Ricard 1966:120). There are numerous examples of throngs of people following behind traveling priests awaiting opportunities to confess, in canoes and in the water when a priest was crossing by boat, in little shelters alongside the road or filling the road ahead when a priest was traveling, gathering in the atrios all year long. Nevertheless, in 1556 Archbishop Montúfar said “some of them . . . go for twenty years without confessing; others never confess at all” or confessed for the first time on their deathbed (Ricard 1966:120). Klor de Alva (1991) believes that the Inquisition, which was forbidden to investigate natives after 1571, was rendered essentially unnecessary by the work of the friars. Rather than the heavy hand of the Holy Office, which was slow and expensive, the emphasis on baptism – and then confession – cleverly induced the Indians to self-report, self-punish, and self-control their immoral and illegal tendencies. Pardo’s (2006) data on the

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widespread withholding of confession and even baptism by the Franciscans raises some doubt, however, about this self-policing role. As the once-in-a-lifetime confession before Tlazolteotl had gained the penitent safety from corporal punishment, Sahagún noted that Indians often sought confession and did penance inside monasteries, which also allowed them to escape civil court and punishment for crimes. See also penance, sodality, weeping

confirmation. see religious instruction conversion 15th-century Central Mexico: Mexica history and military practice make an interesting case for the topic of conversion. Mexica war campaigns, when successful, typically destroyed the losing city state’s main temple, captured its priests and sacred bundle, and mandated a temple to Huitzilopochtli and the apparatus to support that cult (Bassett 2015; Boone 1994:56). Cult priests were then imported, offerings collected, and sacrificial victims exported. These acts, however, were not meant to eradicate prior cults. There is no evidence that Mexica warfare was motivated by a religious need to convert infidels. War was viewed as a contest between royal family members and their patron gods (Early 2006:105). The losers logically sought the protection of the patron god of the winners for that god was clearly the stronger of the two deities. Most unlike European practices of this century, with the subsequent expansion of the Mexica Empire, the movement of foreign goods and people into the Aztec sphere brought about the expansion of the Mexica pantheon as patrons of new settlers or patrons of conquered communities were incorporated. For instance, Chantico was the “patron of the stone-cutters of Xochimilco and later adopted by the Aztecs” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:174). The cult of Xipe Totec was adopted by the Aztecs during the reign of Axayacatl (1469–1481) after defeating the people of Tabasco and Veracruz. The cult to Nahualpilli was assimilated from the Huastecs. Aztecs “took the idol of Nahualpilli and placed him in Tenochtitlan to perform his magic” (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:90). 15th-century Spain: The expansion of Christianity northward after the fall of Rome led to a variety of techniques to accomplish conversions of pagans. Pope Gregory the Great instructed missionaries traveling to England, Ireland, Germany, and points north to put churches on any sacred site and use sacred trees as church beams (Bentley 1993). Also common was finding ways to tell the stories from the gospel using local landscape features and language, such as is found in the Heliand, a 9th-century Saxon version of the gospels (Russell 1994). There are many accounts of forced or coerced conversion of Muslims and Jews in the late 15th century under the rule of Queen Isabella and King Fernando II, and such claims continued into mid-century. The convivencia was a form of tolerance, but not as we might contemporarily understand; rather it was “the sense of enduring something unpleasant” (Hamann 2020:82). How to ascertain whether a person had truly converted – become a Christian – was a challenging, if not insoluble, proof. However, the transformation of European pagans into European Christians was slow with varying degrees of success and cultural exchange.

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Assimilation, accommodation, and coercion were all in evidenced in European Catholicism. Social conversion, conversion through political pressure, voluntary assimilation, and coercion all contributed to the expansion of Christianity. Uniformity of belief and practice was a different challenge and remains elusive. The idea of regulating beliefs and practices found its fruition in the twelfth century with the formation of the Inquisition. Questions of orthodoxy and orthopraxy became central as the Middle Ages flourished. The work of the Inquisition to rid Christianity of both pre-Christian beliefs and practices and heterodoxy was part of resolving the question of not only what it meant to be a Christian but to police how an “orthodox” Christian thinks and acts. Concerns about Jews, particularly in northern Europe, also sparked concern over how to maintain the boundaries of the Christian faith. The vocation of the Franciscans from the 12th century was to preach the gospel to all living beings, and only they were granted the right to enter the Jewish and Muslim precincts in Spain to preach to them (Moreno de los Arcos 1991). “The medieval Franciscans followed the Crusaders, engaging Muslims in the Near East as well as in North Africa and Spain; they were also involved in embassies and work among the Mongols . . . they followed the Portuguese, establishing monasteries at their trading posts in Africa and India” (Early 2006:120). But conversion of Jews was a complicated question, though one that fit well with Franciscan millennial expectations. Traditionally, Jews were believed to be among the last converts at the end of days – this was part of God’s divine plan. This left the complete conversion of Jews in the distant future. Throughout most of the Middle Ages Jews and Christians lived together in Spain in a form of mutual accommodation called convivencia. With the very real possibility of the reconquest on the horizon in the late 15th century, Spanish concerns turned from toleration of Muslim and Jewish minorities to conversion or expulsion. The expectation of the Millennium was vibrant; Jerusalem and the Holy Land felt in reach once the reconquest appeared complete. The establishment of the Spanish Inquisition beginning in 1478, distinct from the Office of the Inquisition in other European Christian territories, was directed to affirm the conversion of primarily Jewish converts, known as Conversos. [V]arious identities and associated experiences existed along a spectrum that ranged from devout Christians and sincere converts to devout Jews and insincere converts. [. . .] Those who [. . .] remained connected with their Jewish heritage were often considered to be Judaizing and straying from their new religion, with these heretical behaviors pertaining to the continued practice of the Jewish rituals including, for example, avoiding work during Shabbat or diet regulations like cutting excess fat from meat. (Koza 2013:1)

Under the Spanish Inquisition, Christianity became not only a religious identity but a quality of one’s heritage through blood. “Limpieza de sangre always had a racial element, but that eventually went beyond parentage to include a generic concept of infamy, that is, those tested by the Inquisition and their descendants, and those whose ancestors had run afoul of the civil law or labored in unbecoming occupations” (Poole 1999:388). Suspicious of false conversion to Christianity among Conversos and Moriscos, the Church in Spain made several modifications to Christian burial practices after 1492 lasting most of the 16th century. Because Jews and Muslims had specific rites and rituals for

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corpse preparation and burial, all Catholics in 16th-century Spain had to prepare corpses without washing and all Catholics had to be buried inside of churches. If burial inside (walls, floors, catacombs) was impossible, burial had to occur inside a walled yard adjacent to a church (Eire 1995). Furthermore, beginning several centuries earlier, all Catholics had to have a written will or a paper document of poverty in order to undergo Christian burial. These wills contained an opening proclamation of faith. 16th-century New Spain: The two cultures both expected conquest to mean acceptance of the conqueror’s state religion. But if the native communities expected to be able to continue the cults of lesser deities, they were no doubt shocked to learn that any and all of these religious practices were strictly forbidden and grounds for harsh treatment. For the University of Salamanca-trained priests, Dominican Francisco de Vitoria’s perspective informed their approach: conversion is about changing an inner state of belief. After that transformation, other signs of false doctrine could be removed (Hamann 2020). This attitude is plainly evident in Sahagún’s work. For the Franciscans, conversion consisted of numerous behaviors (e.g., marriage to one woman, no idolatry, no drunkenness, no nudity) and espoused beliefs (e.g., the fourteen articles of faith), renouncing their gods, and declaring themselves to be loyal subjects. The lack of exterior cemeteries suggests paranoia about the thorough conversion of natives. Some have said that what the Spanish managed to eliminate was the Imperial religion focused on Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli but that Christians failed to make significant inroads into the commoner religious practices directed toward Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue, governing the agricultural/rural domain. In 1526 Valencia ordered the hanging of six men and one woman of the noble class in Tlaxcala as Christians who had returned to idolatry (Moreno de los Arcos 1991:29). Graham (2011:283) points out that while it took centuries to convert European tribes, Bishop Diego de Landa of the Yucatan was appalled that the Maya were still idolatrous in 1561 after only 40 years. A handful of Spanish missionaries faced hundreds of thousands of people to be converted in the Indies, La Florida, and New Spain. Early (2006:161–162) calculated that priests in Guatemala were 1 for every 420 households in 1572–1574 compared to Spain’s ratio of one for each 200 households. Christensen (2013:72) says that outside of Mexico City in 1570 there was 1 cleric for every 1125 families. The Council of the Indies published the desired ratio of 1 priest per 400 households. Even this high ratio meant infrequent contact, infrequent instruction, and poor familiarity with the laity. “In Mexico alone there were an estimated four million converts by 1540, served in 1559 by some 160 monasteries” (Gillingham 2010:205). Was lasting and meaningful conversion even possible, asked Early (2006:148)? He answers, “no.” Was baptism sufficient? Russell (1994) says no. Elizabeth Graham (2011:17) asserts that “the idea that the [native people] were somehow less than true Christians – or the idea that superstition and what is often called recidivism, or a poor understanding of doctrine, or even the veneration of images unfamiliar to Europeans makes one less Christian – is based both on an idealized notion of being Christian” and by ignoring the history of Christianity in pagan lands. See also baptism, communion, confession, marriage, purity, sin, text

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cosmos 15th-century Central Mexico: The disc of This World was land surrounded by water. At night, this water raised up around the disc forming a wall that supported the sky. This water then filled all of the caves from which life-generating water flowed. The disc was subdivided into five sections, the four world quarters and the center. Above this disc were thirteen (or nine) layers, closed to humans, and below was the Most Holy Earth, divided into nine layers all open to humans. An axis mundi tree passed through all of these layers and each layer had a major oppositional male/female duality, and minor paired deities positioned in each of the layer’s four quadrants. The Aztec’s upperworld was described as (Carrasco and Sessions 2011:50–51): Level 13, the place of duality, Omeyocan, was marked with a fire surrounded by three hearthstones (Taube 2000). The creator grandparents who dwelled here, represented a union of the Upper world with the deep god of the Most Holy Earth, creating the place of duality, a marriage between the forces of life and death, light and dark, male and female. These deities were Xochiquetzal (female) and Seven Flower (male) or Tonacacihuatl and Tonacatecuhtli based on the “Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas and Codex Telleriano-Remensis” (Bassie-Sweet 2008:196). “The male aspect was especially found in fire, in the sun, and in all the corn gods. The female aspect was in the plants, the water, and the earth and ensured regenerations” (Carrasco and Sessions 2011:54) Level 12 Omeyocan Level 11 The God who is Red Level 10 The God who is Yellow Level 9 The God who is White Level 8 The Place with Corners of Obsidian Slabs Level 7 The Sky that is Blue-Green Level 6 The Sky that is Blackish Level 5 the planets live here; where the whirling is Level 4 home of the morning star and the evening star, The Sky-Place of Salt Level 3 The Sky of the Sun Level 2 The Sky of the Skirt of Stars Level 1 Sky of Tlalocan and the Moon. Tlalocan was the home of Tlaloc (Figures 9 and 46), god of celestial water and Chalchiuhtlicue (Figure 9), goddess of terrestrial water and patron of navigators. Early colonial accounts position Tlalocan in its eastern quadrant – a paradise bestowed with an abundance of all the foods (Huckert 2002) and medicinal plants. This world, Tlalticpactli, Mesoamericans believed was unstable. It was constantly changing as seen in weather, in social upheaval, in seasons. The landscape of This World was filled with spirits and their manifesting special places (topographic features) and in animals and plants. It was marked by corner trees that held aloft the Upper World, separating it from the Most Holy Earth below. These trees defined a quadrilateral space for humans, relatively safe from the clashing forces of other worlds.

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Below This World was the Most Holy Earth the home of the dead and the world of dreams and visions. It was a foggy, shimmering, slightly distorted version of this world but it could be penetrated by humans. The lords of the directions, the earth lords, the souls of the dead, and every human’s nahualli, animal spirit, lived in the Most Holy Earth. It was a four chambered, multi-layered realm, and out of each chamber grew a giant corner marker tree (Knab 2006). These levels were (as named in Carrasco and Sessions 2011:51): Level 1 The Place for Crossing the Water Level 2 The Place Where the Hills are Found Level 3 The Obsidian Mountain Level 4 The Place of the Obsidian Wind Level 5 The Place Where the Banners are Raised Level 6 The Place Where People are Pierced with Arrows Level 7 The Place Where People’s Hearts are Devoured Level 8 The Obsidian Place of the Dead Level 9 The Place Where Smoke Has No Outlet, Mictlan. Here could be found the bones of all the previous beings and the home of gods Mictlantecuhtli (Figures 41 and 64) and Mictecacihuatl. Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl retrieved the bones of the Fourth Sun beings from Mictlan, from which humans were later created. Near the earth’s surface was Tamoanchan (which some said was the Huastec region of the Gulf Coast [Knab 2006]), the domain of Itzpapalotl and of Centeotl, the corn god (Huckert 2002:206). Tamoanchan was known as the Place of Life, and the Broken Tree Place. It was a paradise. Yolia souls of unweaned children went to Chichiualcuauhco, in Tamoanchan, where they nursed from a tree as birds or butterflies awaiting their rebirth in the Sixth Sun. The word used for the divine force was teotl, a concept filled with movement. Teotl was swirling all about and filled containers such as deities and animals. Creation, fertility, and sacrifice were the domains of the deities (Carrasco and Sessions 2011). All of these gods were serviced by a huge priest population, each master of very esoteric knowledge. The diurnal passage of the sun was a key focus of cosmological knowledge and ritual. Each evening the sun was escorted into the Most Holy Earth by Xolotl and the women warriors, the Tzitzimimeh, where it passed into the mouth of Tlaltecuhtli (earth monster) to die. There the moon and a weak midnight sun cohabited and a new sun gestated through the night to be dragged by Morning Star into the eastern sky. At the eastern midpoint warrior souls met, escorted the new sun to its zenith, and handed the now mature sun to the Cihuateteo, women who brought it to the western cave, home of Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl. Dualities played out in cosmology, architecture, politics, warfare, ritual, and social life. For instance, the twin pyramid built in Tenochtitlan was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. These two deities were oppositional in many ways: fire and water, Chichimec and Nahua/Toltec, war and agriculture, sky and earth, destruction and creation, among others (Douglas 2010:126). The male, daytime Sun was seen in the eagle and the female nighttime sun (moon) in the jaguar. A female half of the cosmos (from NW to SE) and its opposite

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male domain was duplicated in belief systems from the northern Plains (United States) to southern Mexico and well into South America. 15th–16th-century Spain: The universe was thought to circle around the earth, be spherical, and be finite. A three-story cosmos is present in biblical writing, consisting of Heaven (celestial sphere), Here (terrestrial sphere), and Hades. The terrestrial world was in constant flux, caused by the actions of the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. Each of these elements created a sphere of influence and was associated most strongly with a cardinal direction. The celestial sphere was composed of “incorruptible [unchanging] ether” (Grant 2005a:147) and was divided into layers (Acts John 1:14, Acts Thomas 1:48) (Figure 28) (Grant 2005a:148). The scheme was most clearly laid out in the apocryphal text the Evagnelium of James or the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, although Dante’s paradiso showed significant Christian modifications. Level 10 was called “Empyrean” (Figure 28), the dwelling place of the Creator, a luminous place that was not made of the four elements of the physical world (McDannell and Lang 1990). Mary, Jesus, and the Holy Trinity, cherubim, seraphim,

Figure 28 The cosmos as depicted in Peter Apian’s Cosmographia (Antwerp 1539). (Library of Congress)

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and the Throne of Thunder and Lightning were located here. This is where the Lord held counsel with His Angels and Saints, made His decisions, handed down His judgments, and commanded countless Angels who continuously sang songs of praise and glory. In Diego de Valadés’s 1579 engraving in the Rhetorica Christiana the souls of the indigenous inhabited this level, emphasizing the natives’ inherent holiness (Cuadriello 2013). Level 9 The Crystalline Sphere was the celestial home of the constellations and home to the Heavenly waters. Here God put an “immaterial internal force into every celestial orb, providing the power for its incessant motion” (Grant 2005a:148). The water was solid, providing protection to those on earth from the brilliance of God above. Level 8 was the home of the twelve constellations of the zodiac and the other fixed stars. From here emanated the different seasons of the year. Level 7 Light, fire, fill this level along with loyal soldiers, the “Archangels, Virtues (forces), Dominions, Powers, (orders), and Principalities (governments). Also present are the other-worldly cherubim, seraphim, thrones, and other celestial beings with many eyes, along with what the text calls ‘nine regiments’” [Maccabaeus 2011:unpaginated]. Saturn lives here. Level 6 Here are the Archangels of the Arts and Sciences, seven groups who “both rule over the stars, keeping track of their motions, as well overseeing and managing the various governments on Earth.” They record each human’s “good or bad deeds, and keep careful watch over earth’s natural systems of life and death. Other inhabitants include six Phoenixes, six Cherubim, six Seraphim who, with one voice, sing songs so other-worldly, they remain impossible to describe” (Maccabeaus 2011:unpaginated). It is also the place of righteous rulers. Level 5 Here dwelled countless sad gigantic soldiers, the Grigori, followers of Satan (Maccabeaus 2011:unpaginated). Home of the planet Mars. Level 4 has “12 great gates (and pathways) of the Moon, the 6 eastern gates and 6 western gates of the Sun along with all its different pathways. Guarded and maintained by thousands upon thousands of Angels, the sun is escorted daily by 8,000 other stars and needs 100 Angels just to light its fire” (Maccabeaus 2011:unpaginated). Here dwelled the theologians who are the carriers of the light of God to the world (McDannell and Lang 1990). Level 3 was a Paradise with orchard and the golden Tree of Life in its center where the good and righteous went and the Lord rested when visiting. The roots to this Tree of Life extended below into the Garden of Eden from which flowed four springs: one with milk, one with honey, one wine, and one oil, and in which 300 angels sang and gardened. It apparently was marked off in quadrants with that to the north described as “a terrible place of icy, frozen darkness with a river of fire flowing through it and inhabited by fierce cruel angels with weapons who torture those sinners who have been condemned here” (Maccabeaus 2011: unpaginated). This was the home of Venus. Level 2 was a prison of darkness, death and despair where the angels who joined with Satan in his original rebellion awaited Judgment Day. Here dwelled Mercury. Level 1 was the home to 200 winged Angels, the rulers and elders of the constellations, the Great Sea, larger than any of earth’s oceans, and the Heavenly store-houses for both snow and morning dew. Here was the house of the Moon.

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The terrestrial sphere had horizontal layers. The uppermost level was the location of comets, shooting stars, and other occasional phenomena displaced from the celestial realm, all located in the place of fire, just below the moon. “As changeable phenomena, they had to be excluded from the heavens and placed in the upper reaches of the terrestrial region,” where continuous change occurred (Grant 2005a:147). The terrestrial realm was full of potential for manifesting the forces of Heaven and Hell: landscape features where Mary might reveal herself, pestilences where a saint or God might reveal themselves, pagan forests, waterfalls, and bewitched trees and animals revealing the presence of the Devil. Below the terrestrial realm was Hades, a sea that covered the abyss described in Luke 8 (Luke 8:31, 8:33). “The abyss designated the waters below, and soon led to an association of baptism’s ‘descent into the water’ with descent into Hades (1 Peter 3:19-21) . . . Matthew replaced Hades with ‘heart of the earth’” (Crim and Buttrick 1962:826–827). In the apocalyptic book of Enoch, Enoch takes a tour of the Underworld, which is divided into four levels that separate people according to their conduct in life and where they await the final judgment (Bauckham 1992). Besides the realm of the dead, Enoch also sees a “fiery abyss” where “fallen angels are punished” (Bauckham 1992:147). Spanish descriptions of the medieval cosmos “frequently depicted the heavens as a series of nine nesting orbs, all of which shared the same center. It was a tidy picture, one that meshed easily with cosmological references in literature and one that provided explanations for phenomena on Earth” (Nahmias 2016:xii). Astronomy, physics, metaphysics, and astrology each provided understandings of the cosmos. In keeping with scholastic approaches to understanding God, observing nature provided a model for expanding humans’ limited knowledge of the Divine and divine realms that made Muslim and Jewish cosmologies acceptable to later Spanish theologians and the school at Salamanca. McDannell and Lang (1990) argue that scholastic theologians were more reluctant than others to speculate on the nature of heaven and God’s abode there. There was a widely held belief in the Middle Ages, founded in the Gospel of Nicodemus, that Christ spent Holy Saturday in a “Harrowing of Hell” where he released the souls of those who had lived before he died – such as Moses and Abraham but also Plato and Aristotle. This limbo was not a place of eternal torment but rather “the bosom of Abraham,” also referred to as the Limbo of the Patriarchs where righteous prechristian souls awaited the Last Judgement and Resurrection (Le Goff 1984). This idea moved into France and Spain after 470 and entered the Apostle’s Creed and general acceptance under Carolingian auspices (Chadwick 1995). Into this scheme came purgatory and limbo (see essay). Humans in general were sinful beings, destined to end up in Hell but for the practices of confession and communion, combined with the intervention of the saints in Heaven (achieved through prayers and offerings) and the clergy and Church, which bought them time in Purgatory where the soul was gradually cleansed. All souls should expect to pass considerable time – possibly millennia – in Purgatory awaiting Judgement Day. Prayers by the living were the only hope for those souls, though there was some theological debate about the ability of souls in Purgatory to do penance while there (Le Goff 1984).

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Conceptions of the cosmos were greatly altered in the 16th century through both theological and scientific challenges. In 1554 Protestant John Calvin proposed interpreting the “firmament” not as “firm” but as clouds. Counter to this rather poetic and somewhat uncharacteristic interpretation, 30 years later, Giordano Bruno proposed a cosmos without a firmament. With Copernicus and Galileo’s adoption of telescopes, it became hard to argue that the heavens were bounded. 16th-century New Spain: These two cosmologies had striking similarities: the multilayered Above world with the original deities in the highest level, the four quadrants, the unstable Here, cosmic dualities, the location of moon and clouds, rain and snow in Level 1, being geocentric, and perhaps most surprising, a belief in both cultures that the Sun was accompanied by warriors during its daily passage from east to west. There was also the shared reference to a place called “Heart of Earth,” a multilayered Earth, a deity who descended to the deepest level to retrieve people of a prior era and a delay in reaching the final resting place, and the need for the living to assist in that journey. In spite of their similarities, the cosmology of the natives of New Spain was radically altered by their acceptance of Christianity. Time was repackaged in cycles, rather than quadrangles. Successfully obliterated were the state cults dedicated to Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli, and the related ideas about the fragility of the Sun’s beneficence. Where humans had once been caught in the middle between the forces of the Upper World and Mictlan, their priests performing acts to deflect, decipher, or redirect these forces, humans were now totally exposed to punishment by God, Jesus, and the Saints (but not Mary), and Satan in this life and in the next. Christianized natives now worked to avoid going “down,” whereas before, most people’s souls descended. The Most Holy Earth became a dreadfully hot place. The infant dead, once residing in a paradise where they awaited rebirth, now went into limbo from which they never were freed. Upperworld access for the native dead was still restricted, and whereas most native people had spent 4 years in one place or another after death, Catholic natives could expect to spend an eternity in a waiting place becoming purified. “Christ on the cross became the equivalent of the defeated or setting sun” (Burkhart 1989:83). See also afterlife, astrology, astronomy, body: human, calendar, creation, death, devil, paradise, quadripartite world, soul, underworld

covenant 15th-century Central Mexico: All American groups recognized a covenant between themselves and the deities or spirits that created them. Humans were constantly reminded through the calendrically timed festivals of their debt to the gods. The first four Suns were destroyed because the beings did not recognize their debts or honor the gods sufficiently. The Fifth (current) Sun came about from the blood sacrifice of the gods followed by the gift of food, sunlight, safe space, and water to nourish the earth. This covenant mandated a responsibility to honor and feed the gods in exchange. Beyond the general debt, every ethnic group was particularly favored or chosen by one deity to whom the elite paid homage – such as the covenant between Huitzilopochtli and the Mexica.

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Human forgetfulness would turn deities into monsters. Nevertheless, deities that failed to deliver or protect were abandoned in favor of those seen as stronger or more attentive to a human or group. “Military defeat was a consequence of a king’s spiritual failure to hold the covenant and alliance of the gods against the rival supplication and magic of the king across the field” (Early 2006). Bloodletting by rulers, heart offerings from captives, and offerings of live children paid part of this debt and brought great honor to leaders, warriors, and merchants. One’s own blood and the blood and bodies of animals were more typical offerings by commoners. Offerings that pleased the deities were also made in the form of song, dance, poetry, paper banners, cacao, flowers, incense, food, temples, images, and paint. Rituals were acts of remembering, honoring the covenant. 15th-century Spain: The initial covenant with the Israelites established God as the only god to be worshiped (monotheism) and in exchange made Jews the Chosen People. As developed in the Old Testament, God gave them sacred law concerning morals and rituals, impressing on them that they were holier than all other people. The covenant granted conditional privileges and protections as well as punishments for failing to witness for God. This covenant is inherently intolerant of others and uses ritual as an aid to teaching morality. It was not a bartering relationship but a set of commandments and laws. Christianity kept this Old Testament understanding of covenant and by the 6th century argued that Jews had been superseded by Christians as the Chosen People. The idea of covenant as a contractual arrangement was later connected with ideas of the duty and sovereignty of kings and popes as spiritual rulers. Thus, the Spanish king “saw himself as the inheritor of both the Jewish and Christian covenants,” which required reciprocity (Early 2006:87–88). By the 16th century, “Christianity had been transposed into a cult focused on covenants with divinized saints” (Early 2006:101) with whom the laity and even many of the parish priests engaged through barter. The shrines that marked the manifesting places of the Virgin and the saints that sacralized the landscape in Iberia were community responsibilities to maintain and engendered fears of dire consequences if they were profaned or abandoned (Christian 1981b). Individuals promised praise and honor if the personally adopted saint delivered the miracle requested. 16th-century New Spain: The Christian covenant acknowledged by the conquistadors and the missionaries motivated them to sail to and proselytize in the New World as instruments of God’s plan and representatives of the sovereigns of Spain and Rome. From the native perspective, the Spanish victory over the Aztecs indicated that the Spanish god was more powerful than Huitzilopochtli, thus breaking that covenant. The Spanish saw to it that the ties to Tezcatlipoca, Toci, Itzpapalotl, and most of the other deities were also dissolved as quickly as possible. The Spanish then had to establish a new covenant with God and the Trinity in the minds of the native population. Yet the native convert, like the Morisco and the Converso, was not to be trusted and was not, in the judgment of many religious and secular priests, capable of fully participating in this covenant. Natives were not deemed intellectually or morally suitable to enter the priesthood and were susceptible to the old ways if music and dance were to be permitted. The

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cult surrounding various saints, Jesus, and Mary continued the bartering characteristic of the Old World. See also apocalypse, tripartite spirit

creation 15th-century Central Mexico: Many of the documents related to Nahua and Mixtec creations stories were written under Spanish influence and in various decades. It is often stated that Ometecuhtli [or Tonacatecuhtli, Seven Flower] and Omecihuatl [or Tonacacihuatl, Xochiquetzal], male and female, were the creators of the universe living in Colhuacan cave. This couple had four sons, the four forces of the universe, in whom they entrusted the creation of the earthly world. Struggles between two sons, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, resulted in the failure of four creations prior to this one, the origin and fate of each recorded in the 16th-century Codex Chimalpopoca (although different versions can be found in other sources). Four Jaguar, the First Sun, was created by Tezcatlipoca and populated with giants who gathered acorns. It lasted 676 years until Quetzalcoatl (wind force of the West) caused all giants to be eaten by jaguars and knocked Tezcatlipoca into darkness (This idea of giants surely derives from the presence of megafauna fossils in Mexico). The Second Sun, Four Wind, was created by Quetzalcoatl and ruled by Chalchiuhtlicue. Its beings were destroyed by Tezcatlipoca, who caused rain for 52 years, turning the beings into fish. Tezcatlipoca then took another turn at creating a world and chose Tlaloc to rule. The beings ate seeds and turned into turkeys when Quetzalcoatl sent a rain of fire and flint to destroy the world. Next, Quetzalcoatl created the Fourth Sun called 4 Wind. Tezcatlipoca came as a jaguar to destroy it using the wind power of Quetzalcoatl to blow away all the houses, trees, and even the sun. The beings turned into monkeys and the heavens collapsed (Most probably this idea reflects the reality of the sea level rise associated with the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age). Finally, the two siblings, embodying powers of the south and west, of darkness and light, decided to cooperate in creating this, the Fifth Sun. To make the earth of the Fifth Sun, they turned themselves into snakes and attacked the earth goddess, the great caiman, and tore her into halves. The Grandparents bloodlet onto her to create earth and teach their children to sacrifice. The new earth was hungry for beings but their bones (from the fourth world) were in Mictlan, the ninth level of the Most Holy Earth. Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl (dog spirit other or twin) went all the way down to Mictlan to retrieve these bones and completed many trials before returning with them to Tamoanchan cave where the bones were ground into powder by Cihuacoatl. Again, blood was let to give the flour life, and man and woman were created. They were given spirits and tools, and sent to earth to labor and care for the earth. It is said that “When the gods created the First Man, they plucked him by the arm from the waters of Lake Texcoco and placed him, alone and dripping, on the heights overlooking the pristine Valley of Mexico . . . near the pyramids of Teotihuacan” (Perry 1992:41). But humans grew hungry. To find food for the humans, Quetzalcoatl followed an ant into Cincalco cave where he found and retrieved kernels of maize and other plants that he brought to Tlalocan cave, the abode of Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue, in the center of

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Tamoanchan. Next, the gods taught humans to divine and heal with maize and other plants, and about the 260-day calendar, giving humans the ceremonies they needed to thank the gods. But the humans were sad, so once again Quetzalcoatl saved the day, seducing and sacrificing a maiden goddess (quickly devoured by star demons) who became the maguey plant. From her body women obtained thread, needles, and medicine – specifically pulque, an alcoholic drink. Then humans and the gods were happy. The last act of creation was to create light and heat in the form of a sun. Twenty-six years after the great flood ended the Fourth Sun, the gods gathered to create the Fifth Sun (Boyd 2016); both Nahuas and Maya say the year was 13 Reed. Two gods jumped into the great fire and both rose as suns. This world was then too hot and too bright, so one of the suns was hit on the face with a rabbit. Weakened, this feminine sun became the moon. But the sun did not move, stating that it would not until all of the gods had sacrificed themselves. Xolotl then beheaded each of the gods and Quetzalcoatl blew on the Sun until the Sun moved, setting it on its daily path. Because of the many sacrifices made by the gods, humans are forever indebted to them. They also knew that this world would end. Once this Fifth Sun had been set into motion, it remained for the historic groups to explain their own origin. López Austin (2015:48–52) condenses the multitude of accounts into an outline as follows: the second generation of gods arrive at a cave in this world and birth various peoples, often crossing a great body of water. Some groups say that they then came forth through fountains and springs, or from caves, or that they sprang from gods. The order of emergence varies and some speak different languages. The first generation of humans may be people with only upper bodies having sex using their mouths, or couples who procreate along a migratory route. These first people led their chosen ones on a migration seeking a homeland. These leaders may have been historical individuals later deified. Sometimes they appear as gods. They walk and they fly, often as eagles, and always followed by priests carrying sacred bundles. During their migratory period, the people develop arts and politics. A government-ordered revised history of the Mexica was written in the mid-15th century that downplayed their hunter-gatherer past and manufactured their connections to the great Toltecs. 15th-century Spain: During darkness and from nothing, God created the cosmos in six days (Genesis 1–2). On the first day, light was brought into existence, creating day and night as well as the heavens and the earth. On the second day, the sky and atmosphere for the earth were created. On day three, continents and islands, seas and land were formed on earth. All plants were created on this day as well. On day four, the stars, the sun, and the moon were created. On day five, all that lives in water was created, and all of the birds of the air. Day six was the day all the land animals were created. Into the Garden of Eden humans were then made, and given the stewardship of land, sea, plants, and animals. On the 7th day, God rested. The first humans soon greatly displeased God and were punished by eviction from paradise, lives of toil, hardship, and childbirth pain. The doctrine of creation is that matter was created by God out of nothingness. It was set forth in greater detail by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which affirmed creatio ex nihilo. For Augustine and later neoplatonists alike, the microcosm of creation was a

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reflection of the macrocosm of God’s divine order. “[M]edieval authors saw the causal relation between God and the cosmos generally unfold in terms of a dynamic process of [. . .] procession and return [. . .] synchronized with Christian salvation history stretching from the opening of the Bible in Genesis to its apocalyptic closing in the book of Revelation” (Otten 2016:255). Later neoplatonists would apply this ebb and flow of creation to the question of the soul, which they argued precedes from and returns to God the creator, the source of all goodness and love. Much was made of the order and hierarchy of creation in Columbus’ time, known as the Great Chain of Being (Figure 29). From chaos came light and order, then the earth’s form, followed by the animals great to small, then humanity [angels], spirituality, saints, and finally people, tools, and minerals (Guzauskyte 2014:58). But Columbus and many others believed that this creation would end, plunging the world back into chaos before Christ would return and restore divine order to the entire world. 16th-century New Spain: Speech was the precipitating element bringing both the Christian and the Aztec worlds into existence, as the respective deities spoke their desires. But whereas light was the first desire of the Christian God, sunlight and moonlight were last in the creation activities of the deities at Teotihuacan. Both groups spoke of the eradication of beings by flood and the pending end of this world. There is also the similarity of a garden paradise in which humans were created (Tamoanchan and Eden) and from which gods (Aztecs) or humans (Christians) were expelled. In both creation stories the humans displeased the gods and were punished by destruction of their kind. Nevertheless, the succession of ages told in the Aztec myth is quite unlike the Judeo-Christian concept of an original paradise, followed by the fall and expulsion of the first human being. Instead, the image of the Aztec creation myths is of a progression of worlds, as the creator-forces and deities strove to find a formula for a more perfect world and humanity. (Townsend 2009:123)

We remain unconvinced of this “dissimilarity,” for the Flood sent by God, survived by Noah, is just such a remaking of creation. The Biblical creation story is found in many of the handmade books written by ecclesiastics, for it carries several important theological points: one god, good and evil, the devil who tempts, an explanation for a hard life, and the need to seek God’s grace from that life of pain and toil. Christensen (2016:30) says that “it is due in large part to precontact parallels that the Maya awarded the Genesis Commentary its popularity,” and the same can be said for the Nahuas. The imposition of the Christian creation story was not without its consequences. The impact of the conqueror’s creation story on the Nahuas and all other peoples of the New World was to (1) prevent work on 52 Sundays, the most important day of the conquerer’s Creation story, (2) impose the perpetual burden of Original Sin from which the Nahuas would never be able to free themselves, (3) conflate Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca with the Devil, and (4) recast manifesting special places as places of the Devil, thus reworking the landscape from miraculous places into evil places. See also calendar, cosmos, cult, day, sacred bundle

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Figure 29 The Great Chain of Being from the Rhetorical Christiana (Valades 1579).

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cross 15th-century Central Mexico: The equal arm cross or quartered motif of the cosmos is thousands of years old in the Americas, appearing on pottery, murals, and the shape of tombs. For the Mexica and others in Mexico, the cross “was a symbol of the four cardinal points and an attribute of the deities of rain and wind” (Ricard 1966:31). This equal arm cross was an axis mundi, understood to stand at the center of the world linking the horizontal divisions of the universe. The conquistador Grijalva noted that this form was associated with water and fertility. Indians put crosses in their domestic patios, on hilltops, and at crossroads as protection against evil forces. Indians made offerings to the cross at Huatulco in Oaxaca, and on Cozumel Island in the Yucatan “when they need water, and to make it rain” (Tapia 1980:556). 15th-century Spain: Various cruciforms are in evidence for thousands of years before Christianity. These forms are the equal arm cross, the X, the T, and the t. Because of a biblical passage that states that Christ’s name was put above his head, the Catholic church has portrayed the cross as a “t” and other denominations with double cross bars. Saint Andrew was crucified on the tilted cross (X). In the 4th century, Helen, mother of Constantine, sponsored an excavation at Gethsemane and reputedly found the cross of Christ’s crucifixion on May 3, 355 along with those of the other two men crucified at the same time. This cross was believed to have been erected “over the grave of Adam, cleansing Adam of sin” (Callaway 1990:205). Pieces of The True Cross, as it is known, were subsequently sold and distributed throughout Europe. This discovery was commemorated for centuries with the Feast of the Cross on May 3. Crosses wielded by Mary figure in many of the Marian visions in Castile and Catalonia in 1449, 1458, and 1490 (Christian 1981b:184). After 1580 devotions to Jesus on the cross and Mary at the cross increased greatly in popularity in Europe, which “can be seen in the alacrity with which crucifixes that were found or dug up were enshrined or venerated” (Christian 1981b:194). At the same time, these crosses miraculously began to affect cures. Brotherhoods of the True Cross existed in Toledo, Seville, and Zamora in the 15th century (Christian 1981b:184–185). “Each parish and brotherhood had a processional cross. . .used to conjure locusts and hail-bearing clouds, and in some places to dip in streams or the ocean for rain” (Christian 1981b:184). The cross-as-weapon, may have led to its use during the Black Death epidemic in Catalonia, “where in 1348 Jews were blamed for the Black Death . . . if the Black Death was caused by the enemy, then the crucifix would keep them at bay” (Christian 1981b:184). This cross-as-weapon idea may have been the intent behind the order given by Columbus that crosses be incised on visible places in the Indies. 16th-century New Spain: Crosses were used in both cultures for rain calling and derived their shape from conceptions of the four-sided cosmos. Mendieta relates the miraculous appearance of a cross to Hernan Cortés and the [Tlaxcala] native chiefs at their first contact. According to Fray Mendieta, upon seeing the sign the native lords remarked, ‘We have now come to tlatzompan, the end of the world, and these men

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Figure 30 Codex style cross-in-hills and Franciscan knotted cord. The Franciscan cord runs above the moralistic saying. Mural located in San Juan Bautista cloister, Cuauhtinchan, Puebla. (Photo by C. Claassen, used with permission of Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, Mexico)

who have come here will remain’. [. . .] The supposed apparition is, no doubt, the reason for the special Golgotha shrine at Tlaxcala, where three crosses were erected on the roof of the still extant Holy Sepulcher chapel. (Lara 2004:162)

Three crosses on rocky hills, in exactly the way codex painters depicted hills, were painted above a doorway in the cloister at Cuauhtinchan (Figure 30). As Cortés moved through modern Veracruz, Tlaxcala, and Puebla, he frequently ordered the erection of crosses in place of Indian images and shrines that they passed, often over the objections of Olmeda, the priest accompanying them. Francisco de Alarcón left under each cross “a bottle containing the date and details of his military victory there” (Hughes 2010:33). The first missionaries continued to erect humble wooden crosses wherever an idol was found, and plain wooden crosses came to litter the landscape “at crossroads, mountaintops, and rock cliffs in order to ‘liberate’ the terrain from the influences of demons and devils” (Hughes 2010:33). The fact that many cross-like images already existed in New Spain caused some Spaniards to speculate that a Christian had earlier reached the New World (Wake 2010:216). According to Alva Ixtlilxóchitl (1985), crosses were brought to the New World before the Conquest by Hueman or Quetzalcoatl. One of these, known as the cross of Huatulco, was discovered on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca on the beach. Natives claimed that it was “1500 years old, put there by a white man with long hair and beard who came by sea, possibly from Peru . . . it was appealed to for help in all life’s necessities and served as a kind of universal medicine for sickness” (Callaway 1990:209). Actually a post with a Quetzalcoatl image on top, it was interpreted by the Spanish as a cross (Longman and Pohl 2019). As late as the 17th century it still attracted pilgrims. When Fray Pedro de Gante recorded the erection by Indians of a 200 foot-high wooden cross in the open chapel of San José de los Naturales in Mexico City on

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Christmas day (some year prior to 1554), he concluded that they had been converted. However, the huge ahuehuete tree had been cut from Moteuczoma’s garden and the feast day fell in the veintena of Atemoztli with a festival to call rain (Kubler and Gibson 1951:34). Elsewhere during this century, the cross, known as La Santa Cruz in central Mexico or Yax Cheel Cab “the first tree of the world” among the Maya, was worshiped as a god, especially in times of drought or disease, eliciting flagellation and decoration. They incensed and worshiped the cross of Tlaxcala, erected by Cortés, as an idol, calling it Tonaca cuauitl, or “wood that gives sustenance to our lives” (Mendieta 1971:307–310), echoing the language about maize, or the god of rain and health (Callaway 1990:208). The imagery of the broken, bleeding tree in Tamoanchan coalesced with medieval crosses that were depicted with five bleeding wounds (Figure 25). These trees “conflated . . . with medieval notions of the cross as the tree of life” (Lara 2004:154), particularly when embellished with flowers and vines (Wake 2010:225). The 1583 Codex Mexicanus shows us that the Day of the Cross, May 3rd, was being observed (Brotherston 2005:80). Over the century, crosses shrunk in size, Indians added foliage endings on cross arms, in some cases putting Christ’s face in the center of the arms (Figure 31), and icons of the passion were added. In order to signal that the colonial churches were aligned with sacred water mountains, cartographers typically skewed the facing direction of the rooftop crosses to show the “correct” alignment (e.g., Wake 2010:136). “In the sixteenth century, when memories of human sacrifice were vivid, the cross was a focal point of syncretic religious ritual in Mexico” (Callaway 1990:226). An example

Figure 31 16th-century cross in Taxco, Mexico. Icons of the passion are visible on the vertical member and his face is in the center. (Photo by C. Claassen)

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might be the grafted cross – a cross made from two tree stumps without leaves and branches. This was a symbol often used in medieval manuscripts for the cross that would return on judgement day or to represent the cross and seraph that gave Francis his stigmata . . . The [grafted] cross at Huejotzingo stands forth as the Tree of Life raised up at the center of the paradisial patio, as the axis mundi of a new creation, as the altar of holocausts of the new Temple, and as the sign of the soon-to-return Son of Man. (Lara 2004:163)

See also crucifix, mountain, quadripartite world, tree

crucifix 15th-century Central Mexico: Women priests known as Ixcuiname introduced the rite of tlacacaliliztli, “the shooting of men with arrows,” a fertility rite (Sullivan 1982:8). In this rite a man was tied to an upright scaffold, a cross (Torquemada 1969:3), or a tree and shot with arrows (Callaway 1990:200). This originally Huastec ritual appeared in the Central Plateau during the reign of the Toltec ruler Huemac (whose son-in-law was Huastec) or during that of his predecessor Quetzalcoatl around 1162 and was subsequently adopted by the Mexica. 15th-century Spain: The older Byzantine Christus gloriosus had scenes of Jesus’ lifeless body with no signs of suffering or pain (Schiller 1972). The Italian Franciscans favored a humanized Christ on the cross, which led to the development of a 13th-century suffering Christus patiens. Small crucifixes hung on the cell walls of monks, then other clergy, “followed by the homes of the laity, spreading down from the top of society as these became cheap enough for the average person to afford” (Schiller 1972:96). Affordability also accounts for the increased frequency of altar and processional crucifixes after the 10th century. Nevertheless, statues of the Virgin were far more numerous in medieval Spain than were crucifixes; at a ratio of 3 to 1 in Navarre alone (Remensnyder 2000:201, fn 59). In 1575, miraculous crucifixes were just gaining popularity in Castile (Christian 1981b:22) and then were much less common than in the kingdom of Aragon. At the same time and place, the devotion to the Passion was active and growing so that some brotherhoods had life-size crucifixes. 16th-century New Spain: The story of San Sebastian, tied to a tree and shot with arrows, had obvious parallels to the pre-Columbian arrow sacrifice and to the crucifixion image and even the St. Andrew’s cross. That the Aztec scaffold sacrifice is an appropriate analogue for the crucifix imagery is indicated by a churchyard stone cross found in the town of Topiltepec (Teposcolula), Oaxaca, with “the arrow sacrifice and the cosmic forces of nature [adorning] each of the two sides of the vertical member” (Callaway 1990:211). It was quite rare to have a stone cross with a crucified Christ in this century (Callaway 1990:220). Emphasizing as they did images of the suffering Christ, the Crucifixion, and the Passion, the Franciscans faced a challenge – how to distinguish Christ on the cross from the indigenous focus on blood and auto-sacrifice. The crucifix offered both a mobile piety

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and an object of veneration that could replace native relics, bones, and shrines (Verástique 2000). The paucity of Catholic images in New Spain created a crisis for missionaries, leading to their importation from Europe and the Philippines. Those arriving from the Philippines via Acapulco were often made of ivory and marble. Those coming from Spain typically came in pieces (heads, arms, feet) transported overland and were then assembled to torsos made in Mexico (Hughes 2010:34; ftn42 p. 250). Mexican apprentices and workshops appeared perhaps as early as the 1540s (see Orozco 1970). The woody stem of the maguey plant and a paste made from corn stalks were materials used for these torsos and whole bodies. The paste was combined with paper, fabric, and wood and stretched over a hollow frame, resulting in virtually weightless figurines that could be made in any size (Orozco 1970). From this lack of images that left Fray Antonio de Roa pleading with God for a crucifix in 1543 (with a miraculous appearance of one) to the Third Mexican Council in the 1580s, there was an explosion of Christ and Mary images in the possession of the religious and the Indians (Hughes 2010:25). The crucifix “held a powerful appeal and fascination for natives” (Hughes 2010:72). “Indians discovered branches of trees that already showed the shape of the crucifix. In some instances a branch that was being used as firewood was retrieved from flames when it was recognized as following the form of the crucifix or when it refused to burn an Indian artist then completed the miracle . . . also understood to be cristos aparecidos” (Hughes 2010:38). Speaking about the Cristo Aparecido of Totolapan, Hughes makes the poignant point that these crucifixes and images of saints were the actual evangelizers: They were left behind with the population, while the missionaries moved on. In the 18th century, Joaquin Sardo, prior in the convent at Chalma, gave a rank ordering of the importance of several miraculous 16th-century Cristos (crucifixes) based on the number of pilgrims and miracles. First in importance was the Señor of Chalma, then the Cristo Aparecido of Totolapan (subsequently removed to Mexico City), followed by the Cristo de Ixmiquilpan (Hughes 2010). See also body: human, cross, cult, tree

cult 15th-century Central Mexico: Religious covenants with a patron deity were practiced in cults. Cults had regalia, objects, shrines, schedules, members, a hierarchy of leadership, and lore, and were often significantly tied to specific landscapes. So close was the tie between a people and their patron deity that the name of many cultural groups is that of their patron: e.g., Tepoztecas of Tepoztlán for Tepoztecatl, Totonacas for Totonac, Tarascans for Taras (López Austin 2015:48). Cultic associations began at the level of the clan. Foundational cults specified that the patron god was present during the migration, had a sacred bundle with gifts donated by the patron, had priest-leaders who carried the bundle serving as intermediaries, spoke of the patron as the “heart” of the pueblo, and built a temple on the founding of a settlement (Nicholson 1971). Each calpulli or barrio in Aztec towns was a clan

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(López Austin 2015:60–66), each with a patron deity, giving rise to multiple cults within any one city. For instance, within Tenochtitlan, in the calpulli of Huitznáhuac, whose people were lords, fishermen, and teachers of noble children, were found the cults of Huitzilopochtli, Opochtli, Huitznahuac, Centzonhuitznahuac, and Tezcatlipoca. In the calpulli of Tlamatzinco, whose members were pulque makers, tavern keepers, and teachers in a noble school, were found the cults of Tlamatzincatl, Izquitecatl, and Coatlicue. Each calpulli had its own movable and fixed feasts funded through tribute and collective labor on temple land (Durán 1971:2:83). Furthermore, each profession had a patronage cult. As clans often monopolized a profession, these cults were one and the same in many calpulli. The administration of a city cult – created when one clan dominated the government – included numerous levels of officials. It was scheduled using the 365-day calendar. A treasurer oversaw the temple properties and hectares on which food and, probably, flowers were raised. Under the treasurer were a keeper of the temple sacra, a music director, choir-boys, and director of the temple school, served by youth apprentices (Braden 1930:49). Rituals comprised dances, songs, processions, images, sacrifices, and vestments for the teixiptla and participants. Sculptors maintained workshops to create wood and stone images – an extremely dangerous undertaking – for community temples and for elite homes (Early 2006:80). “Lords, priests, and the leading men had also oratories and idols in their houses, where they made their prayers” (Landa 1941:108). Numerous cults existed in Tenochtitlan and in tribute states, some of them with large followings such as that in Cholula to Quetzalcoatl. “One of the strategies that the Aztecs utilized to bring Feathered Serpent cult activities under imperial control included integrating Quetzalcoatl into their pantheon and the importation of the Gulf Coast goddess cults, including their priestesses, to their capital at Tenochtitlan. Some of these goddesses included Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina, Cihuacoatl ‘Woman Serpent’ and Coatlicue ‘Serpents Her Skirt’, the goddess that gives birth to Huitzilopochtli” both snake manifestations (Patel 2016:37). 15th-century Spain: Saints were honored through cults, “and its three key elements were public recognition of the name and the day of the saint; special treatment of the saint’s bodily remains; and celebration of the saint in writing” (Bartlett 2013:95). These saints were “sown across the land by a loving God to act as the bridge between desperate human beings and his divine power” (Bartlett 2013:103). “Any event which abruptly drew attention to a [Virgin Mary] statue might be the beginning of a cult” (Sumption 1975:278). The cult of the saints greatly marked religious practice in this century in Iberia to the point of significantly de-emphasizing Jesus and divinizing the saint. The saints were taken as patrons by villages, occupations, and individuals for protection from various ills, for fertility, or for other purposes, and the vows made to them often extended for centuries (Early 2006). In the last session at Trent (1563), the issue of the cult of the saints (which should be viewed as “cults”) was addressed. Greatly concerned about the superstitions and abuses that had arisen with alarming frequency, it nevertheless approved the veneration of images and relics of saints and the Holy family (Bartlett 2013). Henceforth, Spanish monarchs successfully manipulated the system of canonizations to greatly increase the

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number of “Spanish” saints, accounting for almost half of the beatifications and canonizations finalized in the 17th century (Conover 2011:91). 16th-century New Spain:The cultic organization of both religions was the single most important aspect in the transfer of Catholicism to New World people. Spanish Cults quickly appeared in New Spain around saints, Mary, the True Cross, and Jesus and were found in barrio churches and confraternities. The count of pasta de caña cristos and virgins exploded in New Spain, and mural cycles in monasteries and churches depicted the lives of the favored saints. Chapels with altars devoted to particular saints began to proliferate. New cults also developed around the lives and deaths of several of the first missionaries (Juan de Calero, Antonio de Roa in Metztitlan, Fray Martín de Valencia in Amecameca), two children killed by their tlatoani father in Tlaxcala, the Virgin of Remedios (Trinitarians and conquistadors), the Virgin of Salud of Patzcuaro, the Señor of Chalma, the Cristo Aparecido of Totolapan, and the Cristo de Ixmiquilpan (Hughes 2010:116). The extent to which the prequauhtemoc cults survived this century is a question for concerted research. Inquisition records indicate non-Christian cult activity in the 1560s and sacred bundles in Tlaxcala in 1580. Friars also persecuted women priests of the Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina cult, the Ixcuiname, because they linked this cult with vice and sexual licentiousness (Patel 2016). Calling for rain on May 1–2 has continued to the present, although Jesus, rather than Tlaloc, is addressed at mountaintop shrines (Broda 1971, Claassen 2013). See also bone, body: human, calendar, conversion, covenant, death, feast mother/Mary, patron, priest, relic, sacred bundle, serpent, sodality

*D

dance 15th-century Central Mexico: Singing and dancing were principal ritual activities. Every village had a space reserved for its singers to compose dances and songs. “They danced everywhere – in the plazas, in the houses of nobles – and had special repertoires for each occasion” (Wake 2010:48). Dances had precise movements and required most of a day and a night to perform. Dancing around an object (in counterclockwise fashion), such as an Aztec altar or a sacred pole or tree, increased an object’s power and that power, in turn, was absorbed by the dancers (Lara 2004). “Dancing before the gods had been an act of religious merit . . . a ‘penance’ of a very precise kind, and very often obligatory for a particular group or age-set” (Clendinnen 1990:116). Dances during the Ochpaniztli feast that opened the war season were primarily directed at Toci, goddess of war. This feast cycle began with the hand-waving dance enacted over eight afternoons, moved on to processions and mock battles for eight days, and ended with two days of the hand-waving dance with thousands of Mexica, Huastec impersonators, and, even in his era, Moteuczoma dancing (Harris 2000). The serpent dance was a highlight of the Panquetzaliztli feast, with the dancing slaves, merchants, flag bearers, and priests moving in a sinuous line on the patio before the Templo Mayor (Figure 7). The captives purchased by the traders for sacrifice danced the next day. In the feast of Tlacaxipehualiztli, captives danced the night before their gladiatorial deaths and then the victorious combatants danced with their victims’ severed heads around the stone. Through martial dance the Nahuas acted out their own histories and heroic deeds such as successful battles with the Tepeaca in 1428. They also danced the lives of rulers (e.g., Dance of the Emperor Moteuczoma), and the origins and actions of the gods (Harris 2000; Wake 2010). Dancing – particularly those circular dances called mitotes – was featured at every coronation and at state-sponsored events such as the entrance of a victor or visitations by leaders of other altepeme. For the coronation of Ahuitzotl, the feasting and dancing lasted four days and were staged inside the palace. Citizens danced proscribed dances at every one of the veintena feasts. 15th-century Spain: Dancing before God is recorded in several Biblical passages such as on the return of the prodigal son (Luke 15:25). Dancing confraternities “called” and marked the coming of Spring. Pounding, leaping, yelling, and the clashing of swords and sticks shook the earth, thus shooing away winter. A tradition of mock battles between Christian/Santiago and Moorish warriors probably began in the Spanish kingdoms in the 12th century. Today, the most famous of the dances derived from this tradition is that of the Dance of the Moors. There are only a few

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accounts of a mock battle dance between Moors and Christians before 1492, the earliest referencing a Corpus Christi procession in Barcelona held in 1424 dedicated to St. Sebastian (Harris 2000:43). Harris is quick to point out that no Moor ever participated in this dance and few probably even saw it, but that the conclusion was the joyous conversion of Moors, not their slaughter. Other dances were key features of Corpus Christi eve and day celebrations such as the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, sword dances, and the Seises. Originally known as “young cantorcillos,” Los Seises was introduced by Archbishop Francis Jiménez de Cisneros (c.1490s) into Toledo, Spain, from the Mozarabic rite, the Christian liturgy in Arabic. 16th-century New Spain: Dancing, while not a specific part of medieval Christian life, was accommodated by the missionaries to help with conversion and retention of those converts, apparently the idea of friar Pedro de Gante (Madsen 1967:377). Spanish liturgical dramas were adapted by the Indians, who “notably expanded both the geographical and the dramatic range, transforming them into fast-moving processual street-theatre, with the tableaux activated by the arrival of the procession” (Clendinnen 1990). The prequauhtemoc Dance of the Emperor Moteuczoma, using two rows of richly attired dancers, was performed for the glory of Christ in a 1645 performance. Its predecessor dance also may have spawned the historic Dance of the Pluma and the New Mexican Puebloan versions of the Danza of the Matachines (Harris 2000). Some of the Cantares Mexicanos appear to be battle songs, recorded in the 16th century, that indicate a tradition of danced battles. Popular among the Franciscan friars was the Dance of the Christians and Moors (Santiago Matamoros dance), ending as it did with the happy baptism of the Moors. In an extensive investigation of this dance and mock battles in Spain and New Spain, Harris proposed that the dance owed much to the tournament and epic tradition in Iberia but that it probably received some influence from mock battle dances of Aztecs who were brought to Spain and Italy as entertainers. There was no tradition of this dance or the Dance of the Matachines in Spain before the visitations of Nahuas (Harris 2000:234). In fact, Harris claims that there is more evidence for martial dances in Mexico than there is in Spain in this century. In New Spain, Indians danced their own defeat in the Moors and the Christians and other battle dances. Harris (2000) chose to see their participation as an act of resistance, of hope for their own reconquest of Mexico. Mitotes continued with the featured dancers wearing feathered regalia. Mendieta describes the mass movement of arms and legs in perfect synchrony with each other. At the swearing of allegiance rites in the Plaza Mayor in June 1557, there were “almost 8000 indigenous dancers, and likewise, the Actas de Cabildo records throngs on the plaza as witnesses . . . the rarity of the costumes, as well as the skill of the dancers, made the mitotes special events, danced at official events, and while they could be sponsored by the mendicants, they were also performed under the sponsorship of the indigenous lords” (Mundy 2015:183). As for regalia,“warrior costumes, once out of date, seem to have been repurposed into valuable dance costumes” (Mundy 2015:184). At the wedding of the indigenous governor of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1564, when the bride entered the church dancing began and they performed the water-spreading song, and other songs; the groom danced as well.

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The indigenous Dance of the Voladores, a favorite entertainment for Moteuczoma II, was performed in 1595 at a festival staged at Tepeyac (Harris 2000; Lara 2004:154). New dances were (1) the Blacks, danced in 1588 in Yucatan, (2) Dance of the Masked Indians, danced in 1586 in Michoacán, (3) Dance of Ironsmiths, and (4) Dance of the Litter observed in the Yucatan. Presented in Spain for the first time during this century were the Dance of the Indios and Dance of Motecuzoma or the Feather Dance (Harris 2000:237). Christianized dancing was allowed inside the churches until prohibited by the Junta Eclesiástica of 1539, the very same ecclesiastical junta that had so openly recommended the imitation of the accommodative methods deployed by St. Boniface in 8th-century Germany. The First Mexican Church Provincial Council (1555) dictated that “the Indians were not to ‘dance before daybreak nor before high mass, but only after Hours until vespers, and when vespers ring, they must attend, leaving off dancing’ . . . article IV of the council’s action says that Indians shall not hold feasts in which there is dancing” (Braden 1930:174). Furthermore, the council forbade the Indians “to make unseemly music in the churches, or for too long in the hours of darkness outside them: such performances were inappropriate in Christian worship, and smacked of idolatry. . . . The Indians persisted in making a song and dance of their religion, in time with the de facto tolerance of their spiritual leaders” (Clendinnen 1990:115). See also cult, music, theater, warrior

day 15th-century Central Mexico: Time for all Mesoamerican peoples was experienced in various increments, of half day, one day, 5 days, 9 days, 13 days, 20 days, 260 days, 360 days, 365 days, 584 days, 52 years, and 104 years. The tonalpoualli calendar offers what might be called the anatomy of the day in Mesoamerica. The duration of a day was from noon to noon. Each day had a unique character uninfluenced by events of the day before or the day after. A day had most in common with an earlier day of the same name (Clendinnen 1991b:84). Each day was halved and under the purview of the lord of that trecena (260-day calendar), and lord of the half day, with associated tree and bird (Sahagún 1956: 1:109–227). Furthermore, most activities were defined within three parts of the day (Wake 2010:44), with “parallel in the three places of the dead in the Other World mentioned in Aztec texts”: night – Mictlan, rainy season; morning – House of the Sun, dry season; afternoon – Apan, Tlalocan (Graulich 1981:45). Sun priests made offerings to the day sun four times daily and to the night sun five times nightly (Klein 1975), while those observing the Night Watch made five daytime and seven nighttime offerings of blood, incense, and prayers (Brotherston 2005). Mesoamerican cosmology has cycles of darkness to light and back to darkness. In the 5th world, the creation of all but humans took place in the darkness. Ceremonies to Tlaloc took place at night (Wake 2010:107), as did many other rituals, climaxing with dawn. As the sun dawned, humans were created (López Austin 2015). The first woman, Oxomoco, was goddess of night and the first man, Cipactonal, god of day. Both were keepers of the calendar. Darkness was considered dangerous because the powerful, voracious earth monster controlled the destiny of the sun at night. The Cihuateteo lurked about some crossroads at

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night hoping to steal children. Warriors might creep about at night to rob the grave of a woman who died in childbirth. Shape-shifters were active at night, as were sorcerers who walked about spewing fire that caused madness, sickness or death (Burkhart 2001a:26). Enemies lurked in the countryside. But perhaps even more dangerous were the night rays from Evening Star and eclipses that could send illness or death (Aguilar-Moreno 2006). For all these reasons, the citizens of Tenochtitlan had a curfew. In the early evening the markets closed, the vendors went home, and the farmers retreated, so that by nightfall the streets were nearly deserted. Parties of boys and the tlatoani guarded the city at night (Mursell n.d.a). 15th-century Spain: Day names in Spanish preserve planetary patronage: Sun-day, Moon-day (Lunes), Mars (Martes), Mercury (Miercoles), Jupiter (Jueves), Venus (Viernes), and Saturn (Sabado). Perhaps the most frequently owned book by craftspeople, merchants, landlords, and priests was the Book of Hours. Each month and its sequence of days might be illustrated with saints’ feasts, planet, and zodiac sign. As the name indicates, each day was broken into hourly segments with prescribed prayers, poems, and meditations on a specific aspect of Mary’s life. A day was counted as noon to noon and broken into parts. Old Testament time divisions developed into the Church’s “canonical hours” or “offices,” at which prayers (psalms, canticles, antiphons, responsories, etc.) together with the Holy Mass, known as “The Divine Office,” or “The Liturgy of the Hours,” or “The Breviary,” were uttered. Vigils or Night Office, was made up of four vigils or three nocturnes said at 9–12 PM, 12–3 AM, and 3–6 AM. Matins occurred at sunrise, Prime at 6 AM, Terce at 9 AM, Sext at noon, None at 3 PM, Vespers at sunset, and Compline before bed. Laity copied the monastic practice of observing the offices through the use of a devotional text known as The Book of Hours, which was popular during this and the next century. Each Hour was illustrated in these books with scenes from Mary’s and Jesus’ life. The result of all this waking for prayer was “segmented sleep” for priests and for the majority of other people. “[L]aymen went to bed around 9 PM., slept for 3 to 4 hours, got up for 1 to 2 hours for prayer and possibly sex, and then went back to sleep until Prime” (Cefalo 2014:1). “People living in the Middle Ages believed time belonged to God. Therefore, it was not theirs to waste. The question arose in the 13th century of whether merchants and craftsmen could charge fees for unsettled debts (i.e., late fees). The Franciscans, who were asked to settle one particular case, decided no . . . Only God owns time and charging for it seemed unethical” (Cefalo 2014:1). Minutes were not part of time reckoning with the use of sundials. The impact of the development of the minute hand in 1577 was to make an hour the same length of time year round. However, reliance on clock time was not immediate and people referred to time in either solar time or time of the clock (o’clock) (Cefalo 2014). 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures perceived particular danger at night. Solar and lunar reckoning of time was shared by both cultures in the early decades, as were several of the subdivisions of the day. Both cultures codified the progression of days in either the tonalpoualli or Book of Hours and believed portions of the day fell under the purview of different sacred manifestations. In both cultures, the priests were accustomed to a schedule of daily prayers and in Spain, and so was the populace.

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The regimen of the eight daily subdivisions introduced to the native populace by the missionaries focusing on the life of Mary was quite new, as was the notion of segmented sleep that accompanied the vigils. The divisions of the day were marked with bells tolling and required appearance at chapel. At 2 PM, the bell rang for the unmarried girls (6+ years old) to come for doctrinal schooling. At 4 PM was Vespers, the evening service, which grew in popularity in the late 16th century because of the granting of indulgences for attendance. At sunset, boys were gathered at the church to recite doctrine and prayers. After supper, those who worked in the priest’s house climbed the bell tower to “toll the de Profundis prayer for the deceased and to sing the whole doctrina” (Early 2006:139). The packaging of time into groups of seven days also caused consternation. Camilla Townsend (2019:146) reported the words of the native writer Chimalpopoca, who said “But no one knew yet what was happening, if it was ‘Sunday’ or some other day.” Prior to this century, people living in Tenochtitlan and other Aztec cities would have attended at least 18 days of state-run rituals plus other days of their local cult rituals. The Catholic regimen required no work on 52 Sundays and 12 other feast days, each preceded by fasting and church attendance then feasting and church attendance the next day. For Spanish Catholics, the required number of feasts days was higher. The further away one got from eccesiastical centers perhaps the fewer non-work days were observed. Minute divisions of hours probably did not diffuse into New Spain in this century. We can anticipate that the newly introduced idea that days accumulated as “time since” and “time until,” that they added up to greater and greater weight of sin, were concepts startling to, if not outright rejected by, the first generation of natives subjected to the new system. The wasting of time, sloth, was preached against. Some Christian texts written in Nahuatl in this first century of evangelization continued to make reference to the native evil doers of the night, while relying heavily on darkness to light metaphors for the birth and death of Jesus and the bringing of Christianity to New Spain. The Book of Hours diffused among the natives, as seen in the last testament of a Nahuatl notary who willed his copy to the local church (Christensen 2013:78). See also astrology, calendar

death 15th-century Central Mexico: Nahuas saw death as “the intersection between the ordered upper world and the disordered underworld [and] treated it with scripted ritual, and commemorated it orally and in writing” (Hosselkus 2011:31). “Burial was mostly reserved for Aztecs without rank (Figure 32), individuals from other territories, and those who assisted with the tasks of daily life – the young, the unmarried, women who died in childbirth, and those called by Tlaloc” (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:166). “Durán (1971:267) noted that all people were stripped naked and bathed after their deaths and then dressed” (Bassie-Sweet 2008:307). Some corpses of dishonored people, however, were cast out nude, without dressing or possessions (Bassett 2015:171). Burial rites were conducted in five parts over four years. At the time of death there were orations to the soul still in the corpse; the burning of clothes and the weapons of the

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Figure 32 Burial (left) occurred for some people, while others, including the Tlatoani, were bundled and cremated. Mid-16th-century Codex Magliabechiano page 67r.

deceased to provide heat for travel; and the killing and burial of a yellow dog to lead the dead soul. The actual burial was 80 days later, in a deep trench, in finery with treasures, located in either a field, a home courtyard, or a shrine (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:163–170). The woman who died in childbirth was filled with the presence of Cihuacoatl, so that her corpse became extremely dangerous to the living. Swiftly washed, dressed in a new shift, the hair flowing loose, the corpse was removed from the house in darkness [through] a hole in the back wall. Carried by the husband, it was escorted by an entourage of midwives, howling and shouting, brandishing shields, to a crossroad–most sinister and most marginal of places – and there buried . . . the burial party risked attack by warriors desperate to seize a fragment of the magically charged flesh . . . the husband kept vigil over the grave for four nights as the magic power slowly dispersed. Then he abandoned it (Clendinnen 1991a:178).

A child who died before weaning was buried at the entrance to the house near the maize bins (Clendinnen 1991a:191). Those people who died by water (drowning, lightning strike) or the cold winds (leprosy, dropsy, gout, pneumonia, pleurisy) sent by the tlaloque, helpers of Tlaloc, went to Tlalocan to serve Chalchiuhtlicue. After the corpse was washed, it was dressed in paper clothing and bundled in paper or a mantle. These people were buried as flesh offerings. Their remains were called “seeds” (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:163–166). Cemeteries were rare in Mesoamerica, although they were common in more northerly cultures. Bodies of the Totonac elite were collected in reliquaries on one hillside at Quiahuiztlan, near where Cortés landed (see Figure 53). Mass graves contained extended corpses of sacrificial victims deployed for dedicatory or decommissioning rites. The transformation of the body brought about by cremation was accorded to rulers, great lords, and warriors. Observance for the death of a noble included human sacrifice, songs, weeping, and prayers. The body and a dog were cremated along with personal

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possessions. The cremains were collected in a vase and a stone of equal worth to the person was included. The vase and gifts of clothing, jewelry, weaponry, and food meant to assist in the soul’s four year journey to Mictlan were then interred in a deep hole in a field, or on a mountain top, or in a patio, and covered for four days with bread and liquid offerings. The ashes of a king were put in a tower on top of a temple. Whether the person was buried or cremated, an effigy was burned on the anniversary date of the death for four sequential years (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:163–170). If a man died in war, associates went to fetch his body. “If they could get the body, they burned it there without ceremonies, and when they returned to their land they brought an arrow belonging to [him], and gave it to the members of his house, and they prepared and decorated it, and considered it an image of the deceased, and adorned with the insignias of the sun, they burned it” (Motolinía 1971:307). Elsewhere, we learn that lost bodies of warriors were replaced with wooden carvings and dressed with eagle feathers, then brought back to the home temple and collectively burned (Bassett 2015:171). 15th-century Spain: Spain was renowned for its fascination with death. For Spanish Catholics, a good death was one marked with an extensive set of rites beginning with the calling of a notary and a priest as death was pending and ending with the burial. All Spanish Catholics in these centuries were required to die with a will or formal proclamation of poverty. Anyone without one of these documents was forbidden burial in consecrated land (Eire 1995:20). The will (perhaps executed for about 50 percent of people in Madrid) specified the place of burial, clothing to be worn, the vigil (number of candles, number of masses, amount of alms), and the particulars of the funeral procession (Eire 1995:36). The will served several purposes, most importantly to separate the person from possessions or worldliness, to make a profession of faith and contrition, to specify the burial activities, and to perform acts of charity. Wills were formulaic in outline and had five parts: profession of faith, disposal of body, saving the soul with pious bequests, dividing the estate, and work for the survivors. In the words of Eire (1995:36), wills were the passports to the afterlife and the bequests constituted premiums. The executors had to present the will to a judge within one month of death or all the planning was useless and the soul abandoned. Wills indicated that death was viewed as inevitable and “a willing acceptance of disease and death had long been considered to be a proper Christian attitude” (Eire 1995:66). Grieving was not appropriate. Death was the lot of humans due to the sin of Adam and Eve. The moment of death was the moment of judgment by God and, based on wills of the 16th century, judgment was feared more than was death. But the wills also expressed hope for God’s mercy. The language consistently acknowledged the separation of body and soul at death and even of a debt owed to nature, paid by the return of the body (Eire 1995:84). Next, neighbors, family, and the deceased’s confraternity were called to conduct prayers and singing that would stave off the onslaught of demons that were rapidly gathering at the bedside in a final attempt to lure the person away from Christ. A priest came in procession with the host to the dying person to administer the last rites consisting of confession, communion (to fortify the dying person for the struggle at hand), and extreme unction (anointing with holy oil the five senses and sometimes the liver to keep out the demons). Prayers were made to the Virgin Mary, Miguel, and local and personal saints. Devotions provided by Ars Moriendi books were read and reread.

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Because the corpse was unclean, burial occurred quickly. The preparation of the body, transport to the church, and burial therein were performed for free by the deceased’s confraternity (e.g., Larkin 2006:195) or for payment if not a member (Eire 1995:29). Confraternity members came to the house in procession, chanting while bells tolled. Washing of the corpse was not practiced in these two centuries as the Inquisition officers saw in the practice potential hidden fidelity to Islam and Judaism (Eire 1995:86). The mouth was closed, and the body washed, anointed, and wrapped, followed by body disposal. Many poor, orphans, prisoners, and particularly secular priests were supported by the purchase of mourners, and masses, and the paying of the requisite alms provided for the funeral through wills. Processing to the church, the mass was said and then the body was buried. Putting bodies in the nurturing earth was a practice thousands of years old that reflected an ancient idea of the earth as the proximate source of fertility. Burial places were simple shaft or trench graves lined with mats, wood, or stone slabs, often marked by a tree or, for dishonored people, a pile of stones. Burial also occurred in caves or tombs carved into rock and sealed with rolling stones. Tombs of the wealthy were commonly located in their gardens (Powell 2009:54). Late in the 15th century, because of doubts about the conversion of the Moriscos and the Conversos, cemeteries and body washing were outlawed as both were sites where non-Christian rites could occur. Instead, burial inside a church or in a churchyard was mandated for all Christians. Furthermore, “burial in churches allowed for the ecclesiastical sanction of hierarchical order, for those of high status marked their privilege by burial close to the main altar or other important sites, whereas commoners and the poor rested far from altars or outside the confines of church entirely” (Larkin 2006 :193). The positive role of the dead bodies of saints was multifaceted, and even therapeutic. ‘[T]he dead body heals living bodies,’ as the hagiographer of St. Francis put it . . . The cult of the saints began in the cemetery and ended, not only by bringing the dead into the city (unthinkable in the ancient world), but by making them a focus of devotion inside the place of worship itself . . . this attractive pull of the tomb became one of the defining characteristics of medieval culture (Bartlett 2013:99).

It was also one of the most notorious aspects of Catholicism to Reformers. The Protestant assault on the cult of the saints, Purgatory, almsgiving, and Mass cycles resulted in a great many changes to the death rites and expectations for soul tending during the 16th century. The Council of Trent reified many aspects of Catholic death ritual and belief but stepped up its attacks on ritual elements that it believed indicated reliance on magic and superstition. Theologians as early as Augustine believed that the dead and the living could assist each other – the living honoring the dead with offerings and invocations and the dead bringing spiritual assistance to individuals and communities (Flynn 1989:12). “Offerings of food called limosnas and animeras, usually consisting of bread and wine, were placed over sepulchers or Graves of the Dead immediately after burial. Later in the day, they were consumed by relatives, paupers and Priests” (Flynn 1989:67). Indulgences were also sought and earned by the living to help themselves in death, and by their surviving

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relatives to ease the departed’s time in Purgatory (see Introductory Essay). In some rare cases, the body did not decay. The lack of decay was viewed as a sign of purity during life and sanctity after death. 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures believed there was a soul that adhered to the bones or cremains and one that transferred into the afterlife. Both cultures understood the necessity for the living to assist the passage of the dead in the afterlife and that the dead could in turn help the living. Regardless of their respective burial practices, the onslaught of hundreds of thousands of deaths by disease in the first 25 years of contact combined with the Catholic-imposed termination of blood sacrifices and changes in song and prayer brought about significant changes in how Nahuas marked death and understood the afterlife of the soul (Hosselkus 2011). The sacrament of extreme unction, administered prior to death, was rarely given in this century due to the few priests available and their focus on baptism and confessions. “Nor are the homes of the Indians decent enough for it . . . so, except in the case of some of the chiefs who ask for it, it is not given” (Braden 1930:239). Internment in cemeteries replaced cremation. However, many indigenous people continued to keep the remains of their dead beneath their homes in “human made caves” with burial goods and appropriate sacrifices (Hamann 2020:215). Official wills were also immediately required in New Spain, although, like internment, slowly realized. Proper preparation of testaments was of some concern to Alonso de Molina. In his confessional manual of 1565, he offers instruction to the fiscal and notary regarding the necessity and content of the wills. Baptized individuals were permitted church burial (Klor de Alva 1991). Spaniards were buried inside churches and natives were buried outside in the atrium, which was divided among the barrios of a town (Ricard 1966:165). In a churchyard in Tipu, Belize (Maya), very few corpses were put into coffins from 1540 to 1640 and few had any grave goods. Corpses were laid with their heads to the west and arms folded over the chest. Disregard for native burial was indicated by a petition to the Audiencia in 1591 stating that the local church at Villa Alta refused to bury the Indian ally veterans inside the atrium (Yannakakis 2007). Their petition was successful. The native regidore of Huexjotzingo wrote to the King thanking him for congregating them in this town because now “if he dies, he is buried in the church and the religious and the others pray for him” (Ricard 1966:137). Torquemada, describing the 1576 epidemic, said, “in the cities and large towns, they opened great ditches, and from morning to night, the ministers did nothing else but carry corpses, dump them in, and cover them with dirt when the sun went down, with none of the solemnity with which the dead are usually buried” (Mundy 2015:203). Mendieta wrote about natives in Jalisco that “unlike other people in the world, they did not flee into the countryside when plague struck, instead staying together in their altepetl – only within the altepetl would they be assured a decent burial and not die like animals” (Mendieta 1971:4: 519.) In several cases, martyred friars in New Spain were buried, exhumed, buried again several days later, and if their bodies were incorrupt, exhumed multiple times over the century to “check” on the state of the corpse (Trexler 2002). Burial of these saints was used to create sacred places in this empty land. See also afterlife, body: human, demon, procession, quadripartite world, relic, sodality, underworld

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decapitation. see skull deer 15th-century Central Mexico: Deer had many links to the Aztec pantheon as well as to deities in other American cultures. Mixcoatl, the hunt god, was celebrated annually in Tenochtitlan with a deer hunt, the hunted being both real deer and a teixiptla killed “as a deer.” Quetzalcoatl and Cihuacoatl/Tonantzin creator deities were associated with deer. In myth, women transform themselves into deer and the killing of deer had sexual connotations (Codex Chimalpopoca). In contemporary myths, Quetzalcoatl is a patron of deer hunters and, being deerlike, was also a victim (Ingham 1986:26–27), usually of his brother Tezcatlipoca. “In ancient Mexico, deer-hunting incantations invoked Cihuacoatl, Chicome Xóchitl, the tlaloque, and the four winds” (Ingham 1986:113). Deer symbolized “the weak, tainted, feminine almost lunar sun of the west . . . the day-sign mazatl, deer, was assigned to the west. One Deer was the calendrical name of one of the five Cihuateteo, the goddesses who escorted the sun from the zenith into the earth. Deer beings were ruled by a white deer” (Burkhart 1986:118). The Nahuatl-speaking Wixarika say a deer was brother to humans and carried the sun on its antlers into orbit (Schaefer 2002). Deer and rabbits have short tails, unlike most animals, and both animals eat the food of humans, maize. Deer were reminders to the Mexica of how they had once been crude hunters and wore deer skins, how they had acted in unrestrained ways. People of Tenochtitlan, particularly women, were warned not to become like deer and rabbits, who wandered around and slept wherever nightfall found them (Burkhart 1986:107). Deer and rabbits were promiscuous, risking resulting barrenness. Barrenness also incorporated concepts of drought and destruction by fire. Rabbits and deer were associated with drunkenness. 15th-century Spain: In Christian bestiaries, where animals were offered as examples of moral behavior, the stag was prominent. One aspect of deer behavior that was exemplary was its enmity toward snakes. It is possible that deer trampling and eating snakes led to the association of stags with Jesus and Mary trampling snakes (the Devil) in art. Smoke from burning antlers was a snake repellant. When a stag was bitten by a snake it might plunge into water, further demonstrating proper behavior for the sinner, to seek baptism and the cleansing power of god (Burkhart 1986). The deer was a metaphor for the Christian soul, thirsting for salvation, seeking piety, and occasionally a symbol of Christ (Peterson 1993:108). The annual shedding of antlers and then regrowth was connected to resurrection symbolism in Psalm 42 (Wake 2010). Deer lived in mountains, places where apostles and prophets had gone on vision quests. When trapped, the fleeing deer turned to face its pursuer and surrendered, sacrificing itself, as had Jesus. “The doe was a symbol of the Jews, with Christ as a fawn” (Burkhart 1986:127). The habit of deer of swimming nose to rump in a line was held up as exemplary for Christians, to help others pass from sin to spirituality. But other currents of thought feminized the deer, placing her in the wild-ness, beyond civilization, beyond urban life. Deer were said by some to be stupid and slothful animals. 16th-century New Spain: The contradiction in moral character for this animal created by the union of these two cultures could not be greater. For Mesoamericans in general,

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the deer was a feminized wanderer and prostitute. For the missionaries, the masculinized stag was exemplary for Christians. The missionaries (e.g., Gante, Anunciación, Olmos) preached the native perspective, making reference to its place in wild, vacant, uncivilized nature. The dichotomy the missionaries drew on – nature versus city and rational thought – however, “was alien to Nahuatl thought . . . they appear to have tended toward a simple equation of mazatl [deer] with ‘beast’, neither exploiting the particulars of Nahua animal symbolism nor introducing the Christian symbolism (as they did, for example, with dogs, pigs, and sheep)” (Burkhart 1986:134). But this generic use of the Nahuatl word for deer to mean “beast” by the missionaries led to the description of Jesus’ birth place as in the home of the deer, in the midst of the deer, or the eating place of the deer, and possibly to imply that Mary was a deer (Burkhart 1986:135). In a compilation of orations penned in Nahuatl by Franciscan Fray Andrés de Olmos in 1533–1539, a father implores his son not to be like the unkempt, wandering deer and a mother forbids her daughter to wander the streets and the market where she will be tempted by the sins that “make people deer.” One man summoned before the Inquisition in 1538 for bigamy offered that “since the friars are like deer that come and go he thought they would not find out” [Burkhart 1986:125]). See also insect, morals, serpent

deity embodiment 15th-century Central Mexico: The teotl of the universe [the divine spirit] was captured in containers and materialized in “localized embodiments” (Bassett 2015) or teixiptla. These containers could be paint, or painted images of deities; or stone, amaranth, wood, or copal images, sacred bundles, or humans who embodied the deities by wearing identifying regalia and behaving in a manner befitting the deity (Bassett 2015; Kerpel 2014; López Austin 2015). A tlatoani dressed like Huitzilopochtli or Xipe Totec in public was a teixiptla. Molly Bassett (2015) explores the imagery of the god Paynal’s appearance at the temple of Huitzilopochtli that is recorded in the Florentine Codex. In the course of a few sentences, we encounter a wooden teixiptla of Paynal, who is also Huitzilopochtli’s teixiptla, and a priest carrying Huitzilopochtli’s talismanic xiuhcoatl [fire stick] and his tlaquimilolli [sacred bundle]. By virtue of the xiuhcoatl staff, the priest embodies the god, while at the same time carrying the god in the sacred bundle. These three overlapping embodiments . . . demonstrate the complex layers of representation that occur wherever the teixiptlahuan of teteo appear (131).

Bassett concludes that Paynal is the teotl embodied but is also simultaneously carrying the deity in the sacred bundle and in the wooden teixiptla. For the year prior to the feast of Toxcatl Tepopochtli, honoring Tezcatlipoca, a youth of perfect physical form became his teixiptla, vetted, honored, clothed like the god, and late in the year, wed to four women goddesses, also teixiptla. A year’s worth of training in flute playing, poetry, song, dance, and comportment were necessary for the teixiptla to achieve godly performance standards. “The priests selected, trained, and dressed a perfect

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candidate for the express purpose of manufacturing a teixiptla of Tezcatlipoca” (Bassett 2015:159). This training and process of transformation was quite expensive for the sponsor. Often these chosen individuals were prisoners of war, slaves, some of them Mexica, typically the babies and children, others foreign born. As failures in the deities’ scheme for humans, captives and slaves had to be washed before they became teixiptla. For the Tlacaxipehualiztli Feast, each calpulli contributed a captive, each to be a teixiptla (Ingham 1986:25–26). Bassett argues that the Mexica expected the teixiptla to “look and act like the one before him,” reflecting “their desire for verisimilitude, but more importantly their attentiveness to ceremony reflects their understanding of teteo as mahuiztic (esteemed) and tlazohca (beloved)” (Bassett 2015:159–161). About the crafted teixiptla, Clendinnen writes, It was the process of construction of the image – the preliminary purification of its builders and adorners; the slow sequence of its dressing in precisely detailed and prescribed regalia – which invoked the desired specific sacred presence. The completion of the image, and its naming, opened it as the habitation of the god. Then, after the celebration, and the experiencing of the ‘presented’ deity, the image was ceremoniously dismantled, the materials of its making, now charged with the sacred, reverently disposed of (Clendinnen 1990:126).

15th–16th-century Spain: The Pope, as God’s representative on earth, does not claim divinity but does speak for God on earth and can thereby be understood as a kind of deity embodiment. Saintly persons might also be so construed. Imitatio Christi (imitating Christ’s sacrifice), first as martyrs earning a violent death for one’s faith and later as ascetics imitating the bodily disciplines of Jesus’ 40 days in the desert, disciplining appetites for food, sex, and comfort, shaped Christian practice. Reserved for the earliest Christians (martyrs) and later for the hermits in the desert, imitatio Christi was seen as a way to attain a purity of faith and demonstrate devotion. The stigmata of Francis of Assisi was especially powerful in its literal imitation of Christ. Turley (2014:11) explains that St. Francis intended not just to meditate on the humanity of Christ, but to imitate it as closely as possible . . . Whatever Jesus said or did in the gospel accounts, Francis intended to imitate him and to lead his friars in doing the same. By following the footprints of Jesus, Francis believed that he would encounter God, and therefore his imitation of Christ was the central feature of his spirituality.

From the 12th century on, parallels were drawn between Christ’s role as savior and the earthly knightly profession . . . throughout the Middle Ages numerous allegories portrayed Christ as a knight who triumphed over his dread enemies but who also suffered grievously and meritoriously in achieving his crucial victory. This imagery even assumed courtly-love connotations, picturing Christ as a lover and savior of his lady, the Church . . . [I]n numerous instances these notions were presented as an imitation Christi by which knights became brave imitators of the Christ-knight – ideas that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries became particularly popular among Franciscans and Dominicans (Domínguez Torres 2013:76).

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Public penance “easily morphed into the imitatio Christi,” which was a staple of Christian practice (Terpstra 2014). Imitatio Christi in late 16th-century Castile seemed to refer predominantly to nuns and beatas (Christian 1981b:161). In mid-16th-century Florence in the convent of San Vicenzo, Sister Caterina “dressed as the Christ of Calvary in red gown, diadem, and ‘a false beard on her chin’, or as the twelve-year-old Christ ‘with a lovely wig of real curly hair/would in the course of her dressing be moved into a rapturous state, to the tender delight of her sisters’” (Clendinnen 1990:114). 16th-century New Spain: The most elegant pedagogical and linguistic solution to teaching the Trinity and divinity of Jesus would have been to capitalize on the native concept of teixiptla. Instead, the friars struggled to convey the Trinity while pursuing imitations of Jesus’ life – striving to live sin-free, living in poverty, doing good works, forgiving others, being celibate. Among the missionaries was one individual who may have actually approximated the Aztec concept of teixiptla. Fray Antonio de Roa modeled the suffering of Christ on the cross through his public discipline, consisting of sleep and food deprivation, beatings by acolytes, flagellation, and cross carrying. A “Christo-mimesis, or imitation of Christ . . . his desecrated body also modeled Christian penitence and penance . . . [These] dramatic passion plays were designed to communicate to the Indians the complicated mixture of contrition, compassion, remorse, pity, sorrow, fear, love, and even affection that a Christian is meant to feel before an image of the crucified Christ” (Hughes 2010:50). Roa also imitated the natives by going barefoot, sleeping on a plank on the floor, eating the same foods, dressing the same way, suggesting to Hughes this was another form of Christo-mimesis. According to Hughes (2010), “the Indians were impressed less by Roa’s instruction on Christian doctrine than by the evidence that Roa was in some sense divine” (59). Some of Sahagún’s (2011) informants reported that humans could become “teotl.” The tlatoani, for instance, was both like Christ as incarnate deity and unlike Christ in that he was not a god himself. Tavárez interprets this to mean that rather than “impersonators,” teixipltlameh were representatives for absent people and deities (42), connecting to the Roa example quite clearly. See also human sacrifice, image/idol, penance, sacred bundle

demon/monster 15th-century Central Mexico: We make here a distinction between demons – always evil, and monsters – beings that had more benign personalities under other circumstances. Monsters were commonplace in the minds and landscape of Mesoamericans. For instance, “Pregnant women put on maguey-leaf masks and hid in granaries, for it was believed that if the new fire were not drawn, the women ‘would be changed into fierce beasts’ and ‘would eat men’. The small children also wore maguey-leaf masks, and were kept awake so that they would not be turned into mice” (Boone 1994:103). Other monstrosities that frightened people were giants, dwarfs, bundled corpses (e.g., Sahagún 1950–1982:4:5), and shape-shifters.

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Shape shifters abounded in Mesoamerica. Mometzcopinque were women who took off their legs and put on turkey feet, then wings, and flew about sucking children’s blood. Some ritualists had the ability to transform themselves into “puma, jaguar, caiman, perro, comadreja, zorrillo, murciélago, búho, lechuza, guajolote, serpiente or bola de fuego” (“mountain lion, jaguar, alligator, dog, weasel, skunk, bat, owl, owl, turkey, snake or fireball”), their nahuales (López Austin 2004:24). It was also recorded among the Mazatecos that some animals could transform themselves into other animals. The tlatoani Tzutzumatzin of Coyoacan was threatened by the Aztec tlatoani Ahuitzotl in the late 1400s, so he changed successively into an eagle, serpent, jaguar, and fireball to escape but then gave himself over to the men who slayed him (Mundy 2015). The “Tzitzimime, who were expelled from the heavenly paradise of Tamoanchan for destroying a sacred tree . . . took the form of stars that were thought to descend from the heavens and attack humans during periods of crisis” (Bassie-Sweet 2008:197). 15th-century Spain: In the Old Testament, demons are often described as wild animals. Jews understood Satan as an adversary, having an ambivalent relationship with God (witness the situation in the story of Job). Saint Jerome (d. 420) is the first to attribute demon status to a being in Isaiah 34, which he clarifies in his commentary as an infanticidal demon (Stephens 2005). The gospels do describe demons that possess humans yet are under Jesus’ power and obey him (Luke 4:43; Mark 1:23-25, 34; Matt. 8:29). Satan tempts Christians to reject God but for most of the Middle Ages demons privately, constantly, tempted Christians. The sign of the cross was thought to protect Christians from demons since the third century. The Fourth Lateran Council “declared that ‘the devil and other demons’ were created good but became evil through free choice” (Stephens 2005:2278). Demonology and angelology were developed by Aquinas and Bonaventure as a field within theology. The scholastic interpretation was that demons were able to fabricate bodies but were without physical substance. Christians understood demons as completely evil creatures with monstrous features (Monica Domínguez Torres personal communication June 20, 2020). “Every untoward event furnished an occasion for [Satan’s] intervention, which could be averted or repelled only by the benedictions, exorcisms or anathemas of the Church” (Evans 1906:14). Evans accused clergy of encouraging such associations as it served to impart power to the Church and compensation to the priest. All angels other than the three found in the Old Testament or Gospels were declared to be demons after 744 (Bartlett 2013:163). Nowhere were the demons more present than at the deathbed. Wrestling with demons for the dying person’s soul shaped much of the deathbed ritual. The Ars Moriendi, popular devotional texts of this and the next century, described the appearance of these demons and the temptations that they brought to the dying. Writing a will at this time, with its required statement of faith, divorce from worldly goods, and specific acts of charity, was a weapon used against the onslaught of demons. The light of candles and din of prayers uttered by family, neighbors, confraternity, and priest at the bedside were repelling weapons. Communion fortified the dying for this battle, unction sealed the portals the demons could enter, and last minute acts of charity could be marshalled.

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But the living and the healthy also steeled themselves against the demons and Devil. Some Christian hermits removed themselves to deserts and forests, places filled with demons, where they often conducted legendary battles with them. As every adult nonChristian was filled with demons and every landscape of pagans likewise demon-filled, trials and exorcism by ecclesiactical courts were essential as was baptism, which includes an exorcism rite in this century. Confirmation in the Church anointed new soldiers in this battle (Pardo 2006:56). Witches’ sabbaths were described as early as the 15th century as spirits in different animal forms flying to a meeting in a “remote location to meet with devils” (Christensen 1996:449). Demons were conjured in love magic. Most often invoked were Marta the Wicked, Satan, Barabbas, and the Lame Devil but also Lonely Soul, San Silvestre, Santa Elena, and San Onofre (Ortega 1991:65, 77). Demons were blamed for monstrous births. The idea that demons had intercourse with humans, in the forms of incubus and succubus, went beyond just popular religion, as Thomas Aquinas wrote of this possibility in the Summa (Gerli 2013). Harlequin was a widely recognized character in European folk culture, both devilish and comic, traceable to Roman times. “The ‘Harlequin Family’ was an army of dead, condemned souls wandering in the night and making a tremendous noise. This army included dwarfs with big heads” (Ingham 1986:132). Alichino [was a] “legendary demon who rose from the infernal regions at the head of a diabolic throng, to haunt and ravage the countryside, riding the night wind and striking terror in the hearts of those who saw or heard him” (Niklaus 1956:30). Fascination with demons and the human imagination led to the rise of an artistic convention known as grotesque/grotteschi (referencing cave paintings, Figure 33) or Romano figures, said by some to evoke moralism through comparison of distorted and normal bodies of humans, animals, and their hybrids (Domínguez Torres 2013). The adoption of and Church support for the depiction of demons familiar to the Roman world evoked Christian morals, while also connecting what was laudable in the ancient world to the modern world. Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, a painter in Milan, argued that the grotesque images “partook of the same natural symbolism as [Egyptian] hieroglyphics” (Domínguez Torres 2013:181), and soon included New World hieroglyphics. 16th-century New Spain: Columbus and Cortés both worried about encountering demons in the new lands. Walter Raleigh reported seeing Amazons and a nation of Blemmyae in 1595 in Guiana (Boone 1989:77–78). New Spain was filled with visible monstrous forms and invisible demons. “And it was precisely because the European mendicants perceived Mesoamerican representations as monstrous that they identified them as demons” (Monica Domínguez Torres personal communication, June 20, 2020). Motolinía “referred to Aztec gods as ‘demons’ and to their temples as ‘houses of hell’. Sahagún said all were ‘devils, demons, evil spirits’” (Boone 1989:67). Durán called them “devils” and was appalled that even as late as the second half of the 16th century Aztec sculptures remained visible in Mexico City. The Christian art of the century, found in churches and in codices, records numerous images of the demons that beset the native.

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Figure 33 Grotesque style on ceiling of building in Assisi, Italy. (Photo by C. Claassen)

A demon attends a man’s sacrifice by Aztec priests in the Florentine Codex, the scaffold sacrifice victim is surrounded by demons in a fresco in the convent of Santa Maria Xoxoteco, Hidalgo; friars burn temples from which demons flee in the Historia de Tlaxcala codex and in the Rhetorica Christiana of 1579 demons attend a burning native and ride on the backs of natives as angels come to their side (all images in García de León 2004:56–57). In the Historia de Tlaxcala by Diego Muñoz Camargo, the first twelve Franciscans kneel at a cross, while demons with tails, wings, and flint knife noses – the latter a clear reference to Aztecs – circle them overhead. A 1562 fresco in the church of San Francisco in Tecamachalco by the native artist Juan Gerson depicts the burning of the anthropomorphized devil – with red skin, horns, claws, and tail – as Saint Miguel holds the rope that binds his arms (e.g., García de León 2004:54). A Blemmyae rendering of Huitzilopochtli can be seen in the Frontispiece to Americae pars quarta, 1599 (Boone 1989:76) (Figure 34). The missionaries also encountered shape-shifters. One native priest “was accused of transforming himself at will into a tiger, lion, dog, or cat” (Ricard 1966:271). These shapeshifters and other night sorcerers were named in some Christian Nahuatl texts as evil-doers (Burkhart 2001a:26). An idea of a race of giants was born from the fossil material of the area (Heiser 2014).

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Figure 34 Demons flee the Aztec temple in Tlaxcala. (Historia de Tlaxcala 1585; image and permission provided by the University of Glasgow Library, Archives and Special Collections)

Some church decorations in New Spain employed grotteschi. A 1557 regulation controlling indigenous painters specified that “they should demonstrate their proficiency in painting ‘figuras del romano’” (Domínguez Torres 2013:181). The only baptism to report the exorcism of a demon in New Spain this century was that of a son of Moteuczoma II. The sick man was carried in a chair from his house outdoors for the ritual. When the priest pronounced the exorcism formula both the son and the chair shook violently (Pardo 2006:23). See also baptism, cosmos, death, devil, star, underworld

devil 15th-century Central Mexico: Tezcatlipoca came closest to such an entity in Mexica thought. He was worshipped throughout Mesoamerica as the all-powerful but arbitrary master of human destinies. His were the powers of darkness, night, jaguars, and magic; he was a great sorcerer. Tezcatlipoca inspired fear and vices (Ingham 1986:109–110). He gave and took away riches and also punished with drought, famine, and plague. He was called the Lord of the Smoking Mirror, Capricious One, Tyrannical One, and He Whose Slaves We Are [Clendinnen 1991a:107]. 15th-century Spain: Aquinas taught that the devil was the source of all superstition and ultimately all human sin after Original Sin. Aquinas and the scholastics that follow him understood the devil as operating with God’s (tacit) permission, as in the story of Job. Scholasticism held that humans have a natural inclination to seek God and cannot live without worshipping the divine. Because of this aspect of human nature, the devil is able to attract humans to false beliefs, practices, and gods (Tavárez 2011:14), teaching humans

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superstitions and witchcraft (Ciruelo 1977:91) and drawing “people into his power by offering them what they desire” (Andrews and Hassig 1984:20). The Devil was a mimetic creature, imitating God in all possible ways. His powers were limited by God and any moral evil caused by the Devil or demons could be used by God for the overall salvation and good of humanity. The faithful are members of Christ’s mystical body, the Church, and by contrast, sinners are members of the Devil’s mystical body (Russell 1984). The Devil was often depicted as winged like an angel until the 12th century when his wings were displayed as bat wings rather than feathery wings. The physical attributes of the Devil are often monstrous or deformed, red, and black. He is associated with North and lurks on the north side of churches, to the left of the east door. The Devil’s hours are midnight and noon, though he can appear at dusk and is said “to flee when the cock crows” (Russell 1984:71). Stories of pacts with the Devil can be traced back to St. Jerome, who tells the story of a man who made a pact with the Devil for magical powers and, on the hour of his death, repented and pleaded with Mary to save him, which she did. Some writers have pointed out that Christians cannot claim to be monotheistic if they also believe in the Devil. Graham (2011) traces the history of the Devil in Europe and the recasting of other cultures’ deities as the Devil. She echoes Cervantes (1994) in saying that with the movement to leave the monasteries and preach, the presence of the devil grew in the imaginations and experiences of mendicants and the Church in general. In other words, as Christianity expanded, so did the realm of the Devil. 16th-century New Spain: “The Christians’ fear of the devil’s power was almost certainly fed by imagery encountered in Mesoamerica” (Graham 2011:265). There the Devil was not just a feature of the Mesoamerican environment but was also seen to be an active, anti-Christian force responsible for setting up false idols (Graham 2011:273). Missionaries such as Acosta and Sahagún maintained that the role of sacrifice, offerings, processions, and sacred spaces, as well as native baptism, confession, and communion, were all things that the Devil planted in the New World to make himself like God. Thus, it was God’s providence that brought Christian Spain to the pagan New World to reclaim Amerindians from the Devil’s insidious hold (Ammon 2011). Acosta attributed the supposed wrongs of Aztec culture to the work of the Devil, who out of jealousy and rage had been driven to compete with God and to profane creation. The ritual mimicries (baptism, confession) the Devil inculcated in native culture made them all the more likely to embrace Christianity. Only the form of those rites needed to be altered. The obscure sorcery manual by Franciscan author Martín de Castañega (1529) Tratado de las supersticiones y hechizerias was translated and elaborated by Andrés de Olmos around 1553 (Campagne 2004). Olmos, like Castañega and renowned theologian Pedro Ciruelo, author of another sorcery text, believed that the “rapport between ‘pagan’ deities and ritual specialists issued from a deliberate pact with the devil,” rather than from mere ignorance. Tavárez points out that Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón thought that the successful healings and predictions by native ritual specialists as well as their knowledge of hallucinogens and narcotics were due to the Devil’s presence in New Spain.

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Sahagún particularly equated the deity Tezcatlipoca with Lucifer in his Thomisticinspired view of the Devil. “Particularly relevant for the identification of Tezcatlipoca with Lucifer was that his body was black, he wore a red cape with skull and crossbones, he had only one foot, and he was a shapeshifter” (Ingham 1986:109–110). The friars soon referred to him as a human-owl shapeshifter. Cervantes (1994) argues that the Indians often collaborated willingly with the identification of the Devil with their ritual practices because the insistence the Devil was the central object of their sacrifices made it difficult to conceive of him as an enemy. Many natives, however, saw a shaman who could shape change into an owl, the tlacatecolotl, as the counterpart to the Devil (Christensen 2013:41–42). The missionaries understood that in keeping with dualistic pairs of deities, the Aztec male devil needed a female counterpart. That counterpart was the Harlot, a wicked woman, known as La Llorona, or la Diabla. She killed her children, and appeared at night disheveled and seductive in a white dress with a veil that hid a horse’s face. She brought bad luck and discouragement and carried a cradle containing a stone knife, often abandoning it in the marketplace. La Llorona has been linked to Cihuacoatl, partner of Quetzalcoatl who helped create humans, and thence to Eve. Olmos reported that a native man met the Devil in a forest near Cuernavaca “who demanded offerings, decried the arrival of the friars, and chided a local lord for not heeding his call. The unnamed informant claims that, when ‘the devil’ came before him, ‘he was arrayed like a tlahtoani, long ago when they danced’” (Tavárez 2011:36). See also angel, deity embodiment, demon, divination, insect, morals, supreme deity, underworld, witchcraft

divination/magic 15th-century Central Mexico: At least one scholar has claimed that middle American cultures were more given to prophecies than any others (Edmonson 1967:360). The creation of this sun began with the casting of maize kernels and ended with signs and oracles’ messages. Warfare and the little war of the ballgame were conducted entirely within the sacred realm of fate, chance, and judgment (Townsend 2009:218). Auguries, not the state of a crop, determined planting and harvesting days (Boone 1994:115). Diviners (Figure 35) were consulted to locate spouses and other family members, the cause of sickness and treatments, future weather, and the identity of thieves (López Austin 2004:29). The midwife or calendar priest who knew how to read the tonalpoualli was consulted for the auspiciousness of all important activities such as birthing, naming, traveling, warring, marrying, business, etc. Divining specialists sought the solutions to their clients’ problems by tossing maize kernels with one blackened face, as seen in the Codex Borbónico and Florentine Codex (López Austin 2004); by creating models and effigies that were then manipulated; by using books of dream and date interpretation; by observing animal behavior; and through use of psychotropic plants and animals. Divination with fire was practiced with “a thousand superstitions” based on the noises, sparks, and smoke emitted (Burkhart 1997:40).

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Figure 35 Soothsayers predict (above) and ritual specialists cast kernels for divination (below). Mid-16th-century Codex Magliabechiano 78r.

Lockhart writes that there were Nahua incantations for good fortune in most endeavors, for divination, for manipulating the emotions of others, and for curing many diseases. “The texts use a restricted but highly metaphorical vocabulary involving Preconquest calendrical names, . . . number, color, and direction, and above all a pantheon of gods, identified by name and specifically so denominated (teteo)” (Lockhart 1992:258). These incantations typically were accompanied by some reference to hallucinogens or narcotics “which were themselves conceived to be gods and kept in a special basket or chest, along with offerings. Wherever Christianity left a niche unfilled, it appears, there Preconquest beliefs and practices tended to persist in their original form” (Lockhart 1992:258). The hallucinogenic substances were often put on the altar in the saint-house or oratory, or in other ways associated with Christian paraphernalia. Mirrors were also used. [I]n a 1539 trial . . . don Andrés of Culhuacan volunteered an account about a divination performed by Tetepanquetzal, lord of Tlacopan, in August 1521. As the battle for Tenochtitlan raged on, Tetepanquetzal visited Huitzilopochtli’s temple along with the lords of Tetzcoco and Atzcapotzalco, but Quauhtemoc stayed behind in fright. After saying some words before a nahualtezcatl, or divining mirror, the mirror darkened and in a small section, ‘a few commoners appeared, crying,’ signaling the Mexica would lose the struggle. (Tavárez 2011:36)

Divination was a prominent feature of other neighboring cultures as well. The Chilam Balam books of the Maya were the prophecies of a Maya prophet named Balam who prophesied the coming of the Spanish (Christensen 2016).

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15th–16th-century Spain: Casting of “lots were used for devout purposes in the apocryphal Gospels, and for Augustine and Aquinas it was lawful to seek reverently to know God’s will by casting lots. Throughout medieval Europe the sortes sanctorum was used to find helper saints in times of need. . .a way of provoking a sign” (Christian 1981b:47). If the vow was successful this too was seen as signifying divine favor. The Bible itself was an instrument of divination and could reveal one’s fate. Keith Thomas argues that any prayer, piece of the scriptures, or object involved in the primary rituals of the Church could “assume a special aura” and have a “mystical power waiting to be tapped” in order to reveal the future (Thomas 1971:45). Hagiographies of several hermit saints, as well as historical records of kings and bishops, show that church leaders consulted visionary women such as Magdalena de la Cruz or Sor María de Santo Domingo and hermits about careers and outcomes of conflicts (e.g., Bartlett 2013:196–202; McKendrick and MacKay 1991). Although “all attempts to harness supernatural forces outside the church, ranging from love-potions to the most elaborate charges of witches’ “sabbats”, were regarded as evil” (Edwards 1988:17), few Inquisition investigations queried divination, prophecies, and visions in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. McKendrick and MacKay (1991) attribute this to clerical reliance on visions and visionaries, particularly when the visions were of the Spanishled Apocalypse. Auguries using birds and flight patterns were common among Spaniards. Muslims also used birds in particular for divination, along with astrology and “geomancy,” using sand and dirt to foretell future events. The first translations of Arabic geomancy texts into Castilian date to the late 10th century (Burnett 2013:801). 16th-century New Spain: The Spanish arrival created a whole new corpus of auguries by Aztec diviners, most concerning the demise of the Aztec state. While these omens have been presented as prequauhtemoc, several recent scholars (e.g., Clendinnen 1991a:36; Townsend 2019:94–96) have doubts. These doomsday predictions include that given by the mother of Huitzilopochtli to the party sent by Moteuczoma I (Tenochtitlan would collapse), the omens beheld in the decade preceding the arrival of Cortés, and the prognostication that Quetzalcoatl would return from the east in the year 1519. The eight omens reported to Moteuczoma II that history has cast as predicting the demise of the Aztecs were a comet, the conflagration of the Huitzilopochtli temple, and the temple at Tzommolco, three fireballs streaking across the sky, the roiling of the lake, loud weeping by a woman in the dark streets, a strange bird with a mirror in which an army could be seen, and a two-headed man (Sahagún 1950–1982:5). Divination through signs and through numerology were forbidden and listed as sins. Likewise, the missionaries banned fire divination. The First Mexican Church Council of 1539 specified, “They were not to burn copal, nor to keep fires burning through the night, or in the daylight hours before the churchyard crosses” (Clendinnen 1990:115). Love magic as practiced by mulattos, Spaniards, and mestizos in New Spain relied on divination to learn the targeted man’s intentions. Casting alum or salt into fire and observing the flames, casting beans (chickpeas), or reading cards and cants that employed the rosary beads, oranges, menstrual blood, semen, and words were their means of divination (Ortega 1991).

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In Mendieta’s account of the first Franciscan martyrs in the New World, indigenous testimony indicates the importance of the religious specialist, an omen, and the role of a local deity, Tecoroli, in the planning and hopes for the outcome of the rebellion known as the Mixton War (1540–1542). When a gourd was swept away by wind during a ceremonial dance, the tlatolli saw it as a sign that the Spanish would be blown out of Mexico. His vision promised eternal life and the rewards of good health, abundant food, crops, and ample rain for insurrectionists if they would reject Christianity and the friars’ teaching, and a complete expulsion of the Spanish (Ahern 2007). See also apocalypse, astrology, bird, day, vision, witchcraft

divorce 15th-century Central Mexico: Divorce was a matter for Aztec courts. Judges listened to the parties and if reconciliation was impossible, divided the household wealth according to who had contributed it. Both parties were free to remarry. Girl children and the womanly items in the house went with the mother, boys and their inventory with the father. Permission to divorce had to be given by the husband’s family and he bore the blame for the failure of a marriage (Pennock 2008:133–136). 15th-century Spain: Upper-classes were able to annul, repudiate, and separate from a betrothed due to unhappiness, childlessness, cruelty, adultery, or consanguinity (Ratcliffe 2013a). Annulment and separation were common as they preserved the sanctity of marriage. But at least two Galician charters of this century (dated 1434 and 1457) have come to light that suggest divorce was possible also (see Costa 2016). In Spain, divorce was available to the Muslim population until the Catholic reconquest in the 15th century. Jews also had the right to divorce both in Islamic-controlled areas and in Catholic Europe. The Siete Partidas of Alfonso X, inherited by Queen Isabella, specified that each party took away from the union what each had brought to it. Widows were granted rights and protection based on their status as “custodians of family honor” (Ratcliffe 2013a:545). 16th-century New Spain: “Divorce in sixteenth-century Spanish America was a permanent, legal separation in which both parties had the freedom to live apart but neither could marry again” (Powers 2005:120). Divorce was expensive to pursue and then was rarely granted. The dowry had to be returned at the time of the divorce and the wife was to receive one-half of all the wealth accumulated in the marriage. During the procedure, the wife had to live in the home of an honorable family or in a casa de divorciadas to ensure her sexual fidelity. Divorce among native couples was more common under colonial rule than before (Burkhart 2001b:101). See also adultery, marriage

drunkenness 15th-century Central Mexico: While pulque was part of the Feathered Serpent cult that united shrine centers in the 8th–10th century, well before the Aztecs, a pulque cult was extremely important in Aztec ceremonial life. This pulque cult subsequently spread with

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the Aztec conquest westward and southward. It arrived in central Oaxaca just a few years before the Spanish arrived. Pulque was not the only way to lose one’s self – a necessary state from which to communicate with the gods – but it was one medium readily available to all of the population. Pulque is the fermented sap of one species of maguey plant, flowing “from the pierced heart and womb of Mayahuel,” granted to humans to make them happy (Wake 2010:47–48). Symbols of this cult were pear-shaped droplets lying horizontally or dangling (Wake 2010:152), the nasal labret, rabbits, crescent moons, and the dozens of dancing gods. Its place of origin is possibly Cerro Chichinautzin, on the modern boundary of the states of Mexico and Morelos. The four hundred pulque gods, known as the Centzontotochtin, were closely affiliated with Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina cult and thus were part of the fertility complex that argues for a Huastec origin. Based on the clothing of pulque deities and the moon reference in the place named Metztitlan, Hidalgo, Bruman (2000) favors a Nahua origin in this area, slightly south of the Huastecs. These gods wore crescent-shaped nose labrets, and red and black colors (Sullivan 1982). Each god had a “proper name of regional significance” (Bruman 2000:63), and each one reflected one of the myriad different effects of inebriation (Bruman 2000:122 fn4). The day of the pulque gods – 2 Rabbit – was a day of bad omen, for the child born then would become a drunkard. The shrine to the god Ome Tochtli, 2 Rabbit, was built atop a stone projection in modern Tepoztlán, surrounded by eleven mountains. It drew pilgrims from as far as Chiapas and Guatemala and was erected by the Mexica in 1502 (Brotherston 2005:64). As a drink with sacred purpose, imbibing pulque was highly regulated. Drunkenness was forbidden to the populace but this restriction seems to have been ignored. Pulque drinking was prescribed in eleven feasts covering 220 nights shown by eleven drinkers wearing new moon crescents from a plant that took eleven years to mature (Brotherston 2005:61). The feast of Tecuilhuitontli included obligatory pulque drinking by salt farmers (Clendinnen 1991a:296). During Panquetzaliztli the drinking of pulque by high ranking warriors was condoned and the sacrificial victims were inebriated (with “obsidian medicine”) when they climbed the pyramid. The veintena of Growth, Rebirth (Izcalli) was marked with unrestrained drinking of pulque during the presentation of children (every 4th year). Drinking pulque was modeled for humans by the deities. The practice seems to have been directed toward rejuvenation or rebirth in that the gods ‘die’ and are then ‘resurrected’: that is, fall into a deep sleep from which they will later ‘resuscitate’. In the myth of the origin of pulque the major pulque deity Ometochtli . . . ‘dies’ to make himself eternal but also so that humans can safely partake of the drink in excess. (Wake 2010:215)

Perhaps it was for this reason that the elderly were allowed to drink at will. “Drunkenness had everything to do with the Indian search for the sacred” (Wake 2010:66). “With its derangement of the senses, its disruption of the ordinary, its deliriously transforming powers. The danger was inseparable from the experience. Ritual drunkenness could be invoked because it could be ritually controlled . . . to do that without ritual preparation was not only dangerous to the individual, but to society” (Clendinnen 1990:124–125).

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A prayer recorded by Sahagún (1950–1982:6:68–69) underscores the governing class’s concern with drunken commoners, Can the drunkard possibly live in peace? Can he possibly live in contentment? Can he possibly go benefiting himself? . . . There is no safe storage for things: he is no longer capable. The wind swirleth within the home of the drunkard; misery penetrateth it . . . And his children are stained with excrement and are thin; few are their rags, their old maguey capes . . . For this reason the lords, the rulers who acted for the realm, who gave forth the word of our lord, go stoning people on account of pulque; they go hanging people because of it.

15th-century Spain: Both Old and New Testament authors regarded wine as a divinely given fruit (e.g., Genesis. 9:20–27; Galatians 5:21) but persistently condemned drunkenness “for the Apostle says, ‘drunkards will not possess the kingdom of heaven’ (1 Corinthians 6:10)” (Bartlett 2013:58). The habitual drunk was typically denied communion. 16th-century New Spain: The most frequently mentioned moral failings of Aztecs by the friars were drunkenness and sexual excesses (Burkhart 1986:119). It was not just the inebriation that the missionaries found disturbing but that the Indians failed to recognize a cause and effect relationship between drinking in excess and sinful acts. Instead, natives reasoned that it was the god of wine who possessed the body. “In this fashion many Christian Indians made excuses for their sins, saying they were drunk when they committed them, and it was difficult to get them to see that drunkenness . . . was only one more sin added to the others” (Ricard 1966:117). Excessive drinking was denounced through preaching, morality plays, and exclusion from some sacraments such as communion. Augustinian Pedro Agurto wrote in 1573 that communion should only be denied to those who were habitual drunks (Pardo 2006:144). But these objections of Catholic priests, too, were largely ignored (Wake 2010). In an effort to curb the drunkenness resulting from pulque, the octli root that was added to pulque was outlawed by royal edict in 1529, with “subsequent reinforcements of the prohibition by the cabildo of Mexico City and by other decrees from 1545 on” (Bruman 2000:72). Contradicting these efforts was the introduction of distillation, resulting in the new drinks mezcal and tequila. Furthermore, Spanish civil law permitted Indians to buy alcohol and drink in their own pulque bars and taxed the enterprise. Artistic reference to pulque persisted in Church and civic adornment (Wake 2010). Feathered serpent-decorated vessels in pulquerias may have been a covert protest of Catholic domination (McCafferty 2012). Also subversive, the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms may have been a way that natives “sought to enhance their religious experience” (Hamann 2020:106). Native ritual drinking continued in the colony, as reported by Motolinía, and spread with the relocation of Tlaxcaltecans into Colotlan, Zacatecas, and elsewhere in colonial Mexico around 1590 (Bruman 2000:66). Characteristic of ritualized drinking was drinking in groups, at sunset, and with designated pourers. Natives were reported to drink to inebriation during rituals.

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Keywords The periodic community drinking bouts were typically genial, even jubilant, occasions, with veintenas marked by exuberant mock combats and transvestism, and with broad tolerance of ‘crazy’ behaviour . . . [These occasions indicate] a continued quest for the ecstatic sacred experience, to which other routes . . . had been largely closed. (Clendinnen 1990:125)

Wake (2010:66) points out that if the Indian had ceased to drink, then there would have been no way to communicate with the deities. Throughout the next two centuries the Virgin Mary would come to be equated with pulque and its goddess Mayahuel (Clendinnen 1990). See also divination, morals

*E

eagle 15th-century Central Mexico: A number of Chichimeca groups say their pilgrimage to the promised land was led by an eagle. The Tarascans’ first leader was of the eagle clan. Huitzilopochtli, as a historic leader of the Mexica, made a trip up the mountain of Colhuacan where the gods turned him into an eagle (Christensen 1996:447). Huitzilopochtli was sometimes known as “the eagle” (Townsend 2009:166). It was he who appeared to the traveling Mexica as an eagle perched on the cactus to signal to the migrants that they had arrived at the intended place (Carrasco 1999:6). The Otomi reported that the same eagle had led them to an area in Queretaro where they founded a sacred temple, now replaced with the church of San Ildefonso, Tultepec (Aguilar and García 2012:106). Eagles are associated with the daytime sun, male time, and warriors throughout North and Mesoamerica but they were also associated with women who died in childbirth, the Cihuateteo, known as warrior women. One Eagle was the day when the Cihuateteo, including the mother of Huitzilopochtli, Coatlicue, returned to this world (Montellano Ortiz 2004:33). “Cihuacoatl was also a powerful warrior woman, and she wore the eagle plumes of the great warrior god Mixcoatl. The goddess’s powers are confirmed by an Aztec myth which describes her as a mighty witch, disguised as an eagle, standing on a prickly pear cactus challenging Mixcoatl and another chief of the migrant Aztecs to engage in battle” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:182). “One of the insignia of the earth goddess in her aspect as Cuauhcihuatl, ‘Eagle Woman,’ or Yaocihuatl, ‘Warrior Woman,’ was an eagle claw” (Wake 2010:208). It was customary to burn wings of eagles during birth. The very best warriors were found in the Order of the Eagle serving Huitzilopochtli. Quauhtemoc, the Aztec emperor who surrendered Tenochtitlan, was aptly named “descending eagle” or sunset. Tufts of eagle down on the head of a person indicated the forthcoming sacrifice of that person (Douglas 2010:155). Receptacles for extruded human hearts were called “eagle vessels.” Eagle claws adorned the joints of earth-maize-fertility goddess stone statues. Eagles constituted elite offerings. 15th–16th-century Spain: The eagle is an iconographic symbol of the evangelist John, the beloved disciple who during this century was also thought to be John of Patmos, the author of the book of Revelation. “The eagle may generally be interpreted as a symbol of the Resurrection” for its practice of preening and then plunging into water, leading to its association with the baptismal font (Ferguson 1959:13). An eagle announced the ascension of Jesus (Miller and Miller 1944:330). Medieval bestiaries “claimed that eagles always left half their prey to the birds that followed them, no matter how hungry they were. They therefore are a symbol of generosity” (Taylor 2003:188). St John’s eagle bore the arms of Catholic monarchs on blazons (Domínguez Torres 2013:145). 163

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The 14th-century Scala celi, written by the Dominican Johannes Gobius, tells of Saint Mark’s vision of four winged beings, one of which was an eagle, with flame and lightning coming from their eyes (Burkhart 2001a). Corpus Christi day and other Christian occasions might be celebrated with processions carrying huge-headed effigies, including eagles (Perry 1992:28). The eagle was one of the animals displayed on Roman military banners. The Hapsburg dynasty of Austria beginning in 1438 used a single-headed eagle emblem. The double-headed eagle initiated the reign of Frederick III (1440–1493). The Hapsburg house of Spain with a double-headed eagle began in 1516 under Carlos I, followed by Felipe II in 1556. 16th-century New Spain: The eagle metaphor used by Christians “was not totally different from the Nahau solar eagle, who transported the blood of human sacrifice victims” (Lara 2008:140). Eagles appear in Christian art throughout New Spain, on baptismal fonts, codex pages, chapel walls, and in cloister paintings (Lara 2008). For a procession organized to mark the disbursement of saints’ relics in Mexico City, dancers carried the eagle on the nopal holding a serpent. This symbol of Tenochtitlan “the Jesuits associated with the sacrifice of Christ’” (García de León 2006:48). The eagle that led the Otomis and then the Mexica was also equated to Christ (Aguilar and García 2012:106). Hapsburg double-headed eagles appear in several 16th-century monasteries in Oaxaca, Mexico City, and Puebla (Perry 1992). One must wonder about the substitution of the Eagle of San Juan the Evangelist, and even the eagle of the Hapsburgs, for the eagle who led both the Otomis and the Aztecs to their destinies. See also bird, sun, supreme deity

east 15th-century Central Mexico: The sun is born daily in the east, giving this direction its particular significance. East then was the direction of birth, the present, fresh life, new day. The gentle rains come from Mt. Tlaloc, east of Tenochtitlan. The eastern sky was populated by the souls of men who had recently died in battle or on the sacrificial stone who traveled with the sun until its zenith point at noon. Its specific deity was Tonatiuh (the sun), but its guardian was Xipe Totec, indicated with the color red. The day signs falling in the eastern quadrant were alligator, snake, water, reed, and movement. Other deities with homes in the East were Tlaloc, Chalchiuhtlicue, Xilonen, and Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, the morning star. East was a fire direction, opposed to west, a water direction (Ingham 1986:113). Native maps throughout the Americas positioned the eastern location at the upper or top edge of a map. The Templo Mayor with one half dedicated to Huitzilopochtli was located on the eastern side of the island of Tenochtitlan with stairs on the western face. As victims climbed to the top they moved eastward, their blood soon feeding the sun. 15th-century Spain: East, as the direction of the sunrise and the solar king (Christ), was the direction of salvation and beginnings, and for Spaniards, the direction of Jerusalem, the apex of a holy geography. Saint John the Evangelist resided in the eastern quadrant of the world. In a mapping of alpha and omega, alpha was the direction east. Medieval European maps displayed this religious orientation by positioning east at the top and

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Figure 36 Philippus Jacobus’ T-O World Map, circa 1503. East is at top of the page. (Cornell University Library Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections)

Jerusalem in the center (Figure 36). European ships were said to be always sailing eastward. The “head”/altar of Roman Catholic churches was to occupy the eastern end of the building. Priests face east with their backs to the congregation. The laity walk from west to east when entering a church, approaching both Jerusalem and resurrection as they leave the western land of the dead. In Iberia “from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, it is difficult to find a[n incorrectly] oriented church” (Guzauskyte 2014:57). 16th-century New Spain: These two cultures shared a conception of the direction East as signifying beginning, birth, and the home of a solar deity. In maps of the cosmos both placed east at the top. Franciscan monastery chapels were typically oriented due east–west in New Spain even when the atrium might be skewed (Perry 1992) but smaller churches were often superimposed over a native temple foundation, giving those churches an orientation to a significant mountain peak or astronomical feature. “[T]he influential Jesuits discarded the east-west orientation following the Council of Trent” (Giffords 2007:49). See also quadripartite world, sun, Venus

effigy. see image/idol equinox. see sun

*F

fasting 15th-century Central Mexico: A ritual cycle of fasting (meaning foregoing flavor [salt, chilis, chocolate]) followed by feasting was observed by the Aztecs and other groups in Anahuac. Fasts were pursued both privately and publicly, by the populace and more frequently by priests. It was a key practice for building up the body heat necessary before performing rituals or seeking game. Eating flavor was a means of cooling off. Priests constructed fasting enclosures on some occasions. Enclosures used cord, stacked stones or encircling branches on the ground or in trees (e.g., Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2, sections A and M. [Carrasco and Sessions 2007]). Fasting for four days preceded the Chichimecs’ departure from Chicomoztoc to Cholula in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca (Wake 2007:235) and was required of a person assuming a status as noble (Olivier 2007). Other feasts required fasts by priests for 20, 40, and even 80 days. “In the matter of fasting, they apparently went even beyond the Christian practice” (Braden 1930:73–74). 15th-century Spain: Fasting, as well as celibacy, comes from the need to discipline the will and the body, to deny the “lower appetite” gratification. Jesus fasted in the wilderness and Francis was fasting on a mountain top when he received the stigmata. Fasting was also ordered at the beginning of each season – the so-called ember days requiring abstinence and fasting to sanctify the season. These are certainly pre-Christian in origin but were officially outlined by Gregory VII (Sauer 2010). Private fasts were held in the context of penance, when scorned, or when others were sick (Powell 2009:117). Public fasts were those before Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and before a saint’s day. Called an “obligation,” fasting the night before a feast day was a local tradition in Iberia and a requirement for communion the next day (Christian 1981b:58). Fasting was observed in some provinces during Advent and Lent. On a fast day, only a single meal was permitted. Excluded foods were meat, eggs, and dairy products. Wine was excluded during Lent, and during Holy Week one ate bread, salt, herbs, and water. Fasting was specifically prohibited on Sundays, Easter, and Pentecost. 16th-century New Spain: Fasting before a ritual was a common idea in both regions but, while the natives were accustomed to forsaking flavor in a fast, Catholics could use herbs and salt. The prohibited foods for Christians such as dairy products and wine would have been scarce in New Spain. Fasting was expected of a Christian before confession, confirmation, and communion and before each of the mandated feast days. However, the Indians were obliged to fast only at Nativity, Resurrection, and Fridays during Lent because their caloric intake was so low. Food of any type was reportedly scarce in some localities. When Indios were fasting, Spaniards were supposed to exempt them from service (Braden 1930:176). Some of the

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earliest missionaries were extreme in their own food intake, pursuing months’ long fasts. One must wonder how fasts were envisioned and enacted in these first decades of missionizing. Were the Indians encouraged to fast as they had been accustomed? See also celibacy, feast, food, penance, purity

fate 15th-century Central Mexico: Fatalism is a hallmark of Mesoamerican religious doctrine and literature (Edmonson 1967:357). Fatalism is evident in the expectation of an apocalyptic ending for the Fifth Sun, possibly at each end of the 52-year round. In fact, all temporal units had their essence inculcated immediately preceding the start of the unit. There was no changing what would come to pass in any unit of time. Tezcatlipoca has been described as the source of fates recorded in the 260-day calendar, the tonalpoualli (Townsend 2009:116). The tonalpoualli (https://tinyurl.com/y2ng97wf) was consulted for the fate associated with a birthdate or any beginning of a course of action. If born on an unfavorable date, one could capture a favorable fate only by being diligent and “with careful living and attention to proper penance” (Boone 1994:115). Midwives, however, could speed up or delay delivery or conceal the actual birthday. For activities and for marriages, one delayed the start of the action. Birthdates would determine who would be a drunkard, be sacrificed, be a loose woman, be a skilled silversmith or embroiderer, etc. The fate of a marriage was divined by adding together the numerals of the two birthdays. 15th-century Spain: In antiquity fate was found in the stars through astrology, aligning everything that takes place on earth in a set, unchangeable pattern. The debate over fate within Christianity invokes the question of divine providence, free will, and predestination. In the New Testament, Paul indicates some Christians are destined for heaven in Romans 8, though the context for those verses are recast first by Augustine, and later by Luther and John Calvin (1509–1564). Augustine took great pains to argue that fate was not the same as God’s ordered plan for the universe, and later theologians followed his lead. Particularly with regard to Christ’s ultimate sacrificial death, Augustine wrote that Christ “was awaiting this hour, not fated, but suitable and selfchosen that all things might be fulfilled which should be fulfilled” such that the passion was “in the order of God’s plan for the world, not by the necessity of fate” (Augustine 1993:103). He concludes nothing random, no act or event that happens in the world is subject to fate or chance. Aquinas further finesses the challenges of the vicissitudes of human life by arguing divine providence is the result of God’s desire for some event to come to fruition – the world is “ruled by divine providence,” which cannot be impeded or changed (Aquinas 2012). The role of predestination, and its Calvinist cousin doublepredestination, are further developed in the 16th century. These issues primarily involved theological developments in the understanding of the role of God’s grace in an individual’s salvation and the issue of whether one can contribute anything to their ultimate destiny after death. Many of these issues are addressed by the Council of Trent (1545–1563).

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Columbus attributed nearly anything that happened to him – from finding gold in the New World to the shipwreck of the Santa Maria on Hispañiola – to divine providence (Guzauskyte 2014). Divine providence was the explanation for why the New World was discovered just as the Protestant challenge erupted in Europe. Las Casas argued that same divine providence made the New World the ideal place to relocate the Church, and the recreation of the holy city Jerusalem in Puebla, for example, helped reinforce the belief that God’s providential plan involved the Spanish specifically for this task. 16th-century New Spain: Fatalism has been said to constitute a major arena of difference between Aztec and Catholic theology (Edmonson 1967:357) but we think perhaps not so great a difference as Edmonson thought. Both cultures labored under a pending apocalypse and, from a Christian perspective, the Indians of the preceding centuries, if not this century, were destined for hell en masse (Natives may well have said that both the apocalypse and hell were upon them on earth). Divine Providence, while not understood as fate per se, functioned as the same kind of predetermined circumstance, bringing the Spaniards to New Spain as part of the divine plan both for the Natives and for Spain. Franciscans saw in the Natives a population already prepared to receive the Gospel through that same divinely pre-ordained plan. When Franciscans argued that the Indigenous were more pure than Spaniards they were suggesting that without the Devil to deceive them, natives would be better Christians than Europeans because of their more spiritual state, being closer to nature, not contaminated by Jewish and Muslim influences or European decadence. This perspective had outspoken proponents, such as Las Casas, who argued that divine providence would lead the natives to belief if the friars were exemplars of apostolic life. Perhaps one of the most significant differences between the cultures was that God’s providential plan would override the birth fates. This attitude was also less fatalistic than much thinking about the chains of sin and the inability of humans to either exhibit free will, perform good works, or other theologies developed by Protestants in this century. See also apocalypse, astrology, calendar, day, deer, divination, sin, vision

feast 15th-century Central Mexico: The division of the year into veintenas – bracketing the feast cycle – has a long history in Mesoamerica. The Cholula cycle is recorded in the prequauhtemoc Codex Borgia, that of the Tarascans is in the postquauhtemoc Relacion de Michoacán, and the Mexica cycle is found in numerous colonial documents, most explicitly the Codex Borbonicus. The Otomi, Mexica, and Tarascan veintena cycles are correlated in Miller and Taube (1993:179–180) showing much similarity in sequence, which is not unexpected since the feasts address the agricultural cycle and mark the solstices and equinoxes. The Aztec sacred feast cycle (Table 2) was put to Oxomoc and Cipactinal, first man and first woman, for their oversight but outlines of several of the feasts are visible as far back as the Olmecs. Brotherston (2005:54–56) attributes the feasts of the dead to the Otomi; the Teotleco and Quecholli feasts to the Chichimecas; the mountain cults to the commoners

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resident in the Basin prior to the arrival of Nahuas; and the Mexica to the creation of Panquetzaliztli. Adopted from ancestors and other cultures, the state rituals of the Mexica, culminating on the 20th day of each 20-day long veintena, commanded enormous food and gift resources that drove the tribute system and established the tribute due dates. Feasts were the occasion for formal speeches by guests and hosts, for formal seating that revealed a social value assessment, for the exchange of goods and promises, and for new song and dance compositions. Feasting itself was even more the focus of ritual during the veintenas of the small and great feasts of the lords, June 14 to July 23, when the maize gods Xochipilli and Xilonen were honored with days of feasts given by nobility for the commoners (Townsend 2009:242). Two goddesses presided over the whole Mexica feast cycle, Teteu innan starting in Ochpaniztli and, seven feasts later, Ciuacoatl starting in Tititl. Sixteen feasts were paired sequentially, one lesser, one greater, and those pairs and the remaining two feasts were paired across the year. These feasts and their sequence (e.g., Codex Borbonicus pages 23–36, but also in Mendoza, Mexicanus, Tepepulco) also structured the history of humankind (e.g., the Chichimecas entered the Basin of Mexico during Quecholli, and the later Mexicas during Panquetzaliztli) and even some entrada events (e.g., Cortés was escorted to Cholula on the eve of Teotleco, the “gods arrive” veintena), as well as the semi-annual and quarterly tribute due dates. Brotherston (2005:12) believes that the Feast cycle served the elite well as it divided labor and tribute into 20-day work periods. In addition to the state feasts, community cults also had feast periods with labor and goods constituting tribute. All public rituals predictably ended in feasting and drunkenness, as did the customary family feasts marking namings, death, and returns of trading expeditions and warriors. 15th-century Spain: Feasts had been part of Christianity since its origins, the most famous of which was the Last Supper. Initially, two movable feasts, Easter and Pentecost/ Whitsun (the 7th Sunday after Easter), were observed. Christmas, added in the 4th century, was fixed on December 25, usurping Saturnalia observed at winter solstice. Then, “[i]n 1232 Pope Gregory IX established a standard list of eighty-five feasts and fixed their dates, but there was still much freedom to introduce local variation both with respect to which saints were commemorated, and on which dates” (Eagleton 2005:110). Feasts for saints were arranged hierarchically with those saints most venerated having vigils, nine or twelve readings at Matins, and Octaves. The mandatory five feasts for Mary were her Purification (February 2), the Annunciation (March 25), her Assumption (August 15), her nativity (September 8), and her Immaculate Conception by her mother Anne (December 8). Other feasts, obligatory in some parts of Iberia, were her Visitation with her cousin Elizabeth (May 31), Our Lady of the Snows (August 5), her Presentation as a child to the temple (November 21), and the Expectation (December 18). Feasts also obliged the wealthy landholders to provide food for their communities. Particularly important to their vassals and workers was the Mardi Gras feast before the start of Lent. Holy feast dates anchored economic, legal, and church activities in annual rounds, with time being marked in discontinuous units, as so many days before or after a saint’s feast (Bartlett 2013:97). Rents were typically due on Easter and Saint Michael’s Day – approximating the equinoxes – and fairs and markets were timed to those dates. A community

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vow for a patron saint meant a communal feast held after Mass. Symbolic gifts as specified in the vow (i.e., wine, cows) were given to the assembled or to the poor or children, paid for by sponsors, or the town, or donations collected that day (Christian 1981b:57). Feasts were also common at funerals. Funeral meals were fed to all at the graveside and on the first anniversary of the death, as well as at All Souls day. These feasts became so extravagant in this century that all the money in an estate was frequently consumed, leaving none for family, church, or charity. This waste of money was “deplored by bishops and ecclesiastical visitors” and several city councils moved to forbid funeral and anniversary feasts (Christian 1981b:58). The parable of the feast was used as an explanation of the missionizing effort in New Spain. This parable involved nobles (the Protestants) who would not dine with another noble (the Catholics). The scorned man (the Catholic Church) then invited all of the servants, the poor, and the cripples, or, in this case, the indigenous people of New Spain, to share his bounty (Early 2006:96). 16th-century New Spain: The missionaries remarked on the need to replace the Aztec cycle of eighteen state feasts (Table 2) with Christian-themed celebrations that focused on the glory of God and saints. Some of these substitutions were obvious because of their dates at solstices (June 21, December 21) and equinoxes (March 21, September 21). The adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1584 in New Spain did not alter these assignments. Rather, the new Christian calendar brought the feasts into alignment with the solar phenomena. Because of the notable poverty of the Indians, the missionaries implored the Church to make concessions in the ritual calendar in favor of the Indians. Consequently, in the rules adopted by the First Mexican Church Provincial Council, the forty-two mandatory feast days (plus fifty-two Sundays) required in Spain were greatly reduced to twelve in Indian communities. In addition to fifty-two Sundays, All Saints, Corpus Christi, and Epiphany (January 6), the natives were obliged to observe three fixed dates in the life of Jesus and four in the life of Mary (Braden 1930:176). These feasts, in calendrical order, were circumcision (January 1), Purification (Candalaria), Annunciation, Assumption, Nativity of Mary, and the Nativity of Jesus. Moveable feasts were the Resurrection at Easter; the Ascension of Christ observed 39 days after Easter; the Pentecost held 50 days after Easter; and feast of the Holy Sacrament observed 60 days after Easter, meaning that, “the pattern of Hispanic American fiestas [city fiestas] is drawn almost completely from Spain” (Foster 1960:209). For members of the Most Holy Rosary confraternity (Dominican), that feast date was October 7th. The natives were said to heartily embrace the new feast dates. One of the most beloved feasts according to Motolinía was that of Epiphany because like the magi who came to be believers and followers of Jesus, so too had the Mexica. On All Souls Day in 1572, MexicoTenochtitlan’s indigenous community provided 5,000 loaves of bread, 3,000 to 4,000 wax candles, 25 arrobas of wine, a large number of hens and eggs, and great quantities of fruit; some of

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this was given to feed the resident friars, who numbered about 100 at the end of the century, but much was given out to the poor or to those who asked, and this custom was repeated year after year. (Mundy 2015:170)

Corpus Christi festivals were even more elaborate. The practice of prequauhtemoc feasting and gift-giving between elite households for alliance-making and between elites and commoners continued well into this century. “The maintenance of this feasting culture was crucial for the social adherence of the city’s (Mexico-Tenochtitlan) native elite, at the same time that it was increasingly taxing to the shrinking tributary base” (Mundy 2015:160). Sahagún supported Christian Indians’ processions, feasts, and offerings, though he thought that missionaries should be certain that the feast and celebration were directed to Mary, Anne, or the saints. He was concerned that Indians would practice their old veintena feasts under the guise of these Christian feast days. This concern was exacerbated by the changes brought by the Gregorian calendar. Bridging the feasts of old and new was Holy Thursday, when the Franciscan priests bathed the feet of twelve poor Indians. After this feast the native lords provided new clothing, and fed the twelve and many more of the poor (Mundy 2015:170), harking back to the Small and the Large Feast of the Lords, veintenas during which the leaders fed the commoners. Based on the patronage of churches founded in the 16th century in New Spain, the key feast dates in Mary’s life for Franciscans were the Immaculate Conception of Mary and her Assumption into Heaven. Most, if not all, of the Cathedrals founded in the 16th century had Assumption patronage. The feasts of the Mexica were still evident late in this century, as recorded in several postquauhtemoc codices. The imposition of the Gregorian calendar, bringing the days in better alignment with solar phenomena, also brought important Catholic feast dates into close alignment with the various veintenas’ ancient feasts on the 20th, last day. For instance, the new ending date of Tepeilhuitl became October 31st, All Saints day in Christendom being the next day. December 31, the new ending for Tititl, was the day before Jesus’ circumcision, January 1st. The Purification of Mary and simultaneous presentation of Jesus at the temple, February 2nd, now fell into the feast period of Izcalli with its focus on fire and water, both significant means of purifying. Tlacaxipehualiztli’s new ending was March 25, the mandated feast of the Annunciation. The new ending for Tecuilhuitontli, July 3, was the day after the Visitation feast, July 2. Finally, November 21, the feast marking the presentation of Mary to the temple by her parents, was now the day after the ending of Quecholli. In fact, many of the elements of the Feasts, as well as the tonalpoualli, have remained in ritual use. See also calendar, day, death, fasting, food, music, theater

fertility 15th-century Central Mexico: Fertility petitioning was directed at a number of deities in the earth, rain-water, and maize-vegetation categories (Townsend 2009:116–117). The Most Holy Earth was the source of new life, so that the animals living below the surface

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Figure 37 Offering of aquatic animals excavated from the Templo Mayor, Templo Mayor Museum. (Photo by C. Claassen; used with permission of Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, Mexico)

of the sea, particularly shellfish, and those that moved into and out of the earth and the sea were apt representatives of fertility. Feet, in constant contact with the Most Holy Earth, were also fertility organs. Because the sun died in the western sky, it was there that it began gestating inside the earth to be born the next morning in the east. The direction west, then, was the direction for fertility petitioning. Fertility deities were approached at places such as the giant ahuehuete trees growing beside waterways or at springs, caves, and mountaintops meaning that fertility petitioning was place-based (Claassen 2013). Fertility of a lineage as well as that of a family and of a couple were equally important. Women’s fertility was within the purview of midwives, the moon, pulque, and rain. The most important of the fertility deities was Tlaloc, the rain god (Mayan Chac, Mixtec Tzahui, Totonac Tzahui, and Zapotec Cocijo). Dozens of the offerings excavated from beneath the Tlaloc side of the Templo Mayor were clearly related to fertility petitioning (Figure 37): caches with sea creatures (crocodiles, swordfish, brain coral, large gastropod shells, turtles), blue vases, and vases with images of Tlaloc, and an offering of forty-two children. Rituals for Tlaloc were held most veintenas of the solar calendar, particularly during the dry season, and children aged 5–7 were the most typical gifts. Tears from the children and the spectators to the ritual processions stimulated the release of rain by Tlaloc. Chalchiuhtlicue was honored at a whirlpool shrine to the east of the Templo Mayor in Lake Tetzcoco and at hundreds of springs, streams, irrigation ditches, wells, and aqueducts. Quetzalcoatl was also a fertility god, as were Cihuacoatl and Xochiquetzal (Ingham

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1986:113). In one fertility ritual, an individual was tied to a tree and shot with arrows. His blood renewed the life force as it soaked into the earth (Lara 2004:153). 15th-century Spain: The most significant shrine in Iberia during this century was that at Compostela. For probably thousands of years prior to Santiago’s trek to this western seaside location, the sea and the dying sun beyond Compostela had attracted barren couples to a shrine with the promise of fertility. Throughout the Middle Ages, various saints, including male saints and pieces of their regalia as well as the Virgin Mary, were the focus of prayers and employment for fertility and birth. Shrines dedicated to St. Anne, the Virgin Mary, or St. Thomas Cantelupe were visited (Cybulskie 2009). Saints who had themselves been parents were solicited (Anne, Joachim, Joseph, Elizabeth, Mary). Other popular saints were Raymond Nonnatus and Catherine of Siena. To prevent fertilization, couples might engage in nonvaginal sex, and use some plants such as pomegranates and junipers for aborticides or amulets and charms. “Contraceptive practice was widely commented on, not only in church documents but also by medical writers and famous authors such as Chaucer” (McCann 2009:45). In the case of Iberia, Islamic law was more progressive than Catholic strictures, allowing coitusinterruptus. Infertility was not reason enough to annul a marriage according to Canon Law, although impotence was sufficient. Infertility was not always believed to reside in the woman (Cybulskie 2009). 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures associated fertility or conception with the direction west. Sacred ahuehuete (also called tule) trees closely associated with Chalchiuhtlicue (Kroger and Granziera 2012:172), where petitions for pregnancy were left, were often the site chosen for the erection of a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary (Figure 38), by emphasizing her motherhood. By placing churches at ahuehuete shrines, the Virgin emerged as a fertility goddess in New Spain. However, homage to the ancient fertility deities continued in agricultural communities down to today’s raincalling ceremonies. Death, disease and poverty in the cities contributed to low fertility and fecundity among the natives. The epidemics of the 1520s killed a high proportion of subadults, greatly impacting the birth rate of the 1530s. McCaa (1995) estimated the life expectancy in 1530s Morelos to be fewer than 30 years and Storey (1992) put that estimate at 15 years for people living in the city of Teotihuacan from 1580 to 1620. See also birth, conception, flower, marriage, sex, virginity

flower 15th-century Central Mexico: Flowers signified many things in prequauhtemoc Mesoamerica: sexual desire, a metaphor for philosophy, poetry, song; a metaphor for potency, fertility, and reproduction. Restrictions were placed on the enjoyment of flowers (Sigal 2007; Sousa 2017). All things iridescent, bright, reflective, and colorful could be used to lead the viewer to thoughts of the spirits and their abodes. Cotton was classified a flower, meaning that cotton cloth was made of flowers (Coltman and Taube 2019) and was a suitable offering and mark of royalty.

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Figure 38 Santa Maria del Tule, Oaxaca, sited between sacred ahuehuete trees. Women still come here to rub the branches on their bodies for fertility. (Photo by C. Claassen)

Flowers had two origins relevant to their use in rituals, as related through the Creation of Flowers story (Codex Magliabechiano, Boone 1983). A piece of the labia of the goddess Xochiquetzal was washed by the gods of the Upper World. From the wash water came flowers of little scent. This piece of flesh was then carried to Mictlan, where it was washed again by Mictlantecuhtli, and from this wash water came fragrant flowers. Flowers are a symbol of the spirit world in general, of the sacrifice of Xochiquetzal, and of the vagina (Hill 1992:122). The four-petaled flower (and perhaps a cross-section of the four-chambered human heart) is the cosmic quincunx (four quadrants with a center), and a symbol of This World, the earth, when a flower was viewed from above. With concentric circles in the middle, or with more than four petals, the flower was a sign for the sun. With a spiral in the middle it was the moving sun (Wake 2010:144–145). Not only among the Aztecs but throughout the Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples, “flowers stand for spiritual power and its manifestation in the heart, blood, and eyes” (Hill 1992:117). Flowers were used to invoke the image of fire (and vice versa); youth and the brevity of life; and the valiant warrior and his spilled blood. The sun’s home, the rain god’s home Tlalocan; the highest level of the Upper World Omeyocan; and the western origin place of humans, Tamoanchan, were places of lush

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vegetation, insects, and birds, “with flowery houses, patios, and paths” (Hill 1992:122). Tlatoani Nezahualcóyotl of Tetzcoco had the western side of the Tetzcotzingo mountain made into a representation of Tlalocan in 1453, the third year of the great drought, with magnificent gardens, irrigation, and palace (Douglas 2010:161). Real flowers covered processional routes. They were made into bowers and ramadas, placed around and on altars, and carried and worn by dancers, much the same as in today’s practice. The goals of enflowering were to overwhelm the viewers and reach the gods (Sousa 2017) with scent and color, evoke visions of the spiritual, and in some cases, to lead the deity or souls of the dead to an altar (again, as is still done for Dia de los Muertos using native marigolds). All but four of the veintenas required staggering amounts of flowers, as well as flowers made of paper. For the feast of Huitzilopochtli, participants searched the woods collecting every blooming flower and then strung them into chains that were deposited at the pyramid’s plaza (Sahagún 1956:I:147). In addition to sculpted, painted, paper and real flowers, song was exceedingly important for invoking flower symbolism perhaps equal to the popularity of the use of real flowers in ritual and celebration. 15th-century Spain: Offering flowers to the gods was customary in Europe. Flowers grow where blood drops or a body is buried, so the first martyrs of the Christian tradition were referred to as the “flowers of the Church.” Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and other commentators, “found significance in Christ’s incarnation—flowering . . . from his glorious mother and from the seed of the divine prophecies–having taken place in [Nazareth], and in the springtime” (Burkhart 2001a:34). “By the Middle Ages, flowers decorated the statues of saints, were worn in garlands by priests, and appeared on altars. Statues of Mary and Christ were often crowned with flowers” (Seaton 1989:685), typically the rose, lily, and violet. The rose had been long associated with love, joy, and beauty, so it was easily transferred to the Medieval ideas of passion and joy. The lily stood for purity and chastity; the Virgin Mary probably inherited her association with roses and lilies from Aphrodite (Hill 1992:128). The violet signaled humility and patience necessary for the Christian life. Other popular flowers were periwinkle, primrose, and marigold (Seaton 1989:686). The most popular garden in Medieval-era literature was that in the Song of Songs, followed by the Garden of Eden (Seaton 1989). Christianity’s spirit places were gardens; one was in the highest level of heaven where God resided and another was the Garden of Eden where humans were created and original sin began. 16th-century New Spain: Burkhart (1992) speaks of an “easy correspondence” between the Catholic paradises and the Mexica Tlalocan and Tamoanchan because of the common garden metaphor. In both cultures, flowery reference was made to virginity, to the brevity of life, to youthfulness, to blood. Fire metaphors were applied to flowers by both cultures. Flowers were frequently used in ceremony, priests wore garlands, and altars were buried in flowers. The Virgin Mary “so abounded with flower and garden imagery that she was easily integrated into the flowery world” system of the Aztecs, and perhaps intentionally so by missionaries (Domínguez Torres 2013:121; Peterson 1993). Nahuatl devotional literature dating to the 16th century “applies more garden-related references to her than to any

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Figure 39 Floral painting in the 16th-century cloister at San Cristobal monastery (now Divine Savior), Malinalco, Morelos. (Photo by Enrique López-Tamayo Biosca used under Creative Commons 2.0 license, rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25407557

other single figure, and on the whole these references fall securely within the bounds of Old World models” (Burkhart 1992:100). The flower necklace, the “rose”-ary of Mary, facilitated her adoption. This transference was furthered by Sahagún’s incorporation of the metaphorical system of garden songs and flowery language into his original psalms and hymns, the Psalmodia Christiana, intended for converts (Hill 1992:128). “Although Nahuas were made well aware of Mary’s sexually abstinent lifestyle, flower terminology tied her to the flowery world rather than to any cult of virginity” (Burkhart 1992:101). Floral motifs carved into church stones, particularly around the main entrance and painted in wall murals, are suspected by some authors (Wake 2010 in particular) to indicate an adaptation of Christianity to the Aztec conception of the flowery spirit world rather than to indicate an abandonment of it (Figure 39). In the first decades of evangelization, flower offerings continued to be made without raising much consternation among the clergy. Both Sahagún and Durán thought the flower offerings found in the churches were excessive, but they typically interpreted the enthusiasm as an embrace of the Christian occasion. The festival of Corpus Christi conducted in Tlaxcala on June 20, 1538 is valuable for its documentation of the Aztec ritual use of flowers. The procession route had ten huge flowered arches, “1,068 medium-sized ones, and 66 small ones.

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Nearly one-fifth of the flowers were Spanish pinks. A thousand shields’ made of flowers hung from the arches; where no shields were placed, there were some huge flowers, made up of something like onion skins [maguey leaves]” (Motolinía 1990:61–62). Unaware of the Aztec flowery world, some Spanish writers attributed the excess in flowers to abusive priests and confraternity leaders (Wake 2010:57–58). Flowers served medicinal purposes also. For example, morning glory seeds were common in healing rituals to discover the cause of a disease or identify the source of a curse. In addition, its seeds were ingested for the benefits of the resulting altered state of consciousness. It remained in use medicinally and ritually through the 17th century. Colonial medical authorities and church officials regarded “this plant as a potentially dangerous element that had a limited range of pragmatic uses in Galenic medicine, and . . . remained uncertain as to whether the redoubtable plant was superstitious or demonic” (Tavárez 2011:96). See also bird, landscape, offering, paradise, procession

food 15th-century Central Mexico: The food of the gods was remembrance but chocolate, pulque, maize, blood, tortillas, and other items were also important. Foodstuffs figured prominently in the hot/cold system of native Mesoamerica and the word for food implied “heat” in the sense of calories fueling the soul known as tonalli. Fasting was an important tool for building up spiritual heat, needed during battle, divination, ball playing, hunting, or embarking on any significant task or journey. Feasting and certain individual foods (and strenuous exercise) released spiritual power cooling the body. Securing an ample harvest of maize was the responsibility of the priests of village cults and those in charge of state rituals. To fail in growing the annual crop was a serious breach in the covenant with the gods and a breach in what it meant to be civilized. The Little Vigil planting rituals honored Tlaloc, as did the following Great Vigil (April 14– May 3) during which seeds were blessed and maize stalks were made into images. Balance between hot and cold foods was the basis of physical and spiritual health. Cold foods were things of the night or resistant to the sun: sweet herbs, sour fruits, thick skinned fruits, light colored foods, and pulque. Hot foods were those that were dark colored, or picante: bitter herbs, sweet fruits, and things that produced a burning sensation. Foods prepared in earth ovens or underground pits were “cold” and thus appropriate for offerings, as their coldness could not interfere with the heat of spiritual power. Maize was a plant that in the hot/cold system was neutral and also combined dry and moist, putting it in the center of the cosmos. It was said that maize and humans were created simultaneously in the beginning of the Fifth sun. Human flesh and maize “were the same matter in different transformations . . . [These] transformations were cyclic, and the cycles constantly in jeopardy” (Clendinnen 1985:89). 15th-century Spain: Food was the single most important means of balancing the humors as well as protecting what was known as cultural character. Four humors needed balancing: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. New foods altered the humors,

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producing different abilities and conditions and creating a body constantly in flux. A sudden change in diet could lead to death, so slow changes or regular consumption of a very broad diet were required to avoid harming oneself. Using a food opposite to one’s condition was the corrective; thus food was deployed in the role of medicine. Popular medical texts of this and the next century gave advice on when and what to eat, how to dilute wine, what to combine in salads and not to eat too much (Earle 2012:33–34). Following a hot/cold and wet/dry humoral system, the Spanish categorized moist and cold foods as good for the female body. Hot and dry foods made the male Spaniard – his character and his body. But foods were sometimes complicated by this reasoning. For instance, sugar and black pepper were hot but sugar was moist, pepper dry. Wheat was at the core of Spanish foodways and character. As a mainstay of the Spanish diet, the eating of wheat was a symbol of masculinity and civilization. Wheat bread and wine were the two most highly regarded elements of the Spanish, civilized, Catholic diet (Earle 2012:120–121). Wheat comprised the bread of the Eucharist, the body of Christ, the symbol of the Resurrection (John 12:24; I Corinthians 15:35–36, 42) (Giffords 2007:354). 16th-century New Spain: Because of the need to preserve the Spanish body, settlers planted wheat and garbonzos along with maize in Santa Elena, Florida, and emigrants were advised to bring their own food to the Indies (Earle 2012:53). Spaniards began the cultivation of wheat in New Spain in the 1520s but it required irrigation for two crops per year and twice as much labor as maize, with significant reduction in land productivity as a result (Hassig 1994:155). The lack of maize in the Spanish diet was quickly reasoned to be a significant part of the explanation for why Spaniards did not die at the same rate as did natives in the epidemics (Earle 2012). It was extensively argued and presented as truth that if the Spaniard ate New World maize and root crops, he would become unhealthy, unmanly, and uncivilized. Nevertheless, maize was consumed by Spaniards living in New Spain in the form of atole (liquid) and tortillas. Without the warm foods of wine, meat, and wheat, many worried that the European body would become the moist and cool Amerindian body or, worse, turn into a female body. The environmental impact of Spanish colonization was almost immediate as they quickly cut the dyke separating freshwater and saltwater in the Basin lakes, broke the freshwater pipes, destroyed many of the canals, installed a millwheel in a canal, and began to drain the lake. The Veytia no. 4 Calendar Wheel made in 1572 shows wilted seedlings, frozen bread, few offerings, and dirty, overflowing irrigation channels (Brotherston 2005). “The ability of certain [Old World] crops to thrive in the Americas revealed God’s providential design for humankind, and the similarities and differences between European and indigenous foodways marked out the distance Amerindians needed to travel were they to become fully civilised human beings” (Earle 2012:3). The Indians ate very little and did not eat meat with any regularity – they were said to be free of the vice of gluttony (Earle 2012:42). Las Casas described Amerindians as docile because they were phlegmatic and Spaniards as fierce and choleric, stemming from the foods each customarily ate: “cold” roots, herbs, and fish vs. “hot” wheat and wine. “By the early seventeenth century, it had become a truism that the humidity of the Indies debilitated organisms,

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made roots shallow, and caused food to lack nourishing value” (Cañizares-Esguerra 1999:38). When the chili pepper was first introduced to Europe in the 16th century, dieticians disputed whether it was a hot or cold food. “The chile, along with cacao, was viewed as a potentially suspect food, leading the faithful to lust [and] imbalanced thoughts” (Nesvig 2006b:xx–xxi). Furthermore, “Spaniards attempted to eradicate or regulate foods related to religious practice like pulque or peyote, just as they imported Spanish wine [and wheat] to administer the Eucharist” (Nesvig 2006b:xxi). Debates raged over the status of chocolate as food or drink and thus whether it could be consumed before Mass. For a culture that was governed by humoral theory, the Spaniards’ use of indigenous wet nurses was fraught with consternation. Mother’s milk was known to be the source of a child’s “complexion” and character. It was even more problematic when the source of that milk was maize, a food totally unfit for Spaniards (Earle 2012:51–52). Breast milk was also associated with idolatry. A confessional manual of the next century queried “When your child died, did you put your breast milk on him with a reed . . . or where you buried him, do you go to spill and pour your breast milk on him?” (Christensen 2013:180). In many ways, detailed by Eleanor Wake, Jesus was assimilated to maize symbolism. In several atrial crosses, maize plants replace the reed scepter of the king of the Jews. Jesus’ dripping blood was sometimes shown as a maize cob (Wake 2010:231, fi. 6.79). Tortillas were equated to the Eucharist wafer. “The symbolism of Christ as corn, represented graphically in the hidalgo cross, may also be at work in the fabrication of the cristos de caña [corn paste used to fashion life-size crucifixes], arguably the most important native artistic engagement with Christian imagery in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” (Hughes 2010:78). Wake also points out that the dry season planting in December – the veintena of the Nativity – had a blessing of maize seed and sacrificing of children to Tlaloc who were stand-ins for the seed to be sown. The parallels with Jesus’ nativity were many. “A nativity song composed in 1553 . . . [has] God’s creation descend to earth in Bethlehem as popcorn flowers (that is, as dried, toasted maize seeds) . . . it is as if Christ’s life cycle is being paralleled with that of maize” (Wake 2010:70). Mary was also linked to maize and sustenance (Burkhart 2001a:54). See also body: human, fasting, feast

free will. see fate

*G

garden. see bird, flower, insect, paradise, tree gift 15th-century Central Mexico: Gifts were owed to the gods for all they had done to create this Fifth Sun. The key gift a human could offer was remembrance, recognition. The gods were also well pleased by dance, incense, and music. Offerings to deities by commoners consisted of flowers, maize, birds, reptiles, blood, chilis, salt, cacao, cotton, and copal smoke. For veintena rituals, additionally, amaranth dough figures, seashells (Figure 37), quetzal feathers, jaguar skins, jade, and human blood were needed. Girls tended temples, undertaking the daily feeding of resident deities and the making of vestments. Farming families fed the hearth fire god food or herbs daily. In exchange, the deities continued to provide corn, the creatures of lake and sea, workable soil, and most importantly, rain, in proper quantities. They also could be expected to send children and give power over human enemies. The gift economy was the dominant motivation in Mesoamerican trade for millennia. 15th–16th-century Spain: The creation of the world and humans, the pledge signified by the rainbow, and the self-sacrifice of Jesus to redeem humankind were the major gifts offered by God and Jesus. Saints were bombarded with requests for gifts – of healing, fertility, release from plague and tormentors, etc. “‘Bring me gifts! Ask my help!,’ saints demanded” (Bartlett 2013:106). The supplicant typically asked a specific saint for a specific outcome and promised a specific gift in return. Gifts in these cases signaled reverence. Gifts were also a means of cleansing the soul of sin. Spanish missals written late in this century promised a reduction in sins for charitable works and almsgiving, calling both “a second baptism” (Eire 1995:232). City councils selected charities to receive the alms given through wills and specified a mandatory amount that all death estates were to pay to them. These charities sent out alms collectors when death bells tolled. The recipients – orphans, the poor, and those ransomed from Moors – were expected to pray for the donor while walking in the funeral procession. Other regulations specified the sequence of alms recipients (e.g., Christians, captives, debtors in prison, old before young, sick before healthy, newly impoverished before always poor) and required provisioning of the family first, leaving little but the mandatory alms for non-relatives at the time of death. “Altruism and genuine philanthropy had never been the primary objective of deathbed charity in Spain” (Eire 1995:233). It was the transition from the gift economy of landless peasants offering the products of their labor to the monetization of life in urban settings that brought Francis to his religious vows of poverty and evangelization in the 13th century (Arnold 1999:187). The Council of Trent reaffirmed the cleansing benefit of alms and charity. After the Council of Trent, the situation of gifting at death in Madrid changed. Significantly larger 180

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amounts of money rather than goods went to hospitals, orphanages, and poor houses than to churches, and much less of the estate went to charity than to masses for the soul (Eire 1995:236). 16th-century New Spain: Both lay and clergy believed themselves to gift to the native person the true religion, better cultural practices and norms, better government, better language, and better food in wheat and cattle. Yet the principal gift of Christianity, the Eucharist, was denied the vast majority of Indian Catholics throughout this century. In fact, Pardo (2006:159–162) characterizes Spain as reluctant to gift anything in the early decades. Natives were denied several of the sacraments, they were prevented from learning Spanish in many missions, they were denied entry into the priesthood, and they were denied personal freedom. See also baptism, communion, covenant, death, offering, penance

god. see patron, supreme deity, tripartite deity gold 15th-century Central Mexico: “Gold was a gift of the divine, made available to humans at its will” (Wake 2010:92). It was shiny, reflective. Urine was called “liquid gold.” Gold itself was the excrement of the Sun, silver of the Moon. As excrement, it was eaten as dust and slivers by those who had skin pustules or hemorrhoids, problems attributed to sexual vices (Klein 1993). The goddess of filth, Tlazolteotl, often shown with fecal matter, wore gold bells. Gold in Mexico “was not mined from its deep mountain veins . . . gold came with the rain, washed into river sands, where it lay waiting to be panned” (Sahagún 1950– 1982:11:233). “Gold dust stored in quills, served to standardize the currencies used in market transactions” (Klein 1993:25). Golden items were among the gifts presented to Cortés by messengers of Moteuczoma II in Veracruz, themselves wearing golden lip-plugs. 15th-century Spain: Among the metals, the most perfect was gold. The book of Hosea said “It was Jehovah who had given them [the Israelites] silver and gold, as well as oil and vines” (Miller and Miller 1944:266). “[G]olden rays of the sun represent the revelation of sacred truth and gold itself symbolizes Christ” (Guzauskyte 2014:84). Medieval and early modern Christians believed all metals eventually could be transformed into gold under the right conditions and this formed the scientific basis for alchemy. In keeping with the apparent association of gold with the sun, heat, divine light, and Christ (and silver with the moon), Columbus named the few places in the Caribbean that had gold only on Sun-days, and he named silver places on Mon-day (Guzauskyte 2014:89). Columbus said, “Gold rules everything. Its power is such that it is able to deliver souls from Purgatory or open to them the gates of Paradise” (Descola 1970:41). Pilgrims in Europe expected the relics at shrines to be displayed in opulent ways, and the shrine itself to be a spectacle reflecting its spiritual grandeur. Gold leaf was equivalent to rays of divine light and was used copiously in these shrines, mosaics, and reliquaries. “Superb reliquaries and sumptuously decorated sanctuaries were not only subtle

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indications of the power of the saint but they testified to the devotion and the generosity of past pilgrims” (Sumption 1975:153). 16th-century New Spain: Surprisingly, both cultures thought of gold as the gift from the Sun. But both the Indians and the early missionaries showed little commercial interest in it and even renounced it (Ricard 1966:129–130). The extensive use of gold leaf on altar pieces and elsewhere inside churches, was meant to awe the Indian into conversion and to symbolize divine truth. Of these two precious metals, only silver (and lots of it) would contribute to the colonial economy. Nonetheless, gold was the symbol of a profound set of connections in the Spanish psyche: “gold and Christ, gold and crusade, and gold and worldly unity” operated as unifying principles in Christendom (Graziano 1999:31). Perhaps one of the best known certainties about the Spanish New World was the conquistadors’ greed. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, writing a letter to Lady Fame at the end of his life, laments that many of the conquistadors who followed Cortés died horrible deaths and gained neither fame nor riches, having come to the New World to “give light to those who were in the shadows . . . and also to gain riches” (Hamann 2020:126). This lament was summarized and transformed by Lewis Hanke into “We came here to serve God and also get rich” (Hamann 2020:126). The Spanish relationship with gold is not necessarily the center focus of the conquest. Other expressions of wealth, such as authority over a visita, mill, or mine or in the form of fame for the conquest, not only in territory but also in the form of souls won for Christ, incentivized the Spaniards. Nonetheless, Spanish exploitation of gold from the New World is the foundation of capitalism and the impetus for the expansion of Europe into the western hemisphere. Christ is exported from Spain in the intangible form of the evangelical word and exported from the Americas as precious metal. The intricate associations of gold and Christ, gold and crusade, gold and mission, and gold and world unity together delivered Columbus’s exclamation that ‘Gold is most excellent. Gold constitutes treasure, and he who possesses it may do what he will in the world, and may even cast souls into Paradise’. (Graziano 1999: 31) See also blue, red, white

*H

head. see skull. healing 15th-century Central Mexico: Healers and doctors in pre-Columbian Mexica society diagnosed illnesses and attempted to ameliorate their impact on a patient by appealing to supernatural beings. The ticitl “midwife” was both a spiritual leader and an intermediary, facilitating healing and intercession with deities on behalf of her patients (Sousa 2017). To become a healer is, and probably was, a life course followed with great anxiety, for suspicion of witchcraft was commonplace (Huber 1990; Schaefer 2002). Children might be born with the fate of doctoring or report an uncommon dreaming life, or adults might survive a lightning strike, accident, life-threatening illness, or experience a vision that directed them to learn herbal medicine, wind detection, set broken bones, practice midwifery, etc. Teteo innan-Toci was the midwife, the healer (Sahagún 1956:I:47), as was TlazolteotlIxcuina, the goddess of medicines and medicinal plants and patroness of healers and midwives. Sweats were places of refuge for the ailing and infirm, for pregnant women and newly delivered mothers (Figure 40), as well as for illicit lovers and sexual deviants (Durán 1971:269–272; Sahagún 1950–1982:11:191). Illness took many forms – malaise, unresponsiveness, silliness, agitation, anger, etc. – and had many sources, particularly loss of one or the other soul, bad winds, menstruating women, failure to honor the spirits, inauspicious days and units of time, witchcraft and the supernatural in general (Montellano Ortiz 2004:30). Healing success was dependent on the spiritual power of the healer as well as the attentiveness of the patient. Curanderos were employed to identify and treat illness as well as to cause illness and they pulled from a wealth of verbal, herbal, animal, and material items to do so. 15th-century Spain: Jesus healed the blind, deaf people, and lepers, and some healing is attributed to the Disciples in Acts. By the 4th century, relics of the martyrs were credited with miraculous healing powers. Shrines grew around relics that were efficacious in healing diseases or affecting other miracles. Monasteries were often a refuge for the sick and many physician monks produced medical guides and treatises. Religion, healing, and health were blended categories in early modern Spain. Disease was frequently connected to sin and divine retribution, or to Satan. Self-healing could be gotten from appealing to God, to Mary, to saints, or from substances such as ash, balm, wine, oil, music, paint, dust, and relics. Herbs and other naturally occurring substances were thought to be efficacious because they had been created by God and thereby could have healing powers (Cook 2016). Shrines and relics were major sources of healing and could heal a petitioner even from afar. Relics dipped in water or wine were commonly used to affect healing (Sumption 1975:82). General health 183

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Figure 40 A sweat lodge used by pregnant women, the sick, and people in sexual trysts. Mid-16thcentury Codex Magliabecchiano 77r.

was the purview of the Marian shrines such as Nuestra Señora de la Caridad de Illescas or Our Lady of the Holy Spring, or Our Lady of the Baths, all in central Spain (Christian 1981b:93), while saints specialized, such as Lucy and Christopher for eyes, and Matthew for throat. Rarely, Mary might attract petitions for rabies or hernias (Christian 1981b:94). Epidemics were a separate category with their specific saints. Epidemics were viewed as punishment and, since Mary did not punish, she was not the source of the disease and was not who one would petition for relief (Christian 1981b:98). Book II of the Liber Sancti Jacobi (Santiago Miracles) contains twenty-five miracles occurring from 1100 to 1235 related to Santiago de Compostela but most of them took place during pilgrimage and only three were healing. But the hand of Santiago, enshrined at Reading Abbey, England, also with twenty-eight miracles, had twenty-six healing miracles in the presence of the relic itself (Coffee and Dunn 2019:XLVI). Assisted healing was offered by saludadores, monks (typically at pilgrimage churches), women healers, and physicians (Powell 2009:87). Healers were perceived to have powers not only to heal but to discern the cause (often supernatural, usually diabolical) of illhealth. Saludadores (always men) also drove away bad weather and performed many feats of physical danger, such as walking on hot iron or stepping inside lit ovens (Tausiet 2014:99–100). Their birthdate could predestine them to this occupation (Good Friday or

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December 24th), as would being the seventh son of only sons in a family (Tausiet 2014:100). Although medical theory and philosophy in Spain were a continuation of Arabic approaches, anxiety about Muslim healers persisted in Old and New Spain (Herrera 2013). If Muslims could kill Christians with weapons, they could just as easily kill them with medicine (Cook 2016). As all medicine involved magic, all healers were suspect to the Church. For instance, “the manuscript of medical prescriptions for hemorrhoids and woodworm contained a pentagram, angelic names and a tetragrammaton” (Gutwirth 2014:458). Other examples of medical magic might be the acknowledgment of Saint John the Baptist day (June 24) as the best day to gather herbs; for bathing in fountains or streams or the sea at midnight or dawn; or to treat skin diseases by rolling in the morning dew naked (Foster 1960:199). 16th-century New Spain: Although “the disciples’ power to work healing miracles and other wonders facilitated the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire and the Middle East, even into Africa,” (Hughes 2010:57, fn 10:253) they did not have similar success in Mexico. Instead, “Spanish missionaries to Mexico often wondered why God had not similarly blessed them” with healing success (Hughes 2010:57, fn 10:253). It was native curanderos who filled this void of miracle workers and the lack of doctors in New Spain (Quezada 1991:37). “The Intendant of Guanajuato stated . . . that common cures were provided by women who practiced with extreme conscientiousness, employing domestic medicines” (Quezada 1991:53 ftn2). The native curandera(o) combined local knowledge of healing herbs and traditional practices with advice to the patient as to which saint to direct prayers and supplications. Perhaps because the healer was in competition with priests for her clientele she worked to incorporate elements of Christianity into her preexistent healing rites and formulas (Gruzinski 1993:228) or perhaps she believed in their powers to heal. Records indicate that curanderas relied not only on divination (with chickpeas) but also on prayers, images, relics, and hallucinogens (peyote and morning glory seeds kept in baskets on home altars). “In Toluca, specialists prescribed healing rituals that called for ceramic effigies made in Metepec, and nowhere else” (Tavárez 2011:271). Some curanderos were punished by the Holy Office in New Spain for using divination – the first case in 1613 – with sentences to work in a hospital or never again to practice. Curanderos taken before the Holy Office came from all walks of life in New Spain: Spaniard, Mulatto, and Mestizo (Quezada 1991:41). Pilgrims to the sanctuary of Tecaxic, Mexico state, prayed and petitioned the image of Mary, took exact measurements of the icon, touched her figure with flowers, and collected the melted wax and burnt remains from the candles in the sanctuary. “These cenizas y pavesas (ashes) were considered relics and, as Mendoza states, were dissolved into water and given to the sick to drink with favorable results” (Cruz González 2014:93–94). This description of behaviors matches exactly what one would have observed at a shrine in Iberia. Felipe II of Spain financed the first scientific mission to New Spain, under the leadership of botanist and physician Francisco Hernández de Toledo, who collected and described the medicinal benefits of more than 3,000 plants in his Historia Natural

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de la Nueva España (1577). The presses in Mexico City published medical texts in Spanish rather than Latin as in Spain and several of them were filled with humoralism mixed with indigenous medicine (Earle 2012:40). The similar hot/cold systems must have been noted by Spaniard and Mexica alike, but in the Americas there was no corresponding wet/dry axis for medicine (Furst 1995:124). Healers treated patients with manipulation of the humoral balance using bloodletting, exercise, diet, sleep, and changes in location or climate in their formulas (Earle 2012:37) but the knowledge of the healing properties of bloodletting and purging as well as their practice extended well beyond the Spanish doctor. It must have been difficult for priests and their helpers/spies to distinguish between bloodletting for Spanish medicine and that for ancient religious practice. Hospitals were a major part of the plan to Christianize the population and were mandated in all doctrina and visita towns in 1555, although a number were built well before then. Constructed and staffed by native people and supported by native confraternities, the hospital was the setting where Mexicans were to learn and practice charity and love, tending to the sick and the traveler. “Graft among these brotherhoods generated oversight from municipalities and dioceses and a desire on the part of some Church leaders to consolidate them into a few large hospitals, which happened under royal authority in 1580” (Christian 1981a:168). A combination of European and Native medicine may be present in the Codex Rios image of the human body (Figure 22r) with associated animals (actually the 20 day signs). Furst (1995) remarks that the Italian commentary in the Codex indicated that these signs had “dominion over parts of the body and that the symbols indicated what cure should be used when a body part was ailing” (130). See also body: human, food, relics, serpent, sex, sin, sodomy, soul, speech, water, weeping

heart 15th-century Central Mexico: One of three souls in animals was the yolia soul residing in the heart. This soul was responsible for animation of a being, identity, talent, and endeavor, and could escape through blood loss or dreaming (Furst 1995:20). As living entities, yolia was instrumental in the concepts of “creation” and “community.” The patron god was known as the “heart of the pueblo.” Creation locations were called the Heart of Heaven, Heart of the Mountain (also jaguars), Heart of the Sea, Heart of the Lake, Heart of the Hill, and Heart of the Earth (also obsidian). Man-gods or culture heroes were filled with a force “that emanated from them and infused their accoutrements, their relics, and filled their hearts. Upon death, their power resided in their hearts and might journey into the other world to advocate for their people” (López Austin 2015). The pierced heart was the name glyph for King Tizoc. During the annual Flower Feast, the teixipla of Xochipilli carried an impaled heart. “Some of the most conspicuous local flowers represented are the yolloxóchitl (heart flower) and the ololiuhqui (morning glory), which were important components in Aztec ceremonies. Their leaves, flowers and fruits physically resemble a heart . . . an essential element in pre-Hispanic rituals”

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(Domínguez Torres 2013:126). To treat cardiac issues, curers might look for a plant with a bulb shaped like the heart (Montellano Ortiz 2004). The practice of heart extrusion dates to at least Olmec times, ca. 3,000 years earlier than the Aztecs (Boone 1994:20). During Aztec rituals extruded hearts were burned. “The nopal was a tree of sacrifice, its fruit symbolizing the heart of the sacrificial victim” (Wake 2010:218). It is perhaps the four-chambered heart when seen cut open that was captured in the four-petalled flower symbol or the four-chambered cave underneath the pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, making it “Heart of Mountain.” “Hearts are represented in Aztec art as blooming or as in flames . . . humans who were especially ‘distinguished for their brilliance in the fields of divination, art, or imagination’ were said to have the same ‘divine fire’ as burned in the hearts of the gods” (Hill 1992:122). 15th-century Spain: The heart was thought to be the seat of spiritual emotions, thus the phrases “hard-hearted,” “broken hearted,” and “change of heart” indicated one’s openness to God and “lion-hearted” or “faint-hearted” referred more frequently to character or personality. Empathy for Christ’s suffering often expressed itself as weeping, leading to the belief that the eyes were the outlet for heart feelings. The Augustinians took as their emblem a heart pierced by one to three arrows. “Yet, while Europeans pinpointed the heart as the seat or author of comportment and character, they would not have said the rational soul lived there, nor in any other tissue for that matter” (Furst 1995:20). The heart is where believers receive Christ; it is the seat of the will, the locale where the law is written to replace the tablets where Moses first inscribed God’s laws. Sin hardens the heart and the sacraments soften it, enabling God’s grace to work (Pelikan 1978). Memory is implied in these terms, and Domínguez Torres (2013) found that “the metaphor of the heart as a record keeping instrument dates back to classical times” (90). A wax heart was a writing tablet. Demons were thought to have entered Judas’ heart, leading him to betray Jesus (Burkhart 2013). Love magic chants often called for a spiritual force to “burn his heart,” meaning that of the desired man (Ortega 1991:65). 16th-century New Spain: For both cultures, the heart was a receptacle of memories (Domínguez Torres 2013:90). Sahagún said Nahuas had hearts of wax (Domínguez Torres 2013:91), meaning they could be written on, inscribed with Christianity. In the Crónica Mexicayotl we learn that the yolia “was often carried off to the Christian hell to be punished” because the people still remembered their tribal god Huitzilopochtli (Furst 1995:21). Given the heart symbolism of nopal, the presence of nopal in church art “may allude to Christ’s sacrifice or, perhaps more precisely, a conceptual reading of sacrifice. For the 1565 festival of Saint Sebastian in Mexico-Tenochtitlan (the Christian martyr shot with arrows while tied to a tree and evoked during plagues) Indian artists also produced an image of the saint tied to the same species of cactus” (Wake 2010:218). “Among the perversions Christian missionaries feared the Devil stamped in indigenous hearts, by far the most dangerous was the transmutation of the heart image from a spiritual, internal metaphor into an actual, external offering in the human sacrifices” (Domínguez Torres 2013: 91).

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Because the image of the sacred heart of Mary and of Jesus may appear to be a point of contradiction to this worry and a similarity to Aztec heart focus, the reader should know that veneration of the sacred hearts of Mary and Jesus gained popularity after the 16th century. The Heart of Mary devotion expressed through statues that present her heart exposed, sometimes with a crown of thorns, sometimes with seven swords for her sorrows, began in the 17th century in France followed still later by the Sacred Heart-ofJesus worship (Doeswyck 1962:146). “Alice Kehoe has proposed that there is good reason to believe that the heightened devotion to Christ’s physical heart in the Counter Reformation culture was an example of reverse cultural-influence, that is, that it travelled from Nahua Christians in America back to Europe” (Lara 2008:242). See also arrow, rock, soul, weeping

heaven. see cosmos, paradise hell. see cosmos, underworld. human sacrifice 15th-century Central Mexico: “Perhaps the most dramatic expression of the unique ethos of Middle America is the large-scale practice of human sacrifice” (Edmonson 1967:357–358). Human sacrifice was done in honor of the blood-sacrifice performed by the deities to bring about this world. However, it increasingly became the weapon of political terrorism. Children were sacrificed at four of the veintena ceremonies and adults in twelve of the eighteen feasts. Women dedicated to Xipe Totec were sacrificed and then flayed, infants and children were thrown into ravines from mountaintops during Tlaloc ceremonies, and many adults were decapitated. The greatest number of victims suffered heart extrusion during the feast of Panquetzaliztli for tribute to Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca. The victims were procured through the skills of warriors who captured enemy warriors in battles between royal families and returned them to Tenochtitlan. Other victims were procured through quotas of persons for sacrifice mandated by the rulers of Tenochtitlan from vassal territories. The sacrifices were performed by elite priests and nobility, not by minor administrators or by warriors. The offering of human blood and hearts brought honor to nobles, warriors, and traders (Harris 2000:71). Elizabeth Graham doubts that “sacrifice” was either the appropriate sentiment or term (Graham 2011) but was rather a term specifically chosen to build the missionaries’ case for idolatry. What we do know is (1) that to take a live opponent or touch an honored warrior in battle (“coup”) was the greatest sign of bravery and blessedness in native America, earning the victor war honors (economic and symbolic) and (2) that rebellion against the Mexica state was punished with death. Evidence that it was a religiously motivated sacrifice is found in the escalation of killings by the cihuacoatl Tlacaelel in an attempt to ward off the series of disasters experienced in Tenochtitlan in the mid-1400s. It would seem that his motivation was to propitiate Huitzilopochtli. David Carrasco makes a compelling case for the use of human sacrifice in order to maintain the

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cosmic and social order in the city of Tenochtitlan (see Carrasco 1999) contrary to Graham’s argument. 15th-century Spain: Biblical indication for the practice of human sacrifice was found in Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, foreshadowing the death and resurrection of Christ. Christian life was based on the hope for God’s grace, made possible by Christ’s sacrifice. Bleeding and sacrifice were implied in the wounds of Jesus and of most of the martyr saints – who “voluntarily” gave up their lives. The Catholic Mass is a reenactment of this human sacrifice, and the issue of transubstantiation asserted that the real presence of Christ in the mass meant “the body present on the altar for the sacrifice of the Mass and present for the communicant in the liturgy was substantially identical with the body born of the Virgin Mary and sacrificed on the cross” (Pelikan 1978:184). The question of sacrifice by other persons was always bound to the understanding of the Devil’s role in creation. While late medieval culture was theologically concerned with blood and the question of sacrifice in the Eucharist (the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ), 15th and 16th-century early modern Europe had no culture of personal, physical sacrifice (Bynum 2007). Bynum argues that physical deprivation as a mode of spiritual discipline and labor had been moved onto ascetics and mystics, although this would seem to overlook the rise of flagellant confraternities in 16th-century Spain. 16th-century New Spain: The defeat of the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan quickly put an end to human sacrifices in that city and the others occupied by Spaniards or baptized elites. Over the next decade, sacrificial ceremonies were ended in most of the rest of central Mexico – with little apparent protest by elites (Wake 2010:67). The gobernador of Cuauhtinchan, don Tomas Huitacapitzin, and two native priests were executed for practicing human sacrifice in 1532 (Townsend 2019:147). Sahagún and Acosta saw structural similarities in indigenous sacrifice, because however contested theologies of the Eucharist may have been, within the Catholic understanding of penance and works as well as the Old Testament precedents, sacrifice was necessary to please God. They and other Spanish colonial missionaries recognized sacrifice as essential to religion but also saw the practice in the New World as a grotesque distortion of a theology that had flourished in Europe for centuries (Ammon 2011). Jesuit José Acosta saw native human sacrifice as Satan’s “work” to be reformed through grace and nature into salvation for the Amerindians through the work of missionaries. In this way, Acosta followed Bernardino de Sahagún’s (e.g., 1950–1982:1:62–76) assessment that it was Satan who should bear the blame for human sacrifice rather than the Amerindians. Acosta addressed the sacrifice of children, specifically, and compared this to sacrifices from the Old Testament, specifically the “barbarous nations of the Chanaanites [sic] and Jebusites and the others written about in the Book of Wisdom” (Acosta 2002:292). He also referred to the sacrifice of King Moab’s son made by the king in view of the Israelites. It is possible that Acosta was invoking these “errors” and idolatries that had been practiced by the great empires of classical antiquity as well as by the Hebrews in order to put some perspective on the native practice that so horrified the Europeans (Burgaleta 1999).

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In spite of concern that the images of the crucifix would recall or perpetuate human sacrifice, “there is little evidence that the Indians filtered their reception of the crucifix through the lens of human sacrifice” (Hughes 2010:80). And it would not be surprising if we could trace the practice of native bloodletting as the stimulus for Spanish flagellant brotherhoods in this century. See also blood, bloodletting, calendar, communion, crucifix, deity embodiment, food, image/idol, moon, mountain, penance, relic, skull, warrior

*I

image/idol 15th-century Central Mexico: Mesoamericans believed that tonalli soul – life heat – was contained in likeness, name, clothing, paint, stone, hair, bark, skin, and bone. In the case of deities, the Aztec gods did “not exist ontologically, endowed with visual appearances and physical attributes . . . Rather, sacred power, mana, or teotl is called forth by the creation of a teixiptla” (Boone 1989:4), a container for the sacred power. These teixiptla came in three types: effigies made of stone, wood, or clay, which were fed, and dressed (Figure 41); a dough or amaranth image, which was “sacrificed and eaten by the people, to reenact the gods’ original sacrifice; and in the form of a person who was sacrificed and then eaten by the people” (Mursell n.d.b:1). These people were called by the god’s name, another expression of tonalli. Teixiptla were numerous and found in temples, courtyards, in exterior and interior walls of homes, on peculiar topographic features, at resting places, crossroads, fountains, and in forests and ports. “Near the large trees like the great cypresses or cedars they likewise had altars and sacrifices . . . in different sections of the towns . . . they had oratories in which there were idols [sic] of diverse forms and figures . . . in front of these they offered snakes and serpents, and before some of them they placed strings of snake tails” (Motolinía 1971: I:32). “It is a laughable matter that every province had its Idols and those of one province or city were of no use to the others, thus they had an infinite number of Idols” (Díaz del Castillo 1956:310). With each New Fire ceremony, the Mexica took the teixiptla from their homes and threw them into the lake (Boone 1994:102). Craftspeople expressed great reluctance in making teixiptla as the enterprise was fraught with spiritual danger. The effigy of Huitzilopochtli created for the feast of Panquetzaliztli consisted of amaranth dough mixed with honey or maguey syrup and human blood plastered on a mesquite wood structure, to form a large body of Huitzilopochtli. The image was next dressed and placed on a wooden bench or litter made of poles carved with serpent heads. This image was seated in his temple atop the Templo Mayor. Today, there are only five known images of Huitzilopochtli – all in stone or bone – probably because they were made with precious and edible items (Boone 1989). 15th-century Spain: The terms “idol” and “idolatry” are deeply embedded in Christian ideology; these terms are used to invoke the opposite of “true religion.” Idol in particular identifies religious expressions that do not conform to Christian doctrines and practices, demarcating an arena of unacceptable images, statues, beliefs, and rituals. Idolatry is giving the worship reserved for divine persons (the Trinity) to an object or image. Offering a sacrifice to a creature, such as the devil, was idolatry. In the history of western religions, “idols” are the representations of “false” divinity found in foreign religions, 191

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Figure 41 Priests bring bowls of human blood to pour over image of Mictlantecuhtli. Mid-16th-century Codex Magliabecchiano 88r.

while the home religion has “images.” Images were considered representations for the edification of the faithful rather than relics, which were receptacles of divine power. Perhaps confusing parishioners, images of Old Testament individuals as well as Greeks and Romans often appeared in Christian churches, as these men and a few women were exemplary thinkers and faithful followers. More ancient cultures did not fare so well. Broken Egyptian idols were often seen in Renaissance paintings and often placed into the walls of churches to remind the viewer that the devil was ever present and/or that Christianity had conquered paganism. The Renaissance rediscovery of antiquity was also present in the Church and cardinals “were the sixteenth century’s most enthusiastic patrons of pagan-themed interior decorations . . . Both the glorification and the criticism of antique gods was taking place” because there were no pagans remaining (Hamann 2008:816).

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Aquinas defined idolatry as the opposite of worship and distinguished between idolatry, or “the cult of false gods,” and superstition, which he saw as a part of Christian worship distorted by an inappropriate focus on prognostication. The root of idolatry either comes from humans, who willfully ignore or reject God, or the devil, who wants to lure people away from God (Tavárez 2011). Aquinas also held that images of Christ were due the same reverence and devotion as Christ himself, and further “seemed to confirm the miraculous abilities of some images in noting that ‘the blood preserved as relics in some churches did not flow from Christ’s side, but is said to have flowed from some maltreated image of Christ’” (Lipton 2009:272). Like the issue raised regarding images of non-Christians in churches, this conflation of the image of Christ with Christ’s real presence may also have been a challenging distinction for some of the laity. The differing opinions on the utility of images figured in the Great Schism in 1054, furthering the divide between the Roman West and the Greek East. Schisms also arose in Roman Catholicism: The practice of carrying images of Mary in procession was called an idolatry by the mystics known as Alumbrados, a group declared heretical in the 1525 Edict of Toledo. Spanish Reformers of the 15th and 16th century were insistent that images of the heavenly host were evil, which extended to artistic representation of the worship of the Eucharist. A distinction important to Catholics, veneration is not the same as worship, though it is not a thick line separating the two, and certainly does not readily appear that way from the outside. Veneration is the reverence due to significant humans who attained holiness in their lives. Veneration was the appropriate comportment for devotees of Mary and the saints. Pilgrims traveled hundreds of miles to light candles or say prayers in the presence of images or bodily remains of saints. Gothic cathedrals were filled with images of Christ, Mary, and saints, destinations for pilgrims seeking succor as well as explorers and conquistadors praying for divine support in their quests. Statues and reliquaries also made journeys themselves, in processions from one church to another, to be present at feasts, so others could venerate the saint. Some images inspired excessive emotions that discomfited clerics. Nonetheless, the Church encouraged and profited from these practices in various ways such as “writing prayers to recite before the images, by using prints to propagate pilgrimages, and by issuing indulgences for veneration of specific sculptures and paintings” (Lipton 2009:277). In this way, cultic devotions within the Church were actively encouraged. Protestant iconoclasm, fueled by the reformation fervor, began in 1533 with raids on northern European churches, saints’ relics, and shrines continuing through the century (e.g., Walsham 2005). Reformation critics occasionally recycled “shattered Catholic ‘idols’ into coinage, food, and firewood” (Hamann 2008:812). Sculptures were defaced, paintings marred, and images ferreted away. Wishing to protect relics and images, some dioceses sent these objects to Spanish dioceses, who sent some of them on to New Spain. 16th-century New Spain: The earliest images of Christianity in New Spain were simple wooden crosses, constructed and erected everywhere the Conquistadors passed a native shrine or won a victory, and the saddle virgins that the conquistadors carried, distributed, and buried. “Originally the colonial churches had few saint statues due to the friars’ early

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bias against them . . . [but when they] realized that ornamentation and statues attracted [Indians] to the churches, some began to encourage their use” (Early 2006:201). Perhaps what the Indians perceived was that the soul of the saint was in the image . . .– teixiptla once again – leading to claims of native misunderstanding. A paucity of conventional religious images in New Spain coupled with renewed Catholic fervor after “the Council of Trent explicitly reaffirmed the importance of saints’ images” (Hughes 2010:34) created something of a crisis for both Spaniards and missionaries. To deal with the lack of images, Friar Pedro de Gante added a department of arts to the curriculum at the San José de los Naturales school in Mexico City training both students and adults. “[T]here was little difficulty in training them to produce paintings and sculptures in the style of those brought from Spain and Flanders. Accomplished Indian artisans created chalices, crosses, candleholders and many other liturgical objects, . . . worked directly on the construction of churches and altars. Workshops were set up for carpenters, ironsmiths, wood carvers, tailors, shoemakers and other craftsmen” and embroidery (García Icazbalceta 1972:100). Images and equipment were also imported from Europe and the Philippines. In mid-century, a workshop in Patzcuaro, Michoacán was founded using native artisans – santeros – working with corn-pith paste that produced hundreds of lifesized crucifixes for at least forty years (Orozco 1970). But eventually even these industrious Christians were denied. Starting in 1590, sculpture by native artists, reused prequauhtemoc stone sculpture, and new Christian-themed but native produced sculpture was removed or defaced. Santeros were outlawed in an effort to protect the economy of Spanish workshops (Hughes 2010:36). The common Christian understanding of idolatry was that idols were transparent and a representation of a single entity (probably the devil), and that native beliefs would change when each of those cult objects had been destroyed. Eradicating idolatry was approached in several ways – by purges, by “ethnography,” by Christian education, and by punishment. Hamann argues iconoclasm as a “form of sacred violence in the Catholic tradition” that created opportunities for “reenacting and remembering the sacred destructions of past heroes,” such as Moses, Jesus, and the saints (Hamann 2020:175). At least three iconoclastic fevers affected New Spain in this century – 1525, 1555, and 1585–1590 – and ironically occurred simultaneously with the destruction of Catholic objects and churches by Protestants in northern Europe (Natives also purged their temples of Christian idols but these cases were rarely documented). Abruptly, on January 1, 1525 “the Franciscans drove the Indian priests from their sanctuaries in Texcoco, demolished the precincts, and launched their first systematic countrywide campaign to eradicate idolatry” (Gruzinski 1989:33). “[T]hey hid their idols beneath the cross, as at Cholula, or in the altars of the churches . . . whenever their idols were discovered and destroyed, they made new ones. The country, at least certain regions of it, was full of hidden idols and secret idolaters . . . led not only by the caciques, but by native priests” (Ricard 1966:269–270). During the trial of don Carlos Ometochtli (1539), the investigators tore down two small sacred buildings in Tetzcoco searching for and finding in “their exterior walls ‘certain figures of stone idols’, at least some of which were ‘broken’ . . . more than 50 god-images were taken from the ruins, including five statues of

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coiled serpents” (Hamann 2008:808). Between 1522 and 1547, fourteen cases appeared before the Holy Office charging idolatry but from 1548 to 1599 only four other cases were called. All told, at least twenty-four people were summoned, at least one a woman. Klor de Alva (1991) points out that, although Spaniards sold idols, none of them were arrested. A second purge was stimulated by the First Mexican Church Provincial Council of 1555. All religious images or images made inside churches produced by Indians and Spaniards up to that time were placed under censorship (except for embedded stones, which would remain in place until 1585). Many murals were painted over (Wake 2010). In the Third Mexican Church Provincial Council in 1585, idolatry still was seen by most missionaries as the greatest obstacle to authentic conversion to the Christian faith. Therefore, it was paramount that they continue destroying idols, native-produced Christian art, and artifacts, and eradicating ritual processions and practices. This Council banned popular festivals and the representations of animals, demons, and stars together with saints to prevent the faithful and “especially the old people suck in idolatry’” from venerating them (García de León 2006:45). Masonry idols would continue to be found inside churches in walls, platforms, altars, and bases of saint statues for many more decades (Wake 2010). Amaranth figurines of Huitzilopochtli and mountains were so persistent that “the Spaniards took the drastic step of forbidding the cultivation of amaranth . . . [but] Indians were still grinding amaranth and making tzoalli idols in the seventeenth century” (Boone 1989:36). The earlier purges of religious artwork and the second congregation program in the 1590s brought on a “hiatus in idolatrous [purges] until around 1604, [but] it soon became clear that the Indians who were congregated had brought their idols and superstitions with them to the villages and the churches” (Wake 2010:96). Images and carved stones with prequauhtemoc religious meaning were found in streets, on and in building walls, foundations, pillars, and roofs, and on churches but often went unnoticed until late in the 16th century (Wake 2010). The 1634 confessional manual of Fernando Alva Ixtlilxóchitl asked, “Are you guarding in your home [idols called] ‘turquoise children’ and ‘turquoise toads’? . . . Do you bring them out into the sun to warm them? Do you wrap them up in cotton, honoring them?” (Christensen 2013:180). Spanish religious thought idolatry to be caused by three main problems: “the improper worship of dear, departed ancestors; the human enjoyment of images and representations; and the ignorance of the true God” (Tavárez 2011:14) enflamed by Satan. Diego Durán was convinced that the Indians were inherently idolatrous and therefore should never be given communion (Nesvig 2006a:72). “Idolatry was considered ‘the cause, beginning, and end of all sins,’ since every known sin issued from its pursuit” (Tavárez 2011:14). In contrast to Durán’s conservative view of the possibility of true conversion in the natives, “Acosta saw idolatry merely as the result of a lack of religious development, where in the normal course of time idolatry would eventually be replaced by Christianity” (Boone 1989:67). As the opportunities for encountering Christian icons increased throughout Anahuac, the potential for idolatry expanded beyond the control of the friars. The idea of how to handle idolatry changed a great deal. Under Zumárraga, penalties such as “public shaming and corporal punishment, exile from one’s community, forced labor, financial

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penalties, and exclusion from elective public office” were used and continued to be a significant expression of colonial discipline and power over indigenous devotional practices (Tavárez 2011). But the indigenous perspective on the role of relics, bundles, images, and manifesting places such as caves, mountains, and springs was more nuanced and thereby continued to exist without necessarily drawing the attention of the Church authorities. By the end of the century, as evident in the few Inquisition cases, the Inquisitors were no longer so concerned with native idols. Instead, the prosecution of idolatry passed back into the hands of the clergy – the confessional became the place to confront idolatry. Lewdness was also classified as idolatry by Sahagún and others as revealed in so many of the 16th century trials. “[A]cts of social immorality and even political defiance often overrode accusations of non-Christian activities. Anything deemed offensive to Christian morals and the Spanish presence was defined as ‘idolatrous’” (Wake 2010:57). See also cross, crucifix, deity embodiment, human sacrifice, relic, sacred bundle, soul, vision

incense 15th-century Central Mexico: Incense was food for the gods. The preferred incense was (and still is) the resin of the copal tree. In the 4-year penance known as “Night Vigil,” priests made offerings of incense in each of the four directions six times each night, one night each veintena. Prayers and remembrance were punctuated with odiferous additions but smoke was also believed to be cleansing and a medium of transportation of those prayers. Its billowing clouds were “white gods” (Wake 2010). Singers before singing and judges before judging took a pinch of incense and tossed it into a fire (Clendinnen 1990:135 ftn 36). Elaborate ceramic and stone braziers were fashioned for temples. 15th-century Spain: Incense was (and is) common in Catholic rituals, where it cleanses the path of a procession and conveys prayers. A formula used by Moses (Exodus 30:34-36) had as its key ingredient a gum resin seasoned with salt (Miller and Miller 1944:204). One of the magi brought Frankincense to the baby Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew birth narrative. The fragrance of incense and myrrh “raises the senses to God” and was part of Christian rituals from earliest centuries (Kieckhefer 2004:98). The 14th-century Ritual of Rome adopted the French practice of incensing the altar. Censers – thuribles or censors suspended by chains – became popular after the introduction of Host-worship in the prior century and further led to the incensing of the altar and the clergy. 16th-century New Spain: In both cultures incense was used to convey prayers and to cleanse. Sahagún (1956:1:243) noted that “although the incense used in Europe occurred naturally in New Spain, the Indians almost always reverted back to the traditional copalli resin,” signaling that Nahuas assumed that the “Christian sacred could be attracted in the same way as the Indian sacred” (Wake 2010:68) and that the Christian God could recognize the smell of native incense. The use of copal may have been of no concern to the missionaries. Wake suggests it was viewed as “providential” to them and the billowing clouds that came from the wick were seen as angelic (2010:68). See also altar, prayer, procession, thorn, sweeping

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incorruptibility; see body: human, death insect 15th-century Central Mexico: Insects, songbirds, and infant creatures were beings from an earlier time, smaller by virtue of their great age. They were deities (e.g., Itzpapalotl) and culture heroes. Butterflies and other insects with phosphoric coloration were an important part of the symbol system (Hill 1992). In Nahua philosophy, the yolia soul could be seen leaving the corpse as an insect or bird. This is the soul that returns annually during the Days of the Dead (Furst 1995:34–39). Ants and bees played a number of roles in the creation story. Finally, the grasshopper was the form taken by the Mexica and various North American groups as they emerged into this world. Nahua commoners were called “workers” and in at least one case, a populous city was referred to, with the Nahuatl word for ant hill furthering the image of thousands of workers in the service of a king. Red and black ants were likened to the red and black ink of the codices (Wake 2010:39). As butterflies undergo death and resurrection, they were fitting icons for warriors who died on the battlefield or on the sacrificial stone. After four years accompanying the sun to zenith each morning, they were returned to earth as butterflies “who sip [the flower nectar] forever” (Boone 1994:52). Butterflies and moths appeared in a Teotihuacan mural of Tlalocan (see Figure 46) and elsewhere in that city, sometimes with the fangs of the jaguar. These butterfly-jaguars have been linked to warfare, and the butterfly image was known as a “firebird.” Firebird-adorned warrior-kings were depicted in the famous Atlantians at Tula. Beyond their role in delivering the divine food (and devouring it), insects also constituted Aztec food. The Aztec diet included spiders, worms, ticks, grasshoppers, and stink bugs. A plague of locusts struck the Basin in 1446 destroying the maize crop. Cochineal insects (Dactylopius coccus) were domesticated probably by farmers with small nopal cactus plots in the southern Puebla-northern Oaxaca region to improve quantity and intensity of their red dye. The colorant was used medicinally as well as in paint and ink. A second similar insect, Llaveia axin axin, was also bred for wax for cosmetics and for lacquer (Greenfield 2005). 15th-century Spain: There is a long history of the human soul being viewed as a butterfly in the Western world (Waida 2005). Butterflies and caterpillars are symbols of transformation, particularly that of Christ’s resurrection. A butterfly was sometimes painted in the hand of Jesus (Ferguson 1959). “The grasshopper when held by the Christ Child is a symbol of the conversion of nations to Christianity” (Ferguson 1959:17). Hoards of caterpillars and locusts were understood as a punishment by God (Powell 2009:60). Flies were bearers of evil or pestilence, a symbol of sin. They were placed in some pictures of Virgin and Child to represent sin and then redemption (Ferguson 1959). Ants in Christianity were a model of wisdom and industry. “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise” (Proverbs 6:6 NRSV). Solomon extolled their virtue in working tirelessly, as long as possible, each year.

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Only during famine – such as in Jerusalem in 70 CE – did Christians eat insects, rodents, or toads. “Eating such creatures was moreover a common feature of apocalyptic visions of the end of days, and it was widely believed that the devil himself could transform into repulsive insects” (Earle 2012:120). In fact, “devils in the forms of gnats and tiny insects were thought to be especially dangerous, since one might swallow them unawares and thus become diabolically possessed. The demon, liberated by the death and dissolution of the insect, was supposed to make a tenement of the unfortunate person’s stomach, producing gripes and playing ventriloquous [sic] tricks” (Evans 1906:86). To rid vineyards, orchards, fields, homes, and storage facilities of insect plagues, insects were summoned, tried, and sentenced in Medieval Europe. Occasionally, they were forewarned of their pending peril by repetitious processions of laity. Dozens of French and German cases in this century are annotated by Evans (1906). Plagues of insects – caterpillars, flies, locusts, leeches, snails, slugs, worms, weevils – were consistently explained as God’s wrath or the Devil’s deed, and their origin determined the sentence. If the Devil’s doing “they might be driven into the sea or banished to some arid region . . . [If God sent them as punishment] after they had fulfilled their mission, [they caused] them to withdraw from the cultivated fields and to assign them a spot, where they might live in comfort” (Evans 1906:5). 16th-century New Spain: People of both regions thought the soul could take the form of a butterfly. Both also attributed will and senescence to insects but this status elicited very different reactions from Spaniard and Mexica. Mesoamericans in the first generation of contact saw in insects the familiar souls of loved ones and creatures that played essential roles in creation. Spaniards understood them to be tools of God or Satan. The authors know of no cases of insect invasions treated with trials in New Spain, but a case in 1713 in Brazil against termites in a Franciscan monastery (Evans 1906) strongly suggests the practice would have been found in New Spain. Believing as they did that insects housed devilish spirits, the Spanish were appalled at the Indian diet, which included insects and lake scum. This was not food, not civilized, not Christian, and not normal. In some cases, after taking communion, Indians were admonished not to eat their disgusting food but to eat “good food,” meaning European food. Eating ticks was classified as a sin that required confession. This diet was also presented as grounds for enslavement (Earle 2012:121). The Catholic feasts of All Souls and All Saints, November 1 and 2, were used to collapse two veintena feasts that took place in August and September, the little and great feasts of the ancestors. Native persistence made November 1st into the modern Day of the Dead. Ironically, November 1st is precisely when the monarch butterflies begin appearing in Michoacán, bearing the yolia soul of the dead, and particularly those of sacrificed warriors and kings, back to the land of the living. The most economically significant insect in New Spain was the cochineal that yielded the brilliant red unknown to Europe before the conquest of New Spain. Natives of Tlaxcala supplied this dyestuff through Puebla markets in this century for the European market. “Cochineal red” exports increased from fewer than 50,000 pounds in 1557 to more than 150,000 pounds in 1574. Cochineal was sent to the Philippines by 1570. Since cochineal was a “crop” produced at home with native practices (Figure 42),

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Figure 42 Cochineal-infested nopal pads at a cochineal farm in San Bartolo Coyotepec, Oaxaca. (Photo by C. Claassen)

“cochineal villages were better able to preserve customs, language” (Greenfield 2005:99). But several town councils decried the bad ways of cochineal farmers saying that they worked on Sundays and feast days missing mass and that they bought and drank much pulque with their earnings. See also bee, bird, food, paradise, red, soul

*K

knot 15th-century Central Mexico: A “native slipknot, commonly depicted as a loincloth tie but also as an accouterment on the headdresses of rulers and deities” (Wake 2010:178) has an obscure meaning but the association with loincloth strongly suggests masculinity (Anawalt 1981:209). The cord of Malinalli represented “an intricately woven cord by which the cosmic forces circulated and which was associated with birth” (García de León 2006:42). In the Codex Vienna (p.15b), a male descends to a corn field holding a knot of grass onto which he pours powdered tobacco. Furst (1982) calls this a “votive knot” and points out offerings of grass knots in several other places in that Codex. In one scene birds are decapitated and blood drips onto the knots; in other places the earth monster and skulls are fed a knot of grass. Oxomoco, first woman and goddess of the night and keeper of the calendar, was a diviner. In the Florentine Codex she divines with a knotted cord. 15th-century Spain: In Christianity of this century and the next, knots symbolized poverty, chastity, and obedience (Giffords 2007:328). The monks tied knots in their sash cord for counting their “Our Fathers.” This practice became so popular that instead of pebbles, the laity would get a large rope and tie 150 knots in it. Every knot corresponded with one PaterNoster. This long rope was later shortened to one with 50 knots, which they used three times a day. It can be said that the first form of the Rosary appeared as the recitation of the 150 PaterNosters. (Rosa 2005:95)

Saint Francis’ habit and cord were emblematic of him and thus the Franciscan Order (Figure 30, see Figure 54) and are relics in the shrine where he died. Knots had an older deployment in magic. “To cope with the 7 demons, who were capable of working any harm from headache to impotence or death, it was deemed advisable to tie them up by 7 knots in a handkerchief, scarf, or girdle” (Hopper 1969:119–120). The spell of the knots chanted by sorceresses for love magic is recorded in Ortega (1991). “The Valencian sorceresses would take a ribbon touched by the man, and at the stroke of six, they would make nine knots, tying and untying them nine times; the woman would then wear the belt for nine days. Variations of the ‘spell of the knots’ with cloths or similar objects appeared in Castile and other areas” (Ortega 1991:83). Knots also have a long history of association with winds: untying knots unleashed wind and death – untying knots in the house released a dying soul from this world. Finally, a knotted cord was a popular tool of flagellants.

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16th-century New Spain: The native slipknot – similar to the European swag-knot – appears in early Christian murals, suggesting its use in the traditional fertility role. For instance, this knot is present on the horses’ reins painted in the Franciscans’ Virgin de los Remedios Church atop the Cholula pyramid probably because the horse is associated with virility in European thought of the time (Wake 2010:178). See also bloodletting, divination, relic

*L

landscape: urban and rural 15th-century Central Mexico: In song, the landscape came alive “visible in exquisite sung descriptions of flowers, grass in the wind, feathers on the water, drifting snowflakes, blue mist in the valley, butterflies over the pond, or the young deer against the dawn. The world that is sung is . . . the timeless Spirit Land” (Hill 1992:120). Animals, plants, and topographic features were integrated with the human body through body metaphors, pilgrimage, processions, human sacrifice, tribute, and agriculture. Furthermore, the landscape was minutely detailed in town names. The earth was created from the violent killing by Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca of Tlaltecuhtli, one of four earth goddesses, because she was ravenous. Springs flowed from her eyes (ojos de agua), from her mouth came rivers and huge caves, from her nose came mountain valleys, and from her shoulders arose mountains. The manifestation of power in particular landscape features such as ravines, springs, mountaintops, waterfalls, or caves created a close tie between people and the landscape they inhabited. Importance was accorded to each of the four cardinal and intercardinal points and the center, the place of temples, towns, and ego. As a result, landscapes were marked with unique religious cults, cults that were of little relevance to the people in the next province interacting with a different landscape. Manifesting places for the spirits linked to fertility, for instance, meant that fertility was a place-based concept (Claassen 2011, 2013), as was divination (Arnold 1999:202) and most other aspects of life and religion. Each landscape also had burials, temples, shrines, and battlegrounds that forged bonds with communities and families. Ravines provide one example of what constituted variable experiences with landscape features. “Barrancas are intrusions of unruly wilderness amid an otherwise civilized landscape. Their banks are laced with thickets and underbrush . . . the villagers believe that they harbor snakes and anthills. . . Ultimately, it is the phantasmagoric qualities of the barrancas that make them truly foreboding; they are asylums for miasma and monsters, passageways to the underworld” (Ingham 1986:103–104). The people living in the valley of Mexico were most significantly moving about in a landscape governed by Tlaloc, the living land of Tlalocan. Tlaloc lived on Mt. Tlaloc, an actual peak overlooking the basin of Mexico. Several veintena feasts called the priests and lords of cities in the Valley to various mountaintop shrines ringing the valley. Four of the feasts dedicated to Tlaloc or the mountains he commanded had ritual circuits throughout the valley. The boundaries between altepeme were not fixed, but rather fluid, oriented to an altepetl but also to the distant center to which an altepetl owed tribute. “Aparicio posited that the pre-Hispanic builders of the valley cities consciously connected . . . the urban network clustered around the lake – with visual axes that tied together the built 202

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environment and in turn connected urban dwellers to the sacred mountain peaks that surrounded the valley” (Mundy 2015:15). For instance, from the hill of Tetzcotzinco, one could see across the lakes, down the Tacuba causeway to the hill of Chapultepec, following the same line as the equinox sun (Mundy 2015:175). 15th-century Spain: Scholastic theologians and their descendants, such as the Dominicans and Jesuits, studied Nature as a way to know God and understand the mysteries of creation. The terrestrial sphere was full of potential for manifesting the forces of Heaven and Hell: landscape features where Mary might reveal herself; pestilences where a saint or God might reveal themselves; and pagan forests, waterfalls, and bewitched trees and animals revealing the presence of the Devil. The popularity of shrines and chapels in the countryside may be linked to the fervor surrounding the approved use of images beginning in the 12th century. Devotions that had previously centered on relics in parish churches could move out to strategic locations, which were sacralized by the images. This kind of referral to nature for sacred places is a slow, constant process, which continues today. Essentially, in Spain, it has been a Marian movement.The legend motif of the return of the image to the country site, rejecting the parish church, may be an echo or a metaphor for what was in some sense a liberation of devotion from parish control – or, put another way, the resistance of local religion to the growing claims of the Church. (Christian 1981b:91)

Nature, and the peace and solitude it offered, was where God could be experienced. For this reason, many devout men sought the hermit’s life or the cloister garden. Franciscans saw the turn away from nature brought on by urbanism and mercantilism in this century as a turn away from God as had their founder, St. Francis, centuries earlier (Arnold 1999:187). Therefore, when the peoples of the New World were discovered, theologians immediately saw in these people the ideal Christian: Natives would be better Christians than Europeans because of their more spiritual state derived from their close connection to nature. For the medieval Spaniard, the landscape was divided into the civilizing town and the wild forest (Early 2006). Catholics in Spain knew both a local sacred geography consisting of shrines and chapels in a landscape of trees, springs, mountains (see Figure 45), and grottos and an urban sacred geography of cathedrals and monasteries with their particular relic collections, images, and processian paths, together creating a “geography of grace” (Christian 1981b:152). Local religion was rooted in places: Special places for contacting the saints were known to all and each place was tended by professional groups dedicated to venerating the saint and preventing sacrilege there. Clendinnen (1987:241) adds that in 16th-century Spain local religion was closely tied to local landscape and to a sacred calendar with fastings, feasting, processions, offerings, and rituals that required and engaged the landscape and its products. The Virgin Mary was particularly the “saint” of the landscape whose cult was overwhelmingly situated in exterior, largely rural, places (Sumption 1975). “Local” was not generally, however, the focus of or reference point for the cloistered men and women of the Orders. The Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans) did have men moving about the landscape but with the message of Rome-approved doctrine – devoid of

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local landscape references. Dominicans also could be itinerant preachers but their order, the Augustinians, and the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) were much more library-, university-, and cloister-centered. The parish priests had the most interaction with landscape, but they were not the ones missionizing New Spain. 16th-century New Spain: At the same time as Spanish local religion was increasingly moving into nature with chapels and shrines, religious activities in New Spain were increasingly moving inside – inside fortress church compounds, inside missionarycreated settlements, inside churches, and inside hospitals and schools. In the first decades of missionizing, however, the new Christians managed to fuse their homage to the natural world with the Christian story. Elizabeth Wake (2010:73) said the Nahuatl rendition of the Garden of Eden in Tlaxcala in 1539 was far more beautiful with flowers, animals, meadows, streams, and mountains than any Biblical description. Fernández-Christlieb (2015:339) posits that “the Spanish concept that best encompasses the full meaning of altepetl is paisaje” in this century. This can be seen in Cortés’s comparison of Tlaxcala to Granada, Spain, “There was the same wild nakedness of the plain, the same silver flow of the river, the same blinding light on an almost Oriental landscape. And, like the Sierra Nevada, the Mexican cordillera stood out boldly against the turquoise-colored sky” (Descola 1970:173). Additionally, Cholula was called “a new Rome” by some friars but compared to Babel by Motolinía. But while there were some surface similarities, most of this new world did not seem familiar. Graham (2011:16) points out that the Spaniards quickly began “to refashion the neotropical world in the image of temperate and Mediterranean Europe, a trend which continues to the present.” Mundy (2015:194) adds that to the conquistadores, “Tenochtitlan, a lacustrine city built to embrace the water, was entirely foreign . . . Spaniards . . . attempted to re-create their dry homeland there. By mid-century, the first of many projects to dry up the city had been proposed.” One plan forwarded in 1537 by Mendoza was to drain the lagoon and fill it and the canals. Spaniards found many ways to inscribe the Mexican landscape with their religious worldview, particularly by civilizing it with their idea of urbanization. “The town represented Christianity, civilization and indeed all that was human life, in contrast with the forest, where wild beasts lurked and man risked being overwhelmed morally as well as physically . . . Christianity could prevail only if the Indians were all gathered together under the watchful eye of their pastors” (Early 2006:136). Congregating the Indians into a few existing native cities or into newly founded, more convenient (for the missionary) settlements was actively pursued by the Franciscans. The settlement system consisted of towns (residencias/doctrinas) with monasteries and patron saints; smaller towns (vistas) with a church and patron, but with a priest only on Sundays; many small ranchos outside of Spanish reach; and isolated native communities. Due to the high percentage of deaths through the first five decades, a second congregation program relocated remnant town populations yet again. Towns were divided into four or more wards each typically populated by a single lineage with its church and patron (Early 2006:136). It was also the case that the Spanish used natives, particularly their closest allies the Tlaxcaltecas, to form pacification settlements in areas beyond Anahuac – in Nueva Galicia, the Yucatan, Honduras, and Guatemala, even the Philippines.

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Establishing boundaries between towns was of utmost concern to the Spanish, ostensibly to protect the Indians from trespassers but certainly to establish tribute and labor obligations to encomenderos. Fixed boundaries were “one of the ways in which indigenous land also became ‘territory’ as Europeans understood it” (Fernández-Christlieb 2015:341). Vasco de Quiroga, Bishop of Michoacán, deeply influenced by Thomas More’s Utopia, dedicated himself to creating the first “república de los Indios” in Santa Fe de la Laguna, Michoacán. The goal of this agriculturally self-sufficient, sustainable community with its goats, sheep, corn, and wheat fields was to provide the indigenous with a space to reshape their behavior into model Christians, free of any negative influence from Europeans (Green 2004:171, Verástique 2000:124). Quiroga allowed few Spaniards to visit his utopian hospital, Santa Fe de la Laguna. This first New World utopian experiment was an elaboration on the existing Aztec communal model of several calpulli in each town that Quiroga equated to confraternities. Calpulli “united various families to work for common goals and interests” (Green 2004:171). Quiroga also advocated for the construction of a road between Mexico City and Veracruz, passing through Puebla for trade and pilgrimage. That pilgrimage road led to Puebla, the New Jerusalem. Puebla de los Ángeles (“Angelopolis”) was founded in 1533, as a deliberately and carefully planned replica of Jerusalem. All cities and towns founded by the Spanish had “calvarios” or mountaintop chapels replicating the Calvary hill outside of Jerusalem. Erecting these hillside chapels was one of the first tasks the friars undertook, in order to mark the via sacra of each city, but in Puebla the via dolorosa, or a recreation of Christ’s last journey through the city on the way to Calvary, was assiduously mapped. This meant that the Holy Week and Easter rituals could be ritually enacted through the landscape of Puebla (Lara 2004). Cityscapes of Jerusalem were also found in the background of some images in the Florentine Codex (Arnold 1999:197–198). The transplanted Catholics acknowledged some landscape referents in their reuse of native temple sites for churches; the use of caves and rock shelters as hermitages; the repeat of quadrilateral safe space in the rectangular church yard; and posas put at cardinal points in church enclosures. Yet landscape and nature as known to the Amerindians was anathema to the Spanish, rancher and priest alike. Probably because the missionaries were hoping to create a Catholic religion free from pagan influences and the corruption attending shrines and hermitages in Iberia and because they themselves had lived in secluded monasteries rather than out in parishes, the early missionaries in New Spain had little regard for Aztec landscape beliefs and ritual practices, conceptions that permeated religion: ball courts as canyon, volcanoes as fireboxes, mountains as pyramids, and the mountain cults, shrines on peaks, at springs, waterfalls, sinkholes, and trees. In Spain, these same topographic features were often the site of Marian shrines but they were quickly eradicated in New Spain (giant trees were cut down, springs were harnessed or covered, mountains were demoted, etc). Instead, the friars put native places of importance into Christian Hell or Purgatory; toppled pyramids, shrines, and images; and blended all distinctive manifesting places into a single concept using the cross, Mary, or Jesus that directed the native’s focus heavenward, away from the land.

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Town names in particular show us this difference. Aztec town names were nearly always descriptive of the immediate landscape setting but new Catholic patron names took the point of reference from this world to the Celestial World. For example, Amatlan, a town in Veracruz meaning “abundant fig trees” became Amatlan de los Reyes, “of the [Spanish] kings,” and Atzompa, “abundant mud,” became “Soledad” (all translations by Montemayor 2007). Exceptions noted by the senior author in Guerrero and Morelos are an interesting correlation between ancient water shrines or natural water features and the assigned patronage of San Miguel, apparently because it was the custom in Europe to assign dramatic landscape features to his patronage. Otherwise, at this point, it seems that the newly named landscape was unhinged from topographic reference. Clendinnen (1987) thinks that much of the Franciscan assessment of Indian Catholicism at the end of the century – as something of a failure – reflects a native-based local religious practice that contrasted sharply with the friars’ academic practices and cloistered experiences (244). The Franciscans, attempting to convert the native cosmology into that of the Christian, imposed their understanding of “nature” and the “natural.” “In post-Columbian depictions, the relational quality of the landscape was discarded for a near-photographic image of objects as discrete, and therefore transparent, autonomous realities” (Arnold 1999:203). Through the imposition of cartography and geometry, “landscape was transformed into an abstraction [and] catalogued on paper” (Arnold 1999:203). It was the early Franciscans’ concern with Jerusalem that Arnold thinks did the greatest damage to native concepts of landscape. Biblical Jerusalem was an abstraction in New Spain, and its implementation did not draw from local landscape features, beyond a spring or a river. The Mexican landscape was quickly colonized by European plants, animals, and artistic systems. Cortés ordered that those Spaniards with European plants and seeds should plant them and the Audiencia officials wrote Carlos V requesting that no ship should leave Seville for Veracruz without bringing Spanish plants and seeds to the colony (Green 2004). The introduction of livestock changed some parts of Central Mexico rather radically. Livestock required walls, fences, railings, enclosures, and grassland where there had been forests, agricultural fields, and swamps. Some Spaniards failed to build or maintain fences, allowing the herbivores to trample and graze subsistence crops (Fernández-Christlieb 2015). The questionnaire Felipe II sent to all New Spain communities in the 1570s generated a wealth of underutilized data. These Relaciones Geográficas have been reproduced by Acuña in a multivolume Spanish language set (e.g., 1982). See also cave, flower, mother/Mary, mountain, naming, paradise, religious architecture, shrine, spring, theater, thorn, vision

laziness 15th-century Central Mexico: Parents instructed their children, “Be not lazy, be not slothful” (Boone 1994:61). For the sins of vice and idleness, children could be held over the smoke from burning chilies. 15th-century Spain: Aquinas wrote that sloth was not a specific sin but the result of the weight of sin. It manifests in weariness; in the unwillingness to do what is necessary to

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further God’s kingdom on earth. Nevertheless, sloth is listed in various interpretations as one of the seven cardinal sins. 16th-century New Spain: The 6th Commandment, not to commit adultery, was translated in various ways but most friars greatly broadened the mandate using the Nahuatl word meaning “to go about playing, wasting time, or to live pleasurably” (Christensen 2013:105). The religious were determined to eliminate free times for the converts, fearing their idleness would lead to relapse into pagan dance, song, idolatry, and feasts. To fill the neophyte’s time many missionaries offered technical instruction in trades to commoner children, occupying the time of elite boys in learning doctrine and languages (Ricard 1966:212–213), and kept all Christians attending mass, lessons, observing the eight prayer times, and mandatory fasts and feasts. They supported the encomienda system and mining enterprises for this same reason. See also day, deer, morals, purity, religious instruction, sin

*M

marriage 15th-century Central Mexico: Lifetime heterosexual unions were part of Aztec culture. Marriage to more than one wife was permissible and concubines had a recognized social status (Cline 1993). Divorce and remarriage were acceptable practices. Marriage occurred through a ceremony held by the two families involving the tying of a knot. The wedding was followed by a feast. A Purépecha man marrying for a second time was to cut and carry firewood for four days to a temple while the new wife swept road and house to petition for a successful marriage (Anawalt 1981). The nobility engaged in polygamy as multiple wives were an economic boon to a noble man and household as well as to one’s political place. Xicotencatl of Tlaxcala had at least ninety wives (Herrera 2007). Moteuczoma II had a separate palace for his many wives and children, two of whom (Tezalco and Acatlan, both of Toltec descent) were the official wives (LaFaye 1987). The primary wife of a tlatoani came from the family of the most important ally, the second-ranked wife from a lesser ally, and third-ranked wives from tribute of conquered towns (Read 2005:66 ftn 44). Camilla Townsend (2019) attributes much of the Aztecs’ warfare and bloodshed to elite polygyny and its creation of rival half -brothers, each heading his own altepetl and each desiring to ascend to regional power. 15th–16th-century Spain: Marriage was a minor sacrament in the Old Testament and was not a sacrament attributed to the gospels or Jesus. Jesus was not married and his (presumed) celibate life was one that many Christians sought to imitate in monasteries, convents, and hermitages. Marriage became a sacrament in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council and was affirmed by the Council of Trent’s official statements on the seven sacraments. Christian marriage was considered indissoluble. Castilian law, encapsulated in the Siete Partidas of Alfonso X, gave women greater rights in marriage than did other European governments. For example, Castilian judges were prevented from marrying a girl against her will and consequently ruled in favor of “love” more than in other countries (Powers 2005:116), although choice of spouse among elite women was rare. Women’s property before and during marriage was recorded. Marriage took away from women the right to accuse anyone of a crime and if she remarried after becoming a widow, the law gave legal custody of the children to a male relative (Purvis 2013). To protect the sanctity of marriage, separations and annulments were offered to unhappy couples. Via the Siete Partidas, the Castilian Queen Isabella transferred to the Hispanic colonies these more liberal marriage laws and customs. Before the Council of Trent’s official sacramentalizing of marriage, getting married could consist of a simple verbal agreement between a consenting man and woman in

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front of witnesses, particularly in places where priests were scarce. The posting of an announcement of intent to marry was considered “marriage” until such time as a priest could perform the ceremony. Since sex often occurred on making the agreement and the men then abandoned the agreement, the Council of Trent adopted more formal rules for marriage. Betrothal occurred when a verbal agreement was reached and dowry arrangements began, followed by the reading of banns attesting why a couple should not marry, then “the church wedding,” and finally, sexual consummation (Powers 2005). 16th-century New Spain: In the time-honored practice of political marriage, Spaniards often married women caciques of the Caribbean and New Spain. The high proportion of ethnic intermarriage in the conquest decades was “the influence of both the Catholic church and probably, the centuries-long traditions of convivencia and intermarriage in Spain itself . . . [W]hile canonical law considered different religions to be an obstacle to marriage, it did not consider race an obstacle as long as both parties were Catholic” (Deagan 2003:8). Queen Isabella, for example, instructed the governor of Santo Domingo in 1503 to see to it that “some Christians marry some Indian women and some Christian women marry some Indian men, so that both parties can communicate and teach each other, and the Indians become men and women of reason” (Deagan 2003:8). Menendez de Aviles, from Asturias, Spain and founder of St. Augustine, Florida, was married in 1565 to the sister of Calusa chief Carlos, in spite of having a legal Spanish wife. Marriages between Spaniards and non-elite native women were often contracted in order to secure cooking and house cleaning. “The 1514 repartimiento count on Hispaniola indicates that . . . sixty-four of the 171 married men in Santo Domingo were married to Indian women . . . In general, however, such marriages appear not to have been the alliances preferred by the Spaniards” (Deagan 1985:305–306). No one could be married until able to pass the doctrinal exam (Early 2006:140). Additional questions that the candidates for marriage had to answer were (1) were they both baptized and confirmed, (2) if one party was out of district had the priest there been informed, (3) the legality of the proposed pair regarding ages, slave status, if they were related, and whether married before, and (4) were they acting out of free will. Several voices complained about the abuse of the system as some couples married and separated and remarried at will, easily duping the overworked friars or finding that the friars did not care (Braden 1930:245). In the first decades of missionization in New Spain, marriage was required of all Indians who lived with an opposite sex partner before baptism “which came up against the immense obstacle of polygamy” (Ricard 1966:110). The question arose of whether there was “natural marriage” among pagans, meaning “mutual consent and the intention of accepting marriage for life” (Ricard 1966:113). If present, then in cases of multiple wives, the first marriage should be the wife remaining with the converted man. The Mexican Church Junta of 1524 decided to allow native elite men a choice of which wife to marry.

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Demonstrating the gap between official Catholic policy and the lived experience, the first Christian marriage between natives took place in Tetzcoco in 1526, in spite of the doctrinal exam requirement. Reports in 1540 were that one priest visited the town of Santa Ana and found . . . two hundred couples to marry . . . a week later in Santa Ana, four hundred more couples were married. In Zumpanzingo, people came from a league around and four hundred and fifty couples were married . . . [O]n a journey of the priests in Tecoac . . . one hundred pairs were married. In one day, in another place, as many as six hundred pairs were joined. In Tlaxcala as many as one thousand pairs were wedded on a single day (Braden 1930:239–240).

In order to prevent premarital sex, the missionaries encouraged earlier marriage than was customary (Burkhart 2001a:24). The Morelos Census indicates that official decrees about polygamy were ineffectual and many natives were still living with multiple wives, some baptized and others not, and having concubines (Cline 1993). Eliminating polygamy was accomplished unevenly. “It is noteworthy that the 1530 royal decree allowed unbaptized Indians to follow their traditional [marriage] patterns, but by 1551 the rule applied to all Indians regardless of baptismal status” (Cline 1993:476). In a letter to Pope Paul III in the mid-1530s, Julián Garcés the Bishop of Tlaxcala wrote “it had seemed most unlikely to us that they would submit to the order of the bishops and put aside their concubines, on the contrary they got rid of the numerous wives they had had while they were pagans – indeed, they were so cheerful about it that it had the look of a miracle” (Ricard 1966:110). Elsewhere, the natives were resistant. At a bishops’ council held in 1534, “the Augustinians made it a rule to impose monogamy upon the Indians before baptizing them” but met with continued resistance (Ricard 1966:112). In Franciscan missions it was said that the natives voluntarily took up monogamy after 1531. After the Council of Trent, large numbers of Spanish men who had failed to complete the marriage agreement were arrested in Mexico, held without bail, and tried for having broken the marriage promises after consummating their relationship. Punishments were typically a choice between marriage (often conducted in secret to protect the honor of the girl’s family) and hard labor. Some women successfully sued for the loss of virginity (Powers 2005:116). The insistence on marriage given by the missionaries prior to baptism seems to have had an immediate result of low illegitimacy but probably had no impact on the birth rate in the early decades given the young age for girls in wedlock. In two villages in Morelos in the 1530s – Huizillan and Quauahchichinollan – the average age for girls to cohabit with a male partner was 12.7 years and all girls were wed by age 25, contributing to an extremely low illegitimacy rate of under 5 percent (McCaa 1996). As the century progressed, marriage ages increased, which shortened the number of child-bearing years. Many indigenous were reluctant to give up their marriage rituals and often practiced parallel rites. As a result, the friars’ emphasis on Christian marriage was intimately connected with the emphasis on eradicating idolatry. Lisa Sousa argues that indigenous peoples “adapted Christian nuptials to their own local traditions and beliefs,” making marriage in the colonial period a site of new practices, conflict, accommodation, and compromise (Sousa 2017:83). See also adultery, baptism, birth, celibacy, communion, divorce, fertility

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mary. see mother medicine. see healing monastery. see religious architecture moon 15th-century Central Mexico: Brotherston (2005:11) believed that the Mexica began their history using moon counts, shown as the seven caves (Figure 26). In this image, twelve ancestors or moons are located above and nine ancestors or moons are located below, symbolizing the twelve moons of the lunar year and the nine moons of pregnancy. The moon was known as the feminine sun, the weaker sun. As fertility goddesses (related to the fecundity of rabbits and plants), all earth mother goddesses had lunar associations. These goddesses are often shown headless, a reference to the sun eclipsing the moon (Boyd 2016). Attention to lunar cycles was key to predicting eclipses, viewed as an extremely dangerous phenomenon. The moon had paired deities, Coyolxauhqui, sister of Huitzilopochtli, whose decapitated head became the moon, and Tecciztecatl, who sacrificed himself at Teotihuacan and rose as a second sun. In order to dull his heat and brightness, another god hit him with a rabbit. Native peoples throughout North America saw a rabbit on the moon and believed that the excrement of the moon was the metal silver. It was inside the earth’s body each night that the sun and moon copulated to produce the new sun for the morrow. Under the moon’s light plants grew, helped by the baying of dogs. Hair also grew at night. The moon”was seen as a container full of liquid, emptying itself – and spilling out light and rain (‘tears’) onto the earth - in the rainy season, full and bright in the dry season” (Mursell n.d.c:1). The ball court, according to Seler, was identified with the moon (Seler 1991–1997), as would have been the decapitated players. 15th-century Spain: Moon and Sun are typically included in images of the crucifixion, recalling “the time of the crucifixion when the skies darkened and the stars and moon could be seen” (Giffords 1974:37); the full moon “became as blood” (NRSV Revelation 16:13). The Virgin Mary standing on the crescent moon was derived from the Apocalyptic Woman in Revelation, imagery appearing from the 10th century onward (Stratton 1994:19), and was a symbol of the Immaculate Conception in the 16th century (Giffords 1974:52) as well as the triumph of Mary over paganism (Giffords 1974:72). Text from the Song of Solomon, extensively used in Marian veneration, made reference to her as the Moon (Burkhart 2001a), although she was also likened to the Morning Star, and shown with Sun symbolism. Mary Magdalene was also associated with the moon. The moon was thought to influence the weather, conception, and growth of everything from vegetation to humans. Different phases of the moon were considered significant for different activities, such as harvesting during a waning moon and sowing during the waxing phase (Thomas 1971). The position of the moon was given as an explanation for plagues (Earle 2012:35). 16th-century New Spain: Both regions shared a belief that the moon influenced plant and human growth and that the feminine was associated with the moon and nighttime.

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Mary was shown on a moon in a Christian Nahuatl text in 1607 “stomping on earthly foul delights” (Burkhart 2001a:111). That crescent moon under Mary, however, was to point down by order of the Council of Trent in 1563 but often was painted with moon tips up, “held variously to symbolize Diana, Goddess of the Hunt (signifying Mary’s triumph over paganism) or the Muslim Turks (signifying her divine intervention in defeating the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto)” (Giffords 2007:367). European man-in-the-moon images are found throughout the fortress church of Metztitlan, formerly the site of a Moon deity (Perry 1992). In this century in Mexico City, rain was solicited with processions and prayers to the Virgin de los Remedios, who is standing on a crescent moon (tips up). Burkhart (1986) sees this as a lunar alignment for this Virgin as the moon had cool and wet associations. See also astrology, astronomy, conception, drunkenness, mother/Mary, star, sun

morals 15th-century Central Mexico: Parents and schools gave moral instruction to Mexica youths. A moral life consisted of honoring gods and their images; serving them; praying devoutly before them; attending feasts; revering elders always passing behind them; honoring and serving parents, living in peace; avoiding bad company; never making sport of the old, the sick, the maimed, or the guilty; not poisoning anyone; not harming or intruding; not being an evil example or interrupting; replying properly and truthfully; not gossiping; not loitering, dressing well; keepings one’s eyes quiet (downcast); not touching others; telling your parents before marrying; not committing adultery; not murmuring or complaining; offending no one; and avoiding pride (Braden 1930). The person who lived such a life “lighted the path” for others to follow (Burkhart 1988:238). Children were warned not to go bounding about the countryside like the rabbit or the deer (Burkhart 1986). 15th-century Spain: Morals were considered the hallmark of a rational being, one of the qualities that separated humans from other orders of creatures. The moral code for the Christian could be found in the Ten Commandments, and the Old and New Testaments, particularly in the information about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. Morality was also exemplified in stories of the saints’ lives and deaths and in various council-approved creeds. The moral person conformed to these divine strictures, and sin resulted from failure to conform. Closely related to ethics, morals were the foundation that underpinned the ideas of virtue, justice, duty, and conscience. Fulfilling commitments and promises was expected of leaders in the Church and in government. Yet, morality, says Braden (1930), was hardly the chief characteristic of Catholic parishioners or clergy. Amoral behaviors were continually the subject of Church Inquisitions and edicts, addressing usury to concubinage to solicitation of sex from the confessional to false miracles and heresies. In the 4th century, an Iberian poet, Prudentius, published the poem Psychomachia (Battle for the Soul). The influential poem describes the soul’s struggle with vices in an attempt to cultivate virtues. There are “seven corresponding virtues: humility versus

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pride, patience versus anger, chastity versus lust, liberality versus greed, kindness versus envy, abstinence versus gluttony, and diligence versus sloth” (Taylor 2003:180). 16th-century New Spain: Las Casas and Acosta maintained that New World indigenous people had morals and customs equivalent to the Greeks and Romans that should be respected, except when those customs violated Christian doctrine (Ammon 2011). Several of the elements in the Aztec moral code were those among the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule: respecting the wife of someone, avoiding sloth, honoring and serving parents, avoiding pride. “One of the friars [Father Olmos?] had the substance of the [Mixtec parental] teachings translated for him . . . Then, without a single change, except to . . . substitute for the name of the pagan gods that of the Christian God, he gave it to the Indians for instruction in Christian morality” (Braden 1930:254). As the defeat in 1521 rendered all natives subjects of Spain, the Crown became morally obligated to protect and instruct the indigenous. This responsibility then forced Spaniards to (at least) debate slavery, the encomienda, and upholding religious instruction obligations for the natives as new Christians/subjects. In spite of the presence and power of the Catholic church in the lives of Peninsulares (those from Iberia), the missionaries judged their countrymen to be largely amoral, so they created Indian republics with strictures against contact between Indian and Spaniard and did not teach the natives Spanish until late in this century. Non-natives could sleep no more than three nights in a native republic. Drunkenness and lying increased among natives as a result of bad Spanish influences in the opinion of many writers. Given that the native judges and punishments were no longer in place, litigation was frequently resorted to after 1521. See also adultery, celibacy, children, cosmos, deer, drunkenness, laziness, mother/ Mary, penance, religious instruction, sex, sin, slave, sodomy, sun, underworld, virginity

morning star. see venus mother/mary 15th-century Central Mexico: Deities who were also mothers were not necessarily considered exemplars for human mothers, although honoring mothers was expected of all Aztec children and had been modeled by Huitzilopochtli, who defended his mother from the murderous plan of her other children. The images of a nursing mother were found throughout the Aztec world, particularly in the pulque cult, which was associated with divine motherhood. The goddess Mayahuel, associated with the maguey plant, had four hundred breasts. “In the codices we often see her – together with other deities of the earth-mother group – suckling a child, an image not far removed from the Virgo lactans [nursing Mary] of European origin” (Wake 2010:210). The same could be said for Xochiquetzal, another of the many goddess mothers in the Mexica pantheon. She was both a creator of humans and a mediator between humans and the divine (Miller and Taube 1993). “Nahuas used parental metaphors that had political meanings to describe the beings that they believed protected their sedentary

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communities [and homes]” (Osowski 2006:177). Tonantzin (Our Holy Mother) and Tonan (Our Mother) were reverent forms of address used for the earth and all earth mother goddesses (Kroger and Granziera 2012). 15th–16th-century Spain: In the Old Testament, God is frequently referred to as mother to the Israelites (Isaiah 49:1 and others), and the wisdom of God, the Shekinah, is a feminine principle who is the mother of love, fear, knowledge, and hope (Ecclesiastes 22:24–26). Maternal imagery for God stresses his creative power and his love. In the canonical New Testament, female imagery for God is absent, but in the gnostic and apocryphal gospels as well as church fathers from Clement to Augustine, Jesus is described as “Mother.” Jesus as Mother, while prevalent with mystics and in some theological contexts, was not necessarily present in popular Christianity (Bynum 1982). There were basic paradigms for motherhood in medieval Christianity: mothers are “generative” and “sacrificial,” often giving their life during childbirth; mothers are “loving and tender”; and mothers are “nurturing,” generating and feeding children with their own bodies (Bynum 1982:131). A mother’s love is instinctive and parallel to God’s love. Mary’s body generated the holy infant. The incorporation of Anne (Mary’s mother, also blessed by God with a sexless, Immaculate Conception) into the holy family only added to the idealism of motherhood and faithful femininity found in these two holy female role-models. Both mothers – Anne and Mary – were surprised but willing participants in the divine plan. Whereas Anne gave her daughter to the temple at age 3, Mary was seemingly ever near Jesus. Attentive to the infant, she was believed to have covered his naked body on the cross and, after the 12th century, to have kept vigil at his feet during his death as the Virgin of Sorrows or Dolorosa (Rubin 2009b). Mary exemplified moral behavior, keeping family ties, presenting the baby Jesus at the temple at the customary time, going with her husband and son to fulfill government dictates, fleeing with her family when danger arose, and keeping the Jewish covenant with God. “Her role as mother takes precedence over any of the other roles assigned to her in devotion and in dogma” (Pelikan 1998:1). Her obedience to God and Joaquin’s faith were the exemplars of the devoted Christian family order – paternal authority, female submission, and maternal nurture. God, saints, and fathers were associated with discipline, authority, and decision, meting out punishments such as plague and infertility. Unlike them, Mary, as the perfect mother, never punished, but only assisted in her role as mediator between humans and her son, and for this reason her popularity as an intercessor was unrivaled in these centuries. Images of the Virgo Lactans – Mary breastfeeding the infant Jesus (Figure 43) – can be found in Christian art from as early as the 2nd century. In Spain, La Virgen de la Leche was quite popular. The Council of Trent, however, censored nudity in images of saints and holy family, emphasizing instead the purity of the Immaculate Conception over Mary the ideal mother (Black 2002). A central feast dedicated to Mary celebrated her bodily assumption into heaven at the end of her life (it is not doctrinally clear that she experienced physical death before ascending), paralleling Jesus’ own ascension 40 days after his resurrection. Mary’s body

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Figure 43 Virgin de los Remedios as Virgo lactans in Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See, Seville, Spain.

was raised into heaven preserved from corruption by being the flesh of Jesus’ flesh; she was believed to be dwelling with God and Christ in the highest level of Heaven (Fulton 2009). The earliest artistic representation of this event is from a cave in Spain dated to the 4th century (Zirpolo 2010). For many Catholics, Mary’s Assumption into heaven, her close proximity to God, and her role as Jesus’ mother suffering at the foot of the cross legitimize her role as co-redeemer in human salvation (see Martínez 2010). 16th-century New Spain: Both native and Spanish motherhood were closely orchestrated and watched by missionaries. Missionaries chose the wives for those boys living at convent schools, and they saw to it that native girls were married earlier than Aztec custom to prevent pre-marital sex and illegitimate births. Missions and confraternities established and maintained homes for orphans, unwed mothers, and prostitutes in an effort to control motherhood. Missionaries also railed against midwives and their medicines. Burkhart (2001a) points out that Catholic doctrine of Mary’s ascension was an inversion of Nahua doctrine about which women ascended to the sky. Where Mary, who had a painless and bloodless birth, ascended to heaven for it, the Cihuateteo women had had bloody and pain-filled deaths during birth, for which they were rewarded with a place in the western sky and a task of accompanying the sun in the afternoon until setting in the west. The Virgin of Guadalupe stands as the quintessential motherly image in Mexico. She appeared at a shrine to Tonatzin in 1531 telling Juan Diego, the newly baptized native, that she was his “mother.” (The date of 1531, Juan Diego the visionary, and the apparition itself are highly contested.) Her cult was elaborated by seculars in the later half of this century

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and adopted by natives in the next century (Poole 2006). Was this vision an indigenous creation or a Catholic creation? In the 15th century, nature was the primary setting for encountering Mary in Iberia with some 177 cases (Christian 1981a). The impulse of the Spanish priests to transplant the veneration of a beloved Spanish Señora and move it outside of the Church compound seems perfectly suited to the situation at hand in New Spain. In the missionizing practices of the 1530s, which were strongly focused on the creation of mission compounds – bringing religious practice indoors – and doctrinal teaching, it seems highly unlikely that natives would have started a cult to Mary that was outside of the church compound or congregated town. An exterior shrine was a strategy very familiar to secular Spanish parish priests, however, suggesting a Spanish and secular (rather than Order) origin. Mary was visible also as Antigua/Remedios/La Conquistadora, guarding and protecting her spaces (Figure 43). As she was in Spain, Mary was the premiere symbol of the transformation of pagan space in New Spain. Motolinía, writing to Carlos V in 1555, related that “when the idols had been destroyed Cortés put there an image of our Lady” [Remensnyder 2000:208]. During the Noche Triste, native warriors tried to remove the Remedios image from the Templo Mayor but she would not be moved, demonstrating her will and power to conquer the space (Curcio-Nagy 2000). As places were claimed and repurposed for Christianity, images of the Virgin were placed on altars, and native shrines were encapsulated into Christian churches dedicated to one devotion of Mary or another. Throughout the next two centuries the Virgin Mary would come to be equated with or replace the pulque cult and the goddess Mayahuel (Clendinnen 1990:128), as well as Toci, the creator goddess, and Tonatzin, the earth goddess. Visions of her abounded. See also apocalypse, birth, conception, fertility, virginity, vision

mountain 15th-century Central Mexico: Mountains were fundamental referents in Mesoamerican religion as birth places, death places, and homes of deities, as the origins of rivers, and as birth places for ethnic groups (López Austin 2015:57–58). They were minor male and female deities, all paying homage to Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue the dual deities over water (see Introduction). Tlaloc commanded mountain gods to make clouds from which came celestial water. Tlalocan, inside Mt. Tlaloc, was a storehouse of all sustenance – grains and animals – humans needed. Mountain caves became the homes of bad and good aires and other spirits. Significant mountains were linked through visual alignments to temples and villages (Wake 2010) and marked off the quadrilateral safe space within which an ethnic group was located. Mountain gods were ranked, from senior to junior, with community founders and important ritual specialists buried in the senior mountain’s cave (Bassie-Sweet 1996). Many lower mountains served as altar mountains, facilitating rituals before more distant and higher peaks throughout the Americas. But mountains could dissolve. Pyramids were symbolically (and politically) sustenance mountains, sources of all human needs. The Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan (200–700) mimics and, from

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Figure 44 The two pyramids at Teotihuacan mimic the sustenance mountains behind them, and eclipse the mountains as one walks northward becoming sustenance mountains themselves. (Photo by C. Claassen)

most perspectives, blocks out the natural Cerro Gordo behind it, while the Pyramid of the Sun at that site mimics the large mountain to its south. Together the two pyramids mimic the sustanence mountains behind them (Figure 44). The communities that developed around pyramids and mountains were known as an “altepetl,” water mountain. Altepeme (plural) had two elements, a hill made sacred by being the residence of the patron deity, and a spring or other freshwater supply. The discovery of a canal around the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan indicates that this idea of mountains emerging from watery surroundings had great antiquity. The veintena of Tepeilhuitl honored the mountain deities. In the first ceremony all the lords of the valley gathered atop Mt Tlaloc. A “stone effigy of Tlaloc was surrounded with numerous smaller idols, representing all the mountains of the region . . . The lords dressed the idols with costly jewels and quantities of mantles” (Wake 2010:62). A boy was sacrificed there. Down in the lake, a girl was sacrificed at the whirlpool called Pantitlan. The people in the valley made images of the mountains that had a face on one side of a family member who had died by drowning or lightning (and was thus to serve Tlaloc/Chalchiuhtlicue) and that of a snake on the other side. They arranged all of their mountains on a circular base in the correct spatial relationships as seen on the landscape and placed a feast before the images. In this event, the dead were intercessors for the living. In the Atemoztli veintena ceremony, the priest called rain and called down the tlaloque from thirteen honored mountains surrounding central Mexico. Among the honored mountains were the volcanoes Popocatepetl, Iztaccihuatl, Mt. Tlaloc, and Matlalcueye, home of Chalchiuhtlicue/Toci. Tlaloc, Xochiquetzal, and all pulque deities were honored as well. Mountain images, made of amaranth seeds, were fed tamales, pulque, and chocolate and then the images were killed and burned (Arnold 1999:107–116). The humans ate and drank all that they could. Volcanoes were the source of fire and lightning for Mesoamericans. Sitting on top of a volcano on the winter solstice sunrise and sunset, a pyramid-shaped shadow forms, demarcating the corners of the quadrilateral world (Bassie-Sweet 2008). “The earth was thought to be a manifestation of the creator grandfather, and the primordial fire at the center of the earth was his heart” (Bassie-Sweet 2008:251), situated in Popocatepetl for the Aztecs. For the Maya, eastern volcanoes were identified with male culture heroes, and western volcanoes with female culture heroes.

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15th-century Spain: Moses met God on Mount Sinai, receiving the Ten Commandments. During the exodus, the Israelites rested at many different mountains. Mount Ararat is where the Ark grounded at the end of the flood. Several events in the life of Jesus occurred on mountains: his rejection of Satan’s temptation to rule the world, the verification of Jesus as God’s Son to the assembled disciples, his crucifixion on Calvary, and the transfiguration. Paul delivered a sermon on Mars Hill in Greece during his second missionary journey. St. Francis received the stigmata from Jesus on a mountain. Mountains and other elevated places punctuated a sacred natural geography for Christians and the “pagan” religions before them. Peaks were important places for revelations in Spain (Christian 1981a:91). “The great shrines of St. Michael were located in dramatic and unusual landscapes”(Bartlett 2013:166). A cross for San Miguel is located on a rock summit at Montserrat in Northern Spain. At Monte Gargano in southern Italy, Michael’s shrine was located in a mountain top cavern; and high elevations were favored for his shrines within cities. The shrine and monastery of Santiago de Compostela sits at the foot of a sacred mountain (Figure 45) that has two caves, one the abode of a dragon at the time of the translation of Santiago’s body to Compostela. Similar to the Mesoamerican idea of mountains housing all that humans would need is the legend of Frederick II. German monarch Frederick II (1194–1250) will “one day emerge to reclaim his throne after waking from his sleep under a mountain” (López Austin 2015:135), where he is hidden until the time he would emerge to fulfill the Franciscan millennial prophecy of the Last World Emperor (McKendrick and MacKay 1991). Elevations were important inside the church as well as outside. Altars were to be raised, as was the pulpit. Both mountain and pulpit signified an “imitation of our Lord, who went up into a mountain that he might preach the Gospel” (Giffords 2007:225). 16th-century New Spain: When ten Spaniards in Cortés’ group climbed to the summit of Popocatepetl during a minor spell of volcanic activity, the Tlaxcalans were impressed with the power and might of the Spaniards to overcome the God of Fire (Descola 1970:176–177). The native use of elevated places to erect shrines ensured that the Catholic churches and shrines that replaced them were also on elevations. Calvario chapels – a central feature of the Franciscan mission venture – were placed on a mountain top visible from a town. These chapels replicated the hill of Golgotha, situating the natives in the via sacra as well as Christianizing the landscape (Lara 2004). Eleanor Wake documents numerous ways that the native concept of sacred mountain was transferred to the churches of the 16th century either as actual buildings or as images on maps. Mountains were architecturally brought into the new church compounds as posas, situated at the four cardinal or intercardinal points in the wall. Sacred mountains appeared in paintings hung in churches that used the landscape outside as background, or in native-built theatrical landscapes. “At each of the four corners of the processional route [for Corpus Christi June 20, 1538 in Tlaxcala] they constructed an artificial mountain [complete with vegetation and live animals roaming on them] . . . each mountain was dedicated to a different theme: Adam and Eve . . . the Temptation of Christ; Saint Jerome; and Saint Francis of Assisi” (Wake 2010:72).

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Figure 45 The shrine of Santiago de Compostela and the sacred mountain Pico Sacro. The disciples of Santiago (James the Greater) encountered demons and a dragon on this peak. The cathedral itself is erected over a pagan shrine, which also paid homage to the peak. (Photo by amaianos used under Creative Commons 2.0 license, cropped and rendered black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Santiago_de_Compostela,_Galiza.jpg

The churches depicted on native-drawn maps often had exaggerated entrances and symmetrical windows (cave-like, maw-like), and platforms (pyramid-like). Churches in early colonial maps were clearly understood in the old frame of reference, as watermountains, even painted blue in many cases. The importance of rain-giving mountains was further highlighted by the mapmakers of the 16th century, in that numerous paths end abruptly at their bases. These paths, or Tlaloc roads, carry the viewers and the pilgrim to the mountaintop shrines for rain-calling and other petitions. See also cave, landscape, quadrilateral world, religious architecture, spring/well

music 15th-century Central Mexico: Training in dance and song for youths were equally serious pursuits and intensified leading up to marriage. Music and dance performances had both sacred and secular forms and styles. Temple musicians were separate from court musicians. Temple music was provided by noble-born priests – male and female – trained in the calmecac schools affiliated with temples. “A special patio with surrounding rooms was

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designated as the cuicacalli, ‘house of song’. Here were taught the songs of heroes, elegies to princes, lamentations, war songs, love songs, and all that might fall under the classification of ‘profane’” (Townsend 2009:168). These individuals included teixiptla in training for their roles. “In one example, the impersonator of the goddess Xilonen played a snake rattle before she was sacrificed. In another, priestesses played gourd drums during the feast of Huey Tecuilhuitl” (Both 2007). Court musicians (male and female) belonged to the mixcoacalli, passing their days in a group of rooms inside the ruler’s palace in order to be available for assignments. Instruments were made and stored in the palace, and music instruction was offered at the House of Song and School of Musicians (Both 2007). Some of the court musicians taught in the commoner schools. “[R]richly dressed women perform[ed] ‘mimed songs’, which were dramatic events of dance and song that were acted in front of great leaders” (Flood n.d.b:1). Court musicians performed the chants and dances of conquered groups. They transcribed and composed new songs and dances that honored the ruler or mythological and historical events, including weddings (Both 2007). On several occasions, singers are reported to have sung a song with lyrics that criticized the listeners (particularly tlatoani or missionary) or protested a situation (Townsend 2019:60). Native instruments were water drums, gourd drums, conch shells, rasps, flutes, bells, and voice. Songs were considered the most powerful form of oral expression, having spiritual force as well as different forms distinguished by content (Bahr 1975). Many songs were invented by the Toltecs it was said (Miller and Taube 1993:122). Different rituals used different instruments, which were used exclusively with that ritual. The flowershaped ceramic flute was dedicated to Tezcatlipoca (Smith 2014:20). 15th-century Spain: Music in Spain was provided by choirs, court musicians, roving groups of students, and others. Spanish popular songs of the time were heavily influenced by the Moors, especially in southern Spain, but earlier musical folk styles from the preIslamic period continued in the countryside. Many of these melodies combined sacred music with profane lyrics. There are several examples of Spanish polyphony from the 14th century, such as the Codex Calixtinus collection from Santiago de Compostela, the Codex Las Huelgas from Burgos, and the so-called Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (Katz 2013). Important to understanding the universal role of Mary as the holy intercessor, supporter of humanity, and co-redeemer in the Middle Ages are the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the largest collection of medieval music from Spain. These 420 song-poems were probably composed from 1250 to 1280 and were popular in the court of Alfonso X (1221–1284), King of Castile and León. He may also have been the composer of many of the songs. The Cantigas “combine secular Galician-Portuguese poetic forms with a religious and moral message with music drawn from both sacred and secular sources” (Gumert n.d.:1). These songs tell of Mary’s miraculous works in the world. This collection is sometimes referred to as the “aesthetic Bible of the thirteenth century” (Snow 2013:72). Some cantigas demonstrate the complexities of living in a country inhabited by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. A few cantigas show Muslims present in churches, converted by images of Mary acting to dispel doubts about the incarnation (Rubin 2009b). Many of the

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cantigas deal with Mary performing miracles, such as Cantiga 167, where a Muslim woman brought her dead son to a Marian shrine and the child was resurrected, leading to her immediate baptism. A few songs deal with Mary’s superiority in the region over other saints and shrines, such as Compostela. A pilgrim who was not cured after her pilgrimage to Santiago’s shrine was cured by Mary after she left Compostela in despair (Herwaarden 2003). In the cantigas, Jews die because they do not respect Mary or recognize her. In some cantigas, such as 85 and 107, Jews are converted through the experience of seeing an apparition of Mary, “who the Jews curse.” However, as a result of Mary’s mercy, they convert to Christianity (Casson 2018). The role of the Song of Solomon in Marian texts should be mentioned. Burkhart (2001a) characterizes it as “a dramatic and sensuous love poem,” whose verses were “mined in the 9th century as a source of liturgical antiphons for the feasts of the Nativity of Mary and the Assumption.” Much use was made of the language for describing Mary as shining and shimmering, as the dawn, as the moon. Fourteenth-century hymns celebrated the victories of the Spanish in Morocco and later the victory at Granada. In the royal Christian courts of Fernando II and Isabella I, much of the music, like the Cantigas de Santa Maria, clearly reflected Moorish influences. The Church, emboldened by the Reconquista, mandated “Gregorian standard” for chants, attempting to create uniform musical experiences in the liturgy, devoid of pagan influences. 16th-century New Spain: Perhaps as an outgrowth of both the convivencia and the cultural development of music in Spain, music was one of the many places where Spaniards drew a similarity between Muslims and Indigenous people (Cortés referred to indigenous temples as mosques, for instance.). Friar Ramon Pane “likened Tiano songs to Muslim scriptures,” and this comparison would continue to develop as a way of categorizing indigenous cultural forms, such as poetry and architecture (Hamann 2020:25). Similar in both cultures was the song-poem that conveyed “teachings.” The missionaries quickly adopted this format for the Ten Commandments, the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria, and the Credo, all translated into Nahuatl verse. The natives of Michoacán were said to be particularly gifted musically (Ricard 1966:177). The new music proved so popular so quickly that in 1526 Dominican and Franciscan orders requested that singing occur only on feast days and only during daylight. The First Mexican Church Provincial Council in 1555 called for friars to supervise native singing and dancing because of their extensive use of suspect metaphors. There are two significant collections of music that contain Nahuatl songs – The Romances de los señores de la Nueva España and the Cantares Mexicanos (ca. 1580) (a cantar is a short poem set to music). The two collections are distinctive. The Romances are a collection of songs in “recognizable groups” that valorize prequauhtemoc rulers and were sung in their palaces, affirming the “religio-militarist dogma” of the Aztec world (Bierhorst 2009:5). The Cantares are primarily part of a pre-conquest oral tradition that were not copied into Spanish before midcentury and appear to be more of a source book than a thematic collection. These songs clearly demonstrate more Christian content and were an influence on Sahagún’s Psalmodia Christiana (Schwaller 2005). However, it

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should be noted that the Romances and the Cantares are also their own genre, one that combined pre-conquest material with new composition and performances in public (Bierhorst 2009:10). Zumárraga wrote to Carlos V about music in the churches, saying, “‘Experience teaches us how much the Indians are edified by it, for they are great lovers of music, and the religious who hear their confessions tell us that they are converted more by music than by preaching, and we see them come from distant regions to hear it’” (Ricard 1966:168). In 1583, Sahagún adapted scripture and lessons to Aztec music to create the Psalmodia Christiana and in doing so he may have collected sixty native songs as early as 1564. He and native assistants also composed fifty-four new “garden songs” (Burkhart 1992:92–93; Ricard 1966). Singing schools were founded by Franciscans. Some native students learned all the texts and songs within four weeks and one boy wrote a mass. The instruments used early in 16th-century Mexican masses were bells, organs, flutes, clarinets, cornets, trumpets, fifes, trombones, jabelas, chirimias, dulzainas, sacabuches, orlos, rabeles, and drums. But the Council of Trent, via the Third Mexican Church Provincial Council held in 1585, prohibited nearly all instruments but the organ inside the church and ordered a significant reduction in the number of (native) cantors. Organs were built in New Spain by indigenous craftsmen and played by natives (Giffords 2007:219). See also bell, dance, flower, landscape, paradise, religious instruction, serpent, speech, text, theater, weeping

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naming 15th-century Central Mexico: Names and birthdates carried and conveyed power, derived from the tonalli soul. Rulers were named for their birth date by 300 CE at Monte Alban. Aztec names were typically taken from the birth day name but kept secret (Furst 1995:81) since a fate was attached to that day. It was countered with a self-chosen second power name. Motolinía (1996:164) recorded that All new-born children received the name of their birth day such as One Flower, or Two Rabbit, etc. They were named on the seventh day after their birth . . . Within three months they presented the baby to the temple of the devil and gave him an additional name. The event was also feasted and the baby was reminded of the name of the deity ruling on the day of his birth. And they had a thousand superstitions and auguries associated with the names of these demons relating to the lot of the baby which were falsely supposed to befall him during his life . . . And the children of lords and nobles received a third name relating to [their] rank or occupation, some when they were small children, some when they were young people and some when they became adults.

Oliver (2009) comments that male names were often titles drawing on allusions to showy, brilliant things, such as stars or planets. According to a 1530 census, [m]ale names had more imaginative meanings [than those for women] and were drawn from a vastly larger pool, totalling 574 names. While there were eight occurring fifteen or more times – in addition to Quauhtli, Yaotl (“Rival or Enemy,” 74), Matlalihuitl (“Rich Feather,” 63), Nochhuetl (“Ideal Bean,” 52), Coatl (“Serpent,” 48), Tototl (“Bird,” 19), Tochtli (“Rabbit,” 17), and Colin (“Quail,” 16) – they constituted less than one-fifth of the names of all males. (McCaa 1996:17)

For second names, women were most frequently named for their birth order, such as First Born, Second One (183 females vs. 1 male), Middle One, or Older Sister, or for a personality trait such as “the quiet one” (McCaa 1996). Ten names accounted for 83 percent of the women in a 1530 census. Quetzalcoatl endowed the valleys, mountains, and rivers with their names (López Austin 2015:154). Nahua town names, as translated into Spanish by Montemayor (2007) and then English by Claassen (992 places), are overwhelmingly descriptive. Communities were named for plants (forest, trees, shrubs, grasses, medicinal, edible) or for agricultural facilities in 26 percent of cases; an animal (mammals, insects, birds) in 18 percent of cases, local characteristics of the soil or rock in 15 percent of cases, local characteristics of water (11 percent), or land modifications and products (11 percent). Names that might have more spiritual than practical import amounted to 18 percent of cases. Most common in this category were deity names, which, when combined with named temple places, accounted for 5 percent of place names. Town-naming clusters suggest mythscapes, with 223

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Coatepec mountains, Chicomoztoc caves, and coastal landing places for migrating tribes (López Austin 2015:87). 15th-century Spain: To utter a name is to to invoke the power contained in the name. Power conveyed through names was an ancient concept in the Old World. In the Hebrew Bible, God brought the animals to Adam to be given names. Moses asked God his name at the burning bush, and Jesus told his disciples “I will do whatever you ask in my name” (John 14:13 NRSV). “A good name is more desirable than great riches” (Proverbs 22:1 NRSV). Saints’ names were also powerful words (Bartlett 2013:95). As a consequence of this belief in power and protection through names, baptized individuals (and places) were given new names at that moment. As the millennium progressed, ancestral names for babies were increasingly replaced by first names of saints – for their protection – or for theological ideas, such as “Anastasius” meaning “resurrection.” Promises to saints made for help with fertility or difficult childbirths often resulted in naming the child for that saint. The practice began in the 16th century of naming a baby for the saint on whom’s feast day it was born (Bartlett 2013:463). By 1102, the most common first name in the Byzantine world was “John,” accounting for 5 percent of names in the northern lands by the early 13th century but 25 percent of names in Bavaria and 8 percent in Florence in 1427 (Bartlett 2013:467–468). A list of names from a monastery in León at the end of the thirteenth century indicates that nearly 16 percent of male names were Iohannes, followed closely by Petrus. The same list indicates that over 40 percent of females were named Maria (Santos de Borja 2000). By the end of the Middle Ages, common women’s names were Anne, Barbara, Catherine, and Margaret, and feminized versions of male saints’ names such as Johanna, Lucia, Paula (Bartlett 2013:469). As the practice of naming babies for saints increased, the decrease in variety of first names necessitated the adoption of a surname, which typically carried the ancestral connection displaced by the new first name custom. Together, these practices produced “a European naming pattern in 1500 radically different from that of 1100” (Bartlett 2013:466). Naming places in the European tradition had two goals, practical or scientific and ideological or spiritual. Renaming places in Iberia retaken by Christians from the hands of Moors was seen as an act of purifying and consecrating and it was no less effective for Columbus and subsequent explorers and conquistadors in the New World. Santa Maria is a common name for mosques converted to churches in Spain beginning in the 14th century (Remensnyder 2000). Naming of churches between the 5th and the 13th centuries was often based on the saints whose relics were available at the time of the consecration of the church. Archbishops and bishops might choose the saint for a town’s patron (Bartlett 2013:444–454). 16th-century New Spain: Personal names in this century took on cross-cultural significance. For native individuals, a Spanish name indicated baptism, conversion to Christianity, and acceptance of Spanish norms. Christian names in the Morelos Census undertaken in the early 1530s indicate that duplication of male names within a family was rare, but duplication of both Nahau and Christian female names was frequent (Cline 1993).

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Naming people and churches after Spanish royalty was evident. Some churches were called “Los Reyes,” while people were baptized as Juana, Isabella, Fernandina, Felipe, and Carlos, for kings of the era. “As late as the 17th century, it was common for an infant baptized by a Catholic priest to receive a Spanish first name and an Aztec second name in honor of the Catholic saint and the pagan god on whose day he was born” (Madsen 1967:376). Where deity names had constituted no more than 5 percent of town names, saints names were now used to name new towns created under the congregation programs and to rename existing towns that became doctrina and visita towns. Who and how these assignments were determined are poorly studied. The senior author has uncovered examples of missionaries naming for (1) the Order’s founder, (2) the namesake of the missionary, (3) a correspondence between the Mesoamerican patron deity venerated at that place and a Christian saint (e.g., Tlaquilpa Veracruz, producer of regalia selecting Mary Magdalene), (4) the saint’s feast day that corresponded to the day of the first mass held, or a feat was accomplished, (5) the baptismal namesake of the local cacique, and still rarer motivations. It is highly unlikely that relics of these saints were entombed in the altars at any of these places, a source of church patronage in Iberia. In some cases, the patron saint was elected. New towns in New Spain also selected a patron following a disaster by drawing lots or having an election. In a tally of patronage made by the senior author (relying on information in the 1988 Enciclopedia of Municipios), primarily for the main church in a town, the patrons assigned to Franciscan churches in the decades 1520–1540 were as follows: Francisco ten times, Asuncion five times; Luis and “Maria” (more specific information is probably available in each town) three times; and Santiago and Rosario 2 times. Thirteen other patrons were named once (Ana, Bernardino, Calvario, Concepcion, Enterro, Gabriel, Immaculata, Juan Evangelista, La Cruz, Lorenzo, Martín Torres, Miguel, Pedro). Among Augustinian church patrons assigned in the 1530s were Augustin five times, Santiago three times, and others once each (Andrés, Conception, Guillermo, Isidro, José, Loreto, Miguel, Nicolas Obispo, Nicolas Tolentino, Pedro, Reyes Magos, Santos Reyes). Given the possible apocalyptic import to the names San Miguel and San Francisco (as the Angel of the Sixth Seal [Lara 2016]), the following statistics were compiled for all of the 16th century. In a database of 223 dated church foundings and 196 undated 16thcentury foundings compiled by the senior author based on reports in the Enciclopedia of Municipios (1988), newly founded San Miguel churches amounted to 6 percent before 1541, 5 percent from 1541 to 1561; 6 percent from 1562 to 1580; 3 percent from 1581 to 1600; and 8 percent of those that lack founding dates. His patronage was given to 12 percent of churches founded 1518–1540; 16 percent in the period 1541–1561; 6 percent in the era 1562–1580; and 12 percent of those founded 1580–1600 as well as 9 percent with no dates. See also apocalypse, baptism, landscape, patron, soul

*O

offering 15th-century Central Mexico: Offerings were made to honor the sacrifices made by the deities. Acts of remembrance staved off the destructive powers of those deities (Domenici n.d.:1). Offerings included acts of the body – dancing, praying, singing, burning, bloodletting – as well as countless goods for the veintena feasts that drove much of the exchange system in luxuries in Mesoamerica. For Mesoamericans, the offering of blood was about the quantity of blood one could draw, not the pain or suffering one felt (Hughes 2010). Other offerings that pleased were made in the form of temples, paper banners, cacao, flowers, incense, shells, cooked food, images, paint and animals such as turkeys, dogs, small birds, and eagles (Figure 37). White shell and green jade beads were frequent offerings found in the caches excavated from the Templo Mayor. Foods prepared in earth ovens or underground pits were “cold” and thus appropriate as offerings. Altars were tables for offerings. Inside dark temples, flowers and blood covered the floors and walls near the images. These items and human hearts were burned at intervals. Durán indicates that the fire god was the focus of many domestic rites and food and drink were appropriate offerings to the fire. On the day One Dog, wealthy families held banquets and made offerings to the fire of paper, quail, pulque, and incense. Poor families burned aromatic herbs (Burkhart 1997:40). The gods gave humans yellow corn and white corn, blue corn and red corn with which commoners could make offerings. Warriors, too, used maize in offerings. During several state-run veintena festivals, offerings in groups of five were frequent, such as five tamales pierced with an arrow. Townspeople drummed, danced, sang, imbibed, and laid out offerings as they awaited the arrival of the deity whose feast it was (Wake 2010:48). In addition to the offerings made to deities there were offerings given to the dead to help in their travel to Mictlan (Graulich 1981:45). Offerings were also accorded to “nahualistas,” priests who shape-shifted. Those offerings (and their corpses) were deposited in caves (López Austin 2015:137). Caves in general were fitting places for offerings petitioning for rain, fertility, and release of a soul from the resident wind spirit. 15th-century Spain: Augustine wrote that Christ was the offering, and the recipient of the offer through his God-hood and one-ness with God, and the one who did the offering, creating one of the greatest theological mysteries of Western Christianity (Hill 1992). Offering flowers and ashes to the gods was customary in pre-Christian Europe and continued into the Christian period (Seaton 1989:685). Inappropriate as offerings were things of little value. Nor was “the suffering of the poor. . . an appropriate offering to God” (Hughes 2010:257 ftn 74) but contrition and tears during confession were appropriate offerings. Lilies, because of their white color, were favored as were coins, beeswax 226

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candles, wine, and bread. Tithing was another form of offering. Tithes were destined to support the secular priests or for acts of charity. The dead and the living could assist each other, the living honoring the dead with offerings and invocations and the dead bringing spiritual assistance to individuals and communities (Flynn 1989:12). “Offerings of food called limosnas and animeras, usually consisting of bread and wine, were placed over sepulchers or graves of the dead immediately after burial. Later in the day, they were consumed by relatives, paupers and priests” (Flynn 1989:67). The intervention of the saints to secure a place in Purgatory rather than Hell for a dying person was achieved partially through offerings (Eire 2013a:11). 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures believed that humans owed deities gifts. Both cultures depended on the living to make offerings that would aid the dead in their travels to the afterlife. Failing to understand the Aztec sacred as chronomatic, and the reciprocity implied in the native covenant, the missionaries saw the native-made floral arches, pathways strewn with flowers, smoke, and food offerings contributed to Christian festivals as merely decorative and festive, although both Sahagún and Durán thought the flower offerings found in the churches were excessive. It was not just flowers that moved under the friar’s radar. As wind precedes rain, wind catchers (banners, flags) were part of Aztec rain-calling. Mantles likewise avoided scrutiny but their deployment derived from prequauhtemoc practices. Among the offerings on Easter Sunday in 1536 the Indians included mantles of different sizes. The smaller ones (the size of hand cloths) were embroidered with an image . . . kneeling at the church entrance, the Indians grasped these by the corners, held them up to their faces, and raised them two or three times in the air. Then they laid them out on the church steps. (Wake 2010:68)

See also altar, bird, blood, flower, food, gift, human sacrifice, incense

omen. see vision original sin. see baptism, sex, sin

*P

paradise 15th-century Central Mexico: The Mexica cosmos and creation story had at least three paradises: Tamoanchan, Tlalocan, and Aztlan. In the beginning time, the gods lived in a florid paradise called Tamoanchan found on the thirteenth level of the Upper World (Huckert 2002:206). The Primordial Couple lived in Tamoanchan with their four sons. Amid the fountains, rivers, forests, and flowers the gods lived in pleasure, attended by dwarfs. Quetzalcoatl brought the bones of the Fourth Sun’s beings to a cave here for grinding. After bloodletting, the meal took human form. Here also was the sustenance mountain where Quetzalcoatl discovered maize and where Tlaltecuhtli the earth monster lived (Wake 2010). Yolia souls of unweaned children went to Chichiualcuauhco in this level, the place of the Nursing Tree. Several gods abducted goddesses and mated in Tamoanchan. Here the calendar and the calendrical books were invented. Tamoanchan was evoked in a “cult of brilliance,” light, color, flowers, stones, shells, birds, feathers through song, dance, fire, and prayers. In this garden was a second sacred tree, the Flower Tree. The Primordial Couple forbade anyone to cut a flower from this tree, but the young goddess Itzpapalotl (also called 4-Flower and 4-Flint) picked one flower, encouraging others to do likewise and thus causing all the gods to be exiled from this paradise (Dieterle 2005:1.2.4). Tlalocan, in the lowest level of the upperworld, was the residence of Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue. It was a place of perpetual springtime. This was the destination of people who died watery deaths or had deformities (Figure 46) The place where the Aztecs once lived, Aztlan, was also a paradise where nothing was wanting, cares were absent and all beings were ageless. “Aztlan was a place of beautiful lagoons filled with reeds and all manner of waterfowl and fish. . .But once the Mexica left there, life became very hard. The stones became sharp, wounding them; the bushes became prickly and the trees thorny. Everything turned against them, and they no longer could remember how to return to this beautiful place” (Read and Gonzalez 2002:107). 15th-century Spain: “Christianity portrayed heaven, as well as humanity’s primordial origin-place, as a paradisiacal garden” (Burkhart 1992:89). Surprisingly, the Bible gives us few details in only four verses of Revelation: there is lightning, thunder, earthquake, and great hail (Revelation 11:19), city walls twelve levels high, adorned with precious stones (Revelation 21:9-11), accessed through twelve pearl gates and with streets of pure gold (Revelation 21:21). In Heaven there is a tree, the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits and healing leaves (Revelation 22:2). In the absence of details, opinions about heaven were widely available. Aquinas wrote there would be no active life in heaven, only contemplation, although other scholastics, such as Bonaventure, thought that heaven would be social, with all as “dearest friends” (McDannell and Lang 1990:93). Medieval theologians and mystics envisioned heaven as a 228

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Figure 46 Depiction of Tlalocan in a wall mural in barrio Tepantitla, Teotihuacan. Mount Tlaloc is on the left side. Tlaloque engage in various activities. (Photo by Luis Tello used under Creative Commons License 2.0, rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3046220

city surrounded by a verdant and lush landscape with the flowers of Eden blooming in an ever-temperate climate. Many early modern artists and theologians drew a distinction between paradise – the place of redeemed sinners enjoying the bounty of the garden city – and heaven, where the Trinity resided (McDannell and Lang 1990). Eden was described in Genesis 2:8-10 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.

Much more detail about both paradises is to be found in the second book of Esdras (also called Fourth Book of Ezra or Ezra Apocalypse [Apocrypha]), part of the Vulgate, which was the only bible that medieval scholars, monks, and priests (and Christians who had such a precious object as a book) would have known (The Vulgate was affirmed as part of the Latin bible at Trent, though restrictions were placed on printing and translating). According to the prophet Esdras, Level 3 was a Paradise with an orchard and the golden Tree of Life in its center where the good and righteous went and the Lord rested when visiting. The roots to this Tree of Life extended below into the Garden of Eden from which flowed four springs: one with milk, one with honey, one with wine, and one with oil, where 300 angels sang and gardened. By 1140 the hortus conclusus or “garden enclosed” was the standard symbol for Mary’s womb. This garden was contrasted with the Garden of Eden. Eden was the locus of the Fall but Mary’s womb, as hortus conclusus, was the locus of the redemption (Matter 1990; Winston-Allen 1997).

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Columbus was familiar with the book of Esdras and filled pages of his logs for the third and fourth voyages with his concern over the location of the Earthly Paradise. It was believed to be either to the east or the north of Spain and, as he had sailed around to the other side of the globe, he thought it must be near. Signs that he read as indicative of its proximity were a gentle climate, a tree of Life, and a river. The Gates of Hell were known to be close to Paradise, so his concern was with which realm he was actually closest to in the New World (Guzauskyte 2014:123). From out of the Earthly Paradise flowed the four great rivers of the Near East and Columbus convinced himself that he had found one of these rivers, which we now call the Orinoco. Columbus’s quest to find paradise in the “lands which I have newly discovered, in which, I am assured in my heart, there is the earthly paradise” continued, particularly as he was unable to deliver the gold he had promised Isabella and Fernand (Graziano 1999:164). Instead, he “delivered” Eden to Spain rather than El Dorado. 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures believed in a layered upperworld with a garden residence from which beings were banished. In both cosmologies there is a terrible north, a sacred tree, and a command not to do something to the tree. It could be said that Tamoanchan equaled Heaven. Then humans left a paradise – Aztlan and Eden – forever to toil among the brambles. For the missionaries, the New World was a New Eden. Christ, Mary, and St. Francis were all put into garden contexts by the Franciscans for the natives of the New World (Figure 39) (Peterson 1993). “From as early as 1524, . . . [to the] assembled nobility of Tenochtitlan, the Garden of Eden had been likened to a ‘flowery’ place in ‘the interior of the precious earth’ (Sahagún 1986:192–193). For Nahuas the image of Christ as a tree, [the crucifix], in the middle of a sacred garden would summon ancient cosmological trees” (Burkhart 2001a:15). Likewise, the story of Saint Francis who communed with flocks of birds was easily set in a garden. In the Psalmodia of Sahagún, “the celebrations composed for each of the major festival days are garden rich”. (Burkhart 1992:97). The Garden of Eden was recreated in Tlaxcala in 1539 for the festival of the Annunciation on March 25. Certainly the Tlaxcallan Garden of Eden, with its real sacred mountains, flowers and trees, birds and game, offers a much closer image of the flowery, watery abode of the Indian sacred than do biblical descriptions of Eden . . . Little wonder, then, that the Indian audience wept when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden to take up residence in a world of cacti, brambles, and venomous snakes finding themselves working the land in order to live. (Wake 2010:73)

See also apocalypse, cosmos, creation, east, flower, landscape, quadrilateral world, tree

patron 15th-century Central Mexico: Deities as spiritual guardians and helpers were fundamental to Aztec life. Each calpulli had a patron deity as did each altepetl. Each profession had a patron as well, for example, for weavers, Tlazolteotl; for painters, Xochiquetzal;

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goldsmiths, Xipe Totec; merchants, Yacatechutli (Boone 1994:109). For cities, we find that Tezcatlipoca was the patron of Meztitlan and Tetzcoco; Quetzalcoatl guarded Cholula; Mixcoatl protected Tlaxcala, Huexotzingo, and the Otomi groups; Huehueteotl blessed the Acolhua; Huitzilopochtli was patron of the Mexica; and Cihuacoatl was adored by the Xochimilcas (Kroger and Granziera 2012). A covenant linked the people with their god. The deity was religiously attended to by a cadre of priests and priest-assistants. 15th-century Spain: Christianity built on the Roman patronage system when envisioning the posthumous activities of the martyrs, Mary and Jesus. The spiritually tried and perfected martyred dead filled a role as advocates for imperfect humans. The life stages of the Virgin Mary and apparitions of her were among the most important patrons, as were the founders of the various orders such as Francis of Assisi, Dominic de Guzman, the disciples such as James (Santiago), John, Peter, Paul, John the Baptist, and the warrior archangels Miguel and Gabriel. Additionally, many other important historical people who contributed to Catholicism in unique ways were considered powerful patrons: Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and various kings and queens who converted (los Reyes). Descriptions of their lives (vita) and miracle collections (miracula) were written in the Flos Sanctorum (the Golden Legend hagiography) and other books. “Innumerable petitioners and devotees went to the graves of the martyrs and saints in the hope of a miracle” (Angenendt 2014:293). Saints were divided into several categories: queen of heaven, angels, apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins (Bartlett 2013:150). The significance of this categorization was in the liturgy and prayers to be said. All saints, and the relics of unknown saints, were to be commemorated on All Saints Day held on November 1 in the West since 800 (Bartlett 2013:118). A study by Weinstein and Bell (1986) covering the period 1000 to 1500 found that 7.6 percent of all officially canonized and beatified saints were Spanish. Bartlett pondered the surprising lack of saints native to the peninsula, suggesting several reasons: (1) Italy had 300 bishoprics (sources of sponsorship) but the Iberian peninsula had only 41 and (2) lack of scholarship on Spanish catholicism. While women saints were always a minority, devotions to the Virgin Mary outnumbered all devotions to other saints. “The emphasis on Mary and other New Testament saints is consistent with the Christocentric nature of late medieval piety, which was preoccupied with the suffering and the blood of Jesus” (Bartlett 2013:79). Patron saints were specialized in domain and were intercessors between humans and God for specific needs of an individual, profession, or community. Saints were chosen by laity and communities based on reputation, calendrical coincidence, drawing of lots, dreams, or vision, then embraced with vows by individuals, brotherhoods, and communities. “If the community could find the right intercessor, one who would accept the obligation to help, then all would be well” (Christian 1981b:56). These vows were usually unconditional, sworn by village authorities on behalf of all citizens after consensus was reached. Sumption discusses political saints where miracle working was harnessed for political ends. “Corporations,” as García calls them, or sodalities also adopted saints as protectors – third orders, congregations, universities, cathedral chapters, municipal

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governments, commercial consulates, and viceregal bureaucracies such as the Audiencia and Inquisition – all were engaged in reciprocal relationships with patron saints (García de León 2006). Patron saints were also important for guilds. Saints were unique to each skill and job: “shoemakers beneath Saint Crispin; tailors beneath Saint Homobono; carpenters beneath Saint Joseph; smiths beneath Saint Eloy; and notaries beneath Saint John the Evangelist” (García de León 2006:50). A successful outcome to a petition was a sign that a particular saint was interested in a compact with that particular village or guild. The Orders promoted saints that differed from that of the seculars, guilds, and townspeople. Franciscans promoted St. Francis, Bernard of Siena, Anthony of Padua, Clare of Assisi, Queen Elizabeth of Portugal, Elizabeth of Hungary, Gertrude the Great, Scholastica, and Colette of Corbie (Giffords 2007:271). Dominicans advocated for Dominic de Guzman, Vicente Ferrer, Catherine of Siena, and Jacinto; the Augustinians championed Augustine, Nicholas Tolentino, and St. William the Hermit. Along with these saints, various apostles were promoted by all the orders, especially John (the Evangelist), Peter, Paul, Bartholomew, and Andrew. Others were Mary’s parents Anne and Joaquin, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Catherine of Alexandria, Christopher, Martin, and Sebastian. “[A]mong the Franciscans, the friars insisted a great deal on the apostolic and biblical saints and in the ancient martyrs” (García de León 2006:41). The most frequently avowed saint in the district of Castile, Spain, in the year of 1580 was Sebastian, honored by 216 villages and towns; at a distant second was Gregory of Nazianzus with 90 villages and towns, and in third place, Saint Anne with 67 avowed communities (Christian 1981b:67). Saints Gregory and Roch were newcomers to the devotions. However, “People [in Spain] did not turn to the titular saints of the parish churches for help. With very few exceptions . . . at most they provided (as today) the occasion for an annual fiesta on their days” (Christian 1981b:65). Who they did turn to were the guild, community, and personal patron saints. 16th-century New Spain: The cult of the saints was a powerful tool for introducing Christianity to native people in spite of the fact that missionaries of New Spain in this century were largely Christ-centered, not saint-centered. As each native community had its own cultic deity, the missionaries could begin with simple substitution of patrons. Patrons were petitioned for protection from celestial forces and the solution for daily problems. The Indians understood saints to be both kind and mean with the power to protect or abandon. Patrons were selected by Christianized Indians or assigned by friars to churches, towns, barrios, chapels inside churches, topographic features, ranches, hospitals, and persons. Some 200 European saints found devotees in New Spain. Missionaries, sodalities, and festival leaders (mayordomia) took active roles in the election of the patron saint for a community. Following the selection of the patron saint, “the city council performed a ceremony in which an oath was made to remember and honor the patron . . . Mexico City swore to Saint Joseph as patron of conversions and of the church of New Spain in 1555” (García de León 2006:51). In spite of the best efforts of missionaries, saints were not always successfully substituted for native patrons. Saint John the Baptist, because of his association with water

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baptism, was easily equated to Tlaloc the rain-fertility god. His feast day nearly coincided with the summer solstice, which was traditionally addressed with propitiation for rain. Fire, with its ancient man deity, was called San Simon or San Joaquin, also represented as ancient men. In February, the feast of the Virgen de las Candelas corresponded to the propitiatory rites to the goddess of water, Chalchiuhtlicue. Holy Week coincided with the rites to Tezcatlipoca, associated with sacrifices like that of Christ. The god Xipe Totec, celebrated when nature drew new strength and bloomed, was assimilated as the ancient Saint Joseph, father of Christ. The celebration of Saint Francis in the first week of October, by his association with animals, represented a reworking of the festivals of Mixcoatl, god of the hunt. (García de León 2006:43)

“[R]elatively few female saints other than Mary, had their legends told in Nahuatl,” although more women appeared in the miracle narratives (Burkhart 2001a:131). The unraveling of the noble lineages and religious sponsorship through Spanish modification and the huge death toll from diseases left a patronage hole for families and communities (Haly 1996:9) toward the end of this century. Saints became the patron deities of all native doctrina villages and of visita villages. Mark Christensen (2013) examined wills from several different Nahuatl and Maya towns and devised a threephase model for adoption of the cult of the saints. In Phase 1, the community received a patron saint and testators acknowledged this saint. In Phase 2, various stages of Mary’s life were taken as advocations and sodalities were in evidence. Phase 3 is marked by the presence of saints in home altars and devotions and provisions for these favored saints in wills. Testaments from the central Mexican city of Culhuacan show a widespread awareness of Mary (Phase 2) in 1580 but there is no mention in a will of a household saint image or devotion until 1599 with one exception in 1580 (Christensen 2013), and mentions were still lacking in Ocotelulco (Tlaxcala) throughout the 16th century. Household saints were not popular in the Toluca valley until the middle of the 17th century (Christensen 2013). The slow adoption of saints by households may be explained by the fact that “initially, many early Franciscans . . . discouraged the worship of images. [But] Jesuit Sanchez de Aguilar argued in 1618 that ecclesiastics should encourage the possession of household saints to replace the Maya’s devotion to idols” (Christensen 2013:256). Haly’s (1996) perspective, that native noble lineages had to dissolve first, offers a second explanation. After 1560, “The late arrived orders – Jesuits, Mercedarians, Carmelites, and Dieguenos – along with nuns, were also influential in the process of introducing new saints and new devotions” (García de León 2006:49–50). Saints were largely “incorporated as an added group of tutelary gods, or as additional emanations of the cosmic force” (Early 2006:205), yet they were also “ladino” saints who, like their Spanish advocates, were economically and politically superior to the Indian’s prequauhtemoc patron (Early 2006:205). Saints’ cults provided a form of resistance to Catholicism in cases where they masked the elements of prequauhtemoc cults. “However, in their acceptance one can also find processes of adaptation to western rules and codes. In fact, the relation between celestial forces became more direct and the communication with them closer still, since

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undoubtedly the Christian saints had many more human traits than had the ancient bloody divinities” (García de León 2006:48). García de León observed that the Virgin Mary, among the goddesses, was approachable in unprecedented ways for Aztecs and other natives of the New World, yet she had none of her own power, in stark contrast to central Mexican goddesses. While the status of new saints was determined by bishopric sponsorship, lengthy investigation, and politics, several religious men of New Spain were popularly regarded as saints, e.g., Olmos, Valencia, Colero, Tapia, and Zumárraga. Three routes to “sainthood” in Mexico were martyrdom (death by Indian), death that resulted in an incorrupt corpse, and a long service in this mission field (e.g., Martín de Valencia) (Trexler 2002:294–299). Patrons were also sought in human form. Since every candidate for baptism had to have a sponsor from among the Christian army, new human relationships between Spaniard and native, and between natives of different statuses, were created. Other potential human advocates included lawyers, town officials, governors, and the King. See also baptism, calendar, covenant, conversion, cult, deity embodiment, divination, feast, image/idol, naming, shrine, sodality, supreme deity, vestment, vision, women

penance 15th-century Central Mexico: Acts of penance, often prescribed by priests, were common in Mesoamerican societies, for healing, for debt repayment to the gods, for sexual misdeeds. The specific acts of penance were seclusion, not bathing, piercing the tongue for verbal offenses, piercing the eyelids for visual offenses, cutting the arms for physical weakness (Muñoz Camargo 1986:162), although the part of the body pierced varied by region. The hot copal drops that fell on the arms and legs of priests who held torches during the celebration of Huey Tecuilhuitl were also viewed as a penance (Kroger and Granziera 2012:183). Students and warriors also underwent penance. Students in the calmecac schools periodically went through sustained penance involving fasting, praying, and bathing (Townsend 2009:165). The man who took a captive and was then responsible for the sacrifice of that captive spent 20 days doing penance along with his family – not bathing, eating little, not dancing, and sequestering (Clendinnen 1985:79). But the most arduous of penance was by those young men who ate part of the maize Huitzilopochtli image during the Panquetzaliztli feast. Thus started “a year of such strenuous penance and obligation that men were driven to pawn their land or their labour, or even to seek a once-for-all settlement of their ‘debt’ through death in battle rather than endure it to the end” (Clendinnen 1985:85). A penance of 80 days was undertaken by the priests of Quetzalcoatl in Cholula’s feast. It was said that Quetzalcoatl the human Toltec leader began this practice (LaFaye 1987:140). “[H]e is the inventor of self-sacrifice; he is the perfect embodiment of the penitent . . . he was the priest who performed penance for all of Tollan . . . One of his ways of doing penance was to lie on the ground,” to bleed his leg, and to bathe at midnight (López Austin 2015:152). López Austin (2015:152) calls Xipe Totec, who was

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flayed, “the supreme penitent and personification of victimization. Like St. Sebastian, he was tortured and both figures were associated with disease, especially diseases of the skin and eyes.” 15th-century Spain: Penance was a social activity, people were often seen performing penances under the watchful gaze of their priest and community. Scholars of medieval Christianity agree that penance was a complex concept, and served at least these purposes, “an ecclesiastical procedure to strengthen discipline and an ecclesiastically sanctioned device to relieve feelings of guilt and shame in an individual. Penitence can thus be seen as a policing tool and as a therapeutic instrument in the hands of the clergy, and in the Middle Ages it could be used in both ways [and as a] venue for reconciling conflicting parties” (Meens 2014:254). “In the 9th century . . . the Church adopted a Celtic practice that assigned each sin a corresponding penalty” and allowed for multiple penances for the same sin (Christensen 2013:160). For Aquinas, penance reinforced the grace that flowed from baptism. Contrition became the essential element of penance in the 12th century (Pardo 2006). “A set of mnemonic verses in wide circulation throughout the Middle Ages and quoted by Aquinas enumerated sixteen necessary conditions for penance to be complete” (Pardo 2006:121). Much of penance was tied to parish life and local saint veneration and thereby subject to variation across regions and locales. Pilgrimage was assigned for penance by both the Church and the State. “Penance was at the heart of lay notion of religiosity in the early modern Catholic world” (Starr-LeBeau 2008:403). Sodalities offered opportunities for both group and individual public expressions of penance. Flagellants were a lay penitential movement that travelled through Spain attempting to save the world through their actions (Starr-LeBeau 2008). This particular practice was more common in northern Europe but not unheard of in Spain. Penance was also performed by the dead in order to shorten their time in purgatory (Angenendt 2014). The opinion that penance was “just as efficacious for the dead as it was for the living” was first formulated officially in the 11th century. “Thomas Aquinas argued a man could gain an indulgence in two ways, by fulfilling the conditions himself or, if this was impossible, by fulfilling them vicariously” (Sumption 1975:297). After 1575 the meaning of penance began to change from one of punishment to that of a pledge. This changing conception was related to the growth of the non-punishing Marian cult, and due to the gradual societal adoption of the ideas of chance and misfortune, both present throughout the 16th century, replacing the idea of a punishing God. The collective religious vow, so important in the prior century “gave way to individual solutions, generally personal vows to the general patron saints” (Christian 1981b:207–208). 16th-century New Spain: Penance and penitential rites were transported to New Spain as they were integral to the sacrament of confession. Indigenous Christians were assigned acts of penance for crimes such as bigamy, idolatry, sorcrey and/or witchcraft, divination, and ritual use of halloucinogenic and/or narcotic plants. The hope was that through the practice of confession and penance, indigenous practitioners would develop a “Christian self who would voluntarily identify and suppress instances of idolatry” (Tavárez 2011:61) and live a Christian lifestyle. Social crimes were variously met with brutal corporal

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punishment, public shaming, exile, forced labor, and fines. Dominicans in Oaxaca resorted to “whips, shears and bonfires in order to reform indigenous social behavior” (Tavárez 2011:61), which the Audiencia attempted to curtail with mixed success. By the mid-16th century, the friars were encouraging sacramental confession as an alternative to self-inflicted and government-inflicted bodily punishment. Several missionaries’ own penance in “the field” was and is viewed as extreme (Hughes 2010), and some missionaries may have sought posts in the New World as an act of penance. Friar Antonio de Roa, with a mission in Totolapan, Morelos, used his own penance to make his native charges feel the suffering of Christ, to bring them to sorrow and to contrition. Morning after morning when Roa had been barely able to pick himself up from the prior day’s penance, he emerged ready for more acts of penance later reported in Inquisition trials. He lay on hot coals, lashed himself, starved himself, and dragged a heavy cross through the streets (Hughes 2010:47–48). Flagellation was the most extreme form of penance and came late in this century to New Spain. It was immediately popular among the neophytes. Lara (2008) argues that the mendicants needed to “reestablish autosacrifice as self-discipline (flagellation) and to rehabilitate all forms of [Aztec] sacrifice in orthodox ways, both as correct doctrine and right worship” (252 emphasis in text). Clendinnen (1990:123) thinks that the attraction to flagellation came from a renewal of traditional practices, The excitements of in-group competition, while the rhythmic blows, the chantings and the parallel violation of physical integrity promised escape from self through collective engagement. For the engagement was obdurately collective: there was small interest among Indians in private flagellation. It is possible that the flagellant performances also echoed the measured pulse of the obligatory dances which celebrated the self-defined ritual group in pre-contact times . . . the flagellants typically completed the exercise . . . by taking sweat baths and eating of hot chilli peppers . . . so the experience was brought to its conclusion in the traditional model.

See also bloodletting, confession, pilgrimage, procession, purity, religious instruction, sin, sodality, thorn, weeping

pilgrimage 15th-century Central Mexico: Pilgrimages were part of Aztec ritual practice and that of their ancestors. The Codex Zouche-Nuttall may record a fourth-century pilgrimage to two snow-capped mountains (Wake 2010) and a cave pilgrimage. An annual pilgrimage was made by the lords of Tenochtitlan, Xochimilco, Tlacopan, Tlaxcala, Tetzcoco, and Huexotzingo to the Tlaloc shrine atop Mount Tlaloc. Pilgrimage to the home of the god of the caves, in Chalma, was curtailed by the Augustinians around 1540 as they replaced an altar stone with a crucifix. Pilgrims from outside and inside the Basin of Mexico walked to Tepeyac’s cave shrine for Tonantzin. Pilgrimages are also indicated by the practice of making maps such as the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 that detailed a route around the quadrilateral home territory that was probably followed by boys in an initiation ceremony (Carrasco and Sessions 2007).

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Figure 47 Cholula Pyramid (the “hill” in this photo) was dedicated to Quetzalcoatl. The Virgin de los Remedios church built in the 1500s sits atop this earthen mound. (Photo by Alejandro Linares Garcia used under Creative Commons SA 4.0 license, cropped and rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TepanapaCholula1.JPG

It is possible that Chichén Itzá in the Yucatan and Tula in Hidalgo shared such similar architecture and art because they were part of a network of Mesoamerican pilgrimage sites extending from the Gulf Coast of Yucatan all the way to Morelos and the city of Xochicalco. The route included the pilgrimage sites of Xochicalco, Cacaxtla, Cholula, Tula, El Tajín, Isla de Sacrificios, Izamal, Uxmal, Isla Cozumel, and Chichén Itzá (Patel 2016:259). Ringle et al. (1998) thought that the focus of the cult and pilgrimage activity was Quetzalcoatl/K’uk’ulkan, the patron of merchants and leaders. “The colonial documents mention many other gods and goddesses that were consulted at pilgrimages centers and that pilgrims went to these places for a variety of reasons,” including healing (Patel 2016:259). Based on extensive quantities of Cholula ceramics in Cempoallan, on the coast of Veracruz, Anawalt argues that this “Veracruz center was one from which regular ritual pilgrimages to Cholula were undertaken” (Anawalt 1981:204). The huge pyramid at Cholula (Figure 47), dedicated to Quetzalcoatl “drew pilgrims from great distances and the number of priests acting there was so great that the role of Cholula in the life of ancient Mexicans has been compared to that of Mecca for Muslims and Jerusalem for Christians” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:224). 15th-century Spain: Pilgrimage served as an outlet for devotional practice and penance and was engaged in by rich and poor, rural and town dweller alike (Bull 2014:201). Most pilgrims from the 11th century on sought healing for themselves or another individual, as recorded in 90 percent of miracle stories (Bull 2014:209). In fact, cures were so common at shrines, and during pilgrimages, that some people in good health felt no need to participate in a pilgrimage (Sumption 1975:78). Many destinations for pilgrims had associations with springs or wells and most shrines had resident keepers and clergy.

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Pilgrimages were often undertaken to spite the daily control wielded by the parish priest, to see new countryside, to avoid a spouse or work, to escape the urban world of Satan, or to seek the miraculous (witness or experience one), and to perform penance (Sumption 1975). Churches encouraged pilgrimages by investing in relics and maintaining books that documented miracles occurring in the presence of relics. More than anything else, Bull (2014) thinks that it was the distribution of the bones of dead saints that fostered medieval pilgrimage enthusiasm. Relics and statues attracted pilgrims so much that churches throughout Europe invested in spaces for relic and host veneration. But as host-worship became more popular, and easier to access, relic veneration declined, although it did not disappear (Bynum 2007; Doeswyck 1962). Pilgrimages to the Holy Land performed as penance were part of the crusading mentality for medieval Christians. Participation in the Crusades earned an indulgence for any crusader. In 1342, the Franciscans were designated the guardians of the Holy Land and charged with establishing an official route for pilgrims (Graham 2011:363). In the 13th century and beyond, the “Iberian crusade” directed at the Reconquista was linked to the idea of a Spanish route to the Holy Land and offered Spaniards the spiritual benefits of crusading while still in their home lands. Public penance usually meant pilgrimage, and it “was imposed for public sins with overtones of scandal,” typically committed by clergy (Sumption 1975:99). Pilgrimages were also a sentence handed to criminals by the Inquisition. The Dominican Inquisitor Bernard Gui of Toulouse assigned pilgrimages as penance, divided into major and minor categories of travel. Major sites were greater than 500 miles from Toulouse and minor sites were largely located in southern France (Bartlett 2013:427). “By the fourteenth century it was firmly established in . . . Italy as well” (Sumption 1975:105–107) and was banishment under a different name, particularly given to those whose presence in a small town was intolerable or for crimes that would give rise to feuds. These judicial pilgrimages could be commuted with payments to the State and victim, while the Inquisition’s mandated pilgrimages could not. A third source of required pilgrimage was by universities and guilds of Medieval Europe. Pilgrimages were inflicted on entire communities when they lost a battle or failed in a rebellion (Sumption 1975). Catholic pilgrimage required sacrifice and suffering. It was generally believed that a pilgrim should be poor (Sumption 1975:169). Property and money were willed temporarily to the Church, or sold and given to the poor, preceded by confession and making right one’s social relationships and debts. Before departing, the pilgrim sought the blessing of a priest, and then donned the clothing of the pilgrim – a long tunic of coarse cloth, a soft leather purse on his waist, perhaps a broad-brimmed hat and a long scarf enveloping his torso, and a staff (Sumption 1975). “Travellers undertaking pilgrimages . . . were commonplace on the major thoroughfares, and some Catholic thinkers had begun linking pilgrimage itself to the examination of conscience required before partaking of the Eucharist” (Starr-LeBeau 2008:396). The discovery of the burial place of St. James (Santiago) at Compostela, Spain, created a major pilgrimage site beginning in the 9th century. It remained a major center through most of the 15th century, second only to Rome for the number of pilgrims – some

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Figure 48 Pilgrimage routes into and through Iberia. (Image and permission given by Marc Heffner of caminoestrella.com)

estimates suggest 500,000 pilgrims arrived there yearly (Murray 2014). Even after the Christian shrine was constructed, the overshadowing sacred hill Pico Sacro has retained its holy aura (Figure 45). The Camino de Santiago is a braiding of dozens of paths from the north and south into the northwestern corner of the Iberian peninsula, the oldest of which may be that paralleling the northern coast (Figure 48) and the most popular of which is 500 kilometers long. Therefore, “an intricate web of land-based and maritime connections linked all of Europe to northwest Spain,” traversing through Pamplona, Burgos, and León (Murray 2014:66). By the late 15th century, several elements of pilgrimage had changed. Women had become the majority of visitors to shrines, many shrines proved to be short-lived, and most laity could not afford to go to far away shrines, so local shrines increased in popularity. The rise of confraternities also led to large public processions, for which short trips to local shrines were scheduled. “The loyalty of the masses was transferred to an enormous number of minor shrines which commanded attention for a few weeks before relapsing into obscurity” (Sumption 1975:269). Once the substitute pilgrimage for the dead was accepted (the living could do it on behalf of the dead), “it was a short step to

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substitutes for the living, first for those who couldn’t make the trip and then even for those who could – crusaders had been sending substitutes to fulfill their vows for two hundred years” (Sumption 1975:299–301). Further eclipsing the drive to make a pilgrimage was the creation of Stations of the Cross as alternatives to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, circuits that could be enacted inside churches and even in one’s home. Devotional books furthered the stay-at-home pilgrimage. Early in the 16th century, Erasmians attacked the idea that God and grace were greater in some places than others, and Luther and Protestants attacked the cult of the saints, all leading to a decline in pilgrims to the shrines in Spain from areas affected by the Protestants. But “the effort to question the . . . specialization of saints and the particular availability of grace at holy places was unsuccessful in Spain” (Christian 1981b:162). Other important shrines in or near Spain were Montserrat near Barcelona, Guadalupe in Extremadura (Figure 10), El Pilar in Zaragoza, Valvanera at Valvanera, and Candelaria in the Canary Island of Tenerife. Pilgrimage paths often connected multiple shrines, each of which was visited along the way to a more distant destination. 16th-century New Spain: Pilgrimage was central to religious life for both the Aztec and the Spaniard. “In many countries the organization of pilgrimages is considered the normal and necessary complement of conversion. [. . .] In Mexico, however, the part played by the Mendicants in the development and diffusion of this kind of worship seems to have been very slight” (Ricard 1966:187–188). Ricard (1966:191) attributes the founding of the cult of Guadalupe and its pilgrimage to Tepeyac to the energies of the secular priests. Bernal Diaz de Castillo says that Gonzalo de Sandoval established his headquarters at Tepeyac hill, home to the Tonantzin shrine, during the siege of Tenochtitlan and that he built a shrine to the Virgin Mary there and then. In 1531, Bishop Zumárraga brought an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe to this shrine at Tepeyac (Noguez 2006). In the 1550s, this statue was replaced by the painting revered today. A pilgrimage to Tepeyac for children was organized by Franciscans during the 1544 epidemic (Noguez 2006). The Franciscans were denouncing the cult by 1576, partly because the natives were calling her “Tonantzin” and partly because the cult was sponsored by seculars and had dubious (non-miraculous) origins. Hostile to Guadalupe, the Mendicants were more supportive of other pilgrimages, such as that organized by the Dominicans to Sacromonte in 1584 (overlooking Amecameca) and the Franciscan-sponsored pilgrimages to Ocotlán, Zapopan, San Juan de los Lagos, and Naucalpan (Ricard 1966:188). The cave used by Martín de Valencia for retreat was turned into a shrine for Spanish and Indian laity and the Franciscan friars (Trexler 2002:315). None of these shrines appears to have been a native shrine visited by prequauhtemoc pilgrims. The prequauhtemoc shrine in the rockshelter at Chalma was preserved by the Mendicants. “Even at Chalma it seems that the religious were more interested in the substitution of cults than in the development of pilgrimages, which occurred only as a side product, possibly independently of the religious” (Ricard 1966:193). The authors know of no use of pilgrimage for Church or State penance/punishment in New Spain nor of the use of pilgrimage to gain indulgences.

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Native pilgrimages did happen in this century with minimal Catholic trappings, such as to Chalma until 1540 and possibly well beyond, and to other cave shrines. In approximately 1539, Huitzilopochtli’s sacred bundle traveled covertly through Central Mexico. He was taken to places he first visited during the growth of the Mexica, on a path to Tenochtitlan. “But in 1539 that city was in Christian hands, and so the furtive movements of the exiled god recreated his ancient travels in reverse” (Hamann 2020: 148–149). Could this pilgrimage have stimulated the slightly later traveling virgin pilgrimages, such as that of Nuestra Señora de San Juan de los Lagos? See also cave, creation, landscape, mountain, penance, procession, relic, religious labor, sacred bundle, serpent, shrine, sodality, spring

prayer 15th-century Central Mexico: Prayers and rituals were given to the first humans by the gods. Words exuded power, the power to infuse a thing named with soul, making it imperative that the exact words of a prayer were repeated to ensure the effectiveness of the ritual and, in the prayer of a shaman, to recreate the beginning time (Early 2006:75). Book 6 of the Florentine Codex preserves several prayers and supplications by which the elite asked favors of their deities in shrines and at house altars. Most recorded prayers addressed Tezcatlipoca and were uttered at the time of a plague, when they prayed not to be poor; to request aid during war; at the installation of a new ruler; when the ruler died; when seeking the death of a bad ruler; at the time of confession; to ask that the ruler might fulfill his mission; and when a ruler humbled himself and thanked his noblemen. There were also prayers to Tlaloc for rain. In the calmecac school, priest trainees learned fixed prayer formulas (Early 2006:219). For instance, most prayers included the saying, “O master, O our lord, O lord of the near, of the night, O night, O wind” (Sahagún 1950–1982:6:18). Students “underwent periods of rigorous abstinence with penances, prayers, and ritual baths” (Townsend 2009:165) six times a night during the night vigils (Brotherston 2005:21). Children were taught that a moral life consisted of honoring gods and their images; serving them; and praying devoutly before them (Braden 1930:255–257). Wives prayed before the husband’s sacred bundle hung inside their home when he was away at war. Priests and others prayed at mountaintop altars. Death rites included prayers. The smoke of incense, song, and dance carried prayers to their intended destination. Ritual specialists used a unique language, nahuallatolli (Aztec) or sian pay (Maya), in their communication with deities (Montellano Ortiz 2004:31). This language was unintelligible to non-specialists for it interwove form and content – it was context specific. Meter and rhythm were used to memorize the prayer and then sound distortions, voice register, pronunciation variations, and metaphors were used in its utterance. 15th-century Spain: Prayer was an essential part of Catholicism and was modeled for the faithful by persons in the Bible, including Jesus. The praying Madonna, standing on the moon and encircled by a large aureole, was developed from medieval illustrations of the Apocalyptic Woman beginning in the 11th century.

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Prayer was a “shared responsibility” because one prayed not only for oneself but for others, living and dead (Eire 2013b). One of the seven spiritual works was praying to God for all those who did one evil. With the institutionalization of Purgatory, prayers and offerings by the living were a staple in religious life and one of the only hopes of the dead to shorten their time there. Books of doctrine contained approved prayers. Family, neighbors, confraternity members, priests, and conscripted mourners prayed continuously at the side of a dying person to stave off the onslaught of demons attempting to grab the soul. The funeral procession was also a time for continuous prayers by all in the procession. Prayers were made to Mary, Miguel, and personal saints and were scripted in books called Ars Moriendi (Art of Dying). By the 11th century, Novenas, prayers over 9 days or 9 weeks, were commonly observed after a death. Novenas were also held for nine days before a saint’s feast day (Lastra et al. 2009:25), particularly Christmas, marking the nine months in the womb. This custom also spawned books of such prayers. Number of prayers and their repetition with little or no improvisation were key elements for the illiterate laity. Efficacy of prayer was thought to be connected with accuracy and reiteration (Eire 2013b). Counting prayers with beads, sashes, sticks, and stones occurred before and after the established use of the rosary in the 13th century. Prayer books, such as the Book of Hours, were used by the upper-class at home and in church for personal devotion. As printing became both more popular and more affordable, pictures of saints, Mary, and the life of Jesus could be present in homes to be prayed to and venerated (French 2014). Those in Orders and the secular clergy were required to pray eight times a day, and those prayers held at matins and lauds were usually said publicly in each church that had a resident priest. The cult of the saints mandated prayers by the laity on the eve of a feast day. There were guides for different types of prayers at different occasions, with an emphasis on separation from the world in order to communicate with God. Many of these prayer guides used a monastic model as their template, even for those who would not be able to adopt the monastic life (Clark 2014). Household worship, with prayers such as Our Father, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, or the rosary, did not require a special room or a book. Furthering in-home worship was “The work of Jan van Paesschen (d. 1532), [which] outlined a course of prayer extending over 365 days and corresponding to every stage of a journey to the Holy Land – [It] immediately went into several editions” (Sumption 1975:299–301). 16th-century New Spain: One of the most dramatic changes in native life must have been the new divisions of the day and night. People in towns and on encomiendas were expected to attend prayers at Lauds, and native boys were required to gather each evening at the church to recite prayers and doctrine. Native healers soon began advising clients as to which saint to pray to for healing (López Austin 2004). Those prayers that were composed by Christianized natives and missionaries were literally putting approved words and concepts into the mouths and ears of the Aztec speaker, channeling the experience of communing with Mary, Jesus, God, and the saints. Bishop Zumárraga’s Church-approved doctrine with prayers was published in Mexico in 1539 and was widely used. Posters of prayers and commandments were often rendered in popular verse and posted for people to read (Ehlers 2013).

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Other extremely influential books in this century were The Third Spiritual Alphabet by Francisco de Osuna, frequently cited in the writings of Franciscans, and Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises (Turley 2014:5). Osuna identified three forms of prayer. In verbal prayer, he “advised his readers to pray in their own words [out loud] at least fifteen minutes before bed and immediately again upon waking.” In silent prayers, “people were to file away in the mind all the good things which they heard or read . . . the concentration was to be complete, so that God could work uninterrupted in the person’s heart.” Finally, spiritual prayer “required great amounts of time and total concentration in order to produce its fruit” (Turley 2014:7). The Spiritual Exercises was designed as a devotional guide for a wide audience and received support in the Tridentine Reforms. Both books were used in New Spain. The Index of Prohibited Books of 1559 contained several Books of Hours because those books contained prayers from the Bible. The challenges of correct and orthodox translation of those prayers were considered too great to make those available to the laity (Díaz 2013). See also day, death, demon, penance, speech, text

priest 15th-century Central Mexico: Priests were organized hierarchically. At the top was the tlatoani (Aztec Speaker). Below him were two supreme priests, known as Quetzalcoatl, in charge of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan, and two others known as Quetzalcoatl who oversaw the pilgrimage center at Cholula. Below them were the Mexicatl Teohuatzin, who oversaw rituals and directed the calmecac; his staff were the Huitznahua Teohuatzin attending to ritual matters and Tecpan Teohuatzin attending to education, both having responsibilities for temple lands and choosing teixiptla. Assisting all of the priests were students in the calmecac, and finally, applicants for the priesthood. The Fire priests conducted human sacrifice and performed the New Fire ceremony. The Lords of the Sun were warrior priests who preceded the troops to battle, captured enemies, made sacrifices, and refereed disputes between warriors (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:87–89). There were 400 priests dedicated to the service of Tezcatlipoca in Tenochtitlan, and in the whole Mexica empire there were 5,000 priests (Braden 1930:51). The priests of Huitzilopochtli in Tenochtitlan were selected from just a few calpulli. For the Zapotecs of Oaxaca, Ricard (1966) said that the priestly hierarchy consisted only of high priests and ordinary priests, drawn from the elite families and trained in a special school. Each military unit, some professions, and each calpulli had its own temples, often with part-time religious specialists who had to gather supplies for the annual festival and procure a teixiptla. Sahagún recorded groups of religious specialists – the itinerant curers, magicians, and hermits – who were not part of the established priesthood. There were numerous routes to a life as a ritual specialist, including being an elite son, making a vow (often by those surviving a lightning strike), and having that fate, preordained by birthdate or birthmark (López Austin 2004:23). For the highest ranks one had to be born into nobility.

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Students from elite families studying in the calmecac took vows of celibacy and lived austere lives. “Meditation and the learning of prayers were accompanied by periods of fasting. Long vigils were kept and marked by periodic offerings and purifying baths; food was usually taken in meager amounts at midday and midnight. Special occasions demanded auto-sacrifice” (Townsend 2009:206). Trainees learned fixed prayer formulas in the calmecac (Early 2006:219) and then some were “chosen to enter the priesthood, continuing their austere lives giving service and taking part in the warfare” (Anawalt 1981:17). While many priests attended temples, some priests were codex painters and scribes, readers of almanacs, prognosticators/oracles, vision interpreters, and teachers, with the teacher being the most esteemed of these specialties (Townsend 2009:206). The trances of priests were typically experienced in a priest-house or alone outside (Clendinnen 1990: ftn 54). Some of the priests fainted or fell asleep, during which they heard an image grant their requests (Clendinnen 1990: ftn 64). Priests wore black cloaks like cassocks and long gowns reaching to their feet. Some had hoods like those worn by canons, and others had smaller hoods like those of Dominicans, and they wore their hair very long, right down to the waist, and some had it even reaching down to the ankles (Figure 41). Their hair was covered with blood, and so matted together that it could not be separated and their ears were cut to pieces by way of penance. They stank like sulphur and they had another bad smell like carrion . . . The nails on their fingers were very long, and we heard it said that these priests were very pious and lead good lives. (Díaz del Castillo 1956:104–105)

In an instance of cultural confusion, the “Spanish referred to the indigenous priests as papas, which was the same word used for pope in Castilian” (Hamann 2020:104). The problem became more complicated when, later in the 16th century, José de Acosta noted “how strange it was that the indigenous people in the New World referred to their supremos sacerdotes with the same term that Christians used for their sumos pontifices. Acosta assumed papa to be a Native American term,” seeing it as further evidence of the Devil’s hand in the creation of indigenous religion (Hamann 2020:105). The Spanish recorded Aztec celibate and sequestered orders of both men and women dedicated to various deities. Four hundred priests dedicated to the temple of the gods of pulque were presided over by a superior priest called Ometochtli (Braden 1930:49). An order of young men dedicated to the service of Tezcatlipoca did not live sequestered but gathered at sunset daily to dance and sing. An order of widowers aged 60 years or greater existed to honor Centeotl, god of dry, ripe, maize. New members were admitted only on the death of a member. Next to the Templo Mayor was a “convent” for women priests dedicated to two goddesses who oversaw marriages (Braden 1930:54). Women priests served the numerous earth-mother cults and maize goddesses and instructed girls and women chosen as teixiptlahuan (Townsend 2009:205–206). Women might make vows to a deity and spend 1–2 years in service in the temple. “There were also priestesses who accompanied unmarried young warriors into battle” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:213).

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15th-century Spain: Men could choose to join a religious Order to be either a monk (various terms such as “Religious,” “Regular,” or “Mendicant”), dedicated to a monastic life of spiritual labor, or a secular priest who serves in a church and provides access to the sacraments. The education and behavior of secular priests was of great concern to the Church as this was often the area most affected by the buying and selling of offices. The training of men in Religious Orders was much more rigorous, often including university training in philosophy and theology as well as languages. All Catholics were obligated to their home parish and priest for weekly mass, annual saints’ festivals, and for baptism, marriage, confession, and burial. Monks and friars often lived in cloisters, and different Orders stressed different combinations of contemplation, prayer, work, and preaching. In Spain at the time, the Franciscan monks, founded to emulate Francis’ rejection of urban monetized life, preached the gospel in the countryside living in self-imposed poverty in either solitude or small cloisters. If they were in a cloister, they spent time together, time in solitude, and time outside the monastery. Franciscan communities in Spain that provided missionaries to the New World were significantly influenced by Erasmus and millennialism and devoted to the Immaculate Conception. Erasmianism emphasized a simplified Christianity, an inner spirituality, and biblical studies. The ability of Franciscans to start missions in New Spain was made possible by the relaxing of the rule of St. Francis, allowing for these men to spend more time preaching, ministering, and performing the sacraments and less time in contemplation and retreat. Later reforms in Spain at the end of the 16th century created the Friars Minor Recollects, though this order was dissolved in the 19th century. The Order of Preachers or Dominicans was founded by the Spanish priest Dominic de Guzman in 1216, a contemporary of St. Francis. Trained at the University of Salamanca, Dominic was appalled when he encountered a sect of Christians in the Pyrenees who advocated reading the Bible in the vernacular and choosing their own priests rather than following the priest appointed by the archbishop. Dominic believed that these ideas came from a deficient understanding of Christian faith and proposed an Order of Preachers who would go throughout Europe to preach the gospel and teach right doctrine. This desire to insure Christians were all sharing the same beliefs and practices eventually led to the Inquisition, controlled by Dominicans, and their presence in many of the universities of Europe. Dominicans were famous for their theological scholarship and teachers, such as Thomas Aquinas, and their emphasis on learning foreign languages. Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria are patrons of the Order of Preachers, and large numbers of women’s convents were established in Europe where they engaged in sewing, scholarship, and chanting the Divine Office. Hermits following the rule of St. Augustine in Tuscany were gathered together in the 13th century as the Augustinian Friars. Characteristic of this Order in the late 14th century was the singing of the Divine office and psalms, communion, prayer, study of scripture, seeing to confessions, and preaching. All lived in mendicant communities. There were dozens of Augustinian reform groups throughout Europe after their brother, Martin Luther, spurred various critiques of the Church. Many Saxon Augustinians became Lutherans. Augustinians particularly sponsored Our Lady of Good Counsel and the

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confraternity of the Lady of Consolation. Their members taught at Salamanca and Alcalá. Reforms in Spain at the end of the 16th century created the Augustinian Recollects in 1588 who sought to perfect monastic reflection and the contemplative missionary community of Discalceds in 1592. Many mendicant orders were influenced by the Renaissance ideas of the time. Some hoped they could create an ideal society such as St. Augustine’s City of God or Thomas More’s Utopia, which would perhaps lead to the second coming of Christ. Other orders discouraged worship before images (Christensen 2013:256). Augustinian Martin Luther proclaimed no need for a priesthood, saying that every Christian may gain knowledge of the mysteries of God through reading the bible for themselves (sola scriptura). The reforms enacted at the Council of Trent in the mid-century soon led to other preoccupations. The Council codified the Catechism, Breviary, and Missal, and mandated that every priest be a graduate of a seminary and maintain good behavior, and that every diocese open a seminary. 16th-century New Spain: The men who came as missionaries to New Spain were not parish priests; they were members of mendicant Orders. The decision to give the missionary field of the New World to mendicants, rather than the secular priesthood, was based on the hope that mendicants would be a better example for the neophytes. The mendicant monks were respected for their vows of poverty, simple life, and humble character. Mendicants were also favored by Spanish kings. Importantly, these Orders were designated as self-governing bodies as decreed by Pope Leon X in 1521, which lessened some of the hold the Crown exercised over the Orders. Secular priests were prohibited from interfering with the Regular (Religious) clergy, on penalty of excommunication. Life in New Spain for a mendicant was very different from life in a monastery in Spain. The food was different and sparse, the terrain quite difficult and infested in the lowlands with diseases, and there was little in the way of community for the friars. The Franciscans were a contemplative brotherhood and attracted men who wanted to spend time alone in prayer and together in communion. The task undertaken in the New World, however, demanded exhaustive, nearly continual travel and language study; the performance of the sacraments at all hours with a paucity of the essential items and trappings customary; and the preparation of masses, as well as examination of the new converts in a foreign language. The territory was so vast that few friars resided together and no one had time for contemplation. Some friars left the mission field disillusioned, some moved on to other missions in the Philippines and Japan, and some became hermits retiring to caves in New Spain (e.g., Friar Valencia). Recruitment from houses in Spain became quite difficult. Later in this century efforts were made to provide more opportunities for withdrawal and for brotherhood with other friars. The secular priests served the Spanish in New Spain. Thus, during Mexico’s colonial era, “the secular clergy worked hand in hand with civil authorities, while the missionary friars, laboring independently, tended to have greater influence over the common people” (Palfrey 1998:1) and exhibit greater independence. Seculars maintained businesses and active Spanish-based social spheres.

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The revenue from their parish (tithes, first fruits, fees for baptisms, weddings and funerals) could be used to capitalize these businesses. Also like any other Spaniard, most parish priests aimed to create large households in which they were surrounded by their dependents (relatives and servants) and to spend as much time as possible in the nearest Spanish city, and as little time as possible in the village. (Palfrey 1998:2)

All branches of the clergy jealously defended their turf. Regulars were supposed to hand over their ministries in native parishes to secular priests as soon as possible but the near complete lack of interest in rural, Indian, Nahuatl language missions by seculars left many friars gravely concerned for the welfare of the Indians. “As a result, the more distant parishes were relegated to the friars for centuries” (Palfrey 1998:3). Reforms enacted by the Council of Trent put limits on the mendicants and demanded better training for the secular priests but it was the huge death toll among native peoples that led to the abandonment of many rural missions. There simply were too few Indians left to serve. Comparisons of the practices of the Augustinian, Franciscan, and Dominican orders are fairly common in modern scholarship and are contained throughout this book. Differences between the confessional procedure of Franciscans and those of Augustinians were described by Ricard as “methodical” vs. “more expeditious.” In one village the Augustinians mandated confession over four Sundays for the four barrios and gave collective absolution of the less grave sins and then heard individual confessions for sins of gravity (Ricard 1966:117). In most areas, natives were barred from the Eucharist by both Franciscans and Dominicans unless a member of a sodality. The Catholic Church failed to produce indigenous priests, despite optimism in the earliest decades of the conquest. The Franciscan’s Colegio de Santa Cruz at Tlatelolco, built directly atop the ruins of the double Tlatelolco temple (Figure 49), was designed to develop native men as clergy. These men ultimately failed in the estimation of the Franciscans and the project was abandoned. In 1555 the First Mexican Church Provincial Council decreed that no Indian person could become a priest. At the end of the 16th century, as seculars took over parishes from the mendicants, Indians and persons of mixed ancestry began to enter the ranks of the auxiliary clergy out of a need for people who could speak the languages and understand the idols (Poole 1981). see also baptism, celibacy, divination, marriage, naming, patron, procession, religious architecture, religious instruction, religious labor, sodality, speech, supreme deity, text

procession 15th-century Central Mexico: Processions were embedded in the veintena festivals. For instance, the Panquetzaliztli festival had several processions: (1) apprentice traders seeking professional status processed from Tenochtitlan to Atzcapotzalco’s slave market where they purchased four slaves for sacrifice, (2) during the festival, the traders and their slaves processed to the temple of patron Paynal in Pochtlan, (3) a procession led by the teixiptla of Paynal made a “ritual circuit going around the city then west across a causeway to the mainland, south to Huitzilopochco, east to Iztapalapan, and then north

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Figure 49 Ruins of the double pyramid of Tlatelolco now overshadowed by the ex-Franciscan Church and college of Santiago Tlatelolco, once the home of Colegio de Santa Cruz. (Photo by Diego Delso used under Creative Commons SA 3.0 license, rendered in black and white and cropped) https://commons .wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30821989

across that causeway back into Tenochtitlan to stop at the foot of the Templo Mayor” (Figure 50) ritually purifying the area within (Townsend 2009:201). Processions of children on litters decorated with quetzal feathers occurred in several of the Tlaloc ceremonies. Conch trumpets sounded and townspeople fell in behind the litters to walk to the seven places of sacrifice (Arnold 1999:83–85). Mixcoatl was honored with a procession by warriors, a deer embodier, and the tlatoani from the Templo Mayor moving southward to the hill of Zacatepec and back (after a deer hunt). Leaders from several cities in the Valley of Mexico processed to the shrine atop Mt. Tlaloc each year and on another annual occasion processed to a mountain top and back to the Pantitlan whirlpool in the lake, where a girl was sacrificed and a pole erected. All causeways were raised, creating long platforms for processional display. Open plazas made good stages, and stepped facades of the many pyramids provided laddered platforms. Leaders moved along the causeways walking to or from the central ceremonial precinct (Mundy 2015:58). Lightweight corn pith paste figures were carried (Hughes 2010; Orozco 1970) and tremendous numbers of flowers were expended in arches and at altars along these routes. Processions or pilgrimages were also part of the coming of age initiations. Maps such as the historic side of the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 may show a processional route that would introduce the youths to the storyscape of their territory (Stanzione 2007). 15th–16th-century Spain: The large cities of Spain organized spectacular processions such as that held annually in Toledo for Corpus Christi (papers in Hanawalt and Reyerson 1994). Other processions were organized for the success of the Council of

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Figure 50 Procession routes through Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the 16th century. (Image and permissions provided by Barbara Mundy, reprinted from her 2015 Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, The Life of Mexico City, University of Texas Press. Fig. 8.2)

Trent in 1563, for Royal weddings, for victories of Catholic forces over Turks and Protestants and “at moments of great danger” (Christian 1981b:151), to call or stop rain or infestations. Processions led by a priest carrying the Host in a monstrance began in the 14th century (Doeswyck 1962). Problems arose with large and long processions. To curb immoral behavior during processions after 1565 some cities prohibited processions longer than 1 league and all overnight vigils except those held during Holy Week. Consequently, many processions were diverted to nearby chapels and shrines. Processions to large shrines would attract numerous towns – up to forty – on the same day, fanning rivalries between towns. Late in the 16th century, several dioceses mandated staggered dates for pilgrimages (Christian 1981b:117). After parish boundaries became fixed around 1300, rogations, or circumambulating a space, were conducted annually by villagers “beating the bounds” (Hutton 1996:277). Rogations performed several purposes: walking the boundaries of the parish to know one’s neighbors, to drive out evil spirits, and to bless the fields for a good growing season.

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“The recovery of ampullae from cultivated fields suggests that they may have been broken open on such occasions to disperse their contents of holy water in a ritual . . . these processions were also a rite of initiation, especially for boys, who were required to memorize the landmarks along the route by engaging with them physically” (Gilchrist 2012:170–171). 16th-century New Spain: Ritual processing in the two cultures overlapped for the week of April 25 to May 9 and in their use to initiate new adults. Since processions were already of ritual importance to natives, it seemed wise “to interest and charm the new converts by splendid services, processions, and festivals of all kinds,” both religious and civic, for important events in Spain and Mexico (Ricard 1966:168). However, “[i]n defiance of proper Christian solemnity ‘men with masks, dressed as women, and dancing and leaping about shamefully and lasciviously, pranced in front of the sacred things’” (Clendinnen 1990:120 citing Archbishop Zumárraga). Processions were performed almost weekly and on all feast days. Floats were carried in Spanish style. In one native Mexico City procession on Holy Thursday leaving from San José de los Naturales, “more than 3,000 crucifixes were counted . . . many Indians carried them” (Ricard 1966:180). Alvarado, while in the Maya area in 1518, petitioned the Bishop to organize a procession in his city “of all the priests and friars so that our Lord may help us” overcome native resistance (Early 2006:109). Holy Week processions with flagellants began in 1590 or thereabouts in Huexotzingo, Puebla; Taxco, Guerrero; and in Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán shortly thereafter (Webster 1997). It was meant for the flagellant to experience the same pain as Jesus’ suffering (Clendinnen 1990: ftn 59). Processions of flagellants numbering in some places “five or six thousand and in others ten or twelve thousand]” were recorded by Motolinía (1990). Procession routes in Mexico City in this century typically followed those of prequauhtemoc times (Figure 50). The procession marking San Hippolytus’ feast day (August 13), the day Quauhtemoc surrendered the city to Cortés, began with trumpets, battle suited conquistadors on dressed horses assembling at the south end of the Plaza Mayor, then following the preferred Aztec kings’ processional route along the causeway of Tacuba out to the shrine for San Hipólito. This was also the route of retreat for the Spanish on the Noche Triste. This procession was repeated the next day followed by Mass, bullfights in an arena assembled in the Plaza Mayor, and roping contests. (Mundy 2015:96)

Procession routes were established inside the atrium walls of 16th-century fortress monasteries with stops at the four posas (Perry 1992; Webster 1997) and with a route for the Stations of the Cross “that the faithful walked every Friday during Lent carrying an image of Christ. On returning from the last station, they chanted the rosary” (Early 2006:139). The posas were also sites for processional stops during the Good Friday processions of the confraternity of Vera Cruz, their direction of approach marked by iconography (Webster 1997:37). Following the Mesoamerican ritual direction, the procession moved counterclockwise and laid the body of Christ on an altar in each posa, incensing and praying as they went.

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The processions themselves revealed rank orders of neighborhoods, guilds, and populace. In processions instigated by native leaders in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, first the guilds then native church officials (fiscales, cantores) processed, followed by the native governor dressed in feathered regalia and cabildo members. Fireworks, drummers, and trumpeters accompanied them (Mundy 2015:159). In processions organized under Spanish auspices for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and San Juan’s day, for instance, hundreds of thousands of indigenous people, grouped by neighborhoods, and confraternities, processed with crosses, statues, candles, and banners. Fines were levied for nonparticipation (Mundy 2015). Several early authors remarked how the processions were filled with native Christians but rarely attracted Spanish laity. In fact, the native participation in funerals and saints days was so spectacular that Spaniards and clerics reported their own conversion and religious experiences while watching (Trexler 2002:322). In 1587, Friar Diego de Soria, stationed in San Agustin Acolman near Teotihuacan, successfully petitioned Pope Sixtus V for permission to institute a nine day reenactment of Maria and Joaquin’s travels before she delivered, held December 16 to 24 within the church atrium. It is highly likely that these daily processions were adapted from those held during the festival of Panquetzaliztli, honoring the birth of the Aztec sun deity Huitzilopochtli, which concluded just before these posadas. See also bloodletting, crucifix, dance, death, fast, feast, flower, music, pilgrimage, priest, shrine, sodality

purity 15th-century Central Mexico: The lords of cities were charged with caring for the people. It was said that the ruler “will bathe them, he will wash them” (Boone 1994:63). Newborns were washed to clean them of the filth of birth. Bathing was part of healing as well, meant to clean the body of bad aires. Bathing was particularly part of the preparation of boys in the calmecac and of priests. For purification purposes, Aztecs frequented temazcallis, the sweat houses (Figure 40). At the ceremony for Xochiquetzal, “at dawn [artisans] would have ritual baths in rivulets and streams, believing that those who did not wash themselves would be punished with venereal diseases or leprosy” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:214). Ritual baths taken during the veintena of Tepeilhuitl could cure dropsy and leprosy (although death from these diseases would get one to Tlalocan). The deity embodiers also underwent purification rituals before being sacrificed since each of these persons – slaves or captives – had the taint of failure. “The ‘bathing’ seems to have consisted of two parts: a preliminary purification with a special ‘holy water’ which cleansed the slave of the stigma and status of ‘slave’, and then the ‘face washing’ by a skilled older woman during the course of the ritual which at once sedated the victims and brought them closer to the sacred state” (Clendinnen 1991a:99). Clendinnen puts much weight behind the face washers and washing in general in effecting the cooperation of these slaves-meant-for-sacrifice, or the “bathed slaves,” in their plight as victims. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Sun god, and the rain gods, selected as their assistants

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victims of drowning, lightning strike, and death by certain diseases – morally pure humans – to bring into their realms as servants (Burkhart 1989:50–52). Durán (1971:267) recorded that all corpses were stripped and bathed at death. The phrases “entering the road, or ‘enter the water’ could mean either the ritual bathing of a king at the time of coronation or cleaning of a corpse” (Bassie-Sweet 2008:294). The Spanish remarked that central Mexican cities and villages were extremely clean and orderly, and noted bright paint, smooth roads and streets, fresh plaster, etc. Ritual cleansing of space employed sweeping and incensing during rogations, and cleaning of time units occurred with rituals conducted at the conclusion of each cycle, using fire and breakage of items, discard into water, and burial. The imaginary place of “Tamoanchan Chalchiuhmomozco [and the Otomi Mayonikha] was so sacred that no one could defecate there. The settlers had to travel four leagues to relieve themselves . . . but, since they were great magicians, they flew there” (López Austin 1997:54). Purification and resurrection underlay these New Fire ceremonies. For the Mexica ending of a 52-year cycle, all home and temple fires were extinguished and houses were swept; and hearth stones, pestles, pottery, and images were broken and thrown into water and replaced with new items. Once the new cycle began the old items would be “out of time” (Hamann 2008). 15th-century Spain: Confession, penance, prayer, and water were the Catholic’s route to purification of the soul. Baptism carried the greatest symbolism of purification as it was the Church’s prescription for washing away Original Sin. Water was used also in the cleaning of infants, the sick, priests at consecration, and corpses. The Feast of the Purification of Mary, the day she was clean enough to return to the temple community (February 2) provided an annual lesson on the need for purification of sinners. A major theological point regarding purity was the question of the Immaculate Conception, the belief in Mary’s pure birth recognized for centuries by different church fathers. There were two key positions on this question of the purity of Mary and by extension her mother Anne. The maculist position, held by Dominicans, argued that Mary had been conceived in original sin but had been sanctified in Anne’s womb and was thereby pure when born. The Immaculatist perspective, which was formulated by Franciscans, held that Mary had been preserved from Sin in the womb retroactively by the merits of Christ’s death and resurrection, even though those events had not occurred at the time of Mary’s conception (Lara 2014:38). This Immaculatist position was dominant in Spain and was favored by the Spanish Crown. The other point of purity of great significance in this century – to individuals and institutions – was that of the cleanliness or purity of blood, favoring a Christian bloodline. As the reconquest of the peninsula advanced, the question to be answered was “Were the parents of a person Christians? . . . [H]ow far back the demand for genealogical purity went, and the stringency of the definition of purity, varied over time and from institution to institution” (Earle 2012:9). The Limpieza de sangre statutes excluded Conversos and to some extent Moriscos from participation in civic life and from Christian rights “no matter how sincere the conversion” (Poole 1999:363). Statutes barred their admission to Orders, attendance at university, holding civic office, and even

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emigration to the New World (Poole 1999:363). It is interesting then to note that Columbus’ lineage was Converso, as was that of Teresa de Ávila and as were the lineages of a number of the Hieronymite friars who lived in the Santa Maria monastery at the shrine of Guadalupe in Spain. 16th-century New Spain: Franciscans were particularly the promoters of Mary’s purity, as evidenced by the presence of Immaculate Conception madonnas they transported across the Atlantic (especially La Purísima), the patrons of their churches and hospitals and various confraternities they founded or supported. Churches under the general patronage of the Immaculate Conception were founded in Tlahuelilpa, Hidalgo in the 1530s; Otumba in the 1550s; Chucanero, Michoacán; Celaya in 1570; Etzatlan, Jalisco; Puebla city in 1593, and Zongazolla, Puebla (Enciclopedia de los Municipios 1988); and in Oaxaca. Diego Romana, the visita of Tecamachalco (Tlaxcala), authorized the confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in December 1588 and a second in Yehualtepec, also in 1588. In spite of these devotions, Perry (1992:73) says that the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception was “a subject rare in 16th century mural art” with only two known examples, one in the Franciscan cloister at Huexotzingo. “While Christians saw cleanliness as metaphorical, at least Nahuas seem to have understood that to partake of communion one must be ritually pure, an idea that did not distinguish between the physical and the spiritual” (Starr-LeBeau 2008:408). A 1577 sermon written by Fray Juan de la Anunciación on the Purification of Mary stated: “It is essential for us sinners that we be purified in a sacred way . . . ’nothing black, nothing dirty, nothing repulsive will enter the home of our lord God . . . For no one will be able to see our lord God unless his or her heart, his or her soul is first purified” (Burkhart 2001a:67). So close were the Christian and Mesoamerican ideas of purity that the subtleties of difference were surely lost in translation (Burkhart 1989). Ritual purity for the Indian, however, included bathing. Native sweat houses, an indigenous purification practice, were of great concern to the friars for several reasons. One was the easy continuation of ancient fire and healing cults, another was the co-ed bathing practices with nudity. A third stated concern was the undignified manner of entrance into a sweat house, crawling on all fours. Sweat lodges were outlawed in 1546. Limpieza de sangre was carried to New Spain. In the next century this attitude would solidify into the caste system. Conversely, native leaders in towns created by the Spanish soon adopted their own blood purity requirements for their civic offices (Martinez 2008:273). Jews did manage to come to the New World in this century primarily by hiding their Jewishness. They could legally come into the New World as Portuguese merchants (Ruggiero 2005). See also baptism, blood, celibacy, healing, marriage, morals, mother/Mary, procession, sweeping, virginity, water, weeping, white, women

*Q

quadripartite world 15th-century Central Mexico: The four cosmic quadrants have been a theological precept since the time of the Olmecs, 3,500 years ago. It was recorded as quadrilateral shapes in space or other groupings of four and five objects or beings. It is no surprise then that several 15th- and 16th-century codices show the cosmos and this world as a quadrilateral shape, each quadrant populated by a distinguishing color, bird, gods, plant or sacred tree, or founding couple (Figure 51). Quadrant divisions of space (and time) continued into the Other World layers as well (e.g., Codex Borgia pages 25–28). Several codices tell us that east, the domain of the fire god, was colored red; south was blue, the domain of Huitzilopochtli; and west was white, the realm of Quetzalcoatl. North was the domain of Tezcatlipoca. It was black like him. Bassie-Sweet (1996) argues that Mesoamerican people in general conceptualized This World as a quadrilateral space inside of which humans were relatively safe from the cosmic forces emanating from above, below, and beyond this realm. The corners of the quadrilateral were variously marked in native cosmology by four ceiba trees (Maya), four rain gods (Maya), four deities (Aztec), or four candles (Wixarika). The midpoints of the sides were broken by cosmic caves, which in the east and west were caves of the sun. The quadrilateral safe space for humans was duplicated in the rectangular sleeping mat, house, cornfield, and village territory. Numerous maps document the role of four mountains (volcanoes often) in defining this quadrilateral space, marking off an altepetl (city-state) and “traditional lands.” This quadripartite cosmology was also reflected in city organization. Huitzilopochtli commanded the Mexica to divide their new city into four sectors, calpulli. The ceremonial precinct of the town was built in the center. Some other non-Mexica groups in the Valley, such as the Tlaxcaltecas, also employed this social geography. Space and time were seamless in ancient Mesoamerican philosophy, which is attested to by the incorporation of dates and the flow of time into many of the cosmic quadrants shown in the codices. Days in the solar calendar were numbered and named. Each number and day had a quadrant assignment. Using the predictable motion of the sun, calendar priests could mark out a rectangle on the landscape using the rise and set points on a horizon line of the sun at summer and winter solstices – defining NE, SE, NW, and SW intercardinal points on the land – and could find the cardinal (mid)points using spring rise and fall set equinoxes. In this manner, communities, buildings, and fields were laid out. Triangles form halves of quadrangles. Large equilateral triangles were apparently used for overall site design at mound sites in both Louisiana and Mexico as early as 3,800 years ago (Clark 2004). Legs of the triangle were measured as multiples or divisions of 86.63 meters (including 1.666 m, which divided into 86.63 gives the significant number 52), such 254

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Figure 51 Four world quarters with their respective gods and trees. In the center is Xiuhtecuhtli, the Sun god. The five sections form a cosmic quincunx. (Codex Fejervary-Meyer, p. 1)

as found in over a dozen early ceremonial centers on the northern plain of the Gulf of Mexico, and in Gulf coastal Mexico. Dimensions of this triangle and multiples of the standard measurement “form a progressive series . . . of natural numbers (4, 5, 6, and 7)” and other culturally significant numbers, such as 4, 13, 20, and 52 (Clark 2004:187), clearly indicating that (1) the time-space continuum is quite old and (2) that ceremonial centers were laid out before construction began with attention to cosmic dictates. 15th-century Spain: The significance of four saturated the Greco-Roman world and came to permeate Augustine’s thought about the history of the world and the structure of the afterlife. Augustine had a four-part history-scheme: before the law of Moses; Jews as God’s chosen people; Jesus’ sacrifice that frees humans and replaces God’s chosen people with Christians; and the reign of God that follows the return of Christ and the establishment of the City of God (Fredriksen 1991). Augustine’s understanding of the afterlife was also fourfold: the elect who achieve heaven immediately; those who will attain heaven after being cleansed of their sins; those who will eventually achieve relief from the torments of hell; and those who will spend eternity in hell (Augustine 2009). Spaniards inherited an ancient conception of this world as a square marked by the cardinal directions, the four winds, four elements, four seasons, the four rivers of Eden, and the four corners of the earth. By this century, most references to the world quarters and directions were wrapped in Christian allusion. In the beginning, God gathered all the pieces from the four winds and forged this world. In the middle of the universe were Jerusalem, the sun, and Christ. Each letter in Adam’s name was the first letter of the name of one of the four winds. The

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Figure 52 Cloister yard at Monreale, Sicily, divided into quadrants, each with a different tree species, and with a center tree. (Photo and permission given by Marilyn Crafton Smith)

Earthly Paradise was either north or east, the direction of salvation. Hell was in the hot, dry South. The west was the location of the Last Judgment (Guzauskyte 2014). The equalarmed cross furthered this quadrilateral reference. A square was used as a halo around living persons in art. Each quadrant of the world had its sacred tree as well, and the quadrilateral cosmos was the typical design motif in cloister gardens (Figure 52). The saints and the Virgin were assigned directionality in the Flos Sanctorum. “There is a fourfold classification of the saints of the New Testament whom we celebrate through the cycle of the year . . . apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins . . . apostles by the east, martyrs by the south, confessors by the north, virgins by the west” (Voragine 1998:1105). Space and time seamlessly flowed together in the cosmos. Even the wounds of Christ were organized into this quincunx and adopted by the Franciscans as their symbol (Figure 25). Church architecture included three doors at the cardinal points, the west door for taking out a corpse, and an east–west axis; the atrios also had cardinal point portals. Some town foundings and relocations in the countryside of Spain in this century followed the Roman encampment model, that is “a rectangular plan consisting of four quarters formed by two principal streets crossing at right angles at midpoint, where a plaza was left open, on which faced the church, town hall, jail, and other public buildings” (Torres Balbas et al. 1954:59). Gates were often placed at the four midpoints and bastions at the four corners. Four also symbolized totality, solidity, and earthiness and was significant in witchcraft (Tausiet 2014). 16th-century New Spain: Overlapping derivations for the sacredness of the number 4 in these regions stem from the common observations of the natural world. Both cultures thought of the realm occupied by humans as quadrilateral in shape. The symbolism associated with this conception was also shared: the equal arm cross, the trees of the four world quarters, the importance of cardinal and intercardinal directions and points, the grouping of things in fours, and the overlap of temporal units with spatial units. But the greater European focus on cardinal points rather than quadrants formed by

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the intercardinal corners shifted the native’s spatial awareness somewhat from units of space to points in space. Quadrilateral Catholic churches in New Spain captured the sacred directionality of Mesoamericans in their floor plans, and walled atriums literally and figuratively defined “safe space” for the Indian (see Figure 56). Spanish buildings and town layouts with town squares and gridded streets continued the motif of quadrilateral safe spaces and celestial roads (Figure 19). Like the Mexicas’ four Tezcatlipocas or the powhatans/bacabs of the Maya each placed in a quadrant of the universe, many church interiors in New Spain had four pillars under the dome with the four doctors of the Church or the evangelists depicted at the top supporting the roof/heaven. See also calendar, cave, cosmos, cross, east, mountain, procession, religious architecture, tree

*R

rain. see water

red 15th-century Central Mexico: Red was the color of fire, the dawn sun, the earth, and the east. When paired with blue the combination denoted war. One story of the founding of Tenochtitlan tells of a double spring of water, one part flowing with blue water and another with red. Writing was spoken of as “the red and the black.” The color red was also associated with the ruling class (Anawalt 1981:135) and with thwarting “bad aires” (Furst 1995). Most Mixtec xicolli jackets were red, worn by persons in place name glyphs, in ceremonial scenes, bridegrooms, ancestors, ambassadors, and intended sacrificial victims. Red ochre was put on the face of the girl sacrificed as a ripe ear of corn (Kroger and Granziera 2012:177). Red, orange, and tan colorants were derived from organic sources – cochineal insects (Figure 42), the achiotl plant, and blood, and mineral sources – red oxide, hematite, and cinnabar. 15th-century Spain: Red was the color of blood, whether it be the blood of Jesus or that of the martyrs. This blood shed in sacrifice was evoked by the red vestments of the Cardinals and thus was the color signifying war, courage, martyrdom, and royalty (Greenfield 2005:19–20). “From late 1100s the Church adopted red as a symbol of its authority taking a red cross on a white shield . . . By decree, red also became the Church’s official symbol for Pentecostal fire . . . sin was scarlet in the Old Testament. In Revelation, the Antichrist is portrayed as a ‘great red dragon’ cavorting in the depraved company of the Scarlet Woman,” a whore (Greenfield 2005). Frequently, Mary Magdalene wears red (Taylor 2003). Many cultures in Europe and beyond thought that red hair indicated a connection to the spirit world. The color’s spiritual connotations went both ways. “[R]ed thread was said to ward off witches. Wealthy children were given red coral necklaces to guard them from illness and red cloth was said to prevent sore throats and smallpox” (Greenfield 2005:19). True red was the most sought after color in Europe. The Pope decreed in 1295 that cardinals wear red robes yet a shade of purple was the best that could be produced. In Lucca, Italy, silk dyers mastered a red that the guild protected. 16th-century New Spain: The arrival and spread of Catholicism imparted new meanings for the color red for native peoples while sustaining the idea that red could thwart some evils and its association with blood and sacrifice. A fascinating study by Kerpel (2014) of the colors in the postquauhtemoc Florentine Codex found that the native red colorants were applied to Nahua figures, while the imported minium (lead tetroxide) used 258

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extensively in European illuminated manuscripts was used to color Spanish items and people. Cochineal farming did not interest the encomenderos, so the cochineal trade remained in the hands of native peoples through this century, at first engaging producers in Tlaxcala trading through nearby Puebla and on to Veracruz from where it was shipped to Spain (Greenfield 2005). As the colorant’s popularity grew, English pirates took greater interest in the shipments headed to Seville. “The struggle over cochineal had a symbolic dimension as well [as economic]. To possess cochineal was to possess the color of military prowess and imperial glory – a metaphorical triumph that meant everything to Protestant England” (Greenfield 2005:117). See also blood, blue, insect, sin, vestment, white

relic 15th-century Central Mexico: Relics, as repositories of divine power, were kept by Aztecs and others in Mesoamerica. A belief that the yolia soul attached to bone after death (Furst 1995) insured that skeletal elements had a role in the theology of all groups in Anahuac. The bones of the deity embodiers (teixiptla) were kept as relics (López Austin 2015:155) in sacred bundles. The deities were present in these bundles for the priests who kept them in the innermost sanctuaries of temples and were considered conduits to and the presence of the sacred. Warriors, too, had personal sacred bundles that contained the bones of their sacrificed captives. Furthermore, “In a ritual similar to one performed by warriors themselves, wives would take out the femurs of their husbands’ former captives, which were kept in the home and called malteotl, ‘prisoner deity’, wrap them in paper, and hang them from the house beams. Addressing these relics they would offer incense and pray for their husbands’ safety” (Burkhart 1997:40). Warriors were buried with the trophy parts they had collected. Among the Totonacs, the bones of leaders were kept in stone reliquaries (Figure 53). 15th–16th-century Spain: Shrines almost always housed important relics, typically bone fragments of a saint but also nearly complete bodies after the 10th century (bodies of Spanish martyrs such as Vincent, Eulalia, and Leocadia probably were the basis for the first Spanish Christian shrines). “By the high Middle Ages, holy matter of all sorts was enthusiastically divided” (Bynum 2011:193). Posthumous beheading of saints’ remains produced valuable fragments and it was usual to deliberately dismember a saint’s body in the quest for relics (García de León 2006:48–49). As martyrs were torn apart during their deaths – by beasts and persecutors – theologians had to develop a theory of wholeness in partition. Christian cathedral status required a relic as well as a cemetery. From the early 15th century, churches were encouraged to show their relics to pilgrims. Carlos V and particularly Felipe II collected relics, Felipe having over 7,000 items, many gifted by leaders and by Jesuits in Protestant countries (Christian 1981b:135). Most available relics were bone pieces of male saints. Relics of the Virgin were few and were mostly pieces of clothing such as her girdle, which was said to have dropped to earth during her assumption, and her robe (Rubin 2009b). Relics were sold by relic hunters and in the

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Figure 53 Stone reliquaries for royal dead at Quiahuiztlan, Veracruz. (Photo by Edgar Jimenez used under Creative Commons SA 3.0 license, cropped and rendered in black and white) https://commons .wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28676443cropped

agreement to accept a relic, a village pledged to observe that saint’s feast day. Relics reinforced not only community pride but also competition. Parishes would steal relics or parts of saints’ remains from other parishes, figuring if they were successful God must have willed the acquisition (Chidester 2000). “The medieval geography of the holy thus included hundreds of whole-body shrines and thousands of [shrines and churches with] bodily fragments. Nowhere was far from one of the former, while the big churches had huge collections of the latter” (Bartlett 2013:243). Non-osseous relics that had been in contact with a saint were also found, forged, sold, and venerated (Figure 54). Principal among these were pieces of the wooden “true cross” and nails excavated by Helen, mother of Constantine, from the hill of Calvary sometime between 326 and 328. Church-held relics mentioned in the Relaciones Geográficas of Castile in 1577 included thorns from the crown of thorns, hair, clothing, ashes of saints, etc. Pilgrims collected anything they could from the path, waymarker shrines, and the destination shrine: threads, dust, wax, hair, splinters from beds, belts, even shrine washwater, dirt, and rock. The saint with the largest number of relics mentioned in the Relaciones Geográficas was Blaise (Christian 1981b:127). On feast days, people were allowed to touch some relics. Relics had been moved into France during the Muslim invasion of the Spanish kingdoms. Most relics were not returned with the Reconquest. As part of the effort to protect Catholic relics during the first years of the Reformation, the Jesuits collaborated with the Spanish royals and Rome to send shipments of relics to Spain, Portugal, and to missions in the New World (Christian 1981b).

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Figure 54 Habit and cord of St. Francis, Assisi, Italy. (Photo by C. Claassen)

Increased use of images, officially encouraged in the 11th century, led to the development of shrines dedicated to saints for whom there were no available relics. These images might also weep or bleed, which Aquinas suggested could be from the presence of the divine in the image itself. “The introduction of a vital Marian cult into this system, a cult based on images, not relics, reduced the importance of relics. By the sixteenth century most active shrines in Spain were Marian” (Christian 1981b:126) with an image or statue. 16th-century New Spain: “The traffic in relics across the Atlantic began when a fragment of the True Cross was given to the Santo Domingo church” of MexicoTenochtitlan (Clossey 2008:221). Spurred by the destruction of Catholic relics in Europe, Catholic relics were sent to Mexico City in several shipments (while at the same time Catholics were destroying all the natives’ relics they could find). In 1573 the Augustinians at the Colegio San Pablo in Mexico City received another piece of the True Cross (Hughes 2010:90). “On the feast of All Saints in 1578 the Jesuits organized a festive reception of 214 relics of European saints that the pope had sent them to be distributed in the churches in Mexico City” (García de León 2006:48–49). Another of these gifts arrived November 1, 1587 (Harris 2000:152). “During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, an infinity of bones, objects, and even complete corpses of saints arrived from Europe in Mexico to be placed in the innumerable churches” (García de León 2006:49). Venerated relics were also generated within Mexico these decades, at first targeting the bodies, possessions, and places of the inaugural generation of missionaries. Two

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missionaries were murdered by natives in Cacalotlán – Fray Francisco Lorenzo and Fray Francisco Anunciación – and their bodies were treated as relics in the convent of Etzatlán. In Molango, natives “venerated pieces of charcoal that survived a church fire as relics of the ‘saint’ Antonio de Roa” then “whenever they came across a piece of charcoal that refused to burn or could not be reduced to ash, they saved it and would kiss and venerate it as his remains. Similarly, in Meztitlan, the people venerated a cave where Roa was said to have retired to pray” (Hughes 2010:70). Mendieta’s Historia eclesiastica indiana recounts the martyrdom of Franciscan friar Juan Calero on June 10, 1541. He was beaten to death, his face disfigured, and his mouth and teeth mutilated by Caxcans in the mountains northwest of Mexico City. The indigenous kept his habit and used it as a ritual object, commemorating their victory over one who had destroyed their images. However, Calero’s body was found five days after his martyrdom, naked and “without any decomposition whatsoever” (Ahern 2007:283). For burial it was wrapped in a second habit. That habit was torn apart at his funeral by brothers who wanted “a piece of the fragrant aroma the corpse emitted” (Ahern 2007:284). Mendieta reported that years later the first habit was returned to the friars by Christian Caxcans. The body of the martyr Alonso de Escalona (d. 1594) was conserved by his brothers while they collected hair and nails from it. Pallbearers spilled his body and the “excitement exploded . . . First the habit or shroud on the corpse, and then other clothes . . . were shredded to pieces by the crowd, an attack so fierce that the Franciscans in this and other cases threw the body naked into the ground and covered it up,” later to be exhumed and reburied (Trexler 2002:316). See also bone, cult, deity embodiment, healing, image/idol, knot, offering, patron, pilgrimage, religious architecture, sacred bundle, shrine, vestment

religious architecture 15th-century Central Mexico: A quadrilateral space on earth was created by the gods within which humans were relatively safe from the conflicting energies of the cosmos (Bassie-Sweet 1996). Duplicating that shape throughout religious architecture were quadrilateral temples, pyramids, shrines, and enclosures. These temples often visually arose out of the watery world below, being surrounded by a moat, or being on an island, or beside water. The Cholula pyramid, begun long before the Aztecs existed, was a massive adobe brick structure with several platforms (Figure 47). It is the largest pyramid by mass and base dimensions in the world. It, too, was enlarged multiple times and the eastern approach to its west side, its stelae, and other elements indicate a Gulf coastal influence in one or more of its remodelings. The post-Teotihuacan era Feathered Serpent cult had as its principle shrine type the stepped pyramid, such as was constructed in the Totonac region of Veracruz at El Tajín after 600 (Figure 55) and, secondarily, the circular pyramid. Circular pyramids (Figure 9), adopted from the Huastec, were dedicated to the swirling, spiraling winds embodied by

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Figure 55 Ceremonial center of El Tajín, Veracruz. Stepped pyramids are attributed to the Feathered Serpent cult. (Photo by Jacob Rus used under Creative Commons 2.0 license, cropped and rendered in black and white) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43835

Quetzalcoatl/Ehécatl. A most impressive collection of this architectural type can be seen at the Guachimontones site in Jalisco. Moving to Mexica architecture, Teocalli, god house, was the term applied to both the pyramid and the temple. Codices show many temples on raised platforms, with thatched roofs. Most temples were small, dark, and smoky inside from the burning of incense and offerings. Large temples might also have ceilings with ornate carvings. Images, relics, flowers, and offerings lay on the floors, hung on the walls, and rested on the altars. The images were hidden behind curtains of feathers, bells, flowers, and clothing, and were often studded with precious stones. “[Francisco] Clavigero (1731–1787) . . . thinks that Torquemada’s figure of forty thousand [temples] is far below the actual number, if the lesser ones be taken into account, since there was no inhabited place that did not have one temple, nor any place of any size that did not have a considerable number” (Braden 1930:52–53). Unique to Aztec pyramid design was the double pyramid at the top of which were two temples, such as the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan (Figure 7). Double pyramids, dedicated to two deities, were found at other Aztec centers: Tenayuca, Teopanzolco, Tlatelolco (Figure 49), and Tetzcoco. The symbolism of the Huitzilopochtli side of the double temples was to recreate the birthplace of Huitzilopochtli on top of Coatepec Mountain, and his fearsome destruction of his 400 brothers and sister Coyolxauhqui immediately thereafter, and then casting of her body down the mountain. Mt. Tlaloc, where Tlaloc resided, occupied the other side of Tenochtitlan’s and Tetzcoco’s double pyramids. The double Templo Mayor seen by Cortés in Tenochtitlan was first built in 1325 then enlarged completely six times and partially four times over the next 200 years (Figure 7).

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The fourth enlargement occurred between 1440 and 1481 and the facade was adorned with stucco serpents, monkeys, Tlaloc images, and braziers; an altar in front of the pyramid sported stucco frogs. A huge stone disk showing the dismembered Coyolxauhqui (https:// tinyurl.com/y2hfzm9l) also dates to this enlargement, as do many of the offerings uncovered (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:233–236). Images of the old fire god Xiuhtecuhtli, together with Tlaloc, presided over most of the offerings. King Ahuizotl made the sixth enlargement to commemorate Aztec success in subjugating numerous Gulf coastal cities. Four uninterrupted days of human sacrifices were made before dozens of summoned leaders from surrounding towns. The temple was reopened on the last day of Panquetzaliztli in 1487, the feast dedicated to Huitzilopochtli. The Sacred Precinct was walled off at this time and this wall was decorated with serpent heads. Ahuizotl built three other shrines and the House of the Eagle Warriors adjacent to the Templo Mayor (Townsend 2009). This House of Eagles was a large single-story building with meeting rooms and patios having broad benches set off with friezes copying those at Tula. Here warriors bloodlet on two large statues when the death of a king occurred (Figure 41). In the final stage of renovations to the Templo Mayor, the parallel pyramid tops were nearly 200 feet high. The crowning temples had standard-bearers with banners and deity images inside. The entire pyramid was stuccoed and painted. On the spring equinox (Milbrath 2007:174), the sunrise shows through the cleft between the two shrines at the top of the pyramid. During the dry season the sun appears behind Huitzilopochtli’s side of the temple, while during the wet season the sun rises behind the Tlaloc side of the temple (Mundy 2015:30). More than 135 offering caches (e.g., Figure 37) containing 8,000+ items were deposited during these remodelings (Carrasco and Sessions 2011:15), some of which the Mexica collected from the ruins of Teotihuacan and Tula ritual centers (Figures 2–4). Sacred energy, teotl, was captured not just through the vessel that was the building and its ritual trappings, however. Alignments to mountains have been demonstrated in dozens of temple constructions throughout the land such as at Teotihuacan (Figure 44; see Wake 2010 for more examples), as have alignments with moonrises and sets, and with particular constellations. The Venus calendar has also been captured with architecture such as the ciudadela area of Teotihuacan. Other locational criteria for pyramids and shrines that captured teotl were high elevations and “center,” “corner,” and “mid-point” locations in the quadrilateral space writ large within and around each town. 15th-century Spain: Cathedrals, churches, chapels, shrines, and cloisters were the most common types of Spanish religious buildings. “Basilica” refers to a floor plan of a rectangular building with a central nave and side aisles, and raised platform at the opposite end from the door, the standard plan for most Christian architecture through the Middle Ages. The term also designates a church with special ceremonial rights given by the Pope. Cathedrals are the seat of a bishop, the main church in a diocese. Cathedrals and basilicas often took centuries to build. The statuary, stained glass imagery, and apse and ambulatory conveyed biblical stories and saints’ exploits. Among the great cathedrals in Europe were two in Spain, Santiago de Compostela (Figure 45) and Seville’s Saint Mary of the See. St. Mary’s was transformed from church to mosque then to cathedral again in

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1502, to become the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Gothic cathedrals were the ultimate expression of medieval theology in stone – a place of light with stained glass to give a glimpse of the miraculous colors of heaven (McDannell and Lang 1990). In large churches, side chapels served as devotional foci for brotherhoods and guilds (Christian 1981b:70–71). European churches are oriented east–west and have entrances at west, south, and north midpoints. A convent is often located to the south, connected by a portico with rooms located “above the refectory, the kitchen, the chapter room, the library, the stables, and the cellars” (Ricard 1966:162). Spanish cathedral architecture in the 15th century was especially distinctive in terms of the absence of steeples and the presence of circular towers and octagonal funerary chapels (Wilson 1990). Chapels and shrines were public, devotional places, although some housed hermits (Christian 1981b:70). “Shrines were [an] order’s most sacred places . . . located by this particular spring, tree, or castle. . .the quintessential institution of local religion” (Christian 1981b:125). The Relaciones Geográficas of 1575 collected by Felipe II’s administration from Spanish communities throughout the realm report an average of two chapels per community and many towns with at least five, often founded during plagues. There were 277 chapels to Mary in Castile alone. Some individuals willed their house to the devotion of a favored saint to become way marker chapels/shrines along pilgrimage routes. Some pagan shrines were also reused, such as the first structure housing the crypt of Santiago in Compostela. 16th-century New Spain: In 1525, the friars began the methodical destruction of temples in Anahuac. In 1537, the bishops of New Spain received permission to destroy the remaining temples and to reuse their stones and lumber in churches. The Mexican Church Junta of 1539 worried about the persistence of pantheism that might be indicated by the hundreds of extant native chapels, but by the 1550s, central Mexico was said to be free of pre-contact era temples and to have dozens of new churches (Remensnyder 2000:210 ftn 98). These new spaces were built utilizing Aztec temple foundations whose orientations were rarely that common to Christian churches. Elements of Moorish architecture are evident in the new churches, such as the bell tower at Actopan, Hidalgo, and the cloisters of numerous monasteries (e.g., Figure 16). The floor plans and their alignments surely led to the continued use of “teocalli” and “teopan” referents by natives for Catholic churches (Wake 2010:115–116). Christians, like the Aztecs, named their churches after a particular sacred force, such as St. John the Baptist or La Asunción. There were no professional architects in New Spain before the 1550s. As a result, friars worked with experienced indigenous people on designs and materials (Peterson 1993:21). The fortress convents built by Indians for the different Orders had open chapels (Figure 56), large atria (Figure 56), reduced cloisters (into which few Indians would have been permitted), stages, and corner posas in the wall around the atrium. Open chapels, atria, and corner posas were once considered to be New World inventions (Wake 2010:102, 117) but now “Spanish historians have proposed Andalusian antecedents . . . in particular, the Convento Casa Grande de San Francisco (Seville), where, interestingly enough, early Franciscan friars bound for the New World were housed and outfitted prior

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Figure 56 Atrium yard in foreground, open chapel (left half ), and church (center) of the Dominican mission San Pablo y San Pedro, Teposcolula, Oaxaca. (Photo by Gerardo Corona Alarcón used under Creative Commons SA 3.0 license, cropped and rendered in black and white) https://commons .wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27987164

to embarking” (Giffords 2007:63). Nevertheless, the first application of the open chapel in New Spain was reportedly that by the Flemish Franciscan Pedro de Gante for the native church of San José de los Naturales in Mexico City, founded in 1525. The atrium – a large walled yard in front of a monastery – was an obvious parallel to the prequauhtemoc quadrilateral safe space. It was also part of the solution for how to accommodate the vast number of attendees, as was the open chapel from which the friars addressed the throng. This area was used for instructing and gathering the natives, for feast days and processions, and for burying those who had an active role in the congregation (Lara 2004). The enclosing wall was crenelated in many cases and typically opened through gates onto the town plaza. Stations of the Cross might be embedded in the wall for processions. The wall continued behind the convent to completely enclose the church, situating that building in the conceptual, if not the actual, center of the quadrilateral enclosure. The duplication of this Mesoamerican principle was surely not unnoticed or unappreciated by the natives. Both atrium and open chapel were absent from most churches built after 1576, at least in the Maya area (Graham 2011:180). The arch with keystone was introduced at this time (Mundy 2015:207). Simpler churches consisted of a rectangular floor plan with no side aisles, a flat roof, or possibly a vaulted roof. This style of church was common in Mexico but uncommon in contemporary Spain (Graham 2011). Excavations by Elizabeth Graham in early Franciscan churches in two small Maya villages give us a rare glimpse into the architecture and associated spaces and practices in 16th-century churches. They had naves of

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stone mixed with wood, raised platforms for the altar stipes, a bench for the portable altar, a single aisle nave, doors at north and south mid-points, a polygonal east end, thatched roofing, and later a sacristy accessed from the south side of the altar, 22–23 meters long, 6.5–8 meters wide. An associated cemetery was both outside and under the floor. There was no visible connection to the rectory. Both villages placed their churches on older foundations. Giffords (2007:44) and Graham (2011:232) suggest that this floor plan and size reflected poor engineering and building skills or inadequate scaffolding, or perhaps, the vision of the primitive church. Perhaps it was this simple church that could allow for Pedro de Gante’s claim that he himself constructed more than 100 churches and chapels in New Spain (Mundy 2015:123). Graham observed that “church” was used for structures where Spaniards attended and natives were not permitted and “chapel” for structures where natives congregated (Graham 2011:182). The huge, fortified convents were intended to rival the monolithic and monumental architecture of the Aztec state but more than that, from herein the missionaries would conquer the infidels as soldiers of Christ building His palace and kingdom on earth. “[T]he architectural models that inspired the open monasteries of Mexico were imaginary constructs taken from the Old and New Testaments as well as from medieval apocalyptic literature. Imitating the New Jerusalem or Solomon’s temple, these so-called fortressmonasteries became visual symbols of a ‘spiritual conquest’. . .[and] the spirit of the early, primitive Church” (Domínguez Torres 2013:67). These fortress monasteries also suit the medieval idea of the castle of the soul. “[T]he defensive appearance of these precincts did not derive from any practical purpose; it was a symbolic expression of their spiritual mission” (Domínguez Torres 2013:67). The architecture was imagined and constructed as the appropriate structures for “a new utopian Indian Christendom that would usher in the last age” (Hughes 2010:28–29). Colonial period maps show “how Indian cartographers over several generations consistently related their churches to the temple-pyramids of old, at both a conceptual and functional level” (Wake 2010:102) beginning with a vantage point from a sacred mountain. Merlons on the churches and atrium walls may have been from a European idea expressing the war waged against the Devil – but would the Indians have seen them as pyramids and mountains? Examples of place name glyphs occurring in walls at several churches, without the hill element of the toponym, indicate the church substituting for the mountain (Wake 2010:120), both having cavernous space and rocky walls. Wake also observed that in native-drawn maps, the churches often had two symmetrical windows on either side of the entrance, which they rarely had in reality, and were shown on a platform, further evidence of the church equivalent of the prequauhtemoc temple/cave and its artificial mountain platform (Wake 2010:125). Furthermore, the mouth of the cave was conceptually a face, the windows the eyes, another indication of persistent references to Tlaloc’s face. “The home of the Christian god had acquired the identity of the native sacred” (Wake 2010:130). Yet, the vaulted roofs and arched doorways of churches were quite different from the small, stucco, flat, thatched roofs, and rectangular doorways of traditional teocallis or cave shrines (Wake 2010:115–120). See also altar, cave, landscape, mountain, quadrilateral world, procession, shrine

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religious instruction 15th-century Central Mexico: Instruction in religion and a craft was conducted at home before age 13 and in sex-segregated, temple-run boarding schools from about age 13 until 17. In the calmecac school for nobles’ children, under strict supervision of priests, the boys learned “basic calendrical calculation and use of the tonalamatl (260-day calendar); the significance and timing of the annual veintena festivals . . . a range of ritual performances, and how to address the deities. History, arithmetic, architecture, astronomy, agriculture, and warfare were also part of the curriculum” (Townsend 2009:165). The teachers taught from books. Success in school was the key to advancement within the administration in either priesthood or government (clerks, officials, accountants, ministers, judges, historians, tax collectors, envoys, ambassadors) (Boone 1994:61). The commoners’ school offered basic training in occupations, warfare, good citizenship, and morals, particularly moderation, reverence, and valor. “Girls learned prayers for her wedding and for daily life, spinning, weaving, and embroidery” (Townsend 2019:77). A commoner child with promise might earn a place in the calmecac. 15th–16th-century Spain: Christian education was the charge of parish priests and the vocation of itinerant priests and monks. In attempting the conversion of pagan Germanic peoples, parish priests and itinerant priests had to accommodate some cultural practices, appropriate some sacred sites, and preach against the pagan icons (Russell 1994:197). “A result of the implementation of this policy of accommodation was a perception among the Germanic peoples that one became a Christian merely by including Christ and his saints in one’s pantheon, and by relating to them in a Germanic magico-religious and religio-political fashion, without substantial ethical or doctrinal requirements” (Russell 1994:212). This developmental pattern can be seen in Celtic Christianity as well and one might imagine it to be similar to the situation in the New World. As their spiritual lives matured, the laity was eligible for and could seek confirmation by a bishop, signalling that the individual had mastered basic and slightly advanced theological points and ritual practices. Of concern to bishops was the lack of education among the parish (secular) priests. It was Dominicans who led the way in the education of clergy. They were motivated by concerns about the lack of doctrinal understanding among the laity as well as the proliferation of communities of Cathars and Waldensians. The Dominican conventual school educated the men of the attached monastery, other clerics, and a few seculars. In the mid-13th century, Dominicans began teaching in some European universities and in the 14th century in Barcelona and Salamanca. In the 15th century, Dominican scholars held several chairs of philosophy, especially of metaphysics. Their students were primarily men in the Orders, not the secular priests. All Dominican friars were fluent in Latin, the lingua franca of the Western Church, as well as Greek, Hebrew, and, in the Iberian case, Arabic. Along with Hebrew, Arabic was one of the central philosophical and theological languages for any study of academic topics in Iberia. This was not the only reason language study was central to the Dominican mission. Friars often found themselves offering support to Christians in Muslim-held Iberian territories or “Arabic-speaking Jacobites, Nestorians, Maronites”

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in the Holy Land Province in Jerusalem (Vose 2009:104). From the 1230s, language study was a central educational focus for the Dominicans, who were admonished to “learn the languages of their neighbors” in order to serve any who found themselves in need (Vose 2009:105). The Book of Hours, for daily devotions, the Ars Moriendi, for end-of-life and funerals, and the Flos Sanctorum, detailing the lives of saints, were important vernacular instructional books. The invention of the printing press in 1454 led to mass distribution of religious tracts. The Flos Sanctorum was among the first books printed, with nearly 100 editions before 1500. 16th-century New Spain: Religious education, basically the teaching of the catechism, was approached in different ways for adults and children. For adults, the message (always in a native language in the first seven decades) was conveyed through pictorial cloths, picture books, theater, songs, portable images, confraternity devotions, and the example of the missionary friars (e.g., Hughes 2010). Pieces of the Atzaqualco Pictorial Catechism, consisting of folios put together from the late 16th through 18th century, may have been in use, at least for “the General Confession, Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed, and Salve, and on the folios . . . that bear the question and answer section” (Boone, Hill, and Tavárez 2017:7). Pictorial catechisms were the “first books printed in Nahuatl . . . and it was from these that boys learned to read and write” (Boone, Hill, and Tavárez 2017:19). Schools for children were seen as essential to creating a stable society, spreading the message of Christianity, and creating Spanish Christian communities. Franciscans made child education mandatory in 1524. Encomenderos with more than fifty natives were obligated to send all sons of native nobility under age 14 to the Franciscans for four years. At the mission schools, native children continued to be divided into two tracks, one for the children of native aristocracy who were boarders and the other for farming children who returned home each night; each “school” had different rules, although both were held in the same facility (Nesvig 2006a:77). All children were schooled in reading, writing, numbers, and singing, all in Nahuatl. Friars soon increased the number of boarding schools for noble children in Tetzcoco, Tlaxcala, and Huexotzingo, teaching from 600 to 1,000 students in each school. Graduates were expected to teach in their communities as well as to report idolatry and to serve as maestros and fiscales (treasurers) in paid positions in rural towns (Christensen 2013). Confirmation, like baptism and confession in the New World situation, was not a simple process or an easily defined expectation. At what age to confirm was a contentious topic. Archbishop Zamárraga favored the confirmation of young children because of possible early death leaving them with less grace than they might otherwise have if they died after the age of reason. What constituted the requisite religious knowledge in order to be confirmed was also contentious – various published catechisms contained different information. The manual with the greatest detail on the requirements for confirmation was written by Franciscan Fray Alonso de Molina in 1569. One manual covered the fall of Adam, one had forty sermons, and one barely mentioned confirmation. Franciscans also offered advanced religious instruction to native men in the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco, established in 1536 (although classes began in 1533). Bernardino de Sahagún, Andrés de Olmos, Alonso de Molina, and Motolinía were among the

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teachers. Students at this college (perhaps the most famous being Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtilxóchitl [1568–1648]) were instructed in Latin grammar, Spanish, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, Christian morality, the Holy Scriptures, painting, and some medicine (Carrasco 1999:18). “Inspired by Erasmian and utopian humanism, the Franciscans had three goals for the new college: 1) to form a firmly Catholic Indian laity; 2) to train a future Indian priesthood; and 3) to provide linguists and translators to help illiterate Indians obtain access to Scripture and liturgy” (Nesvig 2006a:77). The Dominicans, in general, were suspicious of the Franciscan Tlatelolco project. The Provincial Councils of the Mexican church held in 1555 and 1565, dominated by the Dominicans, prohibited the ordination of Indians as priests, perhaps bringing about the end of the College in the 1570s. The Tlatelolco facility continued as a monastery for Spaniards (Figure 49). By 1534 there were eight schools for girls. Religious women had been brought from Spain to teach them but their education, such as it was, focussed on manners and meant to make them suitable wives and mothers in the estimation of Spaniards. Beginning school as young as five years old, and separated from their families, girls were married at the age of 12 to boy pupils. These schools lasted only a decade for want of religious women to instruct them (Ricard 1966:211–212). Augustinians conducted schooling with mixed ethnicities (Nesvig 2006a) but it was the arrival of the Jesuits in New Spain in 1572 that heralded a new approach to religious instruction for native peoples. Felipe II sent Jesuits to Mexico with the mandate to educate Mexican-born Spaniards, aristocratic indigenous, mestizos, and promising lowborn males (Liss 1973). The first five Jesuits arrived in Mexico City in 1572 and very quickly established themselves as the leaders of both indigenous and criollo education in New Spain (Clossey 2008). “Juan Curiel in 1573 taught Latin grammar to Spanish, mestizo, and Indian students at the Colegio de San Nicolis in Patzcuaro” (Liss 1973:328). Shortly thereafter, the Jesuits opened schools in Puebla and, by 1580, in Tepoztlán, where they founded a novice house (Clossey 2008). Jesuits held a virtual monopoly on schooling and the Order also became, in conjunction with the University of Mexico, a prime dispenser of higher education. The prestige associated with attending Jesuit schools was immediately apparent as 300 students enrolled on the opening of classes in 1574. By 1579 there were also Jesuit colegios in the regional centers of Patzcuaro, Valladolid, Oaxaca, and Puebla. (Liss 1973:332)

Adolescent boys came as boarders or day students and were educated for free. In 1586, the Jesuits attempted another native elite school, the Colegio de San Gregorio in the heart of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Its mission was “the transformation of young indigenous men into loyal subjects of the Spanish sovereigns by teaching skills that would aid in spreading the habits of correct Catholicism and imperial administration to rural towns and urban barrios” (Osowski 2006:169–170) but resistance from other Orders, particularly the Dominicans (their historic rivals), and from Rome led Jesuits to abandon the goal and to focus on developing trade schools for natives.

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With the perspective that confirmation was the result of adequate religious education, many of the religious acknowledged that the requisite state of understanding for confirmation was not present in natives in the first decades of Spanish control. Confirmation was one of the sacraments attacked by Martin Luther since it had not been instituted by Christ, but the Council of Trent reaffirmed confirmation and the need for bishops alone to administer it (Pardo 2006:77). “Motolinía seems to have been the only one who practiced it before the coming of the first bishop Zumárraga” (Braden 1930:232). It would grow in importance through this century. See also baptism, children, communion, confession, conversion, covenant, day, marriage, penance, prayer, priest, religious labor, shrine, speech, text, virginity

religious labor 15th-century Central Mexico: The modern archaeologist cannot help but be dumbfounded at the tremendous person hours expended in ancient times to create the countless substantial terraces, rubble-filled stone-dressed pyramids, shrines, and cities with complex ceremonial precincts including walls, altars, caches, palaces and pyramids, water and sewer systems, gardens, and murals. Leveling and terracing activity alone must have exacted huge costs. Voluntary or conscripted, millions of hours of quarrying, carrying, digging, stacking, lime production, plastering, and dye/colorant production are evident, to say nothing of the millions of hours spent gathering, preparing, and presenting offerings and regalia. The entire city of Tenochtitlan expended five days every year preparing just the pasty mountain images for one feast (Arnold 1999). All of this work was understood as engaging with the divine (Wake 2010), part of the covenant. Working in the fields was equally couched in religious terms and relationships. “To ‘work,’ ‘maintain,’ ‘nourish,’ ‘fulfill responsibilities,’ or to ‘bear tribute,’ whether in behalf of saints or rulers, means that they are to be greeted, that is, provided with what they require. This is what ‘work’ was before the introduction of wage labor [i]n the Sierra Norte de Puebla” (Haly 1996:525). 15th-century Spain: From the origins of monasticism, manual labor was a key component of collective contemplative life. The Franciscan rule was one of obedience, study, prayer, poverty, and retreat, and, following Francis, “a pattern of active days spreading the word and contemplative nights in a remote location” (Turley 2014:15). This effectively blended ermetic contemplation with the labor of preaching. From the time following Francis’ death in 1226 to the end of the 16th century, factions within the Franciscan order emphasized either works or contemplation and a few called for the return to Francis’s model of doing both. “Religious labor” of the laity was expected in numerous ways, such as participating in and preparing for feast days and processions for the town and confraternity vows; praying for the dying and for the dead in purgatory; working to gain indulgences for the dead (such as going on pilgrimages); charity work in orphanages and hospitals; and the other seven corporal acts of mercy. Confraternities performed much, if not most, of the religious labor at the parish level, such as feeding the hungry and burying the dead.

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Important, too, was to be a soldier for Christ, participating in a Crusade. People of noble birth were personally solicited by bishops to join a crusade and peasants were recruited by parish priests by appealing to the need to do God’s work outside of churches. 16th-century New Spain: Natives built the churches, the monasteries, the new villages, the hospitals, and the roads of New Spain directed by (some African) overseers, master craftsmen, and architects, with the work rationalized as religious labor. Abuses of the laborers were recorded by the missionaries (often of a different Order than the Order being accused), including forced relocations of villages to bring laborers to the project area (i.e., Ricard 1966:172). But labor tax had long been seen as divine work in Anahuac, so there is reason to believe that in some situations the Indian population voluntarily undertook the building of churches as religious action (Ricard 1966:173). At least one scholar has proposed that religious labor was even mustered in a competitive way. Cities and calpulli competed in producing the most dazzling pyramid, procession, offerings, regalia, or parade of flagellants. Warfare was also religious labor and highly competitive. “The enthusiasm to build was also matched by the effort to decorate these edifices by means of sculpture and mural painting. These had been highly ritualized occupations in Prehispanic times” (Wake 2010:93). Most Spaniards “did not comprehend that, for the Indian, no work was worth doing which was not infused by ceremonial symbolism . . . work was punctuated by ritual and festive occasion; work itself was ceremonially performed” (Kubler 1947:392). But a few land and mine owners did understand and permitted their workers to ritualize their daily work (Wake 2010:92). It is also true that some native communities on their own constructed churches to try to attract friars and/or assert their independence from a doctrina that the Franciscans then ordered them to tear down (Crewe 2019). Santeros produced religious artifacts such as crucifixes, and native painters learned the European styles. Their participation in their own conversion through these labors would be ended by decrees from Trent intended to regulate imagery as would be the friars production of native texts. Other clues point to the work of indigenous neophytes and laborers. Discussing frescoes in the main sanctuary of the Augustinian church of Ixmiquilpan, Serge Gruzinski attributes the color choices of turquoise blue, “the precious, sacred beauty of divinity . . . dawn pink colors . . . swaths of green plumes” to the indigenous workers (Gruzinski 2013:85). The clothing, weapons, and accoutrements of all the figures come from the indigenous, prehispanic world. Yet, “[n]umerous details in the fresco link the two worlds so tightly that attributing them to one or the other runs the risk of masking their composite, polysemic nature” (Gruzinski 2013:86). Sodality membership was another form of religious labor for native, Spaniard, and African alike in this century and spread quickly. This blessed labor included financial support of the priest; the funding and outfitting of processions and feasts; care of the holy images; the organization of funerals and burial for members; and praying away the demons surrounding the death bed. Sodalities were developed in the 16th century by various constituent communities from Europe. A distinctive example is the Zape confraternity in Mexico City. This sodality of Afro-Iberian slaves and freed former slaves was devoted to the care of an image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in the Hospital of the Immaculate Conception (von Germeten 2006).

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Religious labor in extraordinary measure can be seen in the hundreds of native texts, dictionaries, ethnographies, and plays that these friars produced in recently learned languages. One of the most industrious laborers in the mission field of Mexico was Bernardino de Sahagún. The materials collected in the Florentine Codex show just one example of the combined labor of Sahagún and his indigenous collaborators (see text). Written in both Nahuatl and Spanish, working with many young native scholars that he taught at the Colegio de Santa Cruz (Figure 49), Sahagún and his native collaborators both collected indigenous history and expanded indigenous Christianity. Through the various multi-lingual indigenous artists, the Christian message was “Indianized” by artisans familiar with Aztec history through new and old forms of painting, engraving, poetry, and imagery. “The combination of Christian themes taken from engravings and native themes [by indigenous artisans working with Sahagún], derived from the pictographic repertoire, was deliberate . . . ” (Gonzalbo 2003:180). Simultaneously, this act of Christian labor preserved precious prehispanic images and histories. News of the activities and lifestyle involved in the mission field were part of the trouble with recruiting more friars. That difficulty was exacerbated by restricted recruitment to only Spanish Franciscans and the attrition of interest in religious life caused by the Protestant reform movement, the founding of the Jesuit Order, the ever-expanding territory of the New World. One ineffectual solution in Spain was to use official recruiters and to mandate the number of men each province was to send to the New World (Turley 2014:109). For many men attracted to monastic life, the requisite life in the midst of doctrina towns and the necessary engagement with government officials and encomenderos in the missionary’s daily life was repellent. See also altar, fasting, image, landscape, penance, priest, procession, purity, religious instruction, sodality, soul, sweeping, text, theater

rock 15th-century Central Mexico: Rocks were fertile and their fertility was evident in many ways. “Chichimec groups [believed] that their ancestors were descended from giant rocks or became rocks when they died” (Correa 2000:447) (no doubt referencing megafauna fossils). How do they exude fertility? A rock placed in the pyre for cremation anchored the individual’s yolia heart soul, serving as a seed for the next generation. Rocks line river beds, express spring water, encompass cave mouths leading into the Most Holy Earth, make up house (and thus family) foundations, and were used in threes as hearthstones, the heart of the house, and produced healing steam in sweat lodges. Many sacred bundles contained one or more rocks, crystals, or gems (Bassett 2015; Olivier 2007). Rocky fields were thought to be particularly fertile. Rocks in the shapes of eggs and penises could copulate in sacred bundles (Irwin 1994). A rock swallowed could lead to pregnancy. Children were referred to as “the chips, the flakes” (Furst 1995:175). Biology could and did result in stony substances forming in the body and found in corpses – gallstones, kidney stones, calcium deposits – establishing a relationship between rock and soul and rock and heart (Furst 1995). The yolia soul dwelled in the heart and heart-shaped stones were collected as teixiptla (containers of the divine). Stone images of

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deities captured teotl. The omen recognized by the wandering Mexica as their place of destiny was a cactus growing from a rock, which arose from the place where the heart of their adversary Copil had landed. The painted sign for rock and heart were the same. Gems were the hardened mucus of the earth monster. 15th-century Spain: Speaking to the Apostle Peter, Jesus said “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18 NRSV). Thus was founded the earthly kingdom of God, equating “heart of the Church” with “rock.” Comparison of heart with stone is made elsewhere in the Bible. For instance, in 2 Corinthians 3:3 (NRSV), Paul writes “You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” That rock was fertile is a belief further shown in the stone baptismal fonts, where new Christians were made, and in miracles performed by many saints who struck a rock that then produced spring water. Pilgrims often “applied to their bodies objects such as dust, stones, or scraps of paper which had been in contact with the saint or shrine” (Sumption 1975:82). In powder form, rock dust worked thousands of miracles. In 15th-century Castile, “pilgrims at the shrine of Guadalupe in Extremadura not only kissed the slab of marble on which the image was discovered, some of them were cured by drinking scrapings of the rock with water” (Cruz González 2014:94). Rocks were also carried by pilgrims to be touched to relics and thus “capture” and “hold” blessings (Sumption 1975:25). 16th-century New Spain: Both the spiritual kingdom of the Christians and the spiritual and actual kingdom of the Aztecs were founded explicitly on rock. The rocks from Aztec temples and pyramids as well as their foundations were reused by Catholics in monasteries and churches. Rocks for both groups had teixiptla potential and occupied the role of heart. In the adoption of the Christian cross, several native beliefs were incorporated in the early years of evangelism. Stone crosses were trees. “The carved stone crosses of sixteenth-century Indian Mexico do not represent Christian crosses with a few eccentric iconographic inserts . . . Rather they stand as native cosmic trees with Christian iconographic inserts” (Wake 2010:233). Wooden crosses in the area around Calderon Pass are said to be subordinate to the stone cross of Calderon Pass (Correa 2000:447). Some stone atrial crosses had an obsidian “heart” affixed at the juncture of the arms. See also cave, cross, deity embodiment, fertility, springs/well

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sacred bundle 15th-century Central Mexico: Mendieta recorded the story that when the gods sacrificed themselves at the beginning of the Fifth Sun, their clothes were used to bind up notched sticks with inset small green “heart” stones, and skins of snakes and jaguars. These sacred bundles were then carried off by the servants of these deceased gods. Several codices present information on the creation of the bundles of four major deities: Itzpapalotl, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, and Huitzilopochtli (Bassett 2015). The contents of the historical bundles might be corn, feathers, rubber, bone, or precious stones wrapped up in cloth or leather, with each item referring to an “area of sacrality or an episode of grave importance” (Boone 1994:105). Bundles were also made by molding, sewing, and painting. The bundle thus contained teotl (divinity) and was more precious than a temple or an image, both of which could be remade. So sacred were these bundles that during migration, upon a stay of sufficient duration, a temple was built to house the bundle. “Gentle care and kind regard for the sacred most likely found its fullest and deepest expression in native engagement with the sacred ‘bundles’ or idols of lineage” (Hughes 2010:79). Sacred bundles could also contain key components of mythic events, specific to the deities involved. For example, Mixcoatl, the god of the hunt and the Milky Way, helped destroy the goddess Itzpapalotl whose body, when exposed to fire, exploded into flint blades of different colors. He chose the white flint blade from among her remains to put in his War bundle along with her ashes (Dieterle 2005). As the Aztecs burned the temple of Mixcoatl in Cuitlahuaca, a priest attempted to rescue this bundle. When the Mexica demanded it be surrendered, the priest surreptitiously substituted a bundle of a lesser deity, thus fooling the Mexica. Relics of lineage founders were bundled on their deaths, to be kept as sacred bundles by tribes, clans, ceremonial organizations, and villages (Irwin 1994). “Village bundles were called . . . the heart of the town, because they embodied the creative energy or the spirit of the town” (Boone 1989:25). Bundles were carried by priests during migrations and can be seen in the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2, where they are stored in caves, and prominently in the Codex Borgia (Figure 57). The bundle of Micailhuitl sat atop the pole erected during the Great feast of the dead. The Mixteca communities of southern Puebla kept the greatest number of sacred bundles. “The use of bundles in Mixtec religiousness took place in foundational rituals, ceremonies of the accession of rulers, and periodical ceremonies that involved the whole community, but also in particular or private cults organized by the owner of a specific bundle” (Hermann Lejarazu 2008:75). The most significant Mixtec bundle was kept in a temple atop the highest mountain. This bundle was known as “the People’s Heart.” 275

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Figure 57 A sacred bundle (center) in the 15th-century Codex Borgia, p. 36.

Contents were a large jade piece carved as a coiled snake and bird, gold, and precious stones. Wood and copal were burned in front of the bundle. Bassett argues that bundles are significantly different from deity embodiments even though both of them were teixiptla, containers of the divine. Bundled relics “reveal the importance of the god’s materiality and tangibility . . . the presented teteo” (Bassett 2015:191) and were a more direct connection to the presence of the divine being. Bundles also show that there was pre-contact veneration and/or worship of corporeal remains. 15th-century Spain: The enwrapped divine was possibly present in European notions of holy clothing, containers, kreshes, and even shrines. To touch or wear the vestments worn by royalty, by priests, by cardinals, or by saints imparted some of their owner’s holiness and divine power. The equivalent of sacred bundles might also be seen in the arks, monstrances, and crypts where relics were hidden. The Ark of the Covenant and the swaddled baby Jesus or swaddled Christ taken from the cross may be viewed as sacred bundles. This century saw the first kreshes in which Jesus was swaddled and illustration of the soul as a swaddled child was also common. Pilgrims often bundled their relics of bone fragments, stones, wood, and hair in a piece of fabric tied together with twine. Anything that had been in contact with the body of a saint was considered a receptacle for divine power and could be accessed by devotees. These precious bones and bits of cloth were also kept in elaborate reliquaries, treated with the utmost care, appealed to for intervention and intercession in worldly concerns.

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While relics have some direct connection with the sacred bundles of the Indigenous people of Mexico, another parallel may be the Eucharist, the bread and wine believed to be the body and blood of Christ. The transubstantiated host was not only filled with divine power but was the immediate presence of Christ among the faithful. God is present in the monstrance, available for all devotees to worship in his presence. Certainly, 15thcentury Christians would not have called this presence of Christ in the monstrance a bundle or an “idol” but we suggest that it is possible to see some correlation across the religious field here that would connect a divinity and their attributes, present among their worshippers, as a difference of degree rather than kind. 16th-century New Spain: Sacred bundles continued in existence in central Mexico until late in the 16th century and in remote areas for much longer. “Circa 1539, the sacred bundle of Huitzilopochtli (which had escaped Tenochtitlan in 1521) was being carried across the landscape of Central Mexico. [. . .] the exiled god recreated his ancient travels in reverse. Could the circulation of divinities reclaim sacred space, and drive the invaders away?” (Hamann 2020:148–149). The covert use of pre-Christian idols, offerings, and sacred bundles continued through at least mid-century, engaging in resistance to the new god of the Europeans. Lord Seven Monkey of Oaxaca, who took the Christian name Dominic de Guzman, went before the Inquisition in 1544 for hiding/keeping twenty sacred bundles, along with two other Mixtec priests. In 1582, Juan Bautista de Pomar referred to two bundles held in the city of Tetzcoco during a trial (Acuña 1982: 59). “For the Spanish friars, the Indians’ attachment to these ‘fearsome’ images was the single greatest obstacle to authentic conversion to the Christian faith” (Hughes 2010:79). Some images were bundled and taken into the countryside “to be revealed [. . .] their cloth wrappings were opened” before being given sacrifices and offerings (Hamann 2020:145). Christians, too, had their sacred bundles, the swaddled santo entierros found in most churches with cabinets of seasonal clothing and accoutrements. Hughes refers to the swaddled crucifix known as the Cristo Aparecido of Totolapan as a sacred bundle (Hughes 2010:24). Domínguez Torres (2013:42–43) rejects this equivalence, however. Although the first missionaries seized on this concept to “denote the Christian icon,” she claims it failed. See also cult, deity embodiment, idol/image, pilgrimage, relic, rock, vestment

serpent 15th-century Central Mexico: Snakes are particularly associated with women, darkness, wetness, and penises, indicating an important role in fertility. “No creature appears more frequently in Aztec art than the rattlesnake. Its habit of shedding its skin and renewing itself link it with agricultural fertility” (Boone 1994:136). The earth-mother group of goddesses, and the Cihuateteo, are all adorned with snakes in various codices. There was not one but two snakes of Mesoamerican religious focus, a sky serpent and an earth serpent. The sky serpent, or Olmec Dragon, is some 2,600 years old with a caiman’s body and a flame eyebrow. The earth serpent is an avian serpent with feathers

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on the body, sometimes around the face, and rattles on the tail. It too first appears in Olmec times and both serpents are found only in ritual contexts (Mollenhauer 2019). It is this earth serpent that appears at Teotihuacan’s Temple of Quetzalcoatl built between 150 and 200 (Figure 4). Eleven hundred years later, the Aztec Templo Mayor had an undulating serpent at the base of the stairs, serpent bodies on the balustrades, and serpent heads emerging from its walls. The Templo Mayor (Figure 7) was the Coatepec, Serpent Mountain, where Huitzilopochtli’s mother Coatlicue, Serpent Skirt, resided and where he vanquished his siblings. It is possible that volcanoes were snakes with plumed tongues and that pyramids mimicked the volcano/snake. The temple atop a pyramid would be the mouth of the snake from which issued plumes of smoke and incense. Clouds rising from these snakes’ mouths join with those in the sky to create rain, domain of Mixcoatl, “Cloud Snake,” the ancient hunting deity and father of Quetzalcoatl. The mimixcoa “Lesser Cloud Snakes” were stars (Luckert 1976). The significance of the god Quetzalcóatl (Aztec) or Kukulkan (lowland Maya) in the history of Mesoamerican thought and ritual cannot be overstated. In the Mexica story of the Fifth Sun, Quetzalcoatl was responsible for making the Second and Fourth Suns, destroying the First and Third Suns, and then teaming up with his “brother” Tezcatlipoca to create the Fifth Sun. He also brought up the bones from deep within the Most Holy Earth, bloodlet on their powder to create humans, and found them maize and other foods. He brought Mayahuel to earth where she was sacrificed to give pulque to humans for their enjoyment, medicine, and fiber needs. A Feathered Serpent cult is evident at Teotihuacan and was greatly elaborated immediately after that polity lost preeminence. Associated with rulership and the concept of twining/movement, Feathered Serpent cult practices were carried out at stepped pyramids (snake mountains), at circular pyramids (also coiled snakes), in ball courts, and with pulque drinking. Cult centers were connected by pilgrimage/trading paths. These centers – such as Xochicalco (Morelos), El Tajín (Figure 55, Veracruz), and Cholula (Figure 47, Puebla) – and the connecting paths circumvented the Basin of Mexico. Artistic expressions of the cult have been codified into the “International Style” with early west Mexican influence (Boone and Smith 2003). The Toltecs apparently carried this Feathered Serpent cult to Chichen Itza in the Yucatan by 932 (Coe et al. 2019:191). Several other fearsome snakes were present in Nahuatl thought (Sahagún (1956:3:266–274). The large acoatl (water snake), found in caves and springs, was capable of inhaling humans; the mazacoatl (deer snake), also dweller of caves, had deadly breath and antlers; the third, the wind snake, and the feathered snake were also large and lived in the (Devil’s) cave. An enraged snake coiled upward into a tornado or hurricane. 15th-century Spain: Medieval bestiaries used “serpent” as an umbrella term for amphibians and reptiles, including the New World iguana. Serpent and dragon might also be conflated and either animal might have feet, legs, wings, or horns. Snakes could symbolize God’s authority, as in the transformation of Moses’ staff to prove that he and Aaron had been in God’s presence (Taylor 2003), or the devil, sin, or heresy. Snakes were often associated with the Crucifixion, as a serpent with an apple symbolizing the defeat of

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sin (Taylor 2003:198; Wake 2010:209) or a snake or pair of snakes wrapped around the cross below the feet of Jesus. Mary, when depicted standing on a writhing serpent, was symbolically vanquishing original sin (Guzauskyte 2014). Pairs of serpents or dragons were occasionally used as symbols of healing but more often were symbols of sin, evil, oral sex, or the victory of Christianity over paganism and heresy (Guzauskyte 2014). In Jesuit and Franciscan iconography in the 16th and 17th centuries, snakes and dragons represented the triumph of Roman Catholicism over Protestant heresy and pagan groups across the globe. 16th-century New Spain: In both cultures, snakes are foundational deities. A snake’s actions are far more important than that of humans, whose stories are engendered by cosmic snakes. The first Spaniards must have been overwhelmed not only with the size of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan but also the fact that large stone and plaster snakes “coatl” adorned the bottom of this “hill,” in a position like that of Christian art about the crucifixion. Likewise, the Mexica may have been expressing their awe in naming Cortés in the Codex Rios (folio 88) “coatl.” Quetzalcoatl survived this first century of Christianity, perhaps, because this deity was venerated more by the rural Mexica farmer than by the urban Mexica noble who was Christianized earliest. Quetzalcoatl was also remade by some missionaries into a Christlike figure who sought peace. St. Thomas was linked to Quetzalcoatl by Carlos Siqüenza y Góngora in the 17th century (Boone 1989:87). The head of a prequauhtemoc stone statue of the Feathered Serpent was broken off and the coils cut through to hold a wooden crucifix, showing a defeated devil (Hamann 2020:111). See also deer, demon, devil, sin, Venus

sex 15th-century Central Mexico: Sexuality was a gift from the gods, comparable to that of food, and it was to be enjoyed in moderation (as was food). Sexuality was particularly feminine (López Austin 2010:29). Each baby came into this world with the filth of the sexual act on its body, which led to a bathing ritual similar to the Christian baptism. And while human women conceived through sexual intercourse, many goddesses did not. Sharing food and drink was the foundation of a couple’s intimacy and eating together could lead to accusations of adultery (Sousa 2017). Like food, sex had its roles in the hot/ cold system. Lovesickness, strenuous activity, and other causes of extreme heat buildup could be relieved by orgasm. However, excessive sexual activity, whether masturbation or copulation, depleted the normal heat needed for health. Such an individual would then pull off the heat from crops, babies, and animals and give off bad aires. Excessive sex broke a covenant with the gods to honor the human body. Confession of this sin was expected and social castigation was common, from moral lecturing to public violence – biting off the nose or killing. “Sexual transgressions were often depicted in codices or in orations as broken and bleeding trees . . . on day 1 calli, ‘evil women and adulterers’ who wanted to rid themselves of sin went to crossroads and divested themselves of their clothing as a sign of forsaking evil” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:194). Nevertheless, the

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Nahua word for prostitute meant “the happy” (López Austin 2010:35). In one account, Quetzalcoatl masturbated and his sperm transformed into a bat (Kroger and Granziera 2012:213). Masturbation rites for some priests were recorded. Aztecs attributed greater sexual appetites to neighboring groups, particularly the Huastecs, notorious for their nudity (The Aztecs tolerated little nudity [Anawalt 1981]). During the Sweeping of the Roads feast the Toci embodiment, a male priest wearing the skin of the slain woman, walked to the Huitzilopochtli temple with a large procession of men imitating Huastec men, each man wearing a greatly exaggerated erect phallus (Harris 2000:79). López Austin (2010) speaks of the Otomis flaunting their sexual prowess. Interethnic sexual relations were said to confuse the two patron deities and thus be discouraged. 15th-century Spain: There were two key tennets regarding sex. The division of creation into two sexes was considered a result of Adam and Eve’s sin, as the “pristine state” of prelapsarian humans had no gender and hence no sex (Galatians 3:28). Original sin is sexually transmitted. Sex, in all but its penis/vagina pairing for procreation, was defined as sin, and punishment was to be expected. Virgin birth was a denial of sex par excellence, as was abstinence for men in Orders. Houses of prostitution were supported by both the Church and government in Spain to channel uncontrollable male sexuality and to protect virtuous (non-institutionalized) women from men (i.e., rape) (Powers 2005:136). In 1602, the bishop of Cuenca instructed the Inquisition inspectors to look for homosexuals and pimps (Christian 1981b:90). Much of the love magic recorded in Inquisition documents of Spain was for soliciting sex (Ortega 1991). Many of the clients of the love sorcerers may have been prostitutes and women pursuing illicit affairs with married men and clergy but there were also a number of scorned wives seeking to retrieve husbands from lovers. In addition to magic to bring the man to her bed, there was magic meant to make him impotent with any other woman. 16th-century New Spain: Like the Mexicas’ stereotype of oversexed Haustec men, Haustec and Gulf Coast women who served the goddess Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina were considered deviant, oversexed women by the friars. They were exhibitionists and “promiscuous women sorcerers who drank too much pulque in their worship of the ‘Filth Deity’”(Patel 2016:46). Worried that native couples would not consider premarital sex a sin, one manual instructed confessors to ask how many times the couple had had sex. Indeed, confessional manuals demonstrate a deep concern with sexual practices. .

[I]n the confession manual of Father Joan Baptista, 69% of the questions refer to sex, while 63% of those of Martin de Leon and Juan de la Anunciación concern this topic. Such preoccupation with the sixth commandment, only one of ten, gives the appearance of an uncommon, obsessive interest on the part of the confessors and/or of the institution whose beliefs they represented. (Marcos 1992:163)

Soliciting sex in the confessional had a long tradition in Spain and then New Spain. Friar Miguel de Oropeza was “only one of many similar trials during the 16th century, and counted among the accused were secular priests, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Mercedarians” (Turley 2014:143). Oropeza’s punishment was a 3-year sentence but before

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completing the sentence he was called back into service in 1579 due to the shortage of priests. Houses for prostitution were authorized in Mexico City by 1539, by royal authority. Non-native women were the prostitutes and non-native men their customers (Powers 2005). San Juan de la Penetencia, a reform house for rehabilitating these women, was opened in Mexico City in 1572. In one morality play, the ending comes as a person admonishes the native audience to “see that your children live not according to the flesh; that they live in wisdom” (Ricard 1966:204), precisely as Mexica had wanted their children to live before the coming of the Spanish. See also adultery, celibacy, marriage, sodomy

shrine 15th-century Central Mexico: Shrines may be said to be any place there was an image left or altar constructed. Locally important shrines were frequently found at places known to be auspicious for contacting a spirit, often with a history as a manifesting place – caves, springs, hilltops, certain large trees, crossroads – and could be the scene of individual devotional activities or those of a group. Major shrines of regional importance were any pyramid or temple, some caves, some springs, and some mountaintops. Pilgrimage trails connected the cult shrines of the Feathered Serpent (Patel 2016), each a major ceremonial precinct such as Cholula or Tula. As part of the tlatoani’s coronation rites he visited two shrines – the temple of Yopico, dedicated to Xipe Totec located in the southwest quadrant of the city, and Tlillan, a temple dedicated to Cihuacoatl, located on the north side of the Templo Mayor. The Chapultepec springs were visited when the tlatoani traveled west of the city (Mundy 2015:58). During several of the veintenas, processions left Tenochtitlan’s ceremonial complex (Figures 6, 7, 50) and walked to distant shrines such as Zacatepec hill, Mt. Tlaloc, or a whirlpool in Lake Texcoco. 15th–16th-century Spain: The hundreds of shrines marking places where a saint or the Virgin had manifested were maintained by one or more “professional” keepers. These shrines drew large crowds, even larger than did holy days at the village church, and were often sites for “sinful” behavior (men and women together, drinking, nudity, revelry), causing church authorities great concern (Christian 1981b) while also creating a sacred geography in the countryside. Distant shrines were often reached via lesser shrines and a pilgrimage to the former involved multiple stops and sets of offerings at each lesser shrine. The Council of Trent renewed promotion of miracles, saints, and shrines. 16th-century New Spain: The “geography of grace” as Christian (1981b) put it, began anew in this century, for both the Spaniard and the indigenous, in both rural and urban landscapes. Christian shrines typically occupied prequauhtemoc shrine locations, built to house an image of a patron (Early 2006). Orders are known to have actively promoted the veneration of the Cristo Aparecido of Totolapan, the Señor of Chalma (Hughes 2010:180), and the Virgin of Guadalupe at shrines that housed their images. See also cave, mountain, patron, pilgrimage, procession, religious architecture, spring/ well

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sin 15th-century Central Mexico: The earth was conceived as a peak that put humans perched on a slippery slope between the upperworld and world below. This slippery slope made it easy to commit immoral acts (Burkhart 1989:58). Aztecs were given the opportunity to confess their carnal transgressions, the violations of moral codes. “The confessor had . . . to pardon sins of a physiological kind, those having to do with needs and functions of the body . . . Sin was not a spiritual blemish that stained the soul, but was simply a kind of poison that had invaded the body” (Ricard 1966:32–33). The goddess Tlazolteotl, “Filth-Deity,” ate the carnal sins of humans. Sins recognized by the Purépecha were adultery among women, rebellion, and disobedience, as well as “those who had four times failed to bring wood for the ritual temple fires, doctors who had let someone die, workers who had neglected the seedbeds of the . . . ruler, workers who had damaged the maguey, and victims of diseases of the genitals” (Anawalt 1981:85). Bloodletting from ears and tongue to purge the sins of evil talk and hearing was mandated for penance. 15th-century Spain: Sin was a moral sickness and confession with prescribed penance was the spiritual cure. Since the worst thing that could happen to a child was to die in original sin, infants were carried to church as soon as possible after birth, which often meant somewhere between the first and third days of life. In the interval between baptism and the age of reason – usually the age of 7, when medieval canonists believed children understood right from wrong – children were incapable of committing a personal sin. If they died during those years, they were thought to go directly to limbo, a place of security and pleasure, though not heaven. Adults who were baptized as adults got something of a clean slate – all of their personal sins to that point were forgiven as well as the original sin of their birth. Baptism undid the spiritual damage of Adam’s sin and made the human being pure in God’s eyes, although the physical consequences of pain and death remained (Lynch and Adamo 2013:287). Sin was the origin of most diseases and mental afflictions, leading to the popularity of healing saints, a requirement to call a priest before a physician made a second visit, and the efforts to prevent Jews from being doctors (Sumption 1975:80–81). Leprosy was the punishment for fornication, and barrenness a punishment from God for incest or adultery. The seven deadly sins, identified by Augustine and elaborated by Aquinas, were the central focus of identifying sinful behavior in the confessional: pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, sloth – although drunkenness and pagan behaviors at shrines were also of great concern. Confession and assigned penances were the way to atone for sins. 16th-century New Spain: The Friars were particularly interested in teaching the concept of sin, with the aim of changing behavior, rather than focusing on more abstract metaphysical or theological concepts. Some missionaries were of the opinion that “the Indians have no sins other than drunkenness, thievery, and carnal excesses” but Sahagún added that there were “grave faults among them which insistently call for remedy. The sins of idolatry, the rites of paganism, the auguries and superstitions connected with it, have not completely disappeared” (Ricard 1966:40). Many catechisms in Nahuatl (see Figure 62) discussed mortal and venial sin, listed the seven mortal sins, and explained

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how one atoned for sins, as did doctrinal treatises, confession manuals, and collections of sermons. The Nahuatl word most frequently used for the concept of sin meant something broken, implying an act that caused the breakage, not an innate state of being and not a condition of birth. “In other words, for the Nahua, corruption/sin/disorderliness was the sin itself, whereas for Christians, corruption was the cause or effect of sin” (Starr-LeBeau 2008:406–407). Penance, the means of atoning for sin, was an important element of the early missionizing efforts, although the role played by indulgences is unknown to the authors. See also body: human, celibacy, cosmos, deer, devil, drunkenness, morals, laziness, penance, purity, religious instruction, sex, sodomy, text, underworld, weeping

skull/head 15th-century Central Mexico: Tlazolteotl, Tlaltecuhtli, Cihuacoatl, and Coatlicue, female Nahua earth deities, wore a human skull at the waist, on a necklace, or as headband, signifying the death sacrifices to them needed to keep the earth producing. They were also shown on occasion as headless, referring to their lunar affiliation and eclipses by the sun (Milbrath 1997:191). The Tzitzimimeh were also shown with human skulls, hands, and hearts. At the time of creation of this Fifth Sun, the Sun refused to move in the sky until all the deities sacrificed themselves. Xolotl beheaded each one. Alluding to this story, sacrificial victims were often decapitated. “For the Aztecs, the act of beheading created a bleeding opening similar to a vagina. The blood which came gushing out of the victim’s neck watered and fertilized the earth” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:207) and was occasionally shown as two snakes. Severed heads were publicly displayed on racks. Although skulls were considered trophies, they were also full of the tonalli of the victim, which could be acquired by the captor. Skulls evoked thoughts of spirit power and fertility and mark a “widespread belief that the souls of humans and animals reside in the bones, particularly those of the head. From these bones, humans and animals are reborn” (Furst 1982:222). A barren gourd tree miraculously came to life bearing gourds when the skull of Hun Hunahpu (Maya) was placed in its branches. Passing beside the tree, a girl was impregnated by the spittle from this skull. In the Codex Vienna, Lady 9 Grass is seated in a temple comprising an open mouth and skeletal jaw, the place called “Skull.” Such an image may well allude to the belief that “the burial of heads not only supplied the energy necessary to expel negative forces from the site of the new construction but also provided the force required for its safety and functioning” (López Luján 2005:205). Hundreds of skulls were placed in cavities in the walls of the Templo Mayor in 1487 generated during the Tlacaxipehualiztli feast. Other groups in Anahuac also took captives and performed decapitation rituals for building dedications. In the coronation ceremony of a new tlatoani, the elect wore a green cape with skull and crossed femurs like that seen in Figure 41 alluding to a skeletal Huitzilopochtli; the tlatoani’s four officers wore a black cape with the same motif (Bassett 2015:169). Like the skull, the femur was particularly imbued with tonalli and when it was that of a deceased

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leader, was used to show rights of accession. Bones of ancestors resided in Mictlan and from Mictlan came new life. 15th–16th-century Spain: Biblical decapitations were those of Goliath, Holofernes, and John the Baptist. Beheading was the fate of at least forty-three martyrs, including Columba of Spain, George, James, and Paul. Some depictions of the Crucifixion in these centuries show Adam’s skull at the base of the cross referencing the location of Golgotha over Adam and Eve’s grave and, furthermore, illustrating the triumph of life everlasting over death. Skulls were meant to evoke thoughts of death and of original sin whether under the cross or in the hands of a saint (Mary Magdalene, Paul, Jerome, Francis). At the turn of the 16th century, “a saint holding and contemplating a skull – a memento mori and symbol of all that is transient and tragic in man’s brief earthly existence – was a common theme in European art” (Giffords 1974:100). Skulls of saints were particularly prized relics, perhaps one of the most prized of which was that of John the Baptist, now on display in the Church of San Silvestro in Rome (though not authenticated by the Vatican at this time). In the later Middle Ages, the head of a saint might be encased in silver or gold and the metal studded with jewels or the head might be simply mimicked in metal. The head of St. Martin of Tours was removed from his body in 1323 and placed in its own reliquary. In the process of removal, “the clergy begged the bishop to exhibit the head to them, and this he did . . . The worshipper looked at the saint, and the saint looked back” (Bartlett 2013:271). St. Martin’s and St. Andrew’s heads were two of dozens of skulls moved across the European landscape. At the water petitioning shrine of Valtablado del Rio, Spain, “the skull of Saint Vincent was taken out and dipped in a well during the ceremony . . . also customary at the shrines of Saint Urbez and Saint Magín” (Christian 1981b:120). The head of the hermit Isidro Labrador (San Isidro) was a relic held by the town of Uceda. Madrid was home to 109 heads of the Eleven Thousand Virgin followers of St. Ursula, martyred in the 4th century for refusing to marry invading Huns while the women were on a pilgrimage. Skulls with crossbones were a common symbol of death. This symbol can be found on tombs, over church doorways through which the corpse was customarily removed, and at cemeteries (Figure 58). Francis’ iconography frequently contains a skull or a skull with crossbones, emphasizing the ultimate fate of all creation. 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures adorned holy beings with skulls and both cultures understood the skull to mean a dead being. They differed in the emotions elicited by the reference to death, however. “The Spanish friars assumed that skeletal imagery in New World art and iconography was imbued with [memento mori] significance” (Furst 1982:207) but these depictions of saints with skull probably signified to the Mesoamerican ideas of regeneration and life (Furst 1982). Sahagún translated the word “Golgotha” as “quaxicalli tepeuh, literally, ‘mound of skulls,’” possibly an allusion to Aztec skull racks or skull caches such as those often excavated today in ceremonial centers of Anahuac. In what may have been the last example of skull racks, the Tlatelolcas set up skull racks with Spaniard, ally Indian, and horse heads during the Spanish attack on Tlateloloca/Tenochtitlan (Terraciano 2010:29).

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Figure 58 Skull and crossbones over a door at the Assumption of Mary Cathedral, Cuernavaca, with Adam’s skull appearing at the base of the cross. Compare with skull and crossbones in Aztec figure 43. (Photo by Eduardo Serrano Pérez used under Creative Commons SA 3.0 license, rendered in black and white and cropped) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28530598

After the conquest of Tenochtitlan, decapitation appears to have existed in the 16th century only in the form of Christian iconography. St. Dominic holds a skull at the monastery in Oaxtepec, Morelos. St. John the Baptist holds out his own head in the Tlacolula monastery and St. Jerome’s hand rests on a skull in the Tlacochahuaya monastery (Perry 1992). The head of martyred Jesuit friar Gonzalo de Tapia was carried through New Spain (Trexler 2002:305). Skulls with crossed femurs are found in Franciscan monasteries in the Puebla region. A skull bordered on each side by a femur was carved into the center arch at Tlalmanalco (Perry 1992). Skull and crossbones are carved into or pieced together with stone at several 16th-century Franciscan monasteries in Morelos churches, Cuernavaca, Tlaquiltenango, and Tepoztlán (Perry 1992), and in murals in many places such as that at Actopan (Wake 2010, plate 15) and Cuauhtinchan, Puebla (Perry 2017). It may be said that in either culture this could be read as a sign of resurrection. See also bone, death, relic, sacred bundle, soul, spring/well

slave 15th-century Central Mexico: Aztecs considered themselves the slaves of Tezcatlipoca, in his guise as Titlacahuan (Carrasco and Sessions 2011). Actual slavery seems to have occurred as early as Teotihuacan (Townsend 2019:22). One became a slave in several ways, most typically by gambling; during famines when parents sold themselves and their children to the Totonacs (garnering 400 maize cobs for a young woman); when chiefs sold subjects in punishment; and through capture during warfare, such as the Mexica women who were taken as slaves in a battle in 1299 (Mundy 2015:32).

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Slaves were the lowest class of society with no access to land and few individual rights. The children of slaves, however, were born free. Slaves constituted a pool of sacrificial candidates, porters, and laborers. Tepanec citizens captured in a battle with Mexica were used to build causeways to Tenochtitlan. Many women slaves were destined to be household servants. A large slave market was located in Azcapotzalco, the Tepanec capital. 15th-century Spain: Biblical verses acknowledged the existence of slavery in this world with a promise of freedom for all in Christ. Whether that life in Christ is here on earth or in the future in heaven was a question that theologians debated well into the 20th century. One of the strongest theological justifications for slavery originated in Augustine’s argument for just war. Augustine sanctioned the use of war in service of Christianity, advocating battle and conquest in pursuit of spreading the faith, which he understood as a universal good. This theology was further supplemented by Aquinas, whose appropriation of Aristotle on Natural Slavery affirmed the status of slaves as a natural part of the fallen world. Francis of Assisi and later Franciscans also understood proselytizing and crusade to be intimately connected to just war (Herwaarden 2003). Slavery in Iberia was not necessarily based on race: religion and politics were as important as origin or ethnic identity. There was nothing like a slave society in the Christian regions. Most slaves in Northern Iberia worked in urban areas, “in the homes, workshops and on the farms and garden plots of their owners” (Phillips 2013:20). Moors captured at sea or living in isolated areas were frequently enslaved but it was more profitable to use them for ransom, which was a flourishing business. By the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese slave trade brought more sub-Saharan Africans into the Peninsula, and increased their presence throughout the newly Christian territories claimed in the reconquest. Slaves in southern Muslim Iberia included North African Berbers, sub-Saharan Africans, and Byzantine Christians from Eastern Europe. Those slavs were the largest group of slaves in the south (Phillips 2013). It was rare for there to be slaves taken in conflicts between Christians and Muslims. “Muslim raids into Christian territory in Iberia were designed for quick seizures of booty and prisoners, and the captives held until they were ransomed” (Phillips 2013:18). Orders such as the Mercedarians were founded to ransom Christian slaves captured throughout Iberia and the Holy Land. Pope Nicholas V gave the Portuguese the right to permanently enslave Africans and any Muslims they encountered in Africa in the Bull Dum Diversas on June 18, 1452. When Spain’s King Felipe II became King of Portugal in 1580 the number of slaves in Spain increased, amounting to 10 percent of Seville’s population at the end of the century (Phillips 2013:19). Slaves were on the whole treated as members of a household and were frequently granted access to education and other resources, often faring better than poorer free citizens. Women slaves were considered more valuable than male slaves. Educated slaves were more valuable overall. Manumission was sometimes granted on the death of the owner (Eisenberg 2013; Fuchs 2009). Children born to slave mothers in the North stayed enslaved, while a child whose father was free was a free person in southern Spain even if his mother was a slave.

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16th-century New Spain: Columbus remarked in his first voyage that the people he encountered in the Bahamas and Gulf of Mexico islands would make good slaves. On his second voyage, in 1494, Columbus captured 1,500 Tainos in Hispaniola and shipped 550 to the slave markets of Seville, many of whom died en route. Subsequent Spanish navigators captured thousands of Maya and shipped them to Hispaniola from 1500 to 1510 (Graham 2011). Cortés began selling natives of New Spain into the Caribbean slave trade in 1522. Peoples of India and the Philippines (“chinos”) were kidnapped then sold into slavery in New Spain through the port of Acapulco after 1565, many bought to staff monasteries and wealthy homes (Townsend 2019:191). Those captured at sea or in war were to be branded and registered. Nuño de Guzman, as governor of the Panuco region, and as leader of the entrada into Jalisco took thousands of natives into slavery, moving them into the Caribbean slave trade (Altman 2007:148). Legal slavery was permitted if the group was an enemy of the Crown, meaning belligerent or unwilling to accept Spanish rule. Viceroy Mendoza, in his military intervention in the Chichimeca area, allowed his Indian allies to take captives as slaves without branding or registering them (Altman 2007:165). His successor, Viceroy Villamanrique, found that a major cause of continuous rebellion in the Chichimeca region of northern Mexico in 1587 was the illegal slave-taking by Spaniards connected to the forts, who intentionally stirred up hostilities so that they could then capture “belligerent” people to sell (Blosser 2007:290). All indigenous slaves were (supposedly) freed in 1542 under the New Laws of the Indies promulgated by Carlos V, largely owing to the arguments of the Dominican friars in Hispaniola and the University of Salamanca professor of theology Francisco de Vitoria. Vitoria used Thomistic principles to support the case for basic human dignity. “All people,” he wrote, “whether Christians or not, have reason and dominion by nature because they are formed in the image of God” (Matsumori 2019:79). Freedom from slavery, however, was short-lived as the new repartimientos were formed, and the New Laws went unacknowledged by many encomenderos. Natives working on land grants (encomiendas) were not enslaved, although in reality dozens of land owners treated them so. Vitoria, Bartolomé de las Casas, and the Dominicans at University of Salamanca rejected the justification of enslaving indigenous people through conquest, arguing that the conquest did not constitute a just war. Las Casas in particular claimed the war of conquest “served particular interests rather than the common or universal good,” which negates the claim of just war (Orique 2013:15). Instead, Las Casas petitioned the Crown in 1531 and 1543 for black slaves from Spain to labor in the fields in the New World. Later in his life he condemned slavery and the slave trade and was “the first to denounce the African slave trade” (Orique 2013:16). In 1555, Las Casas and Juan Ginés Sepúlveda debated the legitimacy of just war and slavery in the New World at the command of Carlos V in Spain. The crux of that debate was how to understand the existence of humans not accounted for in the Bible. Sepúlveda argued that the natives were not rational, but were the equivalent to beasts of burden who did not possess an eternal soul – for all intents and purposes, he declared they were not human (Ammon 2012; Castro 2007). He argued that

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the Aztecs were particularly barbarous; their human and blood sacrifices were evidence of their lack of humanity and civilizing potential; and war was the only response to end their practices that so egregiously violated natural law. War waged against infidels prepared the way for teaching the faith. Conquering, enslaving, and eventually possibly baptizing them after subjecting them to Spanish rule was the best possible outcome. Las Casas, in contrast, argued that these indigenous people were humans just as the Spaniards and perhaps closer to God because of their simple lives and capability to be pious, as evidenced by the various practices of sacrifice found in the Aztec culture, however misdirected. Las Casas maintained that no nation, either historically before Christ or geographically outside of Christendom, was so barbarous and lacking in rationality as not to have at least a glimmer of the knowledge of God. Where Sepúlveda saw barbarousness, Las Casas saw the traces of recognition of God and tremendous religious potential. He likened indigenous people to Greeks and Romans in terms of art, philosophy, law, and statecraft (Ammon 2012). At stake in this issue of rationality was the very existence of souls in Amerindians’ bodies. Beasts of burden were thought to be “irrational” and lack an eternal soul. If Amerindians were to be considered rational, i.e., ensouled, it would be un-Christian to enslave them; Pope Alexander VI had authorized only the enslavement of nonChristians. So as conversion of native peoples continued, enslaving them would become un-Christian and immoral. Carlos V embraced Las Casas’ position over Sepúlveda’s but did little to end the brutal practices of the encomenderos. Additionally, the two major universities in Spain – Salamanca and Alcalá – condemned Sepúlveda’s arguments. It was not until decades later, however, that the last vestiges of indigenous slavery were finally eradicated, replaced by the rise of African slavery. The first Africans arrived in Mexico with conquistadors and government officials as their slaves. By mid-century, children of African slaves held in the Caribbean were brought to Mexico (Casteñada 2012) and adult African slaves, probably from Angola and Congo, were imported to Mexico as a labor force to replace a disease-ravaged indigenous population. Spaniards believed “that one Black enslaved person was worth four indigenous persons . . . maintaining that enslaved Blacks were able to survive demanding labor that both the indigenous populations and Whites could not” (Simms 2008:234). Slave revolts in 1535, 1546, and 1570 increased Spanish paranoia about indigenous people and African slaves conspiring together and led to an eight-year moratorium on importation of Africans (Simms 2008). Thereafter, African slaves appeared in the port of Veracruz in the 1570s destined to work in mines, plantations, and the elite households of Mexico City and Puebla. When Felipe II became King of Portugal and effectively the leader of the primary slave-dealing country in the world in 1580 there were about 8,000 Africans and 8,000 Spaniards in Mexico City. By 1600, in Mexico, there were 12,000 Africans, more free than slaves, many of whom had purchased their freedom. While the children born of native slave women were free as well as those born of black slave men and indigenous women unions, it was not so for the children born of African women (Townsend 2019:182). See also body: human, human sacrifice, soul

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sodality 15-century Central Mexico: Sodalities are human groups whose membership is not based on kinship, such as age-based groups, occupational groups, or groups with a shared devotion (cults). Although kinship was the most important organizer in Aztec social life, causing occupations to be inherited (López Austin 2015:59), some sodalities did exist among the Aztecs. Barbara Mundy (2015) points out that “the bonds of collective identification were forged [in] . . . the marketplace, particularly the great tianguis of Mexico (Figure 50), where craftsmen and merchants were grouped by craft in stalls to sell their goods, which afforded them repeated and habitual face-to-face interactions with each other” (156). Moteuczoma II moved artisans from various calpullis into his palace complex (López Austin 2015:63), creating sodalities for some occupations. The best known prequauhtemoc Aztec sodalities were those of the eagle and jaguar warriors, although these, too, were heavily influenced by kinship’s noble status. It was, however, possible for commoners to rise in the ranks of warriors to become eagles or jaguars. Priests serving a cult constituted a sodality, as did members of the cult. Fire priests, warrior priests, Tezcatlipoca priests, and Toci priests are examples. The Spanish recorded Aztec celibate and sequestered orders of both men and women dedicated to various deities. Vasco de Quiroga recognized that some indigenous institutions were remarkably similar to religious confraternities, which guided his vision of the shape and governance of Indian republics. More sodalities were to be found among the northern tribes. A man or a woman might have a dream or vision in which songs, dances, and medicine were given and then this individual taught this message to others, soon forming a cult/sodality. These vision societies are known to anthropologists as medicine societies or warrior societies, and each had a sacred bundle containing the vision items. 15th–16th-century Spain: Catholic sodalities are an outgrowth of guilds of the Roman era. In the early Christian context, these guilds formed around martyr cults, funerary devotions, and eventually, patron saints. As Christianity grew, “larger groups, such as . . . guilds, estates, and religious communities . . . were meant to create community among diverse groups of Christians and express charity” (Larkin 2006:197). Other sodalities were filomonicas, third orders (secular individuals adopting a monastic rule), congregations, universities, cathedral chapters, and municipal governments (García de León 2006:50). For our purposes, religious sodalities (also known as cofradias, or brotherhoods) have the greatest relevance, and were found as groups of men, of women, and of mixed gender organized for a particular devotion. Sodalities multiplied “at first in response to incipient stirrings of Catholic reform and later to the Church’s advocacy of these fraternal organizations to counter Protestant assaults on Catholic doctrine” (Larkin 2006:194). Some confraternities were started by laity, and some by priests. Sodalities devoted to a saint, particularly Sebastian, the Five Wounds, the Blood of Jesus, the Rosary, and the True Cross, were active in Spain, with the latter two busy building chapels in the decade 1570–1580 (Christian 1981b:51). Regional devotions in Castile to the Holy Name, possibly under Dominican or Franciscan stimulus, and to San Joaquin, definitely under

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Dominican encouragement, are documented (Christian 1981b:53–54). Town-based confraternities oversaw town vows and devotions to Mary, including processions, wardrobe, and feasts. Barrio-based groups oversaw specialist saints for the chapels, day-to-day devotions, funerals, and charity. Money was raised through new member fees, donations during festivals, sponsorship by mayordomos, and bequests. Most villagers belonged to sodalities and in some villages membership was obligatory, at least for men. In Castile, there was one sodality for every 100 households. In the city of Toledo, these sodalities were largely occupation based. Eire (1995:135–38) found that 20–30 percent of testators were members of confraternities in Seville. Six percent of the wills dated to the 1520s asked for members of two confraternities to walk in the funeral procession; 12 percent did so in the 1550s; and in the 1590s, 12 percent asked for members of four or more confraternities to walk and pray for them. These groups designed requiem masses, coordinated vigils and almsgiving, and established programs “that made reparations for sin” (Flynn 1989:13). Because the streets were clogged for hours during funeral processions, the City of Toledo attempted to limit confraternity membership. Flagellation in these sodalities is not documented in Spain before 1520 but appeared rapidly thereafter in Spanish cities: Cáceres 1521, Cabra 1522, Villalpando 1524, Toledo 1536 or before, Seville 1538, Baeza 1540, Jaén 1541, Jerez 1542, and Barcelona 1544 (Christian 1981b:185). Verástique argues this rise in flagellant brotherhoods coincides with confraternities dedicated to the crucified Christ, which led to the founding of related sodalities across the Atlantic. “Spiritual rewards” were garnered through participation in Passion re-enactments (Verástique 2000:56) such as the Descent from the Cross, a flagellant ceremony documented for confraternities of the Vera Cruz in Andalusia, Córdoba, Castile, and Málaga. It might be that the image of Mexican bloodletting contributed to flagellation adoption in Spain as well as in New Spain. 16th-century New Spain: The sodalities of New Spain were primarily religious confraternities that were sponsored by priests or by occupational guilds. Native guilds were soon eliminated by the new government, while guilds for Peninsulares were organized in New Spain within 30 years of the conquest. Spanish carpenters, sculptors, painters, gilders, instrument makers, embroiderers, and silk makers had their confraternities (Giffords 2007:74). The first confraternity in New Spain, the Caballeros de la Cruz (Soldiers of the True Cross), was founded by Cortés in the chapel in Veracruz in 1526 (Larkin 2006:194), and secondly, in Oaxaca. The Veracruz parish was home to the first Afro-Mexican sodality, “Exaltación de la Cruz y Lágrimas de San Pedro” (tears of St. Peter) sometime before 1538 when two other sodalities were established there (Valerio 2020:2). Some scholars say the majority of the early sodalities developed first in the Yucatan and other peripheral regions where colonial structures were somewhat weaker than in central Mexico (Lockhart 1992:219 fn 64). However, Lockhart discusses the confraternity of the Most Holy Sacrament in colonial Tula (Figure 2), which had approximately 400+ members in the first three years of its official existence, and more than half of those were female (Lockhart 1992). At San José de los Naturales, the Indian church in Mexico City, one could find the Franciscan sodalities of the Very Holy Sacrament, Souls in Purgatory, St. John the Baptist, San Diego de Alcalá, the Trinity, the True Cross, La Soledad, and the

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Entombment. Augustinians had in each of their convents a sodality of the Souls in Purgatory, which sponsored a mass every Monday for the dead, and the confraternity of Our Lady, which sponsored a mass for the living every Saturday (Ricard 1966:182). Our Lady of the Incarnation confraternity was founded in Tlaxcala sometime prior to 1539. Sodalities “lent themselves quite readily to Dominican theological purposes [assisting in their] struggle against New World heterodoxy” (Wasserstrom 1983:27–28) such as the Dominican-sponsored Descendimiento y Sepulcro de Cristo group. They glorified mysteries such as the Eucharist and virginity of Mary. “[C]onvents of other orders as well as parish churches throughout Mexico often served as headquarters for a rosary confraternity, founded in imitation of the original in the Dominican convent in Mexico City” and apparently with members of Indian, Spanish, and mulato ethnicities (Germeten 2006). Flagellant confraternities are recorded in wall murals in San Miguel Huexotzingo, Puebla (Franciscan), and in San Juan Teitipac, Oaxaca (Dominican), painted during the 16th century. In one mural at Huexotzingo, Franciscan friars take Jesus down from the Cross flanked by flagellants. In another mural, three parallel lines of robed figures can be seen processing on Good Friday (https://tinyurl.com/y8nkj8k6). One outer row consists of white-robed and hooded men and the other outer row of similarly dressed women and children. All carry whips. The middle row consists of black-robed and hooded figures carrying the implements of the passion followed by persons carrying a deceased Jesus, and statues of Mary as the Sorrowing Virgin (Dolores), John the Evangelist, and Mary Magdalen (Webster 1997). Passion re-enactments were part of holy week activities sponsored and performed by sodalities. “In the dramatic processional reenactment of the Passion, the cofradias member gained spiritual rewards through participation in the divine suffering” (Verástique 2000:55–56). Confraternities financed the fiestas and even the friars of some orders (Early 2006:145) often using the produce from farm land. “In some regions they even appropriated community lands and goods that were worked by all. As a result the saints [and their confraternities] were converted into owners of extensive properties and saved such lands from the plunder of Spaniards” (García de León 2006:46). Confraternities also performed acts of charity to gain indulgences for both living and deceased members. They “founded and administered hospitals, lodging for pilgrims, granted dowries to poor or orphaned girls, visited prisoners, distributed alms to the poor, promoted veneration of their patron saints through processions, feast day liturgies, chapel buildings, purchasing art and paraliturgical items for churches” (Larkin 2006:195–196). Nearly every sodality stood the cost of funerals and burials for their members and organized these affairs as well. Another benefit of joining a sodality in New Spain, particularly, was access to communion (Pardo 2006:139). When the general modus operandi in the first generation of missionizing was to withhold this sacrament from native Christians, it was given to confraternity members who were typically native elites. The confraternity of the Holy Sacrament, under the direction of the Franciscans, took communion during Lent (Ricard 1966:124). Another advantage of confraternity membership for natives was the creation of a native network “to preserve cultural and religious autonomy” and allow at least some of them to “maintain their religious worldview under the guise of honoring catholic saints”

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(Verástique 2000:140). For Africans brought as slaves to New Spain, confraternities offered family, in addition to ways to keep their connection to pre-slave identity and religion (Germeten 2006). While the First Mexican Church Provincial Council in 1555 decried well-intentioned but unapproved confraternities that lead to “troubles” and the Council of Trent moved to regulate these brotherhoods, “Mexico City generally allowed these institutions to function independently, only occasionally monitoring internal confraternal elections or auditing accounts” (Larkin 2006:194). In other locations, however, sodalities paid fees and taxes to the bishop who could and did shut them down and confiscate their possessions (images, land, treasury). The Third Mexican Church Provincial Council (1585) estimated there were 300 indigenous confraternities (Truitt 2018). See also bloodletting, cult, death, penance, priest, procession, religious instruction, religious labor, sacred bundle, shrine

sodomy/homosexuality 15th-century Central Mexico: From 16th century accounts it is clear that same-sex and anal sex occurred in ancient Mexico. The giants of the First Sun had engaged in cannibalism and sodomy and were associated with the god Tezcatlipoca. In the Fifth Sun, both gods and humans committed adultery, homoerotic acts, and other sexual transgressions (Hernández and García 2010). Cast as an imbalance, homosexuality affected the individual, society (crops, commerce, newborns, etc.), and cosmology, and was to be righted, case by case, considering class, gender, or circumstance (Olivier 2010:65). Piles and hemorrhoids were the manifestation of the act of sodomy and the state punished men who had sex with men by disemboweling them and by smothering them in hot ashes (Klein 1993:25). One text stated that Nezahualpilli, king of Tetzcoco, ordered the killing of those engaging in same-sex eroticism while he, himself, was described by one source as an “hombre afeminado.” His father, while king, reportedly had had his brother killed for the act (Olivier 2010:61). Sigal (2007) argues that “homosexual” did not exist as an identity in Mesoamerican cultures. Rather, the performance of gender determined a person’s gender identification. Cross-dressing and performing the other gender’s labors regulated prequauhtemoc homosexuality by “recasting the same-sex couple as heterosexual” (Sousa 2017:118). Olivier (2010:64) reports that when someone had bad luck, he might call to Tezcatlipoca, giver of sexuality, “¡Tu miserable sodomita! ¡Te divertiste conmigo, te burlaste de mí!” (“You miserable sodomite. You enjoyed yourself with me, you made fun of me”). 15th-century Spain: Thomas Aquinas “predicated his objection to homosexual activity not on animal sexuality but on an argument . . . that semen and its ejaculation were intended by ‘nature’ to produce children, and that any other use of them was ‘contrary to nature’” (Boswell 1980:321–322). Realizing a logical problem, Aquinas later specified that the impediment of procreation was the sin, while elsewhere stating that neither celibacy for Orders nor wet dreams were sins. In Summa Theologiae, Aquinas identified vices against nature (homosexuality, intercourse with animals, masturbation, and non-

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procreative heterosexual acts) as the most sinful of the sins of lust yet he offered in one place that it might be innate behavior for some people. Aquinas called ‘on popular concepts of ‘nature’ linking homosexuality to . . . either violently antisocial [behavior] (like cannibalism) or threateningly dangerous [behavior] (like heresy)’. Aquinas subtly but definitively transferred it from its former position among sins of excess or wantonness to a new and singular degree of enormity among the types of behavior most feared by the common people and most severely repressed by the church. (Boswell 1980:329–330)

The Third Lateran Council (1179) was the first ecumenical council to rule on homosexual acts. “If a cleric, [he shall] be deposed from office or confined to a monastery to do penance; if a layman he shall suffer excommunication” (Boswell 1980:277). By the 13th century, homosexuality was regarded as a carnal sin but not as a heresy. Boswell argues that the Christian/Catholic repulsion to same sex eroticism has its origins in the creation of Islam as an enemy. Muslim tolerance of homosexuality was part of the impetus for Christians to oppose Islam and the appeal for the first crusade relied on sexual and ethnic taboos in Western thought (Boswell 1980:279). “The widely held belief that both of the greatest threats to Christian Europe’s security (the Muslims from without, the heretics from within) were particularly given to homosexual relations contributed greatly to the profoundly negative reaction against gay sexuality visible at many levels of European society during this period” (Boswell 1980:286). Northern Spain’s “Juan II (r. 1406–1454) of Castile and his lover Álvaro de Luna were the most famous homosexual couple in medieval Christian Spain,” though his second wife had de Luna executed and that act stood for centuries as a sign of the repression of homosexuality (Eisenberg 2013:398). Homosexuality was “tolerated at part of the court of Alfonso V (r. 1394–1458)” (Eisenberg 2013:398). The Islamic Al-Andalus caliphate in Spain not only tolerated homosexuality but several rulers kept male harems. Homosexual practices had a place in “Islamic mysticism and monasticism,” which “both scandalized and terrified” Christians in northern Iberia (Eisenberg 2013:398). Jews were also connected to sodomy in these centuries, “One reason Jews were excluded from some countries after their expulsion from Spain was because they allegedly took homosexuality with them” (Eisenberg 2013:398). “[M]ost historians consider that the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were ages of less tolerance, adventurousness, acceptance – epochs in which European societies seem to have been bent on restraining, contracting, protecting, limiting, and excluding,” perhaps related to increasing urbanization and “a sedulous quest for intellectual and institutional uniformity and corporatism throughout Europe” (Boswell 1980:269–270). Germanic legislation, however, never penalized homosexuality in these centuries. Female homosexuality is first mentioned in a French code from Orleans in the 13th century (Boswell 1980). 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures at one time believed that homosexual sex (and probably any nonvaginal ejaculation) was a waste of vital fluid and heat, both cultures attempted to force conformity to heterosexual norms. Missionary reports to Spanish officials specified the existence of “sodomites” among the Nahuas, calling it “pecado nefando.” Sodomy was one of the two evils frequently

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condemned by Fray Bartolomé de Olmedo, priest with Cortés, as they made their way to Tenochtitlan (Ricard 1966:18–19). Sahagún (1950–1982) described women “hermaphrodites” as “a ‘detestable woman who has a penis or who has carnal relations with other women or who went about acting like a man . . . She bewitches – a sorceress, a person of sorcery, a possessed one’” (10:53). Yet another 16th-century source claimed that there were men who dressed as women and engaged in weaving and sewing (today’s muxes), some of whom were kept by nobles for their pleasure. Cabeza de Vaca recorded men marrying other men and living as women among Indians in what is now modern Texas as well (Olivier 2010:61–62). Olivier (2010:59) doubts that Sahagún’s reaction to same gender sexual behavior was true to prequauhtemoc sentiment. For one reason, translations of words are suspect, sounding more Spanish in sentiment than native (corruption, perversion, excrement, repugnant, disgusting, effeminate; ones deserving to be burned). A second reason for his doubt is that there were early reports of homosexual behavior among the native boys in Catholic residential schools. Although there were night watches to prevent sexual behavior, “it was necessary to take away their internship and send them to sleep at home” (Ricard 1966:100–101). Third, there were contemporary accounts of homosexuals and prostitutes serving as judges and diviners in their communities (López Austin 2010:34). Finally, all of the major deities, whether in Aztec, Mixtec, or Mayan pantheons, had dual aspects, masculine and feminine, and these dual aspects were played out in the human realm through rank names indicating femininity and male priests dressing as goddesses. See also fertility, sex, sin

song. see dance, flower, music, speech soul 15th-century Central Mexico: The Nahuas identified three souls – the yolia residing in the heart; the tonalli residing in the head; and the ihiyotl residing in the liver (Furst 1995). Much of the moral prescription for Nahuas was meant to preserve or retain these souls in the body, and much ritual, offerings to spirits, and payments to ritual specialists was expended in the diagnosis of soul loss and the recovery of a wandering soul. Wind spirits and strong emotions were among the frequently blamed culprits. Yolia was represented by winged animals and insects, shadows and auras. The yolia was seen in the animation of the body, in breath, pulse, and blood. It was the soul that attached to bone and stone. Yolia souls of unweaned children went to Chichiualcuauhco, orchard of the gods, in the 13th level of the Upper World, where they nursed from a tree as birds or butterflies. “These deceased infants were extremely important to the fate of the human universe, because, in the future, when the current great world age came to an end . . . their spirits would leave the tree and return to repopulate the earth” (Furst 1995:26). These children had not yet partaken of the gifts of the gods so they owed no debt to them (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:163–166). The yolia of women who died in childbirth went to Ilhucac, the western part of the Heaven of the Sun. They went on to the clouds after four years of service, joining the

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ranks of Tzitzimimeh. The yolia of men who died in battle or as sacrifices went to Tonatiuh, the eastern part of the Heaven of the Sun, to serve the Sun for four years. It is the yolia that returns for the Days of the Dead (Furst 1995:21). The tonalli soul was evident as body heat and absorbed by blood from the sun. Tonalli heat was also created by drilling fire, drilling stone or shell, by sexual activity, hot food, and abstinence. The tonalli was measured by body warmth but also in resemblance, whether appearance, name, regalia, or birth date. It was particularly strong following abstinence, and during menstruation and pregnancy, in some foods, and during engagement with other than human beings. Tonalli could escape through the fontanel at the top of the skull or through pulse points on the body. It was readily transported and transferred from person to person via names, relics (hair, clothing, jewelry, bone, hide, bark), and human blood and flesh consumption (Furst 1995). It was drilled into the fetus through the fontanel. It was/is radiance, given by the Father Sun. “While all Nahuas possess tonalli . . . a ruler’s tonalli was his ‘destiny,’ his unquestionable rights and obligations. It was his prestige, his soul, that distinguished him” (Haly 1996: 533). Ihiyotl was wind-borne. This soul came in and out through orifices in the form of pus and flatulence and imparted yellow skin coloration. The garbage aires of a prostitute and other over-sexed individuals were ihiyotl. 15th–16th-century Spain: The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) reaffirmed that humans were a compound of spirit and body, and that it was impossible to do away with either without destroying the whole. There were three powers of the Soul (memory, understanding, and will) and three enemies of the soul (world, flesh, and devil) (Braden 1930:160). Popular religious belief in this period held that the soul was a “plural and mobile entity” that could travel to far-off places to complete tasks (Tausiet 2014:96). However, the prevailing theological understanding of the soul from the Middle Ages maintained that the soul was created “out of nothing by God at the moment of its unification with the body” and that body and soul had a mutually necessary relationship in this world (Hankins 2005:4). The 15th century saw a reinvigorated diffusion of Neoplatonist ideas throughout Christian theology and philosophy. Eager to fully integrate Platonic philosophy and Christianity, Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola advanced a theological-philosophical system that was influential throughout Spanish schools from Valencia to Salamanca (Byrne 2015). Ficino and Mirandola were also avid Cabalists. A common thread connecting Neoplatonic and Cabalistic schools was the conception of the soul as something eternal, existing prior to dwelling in the human body, moving through different substances in order to gain knowledge of creation and its creator throughout its journeys (Idel 2011). These journeys create higher forms of spiritual awareness in the soul. Ficino thought that the “purified mind” of such a soul has the power “to see the future, to do miracles, raise winds, change weather, convert souls to philosophy and perform other works of angelic magic” (Hankins 2005:20). These theological developments were potentially heretical – the idea of the soul existing before its embodiment alone was controversial, let alone discussing transmigrations of the soul as Ficino did. He was investigated by the Inquisition for his treatises on magic. Despite worries about the Inquisition, Neoplatonist ideas about the soul and its origin were an

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important piece of mystical thought in the late medieval world and contributed to many orthodox (and heterodox) theological developments in the period. Catholic doctrine held that “all souls will be reunited with their resurrected bodies at the time of the Last Judgement and those found worthy will be taken to heaven” (Burkhart 2001a:99). Relics would be pulled from across Christendom to reconstruct Saints’ bodies at the Last Judgment. Until that time, “the corpse was thought not to be completely dead, but to contain some remaining life-force. The actual soul, understood as a person’s essence, had passed over to the other world, but a second soul remains in the buried corpse. Consequently the dead person is present in his grave, can exert influence from there and remains open to communication” (Angenendt 2014:292). The first soul then needed to suffer “sufficiently long to obtain the repentance and pardon of sins, which allowed the soul freedom from the eternal penalties of hell” (García de León 2006:52). Artists typically showed the soul as a child or infant, based on Jesus’ words that one must come to God as a small trusting child (Furst 1995:37). 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures understood souls to travel beyond the bounds of the living body, both cultures acknowledged more than one soul residing in each person. For both cultures, one of the souls traveled after death to a specific place in the cosmos. “(Te)yolia was the indigenous soul concept that most resembled that of Christianity” and it was always paired with the Spanish “anima” (Burkhart 1992:101). This pairing of yolia and anima, Burkhart believes, allowed for the native understanding to be carried into Mexican Christian discourse. However, the breath needed to kindle the spark when drilling fire was much like the breath of God that animated Adam, leading Furst (1995:65–66) to link the tonalli soul to that of the Christian concept. A 16th-century resurgence of Neoplatonism led to an idea of the human soul as one that could surpass the angels and commune with God (Keitt 2013: 34). Literature, morality plays, and poetry in the New World emphasized the importance of soul to God through the struggle of angels with demons and the devil for the ultimate fate of indigenous souls (Burkhart 2013). Angels frequently trick demons and the devil to retrieve the souls from purgatory or from their journey to hell. Many of the European observers of natives saw the indigenous soul as “tender and delicate,” and “humble, calm, and broken . . . ready as soft wax to receive the imprint of all virtue” (Graziano 1999:165). These hard-won souls were seen by some as compensation for souls lost to Martin Luther and Protestant reform movements. Souls were also connected to the riches literally mined from New Spain. “It was often argued that an absence of riches would have resulted in a corresponding absence of Spaniards, thereby depriving the natives of salvation and retarding the process of Christian world unity” (Graziano 1999:30). Indigenous souls were a metaphorical mineral vein, whose release was made possible by their labor in the mines. Caring for their own souls was as important to the earliest Franciscan missionaries as was caring for that of the natives. To maintain and develop their souls, cloistered meditation, recollection, communal living, and saying the divine office were essential practices, as was itinerant preaching. But, it was nearly impossible to both follow the

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contemplative/communal life and carry out pastoral care, causing many friars to abandon the mission field (Turley 2014). See also death, heart, priest, virginity, weeping

speech 15th-century Central Mexico: The Aztecs distinguished between the speech of commoners and that of the nobility. The latter was marked by the use of a distinct rhetorical style. To be educated was to be a master of expression, a dialectician, and an orator. An educated [man] had to be able to deliver artful or moving speeches on a diversity of occasions with all the etiquette prescribed by the ritualized pattern of life . . . to be thoroughly literate also implied knowledge of hundreds of metaphors, set phrases, and sequences of repetitive verses or strophes. (Townsend 2009:165–166)

Male students in the calmecac had to excel in speaking or leave the school. Books, whose content was meant to be spoken, were “made to cackle,” both as they were uttered and as the folded pages were turned. Speeches, prayers, song, and gossip were oral forms that concerned the elite of Anahuac. With regard to gossip, elite women were instructed by their mothers, “never concern thyself with words; let what is said be said. Do not speak with others, pretend that thou dost not hear it. With thee will the word end” (Sahagún 1950–1982:6:101). Nahuas, particularly those leaders of Basin groups, are famous for their poetry or cuicatl “song,” their flowery talk preserved today in the Cantares Mexicanos (16th century) and the Romances de los señores de la Nueva España (17th century). At least two women were among them, including Macuilxochitzin, daughter of the powerful Tlacaelel, born around 1435. Nahua flowery talk was structured around couplets, triplets, and difrasismo (pairs of words to mean yet something else) and made frequent reference to dying, war, crying, and flowers (Karttunen 2008). Lordly speech “imparted information in indirect ways and often contrary to fact. Politeness among the Aztecs required that one often say the opposite of what one meant and to speak at length in florid ways” (Karttunen 2008:1). Contrary talk filled Moteuczoma’s welcoming speech to Cortés. Contrary speech is found, in fact, among a number of native North American groups, used by members of clowning or military sodalities. 15th-century Spain: Divine speech created the world from nothingness, first creating light by speaking “Let there be light.” (Genesis 1:3 NRSV). The voice of God, the Metatron, was too fearsome for humans to hear with their bodily ears and so God used emissaries such as Enoch and Moses. Aquinas maintained that God speaks to humans, God speaks to angels, lesser angels speak to greater angels but greater angels do not speak among themselves, as their mental concepts can be perceived by one another without speech. Angels also speak to humans, and God provided speech in order for humans to communicate, learn, and spread the gospel. Humans should speak about faith, virtue, and wisdom (Aquinas 2012). Speaking in tongues was a rare phenomenon.

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Spaniards living in southern Spain while it was under Muslim control spoke Arabic and attended church in the Mozarabic tradition. Latin was used for mass in Northern Spain – regardless of region, Spaniards attended church conducted in a specialized language only the priests understood. 16th-century New Spain: Priests in both cultures spoke in a specialized or “secret” language. In both Old and New world beliefs, speech from the deities set creation in motion. To become Christians, the natives needed to comprehend what Catholics everywhere understood about God, Mary, Jesus, prayer, purification, etc. Burkhart (1989) and Early (2006) doubt this happened because of the problems with language. In spite of the idea that the native languages were too poor in vocabulary to convey the mysteries of the faith, friars worked in native languages with the King’s approval and in fact both Dominicans and Franciscans required friars to learn the lingua franca of their mission field. Later in the century, Felipe II ordered that they teach Spanish to the Indians, “but the friars simply dragged their feet” (Turley 2014:129). In some parishes, Latin was used for doctrine and mass, and there was a requirement to recite the doctrine in Latin before baptism. Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros was appalled at the requirement of Latin in New Spain (Early 2006:168). “Not only was the whole religion confused, but its presentation varied from friar to friar . . . talk of filth, penance and peripheral dangers resembled indigenous discourse while their talk of love and salvation did not . . . the differences between the two world views were not consistently stated and stressed in terms that would have made them clear to the Nahuas” (Burkhart 1989:187). The secular priests who began taking over parishes in the 1580s were notoriously incapable of speaking native languages. Sahagún energetically argued that all priests must be able to understand and speak indigenous languages. In the late 16th century, language proficiency was also required by Jesuits who taught at the schools in Mexico City. The lack of understanding the words may not have been an impediment to “Christianization,” however. Clendinnen (1987:48) pointed out while the “mere sequence of sounds could have any efficacy . . . the friars knew those sounds could open the way to God’s grace.” Early’s (2006) experience with modern Mayan rituals was that “comprehension is not necessary since the recitation of the words is deemed sufficient” and understood by the deity (41). See also music, naming, prayer, text

spring/well 15th-century Central Mexico: Ruptures in the earth were places where the spirits of the New World could be contacted. Ahuehuete trees were associated with springs and fertility petitioning. Spring water had healing properties. The sacred site of Pantitlan, in Lake Texcoco east of Tenochtitlan, may have been a spring. A native sacred spring on modern Cerro los Frailes near Actopan was harnessed by missionaries (Wake 2010:216), and springs in the valley of Talocto were enshrined. As the migrant Mexica searched the marsh in Lake Tetzcoco, they saw several signs that they had arrived at the place where Huitzilopochtli had been leading them. One of

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these signs was a spring that ran both blue and red. This may well have been the covered sacred spring used for ritual cleansing on the west side of the ceremonial complex in Tenochtitlan (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:229). 15th–16th-century Spain: The four rivers of Paradise – the Pison, the Gihon, the Hiddekel (Tigris), and the Phirate (Euphrates) – originated as springs (Ferguson 1959:58). Miraculous springs and wells were visited throughout the Western world in this century and long before. “When a Christian missionary came to a sacred spring dedicated to pagan worship, he adjured the demons by the name of Christ and made the sign of the cross; then the demons departed, and the spring was restored to its proper purpose of providing water for human use” (Pelikan 1978:133). A sealed well was a symbol of the virginity of Mary (Ferguson 1959:61). Holy wells in Spain have progressed through pagan, Visigoth, Moor, Christian, and New Age religiosity. Hot springs grew into shrines at Guadalupe, Compostela, and Fuencaliente (Christian 1981b:91). In Castile, a spring sprung where the Virgin addressed a young servant (1490) and in Catalonia, where holy springs were fairly common, one began exuding healing water in 1460 (Christian 1981a:129). These and other springs and wells dried up when they were profaned by infidels or even dirty diapers. Springs were also sites where purity or pollution of a person could be assayed. The Virgin de Salud was known to restore the flow to wells and springs (Kroger and Granziera 2012). 16th-century New Spain: Native springs were enshrined by Christians. At the base of Tepeyac hill (Mexico City) is the Templo del Pocito, enclosing the miraculous spring near where the Virgin de Guadalupe appeared in 1531 (Figure 59). The spring that gushes from between the roots of a giant ahuehuete tree near Chalma was Christianized with a church late in the 16th or early 17th century. Toward the base of the Cholula pyramid and its crowning sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios is a well shrine that first appeared on the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca (Geoff McCafferty, personal communication, July 25, 2018). The location of the city of Puebla (1531) was based on a vision of rivers and springs by Fray Julián Garcés (Lara 2004:104–105). See also cave, landscape, mountain, shrine, water

star 15th-century Central Mexico: The Mexica pantheon had numerous star deities, with names often beginning with “citlal” and most living in the second heaven, although others could be found in four heavens. The male stars were created by Citlalatonac and the female stars by Citlalicue. The centzonmimixcoa were the 400 stars/constellations of the northern sky led by Mixcoatl, and the centzonhuitznahua, the 400 stars/constellations of the southern sky, the slain brothers of Huitzilopochtli. Priests and priest apprentices observed the rite known as the Night Vigil that used the movement of the constellations in timing offerings of copal and blood to the stars (Brotherston 2005:21). Xiuhtecuhtli, the young fire god, was manifested as turquoise and the North Star (Roy 2005). Star clusters (and blood let below them) fertilized the earth. Seeds were allotted by the star cluster Scorpio/Sagittarius, known as “Market.” Couples gathered flowers and seeds under these constellations in hope of fertilization (Brotherston 2005:54). Sighting on the

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Figure 59 Well shrine at Templo del Pocito, Tepeyac, Mexico City. (Photo by C. Claassen)

Pleiades, known as Tianquiztli or Fire Drill, was a key means of measuring time. It was represented with the sign ollin. Its main star, Castor, was the night sun called Yohualtecuhtli, whose feast was held every 260 days (Klein 1975). Aztec warriors had the fire drill tattooed on their inner wrist and pulque cult members wore a tear-shaped design that referenced the Pleiades (Wake 2010). In Tenochtitlan, the New Fire was drilled as the Pleiades came overhead, while in Cholula, it was the arrival of the constellation Market (Scorpio). There are several symbols used to demark a star deity or stars in general. The female Tzitzimimeh were stars that could be seen attacking the Sun during a solar eclipse. They had knees, elbows, and wrists dotted with symbols that look like eyes. Tzitzimimeh, like Citlalicue, wore shell skirts, Milky Way skirts, sometimes decorated with stars (Flood n.d.a). Mixcoatl was god of the Milky Way who also wore a band studded with bivalve shells/stars down his spine. Some star figures around a cave on Codex Borgia page 39 have shell icons. Charcoal pigment was linked to fire, fire to stars (stars were fires kindled in the night), and stars to Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, who as a result of their creation of the Fifth Sun, were rewarded lordship of the stars (García 2015). The concentric circles on the blackened bodies of some images of Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl were stars. “In Histoyre du Mechique we learn the fires created by Mixcoatl are metaphors for stars . . .

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Collections of black dots represented star groups or constellations” (Boyd 2016:120). It can be said that “celestial bodies are burned things, and the night stars are beings whose faces are covered in ash” (García 2015:1). The ashes around the eyes of Mixcoatl were a mask called “star painting,” a marking he acquired when he burned the goddess Itzpapalotl. The spots in a fawn’s coat and the dark spots on the jaguar’s pelt had star connotations. As well, the “arrow” on some images, such as the sunstone, were “star crowns.” 15th-century Spain: “[T]he ordering of all things from human life to precious stones, herbs, or metals was held to be patterned in the stars” (Hopper 1969:91). Climate, land fertility, and the “growth” of metals were affected by the movement of the stars and planets, a point intensely argued in this and the next century. Las Casas wrote that the movements of the stars caused small changes on earth and in the human body by generating changes in the four elements that shaped human temperament and mentalities (Cañizares-Esguerra 1999). “[T]he role of the stars in shaping health was the subject of considerable debate, as scholars sought to mesh Galenic medical models, which ascribed considerable power to astrological movements, with the Christian doctrine of free will” (Earle 2012:35, ftn 47). Constellation maps were used by sailors and showed the location of the forty-eight constellations that were recorded by Ptolemy in the 1st century CE. For navigation, the sun was most commonly used, but navigators also used the moon, a planet, Polaris, or one of fifty-seven other navigational stars. Stars in Christian symbolism had four to nine points and twelve points (Gast 2000). Marian symbolism uses the eight-pointed star (Perry 1992), the star of Redemption; Mary was called “Stella Maris,” “Star of the Sea,” “Stella Matutina,” and “Stella non Erratica.” Popular images of Mary had twelve stars at her head, such as seen in Immaculate Conception and Virgin of Guadalupe images, said to signify the twelve tribes of Israel or the twelve disciples (Giffords 2007:366). The planet Venus might be referenced with a six-pointed star. Some love magic invoked the stars. “Cants addressed to stars praise their beauty and entreat them to penetrate the ungrateful heart painfully” (Ortega 1991:74). Additionally, many Christians believed that the stars were the location of purgatory and that souls of the dead there could offer assistance to the living (Tausiet 2014). 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures associated significant female deities with the stars, and thus the night sky. Exploration of the southern hemisphere in the 14–17th centuries led to recording of many new constellations and new star maps. New stars were equated with new climates, thought to be harmful to, or at least exerting influence on, the European body. “What with living under different stars and in a different climate [Spaniards] inevitably undergo some change in the colour and quality of their persons,” said López de Velasco in the 1570s (Earle 2012:22). Native attention to celestial bodies was viewed as “pagan,” while Spanish concern with the stars and constellations was “learned.” The Third Mexican Church Provincial Council banned the adorning of saints with stars in 1585 but churches throughout Mexico are adorned with the Marian eight-pointed star. See also astrology, astronomy, body: human, demon, moon, Venus

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stone. see rock suicide 15th-century Central Mexico: There are examples of suicide in the Codex Borgia and in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala. Suicide was quite common in Mesoamerica among deities and rulers. Huemac, the last Toltec ruler, killed himself, and by some accounts all Toltec rulers committed suicide at the 52-year anniversary of their reign, should it last so long. Nezahualpilli, son of Nezahualcoyotl, committed suicide. Quetzalcoatl did so by “going to the east.” So did Huitzilopochtli. Two gods at the council at Teotihuacan immolated themselves, becoming the first sun and moon. Then all the gods present at the great bonfire allowed themselves to be beheaded (López Austin 2015:161). 15th-century Spain: It has long been the Catholic position that only God has dominion over the human body, which was given to humans for stewardship and spiritual growth. Therefore, only God can take life. Augustine argued humans must engage in self-care to honor God. Also, humans have duties to others that strongly prohibit self-murder (Augustine 2009:1:17–30). In the Siete Partidas, the statutory code applied to New Spain by Queen Isabella, killing oneself out of despair signaled non-repentance. By the 16th century, it was allowed that the Devil could force one’s hand but this did not absolve the perpetrator from the violation of the covenant. Christian burial and burial in hallowed ground was denied to those who intentionally killed themselves. Francisco Quiñones instructed recruiters for the mission field in New Spain to include the potential for martyrdom: “Time and again, Franciscans and others expressed their longing for martyrdom, and the opportunity to pursue martyrdom in a new and hostile land would be considered an extraordinary circumstance and opportunity that would change the normal calculus of spiritual thought” (Turley 2014:41). 16th-century New Spain: Cortés wrote that large numbers of native men jumped to their deaths from the temple when the Spanish attacked Cholula (1519). Las Casas recorded suicides by hanging, and many native men in a Nuño de Guzman-led campaign hung themselves because of the hardships (Altman 2007:156). At least thirteen Maya did so rather than face the Inquisition (Tortorici 2011). During the Mixton War (1540–1542), a “large number of rebels threw themselves over steep precipices rather than surrender,” although others fled north and remained in perpetual rebellion (Ahern 2007:283). The cases of native suicide discussed by Tortorici (2011) also included nuns and priests, some of whom were given church burial and some of whom were not. The difference came from the “reading of the body” as to whether the person had struggled to save him/ herself. Some African slaves who committed suicide may have believed that when they died their soul went back to Africa (Tortorici 2011). See also moon, weeping

sun 15th-century Central Mexico: The sun, like all deities, was marked by duality. At the creation of the Fifth Sun, two gods sacrificed themselves by fire, one to become the day sun Tonatiuh/Huitzilopochtli and the other the moon, the night sun. Tonatiuh/

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Huitzilopochtli daily emerged in the east victorious after defeating his 401 celestial siblings each night (Boone 1994:33) to begin a new cycle of time. The charter story of Huitzilopochtli’s battle and victory over his brothers and sister on Coatepec is the story of the daily gendered struggle of night and day. This story was also played out in the Mesoamerican ballgame, the ball figuring as the sun. This day sun was only portrayed in profile view. Like the ballgame and the struggle atop Coatepec, this sun would end violently. The setting/dying/dead sun, also called the female sun, was associated with the west, south, center, earth goddesses, agricultural fertility, and conclusion of temporal cycles (Klein 1975). Night sun deities and the earth deities were always shown frontally, typically with flint knife tongue, and clawed hands and feet. Their faces could be replaced by a half-closed eye or reference to the number 7. It is this sun’s face that is at the center of the famous Aztec calendar stone (Figure 60). The day sun died in the west each day, falling into the mouth of the earth monster Tlaltecuhtli and transforming into the night sun. Then, while weakened, the night sun and moon cohabited to gestate a sun that by morning was pulled from the earth in the

Figure 60 Aztec (night) sun stone with President Porfirio Diaz providing scale, in 1910.

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east by Morning Star and carried by the Warrior souls to its zenith at noon then handed it off to the warrior women who escorted the sun until it set. Daily offerings were made by priests to the day sun four times and to the night sun five times (Klein 1975). A man ready to marry said “the sun was placed at noon. A woman who had found a husband had ‘found her sun’” (Sahagún 1950–1982:1:81). The positions on the horizon at the two solstice sunrise and sunset dates marked out the world quarters (the intercardinal points) and delineated the quadrilateral safe space given to humans for dwelling. Solar equinoxes marked the cardinal points. Architectural alignments and sighting lines to these points provided solar calendars for timing rituals. The sun was also the source of divine rulership and its responsibilities: agricultural and human fertility. Food was tonacayotl, “that which pertains to radiance,” and humans were animated by tonalli, “radiance.” Tonalli was derived from the rulers’ relationship to the sun, whose radiance flowed through their blood and thus imparted the right to rule (Haly 1996:8). Over sixty-five visible solar eclipses occurred in the sky above Tenochtitlan from 1325 to 1520 (Aveni 2017:129). To protect themselves during solar eclipses, “people made noise during totality to scare away the tzitzimimeh, the stars, and especially the planets – that appeared during totality – as they had come to devour the solar deity” (Aveni 2017:128). Solar and lunar eclipses explain the frequent depiction of moon and night goddesses as headless (Boyd 2016). 15th-century Spain: Old World pre-Christian solar cults were modified by Christians – appropriating the midwinter festival as the birth of the light and the son/sun, the summer solstice ceremonies as the feast of St. John the Baptist, and the fall equinox as the feast of San Miguel. At the spring equinox, a time of rebirth and fertility, Easter is celebrated. The book of Revelation refers to the woman clothed in sun with the moon under her feet (Rev 12:1). In the Middle Ages, this verse had a mariological interpretation, particularly related to her role as mediatrix (Pelikan 1978). The stars were considered to reflect the light of the sun, as ones’ virtues were a reflection of Christ’s virtues. This image can be seen in the Virgin of Remedios, whose head is sometimes surrounded by the sun and stars as she stands on the moon (see Figure 43). Burkhart (1988) cites many Biblical allusions to God and Christ as solar deities. For instance, the Bible records that about three hours before Christ’s death, darkness spread over the land (e.g., Matthew 27:45), a metaphor that likened the rising Christ to the rising sun. His ascension and heavenly reign were spoken of as the “light” and “the enlightenment.” The rising sun and the direction east were symbolic of salvation, new life, and beginnings. At the time of Mary’s bodily assumption into Heaven, Mary was wrapped in the sun [Son] and its rays splayed out to cover all of the people on earth (Burkhart 2001a:111). Churches were built to capture the light of the rising and the setting sun. A sun-shaped monstrance, “which became popular during the sixteenth century throughout Europe, was most common in northern New Spain” (Giffords 2007:247). The brilliance and perfection of the sun nurtured the most perfect of all metals, gold, and gold gave back divine light. 16th-century New Spain: Given the highly similar ideas about light and warmth of the sun, the eastern locus of birth, the association of maleness with the rising sun, and the

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importance of solstice and equinox, missionaries surely had an easy time equating Christ to the native ideas of a Solar deity, if that was their goal. Yet the insistence that the son/ sun was the only deity presented a challenge, and confusion was created by references to both Christ and Mary as solar deities (and to the Trinity). Solar attributes of Mary’s image can be seen during her Assumption into Heaven (Burkhart 2001a:111), captured in the rays behind and framing the Lady of the Apocalypse/Virgin of Guadalupe. Solar rays were carved behind the head of Jesus at Tlalmanalco’s monastery (Perry 1992:37). “For the Nahuas, the ‘metaphorical’ Christ-sun is not morally superior to the ‘physical’ sun, or the ‘historical’ sun-deity . . . from the Nahuas’ point of view there is a rationale for continuity between their sun and their Christ . . . Christ could be interpreted as a deity who has taken the place of the sun, thus becoming a new sun presiding over a new segment of history” (Burkhart 1988:240). See also cosmos, day, demon, eagle, east, gold, moon, morals, quadripartite world, star

supreme deity 15th-century Central Mexico: Given the Toltec belief in a supreme deity, it is likely that one existed for the Mexica. Candidates for a supreme deity among Mesoamericans’ pantheon have been advanced, particularly the grandparent couple Ometechutli “two lord” and Omecihuatl “two lady” collapsed into the dual Ometeotl, presiding over Omeyocan “the place of two” in the 13th level of the Upper World, an opinion championed by Carrasco and Sessions (2011:53), León-Portilla (1999), and, most recently, Maffie (2015). Critics have pointed out that there were no temples to this deity, and little in writing or sculpture to support this status; that this deity is found only in historic sources; and that Omi (bone, and another name of Huitzilopochtli, Omiteuctli, a deity born without flesh) and Ome (two) have been incorrectly exchanged in Spanish-era texts (Haly 1992:280–285). Another strong candidate for a supreme deity was Tezcatlipoca, “to whom we are all slaves,” also said to be omniscient (Saunders and Baquedano 2014). This cult, however, was largely restricted to the elite (Smith 2014:23; Townsend 2009:113). Not to be mistaken as supreme deities were the patron deities of Mesoamerican people. These patrons were typically the favored patron of the elite lineage in a town and only one of many cults in that town. Patrons could be and were substituted at any show of weakness or ineffectiveness. John Pohl says that the Zapotecs did have a supreme deity. “Zapotec vessels emphasize imagery associated with a supreme god called Bezelao or Lord Thirteen Flower, patron of a royal paradise” (Pohl n.d.). The Otomis may have had a supreme deity in Otontecutli. 15th-century Spain: “There is only one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three persons, only one of whom is the true God,” proclaims the catechism of the Catholic church. Images of God the Father were often present in churches as the Eye of Providence (a triangle, surrounded by rays of sunlight with a single open eye in the center) or as a bearded old man often associated with a round firmament image. The eye was as a reminder to the faithful that they are always under the eye of God. God the father is the supreme god, the supreme love, the supreme power, and the supreme reality. Protestant critics in the 16th century and even earlier critics of monotheism pointed out that the Catholics could not claim to be monotheistic if they believed in the Devil and

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God, or if they had a triune deity (though not all Protestants were anti-trinitarian). Furthermore, the role of Mary in both the theology of the Middle Ages and in the religious beliefs and lives of the laity in this and the next century surely complicated the monotheistic claim. 16th-century New Spain: The Spanish searched for a supreme deity among the Aztec pantheon. “Mendieta affirmed that they had a vague notion of the true God, for whom they had a special name” (Ricard 1966:31). It is also suggestive that the Codex Mexicanus, written in 1583, “begins by announcing its faith in Tezcatlipoca, whose all-seeing tlachialoni is held high in the Feast of Toxcatl, as it was in 2 Flint 1520, when the Mexica rose up against the Spaniards” (Brotherston 2005:80). “Tezcatepuca was the god of Hell and had charge of the souls of the Mexicans, and his body was girt with figures like little devils with snakes’ tails” (Díaz del Castillo 1956:219–220). But “[t]o Europeans, Huitzilopochtli was the principal Aztec deity” (Boone 1989:55 and Figure 61). Ricard (1966) said that the missionaries never used the word “teotl” but only used “Dios” when referring to the Spanish God (56). Terraciano (2010:32–34) noted teotl in a different context during the early decades of conquest.

Figure 61 Imagining the interior of the temple of Huitzilopochtli. Theodor de Bry, Americae, nona et postrema pars (1602).

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One of the most glaring differences between these [Annals of Tlatelolco, List of Rulers, and Florentine Codex Book XII] and Spanish writings is that there is no mention of Christianity in the Nahuatl-language texts. Nor do the artists of Book XII [of the Florentine Codex] present images of the crucifix or the Virgin Mary or any other Christian icon . . . which are so typical of Spanish (and Mestizo) illustrations of the conquest . . . Ironically, instead of referring to the Christian God, all three Nahuatl-language texts refer to Cortés several times as a ‘teotl’”, god . . . in the List of Rulers narrative, the marques and the king of Spain are nearly always referred to with the word teotl.

Malintzin called many Spaniards “teotl,” including Spanish soldiers. Bassett argues that translations of teotl as “god” is appropriate only when five properties are present: possessions, tonalli, exclusive domain, awesome, beloved. “Teotl does indeed mean ‘god’ but the older Nahuatl concept of teotl-as-god conveys a culturally specific set of criteria” (Bassett 2015:127). Pictorial catechisms presented God the father in more and less complex ways. Sometimes this representation was quite literal, utilizing an image of a Franciscan friar (Boone, Hill, and Tavárez 2017:46). A more elaborate image of God the father can be seen in Molina’s Confessionario mayor (1565). In this depiction, God [the Father] is relatively large and broad, faces frontally, and has a beard and a flowing cape. His triangular hat suggests either the papal tiara that God the Father often wears in such images or the triangular halo that he sometimes bears to represent the Trinity; this headgear is adorned with three crosses that reiterate the concept of the Trinity. His outstretched hands hold the world’s orb (left) and a gesture of benediction (right). (Boone, Hill, and Tavárez 2017:46; 85)

John Early (2006:112) argues that the apparent ready acceptance of God and Jesus by Mesoamerican peoples was motivated by an Aztec penchant to follow the most powerful deity, which had proven to be the god of the Spanish conquerors of Anahuac. But the identity of this Spanish god was confusing to the people of Mesoamerica. They did not readily understand how to best feed and honor this god. By the end of the conquest, Early proposes that the native peoples probably understood God as being worshipped in church-caves with candles, incense, food offerings, and a fixed set of prayers, and looking much like Santiago, a mounted warrior with dead warriors at his feet. The Mixtecs quickly paired Mary and God as co-divinities and co-rulers of heaven, based on their own tradition of male and female ruling pairs (Burkhart 2001a:11). Several scholars point out that what was accomplished in New Spain with the European invasion was the eradication of a state religion that focused on Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca, needing human sacrifices, replaced by yet another State religion about human sacrifice, Catholicism. What has remained in native thought and practice from prequauhtemoc times was/is found among farmers and rural town dwellers: the popular religion, which centered on the earth, agriculture, water, and death rites (Claassen 2011). Mary was often understood as the earth goddess, who each day at dusk received the sacrificial victim Jesus, the sun god, and then sent him back to this world each dawn, renewed just as the Cihuateteo had done with Huitzilopochtli/sun.

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Mary “became the direct recipient of prayers and supplications once offered to the earth” offered at huge shrines, the churches and cathedrals of New Spain (Callaway 1990:226). See also baptism, conversion, communion, cosmos, creation, devil, mother/Mary, naming, patron, religious architecture, religious instruction, religious labor, sun, tripartite deity

sweeping 15th-century Central Mexico: Sweeping was a religious act modeled by the gods. Quetzalcoatl was the sweeper of the roads used by the rain gods (Bassie-Sweet 2008:300), and the morning star was called “thorn broom,” alluding to the sweeping of the Sun’s path. Coatlicue conceived Huitzilopochtli while sweeping. Chimalman was sweeping when she became pregnant with Quetzalcoatl. Tlazolteotl, “Filth deity,” carried a broom. “Toci was represented by a bundle of straw. . .and mock battles were performed using inverted brooms as weapons instead of swords . . . the broom was an object of power, ambivalent because it purified but was itself a carrier of filth” (Burkhart 1997:35). During the “Sweeping the Roads,” roads, houses, sweats, and courtyards were swept. Priests, wives, and boys in the military school swept processional routes, temples, and other ritual spaces, as well as their homes, in order to move out bad aires. When men were at war their wives and other female relations were especially diligent in sweeping . . . not only at dawn but also at midnight, noon, and sunset; the four corners of the sun’s path. (Burkhart 1997:37)

And while a trader was away on an expedition, women swept his home. “Old women left their brooms outside lest the dirt carried by the brooms introduce discord into the house” (Burkhart 1997:35). 15th-century Spain: Sweeping was also a home cleaning rite in the Iberian Peninsula. Love magic, meant to bring a man to the woman’s bed, necessarily by passing through her doorway, had rites associated with lintels and doors and sweeping. Most of these rites “were limited to sweeping the threshold and conjuring him” (Ortega 1991:73). “In Toledo, women who wished to be cured of ciciones (probably malaria) would sweep the church of Santiago on Saturdays. When Carlos V had malaria, he too swept the church” (Christian 1981b:157). A “shadow broom” was used to sweep one’s own shadow, calling out both a demon and the man who was desired. 16th-century New Spain: “Durán, writing in the late 1570s, suspected that the sweeping of domestic spaces continued to have ‘idolatrous’ significance. However, the practice was easily transferred to Christianity. The Franciscans accepted the sweeping of churches and churchyards as an act of devotion” (Burkhart 1997:38). Sweeping around the altar of a favorite saint was also requested in some wills in the Toluca Valley. Some female saints, such as Clare, were depicted sweeping (Burkhart 2001a). See also purity, religious labor, water

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text 15th-century Central Mexico: Books were produced by many of the cultures in Anahuac for several centuries before the Spanish arrived. Native writing used three distinct techniques: direct depiction, ideograms, and phonetic transcription. In “the third, phonetic transcription . . . the glyph for someone named Mixcoatl, Cloud Serpent, would consist of conjoined pictures of a cloud and a serpent” (Lockhart 1992:328). The wise and learned owned books, controlled the content of books, read books, and may have produced them (Boone 2000). The Huastecs “had the reputation of being particularly wise in ritual and divinatory lore, as descendants of the tlamatinime, the wise men of legendary Tamoanchan, who were supposed to have migrated to this eastern coastal region Cempoala, Veracruz, taking with them the sacred ritual books. Indeed . . . the area was known as Tillan Tlapallan (Place of Writings)” (Anawalt 1981:204). “An elderly Otomi Indian recalled to a friar . . . how his community carefully preserved this inheritance, passing the text from father to child to be ‘guarded and taught’” (Torquemada 1969:5:204). Scribes/priests followed two occupations, those who painted walls and those who painted books (including at least one known woman). Each genre had its specialist writers who produced annals, almanacs, and dream books containing prognostications, ceremonies, rites, and omens. Native texts were meant to be performed for an audience, the performer using the pictures in their order as memory cues. These songs and orations “are exceedingly difficult to understand [for scholars] . . . The texts, like their authors, if not all their intended audiences, are finely attuned to metaphor, parataxis, parallelism, and substitutions” (Douglas 2010:14). Sometimes one “read” the text back and forth, other times left to right, or right to left. The books had different foci. Brotherston (2005:49) found that many codices recorded the feast progression with its embedded economic cycle (e.g., Borbonicus, Tepepulco manuscript). The Mexica administrator Tlacaelel, in the 1430s, had all texts of the groups the Aztecs conquered destroyed as well as even those authored by the Aztecs, saying that all of them were filled with lies. Then “the learned men . . . invented new sacred books, the count of destiny, the book of years, and the book of dreams” (López Austin 1997:55). Stateapproved revisions of history continued to be made into the 16th century. 15th–16th-century Spain: The handwritten texts of the first thirteen centuries of Catholicism were produced and curated primarily in monasteries and then universities. Parish churches typically would own only a single book of the Bible, such as the Psalms, which was the most often-quoted book and was a collection of love songs applied to Marian devotion. The Latin Vulgate Bible was the most popular version in use and remained the authoritative text through the Tridentine reforms. Wealthier Catholics would likely own copies of Flos Sanctorum, a hagiography, the Ars Moriendi, and the 309

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Book of Hours. Shrine keepers maintained miracle books in which were recorded the miracles performed by the saint, such as the 12th-century Liber Sancti Jacobi compilation of miracles related to Santiago (Coffee and Dunn 2019). From the 13th century on, the Missal was the principal book used for instruction in Catholic rituals. After the opening of Constantinople in 1453, hundreds of books were carried into Western Europe that explored the world outside of Christianity. The invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century led to even greater availability of books, pamphlets, and tracts, which both helped and hurt the Catholic cause. For instance, Martin Luther translated the Hebrew Bible into German in 1488, which was quickly dispersed in quantity. Important in Spain for confessional practice was the manual penned by Martín de Azpilcueta (1491–1586), quickly going through eighty-one printings. It was extensively abridged and translated between 1553 and 1650 (Christensen 2013:91). Controlling the content of books also has a long history. Rewriting Christian and specifically Franciscan history involved the destruction of older texts on or by Francis of Assisi by none other than the Franciscan Order in 1266 (Bartlett 2013:67). Dominic de Guzman oversaw a book burning as well, and in Florence Savonarola burned books and art. Approval and disapproval of priest-produced texts was a constant task of the Church throughout this era and many ordained men saw their texts moved to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, first appearing in Spain in 1559. 16th-century New Spain: Boone (1994:21) remarked that the Spanish loved to write letters and make accounts of their travels. But the new government was not so quick to record its actions. Government records began in 1535, Inquisition data collection began in 1536 (although the Inquisition was soon suspended), and Motolinía’s History of the Indians of New Spain appeared that same year. In 1535, Bishop Zumárraga, who had already brought the first printing press to Mexico, conducted a public burning of hundreds of Nahua books in Mexico City. “At about the same time Indian communities, drawing on the skills of mission-trained youths, began to keep their own records in their own Náhuatl tongue written in European script” (Clendinnen 1990:106). Dozens of new codices were commissioned by native nobility to document tributees and land ownership after the purge, retaining much of nahua codex stylistic presentation. Diego de Landa also oversaw an auto-de-fe burning of twenty-seven Maya texts in 1562. Censorship of Spanish material was even quicker than that of native books. Cortés’ Carta de Relación, first published in Toledo in 1525, was banned, along with many other early contact accounts, in 1528. Franciscan chronicles from later decades of the century written with an apocalyptic fervor and hope to protect the indigenous from insidious, sinful European influence, themselves were considered a threat by the Crown and the authorities in the colony. For instance, the publication of the work of Mendieta after 1580 was prohibited, as it was deemed to contain “unsound, millenarian, Joachimite ideas” (Martínez 1980:189–191). Sahagún’s tome was also suppressed. It was typical that Church and government officials arriving from Spain brought crates of books. Zumárraga “brought a trove of books from Spain, many of which were archived at the progressive Colegio de Santa Cruz for Nahuas and the Franciscan friary at Santiago Tlatelolco . . . New Spain’s first viceroy, don Antonio de Mendoza (r. 1535–1550) listed

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some two hundred books on the ship’s register when he departed from [Spain]” (Schroeder 2010a:106–107), including Spanish-produced prayer manuals, confessionals (including that of Azpilcueta), and guides. Schroeder adds that 782 titles were brought to New Spain in the 16th century. As a consequence, the numerous monastery libraries (often the recipients of individuals’ libraries on their deaths or departure from Mexico) contained not only religious material but secular books as well as “books on classical history, fables and military arts . . . Even Aesop’s fables were translated into Nahuatl” (Domínguez Torres 2013:101, ftn 3). As was the case with Dominican education in Europe, where vernacular language skills were expected, the Franciscans and Dominicans in New Spain approached conversion through native languages. Fray Andrés de Olmos amazingly produced the first Nahuatl grammar in 1547, the first Totonac grammar before 1554, and the first Huastec grammar sometime before 1571 as well as dictionaries, sermons, and moralisms. Other missionaries were busy producing manuals using codex-style pictures (Figure 62) and sometimes words, concerned with doctrine and confession in Nahuatl, Tarascan, Otomi, Huastec, and Totonac (Dierksmeier 2018:355). Native language texts created by the friars were, however, sites of conflict between Orders over their content and, while at first encouraged by the Church, these native language products were disapproved of by the Council of Trent. Nevertheless, 200 books were printed in Mexico City during this century, a quarter of which were generated by the Franciscan friars (Schroeder 2010a). Many examples of these translated Christian texts have survived and show some comprehension of the Nahuatl linguistic structure using rhetoric, metaphors, and aesthetic references, particularly to flowers and birds to express Christian concepts of sin, evil, heaven, and Mary. The most important of these early texts, according to Burkhart (2001a), were Fray Pedro de Córdoba’s Doctrina of 1544 (Spanish) and 1550 (bilingual); Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s Sermones de Dominicas y de sanctos en lengua mexicana 1540s, revised 1563; Fray Pedro de Gante’s Doctrina Cristiana en lengua mexicana of 1553; Alonso de Molina’s 1565 Confessionario mayor en lengua mexicana y castellana; Juan de Anunciación’s Doctrina Christiana muy cumplida 1575 (bilingual); Sahagún’s Psalmodia Christiana 1583 (1993); and the anonymous Sermones en Mexicano, late 16th century. Others are lost or only survived in pieces, such as Molina’s 1546 doctrina and another doctrina produced by Dominicans in 1548. Also lost is any way to know who the many unacknowledged indigenous collaborators were (Boone, Burkhard, and Tavárez 2017:74). During the 1530s, all texts about the conquest, including Cortés’ letters, were suppressed (Baudot 1995). “In 1559 the Spanish Inquisition banned once and for all any translation of the Bible into vernacular languages [saying that] the laity could not be trusted . . . to interpret the Scripture correctly” (Nesvig 2006a:74). But “many Franciscans defied the Spanish Index’s prohibition of vernacular (Spanish) scriptural translations, keeping copies of them in their monasteries and refusing to hand them over to the Inquisitional authorities” (Nesvig 2006a:74). A bible in Mixtec transcribed by Benito Hernández (1567) does exist in the collections of the Biblioteca de Investigación Juan de Córdova, Centro Cultural San Pablo, Oaxaca. The confessional of Molina and the doctrina by Anunciación were allowed. Soon, however, the royal order to teach Spanish

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Figure 62 One page of the Protestación de Fe from the Catecismo Indocristiano 078, showing images of Jesus, place names, and hellmouths. Manuscript in the French National Library.

to the natives and the huge death toll in the latter half of the century obviated the need for native language material (Nesvig 2006a:75). The Index Librorum Prohibitorum produced in 1583 listed for the first time titles written in New Spain, many with mendicant authors (Christensen 2013:60). To aid in the obliteration of native idolatry, several missionaries worked to document in detail native religious beliefs and ritual practices. Motolinía wrote Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España and sometime before 1568 Memoriales, both about Aztec culture, but neither one was published during the colonial period. Dominican Diego Durán produced three volumes, Book of the Gods and Rites (1574–1576), Ancient Calendar (1579), and The History of the Indies of New Spain (1581). Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún’s first work, Primeros Memoriales (1950–1982:6), was compiled between 1559 and 1561. It became Book VI in the most famous of the missionary ethnographies, the

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Florentine Codex, material gathered through questionnaires and interviews with women and men informants in the cities of Tlatelolco and Tepeapulco. Data gathering ended in 1590 (by his death) and the text was banned and then essentially lost until the 18th century. The prequauhtemoc native texts that survived the iconoclastic fervor and survived their subsequent collectors are those of the Borgia group (Tlaxcala-Mixteca), ZoucheNuttall, Bodley, and Seldon (all Mixtec). Some of the more important codices created in this century were the Borbonicus (Aztec), Magliabechiano group, Historia ToltecaChichimeca, Quinatzin, Ixtlilxóchitl, Azuyú I, Azuyú II, and Mexicanus. Christensen (2013, 2016) closely examines dozens of Nahuatl and Maya Catholic texts – doctrinas, confessionals, copybooks, sermons, dramas, testaments, and sacramental manuals – categorizing them as three types, (1) those written then published by Spanish or trained assistants with Church approval, (2) those manuscripts by the same categories of authors but never published and therefore largely uncensored, and (3) those manuscripts written by native Catholics after Trent, categorically censored even if never examined. The use of pictures persisted into the middle decades often annotated with Spanish writing, but pictographs had largely “disappeared from the Nahua literary canon” by the close of the 16th century (Schroeder 2010b:6). See also death, religious instruction, speech, theater

theater 15th-century Central Mexico: Aztec ritual has been described as “overwhelming theatricality” (Harris 2000:74–78). Harris draws attention to three veintenas that were steeped in scripted battles based in history with copious human sacrifices, two of which were observed by Cortés: the Sweeping of the Roads feast, with a mock battle between women medical priests for and against the goddess Toci; the Panquetzaliztli feast, when the battle of Coatepec was reenacted; and in the barrio of Huitznahua near Tula when Huitzilopochtli and loyalists fought the Huitznahua led by the warrior woman Coyolxauhqui and defeated them. Merchants in 1520 bought slaves and pitted them against real warriors in this veintena (Harris 2000:85). The Feast of the Flaying of Men commemorated the independence victory of the Mexica over the Tepaneca in 1428 and was meant to intimidate the invited dignitaries from other city-states. Theatrical elements were the gladiator battle of one captive against four warriors repeated dozens of times each with a new victim, and a mock battle between warriors and priests the following day. Even though Mixtec and Aztec codices “were also scripts for live performance” (Wake 2010:74), native theater was not “literary theater” as there were no stationary audiences and few speeches. Instead, the action moved about the city freely and took place in multiple locations simultaneously and sequentially so that neither an onlooker nor a performer ever saw the full drama.This privileging of action and costume over the spoken or written word constitutes “traditional theater” (Harris 2000:94). 15th-century Spain: Autos (dramatic representations of biblical or religious-historical themes) and miracle plays, performed by confraternities, were at their height of popularity late in this century. These sodalities took their saints into the streets and plazas,

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enacting scenes from saints’ lives, following scripts with stage directions (Bartlett 2013:81). “The auto sacramental was a serious one-act play dealing with a religious theme, enacted during the days between Corpus Christi and the octave [the following eight days]. The primitive autos were the work of the clergy, and took place inside churches and cathedrals” (Foster 1960:196) but later moved outside onto “small specially erected stages, or on wagons, and were rather static affairs: small sequences of highly mannered and stylised formalised moments, with explanatory speeches; more linked tableaux than drama” (Clendinnen 1990:120). Very popular were autos de nacimiento, in which the birth and adoration of Jesus were portrayed (Foster 1960:205). Some roles within a Biblical play in Tournai, Spain, in 1549 were offered to criminals. One death row man chose execution within the context of the play in the role of Holofernes, beheaded by Judith, rather than at the court-dictated time and place (Harris 2000:68). Christmas, Easter, and the Feast of Corpus Christi were the most common themes found in religious drama in medieval Christian Iberia. Toledo’s elaborate pageant of Corpus Christi included more than thirty autos (Regueiro 2013). A two-act play about the Assumption, Festa de Elche, “has been performed more or less continuously” since the 15th century (Regueiro 2013:291). The 15th and 16th centuries also saw greater development of complex staging and stage machinery, allowing for more elaborate secular, religious, and liturgical dramas to be performed. 16th-century New Spain: The use of written theater to teach scripture and religious tenets was almost exclusively the practice of Franciscans. Dramas were an effective catechizing tool, and had a long history in the expansion of Christianity in Europe. These plays taught biblical stories and doctrines through engaging dramas, using colorful costumes, as well as puppetry, singing, and dancing (Lara 2004). The first native play performed in New Spain might have been that performed in 1531 in the open chapel of San José de los Naturales in Mexico City, The Last Judgment, probably written by Fray Andrés de Olmos. The cast had 16 speaking roles and 800 soldiers and citizens, set in Jerusalem on the eve of the End Times (Lara 2004:178). Also performed at San José de los Naturales were four plays on St. John the Baptist’s Day in 1538, and the Fall of Adam and Eve in four acts during the Easter festivities of 1539. The first Spanish theater opened in 1572. In the 16th century, the clergy were prohibited from participating in autos sacramentales, and the representations were taken over by lay groups performing out of doors (Foster 1960:196). With their Catholic makeover, a few of the old Mexica mock naval and land battles were enacted with Chichimec and “Indian” adversaries for the Spanish, Mexica, or Catholic protagonists. In 1539 in Tlaxcala, the Indians performed the Capture of Jerusalem for which they built a fortified city. The Gifts of the Magi was performed at an Epiphany feast and it was attended in one case by over 5,000 natives (Ricard 1966:205). Elsewhere in 1539 there was a mock battle of Mexican and Christians held in Oaxaca, and in Mexico City the reenactment of the Conquest of Rhodes. Both plays were staged and enacted by natives. The latter performance was preceded by the Battle of the Wild Men and the Blacks performed by Europeans. All actors were male, and boys acted the part of animals. In a 1595 festival at Tepeyac, a hunt was followed by a

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mock naval battle that probably reenacted the battle between Cortés and the Mexica, followed by a Christian versus the Turks battle for the island of Malta. It concluded with over two hours of the dance of the Voladores (Harris 2000:150). Whether in Spain or in New Spain, large-scale mock battles were sponsored by rulers and civil authorities. The use of dramas was often in service of attempting to Europeanize indigenous peoples through presentation of gender and social roles within the play. This was not always successful, and could be subject to some modifications reflecting indigenous lifeways, particularly in the hands of indigenous translators. Louise Burkhart gives an example of a Holy Week drama wherein the “translator rewrites a dialog between Christ and Mary so that Mary is accorded more deference and shows greater foreknowledge of events. The relationship between mother and son is thus adjusted to show greater gender complementarity and filial obedience” (Burkhart 2001a:88). This is one example of many that show females in the Christian tradition taking up indigenous behaviors in their new world context – from sweeping to weaving, saints sometimes appear in dramas performing roles more aligned with pre-Christian indigenous values and identities. Theater demonstrates both resistance and assimilation. Domínguez Torres (2013:169) argues that the use of indigenous elites in these dramas was to show them as exemplars of superior, Christian, behavior and as collaborators in the missionizing effort. Therefore, when staging biblical stories all reference to concubinage (such as Hagar’s role in the story of Abraham and Sarah) and to cannibalism, sacrifice, and burnt offerings were eradicated. Regardless of the role of natives in planning and acting, “Indians rarely chose to dress as Christians or Spaniards and not one dance of the Moors and Christians described by Ciudad Real unequivocally ends with a Christian victory” (Harris 2000:156). See also apocalypse, dance, music, religious instruction

thorn 15th-century Central Mexico: Brambles characterized the landscape of Mictlan, the deepest level of the Most Holy Earth (Wake 2010:41–42). Maguey spines and thorns were used to pierce one’s flesh to let blood. On the last day of each of the eighteen veintenas each year, a trainee priest would pierce his body twelve times using five thorns each time and facing each of the four directions. This amounted to 240 thorns in one day each feast. Over the eighteen feasts 4,320 spines were used. Motolinía calculated a total of 17,280 thorns used in one four-year period by each priest or trainee participating in this penance (Boone 1994:118; Brotherston 2005:21). Durán tells us that the thorn relics were kept and honored in the temples. 15th-century Spain: After Eve and Adam sinned, God cursed the earth and then told Adam “it will produce thorns and thistles for you” (Genesis 3:18 NRSV). Jerome removed a thorn from a lion’s paw, thereby taming it, and figuratively removing sin (Giffords 2007:352). Thorns were occasionally used to rebuke a saint for failing to fulfill a request. This ritual of punishment involved taking an image of the saint or Jesus, putting it on the ground, either on a bed of thorns, or covering the icon with thorns and berating the saint (Bartlett 2013:111–112). Thorns invoked pain, blood, and suffering, particularly in Christ’s Passion. Thorns from the crown of thorns were part of the relic trade. St. Rita of Cascia

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received a thorn wound on her forehead while “mystically sharing Jesus’ crown of thorns and his sufferings during his Passion” (Giffords 2007:396). 16th-century New Spain: In both religions thorns connoted the land outside of the paradisiacal garden of creation, and the toil such a landscape required of humans. Thorns were also associated with drawing blood and sacrifice in both cultures. “On most of the sixteenth-century crosses of Mexico, the presence of Christ is reduced to the representation of His face, derived from images of the sudarium, or a crown of thorns . . . Such forms are placed at the intersection of the horizontal and vertical beams”(Figure 31) (Callaway 1990:222). It is possible that the crown of thorns was a substitute for the Nahua sun, with nails substituted for thorns, and thorns were used by Christian flagellantes in New Spain. See also bloodletting, landscape, relic

tree 15th-century Central Mexico: In the beginning, all of the gods lived in Tamoachan where there was a beautiful tree covered with flowers (Lara 2004:152). On this tree grew many different beautiful flowers, which when touched ensured faithfulness of a lover. The gods were forbidden to pick any of the flowers but the goddess Xochiquetzal did. Thus, all the gods were cast out of Tamoachan and the beautiful tree broke and bled. Other cosmic trees served as conduits between the three worlds and they formed a sacred quincunx defining the borders of the terrestrial plane and the quadrilateral safe space given to humans. As seen in the Codex Tudela (1540), “the trees of the East, North, West, and South all rise from a watery base (mesquite, ceiba, cedar, and willow) and, in all but one case, a pair of germinating seeds are present” (Wake 2010:226). Pulque association with the four corner trees is seen in Codex Borgia, as all “are conceptually fused with the maguey and its derivative cult artifacts and symbols” (Wake 2010:228). These trees are much like the tota father tree erected in honor of Tlaloc during the Huei toxoxtli feast (Arnold 1999:89–91; Wake 2010:228). Earth goddess Tlazolteotl was paired with the western cedar and the eastern tree was associated with “Xochipilli, butterfly, and fire symbolism” (Callaway 1990:206). The principal deity of the Otomis is Old Father or God of the Pine. The pine is referred to as the palo sagrado (sacred pole). “During celebrations to this deity, a wooden pole is raised and an image of the deity is placed on the top” (Correa 2000:447). The male founders of the Mixtec, Lord 2 Grass and six brothers, were born from a ceiba tree growing at Achiutla, Oaxaca, and the first female leader from a tree in Apoala. These trees held up the sky (Bunson and Bunson 1996:5; Jansen and Pérez Jiménez 2008). Dead Mexica infants went to the “place of the tree of sustenance” or “place of the nipple tree” (Sahagún 1950–1982:6:115) where there were flower laden trees suckled by their souls. Rites observed by the allied Aztec kings in April–May each year at the Huei toxoxtli feast included one focused on a tree. After a tree was cut, its limbs bound and transported back to Tenochtitlan, it was erected in the patio on the Tlaloc side of the Templo Mayor. Named Tota (father), it was surrounded by four smaller trees, forming a symbolic forest. A girl embodying Chalchiuhtlicue, the deity of groundwater, was seated among the trees

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as a living personification of the lake (In another ceremony, a teixiptla of Xochiquetzal also sat in a five-tree “House of Flowers”). When news arrived that the lords had completed rites on Mt. Tlaloc, the Tota-tree was pulled down, bound on a raft, and transported to a spring or whirlpool in the lake known as Pantitlán, “accompanied by Chalchiuhtlicue, musicians, priests, and a vast crowd of singing people in a fleet of canoes.” There they were met by the rulers returning from Mt Tlaloc. “[T]he Tota-tree was unbound and set up in the lake by the spring as a ‘tree of life’ . . . The Chalchiuhtlicue-maiden was then sacrificed and her blood poured on the water, along with greenstone jewelry . . . everyone departed, leaving the tree standing with others from previous years” (Townsend 2009:139). The world tree is seen growing from the chest of Chalchiuhtlicue on both the throne of Moteuczoma I and in the Codex Borgia (Mundy 2015:47–49, 52). A sacred tree for the Aztecs was the ahuehuete cypress (Taxodium mucronatum). It grows in watery places and thus was associated with fertility. Standing water drums were made from its trunk, linking the deep sound with the voice of the tree, of thunder and ancient ones. Leaders were likened to trees, particularly the cypress and ceiba (Burkhart 1992:98). Among the most ancient beings, trees were ancestors. Trees were recognized in ritual and art as a symbol of human generations in both Nahua and Maya cultures. In Aztec imagery of human anatomy, the heart is a tree with the “blood vessels . . . imagined as climbing plants or arboreal limbs” (Lara 2004:152). 15th-century Spain: The Garden of Eden, or Earthly Paradise, had fruit- and nutbearing trees and two sacred trees – the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, whose fruit Adam and Eve were told not to eat but did. For this they were cast out of Eden into a world where they would have to suffer and toil. The Tree of Knowledge reportedly grew above the grave of Adam and Eve and was chosen to provide the wood for the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Perry (1992:73) writes of a Tree of Redemption, with Jesus’ head at the top, and from the bottom of which spout side branches linked to the seven sacraments. “The cross as a tree through which the tree-related sin of Adam and Eve was reversed, was a typical medieval figure” (Burkhart 1992:103). Trees used for hanging corpses is a practice over 3,000 years old and is documented in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 21:22–23) (Powell 2009:73). Hundreds of references to trees can be found in the Scriptures, more even than to flowers. Frequently mentioned are willow (Salir alba), cypress (Cupressus sempervirens), cedar, poplar, and palm. “[T]rees were happy treasures, many of them venerated as sacred” (Miller and Miller 1944:205–206). Huge cedars were emblems of strength and power due to their size (Powell 2009:61); the cedars of Lebanon were planted by the Lord (Psalm 104:16) and also broken by the Lord (Psalm 29:5). The cypress was associated with death and the palm with triumph over sin and death (Giffords 1974:49). The Date palm was found at water sources and was a “western emblem of the blessed person” (Wake 2010:185). A pear tree laden with pears was a signal of abundance (Wake 2010:186). The four trees used in cloister gardens (Figure 52) were pomegranate, fig, olive, and date palm. Pagan European cultures also venerated trees. Pope Gregory the Great instructed missionaries traveling to England, Ireland, Germany, and points north to use sacred trees in those cultures as the center beam on the Christian church (Bentley 1993). The Maypole,

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as a part of an ancient tree cult, can be found in Spain from Galicia to Catalonia and south through Castile but is uncommon in southern Spain. “Before the night of April 30, village youths cut a tall tree, strip it of branches except for a cluster at the top, decorate it with flowers and ribbons, and at midnight erect it in the village plaza, where it remains throughout the month” (Foster 1960:189). In Gerona, Logroño, and Santander it was greased with a chicken tied to the top to be retrieved in sport. Tree as a metaphor for descent appears in the Classical era, with depictions of the Tree of Jesse beginning in the 12th century. “[F]rom the 12th century, the Mother of God and her child increasingly displaced the Son alone as the uppermost figure in the Tree of Jesse . . . By the 16th century all representations of the Tree of Jesse had become genealogical trees of the Virgin and, sometimes, the Tree of Jesse was even used to refer to the Immaculate Conception” (Stratton 1994:13). The Spanish concern over blood purity in the 15th and 16th centuries spawned a genealogical industry producing certified family trees that was popular after mid-century. Certifying pure Christian descent was necessary for a number of pursuits, including permission to emigrate to the New World. 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures revered the water trees – cypress and willow – and associated them with fertility and abundance as well as strength. Both cultures had a significant tree in the beginning time that was violated by a female figure. Both cultures used tree metaphors for ancestry, descent, and strength. Both cultures had a festival in which a tree was felled and then as a pole erected in the town square with prizes secured at its top. The Franciscans may have transported the festival pole climb to the pueblos of the Rio Grande region after 1595. Columbus ordered that large trees in the Indies be marked with a cross and the names of the King and Queen (Guzauskyte 2014:44). As Cortés’ group moved from the coast of Veracruz to Tenochtitlan, he ordered the erection of crosses everywhere they observed a mountaintop shrine, many of which had sacred trees or equal armed crosses atop them. Cutting trees to make these crosses and the image of Christ on a wooden cross no doubt reassured the natives of the sacredness of trees in Spanish cosmology and, soon thereafter, the Christian cross came to serve as the new sacred tree of native New Spain. In one sermon about the Immaculate birth of Mary, she is said to be like a cedar in Lebanon, a cypress on Mt. Zion, a palm in Cades, and an olive in the fields (Ecclesiasticus 24:17–19; Burkhart 2001a:17). A marginal notation to a sermon explains “that through these tree metaphors the Holy Spirit shows the Virgin’s superiority to all other saints in paradise”(Burkhart 2001a:21, ftn 22). The Santoral en Mexicano text, a 16th-century Nahuatl text of Marian orations, refers to the Virgin Mary as a fruit tree and her fruit, Jesus, growing in God’s orchard. Jesus was also referred to as “the fruit of the Indian tree of trees [maize], he is the maize that permits the native world to perpetuate” (Wake 2010:180). In the Psalmodia Christiana, we can see how the Aztec idea of a strong ruler as tree was transferred onto Saint Francis. “The opening passages [for the festival of Saint Bernardine] equate Francis with a cypress and ceiba tree . . . Under this arboreal Francis ‘we people of New Spain’ are sheltered . . . Saint Bernardine is a flower and a gem that sprouts from the tree of Francis” (Burkhart 1992:98). The cypress symbolism would have resonated with native Mexicans.

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Figure 63 Jesse tree of Saint Dominic (founder of Dominicans) on the ceiling of the Santo Domingo Church, Oaxaca City, Oaxaca. The tree originates in the body of Dominic de Guzman and grows upward to connect him to Mary holding Jesus. (Photo by C. Claassen, used with permission of Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, Mexico)

The tree of Jesse was introduced early on in the Spanish conquest and is most vividly seen in the depiction of the spiritual lineage of Augustine in murals at Copandaro, San Miguel Charo, and San Mateo Atlatlahucan (https://tinyurl.com/yxzp6kgj). Dominic de Guzman’s link to the Holy Family via the tree motif is visible on the ceiling in the entrance to Santo Domingo Church in Oaxaca City (Figure 63). There are also Jesse tree murals for Franciscans (Zinacantepec), St. Augustine (Atlatlahucan, Morelos and Copándaro, Michoacán), and, surprisingly, for St. Clare (Charo, Michoacán) (https:// tinyurl.com/y4c8m5yk). The genealogical tree immediately began to absorb the meaning and significance of the native central World Tree and conduit trees (Figure 51) of the four cardinal points (Douglas 2010:165). Genealogy was transferred to a large nopal “tree” in the Codex Techialoyan García Granados (17th century). Spaniards ordered the Indians to cut down a sacred ahuehuete in Moteuczoma II’s garden and fashion it into a cross during their occupation of Tenochtitlan. Fray Pedro de Gante gives no evidence that the Indians understood the Christian significance of this 200’ tall cross (Callaway 1990:210). Many more of the sacred ahuehuetes were cut down by the Christianized natives. But whether to supplant or to capitalize on their own tree symbolism, the Spanish erected several churches devoted to the Virgin Mary between massive ahuehuete (cypress) trees at Santa Maria Tule, in Oaxaca (see Figure 38), and even more strikingly at Santa Maria Tixtla, in Guerrero, rather than cut them down. These placements and dedication to the Virgin assured the builders of attendees and implanted the idea of Mary as patron for fertility issues.

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See also cross, crucifix, fertility, flower, heart, mountain, paradise, quadrilateral world, rock, spring, water

tripartite spirit/trinity 15th-century Central Mexico: The very cosmos was a trinity, the Upperworld, this world, and the Most Holy Earth, and one might say that the three souls constituted such an entity. Trinities of deities abounded in Mesoamerican cultures. For instance, Chalchiuhtlicue (Jade Skirt water), Chicomecoatl (Seven Snake), and Huixtocihuatl (Salt Woman) are three goddesses that Sahagún said “satisfy the people” (Arnold 1999:48). In the center of every Mesoamerican house was the hearth, surrounded by three stones. These stones were addressed as three female deities (Burkhart 1997:29). Three other stones were/are used to wash the regalia of deities (Bassie-Sweet 2008:269). Three goddesses attempted to enter Wirikuta, the origin place for the Nahuatl-speaking Wixarika (Schaefer 2002). This Nahua group also venerated another trinity, “a prototypical fire god, sun god, and deer god (Venus) – who set time into motion” (Boyd 2016:126). A trinity of male deities seems to be embodied in the form of Paynal. As recorded in the Florentine Codex, a wooden teixiptla of Paynal is also Huitzilopochtli’s teixiptla, and a priest carrying Huitzilopochtli’s fire stick and his sacred bundle “also embodies the god, while at the same time carrying the god in the sacred bundle . . . three overlapping embodiments” (Bassett 2015:131). 15th-century Spain: Often referred to as the “entire mystery of the Christian faith,” the Trinity is a complicated, often contested, but unequivocal part of the tradition (Pelikan 1978:17). A common Christian understanding of Genesis 1:26 “Let us make humankind in our image,” was taken as evidence of the Trinity from the beginning of time (this is not an interpretation favored by either Jews or Muslims). The question of Jesus’ relationship to God and the Holy Spirit developed across several centuries and many church councils. Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Nestorian, and Arian Christians have different understanding of the Trinity than does the Roman Catholic Church. Christians packaged much of their faith in threes. The Trinity, baptism, and the Eucharist were the foundations of Spanish Catholicism. The trinity of humankind described by Augustine is “mind, intellect, and love,” serving to give testimony to the truth of the divine Trinity (Pelikan 1978:21). Giffords (2007:353) points out that an earthly trinity was composed of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. For both Jews and Muslims, the doctrine of the Trinity contradicted the oneness of God. 16th-century New Spain: A most elegant theological solution for a Christian translation of the concept of the Trinity would have been to present the person and divinity of Jesus as a teixiptla of God, a vessel filled with teotl or tonalli but this understanding does not seem to have surfaced. Instead, the friars struggled to convey the idea of the Trinity using a bird, imitations of Jesus’ life (striving to live sin-free, living in poverty, doing good works, forgiving others, and engaging in self-mortification), and speaking of a Father living in the highest level of the upperworld. The Aztecs must have thought that the Christians were missing the point, that of teixiptla. Meanwhile, more evident trinities must surely have been Mary, Jesus, and God and the Holy Family. Translation is always a

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daunting endeavor, and translating the Trinity is exceptionally challenging. Boone, Burkhart, and Tavárez (2017) indicate there is no Nahuatl word equivalent for Trinidad in the 16th century (76), and thereby many natives understood Jesus to be the one true God, without necessarily recognizing that the Holy Spirit and God the Father are also the one true God. The significance of three and triads in native religion never had the reverence in religion or cosmology that it had for Catholics. Part of the effect of a Spanish Christian education must have been to change illusions and speech practices to triplets from foursomes. For example, natives created a trinity of maize, Tlaloc, and Christ such as painted in the cloister at Actopan (Wake 2010:215–216). Today, Nahuas in northern Puebla speak of the earth as the “Holy Trinity,” the three hearthstones as the “earth’s bones,” and as Mother and Father Trinity and their child (Haly 1996:542–543). See also soul, supreme deity

*U

underworld/hell 15th-century Central Mexico: “Underworld” is a Western misnomer for the realm known in Mesoamerica as the Most Holy Earth (Knab 2006:1). The Most Holy Earth was divided into nine levels, the first of which was Earth and the deepest of which was Mictlan, a place of cold, stench, and rot but also of abundance. Mictlan was the final resting place of all of the beings created in each of the four previous suns. Here is where Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl went to retrieve the bones of the beings destroyed in the Fourth Sun. All who died of sickness (most people) spent four years traversing the levels of The Most Holy Earth, eventually to rest in Mictlan and feed on rot, feces, and mold. Many of these dead (depending on their cause of death) were cremated and their personal possessions were included in the pyre to serve them at the end of their journey. Mictlantecuhtli, lord of Mictlan (Figure 41) and one of the oldest deities, restored these items to the deceased once the journey ended so that the new arrival could make a shelter and stave off the various forces found in Mictlan. A mound at the El Zapotal site in Veracruz was raised over a temple housing an unfired clay image of Mictlantecuhtli seated on a throne in the midst of murals (Figure 64). “Outside the shrine stood nineteen large ceramic statues depicting the Cihuateteo, much feared deified women who had died in childbirth. They in turn were encircled by 200+ jumbled human skeletons accompanied with an astounding array of superb human and animal ceramic figures, musical instruments, and other fine-wrought clay objects” (Diehl n.d.:1) In the quadripartite cosmos of American peoples, in the South lay the land of the dead and also the Land of the Odiferous Flowers, the domain of Xochipilli, Xochiquetzal, Tezcatlipoca, and Huitzilopochtli. South and center were where Venus and solar cycles concluded before being reborn (Klein 1975). “The place of transition or transformation is associated with the southern direction, which is the location of the sun at midnight and with the center of the earth” (Callaway 1990:219). The days given a southern alignment were Rabbit, Lizard, Vulture, Grass, and Flower, and the numbers with a southern quadrant referent were 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20. The night sky was the Most Holy Earth rotated into the overhead position, the white shells in the watery world serving as white stars and vice versa. 15th–16th-century Spain: The concept of an underworld is probably as old as Homo sapiens in Europe. It had various names, Hades, Sheol, and Hell being most important in Western Christianity. Hades meant the sea, and under the surface water was the abyss (Luke 8:31), sheol, or Gehenna equating baptism’s “descent into the water” with descent into Hades (1 Peter 3:19-21) or “heart of the earth” in the words of Matthew (12:40 NRSV). Bartholomew of Trent (1200–1251) said “all people who lived before Christ, had descended

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Figure 64 Unfired clay statue of Mictlantecuhtli on a throne at the El Zapotal site, Veracruz. (Photo by HJPD used under Creative Commons SA 3.0 license, rendered in black and white) https://commons .wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7543252

into hell” (Bartlett 2013:209). The non-canonical gospel of Nicodemus has an account of Jesus visiting Sheol on Holy Saturday, and freeing the souls waiting there for him, including John the Baptist (Bartlett 2013:209) and Greco-Roman philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, whose work is central to Christian theology. This Gospel account, and others like it such as the Acts of Pilate, the Protoevangelium of James, and the Book of Esdras were popular sources in the Middle Ages, and scholars utilized these cases to support their understanding of the fate of non-Christians as well as heretics (Russell 1984). In Christianity, the destination of the soul on death was/is determined by the life lived. Of the three possibilities – heaven, purgatory, or hell – people who went directly to hell were the damned, those who died in a state of mortal sin, and heretics. The idea of hell developed into an underworld where the non-Christians would go along with heretics and blasphemers (Jews, Muslims, and pagans) to spend eternity in the “outer darkness,” with weeping and gnashing of teeth (see Matthew 25:30), or be condemned to an eternal, unending fire (Matthew 25:41 and Mark 9:43). The book of Revelation (21:8 NRSV) describes hell as “a fiery lake that burns with fire and sulfur.” At the Last Judgment, purgatory would be emptied and the dead would be resurrected and granted “eternal embodied life in one of the two locations they had earned for themselves: heaven or hell” (Eire 2013a:9). Generally speaking, medieval ideas about the location of hell came from either Dante or Ptolemy. One location for Hell was in the hot and dry south (Guzauskyte 2014:33).

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Southern lands were generally believed to be uninhabitable due to the heat and snakes found in them. They were “red” lands, hot lands (Guzauskyte 2014:116). But most often hell was placed directly beneath Jerusalem. Places Columbus named such as Boca del Drago and Boca de la Sierpe reveal his fear that rather than finding paradise in the Gulf and Caribbean sea, he had, in fact, come closer to finding the gates of hell (Guzauskyte 2014). This allusion to mouths (“boca”) captured the idea of the Hellmouth (Figure 62). Hellmouths, large mechanical demons, were present in most plays and processions during the 16th century in Spain (Lara 2008). The image was derived from Anglo-Saxon ideas and was used throughout Europe as a frightening visualization of the Last Judgment and the Harrowing of Hell. Cerberus and the open mouth of a whale were common shapes for the Hellmouth. Mary was said to be the one who emptied hell, a gate to paradise for those who were saved by her prayers and intercession. She was also the “terror of hell” for some medieval theologians for her ability to love and obtain mercy (Pelikan 1978:70). 16th-century New Spain: The Christian placement of hell in the direction south facilitated the association of Tezcatlipoca/Huitzilopochtli, whose domain was in the south, with the devil and devil worship. In the aftermath of the conquest, Christians tried to discourage selected behaviors by portraying hell in both prequauhtemoc and European ways. Missionaries reconfigured Mictlan as a small, cramped “place of no smoke hole,” no anus, a place from which there can be no escape (Klein 2008:827) or as an extremely hot place filled with fire, “a place of excrement.” The devil, the Most Holy Earth, and hell were also equated with chaos (Burkhart 1989:83). Hell was a demonic construction but it was created by humans’ own “moral and carnal transgressions” (Pinilla 2013:15) not least of which were the human sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli. Punishments there were proportionate to infractions. Graphic depictions of Hell were plentiful in New Spain. Ricard reports one friar “had a kind of oven brought in, had dogs, cats, and other animals thrown into it and then lit the fire. The cries of pain of the unlucky animals naturally filled the Indians with a great fear” (Ricard 1966:104). In the 16th century Catecism indocristiano 078 (Bonilla Palmeros 2014:86), a hellmouth is shown numerous times (Figure 62), its gaping mouth nearly the size of the human, and lined with sharp teeth, very similar to the image of Nahua hunters emerging from a cave in Durán’s Historia, a probable adaptation to a native concept of the maw of the underworld. The hellmouth as a “beastly maw with teeth and eyes suited indigenous personifications of the earth as monstrous crocodilian creature and the conceptions of entrances to the underworld as living caves or reptilian mouths” (Hill, Burkhart and Tavárez 2017:87). The murals at the Augustinian convent of San Nicolás Tolentino in Actopan showed giant Hellmouths lined with rows of sharp teeth. Although the missionaries placed Nahua gods and kings in a burning hell, the native authors of the Cantares Mexicanos (ca. 1580) put cultural heroes, kings, and ancestors in Heaven and expounded on the glories of warfare. Burkhart (1989:57) observes that “cosmography changed before ethics” did. See also afterlife, cosmos, creation, death, paradise, sin

upperworld. see afterlife, cosmos, paradise

*V

venus 15th-century Central Mexico: The planet Venus rises as the Morning Star for 263 days, disappears for 50 days, then rises as the Evening Star for 263 days, and disappears again for 8 days to conclude a cycle lasting 584 days. These four phases governed much of Amerindian religious beliefs and practices. Every 8 years the solar cycle and the Venus cycle ended on the same day, giving rise not only to rituals but to the sacred nature of the numbers 5, 8, and 13. The prequauhtemoc Codex Cospi from Puebla-Tlaxcala tracked Venus movements, as did several Maya codices. Saburo Sugiyama, long-time excavator at Teotihuacan, recently stated that the entire southern half of that city was dedicated to Venus, using the multiple Ciudadela platforms to reckon that calendar. The platforms enclosed the Temple of Quetzalcoatl (Figure 4) on whose face the moment of creation of this World by Venus/Quetzalcoatl is documented (Sugiyama 2019). The rising of Venus in the east caused the emergence of This World from under water according to the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. In the Codex Borgia, Quetzalcoatl appears “representing the planet Venus” before undergoing a transformation by fire and heat (Schwaller 2019:45). After disappearing into the east, Quetzalcoatl was reborn as the Morning Star. From central Mexico, morning star-related warfare symbolism spread to West Mexico after 900, to the Casas Grandes region in northern Chihuahua by 1200, and then into the Southwestern US by 1300 (Mathiowetz et al. 2015:1). The Feathered Serpent cult united a number of towns and ceremonial centers from the Yucatan to Morelos after the fall of Teotihuacan. This cult, largely circumventing the Basin communities, stimulated the building of the stepped pyramids at Chichen Itza, Tula, and Xochicalco, and circular pyramids and increased the importance of Cholula’s pyramid, all dedicated to Quetzalcoatl. Pilgrimage tracks connected these shrines. Firebirds, fanged “butterflies” belonging to Quetzalcoatl/Venus (Milbrath 2000:49), which the giant statues at Tula wear as breastplates, symbolized war and fire. Kings were incarnations of heavenly divinity related to the Morning Star (López Austin 2015:116). “[T]he Indians adored this star more than any other save the sun, and performed more ritual sacrifices for it than for any other creature, celestial or terrestrial” (LaFaye 1987:141). Perhaps it was more out of fear than adoration. “The periodic movements of Venus offered warnings of drought, danger, and warfare” (Miller and Taube 1993:180). For the Otomis, the intercardinal points NW to SE were connected by the road of Venus (Aguilar and García 2012:99). For the Aztecs, Venus was a key celestial entity, whose grand cycle governed the duration of each creation and whose minor cycles governed other increments of time. For instance, the festival calendar was shown by Milbrath (2007) to be a Venus event calendar. In addition to those annual veintena ceremonies, the Aztecs had a special week

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of fasting during a ceremony called Atamalcualiztli held every 8 years at the completion of five Venus cycles. For 8 days people ate nothing except for a daily portion of unseasoned tamales, thus allowing other food to rest and revive. Morning Star was male and called Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli/Quetzalcoatl (also possibly the deity Evening Star). As a warrior, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli could be seen shooting the sun during solar eclipses (Milbrath 2007:177). He shot darts at different groups of people on different days as well, the source of bad rays. Closely associated with fertility, rain, maize (Wake 2010:217), and the cooking fire (Graulich 1981:46), Centeotl, the young maize god, was Venus in some accounts (Graulich 1981:49). 15th-century Spain: Venus has been personified as both a deity and a virgin, as male and female. For many Greek and Roman poets, philosophers, and observers, Venus was a goddess. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Venus is a “virgin who is actually a mother” (Starnone 2020:153). In the Jewish tradition (Isaiah 14:12), Morning Star was Lucifer but also the Morning Star’s promise of the new day, the star as herald of the sun. There is reference within Christianity to the Morning Star as a fallen star/angel (Christensen 2013:40). Astrologers saw Venus associated with the character of Fridays. The ancient Virgin Goddess Venus, the mythic figure Venus, and the Star Venus (with six points) are intertwined through the Christian tradition vacillating between female and male gender attribution. Christian appropriation of Virgil’s text began with the Church father Tertullian (~160–240) and continued through the Council of Trent in a variety of allegorical, metaphorical, and symbolic ways. “By the end of the fifteenth century, Virgil’s verses begin to appear in Marian texts championing the idea of the immaculate conception” (Starnone 2020:163). Mary was commonly called the “Morning Star,” preceding the rising “Son.” In Revelation 22, Christ is referred to as the Morning Star. Twelfth century prayers refer to Mary as the “Star of the Sea,” another name for the Morning Star. Yet John the Baptist was referred to as Venus in Selvago’s hagiography of 1615 (Burkhart 1988:149). 16th-century New Spain: As the Tridentine emphasis on the expansion of the Marian cult gained momentum, litanies to the Virgin also expanded. The Litany of Loreto explicitly connected the Virgin Mary to the Morning Star. Officially approved in 1587, this litany is one of many that emerged in the late 16th century with a history claiming origins in antiquity. “In the native authored Psalmodia Christiana we find, ‘Go ahead, oh our friends: for Venus has come to emerge: go ahead: May it be begun: let there be dancing: for he who in a sacred way is Venus has come to emerge, Saint John’” (Burkhart 1992:95), equating John the Baptist to Venus. The virgin of the Immaculate Conception mural in the church at Metztitlan is ringed with four images, one of which is the Morning Star (Perry 1992:73). Given the gender-switching history of Venus in Europe, it is interesting that the Maya’s Hun Ahau-Venus became Lucifer in the minds of missionaries in the Yucatan and Central America. Images where a star is seen in proximity to the cross, such as in Figure 20, that star is understood to be Venus illuminating the cross (Domínguez Torres 2013:144). In order to leave no question about the identity of this star, Felipe II issued a decree to this effect in 1564. Perhaps this decree inspired the comment by Alva Ixtlilxóchitl that the cross form

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was brought to Mexico by Quetzalcoatl, “who as the planet Venus, was closely associated with the rising and setting sun” (Callaway 1990:208). Incantations to Xochquetzal for sexual favors and allusions to her beauty caused the Spanish to view her as the classical Venus (Milbrath 2000:33). See also arrow, astrology, astronomy, calendar, cosmos, cult, day, east, moon, mother/ Mary, serpent, star, sun

vestment 15th-century Central Mexico: Clothing not only marked one’s class and ethnicity in ancient Mesoamerica but it also had an important role in ritual. To wear the regalia of a deity or the skin of a flayed human was to transform into that deity or human, to become the teixiptla, the embodiment of the sacred. The regalia of the eagle and jaguar warriors transformed them into these animals and the forces of the sky and the night. The differences between sacred beings was expressed in these outer wrappings. Regalia elements were made by the feather workers, the gem and shell workers, the painters, the carvers, and residential groups of women weavers and weaving priests in temples and palaces (Anawalt 1981:11). In the codices we see that deities wore kilts, white skirts, and quechquemitl, the triangular slipovers that pointed down the front and back of the female and barely covered her shoulders. A quechquemitl was worn by goddesses associated with fertility from the Huastec area (Anawalt 1981, Patel 2016) and by Aztec people during rituals. Another ritual garb was the xicolli, a fringed, sleeveless jacket that tied in front. Xicolli were worn by male (1) images, (2) gods, (3) god embodiers, (4) merchants and their sacrificial slaves, (5) priests, (6) officials, and (7) put on decorated poles (Anawalt 1981). When worn by priests it was regularly accompanied by three accessory items: the incense burner, the incense bag, and the tobacco container. The officials of the indigenous government wore tilmas of white cotton spun with rabbit hair or feathers, dyed and patterned in some cases and embroidered with the tenixyo design of brilliant cherry-red thread at its edge, one of the signal markers of elite clothing. Finally, there was the tlahuiztli, worn by men and only in martial or ritual activities. It was a complete body suit fitted around legs and arms made out of feather-covered cloth (for noble knights) which opened in the back. Rank and status were indicated by the addition of insignia, colors, designs, headpieces, shields, and back rack in some cases (Anawalt 1981:55–56). These suits depicted coyotes, jaguars, death demons, Huastec men, Xipe Totec, Teteoinnan, Xochiquetzal, Chantico, and many of the pulque deities (Anawalt 1981:56). To dress another adult was to acknowledge subordination (Clendinnen 1991a:105). Dressing an image of a deity brought it to life (Bassie-Sweet 2008:289). In pilgrimages to the top of Mt Tlaloc, the celebrants would enter the enclosure and “proceeded to dress the stone idol in Tlaloc’s splendid regalia, just as new rulers were dressed by royalty at the time of their coronation” (Townsend 2009:138). In the Codex Borgia, capes are tied around the necks of four Mixtec mortuary bundles (Anawalt 1981). At death, a corpse was dressed according to the manner of death: if a

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warrior, like Huitzilopochtli; if from cirrhosis of the liver, like Tezcatzoncatl, god of wine (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:166). A mother might dress a sick child in the vestments appropriate to the god for that sickness in hopes of a healing. Priests could be seen in robes, often black, human skins, the regalia of some deity, or went naked. There are a few scenes in codices (Laud, Meyer, Vaticanus B, Aubin) of feminine images wearing the male loincloth, usually women associated with the earthdeath fertility complex (Anawalt 1981:162). Cotton clothing was acquired twice yearly as tribute payments. These items consisted of woven cotton capes, shirts, and loincloths. New regalia was also due every nine feasts because the route from far Xoconochco, the origin of this tribute, was dangerous and losses could be expected (Brotherston 2005:34). Regalia captured in warfare – from deities, temples, and high ranking warriors – was warehoused in a specific building in Tenochtitlan. “One of the common traits of ancient and contemporary Mesoamerican cultures is the washing of the clothing of gods . . . the custom of using three washing stones . . . likely derived from the washing stones used to launder the clothing of the three Heart of Sky thunderbolt gods, who were also the three hearthstone gods” (Bassie-Sweet 2008:269). These vestments, as well as the sacred bundles and statues, were stored in special rooms or buildings. 15th-century Spain: Vestments became an integral part of Christian ceremony from the earliest decades and by the end of the 12th century they were “standardized both in number and in type” (Hayward 1971:305). Saint Francis’ habit and cord are preserved in Assisi (Figure 54). The introduction of daily masses offered the opportunity to showcase the “sumptuous” character of the silks and velvets that made up the white vestments for Christ and Mary, augmented by red for Apostles and Martyrs, purple for Lent, black for funerals, and green for other occasions (Doeswyck 1962:67; Hayward 1971). “A full length garment of the monk may have been introduced by the Carmelites sometime in the 13th century” (Doeswyck 1962:138). A cope became an attribute of priestly clothing for Eucharistic processions in the 15th century. White collars for priests began appearing in the 16th century (Giffords 2007:259). Dressing of sculptures in Spain and elsewhere in Europe is well-documented (Trexler 2002). Imágines de vestir were nude, hairless Mary and Christ figures meant to be dressed, including with wigs made from women’s hair. It is unclear, however, if nude images were produced first in Europe or first in Mexico. Clothing for these images was usually donated. Many of the items given to statues for a year’s adornment subsequently would be worn by clergy (Trexler 2002). Clothing was stored, washed, and mended. “Dressed” paintings in Spain and Spanish America have received less study, partly because many were stripped of their popular accoutrements starting in the 19th century. God was usually shown wearing white; The Son, wearing a blue or a red robe with a blue mantle, symbolizing heaven and divine love; and the Holy Ghost in red, the color of martyrs’ blood and royalty (Giffords 1974:40). The young Mary was dressed in pale blue and the mature Mary, as Queen of Heaven, in royal blue. 16th-century New Spain: People in both cultures would have been humiliated by being stripped, and understood an initiation/installation to involve a novitiate removing the old

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clothing, being washed, and then dressed in new clothing of the new rank. Both cultures understood dressing another person was a subservient role, and both cultures had a practice of dressing religious persons and statuary for specific occasions, the Aztecs much more so. The clothing, the washing of the clothing, and the dressing of the figures were shared aspects as well, and conducted within rituals. Four pagan priests (of Cempoala) were forced to cut their long hair and remove their sacerdotal vestments by Cortés (Ricard 1966:18). Raising again the issue of the antiquity of imágines de vestir, early native Christians expressed “dissatisfaction with the fully ‘precast’ Spanish Christian image of Mary, Jesus or saints, which came with garments and accoutrements formed into the wood or the clay and accented with paint. Indians insisted that a ‘proper’ image was most desirably a doll, needing only head, hands, and adjustable arms” (Clendinnen 1990:127) that could then be dressed as the occasion warranted. Even the hair was missing, and women devotees donated theirs (Hughes 2010:93). Dressing images was specifically ruled against by the Third Mexican Church Provincial Council in 1585 but was ignored. Elaborate dressing rooms were built and great collections of clothing were accumulated for these statues (Clendinnen 1990:127). These materials were all either made or donated by the parishioners. Spanish vestments were important markers of the conversion of elite natives. Writing about the Spanish patrons of the caciques of La Florida, Milanich (1999:107) records that at the time of baptism, “The most valued gifts, it seems, were outfits of Spanish clothes, colorful and highly visible symbols of the chiefs’ new status. Shoes, hats, stockings, doublets, shirts, and other pieces of clothing – a complete Spanish gentleman’s outfit – adorned each new Christian chief and important members of his entourage.” To appear Spanish was to appear Christian and vice versa. Licenses requested and granted by the Crown to caciques of New Spain “authorized them to carry metal swords and wear costumes and hats ‘in the Castilian style’” (Domínguez Torres 2013:167). Sahagún worried that the native who attempted to dress, speak, and live like a Spaniard would be laughed at. In the sixth admonishment of his Apendiz, he warned the boys of the Colegio de Santa Cruz not to attempt to act like a Spaniard but to wear shirts, knee pants, hats, and shoes, “the things that ornament you before God and before the people of the world” (Sahagún cited in Anderson 1983:121). The garb of missionaries was also a site of ideology. Missionaries in shapeless robes and their avoidance of women led to the rumor that the “friars were in fact dead men, corpses, who wore their habits by day to conceal their rotting bodies, but who set them aside at night when they roamed to hell to seek out their women” (Clendinnen 1987:237). An anecdote from late in this century demonstrates the persistence of ideas of teixiptla with clothing. Mendieta recounts that, in the face of the shortage of Franciscan friars, some indigenous converts requested “at least a habit of St. Francis ‘so that on Sundays and holidays we can raise it on a stick, that we trust God will give it a tongue to preach to us’” (Domínguez Torres 2013:48–49). A cult developed around the stolen habit of the first Franciscan martyr, Juan Calero. Natives killed him and paraded his habit on a pole on several occasions, treating it as a teixiptla (Ahern 2007), and equally rapidly another cult developed among the friars, around the dead man’s replacement habit.

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See also body: human, deity embodiment, image/idol, priest, red, relic, sacred bundle, soul

virginity 15th-century Central Mexico: The tonalli soul governed body heat, which was known to wax and wane with age, in a hot/cold system. The use of virgins/children in rituals, with their weak tonalli, as either assistant or offering, was one method by which a priest could block interfering heat from the offering or the assistant, thus the use of infants in sacrifices to Tlaloc. As menstrual blood was extremely “hot” and could interfere with the powers of many priests and ritual specialists, it would also have been necessary for girls to be pre-pubescent. Many goddesses of ancient Mesoamerica and some historical women figures did not get pregnant via sexual intercourse but rather through spit, tucking feathers into clothing, or swallowing jade pebbles (e.g., mother of Moteuczoma I). (Goddesses also often bore children non-vaginally). Nahuas would have said that their goddesses, too, were virgins. 15th-century Spain: The gospel of the Birth of Mary says that when it came time for Mary to leave the temple to marry she stated her intentions to stay a virgin for the rest of her life (Burkhart 2001a:23). Of the three states for women, virginity, marriage, and widowhood, virginity was by far the best state in the eyes of the Church. The intention to preserve virginity was more important than the mere physical fact: a virgin who intended to marry but died before she did so did not earn the golden crown of glory, but a virgin who intended to remain so but was in fact raped still earned the crown. This high valuation of virginity had become part of Christianity in its early centuries, and it always mattered more in the case of women. (Bartlett 2013:202)

Virgin martyrs comprise many of the female saints. Original sin was conveyed through Adam and all subsequent parents. Augustine went so far as to say that sin was a sexually transmitted disease. In order for Jesus to avoid the taint of original sin through his mother (since there was no sexual intercourse and thus no “father”), it became necessary to “fix” the problem of Mary’s own weight of original sin passed to her through her father. Some Church scholars developed the argument that her parents’ carnal relationship did not impart Original Sin to her, the future Mother of God. Instead, she had an “immaculate” conception. The Immaculate Conception was a pious belief that was integrated into liturgy with the declaration of St. Anne’s Feast Day (mother of Mary) on December 8, 1128 (Stratton 1994). Despite this addition to the liturgical calendar, the scholastic world of the Middle Ages was divided about the idea of Mary conceived without sin. It was one of the greatest disagreements between the Dominicans (Maculatists) and the Franciscans (Immaculatists) and that disagreement bled into New Spain. The special – indeed pivotal – attention that Spanish theologians, clergy, kings, and commoners lavished on the cult and doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is reflected in innumerable works of art [and] has always been a doctrine particularly popular in Spain (Stratton 1994). Isabella and Fernando were staunch Immaculatists (see also Introduction).

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Visual icons of the cult of the Immaculate Conception found in various combinations in 15th and 16th century Iberia are the crescent moon below Mary’s feet, halo of twelve stars, blue robe, attending putti, serpent underfoot, and assumption into heaven (Stratton 1994). This cult was further elaborated as the cult of the Immaculate Child (Mary), which “developed in Spain between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century, at the same time as the imagery of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception was taking its definitive shape. The young Mary, child of Anne and Joaquin, was usually represented reading, meditating or embroidering” (Kroger and Granziera 2012:277) or being presented at the temple. Christian cults aside, it is possible that the worldwide and ancient understanding of a hot/cold system also explains the role of youthful acolytes in Catholic rituals. As handlers of the host, swinging incensarios, leading priests in processions, even as the mother of Jesus, virgins were deficient in heat and thus did not interfere with the greater heat of priests that was needed to successfully interact with the deities. 16th-century New Spain: Columbus named the Virgin Islands for Ursula and her 11,000 virgin attendants who were killed in 383. Several Immaculate Conception saddle virgins were brought to Mexico by Franciscans, such as the small Virgin de los Remedios (Figure 43) who figured so prominently in the interaction with the lords of Tlaxcala from 1519–1521 and Our Lady of Valvernera (Figure 12). The Virgin of Guadalupe is yet another Immaculate Conception virgin, with the characteristic stars, crescent moon, and putti underfoot, and a blue, star-studded robe. Virgin martyrs accounted for five of the nine female saints covered in the two most prominent Nahuatl language hagiographies of this century: Catherine of Alexandria, Clare of Assisi, Martha, Agnes and Lucy (Burkhart 2001b:94). Virginity of unmarried native women became of utmost concern to the missionaries. “Summing up native attitudes toward virginity, Bautista says, ‘they do not esteem this jewel as much [as Spaniards], nor its loss’” (Burkhart 2001a:25). Missionaries also concerned themselves with the virginity of Spanish girls. Orphanages for Spanish girls were founded in Mexico with strict confinement (Dierksmeier 2017), which was intended to protect their virginal state. Virginity law suits were filed and won by some women when her betrothed, with whom she then had sex, failed to marry her. “She therefore needed to be compensated for the damage that had been done to her own and her family’s honor. With the money obtained in virginity suits . . . [she could invest ] . . . or provide a dowry for a future marriage . . . [or] support any children [born] as a result” (Powers 2005:127). See also celibacy, fertility, marriage, morals, mother/Mary, patron, priest, purity, sex

vision/omen 15th-century Central Mexico: “Dreams for the Mexicans were . . . communications, in a language more or less clear, from the ‘real’ world of the sacred. Books of dreams were among the Mexicans’ most valued possessions, and dream-readers among their most honoured experts. Deities revealed themselves in dreams” (Clendinnen 1990:124). Dreaming probably had a role in one becoming a ritual specialist. Dream readers

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interpreted a client’s vision/dream under the influence of psychotropic plants. Dreaming of serpents, jaguar attack, people singing in one’s house, or one’s house afire portended death (López Austin 2004:27). Omens reputed to have occurred in 1519 and seen by the Mexica, as well as the myth that Cortés was the returning Quetzalcoatl, have been discredited by several scholars. The omens resemble both Greek and Latin omens (Townsend 2019:94–96) as well as “the omens that were said to presage the conquest of Jerusalem” (Burkhart 2010:75). What does seem to be prequauhtemoc in age are two omens of the fall of Tenochtitlan, both recorded in Spanish trials of elite natives. One was a vision in a mirror situated in the temple of Huitzilopochtli during the battle with Cortés, wherein “a few commoners appeared, crying, [signaling that] the Mexica would lose the struggle” (Tavárez 2011:36). The second was a “premonition allegedly made to the Mexica ruler Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin . . . by the specialist Martín Ocelotl,” in which Ocelotl claimed he had a vision that the friars were transformed into Tzitzimimeh and Tenochtitlan suffered from famine and drought (Tavárez 2011:36). Ocelotl, baptized by one of the twelve Franciscans accompanying Cortés, continued to be a prophet and clandestine priest for natives. He prophesized the end of the rule of Spaniards and offered religious counsel, drawing from the indigenous traditions, and was ultimately tried and imprisoned by the Second Audiencia (Klor de Alva 1981). Ocelotl had a private chapel, modeled on Iberian private chapels and decorated “with frescoes of Saint Francis (bleeding saint of autosacrifice), Saint Jerome (saint of the holy feline), and Saint Louis (saint of kings)” (Hamann 2020:108). 15th–16th-century Spain: Visions and dreams were due to the direct intervention of a divine or superior power, and figure prominently in the Old Testament and the New. New Testament visions were reported by Anne, Joseph, Jesus, John the Baptist, Mary, and others, and various signs and events portended the two comings of Christ. Prophetic Roman sibyls were cast as predictors of Christ’s birth and death. Prior to Christ’s return many signs were anticipated, as described in the book of Daniel, and in the New Testament in Luke 21, Matthew 25, and the book of Revelation. Books collecting these signs and discussing them were Revelation, the Fourth Book of Ezra, the Second Apocalypse of John, the Apocalypse of Thomas, the Sibylline Oracles, writings by Joachim de Fiore, Irish apocrypha written in the 10th century, and nearly identical lists in books by Peter Damian (11th century), Peter Comestor (12th century), Jacobus Voragine (13th century), Thomas Aquinas (13th century), and the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday (Christensen 2016). Visions were also instrumental in the lives of Dominic de Guzman (receipt of the Rosary) and Francis of Assisi (receipt of the stigmata) and their followers, such as Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419). Ferrer’s vision led him to quit papal service and to preach the nearness of the Last Days so convincingly that he incited flagellation (Bartlett 2013:70–71). In the 14th century, Catherine of Siena consoled popes, princes, and heads of state with wisdom gained in visions. In the 15th century, the Spanish landscape was replete with shrines, each the result of a vision of the Virgin Mary or one of various saints. In Castile there were twelve apparitions of Mary, and five of other saints reported in the 16th century (Christian 1981b:55).

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Late in the 16th century, there were 177 Chapels (public devotional centers outside of parish churches) in Spain (Christian 1981a:70–72) from Montserrat to Seville to Extremadura. Stories tell of a Mary preserved in secret, waiting for the right moment to reveal herself to Christians and restore herself and her shrines. Vision stories in Spain involved a dialogue among the image, the seer, and the lay or clerical authorities. Crosses have been seen sweating or weeping blood throughout the history of Christendom as have images in paintings and statues of saints, nearly all related to the Passion and credited as signs of the divine presence. In Baroque art, figures were seen to move in canvases or in stone. “Even stone columns writhed with movement” (Hughes 2010:86). Nevertheless, it appears that in the 16th century, people in Spain were especially visited by such miracles (Christian 1981a, b). In 1602, the bishop of Cuenca instructed the inspectors to look for people claiming revelations from God or Mary (Christian 1981b:90). Dreams were treated sometimes as visions and were generally more problematic for both the Church and the Crown. “[I]n the fourteenth century, Jean de Meung found that an exaggerated respect for them was almost universal amongst his contemporaries” and “in some hagiographical works it is even suggested that it was sinful to ignore instructions conveyed in dreams” (Sumption 1975:26). Once the Inquisition turned its attention to Catholics in the latter half of the 1500s, it became dangerous to report signs and visions as the seer was often accused of working with the Devil, or committing heresy or treason. By the end of the 16th century, dreams were no longer “deemed to be heavenly or revelatory” (Fernández-Rivera 2013:99). Spain has a tradition of beatas, autonomous influential religious women, who gathered large followings and shared visions and ecstatic religious experiences with their patrons. For example, “Shortly before his death on 25 January 1516, Ferdinand the Catholic received a message from God, passed on to him by Sor María de Santo Domingo, the celebrated visionary and Dominican tertiary who was also known as the Beata de Barco de Avila or the Beata de Piedrahita: he would not die before he had taken Jerusalem” (McKendrick and MacKay 1991:93). Her influence, and the influence of other beatas in the Spanish court, continued into the 16th century, though they were frequently held under suspicion by the Inquisition. 16th-century New Spain: Popular with the Franciscan missionaries was the book The Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday. Christensen (2016:143–145) reports finding this material copied into Nahuatl texts with attribution to Catholic authorship or coauthorship with Nahuatl scribes. (Prominent among these signs were earthquakes, and the New World centers of the Catholic Church [Mexico City, Guadalajara, Oaxaca, Peru] were prone to earthquakes). Christensen observed that a sermon prepared for the first Sunday of Advent cautions that these signs would not appear in a predictable sequence (even though all of the texts cited repeat the same sequence), nor did the scripture advise as to their timing preceding Christ’s return. An early vision at Tizatlán in modern Tlaxcala was observed by Cortés and the four lords of Tlaxcala on a hilltop. There a “cross miraculously appeared amid mysterious clouds and heavenly light. The devil was seen to scurry in fright from the nearby temple of Xochipilli” (Perry 1992:129). A second vision was that observed by many of the conquistadors in Tenochtitlan during the combat of the Noche Triste. Santiago and

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Mary appeared in the sky over the city (Kroger and Granziera 2012). Some twenty years later, Our Lady of Remedios appeared to Juan de Tovar, a “Christianized cacique,” who was also at the Battle of Tenochtitlan (Curcio-Nagy 2000). The Franciscans he consulted did not believe that the mother of God would appear before a “lowly Indian” and Juan did not return to the location of the first apparitions. However, after a serious injury working on a Franciscan church, the Virgin of Remedios appeared to Juan again and “gave him a miraculous leather belt that instantly cured him” (Curcio-Nagy 2000:185). The friars who disbelieved him were astounded and even more so when he returned with a statue of the Virgin that he found “guided by the Holy Spirit in the form of a white dove” (CurcioNagy 2000:184–185). This story has remarkable similarities to stories collected by William Christian (1981a), apparrently part of a style of Marian apparition story that made the journey across the Atlantic. Curcio-Nagy reports that Our Lady of Remedios from the late 16th and early 17th centuries continued appearing to “a Native American and an African slave, reflecting changing demographics and heterogeneity in Mexico City” (Curcio-Nagy 2000:190). The missionaries began recording indigenous visions of Mary in 1531 (Burkhart 2001a:131). One boy died but was revived by the Virgin; she also protected a girl and a young widow from rape (by a fellow confraternity member); a Nahua man, canoeing on the lake, saw the Virgin on the water; and two other Nahuas near death were visited by the Virgin. Two native healers were gifted herbs by Mary (Burkhart 2001a:132). In a battle in Zacatecas, at La Bufa mountain, the Virgin appeared, carrying a baby in her left arm and red roses in her right hand (the classic signs of the Virgin of Antigua). Amid a strong smell of flowers she spoke to the Chichimecs and convinced them to make peace and follow her (Kroger and Granziera 2012:262). Native “[b]elief in the predictive power of dreams remained sufficiently vivid to be denounced by Durán in the late fifteen seventies, along with the tribes of ‘soothsayers’ he saw as infesting all regions” (Clendinnen 1990:124). Other visions recorded include that by the Chichimecs and Christians in a battle that ended the Mixton War. There Santiago appeared in the heavens, after which the natives fell to their knees and accepted baptism. Oñate reported two visions of Santiago at the battle of Acoma pueblo (1599). “The Lienzo de Tlaxcala commissioned in 1552 by the town council to present to Charles V, is divided into two parts, the first concerned with Malinche and Cortés and the second showing numerous images of a man on horseback killing Mexica. Navarette (2008) posits that this man is Santiago. Such a presence of Santiago is unusual in New Spain.” Dominguez Torres (personal correspondence). Several New Spain crosses spoke (Hughes 2010:61) and several crucifixes showed animation. At the close of the 16th century, the Cristo Aparecido “blessed those who gathered in his honor with his first signs of animate life, offering the crowd gestures of benediction and other signs of vitality and divine presence” (Hughes 2010:84). The city of Puebla, known during this period as “Angelopolis” and laid out as a replica of Jerusalem, was founded after a dream of Fray Julián Garcés, Dominican bishop of Tlaxcala (Lara 2004:104–105). A room in the Casa del Dean in Puebla was painted in 1584 with the twelve sibyls prophesying about the life of Christ (https://tinyurl.com/ y4dl7lsa).

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Martín de Valencia, the leader of the initial twelve Franciscans to New Spain, reported a vision that told him not to work for Zumárraga (Turley 2014:44), not to move away from eremitical life and that native people in Asia were “better prepared to receive the Christian word” (Tavárez 2011:31), possibly indicating an early sense of disillusionment in the friars. See also angel, apocalypse, body: human, demon, divination, healing, mother/Mary, warrior, witchcraft

*W

warrior/soldier 15th-century Central Mexico: Warfare was a fundamental organizing principle of Aztec social life, tied up with concepts of “fate, change, judgment, and contest as different expressions of the sacred” (Townsend 2009:218). Before he could be installed, every tlatoani-elect had to prove himself in war. The record of their success can be seen in Figure 8. At the age of 17, young Aztec men became warriors and entered formal military training in defense and capturing a foe in hand-to-hand combat. Boys from noble families also received training in religion, politics, or history by the priests. To achieve adult status, a young man had to capture a prisoner. Aztec warriors could move up in rank by capturing additional enemies. After having performed twenty or more great deeds (such as capturing men to be used as sacrifices), they were eligible to become either a jaguar or eagle warrior, on par with hereditary elites. Each elevation of rank brought with it economic rewards – such as land grants with laborers – as well as honors, indicating that much of the motivation for a warrior was economic and social gain. “At a civic level, they would also become full-time warriors working for the city-state to protect merchants and policing the city itself” (Graham 2011:43). The Tepeyac causeway was built by Nezahualcoyotl’s captured Tetzcoco warriors and the defeated Xochimilcos built the Iztapalapa causeway, impacting the salt water/freshwater interface around these cities (Mundy 2015:38). Warriors and their families were also dispatched as settlers in frontier communities. Scripted battles were conducted by the Mexica with their neighbors. When Nezahualcoyotl agreed to an alliance with Moteuczoma I, a mock battle was arranged that would be “won” by the Mexicas. By no means pretend battles, these flowery wars ranged from “unplanned brawls to ritualized and even sporting battles” between rival cities (Harris 2000:67). These skirmishes began in 1321 between Chalca and Tlacochicalca with captives killed, occurred again in 1376 between Chalca and Mexica with commoners killed but elite captives released, and then between Chalca and the Tepaneca in 1381. While the first two engagements were for amusement, the last was not. None of these battles resulted in prisoners taken away for sacrifice. However, after 1440, the Mexica cihuacoatl Tlacaelel, “proposed a ‘military marketplace’ in several nearby but not yet subjugated cities, including Tlaxcala, Huexotzinco, and Cholula . . . ‘Places where the sons of noblemen, enthusiasts in the art of war, [would] be able to train, to practice their skill and show their valor’” (Harris 2000:69). Honors would be given to the heroes and shame heaped on those who did not go. Under tlatoani Axayacatl, this flowery war “festival” occurred. What distinguished a flowery war from that of real war was that “the conflict was confined to the battlefield and did not spill over into the pursuit of defeated warriors,

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attacks on civilians, destruction of enemy property, nor . . . setting fire to the other’s temple” (Harris 2000:70). Later, invitations for entertainment and military practice were sent by Moteuczoma II to Huexotzinco and to Cholula and accepted by both leaders. While the leaders were entertained, the first engagement, which included over 100,000 Mexica, resulted in much death, and the second cost the lives of over 16,000 men (Harris 2000:70). Three feasts in the year addressed warriors (Table 2). Ochpaniztli “enacted priestly dominance and warrior subordination” (Harris 2000:83) but also the defeat of the Mexica by the Culhuas in 1343 and then Mexica victory over Culhuas in 1347. The handing out of military honors during this feast served as a recruitment tool, and mock battles held outside Tenochtitlan served as ritual entertainment. A race by warriors to the top of a Huitzilopochtli pyramid glorified the deaths of those participants anticipated in the coming year. The feast of Panquetzaliztli seems to have been a remodeling of Quetzalcoatl’s history (evident in the feast’s name) into that of Huitzilopochtli’s biography. Several sources say that originally Huitzilopochtli was a tribal warlord who defeated a rival Mexica faction called the Huitznahua, led by the woman Coyolxauhqui in 1163, outside Tula, at Coatepec (Harris 2000:85). This feast reenacted those events. Long-distance traders played up their quasi-warrior status – for they acted as spies, collected tribute, and frequently had to defend themselves – by making gifts to warriors and chieftains, and purchasing (rather than capturing) slaves for sacrifice. The Flaying of Men feast (Tlacaxipehualiztli) was the most costly in human lives. A captive participated in a gladiator fight with one Jaguar or Eagle warrior while tethered to a stone carved with information about the victorious Mexica battle against the Tepaneca in 1428. Honored dignitaries of other cities watched. Once the captive was scratched by a weapon, he was killed on the stone. Elements of this feast’s ritual were found in other cities. In all three of these feasts, the bodies of the victims were eaten by their sponsors. Harris (2000:93) finds much in the rites of these feasts to posit a reluctance by conscripted warriors to participate in and die in Mexica military campaigns. In the three feasts just reviewed, priests dominated warriors; warriors beat drunken superiors; warriors challenged priests; women wept for sons destined for war; Huitzilopochtli was killed and devoured; some captives refused to defend themselves; captors powdered themselves like their captives; and they are forced to witness the blood of sacrifice, fear, pain, and suddenness of death of their captives. 15th-century Spain: Once confirmed in the Church the individual became a soldier of Christ, doing constant battle with God’s enemies (Pardo 2006:67). “Christians came to call themselves milites, or ‘enrolled soldiers’ of Christ, members of his militant church . . . it means that Christ’s pacifist message was transformed by his followers very early in the history of Christianity” (Graham 2011:89). Augustine believed there was justification for war. It could be waged in the name of advancing Christianity and out of a benevolent concern for the enemy. Christians should be subject to the duties demanded of them by their rulers, such as fighting and tribute, but

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war was only permissible as a remedy for sin. In City of God, Augustine writes “They who have waged war in obedience to the divine command, or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’” (Augustine 2009:25 ). Under no circumstances was just war to be waged as revenge or from selfishness. Further than that, Augustine did not further refine the definition of just war. That was left to later theologians. Aquinas believed violence should be a last resort but war could be just when based on certain criteria. First and foremost, the goal of war must be peace. A just war must be waged by a sovereign, for a just cause, and, importantly, warriors must have the right intent – to do good and not do evil. Only the pursuit of justice could make war legitimate (Reichberg 2013). Beginning in the 12th century, Iberian monarchs fashioned a crusading ideology that was specific to their context of contested borders and close contact between Christians and Muslims. Together with the goal of retaking Jerusalem from Muslims and the mythical tradition of Charlemagne as a (proto)crusading king fighting Islamic advances in Spain, the idea of a religious warrior was intricately woven into the Iberian mindset (Domínguez Torres 2013; O’Banion 2008). Crusades were the ultimate in just war, as they were perpetrated to recover land that had been Christian and “as such were inseparable from religious justice . . . understood to be holy wars” (Matsumori 2019). The 15th century saw significant changes to just war theory. Thomas Cajetan (1469–1534) drew a distinction that Aquinas did not formulate explicitly between two kinds of war: defensive and offensive. “The authority to wage war against external wrongdoers, in particular, he viewed as the distinctive mark of a fully independent commonwealth” (Reichberg 2013:166). For Cajetan, just war is an expression of criminal justice, predicated on the fault of the country being attacked, and can be waged for the just cause of correcting a wrong. Francisco de Vitoria at the University of Salamanca took Aquinas’ perspective on just cause for war based on an offense and made a distinction between malicious wrongdoing on which war can rightly be pursued and adversaries who do wrong out of ignorance. In this connection Vitoria famously cites the example of the Native Americans who, upon encountering the Spanish newcomers, ‘were understandably fearful of men whose customs seemed so strange, and who they can see are armed and much stronger than themselves.’ Due to their ‘invincible ignorance,’ Vitoria reasons that these ‘barbarians’ understandably, but nonetheless voluntarily and wrongly, attacked the Spaniards who (at least initially) wished them no harm. Being wronged in this fashion, the Spaniards had just cause to wage war against their assailants. But because the initial attack resulted from a condition of excusable ignorance, in responding with force the Spaniards were obligated to show the utmost restraint possible, staying wholly within the bounds of proportionate selfdefense. (Reichberg 2013:169)

Molina builds on this to insist that restraint must be exercised even against a belligerent enemy who is ignorant of wrongdoing – the greater the ignorance, the greater the restraint required (Reichberg 2013).

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Figure 65 Diptych of Santiago Matamoros in the Museo Santo Domingo, Oaxaca, Oaxaca. (Photo by L. Ammon, used with permission of Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, Mexico)

Warrior saints were widely adopted in Spain. Santiago – Saint James the Greater – (Figure 65) was the spiritual patron foremost in the formation of the Spanish identity and a just warrior par excellence. Legends of the appearance of Santiago (St. James) at battles in Iberia began in the 9th century and reached their zenith in the 12th century. These stories spurred the myth of the role of the Spanish in the anticipated millennium and ultimate reconquest of both Jerusalem and the Iberian Peninsula (Herwaarden 2003). Santiago united the Christian kingdoms by providing a common enemy in the Moors and a common goal, their banishment from Spain. In northern Spain, the Order of Santiago was founded on the model of the Knights Templar, and as knights they “bore arms and fought wars” against the Muslims, and worked to “persuade Sacacens to become Christian converts” and to ransom Christians who had been captured by Muslim forces (Herwaarden 2003:465). Ultimately, this campaign against the Moors would reach a zenith at the turn of the 16th century in the idea that the Spaniards were the new “chosen people.” Santiago was also identified with Christ, visible on the standard of an equestrian figure that is carved into the great cathedral at Compostela. This standard, which reads Sanctus Jacobus Apostolus Christi, shows Santiago (Jacobus) occupying the place next to Christ. Castro posits that there are two images of Santiago at Compostela: the learned, orthodox Saint James the Apostle, and Saint James the Moorslayer (Castro 1977). Both images were used to feed the religious imaginations of the Iberian Christians (Verástique 2000). In 1517, Carlos V was beset by a terrible storm while returning to Spain from the Netherlands. He vowed that if he were to survive he would make a pilgrimage to Santiago’s shrine. This was the beginning of his connection to the Saint, his first recorded

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plea for Santiago’s intercession and the first of several pilgrimages Carlos V made to Compostela. After victory over the Muslims in Tunis in 1535, attributed to Santiago, Carlos celebrated Mass on the feast of Saint James (July 25) at a Franciscan Monastery outside of that city (Herwaarden 2012). Carlos told the historian Paolo Giovio (1483–1552) “in private conversation how he had, as a kind of battle cry, called upon James the Great with a loud voice” (Herwaarden 2003:502). A depiction of Carlos V from 1541 in Milan shows him seated on a white horse, next to three defeated foes, a Moor, an Indian, and a third figure, most probably the ruler of Tunis (Herwaarden 2012). Don Quixote (1605) shows us, however, that despite this connection of the warrior saint with Carlos V, the ideal of a chivalrous Christian knight was waning in Spain. By the later 16th century, the Christian warriors had driven the Moors from Spain and Lepanto, Greece. Even though they conceded North Africa in 1574 at Tunis, the Crusaders had recaptured enough territory to conclude the Reconquista. However, entradas in the New World gave the Spanish Christian warrior a new purpose. 16th-century New Spain: Both cultures had a history of awarding combatants with land and laborers to work that land, in addition to other types of awards and rewards. Both cultures also used families of warriors to establish settlements along borders and in newly conquered lands. Both cultures attributed victories to patron deities. The Spaniards with Cortés were not soldiers and Cortés did not bring an army to Veracruz. As Restall (2003) makes quite clear, the men who accompanied Cortés were volunteers and investors, unpaid and untrained, carrying whatever equipment they had each independently gathered for the expedition. The word “soldier” does not appear in any letter Cortés wrote or in a letter or account sent by Alvarado concerning his slightly later invasion of Guatemala. There was only one rank, that of “captain.” Many of the military inventions that would mark the European wars of the next century were not present until late in this century and the American terrain and foe could not be addressed with the standard fighting strategies. Cortés’ army from 1519 to 1521 consisted of no fewer than 24,000 Indian combatants with prior training in the calmecacs in hand-to-hand combat that formed the reputed army. From Cempoala were gathered 8,000 warriors and porters at the beginning of the overland march and 10,000 were offered once Tlaxcala was pacified. An army and support crew of 40,000 natives and some dozens of Spaniards conquered the altepetl of Iztapalapa (Oudijk and Restall 2007:32). In both the Annals of Tlatelolco and Book XII of the Florentine Codex, the Tlatelolco warriors were presented as steadfast and unwavering before the Spanish onslaught, while the Tenochca bickered, hid, and fled their city after only one day. “[T]aking a manly posture no [Tlatelolco] was faint of heart, no one was like a woman” (Lockhart et al. 1993:232). Yet women did defend their city. “[T]he Tlatelolco women fought after the Tenochca men went into hiding. They defended the marketplace for a full ten days, [striking blows and taking captives] before they were forced to retreat” (Terraciano 2010:31). In the war between the two polities in 1473, Tlatelolco women rallied, capturing numerous Tenochca warriors (Terraciano 2010:32). Cortés entrusted his military conquest to the patron of the Reconquista, Santiago. This is apparent in the naming of the river Ulua after the river the disciples of Santiago landed

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on near Compostela centuries earlier; in fashioning uniforms after representations of Santiago and Michael the archangel (García de León 2006:42–43); in carrying the Virgin of Remedios, a reconquista herself; and in taking a Mercedarian friar to ransom any Christian captured in the conflict with native warriors. The New World provided a new testing ground for just war theology. In the 1530s the Salamanca School, under Francisco de Vitoria and later under Francisco Suarez, rejected the argument that a war for evangelization was just. The School upheld the ideal that even unnatural acts did not justify war and that non-Christian regimes operating under natural law were legitimate. The scholars there concluded that wars could be used as self-defense but not to expand an empire, that war is unjust if it causes more harm than good, and that a ruler that waged an unjust war would be obligated to pay restitution. “It was furthermore the consensus among a majority of authors in the School of Salamanca that no wars could be waged against non-Christians by reason of their infidelity and that hostile actions could be resisted in self-defense” (Izbicki and Kaufmann 2019). However, much like Las Casas’s juridical victory at Valliodolid regarding slavery in 1555, Old World legal decisions and theological definitions took many years to find their way into practice in the New World. The Spanish conquest did nothing to eradicate the role of warrior for natives and, clearly, with the influence of Catholic teachings and the importation of chivalric romances, with their ideals of honor and generosity, even reinforced the need for Christian warriors (Domínguez Torres 2013). “In both the Habsburg and the Aztec empires, religion and warfare went hand in hand,” motivating colonial indigenous-created images with martial themes “crucial to the consolidation of Spanish rule” (Domínguez Torres 2013:6). Whether through coercion or volunteerism, native Nahua fighters made the “Spanish” conquest of lands beyond Anahuac possible (see articles in Matthew and Oudijk 2007; Schroeder 2010b). Beginning In 1525, Spanish entradas set out to pacify and exact resources from areas beyond Anahuac using native auxiliary troops in the thousands drawn from within Anahuac and often abandoning these troops in distant lands or awarding their leaders territory in these distant places, in which they were required to form allied communities. Clendinnen observed that the Spanish tactic of ambush killed many great native men, dressed for war, expecting the honor of taking captives, before they could engage; this preemption must have been psychologically demoralizing, she suggests (Clendinnen 1991b:80). Tlaxcaltecas, the closest allies of the Spaniards during and after the conquest of Tenochtitlan, were ordered to send warriors and porters and then colonists throughout northern New Spain, into the Yucatan and Guatemala, and even to the Philippines (Yannakakis 2007:237). The partial subduing of the Yucatan, Guatemala, and Honduras by the Spanish Montejo father and son and later by Alvarado was enabled by warriors from Tlaxcala, Xochimilco, Azcapotzalco, Huexotzingo, and Tetzcoco of central Mexico. The Spanish copied the pre-Conquest practice of subduing an altepetl and then conscripting the defeated warriors to join in the entrada. By this means, Lenca and Jicaque natives of Honduras joined the conquest after their own defeat by Montejo’s army. Servants and porters came from communities in Tabasco, as well as Chiapaneca,

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Zapoteca, Mixteca, and Mixe peoples (Chuchiak 2007:177). De Guzman’s Indian fighters for the campaign into northern Mexico in 1530–1532 were coerced from the towns of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Tlaxcala, and Huexotzingo, including the leading men of each place. Few lived to return home. Mendoza’s entrada of 1540–1542 had 5,000 volunteer Indian auxiliaries from central Mexican towns and 5,000 Purépecha conscripted in Michoacán (Altman 2007:159). In each case, these groups had their own captain, banner, and internal organization, and fought and worked separately. It should also be noted that many of these warriors were either abandoned in distant lands or required to settle on these frontiers to secure them for the Spanish. In 1590, the government established a militarized zone called the Fronteras de Colotlán southwest of Zacatecas. At first, two new villages of Tlaxcalteca settlers (Huejucar and Colotlan in 1591) were required to supply archers and arrows for its defence but early in the next century this requirement was extended to all native towns in the zone. Several authors have claimed that without Indian fighters, spies, translators, and porters, no Spanish entrada would have succeeded, including that of Cortés (e.g., Chuchiak 2007:180). What was the native motivation to join these forces? Although it is highly unlikely that the first Indian allies to the Spanish saw themselves as warriors for Christ, perhaps later Christian Indian allies did see themselves as furthering God’s kingdom. [I]n 1537 Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza attempted to institute a Christianized version of the ancient knighthood orders of the Aztec empire: the Order of Tecle Knights (the name derived from the Nahuatl word tecuhtli, ‘lord’). [Those] Indigenous leaders promised loyalty and complete military support to Charles V, while fighting against idolaters and foes of the Christian faith. [It] did not receive authorization from Spain. (Domínguez Torres 2013:70–71)

Concealed in any such membership may well have been more important economic and political inducements (Graham 2011). Like the situation in prequauhtemoc central Mexico, “the Spanish had the practice of relaciones de méritos in which recruited warriors would record and certify the military services that they had performed in order to claim payment upon victory . . . Tlaxcalan conquest images served as the earliest forms of their documents of petition” (Kranz 2010:54–55). What the returning warriors received, often granted to their town, was exemption from tribute and forced labor by encomenderos; future cash payment for their daily labors on behalf of Spaniards; and sometimes land. The native people of Villa Alta/Analco (Oaxaca) received land for their service but had to agree, in 1552, to live apart from the Spaniards in town; subject themselves to the Spanish cabildo; provide messenger service to Antequera (Oaxaca City) and Mexico City once a month; repair the church roofs when needed; and serve as firemen (Yannakakis 2007:238). The Indian fighters filed another complaint with the Audiencia in 1591 asking for a verification of their exemption from forced labor, the right to be buried in the church, and the right to be baptized at the font in that church. They received these rights but this time they were ordered to collect tribute and serve as municipal authorities in politically unstable communities in return (Yannakakis 2007).

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Postquauhtemoc soldiering was also a way to continue life somewhat as expected for the first and second generation of native men. The role of Governor in Mexico City’s native community had been filled by Cortés with non-elite men, but when the position was returned to the royal line, the man to fill that role, Don Diego de San Francisco Tehuetzquititzin, chose to follow the traditional prequauhtemoc protocol by being bathed at Xochipillan and by proving his martial capabilities in Mendoza’s campaign in the Mixton War of 1540–1542. Given his importance in Spain and probably to Cortés, it is surprising that the disciple and warrior Santiago is not more present in New Spain (even homage to Columbus and Cortés is conspicuously scarce for that matter). There were (only) three visions of Santiago on battlefields: during the siege of Tenochtitlan in 1520, during the Mixton War, and twice at the battle of Acoma pueblo in modern New Mexico (1599). A detailed analysis of the Lienzo de Tlaxcala commissioned in 1552 at a town council meeting for presentation to Charles V by Navarete (2008), shows Santiago on horseback slaying Mexica in nearly one half of the images. Domínguez Torres (personal communication with C. Claassen June 18, 2020) was unable to find images of him datable to this century. Kathryn Renton (personal communication with L. Ammon August 14, 2020) speculated that his rarity could be due to his sponsorship by Clunic reform groups of Benedictines, absent in New Spain, or because of the focus of the Order of Santiago on regulating Limpieza de sangre and hidalgo status, which were of less concern in New Spain. Santiago was the patronage given to twenty-eight 16th-century churches (6.7 percent) in the senior author’s list of churches, many of them located in Veracruz, and among those founded by all three mendicant orders. His patronage was awarded to the Tlatelolcas for their fierce resistance during the final battles for Tenochtitlan. He did, however, receive a new title, “Mataindios,” in this or the next century when there is a documented increase in his presence in Mexico (Ballandalus 2014) (In 19th-century Peru, rebellious natives repurposed him as Santiago Mataespañois [Ballandalus 2014]). The dance of the Christians and the Moors features Santiago, so its history in this century gives us another angle from which to explore his import. The first occurrence of this dance in New Spain may have been in Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf coast when Cortés and 3,200+ people passed through in 1524. A second recorded Moors and Christians dance was held in 1539 in Oaxaca and a third was recorded in Mexico City in 1572. “As in Medieval Spain . . . mock battles between Moors and Christians in sixteenth-century Mexico were occasional rather than annual” (Harris 2000:148). It seems then, that Santiago, the warrior’s saint and Spain’s Christian patron, enjoyed more homage in Spain than in New Spain, at least in the 16th century. In an effort to recruit more missionaries from Spain, Zumárraga wrote a letter in 1533 pleading for more friars, reiterating “that the friars had enlisted in Christ’s army when they joined the order and were thus obliged to follow him into this spiritual battle . . . further, if so many Spanish fighters had been brave enough to conquer the land physically, then the friars certainly should be brave enough to join the fray as spiritual soldiers” (Turley [2014:107]). See also birth, blood, cosmos, dance, landscape, religious instruction, slave, sun

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water 15th-century Central Mexico: Of course, water would be important to people living in a land with strongly marked wet and dry seasons, in high plateaus and in rainy tropics, and in mountains with runoff. The cosmology of Nahuatl speakers and others in the Americas placed this earth floating on a base of water out of which emerged life and civilization. The Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan shows Quetzalcoatl emerging from the watery depths (Figure 4), and the Pyramid of the Sun at that 900 year-old site (Figure 3) is ringed with a moat. It was also customary to portray temples arising out of water. The Maya glyph for “plaza” has a waterlily sign (Kowalski 2019). Both the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan and the double pyramid of Tlatelolco were on islands. Water figures in all of the Aztec lineage foundation stories. Nahuatl speakers knew that water was stored in Tlalocan. Water was categorized as celestial or terrestrial in origin. Celestial water – rain, hail, snow, frost – was dispensed by Tlaloc and the tlaloque helpers from four vessels each in a different quadrant of the cosmos. Terrestrial water – lakes, rivers, cenotes, springs – were kept and dispensed by Chalchiuhtlicue (Figure 8R) from mountain/cave vessels. Every mountain was a minor deity under the command of Tlaloc and a container of water. From each mountain’s cave came clouds with their rain. Chalchiuhtlicue is depicted in the Codex Borbonicus sitting on a throne in a cave, out of which flows a torrent of water carrying humans (see essay). In human time, tlaloques were more numerous and were those human souls who died by lightning strike or death from a “watery” disease. In many Native American cultures they are known as Little People, keepers of game. Tlaloc (Figure 8L) is customarily shown with goggle eyes and fangs, both ancient symbols of water and lightning (Arnold 1999:47). Tlaloque sent the watery and cold wind diseases of dropsy and leprosy, and caused drowning, and they were the original owners of seeds and animals. From the records of Aztec rituals, much more effort and human life was expended to keep the covenant with Tlaloc than any other deity or set of deities. Veintena offerings of babies and children whose tears were like rain were staged from mountain top shrines during the dry season. The practical importance of water in Nahua culture is evident in the large number of place names that begin with the letter “A” and allude to qualities of water: color, turbidity, divisions, sandiness, saltiness, current, etc. The foundation story of Tenochtitlan speaks of four springs/streams in the place. These were called “fiery water,” “burning water,” “blue water,” and “yellow water.” The ceremonial precinct enclosing the Templo Mayor had four pools, possibly replacements for the rivers, three of which were used for bathing by priests. Terrestrial water was often shown as an unruly woman, and Chalchiuhtlicue was both unruly and violent. She oversaw the end of a previous world by flood. Indeed, on the opening of the new second aqueduct the city flooded. The Mexica Aztecs of Tenochtitlan built causeways and a dike to separate the fresh and salt water lakes, broken with drawbridges to facilitate canoe commerce. They enlarged the number of chinampas gardens, each one surrounded by waterways. Two aqueducts brought water to the island city from Chapultepec (Mundy 2015:65). Because of the

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extensive canal system in Tenochtitlan, the conquistadors named Tenochtitlan the Venice of the New World. 15th–16th-century Spain: Genesis begins: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2 NRSV). Water baptism is the first sacrament a Christian experiences as an infant and is modeled on Jesus’ baptism conducted by John the Baptist (Figure 22). Water washes away original sin and brings the infant, or the convert, into the Church, the family of Christians. Holy water was considered to have power over all forms of evil. Wash water from sacred places and relics, or water from miraculous streams and springs were important sources of healing in Europe at this time (Sumption 1975:115). Hopper (1969:80) argues that the flood narrative of Noah became “increasingly important in Christian theology, since it was regarded as a prototype for the salvation of man [sic] by Christianity.” As the ark is wood and the flood is water, so salvation is conveyed by the wood of the cross and the water of baptism, it was reasoned. Sprinkling the congregation with holy water served to remind its members of these events as well as Moses’ crossing of the Red Sea, Christ’s baptism, and the water that came from Christ’s side at the Crucifixion (Giffords 2007:248). Holy water was also employed in rituals held at the time of blessing graves, fields, religious objects, animals, and buildings. Cloud chasers were a group sought out by the Inquisition. It was permitted, however, to petition for rain at a Marian shrine (Christian 1981a:95). Hail could be thwarted using a relic of Saint Silvestre or using a fragment of the True Cross. Petitioners for rain used a relic of Saint Vincent at Valtablado after it was washed in a stream. In Almoguera, relics revealed to a “priest under the church altar [in 1460] were also deployed to obtain rain” (Christian 1981b:129). Water was collected at this shrine and taken home for curing purposes. 16th-century New Spain: “[T]he use of holy water [was] accepted with startling enthusiasm” (Wake 2010:77), as was the accommodation of native origin stories to the Biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus (Christensen 1996:453). The birth of Jesus corresponded to the Water Comes Down feast, overlapping December 25 once the Gregorian calendar was implemented. Durán recorded that “‘they pretended that a child came down from the sky on that day, and they called this child ‘Water’” (Durán 1967:1:287–288). This transformed the baby Jesus into a tlaloque, a water-bringer. Mary, then, may have been cast “in the role of the blue-skirted Chalchiutlicue. . .who was the Tlaxcallan mountain and ‘gave birth’ to water” (Wake 2010:69). Painting angels’ wings turquoise blue in murals may have indicated these artisans’ association of Christian angels and Tlaloc’s celestial water (Wake 2010). Water-focused rituals continued in New Spain, both in their prequauhtemoc form and with Christian revisions. Since water and agricultural cults were important to farmers and rural dwellers more so than city dwellers, those native cults were somewhat overlooked by missionaries (Broda 1982:96). “New World evangelizers often performed water ‘miracles,’ undoubtedly as a tactic to promote the Christian god as controller-in-chief of this precious element” (Wake 2010:187). Cortés told the people of Tenochtitlan to pray to Mary for rain (Gillingham 2010:206).

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Mundy documents the pre- and postquauhtemoc water systems and their disastrous mismanagement by Spaniards in the 16th century. The residents of Tenochtitlan had survived on freshwater carried by aqueducts from Chapultepec springs, and water merchants plied the canals selling drinking water. But Hispanic practices diverted the water from the lagoon; denuded the mountains; used potable water for orchards and washing; filled in canals with dirt; granted unlimited drinking and lake water to officials, government buildings, etc.; and dumped sewage and carcasses, including native bodies accumulated during epidemics; into the canals. See also baptism, mountain, rock, spring/well

weeping 15th-century Central Mexico: Tears and weeping are frequently mentioned in Nahuatl poetry in various contexts: pain, pleasure, pending death, actual death, the departed, war, and under Christian influence. It was the responsibility of the tlatoani to make weeping prayers to Tezcatlipoca and for the priests and populace to weep during dry season rituals (Read 2005). There was a close relationship between weeping, singing, and speech in terms of generating noise. The words choca to “cry,” “weep,” “howl,” “roar,” “bark,” and cuica, the sounds made by singers or birds, indicate that “the importance of sounds in Nahuatl poetry may not be clear when we read the words on the page, but we can imagine that the resonance between singing, chirping, weeping, and howling would have been much more evident when the songs were performed orally” (Egan 2018:2). A good speech could elicit tears from parties guilty of some infraction and could move deities. Tears were “good speech.” Bad weeping was that audible at inopportune moments and in inappropriate places. “To weep properly created communal, social, political, and cosmic orders; to weep improperly messed them up” (Read 2005:53). Pregnancy was a major stimulus for weeping petitions – elders wept at delivery to bring out the baby, the midwife wept a plea to the childbirth goddess, and a pregnant woman was to sweep, clean, sigh, and cry (Read 2005:56). Documented in a letter to the King of Spain in 1533 is the custom among native leaders to go out beyond the village boundary to welcome guests with a weeping greeting before they entered a town (Pardo 2006:123). Such weeping greetings were adoption ceremonies intended to make strangers into kin and were practiced by native leaders throughout North America (Hall 1997). Sahagún recorded a father teaching a son that their ancestors showed humility by weeping and sighing; the greater the honor, the greater the tears (Sahagún 1950–1982:6:106–107). Indeed, public weeping was laden with political nuance and such behavior occurred only at significant moments (Townsend 2019). Weeping duties were recorded at the death of a tlatoani. Women of the Royal Palace (1st, 2nd, and 3rd ranked wives, concubines, kin women) and hired women mourners wept for 80 days. On conclusion of that period, their tears were collected from their faces and wrapped in paper, which was then burned. Subsequently, more weeping by other mourners was conducted in front of an image of the dead tlatloani (Aguilar-Moreno 2006:169).

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15th–16th-century Spain: Weeping was recognized as a sign of repentance with a long history in the Christian tradition, with some people having the gift for crying. Contemplation, in some monastic communities, included techniques and exercises for crying because the feelings of the heart were expressed through the eyes. John Cassian devised a classification system for tears in the 3rd century that was later “integrated into a complex system of meditation in Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue [1378] which was widely read in sixteenth-century Spain” (Pardo 2006:122). Catherine of Siena ranked five kinds of tears, each representing a different stage of the soul. In the first rank were tears that washed away sins. Ludolph of Saxony, whose book Vita Christi was published in 1470 and then translated into Catalan by 1500, advocated weeping, as did Alonso Tostado writing from Spain in the 15th century (Christian 1982). Weeping cleansed the soul of individuals and of communities. Weeping by flagellants and their audiences during “crisis” processions and during Holy Week processions was fundamental for attracting God’s attention and causing a change of plight. Weeping was part of the justification for the Corpus Christi feast adoption. Bernardino of Siena and Vincent Ferrer were famous for bringing congregations to tears. Weeping statues of the Virgin Mary grew in importance in this and subsequent centuries. The story of St. Peter’s weeping after his denial of Christ’s resurrection was revived late in this century (Domínguez Torres 2013:109 fn 101). In 1585, El Greco first painted an image of St. Peter, repenting for denying Jesus, weeping, eyes uplifted, hands clasped, face distorted. “St Peter’s tears had been viewed in the Christian tradition as a dramatic example of true contrition and penance” (Pardo 2006:104). Mary Magdalene was also frequently painted crying tears of repentance (Read 2005). St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine, reportedly cried daily until her son converted. Tears continued to be read by priests as the desired sign of contrition during confession when language barriers abounded in New Spain. Spanish childrearing literature advocated that children were not to cry because the soul escapes during sobs, and sobs were not to be stifled because that would lead to illness (Goldberg 2013:226). Like dreams, some emotions, particularly crying, were viewed as signs to be interpreted. Several devotional books described how to discern whether the emotion was stimulated by bad spirits or by God. After the Council of Trent meeting in 1559, the laity were told to consult spiritual specialists to understand their emotions, rather than to undertake the analysis themselves (Christian 1982). 16th-century New Spain: In the 1544 Doctrina breve of Zumárraga, he favorably compared the purifying water of baptism with the cleansing water of tears (Pardo 2006:118). Penitential crying was to be of a greater intensity than that when grieving a death, admonished the Dominican Doctrina cristiana in 1548 (Pardo 2006:119). Priests were even to ask the penitent if her sins made her cry. Just as eyes were closed to keep sin and death out, feelings of the heart came out through eyes. From the soft heart, open to God, flowed tears (Christian 1982:106). Jesuits were “effective practitioners of a long tradition of medieval preachers and celebrants who provoked tears” (Christian 1982:100). The natives were clearly struck by the suffering present in Spanish images of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. Early accounts describe Indians manifesting Christian suffering by participating in penitential processions and by adopting “the embodied gestures of faith,

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through weeping, sobbing, sighing, verbal expressions of pain, and contorted features” (Hughes 2010:65). By crying and flagellating in front of the atrial crosses, “the cross covered with Christ’s insignia achieved its ultimate goal: to activate a ceremonial imitation Christi” (Domínguez Torres 2013:99). Spanish and native weeping at funerals continued the weeping customs of both cultures. At Bishop Zumárraga’s funeral and that of Friar Antonio Cuellar the tears and sobs of the religious and clergy prevented those services from taking place in a manner according to custom (Trexler 2002:316). See also bird, penance, speech, water

white 15th-century Central Mexico: White signified death and the moon goddess(es). Mythical Aztlan was the place of whiteness or place of white eagle down, place of the white heron, a paradise (Carrasco and Sessions 2011). As a death color, white chalk marked a warrior destined to die in the Ochpaniztli feast, and the captor of sacrificed victims in the Tlacaxipehualiztli feast. White turkey feathers and white paper banners also marked sacrificial victims. On the last day of the feast of Panquetzaliztli, warriors raced to the top of the Templo Mayor to plunge their hands into a bowl of white lime powder and feathers, toss it in the air, and let it cover their heads, marking them for death by sacrifice in the coming year (Harris 2000:82). The faces of captives to be sacrificed in the Flaying of Men (Tlacaxipehualiztli) veintena were painted white except for their eyes and mouth and then covered in white down. Their captors were also adorned with white feathers and lime powder. Goddesses dressed in white were dead or in the land of the dead. A whiteheaded hawk’s cry foretold trouble to the trader (Clendinnen 1991a:151). Itzpapalotl’s body exploded in a fire into four colored blades. Mixcoatl, her killer, chose the white flint blade from among the four blades to create his sacred bundle. White skin color was also taken to indicate the work of the gods. Albino men, along with dwarfs and hunchbacks, were particularly desired for ritual sacrifices as it was believed that the deities had created them for this purpose and particularly for the sacrifices needed for a solar eclipse. Toltec law mandated the killing of albino children by the age of five because an albino child led to the downfall of Tula. Moteuczoma II’s zoo had a section for albino animals. Quetzalcoatl was referred to as a white god, the white lord of the light of dawn, who avoided the sun, suggesting that Quetzalcoatl the historical man may have been an albino or lived exclusively indoors (López Austin 2015:130). 15th-century Spain: White was the color of purity and could be seen in the color of angels, clouds, and favored flower offerings such as lilies. In images of the trinity, God was usually shown wearing white (Giffords 1974:40). White accoutrements were used for Christmas, Easter, and Ascension, and for feasts of the Virgin Mary, the angels, and those saints who were not martyrs. It is the color of Trinity Sunday and all feasts of Jesus except the feast of the passion, which is red. As the color of innocence, Papal attire was white; the white collar of the priest became popular late in the 16th century (Taylor 2003). 16th-century New Spain: The Spaniards were described as “white men.” Spaniards were not always considered “white” but white Spaniards were those engaged in

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“government, education . . . religious devotion, or defense” (Lane 2013:185). Extremely popular was the image of Santiago on a white horse. The native white magnolia flower “yolloxóchitl” or “heart flower” had medicinal properties and was singled out by missionaries to replace the purity and beauty imagery of lilies. While white color was thought to convey the Catholic ideas of purity and of life everlasting, perhaps for a time, the crucifix in churches with white altar cloths and white flower offerings signified death to the Aztec neophyte. See also blue, purity, red, women

witchcraft 15th-century Central Mexico: Aztec and Mayan narrative traditions were “thematically preoccupied with doom and destruction, witchcraft and calamity, conquest and salvation” (Edmonson 1967:366). Cihuacoatl, warrior woman, was described in Aztec stories as a mighty witch. As the Mexica wandered southward, discord arose between two lineages, one of which was led by Malinalxóchitl, yet another mischievous sorceress. The great rains of 1447 that were followed by frosts and drought from 1450 to 1454 were explained as witchcraft. Witches were one of three sources of malaise or illness. Witches – or human owls – could send or shoot things into a body that were retrieved as pieces of obsidian or bone splinters by another witch. Some of these witches were said to eat “the heart of the people,” placing emphasis on the mouth, eating, and heart (Montellano Ortiz 2004:31). Some people admitted performing witchcraft (Townsend 2009:134). The thief-naguales [nahuallis] transformed themselves into various types of animal. A gang of fifteen or twenty such male witches would dance through the streets, carrying an image of Quetzalcoatl and the forearm of a woman who had died in her first childbirth. Arriving at the victim’s house, they would beat the arm on the ground of the patio outside the house and then again on the threshold, thereby enchanting the persons inside. As the latter stood speechless, the thieves would eat the food, take the valuables, and rape the women of the household. If any of the witches stopped to rest, he would not be able to move until the morning. (Sahagún 1956:1:357–358)

15th-century Spain: Witchcraft and sorcery are explicitly forbidden in the Bible and defined as an act of the flesh (Deut. 18:10; Gal. 5:19-20). Paganism, in Spain, meant witchcraft (Andrews and Hassig 1984:20). Money-making magic was practiced mostly by men and love magic predominantly by women (Tausiet 2014). At least three types of magic were pursued in Iberia, as revealed in Inquisition records. Magic was used for healing, hunting enchanted treasure, and snaring a lover (Ortega 1991). All practitioners used verbal cants often peppered with the names of Catholic saints and Catholic religious objects, and most used astrology. Curanderos cast beans and read cards, etc.; treasure hunters consulted astrology, cabala, psalms, and esoteric books; and love magic was performed with fire, menstrual blood, semen, pubic hair, spells, and cants (Ortega 1991). Southern European midwives were accused of witchcraft when the woman in their charge produced a monstrous birth, or when the acts of midwives and healers failed to

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cure a body. Before becoming the first bishop in New Spain, Juan de Zumárraga was a judge in a court in the Basque country that was convened for witch trials. He reportedly thought that witches were no more than women having hallucinations (Castaňo 2012). This follows Aquinas’ understanding that people who believed they “were controlling demons were merely deceiving themselves: the spirits might pretend to help mortals . . . but in reality it was they who determined the end results” (Tausiet 2014:33). However, magic and religion were integrally connected in this world – prayer and sacred objects were key to rituals, both those sanctioned by the Church and those performed clandestinely. Curses were not just the tools of witches. Curses were visited on plagues of insects and rodents by Church-appointed conjurers. In arguing the basis for animal trials, several philosophers and theologians recalled the curses of God against the snake in Eden, the earth before the flood, on the city of Jericho, and the fig-tree of Bethany (Evans 1906:25). Metamorphosis into animals and flying to gatherings first appeared in the trials conducted in Valais in 1428 (Ginzburg 1984; Lea 1939). Women were believed to be capable of changing themselves and others into animals at will and “could fly through the air and enter secret places by leaving their body behind” (Gerli 2013:853). These witches attended sabbaths and were also able to make potions, conjure storms, and make animals and humans ill. Tausiet explains this as a rural versus urban distinction. Rural witches/ witchcraft primarily involved women and shape-shifting, with supernatural threats and evil power expressed through illness and death for humans, livestock, and crops. Urban magic was associated with specific professions, such as “members of the clergy (priests, friars or even choirboys), medical professionals, astrologers and executioners” (Tausiet 2014:145) For women especially, urban magic “constituted a job in itself – a means of survival or at least a way of trying to improve one’s standard of living” (Tausiet 2014:147). Most women involved in urban magic were prostitutes, servants, procuresses, or beggars. The witch trials so devastating in northern European countries were rare in Spain. 16th-century New Spain: The various forms of magic were no doubt transported to New Spain in this century. Records from the Inquisition show three trials for witchcraft between 1522 and 1594 in New Spain (Moreno de los Arcos 1991). Four men were accused. At the end of the century, witch trials were increasing in number throughout Europe, to reach their peak in both Europe and North America one hundred years later. There is a belief among modern native peoples of the Northeastern United States that witches eat their victims (Giles 2010), and thus, in the past, people would mutilate the face/mouth of a witch during or after killing the suspect. It is interesting then that in 1541 in the Mixton rebellion in Tequila, a friar was shot (with arrows) and stoned and his mouth mutilated “to prevent his speaking to them of his God and sending them to hell” (Ricard 1966:266; Tavárez 2011:35–36) – or did they think he was a witch? In the 1550s, Andrés de Olmos translated and embellished Castanega’s 1529 Tratado de las supersticiones y hechizerias into Nahuatl (Campagne 2004). This work supported the idea that the indigenous priests had made a “deliberate pact” with the devil through their deities (Tavárez 2011:35). This pact, considered a conscious decision rather than a misstep resulting from ignorance, indicated highly powerful sorcery and a deep rapport with the devil. During Bishop Zumárraga’s tenure (1530–1548), he oversaw seventeen idolatry,

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sorcery, heresy, and superstition proceedings that resulted in public humiliation for the accused and destruction of their idols and fetishes. “Zumárraga’s idolatry and superstition proceedings stand out as the most systematic idolatry eradication experiment in sixteenth-century Central Mexico” (Tavárez 2011:61). See also demon, devil, divination, healing, medicine, women

women 15th-century Central Mexico: Dualism of masculine and feminine forces was a key feature in Aztec theology, resulting in paired feminine and masculine deities working independently. The cosmos was divided into the masculine east, north, up, and right; and the feminine west, south, down, and left. Time was also gendered: the future, the past, night, rainy season, and the animals and plants associated with each were feminine, while the present, daytime, and dry season animals and plants were masculine. Death, creation, disorder, wilderness, stasis, and stench were feminine; life, order, city, movement, and perfume were masculine (Burkhart 1997:35; López Austin 2010:29). This complementarity enveloped the upper world and underworld divisions as well with Ometecuhtli (upper realm) spawning the paternal line and Mictlantecuhtli (lower realm) spawning the maternal line (Bassie-Sweet 2008). Indeed, much of Aztec cosmology involved the struggle between forces represented by male deities such as Huitzilopochtli and Mixcoatl, and female deities such as Coyolxauhqui and Itzpapalotl and even historical figures of Malinalxóchitl the sorceress and the larger group of Mexica. Two goddesses are seen to dominate the Feast cycle (Brotherston 2005:49–56), Teteu innan, “mother of the gods” and spinner of thread (also called Toci, Tlazolteotl), celebrated in Ochpaniztli, and seven feasts later Ciuacoatl in Tititl, weaver with batten, who presided over that and the next eleven feasts. She was the leader of the Milky Way star skirt women, the Ciuateteo, and governed the feasts of planting. Moving to the realm of living women, at the time of birth, girl babies were presented with the spindle whorl and batten. At age 8, they left to live in a temple until married. Some would enter the priesthood for the cults of earth goddesses but women priests “never achieved the status of the principal male priests” (López Austin 2010:31). Some women were professional mourners and bathers of slaves marked for sacrifice. Immoral behavior for women was “a failure to stay home; a tendency to hang about the streets and marketplaces, or worse,” to bound around the countryside like a deer or rabbit (Burkhart 1997). Difficult births were attributed to excessive copulation with men. Women of elite families were expected to perfect weaving skills. A bad weaver was gossipped about, denigrated. If she were born in the trecena of One House she was destined to be lazy and sleep a lot, doing little of use. “She was incapable, witless, negligent, stupid, jeering and impudent” (Anawalt 1981:13). In spite of this ideal woman-at-home, women were noted in canoes on the lake, in stalls as merchants, as pilgrims, as midwives, in corn fields, gathering reeds and wild foodstuffs, and in feast work parties. They were also among slaves, captives, and sacrificial victims. Women owned goods and land and inherited both. Noble women’s genealogies were carefully documented in codices.

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Gifting daughters between nobility to form political alliances was common in prequauhtemoc Mexico. Marriages with elite daughters and concubinage united northern Mexican groups with people in the modern state of Arizona and Oaxaca, united different ethnic groups in Oaxaca, united different altepeme in the Valley of Mexico, etc. However, a slide toward a male-dominated social hierarchy occurred after the middle 1400s as the state cult to Huitzilopochtli grew. Sahagún (1950–1982:6:96–97) recorded a lecture that elite fathers gave daughters, Apply thyself well to the really womanly task, the spindle whorl, the weaving stick. Open thine eyes well as to how to be an artisan, how to be a feather worker; the manner of making designs by embroidering; how to judge colors; how to apply colors [to please] thy sisters, thy ladies, our honored ones, the noblewomen . . . May thou not covet carnal things. May thou not wish for experience, as it is said, in the excrement, in the refuse. And if truly thou art to change thyself, wilt thou become as a goddess? May thou not have quickly destroyed thyself.

15th–16th-century Spain: Mary the Mother of God was the model of the ideal woman. With the other alternative being the reformed prostitute, Mary Magdalene, human women were perpetually inferior. The Cantigas de Maria, a set of popular songs originating in the late 13th century, focus on the acts of the Virgin Mary rescuing people from shipwrecks or other dire circumstances. There are also examples of celebrating the perfection of Mary as the ideal lover and celestial ruler of Iberia, in contrast with the numerous vices of ordinary women. “Such poetic celebration of Mary as love object beyond compare thus contributed to the misogynist discourse that almost always formed one strand of medieval thought” (Remensnyder 2014:293). The failure to record the names of women who came before the supreme council of the Inquisition in Soria and Osma dioceses in 1486 and 1502 (Spain) is one measure of the accord given real women by men in Iberia (Edwards 1988:5). Names were replaced by labels, particularly those labels that qualified a woman’s sexual status: doncellas (virgin), married, solera (single), widow, and religious. Abandoned, widowed, and childless women were vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft, isolation, and homelessness, leading some women into the convent, and others, unwilling or unable to enter the convent, into prostitution. “Women were considered weak, malleable, susceptible to the temptations of the devil, and lacking the reason to be responsible for their own behaviors . . . Paradoxically, it was also thought that women were spiritually superior to men” (Powers 2005:124). To maintain their chastity, elite women were enclosed. Convents were places of refuge for upper class women and were “apt to be exclusive, housing ladies and daughters of the rich” (Ratcliffe 2013b:855). Convents were expensive and required not only a group of mendicants to support them, such as had the Cistercian, Dominican, and Franciscan sisters, but also often required a dowry for entry. While primarily autonomous, convents were overseen by priests, bishops, and confessors, and rules prevented women from having direct interaction with the outside world (Lehfeldt 2013). Exceptions were those women associated with Hospitalar Knights, who worked as nurses and established nursing orders during the crusades. Many convents found ways to enhance and expand their incomes through women’s labor in agriculture and by investing in property. Convents dependent on

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charity and good works provided places for prostitutes to rehabilitate or for orphans to grow up. Additionally, convents were a place for women to be creative, writing music, and authoring treatises as well as dramas that were performed on feast days. It was a space where women could develop and practice their own kinds of spirituality. Girls of southern Spain attended school and had both male and female teachers (Ratcliffe 2013b). Single adult women were uncommon since girls were married by fifteen or sixteen and, if widowed, expected to remarry. All women in Spain worked. Poor girls, either without dowry or otherwise unmarriageable, stayed home to work with their mothers, fathers, and brothers in fields and households. Weaving was considered an appropriate occupation for elite women, and as a child Mary was said to have spent time in the temple weaving. Poor women worked as servants and staff. If a woman worked as a herbalist, she risked being accused of witchcraft. “Minstrels, publicans, hagglers, and procuresses” were considered immoral occupations for women (Ratcliffe 2013b:855). As the New World expanded in geography and settlements, increasing numbers of Spanish men shipped out of Seville. Women were left in Spain to run businesses, invest, and buy goods. “By 1525, Seville was said to be a city ‘in the hands of women’” (Greenfield 2005:70), as were some other towns. With the Siete Partidas, the statutory code in Castile gave women rights over property and throughout marriage, highlighting the paradox of being unworthy of being named in Inquisition records and yet powerful enough to have her own property. 16th-century New Spain: The population in the Indies in 1540 consisted of approximately 1,000 Spanish women and 80,000 Spanish men, rising to 17 percent women in 1550. “[O]nly at the end of the sixteenth century did Spanish women cease to be a rare commodity in most parts of the Indies” (Earle 2012:134). The liberal Castilian laws, the Siete Partidas, which granted protection for women’s property and choice to marry, were extended to New Spain. The two mostly widely circulated hagiographies written in Nahuatl during the latter part of the century valorized nine women saints: Mary, Mary Magdalene, Anne, Monica, Catherine of Alexandria, Clare of Assisi, Martha, Agnes, and Lucy, and some missionaries drew connections between the roles of Mary and Tonantzin, and Anne (grandmother of Jesus) and Toci (“our grandmother”) (Burkhart 2001b:94). Some native goddesses and female saints shared dismemberment as a cause of death, but the goddesses were deities, with powers of their own; some had virginal births. Female saints were glorified as models of behavior and many did not have children or heterosexual experiences. European ideas about the failings of earthly women, of course, were transferred to New Spain. The activities of sweeping, making offerings, cooking, and weaving were proper ones for native women but, while “Indigenous discourse that associated women with the home was heard by the friars as descriptions of dutiful housewives . . . all evidence of the sacred power manipulated by women in that home was read as tricks the Devil played on the weaker sex” (Burkhart 1997:28). Some priests avoided making house calls because “In the war against Lucifer, the Mexican woman was suspected of consorting with the enemy” (Burkhart 1997:27). A life of luxury in New Spain, without house cleaning or cooking, was the temptation held out to European women, as native women would do those tasks. It is this reliance on native women to grow house gardens and cook that has

354

Keywords

been used to explain the adoption of foodways and the prolongation of native (women’s) lore and practices (e.g., Earle 2012:134). The Spaniards of Mexico City gifted themselves a house of prostitution filled with native girls in 1522 (Townsend 2019). “After 1570 in Mexico . . . institutionalization of women became a common vehicle for both female education [and] discipline of allegedly ‘wayward’ women” (Powers 2005:125). Work by women for missions and probably for wages included cleaning, embroidery, fringing, cotton spinning, candy making, dressmaking, and silk threadmaking. They may also have made adobe bricks, carried them, plastered walls, and hauled sand and straw for church construction, as they did in the next century (Giffords 2007:75). Tavárez (2011) argues, based on reports of indigenous devotional practices, that by the late 1580s indigenous ritual specialists were more often women. These practices were considered suspect by priests, often involving healing, remedies for illness, childbirth, and funerary rites. Women healers were also prevalent in areas hard hit by diseases brought by Europeans, most likely indicating an increased demand for local and traditional remedies. Curiously, chocolate was particularly considered a woman’s drink and it was a major expense in the houses of Spanish religious women (Earle 2012:133). It was also linked to native women witches for their love potions. See also adultery, birth, children, conception, divination, fertility, marriage, mother/ Mary, naming, priest, religious instruction, virginity, weeping, witchcraft

Appendix I Aztec Feast Cycle

Annual Feasts of Tenochtitlan correlated with the Gregorian calendar (after Townsend 2009:242–245).

Ceremony/Veintena

Main Deities Honored

Characteristics

Atl Caualo 14 Feb–5 Mar

Tlaloc, maize deities

Poles erected Child sacrifices New year

Tlacaxipehualiztli 6 Mar–25 Mar

Xipe Totec

Gladiator sacrifice, flayings End of war season Spring equinox

Tozoztontli 26 Mar–14 Apr

Tlaloc, Chalchiuhtlicue, Centeotl, Coatlicue

Plantings

Huey Tozoztli 15 Apr–4 May

Tlaloc, Chalchiuhtlicue, Centeotl, Coatlicue, Chicomecoatl, Xilonen

Blessing seeds Child sacrifices Procession of maidens

Toxcatl Tepopochtli 5 May–22 May

Tezcatlipoca, Mixcoatl Camaxtli, Huitzilopochtli

Sacrifices of teixiptla

Etzalcualiztli 23 May–13 Jun

Tlaloc, Quetzalcoatl, Chalchiuhtlicue

Cutting reeds Eating porridge Beginning of rainy season

Tecuilhuitontli 14Jun–3 Jul

Xochipilli, Huixtocihuatl

Commoners hosted Sacrifices Summer solstice

Huey Tecuilhuitl 4 Jul–23 Jul

Xilonen, Cihuacoatl

Commoners hosted Green corn ceremonies

Miccailhuitontli 24 Jul–12 Aug

Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, Ancestors

Flower offerings

Huey Miccailhuitl 13 Aug–1 Sep

Huehueteotl, Xiuhtecuhtli, Ancestors

Fire sacrifice Pole climbing

Ochpaniztli 2 Sep–21 Sep

Toci, Tlazolteotl, Teteoinnan, Coatlicue, Cineteotl, Chicomecoatl

Harvest, sweeping Fall equinox, opening of season of war

355

Appendices

356

(cont.) Ceremony/Veintena

Main Deities Honored

Characteristics

Teotleco 22 Sep–11 Oct

all deities

Return of all deities for feasting

Tepeilhuitl 12 Oct–31 Oct

Tlaloc, Tlaloque, Octli, Xochiquetzal, mountains

Mountaintop offerings Mountain effigies eaten

Quecholli 1 Nov–20 Nov Chichimec origin

Mixcoatl, Camaxtli, Tlamatzincatl

Hunting rites Making weapons Warriors feast

Panquetzaliztli 21 Nov–10 Dec

Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca

Prisoner sacrifices Procession around island

Atemoztli 11 Dec–30 Dec preMexica Basin agricultural feast

Tlaloque, mountains

Mountains honored Rain descends Winter solstice

Tititl 31 Dec–19 Jan

Cihuacoatl, Tonantzin

Merchants sacrifice slaves Great dance of priests

Izcalli 20 Jan–8 Feb

Xiuhtecuhtli, Tlaloc, Chalchiuhtlicue

Animal sacrifices Ear piercings

Appendix II Persons of Note in Europe and Mexico

europe

Name

Lifespan

Dates relevant

Tertullian

155–240?

170–240?

Helen (saint)

248–328

305?–328

Lucy (saint)

283–304

290?–304

Catherine of Alexandria

287–305

301–305

Agnes (saint)

291–304

300?–304

Monica (saint)

332–387

????

Prudentius

348–413?

368–408

Augustine of Hippo

354–430

386–430

John Cassian

360–435

399–435

Scholastica

480–543

?–543

Gregory the Great

540–604

590–604

Bede

672–735

700–731

Bernard of Clairvaux

1090–1153

1115–1153

Alain de Lille

1122–1202

1160–1202

Joachim de Fiore (OFM)

1135–1202

1168–1202

Maimonides

1135–1204

1155–1204

Andrew the Chaplain

1150–1220

1184–1220

Dominic de Guzman (OP)

1170–1221

1205–1221

Francis of Assisi (OFM)

1182–1226

1219–1226

Clare of Assisi

1194–1253

1214–1253

Bartholomew of Trent

1200–1251

121?–1251

Alfonso X of Castile

1221–1282

1252–1282

Bonaventure (OP)

1221–1274

1242–1274

Thomas Aquinas (OP)

1225–1274

1256–1274

Gertrude the Great

1256–1302

1281–1302

357

Appendices

358

(cont.) Name

Lifespan

Dates relevant

Bernard Gui of Toulouse (OP)

1261–1331

1275–1331

Dante Alighieri

1265–1321

1300–1320

John Duns Scotus (OP)

1266–1308

1290–1308

Elizabeth of Portugal (TOSF)

1271–1336

1288?–1336

Elizabeth of Hungary (TOSF)

1277–1231

1223–1231

Ludolph of Saxony

1295–1378

1310–1378

Gobius(Gobi) Johannes

1300–1350

1323–1350

Catherine of Siena

1347–1380

1355–1380

Vincent Ferrer (OP)

1350–1419

1368–1419

Colette of Corbie (PCC)

1381–1447

1406–1447

Alfonso V of Aragon

1396–1458

1416–1458

Pope Nicholas V

1397–1455

1447–1455

Juan II of Castile

1405–1454

1406–1454

Alonso Tostado

1410–1455

1415–1455

Pope Alexander VI

1431–1503

1492–1503

Marsilio Ficino

1433–1499

1462–1499

Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (OFM)

1436–1517

1495–1517

Pope Julius II

1443–1513

1503–1513

Isabella (Queen)

1451–1506

1474–1504

Girolamo Savonarola (OP)

1452–1498

1494–1498

Ferdinando II (King)

1452–1516

1479–1516

Bernardino López de Carvajal (cardinal)

1456–1523

1471–1523

Pietro Galatino (OFM)

1460–1540

1480–1540

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

1466–1536

1487–1536

Thomas Cajetan (OP)

1469–1534

1508–1534

Pedro Ciruelo

1470–1548

1492–1548

Albrecht Dürer

1471–1528

1491–1528

Edigo (Giles) de Viterbo (OSA)

1472–1532

1495–1532

Michaelangelo

1475–1564

1494–1564

Pope Leo X

1475–1564

1513–1521

Pope Clement VII

1478–1534

1523–1534

Appendices

359

(cont.) Name

Lifespan

Dates relevant

Francisco Quiñones (OFM)

1482–1540

1523–1540

Francisco de Vitoria (OP)

1483–1546

1516–1546

Paolo Giovio

1483–1552

1511–1552

Martin Luther (OSA)

1483–1546

1517–1546

María de Santo Domingo

1485–1524

1505?–1524

Pope Paul III

1487–1555

1550–1555

Martín de Azpilcueta

1491–1586

1524–1586

Francisco de Osuna (OFM)

1492–1540

1514–1540

Pope Paul IV

1499–1565

1559–1565

Carlos V

1500–1558

1506–1556

John Calvin

1509–1564

1536–1564

Teresa de Ávila (O.C.)

1515–1582

?–1582

Felipe II

1527–1598

1556–1598

Luis de Molina (SoJ)

1535–1600

1551–1600

El Greco

1541–1614

1577–1614

Elizabeth I (Queen)

1533–1603

mexico Name

Lifespan

Ce Acatl Topiltzin/Quetzalcoatl (Toltec king)

Dates relevant 895–947

Huemac (Toltec king)

11th c.

11th c.

Tenoch (Mexica tlatoani)

????–1375

1325–1375

Acamapichtli (Mexica tlatoani)

1376–1395

1355–1395

Itzcoatl (Mexica tlatoani)

1381–1440

1427–1440

Tlacaelel (Mexica leader)

1397–1487

1420–1487

Moteuczoma I (Mexica tlatoani)

1398–1469

1441–1469

Julián Garcés (Tlaxcala)

14??–1542

1519–1542

Nezahualcoyotl (Tetzcoca)

1402–1472

1429–1472

Julián Garcés (bishop)

1452–1542

1525–1542

Appendices

360

(cont.) Name

Lifespan

Dates relevant

Pedro de Córdoba

1460–1521

1510–1521

Nezahualpilli (Tetzcoca)

1464–1515

1472–1515

Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin II (Mexica tlatoani)

1466–1520

1502–1520

Juan de Zumárraga (bishop)

1468–1548

1528–1548

Martín de Valencia (OFM)

1474–1534

1524–1534

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (historian)

1478–1557

1514–1557

Francisco de Aguilar (conquistador)

1479–1571?

1514–1571

Francisco de Montejo (conquistador)

1479–1553

1514–1553

Pedro de Gante (fray OFM)

1480–1572

1523–1572

Vasco de Quiroga (bishop)

1480–1565

1538–1565

Toribio de Motolinia Benavente (fray OFM)

1482–1568

1524–1568

Bartolomé de Las Casas (fray, bishop OP)

1484–1566

1502–1566

Bartolomé de Olmedo (fray OFM)

1485–1524

1519–1524

Hernán Cortés

1485–1547

1518–1547

Andrés de Olmos (fray OFM)

1485–1571

1527–1571

Cristóbal de Olid (conquistador)

1487–1524

1519–1524

Juan de Grijalva (conquistador)

1489–1527

1508–1527

Alonso de Montúfar (archbishop)

1489–1572

1554–1572

Alonso de Molina (fray OFM)

1489–1572

1528–1585

Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal (audiencia)

1490–1547

1531–1535

Nuño Beltrán Guzman (governor)

1490–1558

1519–1534

Antonio de Roa (fray OSA)

1491–1563

1536–1563

Antonio de Mendoza (1st viceroy)

1493–1552

1535–1550

Quauhtemoc (Mexica tlatoani)

1496–1521

1520–1521

Gonzalo de Sandoval (conquistador)

1497–1528

1519–1528

Bernardino de Sahagún (fray OFM)

1499–1590

1529–1590

Francisco de Montejo the Younger (conquistador)

1508–1565

1527–1565

Luis de Velasco (viceroy)

1511–1564

1550–1564

Juan de Anunciación (OSA)

1514–1594

????–1594

Diego de Landa

1524–1579

1549–1579

Gerónimo Mendieta (OFM)

1525–1604

1554–1604

Appendices

361

(cont.) Name

Lifespan

Dates relevant

Diego Muñoz Camargo (writer)

1529–1599

1580–1599

Diego Durán

1537–1588

1556–1588

José de Acosta

1539–1600

1570–1600

Pedro Aguto (bishop)

1544–1609

1595–1608

Gonzalo de Tapia (SoJ)

1561–1594

1572–1594

Juan de Torquemada (fray OFM)

1564–1624

1588–1624

Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl (writer)

1568?–1648

1602–1648

Álvaro Manrique de Zúñiga (Viceroy)

1585–1590

154?–1590

Glossary

AZTEC DEITIES, PLACES, WORDS

Altepetl (altepeme pl) The “water mountain” or town, typically divided into four calpulli/social entities and spatial quadrants headed by a tlatoani or head speaker. Many altepeme became doctrinas, sites of monastery churches. Anahuac The vast region conquered by the Mexica. Subject towns paid tribute to the lord of Tenochtitlan. Nahuatl was the lingua franca. Also called Cemanahuac. Aztlan First island home of the Mexica. Source of the name “Aztecs.” cacica Female indigenous ruler; also wife of the cacique. cacique Male indigenous leader. Applied to Caribbean peoples then used early in New Spain. calmecac School for elite Aztec children offering religious and military training. calpulli Neighborhood, urban ethnic group. Centeotl The young maize god, the male counterpart to Chicomecoatl. Chalchiuhtlicue The spirit/goddess of terrestrial waters, counterpart to Tlaloc. Chapultepec Place of springs on the west side of the Basin of Mexico lakes. The Mexica tarried here for a while. “Grasshopper place.” Chicomoztoc A cave with seven chambers or seven caves from which the various Chichimec tribes migrated southward. Cihuacoatl A fertility goddess known by many names. Also the name of a human male in the second highest position in the Aztec empire. Cihuateteo Much feared women who had died in childbirth. Dwelled in the western sky and escorted the sun from midday to sunset. Haunted crossroads to steal children. Coatlicue (Teteoinnan, Toci, Omecihuatl, Heart of the Earth) Mother of Huitzilopochtli living on Mt. Coatepec. Gave birth to 400 sons who became the southern stars and a daughter Coyolxauhqui who became the moon after their younger brother. Huitzilopochtli, killed them all because of a plot to kill her. Colhuacan Place of grandparents. Coyolxauhqui She plotted the death of her mother, Coatlicue. Her brother is Huitzilopochtli. She became the moon in one creation story. Culhuacan Nahuatl-speaking altepetl founded by Toltecs in Basin of Mexico. Huitzilopochtli Blue Tezcatlipoca of the south. Warrior, eagle, hummingbird, patron of the Otomi and Mexica. Sometimes represented by Paynal in processions. Itzpapalotl Obsidian Butterfly or Clawed Butterfly. Killed by Mixcoatl. Under other names the mother of Quetzalcoatl, and the goddess who caused the gods to be expelled from paradise. Malinalxóchitl The Malinalli lineage’s leader, sorceress, and founder of Malinalco. Mayahuel Abducted by Quetzalcoatl and sacrificed by him, her body became the maguey plant from which numerous products were derived (paper, thread, throns, pulque). 362

Glossary

363

Mexica The Tenochca, founders of Tenochtitlan, and the Tlaltelolca living on the northern end of the island. Mictlan Ninth level of the Most Holy Earth ruled by Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlantecihuatl. The destination of most souls and the resting place of their bones. Mitote Round dance of the Aztecs and other tribes in the Sierra Madre Occidental. Mixcoatl (Camaxtli, Tezcatlipoca) God of the Milky Way and hunt, and giver of the fire drill and flintknapping to humans. Nahua Peoples speaking Nahuatl. Nahualli Animal spirit other of a human, and of sorcerers. Nahuatl Language spoken by Mexica, other Chichimecas, and administrators in Anahuac. Missionaries used Nahuatl as lingua franca. Ometeotl Dual creator essence with four “children.” The male side was called Ometecuhtli, the female side Omecihuatl. Also called Tōnacātēcuhtli and Tōnacācihuātl. Ometochtli Pulque deity. Panquetzaliztli 15th veintena dedicated to Huitzilopochtli. Pulque Beverage made from fermented manguey juice, at the center of a cult. Imbibing was highly regulated. Quecholli 14th veintena dedicated to Mixcoatl with a ritualized hunt. Quetzalcoatl (ehecatl), White Tezcatlipoca, Lord of Life Patron of priests. The deity, the Feathered Serpent, had as his domain the wind and was a creator god. Also an historical Toltec leader. Tamoanchan A garden paradise, house of birth. Some say it is near Cuernavaca. Teixiptla (ixiptla) (teixptlameh pl) Local embodiments of teotl – object or person. Teotihuacan Huge city state just northeast of the Basin of Mexico. 100–700 CE. Teotl The divine power, energy, ever moving. Teteo innan (Toci) Middle Age corn goddess, creator goddess Tezcatlipoca (Mixcoatl) The Black Tezcatlipoca, worshipped in an elite cult. Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli The lord of dawn and the noon hour. Tlaloc An ancient Mesoamerican god whose domain was the celestial waters – hail, snow, mist, and rain. His female counterpart was Chalchiuhtlicue. They were assisted by the tlaloque. Tlalocan The paradisiacal home of Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue. Tlaloque Disbursed the four forms of celestial water from the four quadrants of the heavens carried in pottery jars. Tlaloque were recruited from among those humans who died by drowning, lightning strike, pleurisy, and gout or were deformed. Tlaltecuhtli One of four earth goddesses. Her violated body became the sky and the earth and various parts of her the topographic features of earth. She bit off the foot of Tezcatlipoca in the struggle. Tlamatinime “One who knows something.” These are legendary wise men of Tamoanchan. Tlaquimilolli A sacred bundle. Cloth or pelt enclosed relics of significance to an ethnic group or altepetl.

364

Glossary

Tlatoani (tlahtohqueh pl) “Speaker.” The leader of every altepetl and city-state, usually male. Tlazolteotl (Ixcuina) Filth goddess, spinner, weaver. Mexicas confessed to her once a year. Toci (Tlalli Iyollo, Coatlicue) Mother of the gods. tonalamatl Books recording the tonalpoualli. Tonalli The soul that resides in the head, exiting and entering the body through the fontanel or pulse points. It is the heat that sustains the body. It is contained in hair, nails, skulls, femurs, bark, cloth wrappings, stone sculptures, names, and likenesses (children, mirrors). tonalpoualli The 260-day calendar that imparted fates based on date and numerology. Tonatiuh Sun god, patron of warriors. Trecena A 13-day period of which there were 20 in the cycle of days and fates. Tzitzimimeh (pl; Tzitzimitl singular) Star deities, skeletal female figures wearing skirts often with skull and crossbone designs, dwellers in Tamoanchan, led by Itzpapalotl. These monstrous women were greatly feared during the New Fire event and during the last 5 days of the year. Veintena A twenty-day ritual feast period and work period with ritual culminating on the last day. Xipe Totec “Our Lord the Flayed One,” the red Tezcatlipoca of the eastern quarter. God of spring and vegetation. Xochiquetzal Young creator goddess. Source of flowers. Yolia The soul located in the heart. It is responsible for animation, escapes as breath, shadow, and bird. It attaches to bones.

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Index

Acapulco, 49, 50, 135, 287 Acatlan (woman), 208 Acolhua, 12, 16–17, 27, 47, 231 Acosta, Jose de, 79, 81, 93, 95, 110, 155, 189, 195, 213, 244, 361 Actopan, 265, 285, 298, 321, 324 Aguilar, Jerónimo de, 51 ahuehuete, 24, 26, 133, 172-4, 298–9, 317, 319 Ahuitzotl, 19, 20, 151 Al-Andalus, 26, 39, 73, 293 Alfonso X, 33, 43, 65, 159, 357 All Saints feast, 103, 170, 198, 231, 261 All Souls feast, 170, 198 Alva [Cortés] Ixtlilxóchitl, Fernando, 270 Alvarado, Juan de, 250, 340–1 Anahuac as geographical region, i, vii, 1, 20, 59, 341, 362–3 as origin place, 89 cities of, 3, 80 natives of, 2, 6, 309, 362–3 religion in, 19, 23, 25, 62, 89, 166, 195, 259, 265, 272, 283–4, 297, 307 Spanish moving beyond, 204, 341 Andrew, St., 131, 134, 284 Angel of the Sixth Seal, 39, 75, 225 Angelic Pope, 38, 40 Anne, St., 60, 173, 232 and the Immaculate Conception, 32, 91, 112–13, 169, 171, 214, 252 feast of, 330–1, 332, 353 Antequera, 48, 54, 342. See also Oaxaca antichrist, 37–8, 74, 258 Aquinas, Thomas and astrology, 78 and just war, 338 and Maculist position, 33 and sin, 65, 67, 206, 282 as Domincan teacher, 245 on a world without beginning, 81 on angels, 297 on casting lots, 158 on demonology, 151–2, 154, 350 on divine providence, 167

on heaven, 228 on homosexuality, 292–3 on idolaty, 193 on images, 193, 261 on indulgences, 235 on natural slavery, 286 on penance, 235 on visions, 332, 350. See also Summa Theologiae Arabic, 78, 139, 158, 185, 268, 298 Aragon, 3, 4, 26, 33, 134, 358 archaeological sites Alta Vista, 10 Casas Grandes, 325 Chichen Itza, 11, 278, 325 Cuicuilco, 8, 27 El Tajín, 237, 262–3, 263 El Zapotal, 322–3, 323 Poverty Point, 6 Xochicalco, 10, 12, 27, 80, 237, 278, 325. See also Cholula; Templo Mayor; Teotihuacan; Tula Aristotle, 5, 29, 80, 124, 286, 323 arrow and divination, 75–6 and martyrs, 76, 95, 134, 187, 350 archer troops, 342 as lightning, 76 deities with, 75, 77 emblematic, 75–6, 187, 226, 301 in Level 6 of upperworld, 121 introduction of technology, 75 of slain warrior, 76, 144 sacrifice by, 12, 27, 75–7, 134, 173 stone point on, 76 Ars Moriendi, 144, 151, 242, 269, 309 Ash Wednesday, 69, 166 Assumption of Mary and St. Miguel, 71 and salvation, 215 as patron, 33, 171, 285 feast of, 32, 169–71, 214 girdle from, 259 liturgical antiphons for, 221 play about, 314 representation of, 90, 285, 304–5, 331

atrium, 57, 146, 165, 250–1, 257, 265–7, 266 Audiencia of Galicia, 45, 232 Audiencia of Mexico, 45–9, 146, 206, 236, 332, 342, 360 Augustine, St. as patron, 232 heart of, 76 lineage of, 319 mother of, 347 on Book of Revelation, 37, 74 on casting lots, 158 on Christ as offering, 226 on creation, 128 on the dead, 31, 145, 167 on fate, 167 on human trinity, 320 on Jesus as mother, 214 on just war, 286, 337–8 on resurrection, 73 on sins, 98, 282, 330 on structure of afterlife, 255 on suicide, 302 rule of, 245. See also Augustinian; City of God; just war Augustinian(s) and relics, 261 compared to other Orders, 29, 52, 58, 84, 111, 113, 115, 204, 210, 247 confraternities, 246, 291 emblem, 76, 187 history of, 4, 29, 43, 48, 52, 57, 106–7, 236, 245–6, 270 men, 40, 106, 111, 161, 246 missions, 52, 225, 232, 272 murals, 319, 324. See also Augustine, St.; Chalma; Colegio San Pablo; Luther, Martin; Malinalco; Otomi; Roa, Antonio de ball court, 10, 23, 27, 205, 211, 278 ball game, 7, 10, 156, 303 banned books, 41, 112, 310–12. See also book burning banner, 10, 104, 121, 126, 164, 226–7, 251, 264, 342, 348 Beata, 74, 112, 150, 323

385

Index

386 bloodletting by Christians, 95, 190 by commoners, 94–5 by deities, 95, 228 by elites, 19, 92, 126 for birth of a child, 83 for health, 95, 97, 186 implements for, 94–5 in imagery, 94, 190, 192, 290, 306 Olmecs and, 8, 94 on body, 94–5, 282 book burning, 310. See also banned books Book of Hours, 141–2, 242, 269, 310 Bull Dum Diversas, 286 Bull Ezekielis, 74 Bull of the Holy Crusade (bula de la cruzada). 114 See also crusade Bull Sublimis Deus, 47–8 Bullfight, 250 Bulls of Donation, 26, 46 Cabala, 31, 39–40, 73, 349 Cabildo, 45–6, 139, 161, 251, 342 Calero, Juan, 48, 100, 137, 262, 329. See also martyr calmecac, 220, 234, 241, 243–4, 251, 268, 297, 340, 362 Camino real, 47, 50, 50 Canary Islands, 106, 240 Cantares Mexicanos, 68, 139, 324 Cantigas de Maria, 352 Carlos V abdication of, 28, 49 acts of, 3, 45, 63, 81, 206, 287–8, 308 and Cabala, 40 as Angelic Pope, 40 as collector, 259 as Last World Emperor, 74 as warrior, 340 confessor of, 51 funeral of, 25 image of, 340. See also New Laws Carmelite, 52–3, 233, 328 Casa del Dean, 334 Castile apparitions in, 131, 134, 332 Christian customs in, 39, 150, 200, 232, 260, 289 confraternities in, 290 history of, 3, 26 laws of, 353 on map, 4 ruler of, 26, 220, 293, 357–8 shrines in, 107, 265, 274, 299 tree cult in, 318. See also Salamanca Catalonia, 39, 106, 131, 299, 318 Catechism, 54–5, 58, 71, 112, 246, 269, 282, 305, 307 Catherine of Alexandria, 232, 245, 353, 357

Catherine of Siena, 72, 173, 231–2, 249, 332, 347, 358 Cempoala, 309, 329, 340 Centzonhuitznahua, 299 Chalchiuhtlicue and birth ceremony, 83 and Second Sun, 127 and Virgen de Candelas, 233 and world tree, 317 cult of, 10, 317 domain of, 119, 344, 362–3 feasts for, 23–4, 355–6 home of, 16, 24, 120, 128, 164, 217, 228, 344, 363 image of, 24 relation to other deities: 24–5, 216, 328 served by the dead, 67, 143, 217 shrines to. 172–3 See also Tlaloc Chalma, 26, 107, 135, 137, 236, 240–1, 281, 299 chaos, 129, 324 Chapultepec, 11, 13, 14, 15, 27, 203, 281, 345–6, 362 charity acts of, 31, 170, 181, 227, 271 as idea, 6, 32, 42, 51, 57, 180, 186, 289 in wills, 144, 151, 181 receipt of, 353 Chichimec, 7, 10–12, 85, 92, 163, 166, 168–9, 287, 299, 313, 363 Chicomoztoc, 12, 15, 27, 66, 85, 97, 100, 103–5, 105, 166, 224, 362 Chimalpopoca, 16, 18 chinampas, 10, 27, 44, 344 Cholula and military marketplace, 336–7 churches of, 72, 194, 201, 237, 299 compared to Old World shrines, 204, 237 entrada in, 302 Feathered Serpent shrine of, 10–11, 26–7, 136, 231, 234, 243, 262, 278, 281, 325 history of, 8, 10, 25, 69, 85–6, 166, 169 men for sacrifice, 18, 110 New Fire ceremony in, 300 on map, 7 veintena cycle of, 25, 168. See also Codex Borgia, Feathered Serpent cult Cihuateteo, 12, 27, 90–1, 121, 141, 147, 163, 277, 308, 322, 362 City of God, 31, 246, 255, 338 Coatepec, 15, 224, 263, 278, 303, 313, 337, 362 Coatlicue, 15, 18, 73, 136, 163, 278, 283, 308, 355, 362, 364 cochineal, 197-9, 258–9 Codex Borbonicus, 22, 168–9, 309, 313, 344

Codex Borgia, 22, 25, 168, 254, 276, 300, 302, 313, 316–17, 325, 327 Codex Fejervary-Meyer, 255 Codex Magliabechiano, 94, 143, 157, 174, 184, 313 Codex Mendoza, 83, 94, 169 Codex Mexicanus, 97, 104, 133, 169, 306, 313 Codex Rios, 79, 97, 186, 279 Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 22–3, 102, 120, 325 Colegio de San Gregorio. 270 See also Jesuits Colegio de San Nicolis, 270 Colegio de San Pablo. 261 See also Augustinians Colegio de Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco, 48, 70, 247, 248, 269, 273, 310, 329 Colhuacan, 104, 127, 163, 362 Columbus, Christopher after, 3 and apocalypse, 38–40, 74, 129 and crosses, 131, 318 and demons, 152 and Divine Providence, 168 and Eden, 230 and Esdras, 230 and Franciscans, 36 and gold, 181–2 and Mary, 33–4, 36 and pilgrimage, 34, 36 and slaves, 287 as converso, 253 homage to, 342 naming practice of, 36, 181, 224, 324, 331 voyages of, 20, 31, 36, 51 concubine, 20, 41, 43, 63, 65–6, 208, 210, 346 confession(al) act of, 226, 245 alternative to punishment, 236 Aztec, 241 differences between Orders, 247, 269 manuals, 269, 280, 283, 307, 310–11, 313 native, 222, 347 penance and, 235 pilgrimage and, 238 sins and, 252, 279–80, 282 congregation program, 3, 49, 146, 195, 204, 216, 225, 267 Constantine, 106, 131, 260 Constantinople, 43, 310 Converso, 26, 36, 40, 70, 110, 118, 126, 145, 252–3 Convivencia, 3, 39, 117–18, 209, 221 copal, 20, 54, 113, 148, 158, 180, 196, 234, 276, 299 Coptic, 320

Index Corpus Christi, 30, 92, 110, 170–1, 176, 314 Cortés, Hernan, 360, 74 and crosses, 51, 131–3, 318, 333 and demons, 152 and Franciscans, 51, 74 and hospitals, 67 and Malinche, 334 and native troops, 342 and Santiago, 340 as conquistador, 12, 28, 43–4, 48, 59, 221, 302, 343 as governor, 44–5, 48, 94, 206, 290, 315, 343 as pilgrim, 34, 36, 40 as Moses, 74 as Quetzalcoatl, 18, 73, 332 as slaver, 287 burial place of, 57 censored, 310–11 children of, 47, 49, 70 in Cholula, 132, 169 in native reference, 279, 307 in Tenochtitlan, 93, 216, 250, 263, 297, 313, 332, 345 in Tlaxcala, 131–3, 204, 333 in Veracruz, 132, 143, 181, 329, 343 on map, 44 men traveling with, 50–1, 182, 218, 294, 332, 340 Council of the Indies, 28, 45, 58, 85, 111 Council of Trent and Venus, 326 commemorating, 42, 249 dates of, 41, 43 organization of, 41 on Bible, 229 on celibacy, 108 on concubines, 65 on confraternities, 292 on death, 32, 145, 181 on education, 246–7, 271–2, 311, 313 on sacraments, 208–10 on saints, 136, 194, 214, 281 purpose of, 40–1 results of, 42, 49, 54, 57, 61, 112, 165, 167, 212, 222, 347 Counter Reformation, 31, 49, 188 Coyoacan, 151 Coyolxauhqui, 15, 28, 87, 211, 263–4, 313, 337, 351, 362 cremation/cremains, 100, 143, 143–4, 146, 273 Cristo Aparecido, 135, 137, 281 Cristo de Ixmiquilpan, 135, 137 Crónica Mexicayotl, 15 crucifix adoption of, 134, 190 and arrow sacrifice, 134 and corn, 179 and Santeros, 179, 194, 272

387 as tree, 135, 230 as weapon, 131 bloody, 95 emplanting, 107, 135, 236, 279 in processions, 13, 250 lack of, 307 miraculous, 131, 134–5, 334 place in church, 69. See also crucifixion crucifixion, 33, 38, 93, 131, 134, 211, 218, 278–9, 284, 345. See also crucifixion crusade(r) and apocalypse, 39 and blood purity, 93 and Franciscans, 118, 286 and gold, 182 and indulgences, 31, 238 and just war, 338 and nursing, 352 and relics, 101 and substitutes, 240 and Tunis, 340 as soldier for Christ, 73, 272 First, 73, 293 Iberia and, 238. See also just war Cuauhtinchan, 18, 85–6, 92, 132, 189. See also Mapa de Cuauhtinchan Cuenca, 31, 280, 333 Cuernavaca, 48, 156, 285, 363 Culhua, 15, 28, 76, 337. See also Culhuacan Culhuacan, 13, 15, 27, 55, 157, 233, 362. See also Culhua Day of the Cross, 131, 133 diocese, 29, 48, 54, 55, 186, 193, 246, 249, 264, 352 divination, 21–2, 26, 75–6, 89, 102, 113, 156–9, 157, 177, 185, 187, 202, 235 divine providence, 167, 168 doctrina (place), 49, 51, 53, 55, 57–8, 186, 204, 225, 233, 272–3 doctrina (teaching), 22, 41, 51, 58, 61, 65, 142, 209–10, 216, 268, 283, 311, 313, 347 Dominican, and Cabala, 40 and native practices, 221 and rosary, 33–4, 170 and Virgin de Soledad, 36 arguing slavery, 51, 287 bishops, 334 child evangelists, 109 confraternies, 290–1 education, 4, 268, 311 ethnographies, 312 finances, 29 in Oaxaca, 51–2 inquisition, 54, 238 missions, 52, 266 on Immaculate Conception, 33

symbol, 52 teaching doctrine, 29 texts, 164, 347 women, 53, 53, 333, 352. See also Aquinas, Thomas; Durán, Diego; las Casas, Bartolome de; Montúfar, Alonso; Oaxaca; Vitoria, Francisco de; Oaxaca; Santo Domingo cathedral; Yanhuitlán Durán, Diego books by, 312, 324 on communion, 195 on death practices, 142, 252 on deities, 25, 152, 226, 345 on festivals, 59, 345 on flowers, 176, 227 on idolatry, 195, 308 on native conversion, 59, 195, 308 on sacrifice, 90 on sculpture, 90 on songs, 59 on soothsayers, 334 on thorns, 315. See also Dominican earthquake, 228, 333 Easter, 84, 86, 110–12, 166, 169–70, 205, 227, 251, 304, 314, 348 Eastern Orthodox, 320 eclipse, 79–80, 109, 141, 211, 248, 283, 300, 304, 326 Egypt, 71, 87, 105, 152, 192 El Salvador, 7 encomienda, 45–7, 213, 242, 287 entrada, 12, 45, 47–8, 51, 169, 240–2, 287. See also Alvarado, Juan de; Cortés, Hernan Epiphany, 69, 170, 314 equinox in Anahuac, 11, 21, 27, 80, 102, 168, 203, 254, 264, 304, 355 in New Spain, 170, 305 in Spain, 79, 103, 170, 304 Esdras, book of, 229–30, 323 Eucharist and confraternities, 30, 291 and pilgrimage, 238 bread, 92, 112, 178–9 cope, 328 doctrine of, 30, 49, 92, 110, 189, 277, 320 eligibility for, 54, 111 feast of, 30 gazing at, 99 in art, 193 in New Spain practice, 111, 181, 189, 247 meditation on, 92 miracles, 92, 110 wine, 41, 95, 110, 179. See also Corpus Christi; wine excommunication, 246, 293 exorcism, 83, 151–2, 154

Index

388 Expectation (Marian feast), 169 Extremadura, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 40, 43, 75, 240, 274, 333. See also Guadalupe eye and spiritual power, 164, 174 averting, 98–9, 212 closed, 98, 347 exuding heart feeling, 187, 347 eyebrow, 277 eyelid, 95, 98, 234 eyesight, 99 God’s, 282, 305 heat from, 98, 164 in facades, 106, 267 in hellmouth, 324 in Level 7 of heaven, 123 in Mexica calendar stone, 75, 303 multiple, 123, 300 of clergy, 67, 204, 303 of Mexica deities, 300–1, 303, 344 of Providence, 306 on captives, 348 open, 352 patron saints for, 77, 184, 235 springs from, 202 trees and, 229 uplifted, 347 Feathered Serpent and calendar, 10, 102 and Mexica, 136 and pulque, 159 and pyramids, 262, 263, 278 as wind deity, 262–3 at Chichen Itza, 278 at Teotihuacan, 9, 10, 278 post-Teotihuacan, 27, 102, 237, 262, 325 role in creation, 10 shrines to, 9, 281 symbol of, 75. See also Cholula; Fifth Sun; International style; Quetzalcoatl (deity); Temple of Quetzalcoatl Felipe II and communion, 111 and Gregorian calendar, 103 and Jesuits, 52 and slavery, 286, 288 and Venus, 326 education initiatives of, 52, 298 issuing travel restrictions, 4 on town building, 56 questionnaire of, 49, 206, 265 reign of, 26, 49, 359 relic collection, 259. See also Carlos V; Relaciones Geográficas Fernando II, 3, 26–7, 36, 38–9, 74, 117, 221, 330 Fernando III, 34

Ficino, Marsilio, 81, 295, 358 Fifth Sun and calendar dates, 11, 27 as apocalypticism, 22, 73, 167 celebration of, 18 debt to creators of, 180 human creation in, 92, 97, 177 story of, 8–9, 27, 127–8, 275, 278, 283, 303. See also Feathered Serpent; Fourth Sun; Quetzalcoatl Fiore, Joachim de, 37, 39, 74–5, 332, 357 First Sun, 127, 292 flag, 93, 99, 138, 227. See also banner flagellant, 95, 189–90, 200, 235–6, 250, 272, 290–1, 316, 347 flagellation(ing), 95, 106, 133, 150, 236, 290, 332, 348. See also bloodletting Florentine Codex data collection for, 49, 273, 313 description of conquest in, 340 eating flesh in, 110 illustrations in, 97, 156, 200, 205, 258, 307 native collaborators of, 273 Paynal in, 148, 320 prayers in, 241 sacrifice in, 153. See also Sahagun, Bernardino de Flos Sanctorum, 231, 256, 269, 309. See also martyr, miracle book Fourth Sun, 100, 121, 127–8, 322. See also Fifth Sun Francis, St. and urbanism, 203 as angel of the sixth seal, 39, 75 as imitatio Christi, 149 as patron, 232 character in morality play, 91 hagiographer of, 145 in garden context, 230 robe and belt of, 261, 329 rule of, 58–9, 245 stigmata on, 149, 218 Franciscan, in general and congregation programs, 56, 204 and Cortés, 18, 45, 51 and education, 4, 81, 247–8, 269–70, 298, 311 and landscape, 203, 206 books, 148, 155, 243, 262, 269, 310–12, 314, 333 dance of Christians and Moors, 139 favored Virgins of, 36, 240, 334 in Rio Grande region, 318 in Spain, 245, 266, 289 iconography of, 99, 132, 134, 153, 200–1, 256, 279, 285, 319 Italian, 134 longing for martyrdom, 59, 234, 302

observations of natives by, 154, 168, 206, 221, 308 on sacraments, 54, 58, 84–5, 109, 111, 114–15, 117, 210, 247 opening singing schools, 222 recruitment of, 273, 329 sodalities, 290–1 Franciscan individuals, 36–40, 51, 99, 154, 159, 262, 280, 307, 332. See also Calero, Juan; Columbus, Christopher; Fiore, Joaquin de; Gante, Pedro de; Franciscans in general; Franciscan missions; Franciscan Order; Motolinía; Olmos, Andrés de; Sahagún, Bernadino de; Scotus, John duns; Valencia, Martin de Franciscan missions and monasteries, 51, 57, 59, 165, 198, 218, 225 among Maya, 266 in Mexico City, 90, 266, 290 in Old World, 30, 32, 36, 40, 51, 265 in Puebla state, 51, 132, 201, 253 in Tetzcoco, 51 in Tlaxcala, 51, 154. See also Extremadura; Franciscans in general; Franciscan individuals; Franciscan Order; Rábida Franciscan Order, 29–30, 43, 48–9, 141, 203, 245–6, 280 and Crusades, 118, 286 and Immaculate Conception, 21–33, 96, 112–13, 171, 252–3, 330–1 and stigmata, 33, 92 apocalypticism, 31, 38–40, 52, 60, 74–5, 118, 218, 310 as Guardians of the Holy Land, 238 conflict within, 271 favored saints of, 44, 71–2, 75, 232, 289 knot, 132 natives as ideal Christians, 37, 168, 203 on conversion, 119, 154 on monstrance, 111 on slavery, 286 practice of Rule of, 29, 58, 71, 118, 245, 271, 296 robes, 96–7, 261, 262 Spirituals, 37–40, 74 women, 32, 53. See also Cabala; Franciscans in general; Franciscan individuals; Franciscan missions; poverty Gante, Pedro de, 45, 51, 68, 132, 139, 148, 194, 266–7, 311, 319, 360 Garden of Eden, 60, 123, 128–9, 175, 204, 229–30, 235, 317, 350 Genesis, 5, 76, 81, 128–9, 161, 229, 297, 315, 320, 345

Index Germany, 5–6, 40, 117, 140, 317 Golgotha, 132, 218, 284 Granada, 3, 26, 43, 204, 221 Great Chain of Being, 129–30, 130 Great Schism, 193 Gregorian, 80, 104, 170–1, 221, 345, 355 grotteschi, 152, 153, 154. See also Romano Guadalupe, Virgin. See Virgin Guadalupe Guatemala, 48, 51, 53–5, 59, 119, 160, 205, 340–1 Guerrero (state), 8, 20, 27, 45, 76, 206, 250, 319. See also Taxco Guzman, Dominic de, 33, 72, 231–2, 245, 277, 310, 319, 319, 332, 357 Guzman, Nuño de, 45, 287, 302, 360 Hapsburg, 164, 341 Hebrew, 37, 39, 189, 224, 268, 310. See also Jew Helen, St., 131, 260, 357. See also Santa Elena hell and limbo, 124 and Mary, 324 as residence, 67, 152, 255–6, 323 avoidance of, 227, 296, 350 geography of, 67, 124, 203, 205, 230, 255, 323–4 images of, 67, 323–4 names for, 322 on earth, 168 priests in, 329 required belief in, 6, 86 Tezcatlipoca and, 306 those destined for, 168, 187, 323 witches in, 91. See also hellmouth; most holy earth; purgatory hellmouth, 312, 324 heretic, 93, 110, 118, 193, 293, 295, 323 hermitage, 25, 34, 49, 53, 59, 105, 205, 208 Hieronymite, 28, 30, 36, 40, 51, 253 Hispaniola, 3, 36, 46, 53, 59, 209, 287, 336 Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, 312, 324 Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas, 23, 120 Historia de Tlaxcala, 55–6, 153–4 as Lienzo de Tlaxcala, 302, 334, 343 Historia eclesiastica indiana, 41, 262 Historia natural de la Nueva España, 185–6 Historia Tolteca-chichimeca, 85, 166, 299, 313 Holy Roman Empire. 71 See also Carlos V Honduras, 7, 45, 59, 63, 205, 341

389 Huastec arrow sacrifice, 12, 16, 27, 134, 160, 327 circular pyramids, 262 descendants of the tlamatinime, 309 imitators of, 138, 280, 327 language, 16, 311 men, 92, 134, 280 Nahualpilli cult from, 117 pulque from, 160 Tamoanchan in, 121, 309. See also Ixcuiname, Nahualpilli, Tlazolteotl Huemac, 11, 27, 134, 302, 359 Huexotzinco, 37, 134, 336 Huitzilopochtli and eagle warriors, 17, 163, 337 and elite, 18–19, 119, 125 and Quetzalcoatl, 337 appearance of, 75, 96, 110, 153, 191, 195, 234, 283 as devil, 129, 324 as eagle, 15, 163, 298 as historical figure, 163, 313, 337 as patron of Mexica, 18, 125, 188, 231 as Paynal, 148, 320 as sun, 302–3 as supreme deity, 306 birth of, 90–1 brothers of, 15, 299 Cihuateteo and, 307 death of, 302 dressed like, 328 elimination of cult of, 119, 125–6, 187, 307 feasts for, 23, 25, 169, 171, 175, 188, 234, 251, 264, 337, 355–6, 363 geography of, 136, 254, 322, 324 human sacrifice to, 15, 18, 324 in gendered struggle, 337, 351 mother of, 18, 73, 112, 136, 158, 163, 213, 278, 308, 362 priests of, 15, 243, 280 promotion of, 17–18, 28, 337 pyramids of, 15–16, 121, 263, 278, 337 sacred bundle of, 16, 100, 241, 275, 277 sister of, 15, 87, 211, 362 spread of cult, 25, 352 teixiptla of, 28, 110, 148, 320, 16, 25, 147, 157–8, 164, 264, 306, 332 warriors serving, 88 wife of, 28 Huitznahua, 136, 243, 313 hurricane, 278 ihiyotl (soul), 97, 100, 294–5 Immaculate Child, 331

Immaculate Conception and Franciscans, 6, 33, 112–13, 171, 245 Anne and, 91, 214 as patron, 113, 253 as saddle virgin, 331 confraternity for, 57, 253, 272 cult of, 2 debate over, 112, 330 feast of, 32, 169, 171 hospital of, 57 imagery of, 33, 96, 211, 253, 301, 318, 326, 330–1 in Virgil’s verse, 326 purity of, 32, 214, 252–3 sermon about, 318 indulgence earned by confraternity, 68, 291 earned indirectly, 235 exploitation of, 38 given for pilgrimage, confession, crusade, art, Vespers, 31, 74, 114, 142, 193, 238, 240 given in New Spain, 68, 240, 283 support for, 42 to aid oneself after death, 31–2, 41, 67–8, 146, 291 to aid the dead, 31–2, 67–8, 271, 291 inherit an occupation, 289 by a community, 309 by farmers, 19 by ruler, 126, 159 by women, 65, 175, 351 from Adam and Eve, 32 Inquisition and patronage, 232 and texts, 58, 311 concerns of, 6, 26, 118, 280, 295, 311, 333, 345, 349 in New Spain, 45, 48–9, 54, 61–2, 137, 145, 148, 236, 277, 302, 310–11, 350 in Rome, 41 in Spain, 4, 43, 118, 158, 212, 245, 280, 295, 333 punishments by, 238 records of, 310, 352 rendered unnecessary in New Spain, 116, 196 inquisitor, 4, 54, 112, 196, 238 International style, 3, 10. See also Feathered Serpent Isabella I, Queen, 3, 26–7, 33, 36, 117, 159, 208–9, 221, 230, 302, 330, 358 Islam(ic), 3, 29, 73, 80, 145, 159, 173, 220, 293, 320, 338 Italy, 40, 103, 139, 153, 218, 231, 238, 258, 261 Itzcoatl, 16, 18, 20, 359

Index

390 Itzpapalotl and Catholics, 126 and Mixcoatl, 7, 27, 75, 275, 301, 348 as butterfly, 197, 362 as stone, 76 in gendered struggle, 351 in Tamoanchan, 121, 228 leader of Mexica, 100 leader of Tzitzimimeh, 364 name, 80, 362 sacred bundle of, 275, 348 Ixcuina. See arrow; Ixcuiname; Tlazolteotl Ixcuiname, 12, 27, 75, 134, 137. See also Huastec Izcalli, 24, 100, 160, 171, 356 Jerome, St., 35, 151, 155, 218, 284–5, 315, 332. See also Hieronymite MARTYR? Jerusalem Cholula as, 237 Christians in, 36–7, 73, 269 conquest of, 37–9, 73–4, 118, 332–3, 338–9 famine in, 198 in art, 205 location of, 164–5, 255, 324 New, 36, 39 plays about, 314 Puebla as, 168, 205 recreation of, 168, 205–6, 267, 334 Sicily and, 28 Spain and, 37–9, 74 Tenochtitlan and, 3 Jesse tree, 318–19, 319 Jesuit and education, 22, 270, 290 and relics, 259–61 and saints, 233 and tears, 347 history, 41, 49, 52, 273 ideas, 59, 111, 164–5, 203–4, 279 individuals, 40, 81, 189, 285. See also Acosta, José Jew(ish) ancestors, 70 and Aquarius, 79 and black death, 131 and divorce, 159 and Franciscans, 118 and host, 110 and morning star, 326 and Satan, 151 and sodomy, 293 and the trinity, 320 apocalypticism, 73 as converts 83, 93, 108, 117–18, 221 as doctors, 282 as doe, 147 contamination by, 168 cosmology, 124

covenant with God, 126, 214, 255 expulsion of, 3, 26, 43, 74, 118 in Contigas, 220–1 in New World, 54, 253 interaction with Muslims, 80 natives as, 94 texts, 36, 39–40 threat of, 118–19 to hell, 31, 323 traditions, 71, 179, 320. See also Cabala; Converso; convivencia; limpieza de sangre; Old Testament Joaquin, St., 91, 113, 214, 232–3, 251, 289, 331 John the Baptist and Tlaloc, 233 as patron, 231–2, 265 as Venus, 326 as visionary, 332 baptizing Jesus, 83–4, 84, 345 confession to, 116 confraternity of, 290 feast of, 185, 233, 304, 314 head of, 284–5 in sheol, 323. See also martyr Junta Eclesiástica, 48, 53–4, 140 just war, 286–7, 338, 341 La Antigua in Spain, 34 Veracruz, 34, 34 La Florida, 4, 52, 119, 329 Landa, Diego de, 119, 310, 360 las Casas, Bartolome de arguing slavery, 287–8, 341 as author, 79, 99, 168, 178, 213, 301–2 as bishop, 48, 54, 360 as priest, 46, 51. See also Dominican Last World Emperor, 38–40, 74, 218 Lateran Council First, 43 Fourth, 38, 43, 92, 107, 114, 128, 151, 208, 295 Third, 293 Laws of Burgos, 43, 46, 51, 55, 58, 109 Lent, 95, 115–16, 166, 169, 250, 291, 328 Lepanto, 49, 212, 340 lightning, 67, 76, 123, 143, 164, 183, 217, 228, 243, 252, 344, 363 Limpieza de sangre, 70, 93, 118, 253, 343. See also Jew Litany of Loredo, 326 Luther, Martin, 38, 40–1, 43, 167, 240, 245–6, 271, 296, 310, 359 Malinalco, 12, 15, 19, 20, 28, 176 Malinche, 334 Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2, 86, 166, 236, 248, 275. See also Cuauhtinchan

Mardi Gras, 169 market and La Llorona, 156 and women, 22, 44, 148, 340, 351 as constellation Scorpio, 299–300 as unifier, 289 closing, 141 currency, 181 deceptive practices in, 116 European, 101, 169, 198 military, 336 Olmec, 7 products, 26, 88, 198 Puebla, 198 slave, 247, 286–7 Tenochtitlan, 45, 88, 249 Tlatelolco, 44–5, 340. See also trader Martin of Tours, St., 232, 284 martyr(dom) and direction south, 256 and guilds, 289 arrows and, 76 as advocate, 231 blood, 92, 95, 258, 328 celebrating, 139 from Japan, 50 head of, 284–5 in New Spain, 48, 67, 146, 159, 262, 285, 329 in Old World, 175, 187, 189, 193, 232 potential to be, 59, 149, 302 Protestant, 41 relics of, 101, 183, 259, 284 virgin, 330–1. See also Calero, Juan; Flos Sanctorum; imitatio Christi; miracle book Maya(n) and arrow sacrifice, 75 and Catholic burial, 146 and Christian texts, 57–8, 313 and Dominicans, 51 and Franciscan friar, 51 and Genesis, 129 and Inquisition, 302 and Landa, 310 and Lucifer, 326 and Mercedarians, 53 and Olmecs, 8, 27 and trees, 133, 254, 283, 317 and volcanos, 217 as slaves, 287 astronomy, 79 calendar, 27, 102, 128 churches, 69, 146, 266 city, 11, 233 codices, 325, 349 confession, 114 deities, 172, 254, 257, 278, 294 glyphs, 344 idols, 119, 233 modern rituals, 298 on map, 7

Index ritual specialists, 157, 241 wills, 233 Mayahuel, 16, 19, 100, 160, 162, 213, 216, 278, 362 Mecca, 237 Mendieta, Gerónimo de, 360 acts of, 59 observations of natives, 131, 133, 139, 146, 159, 275, 306, 329 on discovery of New World, 74 on Juan Calero, 262 protecting natives, 71 suppression of writings by, 310 Mendoza, Antonio de, 46, 94, 185, 204, 287, 310, 342–3, 360 Mexican Church Provincial Council First, 49, 54, 85, 140, 158, 170, 195, 221, 247, 270, 292 Third, 49, 54, 109, 195, 222, 292, 301, 329 Second, 54, 270 Michoacán bishop of, 48, 55, 205 butterflies in, 198 dances in, 140 diocese of, 48, 54–5, 55 entradas into, 48, 59 Immaculate Conception church in, 253 Jesse trees in, 319 music, 221 santeros in, 194. See also Purépecha; Quiroga, Vasco de; Santa Fe de Laguna Mictlan as night, 140 bones retrieved from, 97, 100, 121, 127 Christian depiction of, 324 contents of, 174, 284, 322 forces of, 125, 322 geography of, 66, 322 journey to, 66, 144, 226 native depiction of, 66, 315, 322–3. See also El Zapotal; Mictlantecuhtli; most holy earth Mictlantecuhtli, 92, 121, 174, 192, 322–3, 323, 351, 363 midwife(ves) and mother’s corpse, 143 and religious experience, 22, 183 and tonalpohualli, 22, 77, 112, 156, 167 as doctors, 90, 172, 183, 215, 349 as witches, 91, 349 birth ceremony, 83, 91, 167, 348 in Europe, 349 Toci as, 183 women as, 351 Miguel, St. (archangel) and Franciscans, 71, 74 as patron, 72, 74, 96, 206, 225, 231, 291

391 European shrine to, 218 feast for, 304 image of, 71–2, 96, 153 in death ritual, 144, 242 popularity of, 71 story of, 71 miracle books, 310 mitote, 90, 138–9, 363 Mixcoatl and centzonmimixcoa, 299 and gendered conflict, 163, 351 and Itzpapalotl, 7, 75, 275, 301, 348, 362 and Tezcatlipoca, 363 as patron, 15, 231 cult of, 7, 16, 18 domain of, 278 feasts of, 75, 147, 233, 248, 355–6, 363 sacred bundle of, 16, 100, 275, 348 stars and, 299–301, 363. See also Itzpapalotl Mixtec(as), and missionaries, 51, 57, 311 arrow sacrifice, 77 as entrada participants, 342 burial practices, 107 calendar, 21 codices, 2, 90, 127, 313, 327 deities, 172, 294, 307 language, 57, 92, 213, 311 moieties, 19 on map, 20 origin of, 104, 127, 316 priests, 107, 277 sacred bundles, 104, 275, 277, 327 towns, 10 xicolli jackets, 256. See also Codex Borgia; Codex Nuttall Mixton War, 48, 159, 302, 334, 343 Molina, Alonso de, 99, 116, 146, 269, 307, 311, 338, 360 Monarquia Hispanica, 26 monstrance, 69, 111, 249, 276–7, 304 Montserrat, 32, 105, 218, 220, 240, 333 Montúfar, Alonso, 49, 54, 59, 116, 360 More, Thomas, 205, 246 Morisco, 26, 70, 110, 118, 126, 145, 252 Morning glory, 110, 177, 185–6 Morning Star, and warfare, 325–6 as Quetzalcoatl, 11, 325–6 as Venus phase, 325 in European thought, 211, 326 location in cosmos, 120, 164 names of, 308, 326 role in daily birth of Sun, 121, 304 Morocco, 221 Most Holy Earth and feet, 97, 172 and ihiyotl soul, 97 and nahualli, 121 cave passages through, 104, 273

description of, 66, 120–1, 127, 315, 322 gifts from, 90, 127, 171, 278 in Catholic treatment, 125, 324 in trinity, 320 Mictlan in, 66, 121, 127, 315, 322, 363 nightly passage of sun through, 121 overhead, 322 residents of, 121, 127, 322. See also Mictlan; Mictlantecuhtli Moteuczoma I Ihuilcamina, 17–18, 20, 158, 317, 330, 336, 359 Moteuczoma II Xocoyotzin acts of, 20, 21, 289 and Cortés, 20, 181, 297 and dance, 138–40 and omens, 158, 332 aviary of, 90 child of, 154 description of, 20, 77, 360 garden of, 133, 319 invitations by, 337 relatives of, 109 wives of, 208 zoo of, 348 Motolinía (Toribio de Benavente) and Cholula, 204 and confession, 115–16 and confirmation, 271 and Puebla, 72 as author, 310, 312 at Colegio de Santa Cruz, 270 on Epiphany, 170 on native flagellants, 250 on native practices, 76, 144, 152, 161, 177, 191, 223, 315 reporting on Cortés, 216. See also Franciscan individuals Mt. Tlaloc, 23, 26, 164, 202, 216, 217, 229, 248, 263, 281, 327 Muñoz Camargo, Diego, 63, 72, 153, 234, 361 mural at Cacaxtla, 100 at Teotihuacan, 71, 197, 229 by native artists, 132, 272 cycle, 137 of Immaculate Conception, 253, 326 with flagellants, 291 Muslim ancestor, 70 and birds, 158 and divorce, 159 and Franciscans, 118 and hell, 31, 323 and homosexuality, 293 and Jerusalem, 39, 338 and Mecca, 237 blood of, 93 burial practices, 118 contamination by, 93, 168

Index

392 Muslim (cont.) conversion of, 83, 108, 117–18 cosmology, 124 doctors, 185 hiding relics from, 260 in Iberia, 3, 40, 43, 71, 73–4, 80, 268, 286, 298, 338–9 in music, 220–1 on the Trinity, 320 victories against, 21, 26, 212. See also Convivencia, Islam; Jew; Lepanto; Moriscos mystic(ism), 33, 189, 193, 214, 228, 293 nahualistas, 101, 226 nahuallatolli, 241 nahualli, 15–16, 107, 121, 151, 349, 363 nativity, 166, 169–70, 221 Church of, 105–6, 106 natural law, 5, 288 natural marriage, 209 Navarra, 3, 26 neophyte, 59, 63, 71, 83–4, 108–9, 207, 236, 246, 272 neoplatonic(ism), 81, 295–6 New Laws, 47–8, 287 New Testament, 65, 161, 167, 231, 256, 267, 322 Nezahualcóyotl, 18, 172, 175, 298, 302, 336, 359 Nezahualpilli, 77, 292, 302, 360 Night Watch rite, 140 North star, 81, 299 Oaxaca Achiutla, 316 and cochineal, 197, 199 and earthquakes, 333 bishop of, 46 confraternities in, 290–1 dances in, 314, 343 diocese of, 48, 54–5 Dominicans in, 51–2, 52, 236 elite in, 342 entradas into, 48, 59 Hapsburg eagle in, 164 Huatulco, 131–2 inquisition in, 277 Jesuits in, 270 maize in, 27 marriages with natives from, 352 messenger service to, 342 nuns arrive to, 53, 53 patron saints of, 76, 253 pulque in, 160 Santa Maria Tule, 174, 319 Santo Domingo Cathedral, 319, 339 Teotitlan del Camino, 25 Teposcolula, 266 Topiltepec, 77, 134. See also Antequera; Juaquila; virgin;

Mixtec; Monte Alban; Villa Alta; Zapotec Ocelotl, Martin, 332 Ochpaniztli, 20, 76, 113, 138, 169, 337, 348, 351, 355. See also Coatlicue; Tlazolteotl; Toci Old Testament altars, 69 and divine births, 112 and Gemini, 79 and marriage, 208 and sacrifice, 92, 189 angels in, 151 covenant in, 126 demons, 151 God as mother in, 214 hangings in, 317 people in, 192 rainbow in, 76 sin as red, 258 time divisions, 141 use in Christianity, 39, 192 visions in, 332 ollin, 10, 300 Olmec, 7–8, 88, 94, 102, 168, 187, 254, 277–8 Olmedo, Bartolomé de, 50–1, 294, 360 Olmos, Andrés de, 148, 155–6, 213, 234, 269, 311, 314, 350, 360 Ometeotl, 89, 305, 363 Omeyocan, 21, 120, 174, 323 open chapel, 106, 132, 265–6, 266, 314 original sin and baptism, 83, 252, 282, 345 and skulls, 284 Aquinas on, 67 as tenant of Catholicism, 6, 85 conveyed through Adam, 330 free from, 23–33, 42, 252, 280, 282, 330 Mary vanquishing, 279 perpetual burden of, 129 similar to native belief, 85 sins beyond, 154. See also Garden of Eden Otomi and Augustinians, 52, 111, 115, 164, 311 and sex, 280 beliefs, 1, 252, 305, 316, 325 feasts, 25, 168 history of, 12, 27, 45, 60, 163 language, 57, 115 patron of, 231, 362 texts, 309, 311 veintena cycle, 168 Palm Sunday, 69 Panquetzaliztli as Mexica elaboration, 25, 169 effigy of Huitzilopochtli in, 191 heart extrusion during, 188

Mexica entered Basin during, 169 mountaintop altars for, 68 processions during, 247, 251, 356 pulque drinking during, 160 reenactment during, 313 remake of Quetzalcoatl’s history, 18, 25, 337 reopening of Templo Mayor during, 264 serpent dance during, 138 slaves vs. warriors in, 96 warrior race during, 348 Papal bulls. See individual Bulls parish priest and landscape, 204 and rural shrines, 216 and saints, 126 charged with Christian education, 266 control of laity, 57, 238 recruiting crusaders, 27 reform of, 40 responsible for masses for the dead, 32 seeking large households, 247 supported by laity, 29, 59 Peru, 132, 333, 343 Philippines, 28, 135, 194, 198, 204, 246, 287, 341 pilgrim and poverty, 238 and relics, 181, 259–60, 274, 276 at Teotihuacan, 10 decline of, 240 European, 181, 193, 221, 238–9, 273 generosity of, 181–2 housing for, 291 in New Spain, 106, 132, 135, 185, 240 to Holy Land, 238 to Quetzalcoatl shrines, 237 to springs/wells, 237 to Tepeyac, 236 to Tepoztlan, 26 women as, 351 Pleiades, 21, 26, 80, 300 polygamy, 208–10 poor, the and burial, 145 and confraternities, 291 and pilgrimage, 237–8 as mourners, 145, 180 exploitation of, 109 in Indian prayers, 241 Indians as naturally, 38 mendicant, 39 offerings by, 90, 226 receiving alms, 31, 170–1, 180–1, 238 saints day feast gifts to, 170–1 women, 353. See also poverty Poor Clares, 53 Pope Gregory the Great, 110, 117, 317 Pope Gregory IX, 169

Index Pope Gregory XII, 103 Pope Gregory XIII, 34, 103 Pope Leon X, 246 Pope Paul III, 41, 111, 210 Portugal, 3, 26, 28, 93, 99, 103, 232, 239, 260, 286, 288, 358 poverty and knots, 200 attestation of, 119, 144 of mendicants, 29, 37–8, 58, 150, 180, 245–6, 271, 320 of natives, 170, 173 See also poor predestination, 167 Presentation, of Mary, 169, 171 primitive church, 37, 49, 60, 267 Protestant and cochineal, 259 and inquisition, 54 and Joachimite ideas, 38 Catholic reaction to, 112, 170, 289 churches in Spain, 4, 41 defeat of, 249 iconoclasm of, 3–4, 41, 193–4, 277 impact on Catholic recruitment, 273 martyrs, 41 reforms advocated by, 3, 32, 41, 125, 145, 168, 240, 305 souls lost to, 296 symbolized with snakes, 279 theology, 306, 168 travel restrictions on, 4. See also Calvin, John; Council of Trent; Counter Reformation; Luther, Martin Psalmodia Christiana, 89, 176, 221–2, 230, 311, 318, 326. See also Sahagún, Bernardino de Puebla (city) and Jerusalem, 72, 168, 205, 299, 334 confraternities in, 111 convents in, 53 diocese seat in, 54 Immaculate Conception church in, 253 Jesuits school in, 270 market in, 198, 259 processions in, 250 road through, 205 slaves in, 288. See also Casa del Dean Puebla (state) codices from, 323 entrada through, 48, 132 monasteries in, 51, 75, 164, 285 Nahuas today in, 321 Nonoalca in, 11 region, 197, 259, 271. See also Cholula; Cuauhtinchan; Huexotzinco; Mixtec Pulque and drunkenness, 161 and fertility, 172, 213

393 and honey, 86 and Virgin Mary, 162, 216 and women, 280 as cold food, 177 as offering, 177, 217, 226 cochineal money spent on, 199 cults of, 10, 28, 100, 159, 300, 316 gift of, 278 gods of, 160, 217, 244, 280, 327, 363 in baptism, 83 in Colonial era, 161, 179 in veintenas, 160 makers of, 136 origin of, 160. See also Feathered Serpent cult; Mayahuel Purépecha, 87, 111, 208, 282, 342 pyramid accoutrements, 18, 68, 175, 217, 219, 248, 263–4, 299 appearance of, 8, 9 as mountains, 205, 216–17, 278 as snakes, 10, 278 building as religious labor, 56, 271–2 circular, 17, 19, 262, 278, 325 climbing, 160, 337 destruction of, 205, 274 double/twin, 12, 16, 17, 28, 107, 121, 247–8, 263, 344 history of, 6–7, 10, 12, 15 in codices, 267 locations for, 264 over artificial caves, 104, 107, 187 stepped, 10, 17, 248, 262–3, 278, 325. See also Cholula; Templo Mayor;Teotihuacan Quauhtemoc, 2, 28, 44–5, 157, 163, 250, 360 Quecholli, 25, 88, 100, 168–9, 171, 356, 363 Quetzalcoatl (deity) and deer, 147 and maize, 22, 104, 228 and nahuallis, 16, 349 as creator, 9, 23, 92, 97, 100, 127, 172, 202, 223, 278, 344, 362–3 as lord of stars, 300 as morning star, 325–6 as patron, 231 as sweeper of roads, 308 as Venus, 325 as wind deity, 17, 17, 19, 127–8, 262 association with Tlaloc, 10 birth of, 11, 18 conflict with Tezcatlipoca cult, 11 emerging from watery depths, 9, 344 family of, 16, 112, 127, 156, 278, 308, 362 feasts celebrating, 25, 355 home of, 121, 254 image of, 9

in 16th century, 18, 279 in Mictlan, 100, 121, 127, 228, 322 in Teotihuacan, 278 Mexica integration of, 126 priests of, 228, 243, 280 rites in cult of, 19, 25, 89, 110, 132, 280 sacred bundle of, 10, 275. See also Cholula; ortés;Feathered Serpent; Fifth Sun; morning star; Panquetzaliztli; pilgrim; pulque; Quetzalcoatl (person); Temple of Quetzalcoatl; Xolotl (deity) Quetzalcoatl (person) as albino, 348 as cult priest, 11, 12 bringer of cross, 132, 134, 327 disappearing to the east, 302 penance by, 12, 234 return of, 73, 158 Toltec leader, 359, 363. See also Huemac; Quetzalcoatl (deity); Toltec Quiroga, Vasco de, 48, 53, 57, 205, 289, 360 Rábida monastery, 33, 36 reconquest of Iberia, 34, 43, 118, 159, 252, 260, 286, 339 of Jerusalem, 38–9, 339 of Mexico, 139 reducciones, 53 Reformation, 72, 108, 111, 188, 193, 260 Relacion de Michoacán, 168 Relaciones Geográficas in Mexico, 206 in Spain, 260, 265 Renaissance, 73, 192, 246 repartimiento, 47, 209, 287 república de los Indios, 205, 289 Revelation, book of, 36–7, 39–40, 73, 92, 129, 163, 211, 228, 258, 304, 323, 326, 332 Roa, Antonio de, 106, 135, 137, 150, 236, 262, 360. See also Augustinians Roch, St., 232 Roman(s) and Venus, 326 banner, 164 Bible book of, 167 Catholic, 4, 6, 29, 31, 40, 67, 165, 193, 279, 320 customs of, 213, 255 day count, 103 Empire, 185 encampment model, 256 guilds, 289 images of, 192 patronage system, 231

Index

394 Roman(s) (cont.) philosophers, 288, 323, 326 sibyls, 332 times, 152. See also Holy Roman Empire Romances de los señores de la Nueva España, 221–2, 297 Romano, 152, 154 Rome, 29, 37–8, 40–1, 44, 47, 57, 73–4, 126, 239, 270 Anahuac cities compared to, 3, 204 and relics, 260, 284 Basilica in, 38 ritual of, 196 sack of, 40, 73, 117 rosary confraternity, 34, 68, 170, 289, 291 Feast of, 34 history of, 33, 200, 242, 332 in images of Mary, 75 in use, 158, 242, 250 Order of, 53. See also Guzman, Dominic de Sahagún, Bernardino de, 49, 65, 99, 119, 269, 312, 320, 329, 346, 352, 360 and conversion, 60, 298 and Florentine Codex, 273, 276, 310 and informants, 85, 150, 273 and homosexuality, 294 and natives, 87, 187, 282, 329 and offerings, 155, 171, 176, 227 and prayer, 113, 161, 196 and sacrifice, 189 and teotl, 150 and women, 194 on Golgotha, 284 on idolatry, 196 on the Devil, 152, 155–6, 189. See also Florentine Codex; Psalmodia Christiana Salamanca (university and city), 4, 40, 85, 119, 124, 245–6, 268, 287–8, 295, 338, 341. See also Castile San José de los Naturales, 45, 48, 50, 132, 194, 249, 250, 266, 290, 314 Santa Catalina de Siena, 53, 72, 249 Santa Elena, Florida, 152, 178 Santa Fe de la Laguna. 205 See also utopia santero, 194, 272 Santiago, St., 44, 81, 96, 106, 307 and dance of the Christians and Moors, 138–9, 343 apparitions of, 334, 343 as Matamoros, 339 as patron, 225, 231, 264, 265, 308, 339, 340–1 hand of (relic), 184

Liber Sancti Jacobi, 184, 310 Order of, 339, 343 with Christ, 339 with natives, 339 with Virgin Mary, 221, 334. See also Colegio Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco Santiago de Compostela and pilgrimage, 184, 221, 238–9, 239, 339–40 Codex Calixtinus, 220 monastery of, 218, 219 Pico Sacro, 219 Santo Domingo (Caribbean), 209 Santo Domingo Cathedral, Mexico City, 51, 261 Santo Domingo Cathedral, Oaxaca, 52, 319, 339 Santo Domingo, Sor Maria de, 38, 74, 158, 333, 359 Savonarola, Girolamo, 79, 109, 310, 358 Scotus, John Duns, 114, 358 seculars, 29, 50, 55, 126, 215, 240, 242, 246, 280 conflict with Orders, 56, 58–9, 115, 145, 227, 246 support of, 145, 227 training of, 245, 247, 268, 298 Sepúlveda, Juan, 287–8 Seville, 131, 206, 215, 259, 286, 290 Columbus and, 35, 287 Mosque in, 4, 34 Siege of, 32. See also Virgin Antigua shell, 20, 87, 98, 172, 172, 180, 220, 226, 228, 295, 300, 322, 327 shrine keeper, 107, 310 Sicily, 28, 84, 256 Siete Partidas, 31, 45, 65–6, 159, 208, 302, 353 slave/slavery, 3, 5, 10, 59, 63, 96, 138, 209, 251, 285–7, 313 African, 48, 288, 292, 302, 334 and encomiendas, 47, 51, 213 and New Laws, 47–8 as sacrifice, 247, 256, 327, 337, 351 as teixiptla, 149, 251 sodality participation by, 272. See also Sublimis Deus Solomon, 40, 197, 267 Song of Solomon, 211, 221 St. Augustine, Florida, 52 star, 75, 77, 80, 94, 120, 128, 278, 299–301, 351, 364 and Virgin of Guadalupe, 331 evening star, 141 north star, 81, 299. See also Morning Star; Venus stigmata, 33, 39, 71, 75, 92, 149, 166, 218, 332 Sublimis Deus 47–8

Summa Theologiae, 65, 67, 152, 292. See also Aquinas, Thomas sustenance mountain, 9, 10, 23, 216, 217, 228 Talmud, 39 Tamoanchan, 8, 22, 90, 129, 174, 309, 363, 364 and cave, 104, 127 as garden paradise, 121, 151, 175, 228–30 with crosses, 133. See also Huastec; Itzpapalotl; paradise Tarascans, 7, 19, 110, 111, 116, 135, 163, 168 tax, 49, 161, 268, 272, 292 collection, 103, 109 labor, 19, 272. See also tribute Taxco, Guerrero, 20, 45, 76, 133, 250 teixiptla, 15, 75, 87, 136, 147, 150, 194, 259, 274, 317, 363 and tonalli, 191 effigies, 191, 320 embodiment, 7, 327 of Huitzilopochtli, 148, 247, 320 of Tezcatlipoca, 23, 98, 110, 148–9 preparation of, 220, 243, 244 priests as, 243 sacrifice of, 24, 94, 110, 149, 355 sacred bundle of, 16, 276, 276 Temple of Quetzalcoatl, 9, 9, 104, 278, 325, 344 Templo Mayor, 16, 17, 17, 28, 44, 94, 164, 263, 281, 344 and House of Eagles, 28, 92, 264 and Huitzilopochtli, 23, 96, 191, 241, 278 and Noche Triste, 216 and Tlaloc, 96, 172, 316 double pyramid shape, 17 offerings left in, 87, 172, 226 priests and, 138, 243 processions to and from, 247–8 serpent imagery of, 278, 279 skulls and, 283 tlatoani and, 281 warriors and, 348 Tenochtitlan, 1, 12, 14, 17, 249, 284, 285, 342, 362, 363 ceremonial life in, 2, 11, 25–6, 92, 136, 139, 142, 147, 236, 242–3, 300, 316 Cortés in, 45, 93, 263, 294, 318, 333, 343, 345 destruction of, 39, 43–4, 47, 48, 240, 319, 334, 341 diocese of, 54 Domincan mission, 51 festivals, feasts, prequauhtemoc, 26, 271, 337, 355

Index festivals, feasts, postquauhtemoc, 170–1, 187 founding of, 13, 16, 28, 258, 344–5 Franciscan mission in, 36, 51 Jesuits in, 164, 270 missionaries to, 63–4 Moteuczoma I and, 158 Moteuczoma II and, 20–1, 319 omens regarding, 18, 332–3 Quauhtemoc and, 163 on map, 7, 13, 14, 20, 44, 50 prequauhtemoc daily life, 19–20, 25, 88, 136, 141, 147, 164, 304, 328, 346 processions in, 247, 249, 251, 277, 281 relics in, 261 sacrifice in, 188–9 twin pyramids, 121, 263, 299 urban plan prequauhtemoc, 17, 19, 286, 344–5 urban plan postquauhtemoc, 44, 47. See also Templo Mayor; Tlatelolco Teotihuacan, 7, 8, 9, 25, 27, 80, 129, 173, 217, 251, 285, 363 and Venus, 8, 264 cave construction at, 104, 107 as ceremonial center, 8–12 feathered serpent cult at, 9, 262, 278, 325 Moteuczoma I’s modifications to, 18 Moteuczoma II at, 20 murals at, 71, 197, 229 pyramid of the moon in, 8, 104, 216, 217 pyramid of the sun in, 8, 18, 127, 187, 217, 344 role in creation of Fifth Sun, 211, 302. See also Temple of Quetzalcoatl teotl, 61, 97, 103, 121, 150, 174, 264, 275, 306, 363 aspects of, 21, 23, 77, 307 with teixiptla, 21, 23, 148–9, 191, 273, 320, 363 Tepaneca, 12, 15–18, 28, 47, 313, 336, 337 Tepeaca, 18, 92, 138 Tepeyac, 26, 140, 236, 299, 300, 332, 336 and the Virgin Mary, 36, 48, 240 Tepotzotlán, 52 Tepoztlán, 19, 26, 28, 72, 135, 160, 270, 285 Tetzcoco, 12, 13, 16, 17, 28, 48, 194, 210, 236, 263, 341 friars and, 51, 114, 269 sacred bundles in, 100, 277 Tezcatlipoca and, 231. See also Nezahualcóyotl; Nezahualpilli

395 Tlacaelel, 17–18, 70, 188, 297, 309, 336, 359 Tlacaxipehualiztli, 20, 102, 104, 138, 149, 171, 283, 337, 348, 355 Tlaloc, 24, 60, 72, 96, 119, 127, 233, 241, 321, 355–6, 363 and celestial water, 23, 345, 362 and Huitzilopochtli, 15, 16, 121 and mountains, 17, 23, 26, 164, 202, 216, 229, 236 as creator god, 23 at Teotihuacan, 9–10, 24 caves and, 104, 127, 267 cultic practices, 24, 137, 140, 142, 172, 177, 188, 248, 344 in Tlalocan, 67, 104, 120, 127, 143, 229 offerings to, 24, 104, 108, 172, 179, 188, 330 roads of, 219 Templo Mayor and, 96, 121, 263–4, 316. See also Chalchiuhtlicue; Tlalocan; Tlaloque Tlalocan, 23, 66–7, 107, 140, 174, 202, 228, 251, 344, 363 as cave, 104, 127 home of Chalchiuhtlicue, 24, 143 in Teotihuacan mural, 71, 197, 229 location in cosmos, 120 Nezahualcóyotl and, 175. See also Mt. Tlaloc; paradise; Tlaloc Tlaloque, 23, 67, 72, 89, 143, 147, 217, 229, 344, 356, 363 Tlatelolco, 12, 14, 19, 28, 44, 46, 49, 263, 313, 342 Annals of, 340 double pyramid at, 16, 247, 248 warriors of, 340. See also Colegio de Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco tlatoani, 20, 28, 55, 63, 141, 150, 220, 362, 364 as priest, 243 as teixiptla, 23, 148 attire of, 96, 283 Axayacatl, 19, 336 duties of, 16–17, 248, 281, 346 election of, 336 family of, 65, 137, 208 mortuary bundle of, 143 prequauhtemoc, 22, 81. See also Ahuitzotl; Itzcoatl; Moteuczoma I; Moteuczoma II; Nezahualcóyotl; Nezahualpilli; Quauhtemoc Tlaxcala, 12, 20, 23, 25, 48, 55, 56, 87, 154, 208, 233 as Garden of Eden, 204, 230 Christian neophytes of, 63 cochineal production in, 198, 259 codices, 302, 313, 325

Cortés in, 132–3, 204, 218, 233 diocese of, 53, 54 Domincans and, 210 festivals in, 176, 218, 314 Franciscans and, 51, 56, 119, 137, 154, 269 Julián Garcés of, 51, 210, 359 Lords of, 236, 331, 333 Mixcoatl patron of, 231 sodalities in, 253, 291 Tezcatlipoca’s arrows in, 75 town center, 56 tribute from, 46 warriors of, 55, 340, 341, 342 Tlaxcalteca, 12, 49, 64, 161, 204, 254, 341, 342 Tlazolteotl, 113, 117, 136, 183, 184, 230, 283, 351, 364 and sex, 137, 280 as earth goddess, 88, 316 cult of, 16, 137, 160 feasts for, 355 filth and, 181, 282, 308. See also Huastec; Ixcuiname; Ochpaniztli; Xochiquetzal Tolentino, Nicolas, St., 67, 225, 232, 324 Toltec, 11–12, 16–18, 28, 73, 96, 134, 208, 234, 248, 259, 363 calendar, 11, 27, 102 deities of, 16, 18, 121, 305 ruler’s suicide, 302. See also Huemac, Quetzalcoatl (person); Tula tonalli, 89, 97, 223, 283, 294–6, 304, 307, 320, 364 connection with heat, 92, 177, 295, 330 Tonalpoualli, 19, 21, 22, 77, 79, 102, 140–1, 156, 167, 171, 364 Tonan(tzin), 25, 48, 60, 147, 214, 236, 240, 353, 356 Torquemada, Juan de, 146, 309, 361, 363 Totonac, 3, 48, 114, 135, 143, 172, 259, 262, 285, 311 trader, 10, 11, 138, 188, 247, 270, 308, 337, 348 Tree of sustenance, 67, 316 tribute Augustine and, 337 prequauhtemoc, 2, 10, 26, 136, 188, 202, 208, 271, 337, 362 and formation of the Triple Alliance, 16–17 blood as, 92 clothing as, 328 collection of, 19–20, 169 colonial, 29, 45–7, 48, 49, 94, 205, 310, 342 Tula, 7, 11–12, 15, 18, 27, 73, 197, 264, 281, 290, 313, 337 architecture of, 237, 325

Index

396 Tula, (cont.) collapse of, 103, 348. See also Huemac; Quetzalcoatl (human); Toltec Tzitzimimeh, 66, 73, 121, 283, 295, 300, 304, 332, 364 See also Chalchiuhtlicue; Itzpapalotl urban(ization), 3, 362 colonial, 51, 180, 203, 204, 238, 245, 270, 281 medieval Christians and, 180, 238, 245, 286, 293, 350 prequauhtemoc, 7, 8, 68, 147, 279, 362 Urban II, Pope, 31 Urban IV, Pope, 30 utopia(n), 57, 60, 205, 246, 267, 270 Valencia, Martín de among first twelve Franciscans, 335, 360 and Zumárraga, 335 as administrator, 4, 51, 119 as hermit, 106, 240, 246 cult to, 99, 137, 234, 240 order to hang natives, 119 Valencia, Spain, 3, 200, 295 Veracruz (state) Africans in, 290 Amatlan, 206 and native pilgrimage, 237 and Tillan Tlapallan, 309 Augustinians in, 52 entrada through, 48, 132, 181, 318, 340 Franciscans in, 51 La Antigua (town), 34 natives as Toltecs, 11 Olmecs in, 7 port of, 49, 53, 206, 259, 288 Quiahuiztlan, 260, 260 road from, 205 Santiago in, 343 Xipe Totec cult in, 117. See also Cempoala; El Tajín; El Zapotal; Tamoanchan Villa Alta, 85, 146, 342 Virgin Antigua, 32, 34, 35, 36, 216

Virgin Candelaria/Candelas, 105–7, 233, 240 Virgin Conquistadora, 34, 36, 216 Virgin Dolores, 36, 291 Virgin Guadalupe confraternity of, 30 depiction of, 75, 215, 240, 301, 305, 331 shrine in Mexico, 40, 48, 61, 240, 281 shrine in Spain, 30, 32, 36, 40, 43, 240, 253, 274, 299, 48, 299 Virgin Juquila, 35, 36 Virgin Merced, 35, 36 Virgin Remedios, 36, 215, 216, 237 Virgin Soledad, 36, 206, 290 Virgin Valvanera, 35, 36, 86, 240 Virgo Lactans, 215, 215 visita, 51, 59, 69, 182, 186, 225, 233, 253. See also doctrina (place) Visitation (of Mary), 169, 171 Vitoria, Francisco de, 51, 85, 119, 287, 338, 341, 359 volcano, 23–4, 205, 217, 254, 278 wheat, 45, 112, 178–9, 181, 205 wine and children, 83, 108 and the male european’s body, 178 as a warm food, 178 as medicine, 183 as offering, 145, 170, 227 communion with, 83, 179 container for, 111 diluted, 178 divinely given, 161 Eden river of, 123, 229 in civilized diet, 178 native god of, 161, 328 transubstantiation of, 42, 95, 110, 189, 227 withheld from laity, 41, 49, 110, 112, 161. See also Eucharist Wixarika, 60, 104, 147, 254, 320 Xochicalco, 10, 12, 27, 80, 237, 325 Xochimilco, 12, 13, 25, 48, 117, 231, 236, 336, 341 Xochiquetzal and flowers, 174, 316–17, 322, 364

as mother, 213 as patron to goldsmiths, 231 as tlahuiztli suit, 327 feasts for, 25, 217, 251, 356 goddess of fertility and love, 23, 77, 172 in Omeyocan, 120, 127 origin of cult to, 16 public confession before, 113. See also Tlazolteotl Xolotl (deity), 16, 75, 97, 121, 127–8, 283, 322 Xolotl (historic person), 11, 27 Yanhuitlan, 52 yolia and anima, 296 and blood, 92, 186 and Day of Dead, 71, 295 and lower heaven 97 as insect, 88, 197–8, 294 attached to bone, 71, 100, 259, 364 in heart, 186, 273, 294, 364 of children, 121, 228, 294 of men who died in battle, 295 of women who died in childbirth, 294 Zapotec, 2–3, 20, 45, 57, 75, 114, 172, 243, 305, 342 Zumárraga, Juan de and idolatry, 54, 195, 350–1 and Martin de Valencia, 335 and native adaptation to Catholicism, 71, 222, 250, 271 as autor, 242, 347 bringing books to New Spain, 310 burning Mexica books, 48, 310 career of, 48–9 efforts to recruit Franciscans, 343 fostering Guadalupe cult, 240 funeral of, 348 in Junta, 48, 54, 111 in Spain, 350 on conflict between Orders, 84, 111 on tears, 347 regarded as saint, 234