The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico 0816510881, 9780816510887

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The Slippery Earth

T he Slippery Earth N ahua-C hristian M oral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico F RMS' ß fc l

L ouise M . Burkhart

The University c f Arizona Press, Tucson

T H E U N IV E R SIT Y O F A R IZ O N A PR ESS C opyright © 1989 T he A rizona Board o f R egents A ll R ights R eserved T his book was set in 10/13 L inotron 202 Galliard. © T his book is printed on arid-free, archival-quality paper. M anufactured in the U nited States o f A m erica. 93 92 91 90 89 5 4 3 2 1 Library o f C ongress C ataloging-in-Publication D ata Burkhart, L ouise M ., 1958T he slippery earth : N ahua-C hristian m oral dialogue in sixteenthcentury M exico / L ouise M . Burkhart, p. cm . B ibliography: p. Includes index.

ISBN 0-8165-1088-1 (alk. paper) i. Nahuas— Religion and mythology. 2. Nahuas— M issions— H istory— 16th century. 3. Indians o f Mexico— Religion and mythology. 4 . Indians o f M exico— M issions— H istory— 16th century. I. Tide. F1219.76R45B871989 303.4 '8272'046— dci9

88-38672

CIP British Library Cataloguing in Publication data are available.

Tlaalahui, tlapetzcahui in tlalticpac. It is slippery, it is slick on the earth. —Nahuatl proverb

Contents

List o f Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

i. Evangelization, Dialogue, Rhetoric 2. The M issionary M issionized Mission and Method Moral Education Sin and Damage Good and Evil, Order and Chaos Gods, Devils, and Human Owls Summary 3. Centers and Peripheries The Vertical Plane The Terrestrial Plane Time Summary 4. Purity and Pollution Filth Dirt and Christian Doctrine Bathing and Sweeping

3

15 15 25 28

34 39 44 46 47 58 72

86

87 87 98 no vii

C ontents

viii

Cleanliness as Godliness Summary

124 128

Abstinence and Excess “Nothing in Excess” Penance and Merit Virginity, Sex, and Marriage The Fifth Mortal Sin Summary

130 130 141 150 159 168

H ealth and Sickness MoralAspects ofEtiology Sin as Illness Deformity Infection Heart-Straightening Summary

170 170 173 176 179 181 183

Christianity Conquered The Dialogical Frontier The Effectiveness ofSermons Cultural Survival on the Slippery Earth

184 185 188 192

Appendix: Catalog o f N ahuatl D octrinal Sources

195

Notes to Chapters

203

Glossary o f N ahuatl Terms

213

Bibliography

215

Index

235

Illustrations

1. M ap o f central Mexico. 2. Indian confessing to Franciscan priest. 3. The idealized church patio. 4. Four priests sacrifice a prisoner o f war to “the gods.” 5. The mazacoatl. 6. “Already in someone else’s enclosure.” 7. The torrent and the precipice. 8. M ary M agdalene. 9. Adm onishing the Tzonpachpul, the big mossy-haired one. 10. Tlazolteotl. 11. M an encountering the nocturnal apparition Cuitlapanton. 12. The midwife bathes the baby boy. 13. The “high priest.” 14. A Franciscan joins an Indian couple in marriage. 15. The fate o f the drunkard.

17 19 21 42 43

61 62 68 91 94 96 114 119 158 163

IX

Acknowledgments

This book derives from many years o f education and research. My initial discovery o f Mesoamerica and the anthropology o f religion occurred in the anthropology departm ent o f Franklin and Marshall College, where I studied w ith W Fred Kinsey, Nancy McDowell, and James Taggart. My graduate adviser at Yale University, Michael D. Coe, deserves credit for taking M esoamerican religion seriously, encouraging my language study, and letting an “archaeology” student turn into a colonial ethnohistorian. J. Jorge K lor de Alva, whose research m ost closely parallels my own, has been an ongoing source o f support, encouragement, and insight. My initial language study, w ith Karen Dakin, was supported by a Tide V I Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship and a Josef Albers Travelling Fellowship from Yale University. D issertation research was funded by the H enry L. and Grace D oherty Charitable Foundation, an­ other Albers Fellowship, and a Short-Term Research Fellowship from the N ewberry Library. The final year o f research and w riting was sup­ ported by a C harlotte W Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. The m anuscript was revised during the pursuit o f postdoctoral research at the N ew berry Library, supported by a Columbian Quincentennial Fellow­ ship, and at the John C arter Brown Library, supported by a National Endow m ent for the H um anities Fellowship. The following institutions are thanked for allowing access to their rare xi

xii

Acknowledgments

books and manuscripts: Beinecke Library at Yale University, the Biblioteca Nacional de A ntropología in Mexico, the Biblioteca Nacional de México, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Newberry Library. Lie. Octavio Gordillo O rtiz o f the Fondo Reservado, Biblioteca Nacional de México, is especially thanked for his assistance during the library’s renovations o f 1983-84. For encouragement and advice at various stages o f this project, I w ould like to thank Keith Basso, Michael D. Coe, D oris Heyden, J. Jorge Klor de Alva, Ellen Messer, M ary Miller, and James Taggart. My parents, Lloyd and Esther Burkhart, have provided unstinting moral and occasional fi­ nancial support. Brian Ladd, Debra Nagao, Rosemary Gianno, Susan Benaron, Karen W right, and other friends, by protecting me from exces­ sive indulgence in work, have helped me to m aintain my equilibrium (see Chapter Five). Louise M. Burkhart

The Slippery Earth

CHAPTER

1

Evangelization, Dialogue, Rhetoric

Central Mexico in the sixteenth century was the scene o f a social experi­ m ent which, though hopelessly quixotic, bequeathed to modem scholar­ ship an excellent and extensive record o f intercultural contact, including the largest body o f native-language texts from anywhere in the New W orld. Europeans here did not simply pass through and describe what they saw: they sat down w ith the natives and, over a period o f decades, listened to them speak in their own voices while they themselves learned to answer in kind. This dialogue owes its existence to an odd mix o f medieval theology, which insisted that all human souls were equal. Ren­ aissance humanism, which suggested that something o f w orth m ight be found in another way o f life, and Catholic intolerance, which justified— o r excused— the study o f pagan things on the grounds o f facilitating their eradication. The Indians o f Mexico were contacted at a time when edu­ cated, religious men o f Europe could deem them worthy o f the effort required to communicate w ith them. O n A ugust 13,1521, Cuauhtemoc, the last ruler o f the Mexica Indians, surrendered to H ernán Cortés the island capital o f Tenochtitlan. Cortes’s three years o f schemes and shrewd alliances had paid off, and to the pos­ sessions o f Spain’s young king, Charles V, newly crowned Holy Roman Em peror, was added the vast territory known in history as the Aztec Em­ pire. The colony o f New Spain was established; its capital, now Mexico City, was built upon the ruins o f Tenochtitlan. 3

4

EVANGELIZATION, DIALOGUE, RHETORIC

Central Mexico, the m ountain-ringed Basin o f Mexico and its sur­ rounding territory (now the states o f Puebla, Tlaxcala, M orelos, México, and H idalgo), had been the seat o f urban civilization since before the time o f Christ. Through tim e, shifting political alliances periodically united the area or fragmented it among rival city-states. In periods o f political up­ heaval, such as the fall o f the ancient city o f Teodhuacan, seminomadic tribes would migrate into the area from the north. These tribes brought w ith them the N ahuad language, a Uto-Aztecan tongue related to lan­ guages o f the western and southwestern U nited States, and an origin myth about a place called Azdan, source o f the term Aztec (from aztecatl ‘person from Azdan5) which is often used to describe these peoples. From the local inhabitants the setders learned the arts o f agriculture and civilization, and acculturated their tribal rites and deities to ancient Mesoamerican pat­ terns. The Mexica were the last o f these im m igrant groups, entering the Basin o f Mexico in the twelfth century and founding their island city in about 1325. A warlike group, they synthesized their tribal cult w ith the Meso­ american solar cult and the ancient practice o f human sacrifice, inventing a militaristic ideology which eventually helped them to w in hegemony over most o f Mesoamerica. As their soldiers w ent forth to bring back captives for sacrifice, demands for tribute were imposed on the vanquished polities and wealth poured into the capital. But aside from their state cult and their politically dom inant position, the Mexica were culturally very similar to the other Nahuad-speaking peoples who surrounded them. After the Spanish Conquest, aside from some tem porary privileges granted to Cortés’s closest allies, all o f these peoples shared similar expe­ riences. It is here more fitting to speak o f Nahua culture, the culture o f peoples speaking the N ahuad language, than to distinguish the Mexica from their neighbors or to speak o f “Aztecs55— a vague term that is better applied to the pre-Conquest Mexica empire than to the particular ethnic groups that composed, and outlived, that organization. Located at the center o f the new colony as well as the old empire, the Nahuas came into closer and more immediate contact w ith the Spanish colonial adm inistration than did peoples in more isolated regions. This area was also the center o f the colonial Church. It was the missionaries who entered into closest contact w ith the Nahuas, learning their language and attem pting to understand how their culture operated. These mission­ aries were friars o f the M endicant orders— Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians. They came to New Spain in the hope o f establishing among

,

Evangelization, D ialogue Rhetoric

5

the Indians a new and exemplary Christian community. They believed that this could be achieved only by residing in the native communities and paying close attention to their customs, however alien or repugnant these m ight have seemed. H ence, they entered into a dialogue w ith these people, o f which a fragm entary transcript survives in the missionaries’ many w ritings. The purpose o f the dialogue— to transform the Indians into a model C hristian society—was thw arted by various factors. The Nahuas resisted, actively and passively. The indigenous population was decimated by dis­ ease, overwork, and dislocation. A powerful colonial order based on an economy o f exploitation was institutionalized. Religious authority was transferred from the M endicant monastic orders to the secular Church hierarchy, while at the same time the heavy hand o f the CounterReform ation pulled the priests away from their immersion in native lan­ guage and culture. W hat remains are the records—and the challenge they pose for turning an attem pt at religious conversion into the basis for an­ thropological analysis. Inform ation on indigenous culture has perm itted ethnographic studies to be w ritten on pre-Conquest culture, w ith a degree o f detail impressive for a culture never visited by a modem anthropologist. A very few ex­ amples are Berdan (1982), León-Portilla (1963), López Austin (1980) and Soustelle (1961). Such cultural reconstructions strive to block out Euro­ pean influence, to show the Indians as they “really were.” The results are fascinating and are probably valid for the m ost part, but they tend to over­ look the realities o f the contact situation and their influence on the sources. Also, this emphasis on the pre-Conquest period, this quest for the authentic Indian, ignores w hat these sources are best suited for: the study o f culture contact. The use o f colonial sources to reconstruct pre-Conquest culture is symptomatic o f a general tendency w ithin anthropology to place other cultures into an “ethnographic present” in which they are described as static, self-perpetuating systems. Fabian (1983) attributes this disposition to anthropology’s need to justify itself as a science, to make o f culture a passive object o f inquiry on the same order as those o f the natural sciences. Living societies, w ith whom an investigator has had extensive personal contact, are made to seem removed in time and space, objectified; the investigator’s dialogue w ith individual people becomes his or her mono­ logue about the “culture,” now presented as a homogeneous unit. Sahlins (1985) also criticizes the tendency to remove cultures from their

6

EVANGELIZATION, DIALOGUE, RHETORIC

own history. H e emphasizes that a culture exists in tim e and reveals itself through tim e, as its conceptual categories come into contact w ith an everchanging reality and it is forced to interpret and organize that reality us­ ing whatever symbolic equipm ent its own past has bequeathed to it. H is analysis o f British-Polynesian contact shows how Polynesian culture shaped the course o f that contact and was at the same tim e changed by it. Nahua culture is rooted deeply in a past known only through archae­ ology and continues today among several hundred thousand N ahuadspeakers. To single out the pre-Conquest “Aztec” as its quintessential representadve is to perpetuate the ahistorical bias plaguing tradidonal anthropology. Colonial sources are best suited to the study o f colonial Nahuas, and in some ways colonial Nahuas are more interesting than their predecessors. It is they who faced the greatest challenge ever presented to Nahua culture— how to make sense o f an invasion by alien beings intent not only on seizing their wealth and territory but on altering their m ost deeply held religious beliefs. T hat they survived w ith a large part o f their cultural idendty intact is perhaps a more impressive achievement than the feats o f the poet-kings, warriors, and scribes so beloved o f pre-Conquest enthusiasts. Even if one’s goal is to discover the pre-Conquest Indian, European “influence” in the colonial texts is not simply a screen o r a veneer th at can be easily peeled away. It is the colonial Indians w ho speak through these records, Indians who are in the process o f adapting to the colonial envi­ ronm ent, not by simply adding European traits to their ow n cultural rep­ ertoire but by reinterpreting those traits to make them consistent w ith preexisting cultural models. A t the same tim e, Nahua culture is under­ going w hat Sahlins (iç85:ix, 31) calls a “functional revaluation o f cate­ gories,” the ongoing process o f change that all cultures undergo through time in response to changing experiences but which becomes accelerated, and perhaps more easily observable, in a situation o f contact. The Nahuas reinterpreted their own culture and their own past in the light o f their new experiences and pressures; their own image o f the “ancient Aztec” was in part a colonial artifact. In discussing their culture, the colonial Nahuas did not speak freely, for Europeans created the context w ithin which inform ation was set down. They sought answers to particular questions, determ ining not only w hat matters w ould be recorded but the form the records w ould take. Investi­ gators, especially those who were priests, tended to respond to w hat they learned about indigenous religion w ith shock o r zeal, depending on their

E vangelization, D ialogue, Rhetoric

7

own values. Even if the Indians were encouraged to be honest, they soon understood w hat their interlocutors thought about some o f their most cherished traditions. The records were no t made immediately upon the arrival o f Cortés in 1519 nor upon the fall o f Tenochtitlan in 1521 but mainly during the 1530s to 1580s, while the Indians were adapting to colonization and learning at least as much about Europeans as the Europeans were learning about them . The very language o f the interaction, w hat is now called Classical N ahuatl, was adopted from native upper-class usage and preserved by the friars; thus, its survival was a result o f Nahua-European dialogue (Karttunen 1982:396-97).1 W ithout taking into account the context o f the dia­ logue, the expressions o f either side cannot be interpreted accurately. Studies o f the continuities in native culture have tended to focus on the “survival” o f native elements despite the appearance o f Christianity, or on “syncretism” (for example, Madsen 1957, Uchmany 1980). M odem Indian religion is seen as a mixture o f pre-Hispanic and European elements, a middle ground between the tw o cultures. W hile this approach has been useful in identifying the often surprising extent to which ancient beliefs survive, it does not account adequately for which kinds o f elements from each culture are present, and how they came to be integrated through historical processes into a cultural system that is more than a simple sum o f parts. N or does Ingham (1986), w ho chooses to emphasize the Catholic character o f a formerly Nahuatl-speaking community, adequately explain how the many clearly indigenous cultural elements are integrated into this Catholic structure as anything other than the shreds and patches o f a van­ ished identity. Gossen (1986a), in an excellent collection o f essays on Mesoamerican thought, stresses the persistence o f a pan-Mesoamerican ideological struc­ ture characteristic o f the entire region from pre-Columbian times to the present. C ulture change has been structured in terms o f the system’s own inner logic and w ithout violating im portant symbolic precepts, such as concepts o f space, tim e, and duality. However, the volume’s five essays on Central Mexico include four on pre-Conquest thought and one based on m odem ethnography; there is nothing to bridge the gap. From the European side, Church and academic historians have long studied the conversion o f the Nahuas and their neighbors. In these studies the Indians are presented as the objects o f great humanistic experiments, o f innovative missionary m ethodologies, o f apocalyptic or millenarian musings, o f inflexible dogmas. W hat the missionaries say they did or said

8

EVANGELIZATION, DIALOGUE, RHETORIC

is accepted. Native culture is treated as a given, the inert clay th at the friars tried to mold as they pleased. The missionaries’ ingenious m ethods o f introducing Christianity are described w ith little or no attention to the process o f translation, o r to the Indians as active partners in a dialogue. In recent years a new interest in the N ahuad language and colonial Indian society has yielded excellent work based on long-overlooked non­ religious texts in N ahuad. Legal records, municipal proceedings, land doc­ uments, and wills provide insight into the realities o f Indian life in the colony not recoverable from Spanish records. They also docum ent lin­ guistic acculturadon, filling in the “middle years” between Classical N a­ huad and its m odem descendants. This category includes such works as Anderson, Berdan and Lockhart (1976); K arttunen and Lockhart (1976); Lockhart (1982); Lockhart, Berdan, and Anderson (1986); Cline and LeónPortilla (1984); and articles edited by Harvey and Prem (1984). Along w ith this new emphasis on colonial society has come a new in­ terest in colonial religion, involving a critical synthesis o f Church history and studies o f indigenous culture. Some o f the best N ahua scholars are studying Christianization. León-Portilla (1974) has looked at indigenous reactions to Christianity. K lor de Alva (1979,1980b, 1982b, 1987b) has de­ bunked the “spiritual conquest” legend, the claim prom ulgated by Bicard U966) and others that the Indians o f Mexico were quickly and easily Chris­ tianized, and has focused upon dialogical aspects o f N ahua-Christian in­ teraction from the perspective o f indigenous philosophy. The Colloquios o f Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, the most overtly dialogical text, has been translated and analyzed by K lor de Alva (1980a; 1982a); León-Portilla has brought out a facsimile edition w ith a Spanish translation (Sahagún 1986). Bierhorst (i985) has analyzed the Cantares mexicanos, the N ahuad poems long ascribed to pre-Conquest authors, in the context o f the mid­ sixteenth-century cultural milieu in which they were recorded and at least partially composed and reworked. Baudot (1972, 1976, 1979, 1982, 1983) approaches Franciscan ethnography from the perspective o f missionary goals and interests, applying his proficiency in N ahuatl to the study o f Fray Andrés de Olmos’s and Sahagun’s catechistic w ritings. Anderson and Dibble, translators o f the Florentine Codex, Sahagún’s ethnographic ency­ clopedia, have shown interest in this friar’s doctrinal w ritings as well (An­ derson 1983; D ibble 1974, 1988). Todorov (1985), from outside the field, treats the conquest o f Mexico from the standpoint o f Indians’ and E uro­ peans’ perceptions o f one another, that is, the extent to which they were able to enter into a dialogue w ith one another. H e treats the texts as

Evangelization, D ialogue, Rhetoric

9

expressions o f particular voices rather than as passive collections o f infor­ m ation. For the colonial Maya also, Farriss (1984) and D. Tedlock (1985) have moved beyond the syncretic model to view religious change in terms o f dialogue and creative synthesis. The study o f Nahua culture is opening up to include the missionaries— those men w ho, though they m isunderstood so much, were more familiar w ith it than the m odem investigator can ever be. It was they, their teach­ ings, and the culture they represented that were posing the greatest chal­ lenge to indigenous cultural categories at the very time those categories were being described. In order to apply an anthropological perspective to the missionaries9 dialogue w ith the sixteenth-century Nahuas, the traditional enmity be­ tween the anthropologist and the missionary m ust be set aside. This is not, after all, so outrageous a proposition. Both anthropologists and mis­ sionaries engage in intercultural dialogue, in contexts where the contacted cultures tend to be in a materially and politically weak position relative to the culture represented by their visitors. Malinowski (1935:11, xxi, cited by D . Tedlock 1983:334) saw anthropologists and missionaries as “inverted twins,” the missionary’s role being to translate the European’s point o f view for the native while the anthropologist’s is to translate the native point o f view for Europeans. The missionaries to the Nahuas were sent to do the form er but also did quite a bit o f the latter, for themselves as well as for a broader European audience. Distance in time enriches their rec­ ords by providing a historical perspective usually lacking in modem field studies. Their ultim ate goal was to silence indigenous voices, to resolve dialogue into m onologue, to replace cultural diversity w ith conformity. But since they themselves were silenced w ith the task incomplete, and since they also cham pioned Indian rights (albeit w ithin the colonial con­ text), the anthropologist cannot judge them w ith severity. D . Tedlock (1983:333-34) succinctly points out the flaws o f the tradi­ tional approach to the ethnohistorical documents. H e criticizes the rejec­ tion o f whatever seems “contam inated by the presence o f Spanish mission­ aries,” as well as the general neglect o f the catechistic literature w ritten in native languages by men familiar w ith native customs. Such texts are significant because they “show, from both sides and w ith moments o f thunderbolt clarity, the dialogical frontier between European and M esoamerican cultures during the colonial period.” Tedlock’s work w ith the Quiché Maya Popol Vuh (1985) reveals how one can use the presence o f “C hristian influence” to illum inate the processes o f indigenous culture.

IO

EVANGELIZATION, DIALOGUE, RHETORIC

Approaching the friars’ records w ith attention fixed on both sides o f the dialogue, one can come to understand native culture— and the friars’ impact on it— better than they did themselves. Something more than a static reconstruction begins to emerge. Nahua culture becomes not simply a thing to be described but a process to be analyzed, a m ethod for coping w ith experience, a dialectic by which the old accommodates new content while maintaining im portant aspects o f its form. It is into this context o f inquiry and interpretation that the present study falls. It explores one aspect o f Nahua-Christdan interaction: the at­ tem pt to introduce into Nahua ideology Christian moral precepts, partic­ ularly the Christian concept o f sin. It is based on the ethnographic records and the friars’ doctrinal w ritings in N ahuatl This topic was chosen partly because o f the texts’ own emphases: the friars put a great deal o f effort into making the Indians behave like moral Christians. It was considered more im portant that the Indians lead a simple, Christian life than that they understand Christian doctrine on a metaphysical and philosophical level. In addition, the topic was selected in reaction to the tendency for studies o f Nahua culture to emphasize the world-view aspects o f ideology. To borrow Geertz’s phrasing (15)73:93), “models o f” reality (the structure o f the cosmos, the organization o f the calendar, descriptions o f rituals) are analyzed at the expense o f “models for” behavior. This position contrib­ utes to the view o f indigenous culture as a static given rather than some­ thing to be adapted and manipulated by people as they faced the chal­ lenges o f existence. M oral precepts both reflect a particular w orld view and provide models by which one may live in accordance w ith that view. They are involved in the dialectic between culture and behavior. But they are not to be identi­ fied by an observation o f behavior; they are, like other kinds o f beliefs, part o f an ideology. According to Ladd, a philosopher who studied Navajo ethics, a moral code should be investigated only through the explicit state­ ments o f informants and the logical presuppositions— conscious o r oth ­ erwise—upon which those statem ents depend (1957:12-17). M oral con­ cepts are an apt subject for ethnohistorical investigation, because the ethnohistorical record is in essence a collection o f statem ents, many o f them dealing explicitly or implicitly w ith values. The inability to observe behavior directly— and the fact that contem porary reports o f behavior vary widely and are clearly biased—does not affect the validity o f the study. Statements about behavior can be treated as part o f the discourse rather than as an accurate reflection o f reality.

.2

E vangdization, D ialogue, Rhetoric

ii

Fundam ental to the dialogue o f evangelization was rhetoric, or the abil­ ity to use language effectively. Friars and Indians had not only to under­ stand one another and exchange inform ation; the former had to persuade the latter to accept new ideas and attitudes that would lead them to think and act in ways com patible w ith Christian doctrine. Missionaries are known to have resorted to w hipping recalcitrant Indians, and even burned a few at the stake, but on the whole the friars were, for their time, a peaceable lot w ho preferred to do their persuading w ith words, w ith pic­ tures explained in w ords, and w ith the example set by their own lifestyle. From Christianity’s earliest days its preachers relied upon their powers o f persuasion. Saint Paul believed that “faith comes from hearing”: if he could persuade his listeners to accept his doctrine, they would believe— and behave— differently from the way they had under paganism (Burke 1966:5). The same applied to the sixteenth-century missionaries. This ex­ plains why Fray D iego Valadés, a Mexican-born Franciscan who jour­ neyed to Europe as spokesman for his order, chose to incorporate his apo­ logia on the Franciscans’ work w ith the Indians into a Latin treatise on the rhetorical art, his Rhetoric* Christiana o f 1579. C hristian rhetoric is w hat they used, but they cast it in Nahuad terms. Evangelization had to be carried out in N ahuad and the other nadve tongues: the soul-saving mission was too urgent to await the massive ac­ culturation program that w ould have been necessary to impose the Span­ ish language on a huge native population. Learning native languages en­ abled the friars to gain the Indians’ acceptance, but it was also a factor in the friars’ downfall: having bound themselves so closely to the Indians, they raised the suspicions o f colonial authorities and the leaders o f the secular Church hierarchy. In an effort to avoid such suspicion a century later during missionary efforts among the Pueblo peoples, the Franciscans neither learned the native languages nor won their subjects’ acceptance (see Spicer 1962). The friars were n o t m odem linguists; they lacked sensitivity to the re­ lationship between language and thought, between words and mental cat­ egories. They looked for synonyms and used whatever they could find; some Spanish term s were introduced but almost always as the equivalent o f som ething N ahuad. The meanings o f N ahuad terms were, o f course, no t im m utable, and they did shift somewhat under the friars’ manipula­ tion, but there was no escaping the fact that Nahuad selected, organized, and named a different set o f ideas and objects than did Spanish or Latin— and did so in harm ony w ith a particular ideology. In addition, translation

12

EVANGELIZATION, DIALOGUE, RHETORIC

from Spanish or Latin into N ahuatl was som ething quite different than translation from Latin to Spanish, o r between other European tongues sharing both a common origin and a long experience in the expression o f Christian doctrine. N ahuad not only named but persuaded in a different way from Spanish or Latin. In order to use N ahuad effectively, to persuade as well as to explain, the friars had to adopt the rhetorical forms o f expression appro­ priate to Nahuad. Christian precepts had to be expressed in a way that was not only grammatically correct but that w ould convince N ahua listeners to accept them. To this end, friars elicited and recorded native oratory, listed the figures o f speech and adages contained therein, and strove to master the elegant speaking style o f the native orators. Both Olmos and Sahagún, who compiled the principal sixteenth-century collections o f rhetoric, focused upon this activity quite early in their respective careers. Their interest in this material was not w ithout precedent. St. Augustine, a teacher o f rhetoric before his conversion to Christianity, expressed in his De doctrin a C hristiana an interest in adapting the verbal skills o f the pagans to Christian uses (Burke 1970:49)For the Nahuas, as for Mesoamerica in general, words had trem endous symbolic force. A key aspect o f pan-Mesoamerican thought is, in Gossen’s words (iç86a:7) this “extraordinary power o f spoken and w ritten language as a symbolic entity in itself, beyond its neutral role as medium for routine communication.” Rhetorical speech was sacred and was also an im portant m ethod o f social control: the words o f elders and ancestors set forth the proper behavior o f their descendants, which was to replicate the estab­ lished pattern inherited from the past (Sullivan 1986). If the friars could usurp the power o f those words, replacing the authority o f the Indian past w ith that o f Christianity, they would gain a significant degree o f control over Indian thought and behavior, w ith all the social and political conse­ quences that such control implies. The words, though, were N ahuatl words, and their symbolic power was accorded them by N ahua minds. The friars could successfully m anipulate the system only by adapting to it; violation o f its basic precepts w ould strip it o f the authority the friars sought to borrow. Based on Burke’s idea o f language as “entitlem ent,” by which “the things o f the w orld become material exemplars o f the values which the tribal idiom has placed upon them ” (1966:361)— that is, the w ords are not simply tools for naming things but ascribe culture-specific meanings and values to the things named—Crocker develops a scheme for the ethno-

13

graphic analysis o f rhetoric (1977). It is equally applicable to ethnohistory. “Rhetorical entitlem ent” is the process by which someone says something about a social situation “which summarizes its moral essence in such ways as to define possible actions” (Crocker 1977:37). The situation, simply by the term s in which it is described, entails a certain moral interpretation, which, in turn, suggests appropriate behavior. Behaviors pick up morally positive o r negative valuations by association w ith terms that carry those values. Rhetorical statem ents can be interpersonal, w ith the speaker aiming to persuade the listener to do som ething, or they can refer to a social situa­ tion w ider than the relationship o f speaker to listener, narrating events pertaining to a third party, o r even events from history or myth, and using them as a general prescription for behavior. Rhetorical devices exist also as a verbal codification o f the culture’s ideas and values, and can be ana­ lyzed as such even apart from their applications to particular contexts (Crocker 1977:37-38). To be effective, a rhetorical device m ust be “felt” as well as “thought.” T hat is, it m ust function cognitively in giving a name to a complex situa­ tion, classifying it in accordance w ith some ordering principle, but it must also evoke an em otional response. This depends on an interplay between external m etaphors (analogies) and internal m etaphors, or between meta­ phor and metonymy (Crocker 1977:53-58). The term s used in this study for the various types o f tropes are consis­ ten t w ith the classification o f Sapir (1977). The term “metaphor,” though often applied by rhetoricians to a broad range o f tropes including synec­ doche (substitution o f part for whole or whole for part w ithin a semantic dom ain) and metonymy (substitution o f part for part w ithin a semantic dom ain), is here restricted to tropes which relate elements from separate semantic domains. To illustrate these relationships w ith an example from N ahua-Christian discourse, the external m etaphor or analogy “sin is to virtue as d irt is to cleanliness” provides a way o f thinking about immoral acts by relating the dom ain o f m orality to the domain o f sanitation. W ithin this analogy, sin is related to dirt by internal metaphor. It is this internal m etaphor which is “felt,” because it evokes toward sin the emo­ tional responses evoked by dirt. This internal m etaphor may in turn slip into metonymy, sin and d irt being treated as contiguous, as tw o elements in a single dom ain o f dirty, contam inating phenomena. This particular analogy is explored extensively in Chapter Four. This study focuses on how the friars attem pted to convert the Nahuas

14

EVANGELIZATION, DIALOGUE, RHETO RIC

I by^onverting indigenous rhetoric to the expression o f Christian moral ^ c o n c e r n s , and how Christian rhetoric was made indigenous by its adop­ tion o f Nahua form. It is organized according to principal m etaphors used in indigenous moral argum ent which were adopted into Christianity. The following chapter summarizes mission methodology and examines how the friars handled the major problems posed by the differences between Nahua and Christian morality.

CHAPTER

2

The Missionary Missionized

A paradoxical figure in Mexican history is the Conquistador conquistado, the Spaniard’s child “conquered” by the new land, who rejects Spain for New Spain and ultimately demands independence (Keen 1971:92). One m ight speak in similar fashion o f the missionary missionized, o f the friar whose sympathies come to lie w ith the Indians against the colonists and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, against an O ld World perceived as corrupt, and who adopts Indian ways in order to fulfill his mission. A very brief account o f this man and his mission follows.

M IS S IO N A N D M E T H O D

Evangelization was for Spain inseparable from conquest and coloniza­ tion: the Crown m ust have its gold but God must in return have H is souls. Thus, in the early decades—until almost all the Indians had at least been baptized— the friars were ceded considerable powers. They were perm it­ ted to act as parish priests, tending congregations and administering sac­ ram ents, in addition to their usual role as teachers and healers. They held positions o f bishop and archbishop and acted as Inquisitors in the absence o f the H oly Office. U ntil after mid-century, when the repartimiento system o f labor assignment increased Indian contact w ith colonists and secular

1

15

I6

THE MISSIONARY M IS S IO N IZ E D

priests began to oust friars, Indian interaction w ith Europeans was dom i­ nated by the M endicants. For conversion to be accomplished, Christianity had to be made ap­ pealing to the Indians. This could be achieved only by adapting it to in­ digenous forms o f religious expression. Cortés him self showed a realiza­ tion o f this need when he advised Charles V that the Indians could only be converted by priests who, like their own, held to an ascetic lifestyle (Cortés 1979:203). Such were the friars o f the M endicant orders, fresh from Observant reforms which had reemphasized ascetic principles after a period o f in­ creasing worldliness. The first official missionaries were twelve Spanish Franciscans who arrived in 1524, following a party o f three Flemish Fran­ ciscans who had come unofficially the year before. The first Dominicans came in 1526, the first Augustinians in 1533. In the central Nahuatl-speaking areas, Franciscans dom inated the mission in numbers and influence, de­ veloping the strategies that other orders followed after them. Dominicans were concentrated in present-day M orelos; Augustinians in present-day Hidalgo. Disputes between the orders arose from the Dominicans’ greater concern w ith legality and orthodoxy, which conflicted w ith the Francis­ cans’ simpler, more personal faith; and the Augustinians’ tendency tow ard sumptuosity, which offended the poverty-obsessed Franciscans. All three orders left im portant records, but the Franciscans were by far the m ost prolific in both ethnographic and doctrinal w ritings. Figure 1 shows the locations o f major M endicant establishments in the central, m ost heavily missionized, predominantly Nahuatl-speaking area o f Mexico. W hat the Franciscans and their fellow friars desired, w hat they achieved, and how they lost it have attracted the attention o f many schol­ ars ? Their high educational and ethical standards, their acceptance by the Indians, their learning o f the native tongues, the many churches and m on­ asteries built for them by Indian hands, their political struggles on behalf o f the Indians, their sponsorship o f Indo-Christian art and literature, the suppression o f their w ritings by Church and even Crown authorities, their eventual irrelevance as the Indians died out and secular priests took over their churches— all o f this adds up to a fascinating tale o f intrigue and adventure. Because they contrast so strikingly w ith the colonists in their concern for the Indians, the friars have an undeniable appeal to the m odem hu­ manist and the Church historian alike. Tragic figures on a doom ed mis­ sion, enjoying a brief glory before they were flattened by the relentless

17

•Tula i __ • -, 4 M etztitian Ixmiquilpan * A ctopan4 4 Atotonilco 4 Epazoyucan O tu m b a.

-Tepeapulco

C uaudtlan 4 Acolman Tezcoco • Cuautinchan

Tlatelolco, Mexico) â ° • Toluca

• Tlaxcala o

• Tlalmanalco

H uejotzingo

Amecameca • Calpan •

Cholula 'P u eb la

Malinalco • • Tepozdan Cuernavaca* b .Oaxtepec Yautepec Yecapixtla

• Tecali

• Tepeaca

• Huaquechula

• Franciscan • A ugusdnian ■ Dom inican

©

a . s . d o w d i 988

Figure i. Map qf Central Mexico, showing locations ofprincipal Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian establishments. (Map drawn byAnne S. Dowd.) machine o f colonialism, they seem to provide a glimpse o f a Mexico—or for th at m atter a T hird W orld—that m ight have been, had compassion prevailed over greed. Yet in their own seemingly gentle way they were as ruthless as any conquistador. They supported conquest and colonization in theory; they merely objected to its abuses.3 The utopia they sought to create was paradise as they defined it, w ith the Indians cast in the role o f perpetual children— docile, obedient, powerless reflections o f the friars5 own images o f themselves. Indians were barred from the priesthood as effectively as from the upper echelons o f the colonial government; in the hands o f the friars o r o f the colonists, they were deprived o f selfdeterm ination.

l8

THE MISSIONARY M IS S IO N IZ E D

The friars lavished on the Indians a paternal love sincere in its affect but sternly demanding in filial obedience. They viewed the Indians as basically good but errant children w ho, w ith guidance and constant supervision, could become model Christians. W hat the friars hated m ost about E uro­ pean culture—the power exerted by pride and greed—they found absent in Nahua culture. The em otional reserve the Nahuas shared w ith m ost Native Americans appeared to the friars as a lack o f choler, the “hum or” responsible for sins o f anger. The Aztec sum ptuary laws strictly controlled access to luxury goods, so that m ost people had few and humble posses­ sions. The Nahuas’ profound religiosity was praiseworthy whatever its original object; the forms o f personal devotion—fasting and other m or­ tifications o f the flesh, sexual abstinence, the adornm ent o f temples and images—were consistent w ith Christianity. The Nahuas were a hum ble, devout, simple folk. This view altered as the mission itself began to falter: the Indians came to be seen as subtle, conspiratorial, stubborn, intractably carnal. To view them except through a screen o f value judgm ents was im­ possible. The friars’ attitude toward the Indians is expressed well in Figure 2, a w oodcut from Fray Alonso de M olina’s confession manual. A Franciscan friar admonishes a penitent Indian who kneels before him in an attitude o f prayer (the Indian’s ethnic identity is indicated by his mantle). The friar is raised above the Indian by a stone step as well as the bench on which he sits (wooden confessional booths were not yet in use at this tim e). The source o f the friar’s moral authority is clear: behind him an angel stands, pointing to heaven. This authority is conveyed to the Indian through the friar’s pointed finger. The moral status o f the Indian is equally clear: a demon clutches him, poised as if to drag him back into the idolatrous ways o f his forebears. Such were the terms o f the dialogue. The friars’ Church gave way to the secular Church w ith its less educated and less austere parish priests, its tithes, its contentm ent w ith formal o r­ thodoxy. The M endicant orders lacked the authority to control parishes except in the context o f conversion; despite the friars’ desire to m aintain their position, their very success in attracting converts soon rendered them obsolete in the eyes o f the ecclesiastical powers. The transferal process began in the 1550s and was largely completed in the 1570s and 1580s. Aside from the occasional and ineffectual campaign to extirpate idolatry [such as those o f Ruiz de Alarcón (1982) and Villavicencio (1962)], the Indians were thenceforward left alone to practice their own version o f Christianity, cen­ tered on community rituals and the saints as embodiments o f the divine.

The M issionary M issionized

19

Figure 2. Indian confessing to Franciscan priest. Woodcut in Fray Alonso de Molina’s Confesionario mayor, i$6s edition, f. nr. (Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.) Priests presided when necessary but entered into few dialogues w ith their subjects, satisfying themselves w ith the basically Christian appearance o f w hat the Indians were doing. Thus, w hat the Indians adopted o f Chris­ tianity was mainly w hat they learned in the first half-century o f Spanish rule. This study is concerned w ith that time period, particularly after the mid-i530S. The arrival o f the Second Audiencia in 1535 and o f Viceroy M en­ doza in 1536 ended the violent turbulence o f the immediate post-Conquest years. A stable colonial governm ent looked favorably, at least for a while, on the friars5 activities. The Franciscans5 college for Indian youths, the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, opened in 1536 to provide young nobles w ith an education in theology and the liberal arts. The Franciscaris Fray Toribio de Benavente, known by his N ahuad nickname M otolinia (“the afflicted one55), Fray Andrés de Olmos, and Fray Bernardino de Sahagún conducted their ethnographic inquiries. The exquisite Codex Men­ doza (1938), Cruz-Badiano herbal (Cruz 1964), and other manuscript

20

THE MISSIONARY M IS S IO N IZ E D

monuments o f culture contact were produced. The New World’s first book, a N ahuatl catechism, was printed in 1539 (Schwaller 1973)* The w orst o f the earlier epidemics had passed, and the rate o f indigenous population decline slowed considerably until the devastating plague o f 1576—79. For forty years, dialogue flourished. The friars found many ways to make Christianity appealing to the Nahuas. The physical setting o f evangelization was the churchyard or patio (later called the atrio) ^ a walled enclosure at the center o f the community, laid out according to the four directions, often upon a raised platform built for the purpose. The arrangem ent was not unlike the traditional sa­ cred centers; indeed, the same building materials were reused and in some cases the same spot was retained. The priest presided from an open chapel, an open-fronted chamber facing the patio^ incorporated into the churchmonastery structure at any o f several locations. The Indians thus observed the rites from outdoors as they had watched their own priests perform atop temple-pyramids. (McAndrew 1965 discusses in detail these aspects o f the friars’ building program .) Fray Diego Valadés (1579), to illustrate his Rhetorica Christiana,, created an idealized portrayal o f Franciscans carrying out various m inistrations to the Indians in a church patio (Fig. 3). This engraving summarizes Francis­ can activities; Indians are shown receiving each o f the sacraments (except ordination), learning doctrine, penitence, and how to confess. T hrough the use o f pictures they are taught about the creation o f the w orld and about “all things.” Indian singers practice their art; other Indians partici­ pate in a funeral procession. Couples are examined prior to marriage and their names inscribed in the church records. A t the four com ers friars are shown giving separate education to girls, boys, women, and men. A t the bottom center they setde a dispute. Along the side margins are shown sick people being carried to the church to confess. A t the center the Francis­ cans, led by St. Francis himself, carry the Church to the New W orld. From the dove o f the H oly Spirit radiate lines tow ard the peripheral scenes, indicating the inspirational source for all o f these activities. Catholicism’s emphasis on images perm itted an easy transition, since native deities revealed themselves in manifold and concrete forms. Reli­ gious dramas, w ritten in N ahuatl and acted out by Indians, adapted the medieval mystery play to the native tradition o f deity im personation, by which ritual im personators w ould put on a sacred being’s identity by dressing in its attributes. The Indians were perm itted to sing and dance for Christ and the saints much as they had for their traditional gods: the

The M issionary M issionized

Figure 3. The idealized church patio, _

21

.

. .

Christiana ofiS79- (Courtesy of theJohn Carter Brown Library at Brown University.)

22

THE MISSIONARY M IS S IO N IZ E D

decision to incorporate these forms o f w orship into the Indian Church was a major breakthrough in attracting Indians to the faith. The friars used pictures as didactic devices (as shown in Valadés’s engraving) : woodcuts, paintings, and murals which adapted the native traditions o f sacred picture books and architectural ornam entation to Christian themes. The friars’ educational practices perpetuated the form o f the indigenous schools, re­ moving boys from their homes for a period o f learning and ritual activity, while disrupting generational continuity. In their paternal role the friars usurped the native elders’ authority as the repositories o f wisdom (Trexler 1982). These many small continuities helped overcome and deny the major discontinuity. The friars’ ethnography was influenced by the goals o f missionization. M uch was missed o r m isinterpreted; European cultural categories were imposed haphazardly upon indigenous conceptual schemes. Aspects o f na­ tive culture were sometimes redesigned as they were recorded, to make them acceptable for an Indo-Christian society (for example, Fray Fran­ cisco de las Navas’s version o f the native calendar; see Baudot 1983)- In the prologue to his book on the virtues and vices o f the people (Book X), Sahagún (1981:H I, 97) states that his purpose is to help the preachers by “treating o f the moral virtues according to the intelligence and practice and language that the people themselves have o f them.” But he structures the account according to his own categories o f good and evil, asking his informants to describe a “good” and a “bad” version o f each type o f per­ son (López Austin 1974*141)- Stevenson (1968:102-3), following an earlier observation by Robertson (1959), links this organization to similar state­ ments in the Franciscan Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum., a popular medieval encyclopedia which influenced Sahagún’s presentation o f material. Such a treatm ent o f the N ahuatl inform ation was potentially very useful in developing manuals for confessors, but it was not som ething that Sahagún’s inform ants would have generated spontaneously. Though the friars’ aim was to gain more insight into N ahua culture in order to evangelize more effectively (and also to preserve useful inform a­ tion), it was so difficult for them to perceive it except in their own culture’s terms that the degree o f understanding they were able to attain was se­ verely limited. A t the same tim e they simply recorded, o r allowed their Nahua assistants to record, many things w ith little o r no alteration—other than that imposed by acculturating informants and assistants. The result is a partially Christianized ethnography, corresponding to the partially Nahuatdzed Christianity that constituted the other side o f the dialogue. All

The M issionary M issionized

23

o f the texts are ambivalent to varying degrees, combining indigenous forms o f discourse w ith forms introduced by the friars, interweaving na­ tive and im ported voices so intricately that it can become very difficult to unravel them . The fallacy o f forcing a strict separation between “native” and “European” texts is evident. Although it is possible to distinguish these texts according to the point o f view they purport to represent, it should be kept in m ind that each side was affected by continual feedback from the other. In the friars’ approach to language, an insistence on Latin grammatical categories was paralleled by a tendency to view vocabulary in European terms. They sought correspondence between their own and the Nahuatl words: their aim was translation, not linguistic investigation. A linguist w ould treat the N ahuad words on their own terms, working w ithin the language and seeking to establish the words’ range o f reference, denotative and connotative. A friar wanted to know if there was a Nahuatl w ord for “god,” for “demon,” and so forth. W hatever was available was shanghaied into serving Christian purposes. The friars laid claims to prudence in these m atters, claims accepted by the “spiritual conquest” school o f evangeliza­ tion. M cAndrew (15)65:74), for example, states: Cautious translators did not risk paraphrasing the specifically Christian terms for any important Christian tenet for fear of accidental unorthodoxy or heresy; instead they took over the Spanish or Latin words into otherwise Náhuatl sentences. The friars’ actual usage belies this assertion. H ow could they explain any­ thing except in N ahuatl, even where they did introduce foreign words? Also, the process o f linguistic acculturation is such that nouns are bor­ rowed m ore easily than verbs. In Mexico, Spanish verbs were not adopted into N ahuatl until after mid-century, and this usage coincided w ith the increased contact w ith Spaniards due to repartimiento—not w ith any effort by the missionaries (K arttunen 1982; K arttunen and Lockhart 1976). The N ahuatl catechistic texts contain Spanish and Latin nouns but only Ná­ huatl verbs. Thus, while the things o f religion could come to have foreign names, the acts o f religion did not.4 Indigenous understanding and acceptance o f Christianity varied widely, such th at K lor de Alva has been able to develop a typology o f reactions (1982b). The average person was expected to know by heart the basic ele­ m ents o f C hristian doctrine: the prayers Pater Noster, A ve M aria, and Salve Regina in N ahuatl and Latin, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, Seven M ortal Sins, Works o f Mercy, Cardinal and Theological Virtues, and so

2+

THE MISSIONARY M IS S IO N IZ E D

forth, in N ahuatl.5 Weekly attendance at mass, sermon, and adult cate­ chism class was mandatory, w ith daily catechism classes for children. Yearly confession was required, but only individuals judged to have a good understanding o f the faith were adm itted to communion, the num ber varying at the individual priest’s discretion. Couples were examined on their knowledge o f doctrine before being perm itted to marry. Boys o f the noble class received a more intensive training at boarding schools created for them w ithin the monasteries. People in oudying communities received less attention than those in communities where the friars had perm anent establishments. Exposure to Christian teaching varied widely. W hile active resistance to Christianity was unusual among the Nahuas, lim ited educa­ tion and the general problem o f translation and reinterpretation were common obstacles in cases where people did not adopt m ore than the rudiments o f the new religion. In this study I am presuming a relatively high degree o f exposure and understanding typical o f the urban population o r residents o f tow ns w ith long-standing monasteries and linguistically skilled preachers. Rural dwellers may have had a somewhat different experience o f Christianity, memorizing the required elements o f doctrine and fulfilling the minimal obligations o f participation w ithout ever analyzing w hat they had learned or integrating it w ith their traditional patterns o f thought. Because it is these rural Nahuas who avoided acculturation sufficiently that their present-day descendants still speak N ahuad, comparisons between present-day Nahua culture and Christian teaching as presented here should be undertaken w ith caution. The educarional program that I de­ scribe represents the best that the friars could do while w orking w ithin the Nahuad language. The average rural commoner may have learned much less; the highly acculturated, literate, Latin-speaking noble males raised in the friars’ schools and college undoubtedly learned much more. The large corpus o f Nahuad-language catechisric texts produced by the missionaries and their students is widely scattered throughout the w orld’s libraries. There is as yet litde bibliographic control over this m aterial; var­ ious manuscripts and books known to have been produced have left no known copies. The m ost typical genres o f the surviving texts are the doc­ trina^ or catechism o f varying length containing the material to which Indians were m ost widely exposed, the sermonario^ o r collecdon o f ser­ mons for Sundays and festivals, and the eonfissionario, o r manual featuring questions to ask penitent Indians and other guidelines for m inistering to them. Also represented are biblical readings for Sundays and festivals, and

The M issionary M issionized

25

a variety o f m ore innovative texts: songs, m editations, dialogues, plays, and adm onitions. These texts are attributed to individual friars, but in reality they were joint products o f the friars and their Nahua interpreters and scribes, who were responsible in large part for the w ording o f the N ahuatl texts. Al­ though the friars supervised the process and edited the results, the collab­ oration w ith Nahuas was essential. The friars’ “voice” in the catechistic texts is thus an ambivalent one; the “Christian” texts are to this extent already N ahua-Christian. They are treated here as “Christian” because they are the official vehicles for presenting Christianity to the Nahuas. Thus, they contrast w ith “ethnographic” texts which purport to speak for the Nahuas, regardless o f how Christianized those Nahuas had become. O nly a small selection o f the available texts were used in this study. They were selected on criteria o f originality, reliability, typicality, and the influ­ ence o f their authors. The texts are listed and described in the Appendix.

M O R A L E D U C A T IO N

C hristian morality, as taught to the Nahuas, was defined according to the Ten Commandments and the Seven M ortal Sins, which were part o f the basic doctrine that everyone was expected to memorize. Elaborating on these, the friars w ould list all the behaviors proscribed and prescribed by each. Each m ortal sin had a whole brood o f equally m ortal offspring, named by medieval priests as they sought to classify every conceivable offense (Tender 1977:135—38). The Commandments, coming straight from M oses, and the Seven M ortal Sins, coming by a roundabout route from G nostic eschatology (Bloomfield 1952), classified morality differendy but were integrated and extended to cover all thoughts and deeds the Church deemed unacceptable. The friars sought to impress the truth o f these doctrines upon their charges by the same appeals to authority and fear that they used in the rest o f their teachings (see Borges i960). The authority o f God, the Bible, and tradirional O ld W orld practice superseded whatever authority the native elders claimed to have, for they were ignorant o f truth and deceived by the Devil. Furtherm ore, if the new teachings were not accepted, the Na­ huas w ould join their ancestors in eternal suffering after death. The lives and teachings o f C hrist and the saints were invoked as examples o f proper moral behavior; the fate o f sinners was described in vivid detail.

26

THE MISSIONARY M IS S IO N IZ E D

M issionary teaching practices w ent beyond rote m em orization and simple insistence. The doctrinal texts preserve many efforts to persuade and cajole as well as to threaten and insist. The m ethod used was straight­ forward: do this o r you will be punished; do this because we (or God) say so. But the language used was Nahua moral rhetoric, which skillfully ma­ nipulated m etaphors aimed at inducing desired behaviors while it pro­ m oted a coherent moral conception o f the human universe. Indigenous morality was backed by the authority o f the elders and ancestors, but it was also accordant w ith a whole ideology. However successful the friars were in setting themselves up as moral authorities, they still had to adapt their teaching to native thought. The friars tended to think in moral absolutes. The late medieval view o f the w orld divided its moral aspects unambiguously into “virtues” and “vices”; the form er were associated w ith Christians who served G od, the latter w ith pagans and others who served the Devil (Caro Baroja 15)65:70). The friars’ thinking reflected this pattern. D oubting not that the basic tenets o f their own moral system were compatible w ith ultim ate realities, they had a lim ited capacity for cultural relativism. Late in the sixteenth century, Jesuit probabilists challenged the Church’s moral absolutism; among the early friars, though their own theology was in a state o f flux relative to the rigidity o f medieval scholasticism, certain basic assumptions were not openly questioned. The role o f the Devil in hum an affairs, the universal applicability o f the Christian concept o f sin (whatever the indi­ vidual theologian’s interpretation o f that concept), the use o f good and evil as universal categories—these assumptions are im plicit in the friars’ writings. Many aspects o f indigenous culture, even though alien to E uro­ peans, could be perceived as appropriate to their cultural context, but no t if they violated beliefs that the friars held to be self-evident truths. For example, the native marriage ceremony could be accepted as creating a legitimate union, but there could be no tolerance o f polygyny: God’s cre­ ation o f the Adam-Eve pair established a sacred and inviolable precedent for monogamy. These absolutist aspects o f the friars’ thought, rather than simply aug­ m enting their intolerance, actually had a minimizing effect on their per­ ception o f cultural diversity, just as their search for synonyms lim ited their perception o f linguistic nuances. O n certain subjects, indigenous forms o f thought could be right or w rong, good or bad, but they could no t be simply different. If the Nahuas had a concept o f sin, it m eant th at their ideology contained at least this element o f God-given tru th , even if in its

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details it differed somewhat from the corresponding Christian concept. The friars could use the native term in their teaching w ithout being overly concerned about how well it meshed w ith their own concept. Such an approach facilitated dialogue, for it perm itted the friars to adopt the native categories while satisfying themselves that orthodoxy was being ade­ quately upheld. Hence, there was nothing to prevent their adoption o f native usage, once they assured themselves that it was free o f idolatry. They tended to avoid very elaborate figures o f speech, which they could not fully under­ stand and which m ight thus conceal unorthodox meanings, but simpler tropes which they thought they understood were accepted. Style varied from straightforw ard narrative to the highly metaphorical, depending on the linguistic capacities o f individual friars and the w riting skills o f their N ahua assistants. Also, there was an interplay between the desire to w rite clearly and the desire to replicate the rhetorical style familiar to their au­ dience. The tendency is tow ard simple narrative seasoned w ith the occa­ sional trope, a w riting style which Bierhorst (1985:47) dubs “missionary Nahuatl,” noting the “suspicious ease” w ith which it translates into Span­ ish o r English. In skilled hands, however, this w riting bears the same ele­ vated form ality as the texts o f indigenous rhetoric or huehuetlatoUi6 ‘old men’s speech’ (for example, see Baudot 1982). Fray Juan de Zum árraga, Mexico’s first bishop and archbishop (and him self a Franciscan), in 1544 recommended simple, truthful w riting w ith­ o u t fancy rhetoric (Zum árraga 1928:78^; Sahagún (1583: prologue) ex­ pressed concern that idolatrous ideas m ight lurk behind poetic metaphors. The friars also recognized, however, that such metaphors m ight be used effectively in their preaching. Both Sahagún and Olmos made extensive records o f the m etaphors used in native oratory. Though there is consid­ erable loss and reduction, various o f these metaphors appear in their own and others’ doctrinal w ritings. They m ust have found the tropes effective, for it w ould have been easier for them to compose or edit texts direedy translated from Spanish o r Latin. Native assistants may have shown a pref­ erence for w riting that they considered stylistically appealing. Even in direct translation, the N ahuad words used had various deno­ tative and connotative meanings alien to those o f the terms they trans­ lated. Thus it was impossible to avoid the problem w ith which Zumárraga and Sahagún were concerned. W hen one examines even the closest paral­ lels for Christian moral term s, parallels which the friars accepted w ithout question, one sees the expression o f indigenous concepts quite at odds

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w ith the Christian purposes they are being forced to serve. Indigenous morality had a this-worldly rather than an other-worldly focus; its justifi­ cation lay in the nature o f life on earth rather than the pronouncem ents o f a distant deity. It articulated not w ith a Christian w orld view but w ith basic pan-Mesoamerican religious concepts: a cosmos in delicate balance, the 260-day sacred calendar o r tonalpohualli, capricious deities, and peni­ tence aimed at earning favor rather than forgiveness for sins. Basic to Christian morality was the concept o f sin, which in turn was predicated on the dichotomy between good and evil, a force personified in the figure o f the Devil. These concepts were alien to the N ahua m ind, but the friars had no choice but to grasp the closest parallels they could find and set to work. For sin they substituted tlatlacolli’, the acts classified as tlatlacolli were somewhat different under Christianity, but the nature o f “sin” itself was made continuous w ith native thought. For the good-evil dichotomy they substituted various expressions o f the Mesoamerican dia­ lectic o f order and chaos, structure and anti-structure. They elevated a cat­ egory o f indigenous sorcerer to the role o f God’s Adversary. Thus, native concepts were carried over into the m ost fundamental aspects o f Christian moral teaching. These aspects o f moral dialogue are explored below.

S IN AND DAMAGE

The friars’ development o f a Nahua-Chrisdan m orality rested upon their adoption o f tlatlacolli as a synonym for sin, for the Spanish pecado and Latin peccatum. Tlatlacolli is the substantive form o f the intransitive verb tlatlacoa , which in turn derives from the transitive verb itlacoa. Itlacoa means “to damage, spoil or harm”; w ith the impersonal object prefix tía-, it means “to damage things (or something).” Hence tlatlacollfs m ost literal meaning is “som ething damaged.” Related to itlacoa is the intransitive or reflexive verb itlacahui ‘to go bad, become corrupt, spoil, injure oneself.’ This w ord and its substantive form itlacauhqui were used widely in Chris­ tian contexts to refer to moral corruption. These terms had quite a broad range o f meaning, as an examination o f Sahagún’s Florentine Codex and Fray Alonso de M olina’s dictionary re­ veals. Any sort o f error or misdeed could be labeled a tlatlacolli, from conscious moral transgressions to judicially defined crimes to accidental or unintentional damage.7 A weaver who tangled her weaving, a feather worker who ruined feathers, a w arrior w ho erred in battle, a singer w ho

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failed to harm onize, a mouse gnawing garments, hail harm ing crops: these are all examples o f itlacoa-typc damage (Sahagún 1953—82:X, 52, 25; X m , 53, 56; XI, 17; 1905-08:V I, 67). To offend someone was teyolitlacoa, ‘to damage someone’s heart.’ Slaves were conceived o f as damaged (López A ustin 1980:1, 463); liberation from slavery was called a casting off o f tlatlacolli (M olina 1970T, 78r; II, io9r®). The m ost frequently mentioned tlatlacolli are sexual excesses, intoxication, and theft. A nything displaced o r off balance could be itlacauhqui, including a dis­ located bone (Sahagún i953-82:X, 153) or a woman in the later stages o f pregnancy (M olina i97o:II, 43r). A rotten egg was itlacauhqui as well (M olina 1970 :II, 43r). The cultural defects o f non-Nahua groups were their itlacauhqui (Sahagún 1953-82 :X, 178,186,189). A flaw in the weaving o f a m ande was its itlacauhqui (M olina 1970:11, 37r). If a leader failed to perform his duties correcdy his office itlacauh (preterit o f itlacahui; Saha­ gún 1905-08:V I, 134). Spoiled maize or other rotten foodstuffs was itla­ cauhqui (M olina i97o:I, 3ir; Sahagún 1953-82:X, 66). Otherwise auspi­ cious day-signs could have negadve features mixed w ith them, causing them to go corrupt (itlacauhtiuh; Sahagún 1953-82:IV 9). To some extent these terms are simply descriptive, w ith many applica­ tions falling outside w hat one m ight at first glance designate as “moral.” But Edel and Edel (1968:111) advise that apparendy descriptive terms may contain elements o f moral evaluation leading “directly into im portant as­ pects o f m oral structure and belief.” Could damage, then, have served as a unifying m oral principle in the same sense that sin did in medieval Chris­ tianity? It w ould seem less ethnocentric to begin by treating all these sorts o f damage as a single native category w ith general moral implications rather than singling ou t moral from nonm oral uses. One notes an empha­ sis on effect rather than cause, on the outcome o f the act—that something is damaged— rather than some element inherent in the act itself. All o f these types o f damage represent violations o f structure or continuity, be it physical integrity, social norm , o r psychological state. To behave immor­ ally is to disrupt order, to prom ote decay over cohesion, randomness over continuity. Entropy is the essence o f immorality. Conversely, the establish­ m ent and preservation o f order is the primary moral obligation and mo­ tivation—w hat Ladd (1957:165) terms the “ground-motive” o f the ethical system. Given these assumptions, those acts culturally defined as tlatlacolli can be argued against on the basis o f the well-being not only o f the indi­ vidual but also the society and the entire cosmos. Tlatlacolli may have occupied a position in Nahua ideology analogous

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to that o f sin in Christian, but the terms are not synonymous. Early sixteenth-century theology was in a state o f flux between medieval for­ mulations and the Counter-Reform ation’s reestablishment o f orthodoxy. There were variant interpretations o f the concept o f sin— for example, in regard to the role o f unintentional acts— but in composing their catechistic texts the friars tended to fall in line w ith traditional form ulations which contrast strikingly w ith the Nahua concept. The extent to which the friars diverged from this perspective in more casual contexts is difficult to say, though their acceptance o f native concepts m ight imply a certain tolerance for variant expressions. In its standard medieval form ulation, as defined by St. Ambrose, Chris­ tian sin is restricted to “a transgression o f the divine law, and disobedience to the heavenly commandments” (Aquinas 1969:59)- It is confined to vol­ untary acts: accidents do not count and under certain conditions igno­ rance can excuse. Ideas o f harm and disorder are involved, but the harm results from the sin and is distinct from the sin itself, while disorder is not a result but a characteristic o f the act (Aquinas 1969:81-85,129). The D o­ minican Doctrina cristiana o f 1548 defines tlatlacolli in terms o f G od’s will (42r-42v): Yn tlatlaculli tiquitoa yn icoac ytla mochiua: anoço yn icoac ytla mitoa: i anoço yn icoac ytla molnamiq’ I a^pli in ayectli in amoquimoneq’ltia in toveytlatocauh in Dios: We say “sin” when something is done, or perhaps something is said, or perhaps something is thought, which is bad, wrong, which our great ruler God does not want. If both the Christian and Nahua concepts are viewed in broad, crosscultural term s, analogous aspects do emerge. Fürer-H aim endorf (1974: 554) distinguishes sin from the general field o f moral transgression by stat­ ing that sin “is believed to bring about consequences damaging to the transgressor w hether o r not his conduct becomes public or attracts any social disapproval.” Sin, along w ith guilt, has traditionally been associated w ith Western culture or w ith the great world religions, but FürerH aim endorf dissociates sin from any cultural-evolutionary scheme and treats it as an independendy variable phenomenon. H e defines four cate­ gories into which societies may be placed on the sole basis o f the degree to which a sense o f sin is present. The Nahuas m ost closely (though not perfeedy) fit his second category:

31 s o c ie tie s w h ic h r e c o g n iz e th a t c erta in h u m a n a c tiv itie s, su ch as b rea ch es o f ta b o o s, d o b r in g a b o u t an in te r v e n tio n o f su p ern a tu ra l p o w e r s, b u t a ssu m e th a t any san c­ tio n s ex er c ised b y su c h p o w ers are restr ic te d to m an’s fo rtu n es in th is life , a n d d o n o t a ffec t h is fa te a fter d e a th . (F ü r er -H a im e n d o r ff 1974:554)

C hristianity falls into his fourth category: s o c ie tie s w h ic h b e lie v e in a p erso n a l G o d o r a n u m b er o f d e itie s a c tin g as g u a rd i­ an s o f th e m o ra l o rd er a n d rew a rd in g o r p u n ish in g m an’s a c tiv ities in th e h ereafter. (F ü r er -H a im e n d o r ff 1974:554)

According to this typology, the Nahuas had a partially developed sense o f sin while their missionaries possessed it in its fullest expression, to the extent th at it dom inated their ideology. In Nahua belief ritual breaches could bring on divine sanctions in the form o f diseases (Aguirre Beltrán 1963:38-43). The most common breach was the breaking o f fasts (which involved sexual as well as alimentary ab­ stinence); the verb itlacoa was used in this context (for example, Sahagún 1953-82:111,11). This belief was one o f Preuss’s arguments for asserting the presence o f a sin concept in pre-Columbian religion (1903); Lanczkowski (1970:123) also includes ritual offenses along w ith more overdy moral ones in his explanation o f tlatlacolli. Some immoral acts brought on misfortunes due less to divine punishm ent than to a form o f possession by divine forces. But in both cases supernatural agents participate in human moral­ ity, in contrast to Fürer-H aim endorf’s (1974:553-54) first category where such involvement is absent. Thus, the tlatlacolli concept provided some common ground between Christian and Nahua belief. Tlatlacolli is sin, but not in the full extent o f the Christian usage, and it has a range o f meanings alien to Christianity; the concepts overlap but are not synonyms. The distinction between sanc­ tions in this life and in the afterlife, as expressed in Fürer-H aim endorf’s definitions, was o f vital interest to the friars but was not used to distin­ guish sin from other types o f misdeed. A discussion o f sin leads into a consideration o f guilt and shame. Piers and Singer (1971) have refuted the classic distinction between “guilt cul­ tures’’ (W estern) and “shame cultures” (all others), noting that shame can be internalized, having much the same effect and appearance as guilt, and th at cultures traditionally classified as “shame cultures” may in fact have a sense o f guilt as well. Though psychologically distinct, guilt and shame do not constitute a very useful tool for classifying whole cultures. To cast N ahua-Christian contact in these terms would be a gross

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over-simplification. Nevertheless, given the emphasis placed on these con­ cepts in moral analysis, they may m erit some attention. W ithout delving too deeply into psychoanalytic concepts, shame may be characterized as deriving from a fear o f contem pt or, ultimately, o f abandonment, while guilt derives from a fear o f m utilation or annihilation (Piers and Singer 1971:29). This second type o f fear certainly was present in the Nahua psyche—gods (like parents) could punish immoral acts by inflicting physical harm on the offender; on a grander scale, there was a constant fear o f w orld annihilation. A sense o f sin is evident in these con­ texts; perhaps a sense o f guilt, or som ething approaching it, may be as­ sumed. However, the need to please the capricious gods, to cajole and entertain them in order to keep their attention fixed on hum an welfare, was very strongly emphasized. Christianity, w ith a personal deity who was vitally interested in hum an affairs, greatly emphasized guilt. Because o f sin, everyone was guilty be­ fore God and m erited annihilation. Penitence for sin, more a m atter o f public shaming in the early Church, had in the M iddle Ages become a private affair between sinner and priest. Shame before the priest remained a desired element o f penitence but guilt was more im portant. Sin was supposed to cause pain even if known only privately (Tender 1977:128-30). However, such criteria do not easily distinguish guilt from internalized shame, especially for Europeans viewing Indians—people whose public behavior, let alone psychological makeup, was in many ways im penetrable. For present purposes, the idea o f a basic psychological difference between Nahua and Christian mentality is rejected while noting that the sense o f guilt, like that o f sin, was relatively more central to Christian thought than to Nahua. This shame-guilt question, despite its interest for anthropologists and psychoanalysts, did not trouble the friars. They adopted the N ahuatl term pinahuiztli as a synonym for shame (vergüenza), using it in the sense o f public reprim and, which indeed seems an accurate interpretation. The verb form pinahua is often paired w ith the verb ahua ‘to chide o r repri­ mand Pinahuiztli has the meaning o f tim idity or bashfulness also. As an example o f its usage in a seemingly non-ethical context, pinahuizatl ‘shame-water referred to a type o f river which allegedly stopped flowing when people crossed it, as if shrinking from public scrutiny (Sahagun 1953—82:XI, 249). A lthough revelation o f one’s misdeeds w ould shame a person, pinahuiztli is not part o f the tlatlacolli complex. The friars did not confuse pinahuiztli w ith guilt. N ahuatl has no sepa-

.9

9

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rate term for guilt— to the extent that such a concept was present it was subsumed w ithin that o f tlatlacolli. Rather than trying to develop a distinct concept o f guilt, the friars worked w ithin the existing system, translating culpa as tlatlacolli. The resulting identification o f sin w ith guilt was com­ patible w ith Nahua thought but eliminated the cause-effect relation be­ tween the Christian ideas. Mea culpa became notlatlacol ‘my damage,’ the damage th at I have done, w hether to myself, to society, to God, or to cosmic order— ultim ately it was all the same. The fear and uneasiness one may feel as a consequence o f one’s transgression inhere in the transgres­ sion itself, are part o f the damage, the disturbed and disordered condition characteristic o f all tlatlacolli. The friars concentrated on developing this fear and uneasiness into som ething more like their own sense o f guilt by constantly stressing that one m ust feel pain and sorrow for one’s tlatlacolli. The friars’ procedures m ust be understood in the context o f contem­ porary theology, which took guilt more or less for granted while focusing more on the issue o f attrition and contrition. A ttrition is sorrow for sins stemming from fear o f their consequences, accompanied by an intention not to sin again; contrition is a more sublime form o f sorrow stemming from love o f G od and a desire not to offend him. A ttrition can precede and evolve into contrition; it is a m ore primitive form. A ttrition subsumed shame and to some extent guilt, since it covered fear o f exposure and disgrace as well as fear o f punishm ent by God (Lea 1968:11,15). These were im portant theological concepts because, after annual sacra­ mental confession was declared mandatory in 1215, the Church had to ex­ plain why sorrow alone was insufficient to secure divine pardon. The attrition/contrition distinction was m anipulated to this end. C ontrition was declared essential to pardon. Since one could not be sure if one’s sorrow was attrition o r contrition, one could not rest assured o f one’s salvation. However, divine grace infused at the moment o f the priest’s absolution had the power to transform attrition into contrition, compensating for the penitents imperfect sorrow. Absolution guaranteed salvation while sorrow alone did not. This view was endorsed by the Franciscan and Dominican orders. The Council o f Trent, w ithout overtly endorsing it, came close enough that subsequent theologians were justified in perpetuating it (Lea 1968:1,102-3; H, 13-15; Tender 1977:19-27). The im portance o f sadness, m ore than o f guilt, drew the friars’ atten­ tion. Their teaching is a simplified version o f contemporary doctrine. W hile contrition is preferred, attrition is not utterly rejected. The threat o f punishm ent in hell, as well as shaming (whether public, before the con-

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fessor, or before G od), was a necessary tool for inducing moral confor­ m ity; the friars were hardly prepared to give that up in the interest o f a more sublime spirituality. They encouraged people to reprim and and shame sinners. They strove to induce sorrow for sins, but w ithout at­ tem pting to distinguish in N ahuad between the tw o types o f sorrow (let alone whether they derived from guilt or shame). Tequipacholiztli ‘anguish, affliction and tlaocoyaliztli ‘sadness are used interchangeably as synonyms for sadness or sorrow, translating such Spanish terms as contrición, dolor^ pena,, aflicción. A ttrition receives litrie overt attention. After all, as long as the Indians were sad, priesdy absolution would act to secure their pardon. Fray Alonso de Escalona (n.d. :157V), the Franciscan author o f an early set o f sermons, teaches simply that if all the sins that sinners commit make them sad, and if they obey all the commandments (i.e., “sin no more55), they will gain eternal life. The Dominican catechism o f 1548 gives remem­ brance o f all sins, crying for them , and the intention not to sin again as prerequisites for confession w ithout distinguishing motives for the crying phase (Doctrina cristiana i944:97r-98r). Fray Dom ingo de la Anunciación’s catechism (1565:34V), another Dominican work, states the necessity o f sadness for sins w ithout accounting for the origin o r character o f this sadness. Sahagún (i563:6ov-6rv) distinguishes “good sadness55 from “bad sadness,55but the contrast is between sadness for sins, for Christ’s suffering, or from longing to see Christ, and sadness for worldly m isfortune; he does not attem pt an attrition/contrition distinction. In thcA pendiz (1579b:i4r) he contrasts “spiritual sadness55w ith “earthly sadness55; the form er is con­ trition, but the latter is not necessarily attrition. M olina, in his Confesion­ ario mayor (i569:i3v-i4r), comes closer to such a distinction, stating that the principal reason for confessing should be to please and honor G od, not to escape hell, receive divine favor, or enjoy the glory o f heaven. H ere love o f God is distinguished from fear and greed, but one type o f sorrow is not distinguished from another. W here he speaks o f sadness for sins, using contrición in Spanish and tlatlacolnetequipacboliztli ‘sin anguish5 in Nahuad, he states that this sadness originates in fear o f God and knowl­ edge o f sin (as contrition originates in attrition), but w ithout designating this a d istin a form o f sadness (5r).

5

5

G O O D A ND E V IL , O R D E R AND CHA OS

Nahua and Christian alike dwelt at the center o f a vibrant universe where struggles o f cosmic scale aaed themselves out. For Nahuas the basic

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cosmic conflict was between order and chaos, for Christians between good and evil. Both cast light against darkness, life against death, wisdom against madness, restraint against excess. But only in Christianity was it conceived as a struggle between moral absolutes. Because the C hristian deity is om nipotent and benevolent, theodicy, or the defense o f that benevolence in light o f the existence o f evil, is a difficult and unavoidable task for Christian theology (Russell 1981:16-17). The problem o f evil involves C hristianity in a basic contradiction with no so­ lution; over the centuries the problem has been masked, though never really solved, by tw o interrelated but conflicting trends o f thought. One is a flirtation w ith dualism w ithin an over-arching monotheism; the other is the denial o f evil’s ontological status. Exposure to dualist philosophies during Christianity’s formative cen­ turies left lasting effects. Persian Zoroastrianism had divided the cosmos into equal and opposite forces o f light and darkness. Greek cosmic dualism o f the O rphic and Platonic sects set spirit against matter. Jewish dualism, m anifested especially in Essene and apocalyptic thought, involved a moral struggle between good and evil enacted for or in the human soul (Russell 1981:32—33). All o f these oppositions became incorporated into Christian­ ity. In the New Testament the figure o f Satan, the power o f darkness, appears as a counterprinciple to Christ, the power o f light (Russell 1977:222). The D esert Fathers, founders o f Christian monasticism and early form ulaters o f Christian doctrine, espoused a severe asceticism that debased the material and the fleshly while exalting the spiritual. This brand o f m atter-spirit dualism had little to do w ith Christ’s teachings and much to do w ith the ascetic Hellenistic sects competing w ith Christianity for adherents (Bullough 1973:111; Dodds 1965:32-35)- The moral struggle for the individual soul became a basic tenet o f Christian doctrine, expressed in the belief in individual demons and guardian angels as well as afterlife beliefs. However, mainstream Christian theology always asserted the superior­ ity o f G od’s power and his creations to the evil forces, leaving by the wayside fully dualist sects like Gnosticism and Manichaeanism. Christian­ ity evolved as a “semidualist” religion, characterized by a dynamic and creative tension between monism and dualism (Russell 1977:228). The pen­ dulum never stopped swinging: the various Catharist heresies o f medieval times ascribed to so profound a m atter-spirit dualism that they denied the Incarnation— their C hrist would not have befouled him self in earthly flesh. Scholastic theology, led by St. Thomas Aquinas and following St.

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Augustine’s example, devised an ill-fitting m onist disguise for the m atterspirit dualism so inextricably entrenched in Christian thought. M orality was equated w ith ontology, such that the m ost real and the m ost good were the same. This scheme had its roots in Plato’s idealism. A moral/ ontological hierarchy ranged from G od— pure spirit— down through an­ gels, humans, and animals ranked according to intelligence, then plants, inanimate objects, gross unform ed m atter, to total nonbeing (Russell 1968:53—54). To ascribe only lim ited “reality” to m atter and evil is patently absurd, but the scheme provided so useful a solution to so many problems that the scholastics preferred to devote their skilled logic to concealing its flaws rather than to devising som ething else. The equation o f evil w ith m atter was preserved, while both were deprived o f their status as cosmic forces in opposition to spirit and good. Only one universal, eternal prin­ ciple existed. God was Being itself, and all lesser forms o f being derived from this single source. The challenge o f dualist philosophy was explained away, and a weapon was forged against heretics.9 Corollary to this scheme is the privation theory o f evil. Since all being is good, nothing can be evil in itself. Evil exists only in the absence o f good, in the turning away from good and from God. Evil increases w ith distance from God. Goodness, divine harmony, is the natural state o f the universe; evil disrupts that harmony not as an active force but as an ab­ sence o f things o r conditions which ought to be present. D isorder cannot exist as an active principle, since it is merely a negation o f order. The origin o f evil is the will. Ideally, all creatures should choose to turn tow ard God, but in order for there to be a choice the option o f evil has to exist. Devils and sinners have turned away from good: they are evil in that they have chosen not to be good. Since this is their own choice, evil cannot be blamed on God (Aquinas 1969; Russell 1968,1984). H ere the cosmic struggle is not an opposition o f forces but the yearning o f all creatures toward their Creator, toward the perfection o f the ultim ate Being. The existence o f free will demands o f humans that they make choices; the individual m ust struggle to choose the good against the influ­ ence o f those who have not. Life is a battle, w hether one inclines tow ard dualism or toward the scholastics’ solution. Evil cannot be denied com­ pletely. Indeed, folk belief in the Devil waxed particularly strong at the end o f the M iddle Ages in spite o f the scholastics’ arguments (Russell 1984). U nder one guise or another, Christians retained their belief in the cosmic opposition o f good and evil. Nahua cosmic dualism was not cast in terms o f good and evil. D espite

37

the many dual aspects o f Nahua thought, its theology was monist. A single divine principle— teotl—was responsible for the nature o f the cosmos, negative aspects o f it as well as beneficial ones. It was a polytheist monism: th at is, the divine principle manifested itself in multiple forms, some am­ bivalent, some expressing opposite principles in their different manifesta­ tions (Russell 1977:251). M ore accurate would be Klor de Alva’s term teoyaism (1979:7) (from teoyotl, the abstract form o f teotl), since teotl could m anifest itself in ritual objects, images, and human deity-im personators— forms no t necessarily consistent w ith the Western conception o f deity. Negative forces were not construed as enemies o f goodness, nor as a turning away from good, but as essential, functional components o f the cosmos. Disharm ony was as necessary as harmony. Creative, ordering forces and destructive, chaotic forces were tw o sides o f the same coin, each dependent upon the other for its functioning. There was no permanent structure, no ontological hierarchy or Great Chain o f Being, but rather a process or a movement. O rder was tem porary and incomplete, w ith chaotic forces dwelling at its interstices and peripheries. O rder and chaos, structure and anti­ structure, were subsumed w ithin a larger pattern. Life came from death, creation from destruction. U nordered m atter was the stuff o f creation—it was no t deprived o f ontological status. Entropie forces eroded order, but they were themselves fertile and energizing, providing the substance for new establishments o f order. This is the same sort o f mythical chaos which Sm ith (15)78:97), com m enting on Eliade’s work, describes as a chaos which is never overcome but “remains as a creative challenge, as a source o f pos­ sibility and vitality over against, yet inextricably related to, order and the Sacred.” This is the dialectical dualism typical o f Mesoamerican thought, as de­ scribed by B. Tedlock (1982:42,145-62) and D. Tedlock (1983:217; 1985:63). The opposites complement each other, existing w ithin an overarching unity or synthesis. They cannot be reduced to an opposition between pos­ itive and negative. They contain elements o f each other; thus, there is no need for m ediation between them. The dualist philosophies that contrib­ uted to C hristian theology posited no such synthesis; Christianity tended to assert unity by denying rather than incorporating the second element. This is an analytical dualism: dualities clash w ith each other. There can be m ediators between them , but they cannot be resolved into a whole. In the N ahua universe, how to align oneself w ith good and to avoid evil was n o t the basic problem o f human existence. Rather, one had to

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discover the proper balance between order and chaos. O ne had to establish and maintain the order, continuity, and stability necessary for social and cultural survival while capturing just enough fertilizing energy to ensure biological survival. O rder had to be forcibly wrested from chaos and then paid for periodically through ritual sacrifices. Contact w ith chaos could not be severed since it was the source o f life. Graulich (1983) views this cycle o f debt and repayment in terms o f sin and retribution. Zantwijk presents a valid criticism o f this interpretation, suggesting that w hat G rau­ lich sees as sin would be better described as “the basic Mesoamerican con­ cept o f the ‘holy war the creative struggle, the essential M esoamerican struggle for life .. . .” (Comments, in Graulich 1983:583). This universe is not structured in moral terms. H um an moral codes provide essential guidelines for interacting w ith and enduring cosmic forces, but the forces themselves are not subject to these rules. W hat is good o r bad for humans may be meaningless to the higher powers. The friars’ w ritings portray a universe divided between powers o f good and evil, light and darkness. Images o f warfare and struggle abound. The basic goodness o f creation is asserted, but mainly as a foil for the corrupt­ ing forces that plague it. For example. Fray Dom ingo de la Anunciación teaches that God made the world good but, because o f our sins, it is against us and makes war on us (1565:56^. This attitude reflects the friars’ self-conception as crusaders bringing light to the pagans, battling against the pagan gods/demons. Their emphasis on celibacy and poverty corre­ lated w ith a strong inclination tow ard m atter-spirit dualism. H ere they bear perhaps a closer resemblance to the Apostles and the D esert Fathers than to the scholastics who were their more immediate forebears. Evil flourishes in their w orld, though less as a force in itself than as personified in its many minions: the Devil, the flesh, worldliness, sin, and sinners. In their teachings, evil appears more in the concrete than in the abstract, more in the adjective than in the noun: evil beings rather than Evil itself. W hile N ahuad is replete w ith terms expressing disorder and decay, it has no w ord for evil in the abstract sense. Terms for good and bad, right and w rong exist but are relatively concrete. “Good” was usually translated as cualli, derived from the passive o f the verb cua ‘to eat.’ A second term used to mean “good” or “right” was yectli, literally meaning som ething finished or completed (Andrews 1975:487). Their opposites are simply their negations: acualli and ayectli. These terms had moral implications in indigenous usage. Expressions such as cualli inyollo ‘their hearts are good’

,5

39

and yecnemilice ‘possessor o f a righteous life5 seem too common and too idiom atic to be Christian inventions. However, these terms, and their m ore abstract derivatives cualiztli and yectiliztli ‘goodness,5 (or acualiztli and ayectüiztli ‘badness5), were not universal evaluative categories into which all phenom ena could be placed. The friars treat them as if they were. Wickedness o r perversion was often translated by the term tlahuelilocay0i/, o r tlahueliloc for the wicked person or in an adjectival sense. This cor­ responds to the abstraction “evil55 no better than acualli does. Its root, tlahueUi, means anger; the term denotes frenzy or raving madness— an uncontrolled, disorderly state o f em otion— rather than badness itself. The friars insisted on Christian categories o f good and evil but ended up expressing them in term s o f the order-disorder dialectic. This was the only way o f making their value judgm ents meaningful to the Nahuas, yet it effectively “N ahuatized55w hat they were trying to say. By placing great emphasis on certain things, they could work on altering content—for ex­ ample, the punishm ent o f sinners after death— but they were still operat­ ing w ithin w hat was essentially a Mesoamerican universe.

G O D S , D E V IL S, A N D H U M A N OWLS

The friars accepted the indigenous concept o f deity, teotl, as a term for their ow n deity and an adjective for “holy.55They merely insisted that there was only one being, named Dios, o r the three o f the Trinity (a concept extremely difficult to explain in N ahuatl) to which the term applied. Epi­ thets pertaining to the m ajor indigenous deities, Tezcatlipoca in particular, were applied to the Christian God if they were compatible w ith his char­ acter: Ipalnem ohuani ‘H e by W hom One Lives,5Tloque Nahuaque ‘Pos­ sessor o f the Near, Possessor o f the Surrounding,5Ilhuicahua Tlalticpaque ‘Possessor o f H eaven, Possessor o f Earth5 (see Burkhart 1988). The terms ángel and santo were introduced to describe holy beings o f lesser status to whom teotl could not properly be applied. The indigenous deities did not, as a group, represent moral authority: there were tricksters, harlots, and drunkards as well as virtuous priests and benevolent grandm others. The same being could incite immoral behavior and then afflict the wrongdoer. Deity, like creation itself, embodied order and disorder; the priesdy culture-bearer Quetzalcoatl was forever chal­ lenged by the dissolute sorcerer Tezcatlipoca.

40

THE MISSIONARY M IS S IO N IZ E D

Christian teaching attem pted to redefine teotl in terms o f moral order while placing all the anti-structural aspects into the category o f demon. Although the concept o f teotl was adopted, all the individual beings w ho had been called by that term had to be stripped o f their divine status. The friars, for whom devils were very real creatures, assumed that the indige­ nous deities were devils— not products o f pagan ignorance but mimons o f the Prince o f Darkness. And Tezcatlipoca was Lucifer him self (Burkhart 1988; Sahagún 1563:82^ iS79b:iov, 1953-82:1, ; Weckmann 1984: , 242). Idolatry was occasionally explained in nondiabolic terms: for example, in M otolinia (1971:25)9), in Sahagún’s appendix to his book on the gods (1953-82:1) and in Valadés (in Palomera 1962:226-27). The natives may have invented on their own the worship o f images and the deification o f natural objects, but even so these practices led to their enslavement by the Devil. The usual view, and one professed by Sahagún in other w ritings, attributed to Satan the origin o f N ahua religion (Burkhart 1988; K lor de Alva 1982a; Sylvest 1975:48). This diabology exercised a strong hold on the Europeans in Mexico. Olmos was so convinced o f the Devil’s presence among the Indians that he translated into N áhuatl Fray M artín de Castañega’s 1527 treatise on su­ perstition and sorcery, a text based on the notion o f the diabolic pact (Bau­ dot 1972,1979,1983:244)- Devils are everywhere in Fray Juan de Grijalva’s chronicle o f the Augusdnians (1624). N ot only the friars held this view but also conquistadors and colonial officials. Diaz del Castillo (1956:78, 206) calls the native gods devils and Tezcatlipoca the god o f hell. In the Procesos de indios (1912) and Relaciones geográficas (Paso y Troncoso 190506), the Nahua gods are routinely referred to as devils o r demons. The terms diablo and demonio, and the names Lucifer and Satan, were introduced. However, a N ahuatl term was needed as well, one which would indicate nondivine status, malicious character, and dangerous power. Tlacatecolotl was selected for this function in the 1530s if no t ear­ lier.10 Tlacatecolotl, a com pound o f tlacatl and tecolotl, means “hum an owl.” Tecolotl was a generic term for owl, and also referred specifically to the hom ed owl; the Florentine Codex describes its horns o f feathers. The name was onom atopoeic; the owl’s hoot was heard as “tecolo, tecolo, o, o” (Sa­ hagún i953-82:XI, 42). The term tlacatecolotl was not coined by the friars but referred to a particularly malevolent type o f nahuaili, or shape­ changing shaman who took the form o f an animal alter-ego during his or her trances. The tlacatecolotl inflicted sickness and death on people while

38

1

The M issionary M issionized

4i

in the shape o f a hom ed owl (López Austin 1967:87-88; Nicholson 1971:441-42). M otolim a (1971:152), in his chapter on omens, describes the omen o f the owl as the tlacatecolotl: a “man who goes about at night wailing or frightening [people], a fearful nocturnal man.” According to M endieta (1980:94), this phantasm was given the owl’s name because the owl was an augury o f evil. In Mesoamerica the owl is a bird o f the underworld, emissary o f the underw orld deities (López Austin 1967:88; Tedlock 1985:158). The tlacatecolotl was associated w ith the night, the underworld, sorcery, ghostly apparitions, human afflictions, even horns— all features o f Chris­ tianity’s Devil. And it was not a teotl. O f all indigenous concepts, this one was undoubtedly the best choice. It solved the major problem o f dedeifying the native gods by identifying them w ith something which, though having superhum an powers, was essentially human. It played a small enough role in native ideology that it could take on new meanings m ore readily than som ething that was a major focus o f attention. It also dim inished the Devil into som ething less than the immortal Adversary— it better described someone who had a pact w ith that being. But since there was no interm ediate, m ediating category in Nahua thought between god and hum an, to parallel C hristianity’s good and fallen angels, the friars had to choose either a divine or a human being to represent both their Devil and the indigenous gods; apparendy they preferred the latter option in the interest o f discouraging idolatry. In his H istoria (15)05-08:V II, 316; 1981:1, 334), Sahagún expresses the opinion th at the term tlacatecolotl was used improperly for “devil” because it properly applied to a “necromancer or witch.” Sahagún was concerned about the perpetuation o f non-Christian beliefs. H is stated opposition to the use o f the name Tonantzin ‘O ur Revered M other’ for M ary has often been cited: the term was used for an indigenous m other goddess; Mary was better called inantzin dios ‘God’s revered m other’ (i98i:III, 352). H ow ­ ever, in the doctrinal texts prepared by him and his students, the term tlacatecolotl is widely used, as is Tonantzin for Mary.11 The Nahuas accepted the term tlacatecolotl. In indigenous writings the native deities are frequendy referred to as tlatlacatecolo (plural o f tlacateco­ lotl) as well as diablos and demonios, just as native artists learned to depict them like C hristian devils (see Fig. 4). In the H istoria ToltecorChichimeca (1976:143,164,207,226, 227), the deities Quetzalcoad, Tezcatlipoca, H uit-

42

THE MISSIONARY M IS S IO N IZ E D

Figure 4. Four priests sacrifice a prisoner of war to “the gods” here represented by a European-style demon. Illustration in the Florentine Codex, Book V m , 34*. (Photo from Sahagún 1979-) zilopochtli, Itzcueye, and Camaxtli are all called tlacatecolotl. Chimalpahin (1889:25) calls Tezcatlipoca the great tlacatecolotl (implicitly identifying him as Lucifer). O ther tides were used on occasion. The Tzitzimime or Coleletin, female or androgynous numens o f the western sky, the tw ilight, and the end o f the w orld, were lesser deities o f unpleasant character and m on­ strous appearance. The application o f their names to the devils was suffi­ ciently standardized that M olina (1970:1, 45r) includes them after tlacate­ colotl in his gloss for Diablo. The idea o f deities descending through the western sky into the underw orld looked to Christian interpreters like the fall o f the devils from heaven to hell; this reinforced the connection o f the Tzitzimime and also gods o f the underw orld w ith the devils (Codex Rios

The M issionary M issionized

43

Figure 5. The mazacoatl. Illustration in the Florentine Codex, Book XI, ter. (Photo from Sahagún 1079.) 1964: plates 3, 68; Codex Teüeriano-Remensis 1964:4V, i8v; Weckmann 1984:1, 242). The Devil was occasionally given descriptive names such as miction cuetlochtli cthe w olf o f hell5 who drives away Christian sheep (Sahagún 1563:58V); o r miction coati ‘serpent o f hell5 (Comyn and McAfee 1944:324; Escalona n.d.:i57v, 233r, 235r). In the Psalmodia Christiana the dragons van­ quished by Saints Philip and M artha, and Lucifer’s manifestation as the draco o f Revelation 12:7 vanquished by Saint Michael, are all called maza­ coatl ‘deer serpent5 (Sahagún i583:79r-79v, i28r, 179V). This term describes a type o f snake so named because it had horns like a deer’s anders. It was so large, according to the Florentine Codex description, that it could eat deer (Sahagún 1953—82:XI, 79 ) 12 M olina also attributes horns to it (Mo­ lina 1970: II, 5or). Sahagún’s informants list three different types o f maza­ coatl', the third, a smaller variety, was used in an aphrodisiacal potion—it caused a man to ejaculate so much that he shriveled and died (Sahagún 1953-82:XI, 80). In appearance, this large hom ed creature was the closest thing to a dragon in N ahua animal taxonomy. The horns, the serpent iden­ tity, and the association w ith sexual excess were features appropriate to a C hristian demon. Figure 5 reproduces the Florentine Codex illustration o f the larger variety o f mazacoatl.

THE MISSIONARY M IS S IO N IZ E D

Though the friars drew names for the devils from native ideology, in didactic art demons appear in forms consistent w ith medieval and early Renaissance art in Europe (Russell 1984; Weckmann 1984: , 212—13): goat­ like human-monsters w ith horns and tails, naked, sometimes female. They considered the (to them) horrid appearance o f native deities an indication o f their demonic nature, but these were guises o f beings who really looked like ordinary devils.

1

SUMMARY

The Nahuas were the subjects o f an intensive missionization program which aimed to transform their culture into a utopie Indian Kingdom o f Christ. They all became Christians, at least nominally, but failed to yield so easily to the friars’ attem pt at cultural alchemy. In various ways, w ith or w ithout the collusion o f the friars, they managed to turn C hristianity into something o f their own. The friars were obliged to accommodate their teachings to native thought categories to a greater degree than they—or their apologists— dared to adm it, and even greater than they may have realized. The Indians’ inability to become the model Christians their missionaries hoped for, a failure the latter attributed to the Devil’s power or the Indians’ weakness, was in part a result o f poor communication. A significant portion o f Chris­ tian doctrine was simply lost in translation. The major obstacles to communication in the moral realm stemmed from a fundamental contrast between the m onist, relatively amoral w orld view o f the Nahuas and the dualist, morally charged w orld view o f the missionaries. The Nahuas were not predisposed to accept good and evil as absolute principles, the material w orld as an evil place opposed to a m or­ ally positive spiritual plane, or the individual moral condition as the m ost im portant attribute o f human beings. The friars viewed the Nahuas as being predisposed to Christianity because o f the simplicity o f their life­ style, judging them by superficial attributes in terp rétai through a Chris­ tian screen and ignoring essential aspects o f their thought system. Terms chosen to express basic Christian moral concepts fostered conti­ nuity between traditional religion and the Nahuas’ version o f Christianity. The concept o f tlatlacoUi, o r damage, usurped the place o f sin, changing the latter concept from the cause o f universal human guilt into a basic principle o f the cosmic process. G ood and evil were phrased m etaphori-

The M issionary M issionized

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cally in term s o f the principles o f order and chaos, but, since the Nahuas did n o t view good and evil as universal principles, such phrasings lost this aspect o f their m etaphorical load and became references to reality as the Nahuas already conceptualized it. The Nahua concept o f deity, teotl, was retained in its essence if not in its object; the Devil was diminished to the status o f a sorcerer— superhum an but a poor rival for Europe’s Lucifer.

CHAPTE R

3

Centers and Peripheries

The cultural significance o f boundaries or liminal zones as places o f dan­ ger, places where orders—cognitive or social—may be reversed, dis­ solved, or restructured, is well established (Douglas 1966; Turner 1967). The Nahuas, dwelling in a w orld where structure exerted only partial con­ trol over anti-structure, were keenly aware o f the dangers lurking in pe­ ripheral zones. Spatial center contrasted w ith periphery, upper world w ith underw orld, day w ith night, structured time w ith the unstructured period between years (five unnamed days called the nemontemi) or between solar ages. In such a world one had to be very careful o f one’s position in space and tim e These contrasts were active in moral discourse, moral excesses being associated w ith liminal times and places. Christian teaching used the same contrasts in reference to sin, demons, moral tem ptation, punishm ent, and other aspects o f its own negative side. This chapter considers aspects o f structure and anti-structure in regard to the vertical plane o f heavens and underworlds, the horizontal or terrestrial plane, and the tem poral dim en­ sion.

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Centers an d Peripheries

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T H E V ER T IC A L PLANE

The friars made no attem pt to teach the Nahuas a Copemican view o f the cosmos. A medieval conception o f a layered universe w ith the earth at its center corresponded to N ahua belief and suited the late-medieval ver­ sion o f C hristian doctrine which the friars presented. In medieval thought, heaven and hell were concrete, tangible places, and so they appeared in the friars’ teachings (Weckmann 1984:1, 378-79). The Nahua conception o f flat layers was allowed to persist: the friars did not introduce the Euro­ pean notion o f concentric spheres. The general Nahua plan was sufficiently com patible w ith Christianity, and the friars reinforced it—for example, by using a three-tiered stage for religious dramas as was done in medieval mystery plays (H orcasitas 1974:565). Heaven and hell were described as residences: they had doors; roads led to them. The friars concentrated on imposing a Christian moral hierarchy onto this general framework. Borges (1960:328-29) notes that the missionaries’ m ost frequent argum ent in favor o f conversion was salvation— the threat o f eternal suffering for pagans and the promise o f eternal reward for good Christians. The concepts o f heaven and hell were therefore o f extreme im portance, and vivid descriptions o f these places were deemed necessary. This emphasis on individual salvation was alien to native thought; as Jiménez M oreno observes, indigenous religion focused instead on the collective preservation o f cosmic order (1958:413). Thus, while the most im portant feature o f the cosmic layering was for Christianity its soteriological aspect, for Nahuas it was the structuring itself. According to N ahua belief the earth, itself a female deity, lay above a nine-layered underw orld and beneath thirteen celestial levels, the lowest o f which m erged w ith the ocean. Different deities, some corresponding to celestial bodies, were associated w ith the different heavens; a dual or bi­ sexual creator deity occupied the upperm ost level. An axis tnundi passed from here dow n through the center o f the earth and the underworlds. A t the very bottom dwelt the dual or bisexual death deity. The num bers thirteen and nine were not selected arbitrarily. The 260day ritual calendar o r t32. G erson belonged to the indigenous nobility o f Tecamachalco. H is paint­ ings are reproduced in a num ber o f sources. The m ost complete are Camelo Ar­ redondo et al. (1964), which has alm ost all o f the paintings, a map o f their arrange­ m ent, and biblical engravings on which they were m odeled; and Fondo Editorial de la Plástica M exicana (1972), a collection o f splendid color photos o f m ost o f the paintings. 33. T he tlahuipochtin were w itches who w ent about the m ountains at night ejecting fire from their m ouths, frightening their enemies so that they w ent mad o r died; o r they were shape-changers w ho took the form o f fire (López Austin 1967:93)34. A ccording to the Florentine Codex, Tezcatlipoca often used the coyote as his nabualli. H e appeared to people on the road in this form ; this was a tetzahuitl indicating thieves o r other dangers ahead (Sahagún 1953-82:V, 180). 35. Tlaäuhque were respected diviners, interpreters o f signs, curers o f disease.

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Notes to Pages 84-102

finders o f lost souls o r objects (López A ustin 1967:101—2). T heir inclusion here shows how the friars classed all native religious practitioners as evil sorcerers. 36. The cantos or verses of the Psalmodia are called psalms, though they only

occasionally incorporate material from the book of Psalms. 37. Teoyotica ‘in a sacred way5 or ‘in a divine sense5 was often used when the friars wished to use the material world as a metaphor for the spiritual world. Here Mary’s birth, like the light in which humans are created (in the preceding canto) is not to be literally identified as a dawning; rather, it is like a ‘‘spiritual55 dawning. The Nahuatl does not really convey this—it merely casts an aura of holiness over the event. 38. A Latin note in the margin of the text reads: Quae est ista quae progreditur, quasi aurora. This line, from the Song of Songs 6:9, is part of an antiphon used in the Church liturgy for Marian festivals. 39. Anunciación’s work was published earlier than the Psalmodia, but the latter text had been circulating in manuscript form since the early 1560s (see Appendix). Chapter Four: Purity and Pollution 1. For a full range o f related term s and their English m eanings, see Campbell’s entries under izoliui and zolli (1985:155,444). 2. Among the body products, blood is conspicuously absent. A positive sym­ bol, blood differs from the others in th at its emission is controlled, done inten­ tionally in the rite o f bloodletting. It does n o t issue from a perm anent rupture in the body’s structure. Its red color tied it to life, the east, the strong, pure rising sun. Blood o u t o f its norm al place was negative: bloody diarrhea was tlayelli, a w ord also m eaning “som ething foul55; the w ord for placenta was tlayellotl ‘foulness5 (tlaellotl in M olina 1970: II, i20v). O ne m ight expect m enstrual blood to be an exception also; however, it apparently was n ot considered im pure (López A ustin 1980:1,194). 3. Momotus mexicanas, a timid, slow-moving bird of warm regions, which nests in holes in the ground (Santamaría 1974:138). Its anomalous pattern of movement

and its association with the earth’s surface explain its status as tlazolli. 4 - Pachtli refers to useless or parasitic plants, such as mistletoe or Spanish moss, or plant refuse such as hay (Karttunen 1983:183). “Mossy” is used here for lack of a closer English equivalent. “Mussed” or “disheveled” conveys the same idea but without the plant element. 5. In Quiché Maya belief, the gods of filth were Trash Master and his compan­ ion Stab Master. Their duty was “to catch up with people whenever they have filth or grime in the doorway of the house, the patio of the house.” Such a person was then stabbed, and crawled on the ground and died (D. Tedlock 1985:107). 6. K lor de Alva (1987b) discusses the N ahua conception o f the self in contrast to the C hristian. 7. Nezcayotl is the abstract noun form of the verb ned *to appear.5 In the texts

it usually occurs in the possessive form inezca, the “appearing” or “manifestation” of something. (“Nouns of quality” ending in -cayotl usually go to -ca in the pos-

N o tes to P a g es

104-122

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sessive form ; Launey 1979:1, 286). The relationship between an object and its nezcayotl is m ore direct and causal than th at between a symbol and its vehicle. Machiyotl is an abstract noun form o f macho, the passive form o f the verb mati ‘to know.’ T he literal m eaning is som ething like “its being known.” H ere again there is a sense o f som ething hidden appearing on the surface, o f the revelation o f an inter­ nal state— the item s in question being in a metonymic rather than metaphorical relationship. 8.

Read caxtapalcatica.

9. According to Taggart (1983:175), the present-day Nahuat of the Sierra de

Puebla emphasize sexual sins: tatakol refers primarily to sexual intercourse outside of marriage. The extent to which this emphasis derives from Christian teaching or from the traditional tlazolli complex is difficult to determine. 10. How to handle situations in which a converted Indian was wed to one who was not posed complex problems for the friar. As a general rule, such a marriage was accepted if contracted before either partner’s conversion and if the nonChristian spouse agreed not to interfere with the other’s worship. Fray Juan Focher (i960), the Franciscans’ expert on marriage, prescribed what should be done in every conceivable situation. 11. This opinion was standard. Aquinas wrote that the Devil rejoices most in sins of lust because of their tenacity—people find it very hard to give them up (1969:7$)- Also, it was believed that Satan had been granted license by God to intervene especially in this realm (Tender 1977:165-66). 12. The Popol Vidfs treatment of the creation of humans, as analyzed by D. Tedlock (1985:79,257-58), shows that the Quiché considered this element of Chris­ tian doctrine preposterous. The man created of earth and mud is senseless, does not speak, has a twisted face, cannot walk or reproduce, crumbles and dissolves in water. 13. Cuicui, the frequentive of cut ‘to take,’ has the meanings “to take something away” and “to clean up a surface” (Karttunen 1983:71). 14. Chico means “crooked” or “on one side”; tlanahuac means “around” or “on all sides.” Combined with tlacuicui, the image is of picking things up and removing them from the center to the sides. 15. In the formerly Nahuad-speaking community studied by Ingham, evil-eye sickness is cured with garbage, hair, and underwear; prostitutes and murderers are the ideal choices as godparents for a susto-cuimg ceremony (Ingham 1986:76,172). These diseases have historic roots in tlazolli diseases; filthy things and filthy people help to drive them away. 16. It is typical of the Franciscans to accept what the more orthodox Durán rejects. 17. A ccording to D . Tedlock’s Q uiché inform ant Andrés Xiloj, the agents o f the underw orld can best be kept from one’s house through rigorous sweeping and trash rem oval (1985:270; see above, note 5). 18. Here is an example of the fairly common pairing of Nahuad and Spanish/

Latin terms for the heart-based soul. The metaphorical nature of the sweeping is doubly expressed: sweeping “in a sacred way” and sweeping of the soul, which is not the same as what one does with a broom.

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19. The idea o f internal purification as a m etaphorical “sweeping” is expressed in N ahua medical beliefs. For example, the opossum tail used as an expectorant “sweeps” away bowel obstructions (Sahagún 1953—82:XI, 12). H ere the obstruction is, nevertheless, physical and n o t spiritual. 20. This identification w ould have been based on the “enclosed garden,” hortus condusus, o f the Song o f Songs (4:12), which was often used as a figure for Mary.

Chapter Five: Abstinence and Excess 1. A similar philosophy is reflected in the Popol Vuh. After the gods dull the vision of the first men, who had been able to see everything, they create women so that the men will be happy in spite of the diminished existence that will be theirs on earth (D. Tedlock 1985:167). 2. Tlaixyeyecoliztli has the same root, yeyecoa, as the terms the friars used to express the idea of moral temptation. Its appearance in a totally different context here further indicates how alien that idea was to the Nahuas: the friars are stretch­ ing indigenous concepts to cover situations outside of their original range of ref­ erence. 3. As Arvey (1988) observes, w hether commercial prostitution existed in preC onquest tim es is unclear. The public women who consorted w ith the w arriors were called ahuianime; the term was applied to prostitutes by the friars and was used to describe women w ith that role in colonial society. 4. G reat-grandfather and namesake o f the famous “M ontezum a” o f the Con­ quest period. 5. So named after the Otomi ethnic group which lived on the northern edge

of the Nahuatl-speaking area. The Nahuas considered the Otomi to be crude and uncivilized—characteristics of mighty warriors. 6 . From tlaco ‘middle, center, half’ and cualli ‘something good’ (Karttunen 1983:260; 59). 7. In Sahagún’s list of the deities and their attributes, it is said that the swift Painal stirs up dust and earth in his running (i905-o8:V Ü , 2). There is a direct link between immoderately rapid movement and the creation of tlazolli. In the Florentine Codex account of the confession rite, one of the metaphors used for the penitent’s tlatlacolli is vitlaUotl (Sahagún 1953-82:1, 24). The huitlaUotl is a bird, which Hernández (1959:111, 330) describes as being unable to fly well but such a swift runner that it can outdistance the fastest horses. This would seem to indicate the roadrunner or a similar bird: a bird not only anomalous in its flying but an inordinately rapid runner and a stirrer up of dust. 8 . Fruit of the tree Crataegus mexicana; tejocote in Mexican Spanish. 9. These are answers to a questionnaire sent out by Philip H to gather infor­ mation about his realms. 10. Sahagún (1981:1, 55) states that the Indians had a belief in the necessity of confession in lumine naturali ‘in natural light9 rather than because of previous evangelization. 11. The term I am translating as “fasting,” nezahualiztli, in native usage in­ volved restrictions on eating but also bathing, sex, etc.—it was a general penance.

Notes to Paffes i4&-i$8

211

Fasting from food was indicated w ith the term s Üacatlacualiztli ‘eating at midday,’ lim iting oneself to one daily meal; and tlacualizcabualiztli ‘leaving eating,’ an un­ specified abstinence from food. The doctrinal texts tend to use nezahualiztli in regard to C hurch-ordered fasting from food, ignoring its other meanings, though tlacualiz cabualiztli is often used as well. 12. Sahagún lam ented the breakdown o f the strict indigenous behavioral regi­ m en, blam ing it on the Spaniards’ desire to cast down all native customs regardless o f their value. H e believed that the friars themselves had been too lenient w ith the native youth. This was one reason why even the m onastery-trained boys were so m orally lax as to be unfit for the priesthood (i98i:III, 158-59). However, judging from the opinions expressed here, he w ould no t have im posed this strictness on the youngest ones b u t only on the adolescents. 13. Some good sources on Aztec law are the Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas (in G aribay 1979), Estas son las leyes (1891), M otolinia (1971), Las Casas (1967), Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1975). O ffner (1983) presents a comparative legal analysis. The sources tend to be very consistent regarding the strict penalties enforced for sexual offenses. Such penalties functioned to uphold the authority o f the Aztec state, bu t they were based on the moral concerns im portant to the culture. It is possible th at the special attention to sexual m atters in these records is in part an effort by N ahuas and Spanish apologists to make pre-Conquest culture seem com­ mendable to Europeans. 14. The concerns o f women were som ewhat different since they need not be concerned about fluid loss through ejaculation. R ather, death in childbirth due to excess sexual fluids gluing the fetus to the uterus was a concern, as was the moral stigm a attached to the ahuiani, the prom iscuous woman who wandered the pe­ riphery. Such women had im portant social and ritual roles (Arvey 1988), but they were clearly associated w ith the disorderly side o f nature. 15. Incest restrictions were m ilder for Christianized Indians than for O ld Chris­ tians, but they still excluded many partners acceptable under indigenous law. 16. A distinction should be noted between chastity, which can include licit sexual activity w ithin m arriage, and celibacy, which is complete abstinence. Nepializtli ‘keeping oneself7 w ould seem to refer to celibacy, though the friars used it in contexts w here they clearly m eant to include conjugal relations. 17. This is a fragm entary passage, w ritten in Sahagún’s hand (an earlier, stron­ ger hand, n o t the spidery hand o f his 1563 notes), from the sermons on the Con­ ception o f Mary. Gramm atical errors and peculiar orthography suggest the absence o f any N ahua assistant. The passage is a continuation from an excised folio; for som e reason the entire set o f sermons for this festival has been cut out o r crossed over w ith diagonal lines. This looks like Sahagún’s own doing, though the mate­ rial here is n o t inconsistent w ith the rest o f his sermons. O ne conceivable expla­ nation is th at he eventually decided to om it this festival because o f opposition to the G uadalupe cult, w hich focused on an image o f the Immaculate Conception. H owever, songs for this occasion are included in his Psalmodia Christiana, which was subm itted for publication in 1569, after Sahagún’s 1563 editing o f the sermons. 18. In medieval usage, the pig was a symbol o f female sexuality (Russell 1984:67). 19. T he artist has given the tw o Indian men Spanish-style beards, probably

212

Notes to Pages 160-191

based on a European m odel; however, their mandes indicate that they are Indians. The em broidered hems o f the bride’s blouse and skirt also suggest Indian clothing. 20. Nanahuatl, though glossed by M olina as “buboes,” the swollen lymph glands associated especially w ith the bubonic plague (1970:11, 6 jr), appears rather to have referred m ore generally to sores o r pustules on the skin, particularly those resulting from syphilis. 21. From itetl ‘belly’; xihui is n o t in the dictionaries. 22. In other w ords, “make a spectacle o f yourself.” 23. The “place where one is shorn,” a term for the underw orld comm on in some texts, such as in the Cantares mexicanos, but rare in the friars’ usage.

Chapter Six: H ealth and Sickness 1. It is possible that pollution affected primarily the liver while displacement affected primarily the heart, but this is somewhat speculative. 2. From cacalaca ‘to rattle’ [?]. 3. This is, of course, their own somewhat idealized view. At the peak of Men­ dicant activity, there was undoubtedly a high rate of participation in Christian rites. However, Indian participation in Church activities declined markedly in the later sixteenth century. Montúifar, though his claims may be exaggerated for polit­ ical purposes, in 1570 lamented the failure of many Indians to confess (Descripción del arzobispado 1897:425). Sahagún, in 1576, wrote of the difficulty involved in in­ ducing the Indians to confess and take communion properly (1981:III, 163). Chapter Seven: Christianity Conquered I. It is conceivable, however, that such references were suppressed in the re­ corded oratory because it was intended to serve as a reference guide for Christian preaching.

Glossary o f Náhuatl Terms

The following is a list of important Nahuatl terms used in this book. It is intended for the nonspecialist; those seeking a fuller analysis of the terms, including the presence of long vowels or glottal stops, may refer to Karttunen (1983) or Andrews ( ).

1975

Ahuilnemiliztli: the pursuit of pleasure, sensuality, sexual indulgence; in Christian usage, lust or sexual sins; literally, “pleasurable living” Chipahua: to cleanse or purify Chipahualiztli: cleanliness, purity Huehuedatolli: native oratory, the words of elders and ancestors; literally, “old men’s speech” Ichpochtli: adolescent girl, young woman; in Christian usage, virgin Ichpochyod or Ichpochod: girlhood, young womanhood; in Christian usage, vir­ ginity Ihuinti: to become inebriated or intoxicated Uhuicad: sky, heaven Idacahui: to become damaged, displaced, or corrupt Idacauhqui: damaged, displaced, corrupt Idacoa: to damage, break Micdan: among the dead, the underworld; in Christian usage, hell Nahualli: a shaman who takes the form of an animal alter-ego during trance Nemecadliztli: an informal but socially recognized heterosexual union; in Chris­ tian usage, concubinage; literally, “tying oneself” N em ontem i: the five unnam ed days added to the 360-day year to approximate the solar year; literally, “they go by filled uselessly”

213

214

Glossary

Nepializtli: sexual abstinence, celibacy; literally, “keeping oneself” Neyolmelahualiztli: heart-straightening, ritual confession Nezahualiztli: fasting, generally including sexual abstinence and other penitential exercises Tecuani: wild animal; literally “people-eater” Telpochtli: youth, young man; in Christian usage, virgin male Telpochyod or Telpochotl: boyhood, young manhood; in Christian usage, male virginity Teotl (pi. Teteo): deity, sacred thing Teoyotica: in a divine or sacred way; in Christian usage, spiritually Tetzahuitl: omen, augury, portent, unexpected event, something out of place Teyolia: spiritual agent or soul residing in heart and passing to afterworld Tlacatecolod (pi. Tladacatecolo): a dangerous shaman or sorcerer; in Christian usage, devil or demon; literally, “human homed owl” Tlahuana: to drink alcoholic beverages Tlahuanalizdi: the drinking of alcoholic beverages Tlahueliloc: insane, raving mad; in Christian usage, wicked Tlaixyeyecolizdi: moderation, precaution; literally, “tasting things with the eyes” or “testing the surface of things” Tlalticpac: on earth; literally, “on the summit of the land” Tlalticpaccayod: sexuality; literally, “earthliness” Tlamacehuaiiztli: the meriting of things; penitential practices Tladacolli: misdeed, act that causes damage; in Christian usage, sin Tlayelli: something foul and dirty Tlayelpaquilizdi: literally, “foul happiness”; in Christian usage, lust Tlazolli: filth, garbage, things that are old and worn out, “matter out of place” Tlazolmiquizdi: illness or death caused by someone in a state of pollution; liter­ ally, “filth-death” Tonalli: a day in the 260-day ritual calendar; a spiritual agent, residing in the head and related to the sun and heat, which determ ined an individual’s character and fate Tonalpohualli: the 260-day ritual calendar

Yollod or Yollotli: heart

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Index

Abel, 157 Abortion, 59,151 Abstinence: friars on, 1 3 8 -4 0 ,1 4 4 -5 0 ,1 5 8 59; Nahuas and, 75,130-34,143-45,150, 161,168-69- See also Chastity; Modera­ tion; Penance; Sexuality; Virginity Actopan, Hidalgo, 53,56, 82 Adam, 26,72, 77, n o , 113-16 Adultery (adulterers), 64, 91, 96, h i , 133,152, 160,163,172; deities associated with, 60, 92; friars’ treatment of, 85,155; punish­ ment for, 61, 78, 90, 93, iji, 177 Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzálo, 150,170 Alcohol. See Drunkenness Ambrose, Saint, 30 Ancestors, moral authority of, 12,57,58,141, 190 Anderson, Arthur J. O ., 8 Andrew, Saint, 108 A ngels, 41, 98,153; in didactic art, 18,53,67; in doctrinal texts, 49,81,85,117,146,156 Anthony, Saint, 71 Anunciación, Fray Domingo de la, 195-96; on gluttony, 165; on good and evil, 38; on limbo, 52; on moderation, 135; on pen­ ance, 146; on sadness, 34; on sin, 107,174; on virginity of Mary, 155-56

Anunciación, Fray Juan de la, 196; on bap­ tism, 117; on drunkenness and gluttony, 1 40,166-67; on heaven, 123; on hell, 54; on judgment, 81; on lust, marriage, 157; on Mary, 85,137,157; on moderation, 140; on penance, 148-49; on purgatory, 53; on purity, 117,125-26; on saints, 70-71,140, 149; on sin, 65,107-9,175-76,178,181; on temptation, 71 Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 35-36,99,153, 2 0 4 n .9

Art, didactic, 2 2 ,4 4 , 53, 56, 82 Arvey, Margaret Campbell, 139-40,21 on. 3

Attrition, 33-34 Augustine, Saint, 12, 35-36,20411.9 Augustinians, 4 ,1 6 ,6 9 ,1 9 6 ; art of, 82; pen­ ances of, 100 Axayacatl, 90 Aztecs: educational system of, 133,148; legal system of, 18,60, 21m.13; meaning of term, 4; state cult of, 4 ,7 0 ,7 2 ,8 2 ,1 8 9 90. See also Mexica; Nahuas Azdan, 4 ,7 6 Babel, 77, i75

Ball game, 118,132,133 Baptism, 53,112-17,122,129,147,171,173-74

235

In d e x

2 )6

Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 22,153 Bathing, 90, 97,110-14,123-24, 143, iji, 172, 174; and confession, 109; o f infants, rit­ ual, 82,113-14,117,121; o f sacrificial vic­ tims, 50, in Bats, 6 4 ,9 7 Baudot, Georges, 8 ,52 ,1 0 6 -7 Bautista, Fray Juan, 164,167-68,198 Bierhorst, John, 8 ,2 7 , 57 Blindness, 83,138,176-78 Brooms, 88, 9 3 , 95, no, 117,120-21 Burke, Kenneth, 12 Cacamatzin, 118 Caldera, Fray Luis, 54 Calendar: Christian, 73 -7 4 ,1 4 4 ; Nahua, 4 7 - 4 8 ,7 2 ,73, 206n .i9 Calmecac, 91,118,136,143, 148 Calpan, 82 Camaxtli, 42 Cantares mexicanos, 8 ,4 9 ,5 7 ,78- 79, 2i2n.23 Catherine, Saint, 156 Caves, 56,57,61,67 Center, symbolism of, 5 9 -6 0 ,6 3 -6 5 ,7 6 , 119-21; in Christianity, 6 7 -6 8 ,7 0 ; friars’ use of, 6 6 -6 7 ,8 6 ,1 1 6 ; and town plan­ ning, 6 9 -7 0 , 86 Chakhiuhtlicue, 113,116 Chaos, and order, dialectic of, 28, 34-39, 4 6 ,5 9 -6 0 ,1 6 4 ,1 9 1 ; and concepts o f tim e, 7 4 ,7 8 -7 9 ; and Nahua ethics, 133,168 Chapultepec, in , 172 Chastity, 152-53,159,2iin.i6; friars on, 13637; Nahua view o f, 5 0 -5 1 ,9 0 -9 1 ,1 5 0 -5 2 , 177

Chichimecs, 5 9 ,6 0 ,7 6 ,2o6n.i6 Childbirth, 5 0 -5 1 ,59, in , 113,121,172,2im.i4 Chimalman, 120,154 Christ, 3 4 ,5 2 ,7 2 ,77,104,115,145,146,190, 205-6n.i5; and centrality, 6 6 -6 7 ; 2nd D evil, 35,69,135; as healer, 171,173-76, 178; as Judge, 8 0 -8 2 ; as moral example, 25,107,13«, 140,157,166,191; and purity, 98,104,106,107,116,122,124,126; virgin birth of, 154,155,156

Church, secular: clergy of, Nahuatl texts used by, 196-97; conflicts with friars, 11; replaces friars, 5,15-16,18-19 Cihuacoatl, 7 8 ,9 2 ,9 3 Cihuateteo, 50-51,59, 63,78, 8 3,92,93

Clare, Saint, 123,138-39 Clothing, symbolism of, 6 0 ,8 8 ,9 0 ,9 3 ,1 0 3 4 ,1 0 8 -9 , il*, 132,134,151; in Christianity, 98 ,9 9 ; in friars’ usage, 7 0 ,1 0 3 -4 ,1 0 8 , 138-39,145

Coatlicue, 120,132,154 Coleletin, 42 Com m union, 2 4 , 1 0 7 -9 , 121,122^23,144, 146 C onfession, 33,122,142,148,2ion.7; Chris­ tian, Nahua participation in, 24,109,129, 1 8 2 -8 3 ,1 9 0 ,2i2n.3; indigenous rite of, 6 1 -6 3 ,9 2 -9 3 ,1 0 5 ,1 8 1 ,2ion.io; manuals for, 2 4 ,1 0 6 ,1 9 8 -9 9 ; Nahuatl terms for, 181-82; and sickness, 171,172,173-76,182 Congregation, 6 9 - 7 0 , 206n.i6 C onquest, Spanish, 3 ,4 ,9 5 ,1 3 4 ,1 8 7 -8 8 ; Nahua view o f, 78-79,205n.11; sin and, 78,193

Conrad, Geoffrey W, 1 8 9 -9 0 Contrition, 33-34,142 Córdoba, Fray Pedro de, 197 Cortés, Hernán, 3,7,16,118 Council of Trent, 33,152,204n.5 Coyolxauhqui, 154 Crocker, J. Christopher, 12-13,190 Cross, 6 7 ,7 0 ,7 7 ,1 4 0 ,1 4 4 Crossroads, 6 3 -6 4 ,8 3 ,9 3 , i44 Cuitlapanton, 95 Cuitzeo, 82 Dávila Padilla, Fray Agustín, 108,196 Day, symbolism of, 4 7 -4 8 ,8 2 -8 5 Death: deities of, 51; and fate of soul, 4 9 52; and Final Judgment, 7 9 -8 2 ; origin of, in Christianity, 77; rites of, 112; and tla zolii, 95-97

Deer, symbolism of, 5 9 ,6 0 ,6 2 ,1 6 2 ,1 6 7 , 2 0 sn .i4

Deformity, 176-78 D eities, Nahua, 47; and afterlife, 50-51; character of, 32, 39,124,142; and Chris­ tian, 39; as devils, 4 1 -4 4 , 93; o f earth, 47, 8 9 ,9 2 -9 3 ,1 2 0 -2 1 ,1 5 4 ,161; o f excess, 74, 162; o f tiazolli, 91-93 Demarest, Arthur, 189 -9 0 D em ons. See Devils D esert Fathers, 35, 3 8 ,6 9 ,7 0 Devil: in Christianity, 28, 3 6 ,6 3 ,6 9 ,9 2 ; in doctrinal texts, 4 5 ,6 5 ,7 1 ,7 7 ,8 6 ,1 0 6 , n o .

In d e x

124-25,148, 157,179; friars’ view of, 25,26, 38, 40 , 13s, 164; terminology for, 4 0-43. See also Lucifer; Satan; Tlacatecoloti Devils, 46,67,147; in didactic art, 43- 44, 56; in drama, 80; in hell, described, 53-56; impurity of, 98,102,124,128; indigenous deities as, 4 0 - 4 4 , 93» 148; as wiki beasts, 65,85,116 Diaz del Castillo, Bernal, 40,118

Dibble, Charles, 8 Directional symbolism, 5 0 ,5 9 -6 0 ,6 9 - 7 0 , 72,120

Dirt, symbolism of: in Christianity, 7 9 ,9 8 99; in friars’ usage, 103-9,117,124-26, 138,155; in Nahua thought, 6 4 ,8 8 - 9 1 ,9 7 9 8,100-10 3 Diviners, 6 2 ,8 4 ,9 2 ,1 0 6 ,2o8n.35 D o ctrin a C hristiana (D om inican), 196-96; o n baptism, 115-16; o n confession, 34, 146; on Eden, 70; on gluttony, 164; on hell, 52; on Judgment, 81; on limbo, 53; on moderation, 135; on penance, 145-46; on purity, 123-125; on sin, 30,104,107, 174; on virginity, 155 Doctrinal texts, in Nahuatl, 9» 2 0 , 22r-25, 195-202. S u also individual texts and au­

thors

Dominicans, 4,16, 33, 69,99,108,195-97, 2040.9

Dramas, Nahuatl, 20,47, 7 9 -8 i , 122, 2040.10 Dropsy, 51,161

Drunkenness: in colonial society, 163-64, 168-69,193; friars’ treatment of, 125,135, 160,164-68,175; Nahua beliefs about, 60, 7 4 ,7 5 ,7 8 ,9 6 ,1 4 1 ,1 5 9 -6 0 ,1 6 1 -6 4 ,1 6 7 -6 9

Dualism, 35-38,44,186,188,191 Durán, Fray Diego, 78,112,117,121,164 Durkheim, Emile, 88 Dust, symbolism of: in Christianity, 99; friars’ usage of, 103-5,167,178; in Nahua thought, 8 8 , 9 0 - 9 2 , 101,107, n o - 1 2 ,117, 137,2io n .7

Edel, May and Abraham, 29 Eden, 70,77 EhecatL, 131,140 Epidemics, 20,141,170,180,193 Escalona, Fray Alonso de, 166,197-98; on baptism, 115; on blindness, 177-78; on

237 body, 134-35; center-periphery m odel used by, 66; on Final Judgment, 81,144; o n gluttony, 145,164; o n lust, 154; on penance, 144^45; o n purity, 124; on sad­ ness, 34,144; o n sickness, 173,179; on dazolli, 103-4, n o Eve, 26, 65 ,7 2 ,7 7 ,8 5 ,9 3 , H4 Evil, in Christianity, 3 4 -3 6 ,99; terms used for, 38- 39,107 Evil eye, n o , 209n.i5 Excess, 83,89,113,131,167,169; and number five, 74-75,161. S u also Drunkenness;

Gluttony Excrement, symbolism of, 8 8 - 9 0 ,9 5 ,101, 103, h i , 162-63; used by friars, 103,106-7, 180

Fabian, Johannes, 5 Falling, symbolism of, 6 1 -6 2 ,6 5 ,7 5 -7 6 ,82r83,172 Farriss, Nancy M ., 9,192 Fasting, 7 4 ,2o6n.2o; friars’ treatment of, 122,145-49,167; Nahua practices of, 31, 97,98,117,144,151,161; terms fiar, 2 1 0 1m.11 Fatalism, 75,79,82 Filth, in Christianity, 98-101. S u also Tlazolli Final Judgment, 79-8 2 ,1 2 2 ,142,144,148 Food, symbolism of, 89,105,131-32,138-39 Francis, Saint, 2 0 ,9 9 ,1 2 6 ,1 48 Franciscans, 1 1 ,1 6 ,1 8 -2 0 ,3 3 ,6 9 ,1 4 0 ,1 9 7 202; and baptism, 112-13; on soul/body distinction, 100; view o f mission, 4 -5 ,7 3 , 78,153,20411.3,207n.27 Friars: asceticism o £ 16,142; on attrition and contrition, 33-34; authority of, 15,18; o n baptism, 113-117; o n body, 71,106-8, n 6 , 125-28,134-40,165-67; centerperiphery m odel used by, 6 5 -6 7 ,7 0 -7 1 ; on chastity, 136-37,152-59; day/night model used by, 83-85; on deity, 3 9 -4 0 ; diabology of, 40,6 3 ,9 3 ,9 5,185; doctrinal texts of, 24-25,195-202; on drunkenness, 125,135,138,140,164-68,175; dualism of, 38,44,191; ethnography of, 6 - 7 , 9, i9, 22-23; on Final Judgment, 79-82; on gluttony, 135,138,164-66; goals of, 4 -5 , 9 ,1 0 ,1 6 -1 7 ,4 4 ; o n g o o d and evil, 38-39, 128-29; o n heaven, 4 9 -5 0 ; on hell, 51-56;

In d e x

238

Friars (continued) and language, 1 1 -14,23,26,27-28; on marriage, 153-59; methodology of, n -1 2 , 19-27,190-91; on moderation, 134-40; on original sin, 112,114-117; on penance, 144-50; on purity, 1 0 2 ,1 0 4,107,122,12429; on sex, 105-7,135,137,152-59; on shame and guilt, 32-34; on sin, 25-28,51-

Hermits, 6 7 ,7 0 -7 1 ,99 Homosexuality, 152. See also Sodomy Huaquechula, 82 Huaxtecs, 6 0 ,7 6 ,7 8 ,9 2 Huemac, 75,78,118

5 6 ,7 7 -7 8 ,8 0 -8 2 ,1 0 4 -8 ,1 2 2 -2 3 ,1 7 3 -7 8 ; on soul, 4 9 -5 0 ,7 7 ,1 0 0 -1 0 2 ,1 0 7 -9 ,1 1 5 16,125-28, 134-35,173-76,178,181; on sweeping, 121-24; on temptation, 70-71; on time, 72-73,77-78; and tlazolli com­ plex, 100-109; view of Indians, 18, 44, 158-59,164,166,185 Fürer-Haimcndorf, Christoph von, 30-31, 142

Idolatry: campaigns to extirpate, 18,192; friars1view of, 2 7 ,4 0 ,4 1 ,6 9 ,1 6 6 ; in Na­ huad texts, 55,85,106,175

Gante, Fray Pedro de, 198; on baptism, 116; on gluttony, 164; on lust, 155,178; on Mary, 126,155; on penance, 146; on purity, 108,125 Geertz, Clifford, 10,71 Gerson, Jean, 171 Gerson, Juan, 82,2070.32 Gluttony: in Christianity, 153,159; friars1 treatment of, 135,138,140,160,164-66; Nahua view of, 159-61,163 G ood and evil: in Christianity, 3 4 -3 6 ,9 9 ; friars1treatment of, 38-39,128-29; N á­ huatl terms for, 38-39 Gossen, Gary H ., 7,12 Graulich, M ichel, 3 8,75,2o6-7n .26 Grijalva, Fray Juan de, 4 0 ,6 9 ,1 0 0 ,1 9 6 Guilt, 30,113,142,153; 2nd shame, 31-33; as tlatlacoUiy 32-33

Huitzilopochtli, 41,59, 90,120,132,154,161, 189-90

Ihiyoti, 96,109

Incest, 155,21111.15 Infection, 95-97,105,179-81 Ingham, John, 7 Inquisition, 15,73,140,171,192 Intoxication, 29,98,159,161-62,165-67. See also Drunkenness Itzcueye, 42 Itzdacoliuhqui, 177 Ixcuiname, 5 9 ,6 0 ,6 3 ,9 2 Ixdilton, 91 James, Saint, 140 James the Less, Saint, 157 Jerome, Saint, 71 Jiménez, Fray Francisco, 173 John, Saint, 124,154,157 John the Baptist, Saint, 70,115,140,157,167 Joseph, Saint, 153,156

Klor de Alva, J. Jorge, 8,23, 37,131,183,188 Ladd, John, 10,29

Langer, Suzanne, no Las Casas, Fray Bartolomé de, 51,204n.3

Lawrence, Saint, 108 Hair, symbolism of, 88-91,98,139 Heart: and confession, 181-82; in Nahua moral discourse, 29, 38,177; purity of, 124,125; and sin, 66,105,107,109,136,157, 174,178; and soul, 4 9 ,1 0 9 Heaven: in Nahuad texts, 66-67,85,117, 124,147; friars1treatment of, 4 7 ,4 9 -5 0 , 72,77,83,102; Nahua view o f, 4 7 -4 8 , 50-51,56-58,121

Hell: friars1treatment of, 4 7 ,5 1 -5 6 ,6 7 ,7 2 , 77,83,102; in Nahuad texts, 4 3 ,5 4 -5 6 , 66,81; Nahua view o f, 56-57. See also M ic­ tion

Lazarus, 145,164 León-Portilla, M iguel, 8,72,188 Leprosy, 51,175,176,180 Lim bo, 5 2-53,117 L ópez Austin, Alfredo, 4 9 ,6 4 ,1 3 2 Lucifer, 4 0 ,4 2 ,4 3 ,4 5 , 77,95,147 Luke, Saint, 157 Lust, 105-106,135-38,140,153-55,164,165, 167. See also Sexuality McAndrew, John, 23 Marriage: in Christianity, 152-53; friars1 treatment of, 2 6 ,8 0 ,1 5 3 -5 9 ,209n.io; N a-

In d e x

hua custom s of, 150-51; requirements for, 2 4 , 157- 5« Martha, Saint, 43 Martin O celod, 140 Mary, Saint, 7 7 ,8 3 -85,146,178,190, 20&1.37,2ion.20,21U1.17; as moral ex­ ample, 136-37; purity of, 98,126-28; as Tonantzin, 41,126; virginity of, 15556,157 Mary M agdalene, Saint, 6 6 - 6 7 , 205-6n.i5 Mayas, 9 ,7 2 ,1 9 2 ,2o8n.5 M endicant orders, 4 ,1 6 ,1 8 , 99, 195- See also Augusdnians; D om inicans; Franciscans; Friars Mendieta, Fray Gerónimo de, 41,51,93, 100,112,121,123,154 Merchants, 63,97,118,162,176,181-82 M etaphor, 13,14,27,102,185,188,20811.37, 20911.18; o f blindness, 177-78; o f centerperiphery, 59-67; o f day and night, 8 385; o f pollution and purity, 9 8 -102,12526,128-29; o f sickness, 170,173-74, i7 9 81,183; sweeping as, 122—23 M etonymy, 13,185,188,2090.7; and centerperiphery m odel, 60; and pollution and purity, 98-101,125,129; and sickness, 170, 173,178 Mexica, 3,4,59,132,133; myth and history of, 75, 76, 78, 8 9 -9 0 ,1 2 0 ,1 3 2 ,1 8 9 -9 0 ,1 9 3 , 2o6n.22. See also Aztecs; Nahuas M ice, 6 4 ,9 7 M ichael, Saint, 4 3 ,8 0 ,1 2 2 Mictecacihuatl, 51 M iction, 51-52,75,89; friars’ use o f term, 43, 51-56,66, 77, 80, 85,145,146,148,167. See also H ell Mictlantecuhtli, 51,76 M ixcoatl, 60 Moderation: friars on , 134-40,168; Nahua view of, 130-34,152,159-61,168-69 M olina, Fray A lonso dc, 18,28, 3 4 ,4 2 ,1 9 8 9 9 ,2 0 1 ,203n.i, 205n.3; o n abstinence, 146; on baptism, 116; o n confession, 34, 174; o n gluttony, 165; on lust, 137,156; on moderation, 137; on sin, 104; on sweep­ ing, 123 M onism , 37,44,100,129,185,186,188 M ontúfar, Archbishop A lonso de, 69,158, 195,21211.3 M oquihuix, 90

239

Moses, 25,126,175 Motecuhzoma, 78,118 Motecuhzoma Uhuicamina, 132,141 Motolinia (Fray Toribio de Benavente), 19, 41,51,105,121,154,164,204

Nahualli, 4 0 ,6 5 ,8 4 ,2 0 7 ^ 3 4 Nahuas: devotional practices of, 18,20; as ethnic designation, 4; etiology of, 95-97, 141,171-73; indoctrination of, 23-24; moral system of, 2 6 ,28-32, 3 7 -3 9 ,4 4 -4 5 , 5 0 ,5 7 -6 5 ,6 7 ,7 1 ,78- 79,8 7 -9 7 ,1 3 0 -3 4 , 1 4 0 -4 1 ,1 5 0 -5 2 ,1 5 9 -6 4 ,1 6 7 -6 9 ; pollu­ tion concepts of, 87-121,128-29; purifica­ tion rites of, 1 1 0 -1 4 ,117-21; sin concept of, 28-32; soul concepts of, 4 9 -5 1 ,9 0 ,9 6 , 109,125; theology of, 36-37, 39,44,142; time concepts of, 72-7 8 ,82-83; view o f self and body of, 4 9 ,7 9 , 88, 9 6 , 100-101, 109,132-33,143,152,160-61,177,181-83; world view of, 3 7 -3 8 ,4 7 -4 8 ,5 0 -5 1 ,5 8 6 5 ,1 0 0 -1 0 1 ,115,164,168,186-88,192-93 Nahuat, 5 7 ,6 7 ,209n .9 Nanahuatzin, 74,83,177 Nappatecuhtli, h i, 119-20 Nemontemi, 46 ,7 3 N ew Fire Ceremony, 7 3 ,1 2 0 ,2o6n.i9 N ight, symbolism of, 48,81, 82-85,117 N oah, 7 7 ,207n.26 Numerical symbolism, 4 7 -4 9 ,5 2 ,7 4

Ochpaniztli, 120-21,123,161 Olmos, Fray Andrés de, 199; on baptism, 116,173-74; on confession, 173; on Devil, 65,179; doctrinal texts of, 8,40,52,195, 199; ethnography of, 18,52,199; on Final Judgment, 80,82,122; on hell, 51; on moderation, 135; Nahuad oratory col­ lected by, 12,27,65,102-4,117,179, 204n.io; on prostitutes, 65-66,180; on sex, 106-7,135-36,155; on sin, 65 Omens, 4 1 ,6 4 -6 5 ,7 8 ,8 1 . See also Tetzahuitl Original sin, 112,113-115,117,126-28 Otomi, 53,134,160,2ion.5 Owl, 4 0 - 4 1 ,6 4 - 6 5 ,8 4 Paradise, 49, 70, 75, 76, 85,127-28,132 Pardon, 33, in , 1 4 1 -4 2 ,144-47 Paul, Saint, 11,106,115,157

In d e x

240 Penance: friars’ treatment of, 137,140,142jo; of Nahua priests, 8 2 ,9 7 -9 8 ; for sins, 52-53,81; tlamacchualtzth as, 142-43,14$ Penitence: in Christianity, 3 2 ,141-43, as cure, 149,174-75; Nahua practices of, 137, 1 4 2 -4 4 ,147-4«, 151,161,169,171,187,190;

and purification, 104,142,149; of saints, 70-71,138-39,149; sweeping as, 117,122, 143; and Tezcatlipoca, 6 1 -6 2 ,9 2 Periphery, symbolism of, 4«, 5 9 -67, 75-76, 86, in , 117-21,132,160,162; in Christian­ ity, 67,69; friars’ use of, 6 5 -6 7 ,7 0 -7 1 ,8 5 , 86,116,166-67 Peter, Saint, 149 Philip, Saint, 43 Piers, Gerhart, 31-32 Pig, as moral symbol, 103,105,107,138,157, 160,165,2im .i8 Polygyny, 105,166 Popol Vuh, 9, 73, 207n.29, 20 9 n .i2 ,2 io n .i Pregnancy, 2 9 ,73, i49, 154,177 Preuss, Konrad Theodor, 31,58 Priesthood: Indians barred from, 17,157-58, 164; indigenous, practices of, 8 2 ,9 7 -9 8 , 118 Promiscuity, 60,92,96,157,180,2110.14. See also Lust; Sexuality Prostitutes, 65-66,139,155,180,u on .3 Pulque, 74,88,131,132,140,161-62,167,168, 176 Purgatory, 52-53,142,147 Purification, rites of: baptism as, 112-17; Christian, adopted by Nahuas, 109,129, 182-83,187; Nahua, 8 2 ,101,105,110-13, 117-21,142,151,171-72,181-82; sweeping as, in friars’ usage, 121-24; weeping as, 149 Purity: in Christianity, 9 8 -100; friars’ treat­ ment of, 79,102,104,107,122,124-29; Nahua concepts of, 50-51,82-83,91,150; of nobles, 90,107, i n - 1 2 ,118,133,150,193 Quetzalcoad: moral status of, 3 9 ,5 9 ,7 4 -7 6 , 120,143,154; as sweeper, 08-19,122; as tiaaU ecobd, 41

Rabbit, symbolism of, 5 9 ,6 0 ,6 2 ,6 7 ,7 6 -7 7 , 162,205n.i4

Relacionesgeográficas, 4 0 ,6 0 ,1 4 0 -4 1 ,1 5 1 , 164

Repartimiento, 15,23,203ml

Revelation, Book of, 50,82,124,125 Rhetoric, 1 1 -1 4 ,2 6 ,6 7 ,8 9 ,1 0 2 -3 ,1 8 8 -9 1 Ricard, Robert, 8 Roa, Fray Antonio de, 53 Road, symbolism of, 6 0 -6 3 ,6 5 ,6 6 ,1 2 3 ,1 6 2 , 20511.14 Ropes and snares, symbolism of, 6 2 ,6 5 ,6 7 , 162 Ruiz de Alarcón, Hernando, 18,95,192 Sacrifice, 186,188; o f humans, 4,50,152,177, 181,189; in N ahua religion, 3 8 ,5 7 ,7 3 ,101, 171 Sahagun, Fray Bernardino de, 4 1 ,7 0 ,7 3 ,8 2 , 9 3 ,1 8 3 ,1 9 9 -2 0 2 ,203n.i, 21UI.12, 2i2n.3; Addidones of, 55-56,138,201; Apendiz of, 117,136,138,147-48,149,157,180-81,201; on baptism, 116-17,174-75; o n body, 13839,165-66; o n center-periphery m odel, 6 6 -6 7 ; Colloquies o f, 8 ,4 9 , 78, 204n.11; o n devils, hell, 41,5 4 -5 6 ; on drunken­ ness, 164; ethnography o f, 8,1 8 ,2 2 ,2 8 ; Exerddo o f, 104,105,122-23,156,178, 200-201; o n food, gluttony, 164,165-66; on idolatry, 2 7 ,4 0 ,1 4 6 ; on laughter, 138; o n laziness, 137-38; o n lim bo, 53; o n lust, 105-6,156-57,175; o n marriage, 156; o n Mary, 41,83-85,126-28,136,156,157,178, 204n.11,2im .i7; o n m oderation, 138; N á­ huatl oratory collected by, 12,27,65; on penance, 146-48; Psalmodia Christiana of, 4 3 ,6 6 ,7 7 , 83-85,116-17,123,126,127-28, 138-40,156,175,178,196,201-2, 20811, 21U1.17; o n sadness, 34,147; sermons of, 54-55,85,104-5, H 6 ,1 2 3,136-38,142,14647,156-57,165-66,174-75,178,180,197, 1 9 9 -2 0 0 ,2im .i7; o n sin and sickness, 174-75,178,180-81; o n sweeping, 122-23; o n tiazolli, 1 0 4 -6 ,1 0 8 ; o n upbringing o f children, 136-37,147-4«, 21HI.12; on vir­ ginity, 136-37,156-57 Sahlins, Marshall, 5 -6 Saints, 67,81,127,171; cult o f, 18,73,82; as moral examples, 2 5 ,6 6 -6 7 ,7 0 -7 1 ,9 8 , 138-40,156,157,167,191; N ahua deities and, 39,154,187,190 Salvation, 4 7 ,7 9 ,8 2 ,1 4 2 ,1 8 6 ,1 8 7 Santa Maria X oxoteco, H idalgo, 56,82 Satan, 3 5 ,4 0 ,8 0 ,9 3 , 173

In d e x

Scier, Eduard, 58,61,83,121 Semen, 79,113,153,20711.28 Serpents, 43,6 3 ,6 5 ,9 3 ,1 7 2 Sexuality: in Christianity, 100, ij a - j 3 ,159; and crossroads, 6 3 -6 4 ; and death in childbirth, 51,113,172; and D evil, 43, 209n.11; friars' treatment of, i o $ - 6 , 15359; and N ahua deities, 63,75,91-93; Nahua view o f, 131-33,150-52,171,176, 2im.i3; and tetzahuitl, 64,151-52; and tiatiacolli, 29,10$; and tlazolli, 8 9 ,9 6 -9 7 , 100, io j, 113 Shame, 31-32,64,81,92,153 Sickness: caused by tlazolli, 95-97,171-72; cure of, 63,172,2090.15; and rain gods, 51; and ritual breaches, 31,171; and sex, 152; and sin, 98-1 0 0 ,1 6 7 ,1 7 0 -7 1 ,1 7 3 -8 3 Sin: in Christianity, 28, 30-32,98-100,115, 141-42; and Conquest, 78,193; friars’ treatment of, 26 -2 8 , 3 0 ,5 3 -5 6 ,7 7 -7 8 ,8 0 8 2 ,1 0 4 -8 , 04-17 ,1 2 2 -2 3 ,1 7 7 -7 8 ; Nahua concept o£ 28-31; and sickness, 170-71, 173-76. See also Drunkenness; Gluttony;

Sexuality; Tladacolli Singer, Milton B., 31-32 Slaves, 83; impurity of, 5 0 ,9 0 , h i; sacrifice of, 50,177,181-82; and tladacolli, 29 ,7 6 , 04

Sodomy, 105,106,155,171 Sorcery (sorcerers): D evil and, 4 0 ,4 1 ,4 5 , n o ; and fall o f Tollan, 78,95; Nahua views of, 6 3 ,6 4 ,8 3 ,8 6 ; O lm os’s treatise on, 4 0 ,6 5 ,1 0 6 ,0 6 ,1 9 9 ; and Tezcatlipoca, 39, 92,95 Soul: in Christianity, 35,9 9 -io o ; friars’ treatment of, 49- 50,5 2 -5 3 ,77,8 1 ,1 0 0 , 103-9, 0 2 ,0 5 -0 6 ,1 2 2 ,1 2 5 -2 8 ,1 3 4 -3 5 , 173-76,178,181,209n.i8; Nahua concepts of, 4 9 -5 1 ,9 0 ,9 6 ,1 0 0 ,1 0 9 ,1 2 5 ,1 8 1 Soustelle, Jacques, 133 Spider w ebs, 8 8 ,9 1 ,9 2 ,9 5 ,0 1 Stench, 02,124,126; causes disease or death, 78, 92,95; o f hell, 53, 55, 56; and sin, 103,105,107,167,175,178 Straw, sym bolism of, 8 8 ,9 0 ,95,1 0 1,104, n o , 07,121 Suárez de Peralta, Juan, 109,164 Sun, 50, 59,74, 81, 82-83, 85,189 Sw eeping, 7 0 ,8 0 ,8 8 ,101, n o , 0 7 - 2 4 , 143, 2 0 9 n .i8 ,2io n .i9

241 Syncretism, 7,188 Synecdoche, 1 3 ,9 8 ,101 Syphilis, 7 4 ,8 3 ,1 6 0 ,1 7 7 ,1 8 0 ,2i2n.2o

Tamoanchan, 6 0 ,7 6 ,7 7 Tecamachalco, 82,2070.32 Tedlock, Barbara, 7 2 ,7 4 Tedlock, Dennis, 9,72,185 TcmacpaUtotique, 83

Temptation, 4 6 ,6 9 ,7 1 , i79,2o6n.i7 Tenochtidan, 3 ,7 ,5 9 ,6 8 ,7 0 ,8 9 ,1 0 ,1 3 2 Teed, 37,45; used by friars, 3 9 -4 0 ,4 5 ,1 2 4 , 126,146

Tetzahuitl, 64 -6 5 , 78,92, 93- 95,96,172, 205n.11,207n.34

Teyolia, 49-50,109,125,181 Tezcatlipoca, 3 9 ,59, 74, 01, 02,131,143,154, 177,189-90; and destruction o f Tollan, 6 0 ,7 5 ,7 8 ,1 7 6 -7 7 ; as D evil, 4 0 ,4 2 ,9 5 , 147; and penance, 61,92; tetzahuitl of, 78, 9 2 ,9 5 ,207n.34; as tlacatecolotl, 41,42; and tlazolli, 9 1 -9 2 ,0 9 Theft (thieves): in friars’ usage, 85,125,175; Nahua belieft about, 76,83,132,133,163; as tladacolli, 2 9 ,0 1 ,1 6 0 ; and tlazolli, 91, 96 Time: in Christianity, 72,206; in Nahua thought, 7 2 -7 8 ,8 2 -8 3 Tlacatecolotl, 4 0 -4 2 ,1 8 7 ; friars' use of term, 52,54,55, 85,103, 06,123,136,138,144, 146-47,154,156,165,166-67,178

Tlaloc, m Tlalocan, 51,70 TlamacehualiztU, 142-49. See also Penance Tladacolli, 28-29, 58,76, 05,145,187,204n.8; as concept o f sin, 29-31; friars* usage of, 28, 30, 4 4 , 53-56, 66, 8 4 -8 5 ,1 0 4 -8 , 05, 0 7, i22r-23,125-27,144-46,176,178; and pollution, 87-89,105; purification of, 63, 0 0 -0 1 ,1 4 2 ; and sickness, 171, i73 Tlazolli, 76,87-121,128-29,132,133,143,145, 151,154,160; and Christianity, 98-101; de­ fined, 87-88; deities of, 91-93, i77; friars’ treatment o f, 102-00,128-29,167,173; purification of, 101, 00-121,142,172,187; sickness or death caused by, 95- 97, 171 Tlazolmiquizdi, 95-9 7 ,1 0 9 -00,121,132, 171-72 TlazolteotL, 59,60,120,121,171; and tlazolli, 9 1 -9 4 ,0 7

In d ex

242

Underworld, Nahua, 48,63,64. See also Miction Valadés, Fray Diego, 11,20-22,40 Villavicendo, Diego Jaimes Ricardo, 18,192

Virginity: in Christianity, 152; friars on, 136-37,153-54; of Mary, 126,153, i55, 1 157; Nahua view of, 150-51; of saints, 153,156,157

Ä R

Tod, 120 Todorov, Tzvetan 8-9,48,72 Tollan (Ilila), 60,75,7®, 95,120,143,176 Toltecs, 75,7®, 95, 133,176-77, 20611.21 Tanaili, 47-4«, 113-H,132,133,143,152,160, 172 TonalpobuaUi, 28,47-4«, 90. See also Calen­ dar Torquemada, Fray Juan de, 93,112 Totonacs, 76 Turner, Victor, 88-89,99 Tzitzimid (Tzitzimime), 42,55,83,103,173

Warriors, 28,50,51,57, 97; ethics of, 133-34 Witches, 41,63,84,98,120,2070.33 Xipe Totee, 59 Xochipilli, 83 Xochiquetzal, 77,93,143 Yappan, 143 Zantwijk, Rudolph van, 38,207n.2ó Zumárraga, Fray Juan de, 27,81-82, 158,199

About the Author

Louise M. Burkhart received a Ph.D . in anthropology in 1986 from Yale University, where she specialized in Mesoamerican archaeology and ethnohistory and in the anthropology o f religion. She began learning the N ahuad language in Mexico in 1981. In 1983-84 she conducted research in Mexico under a D oherty Foundation fellowship. She has also done re­ search at the Biblioteca Nacional in M adrid, Spain, and has held fellow­ ships at the Newberry Library in Chicago and the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. In 1988-89 she was a Fellow in PreColum bian Studies at D um barton Oaks, where she studied the introduc­ tion o f the cult o f the Virgin M ary into Nahua culture. H er article “The Solar C hrist in N ahuad D octrinal Texts o f Early Colonial Mexico” was published in the summer 1988 issue o f Ethnohistory.