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Native-Language Religious Texts
Neither Castilian nor Latin... could more expressively persuade nor teach the mysteries of our Catholic religion than that which this [Nahuatl] work manifests.
—Carlos de Tapia Zenteno, in Ignacio de Paredes, Promptuario manual mexicano, 1759
It would be very useful to have printed books in the language of these Indians (Mayas) about Genesis and the creation of the world; because they have fables, or very harmful histories, and some of these they have written, and they guard them and read them in their meetings. And I had one of these copybooks that I confiscated from a maestro named Cuytun of the town of Sucopo, who escaped. And I could never have him to know the origin of this his Genesis.
—Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar, Informe contra idolorum, 1636
After years of hard work, Ignacio de Paredes submitted his book for publication. It was the year 1759, and the Jesuit priest was hopeful that his Promptuario manual mexicano would help Spanish priests preach the Christian message to the descendants of the Aztecs and the natives of central Mexico. The book was written in the Aztec language, Nahuatl, and its purpose was to provide ecclesiastics with a sermon or speech for every Sunday of the year; all the priest had to do was read from the manual every Sunday and the natives would learn the Christian doctrine. Carlos de Tapia Zenteno, who understood Nahuatl well, had the task of reviewing the book to ensure that it was free of any translation errors. He deemed the book and its conveyance of the doctrine in Nahuatl so eloquent that he claimed, “Neither Castilian nor Latin... could more expressively persuade nor teach the mysteries of our Catholic religion.”
In early seventeenth-century Yucatan the secular priest Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar launched a campaign to rid his parish of its wooden and stone representations of ancient deities, or what the Spaniards saw as “idols.” In the process, not only did he find numerous examples of the Mayas practicing idolatry, but, even worse, he found a number of handwritten Maya texts that blended Christian doctrine with precontact Maya beliefs. One case involved a Maya religious assistant—tasked, among other things, with the responsibility of teaching the doctrine—whose religious text conveyed an unorthodox Christian-Maya view of the Creation. To remedy the situation, Sánchez de Aguilar requested the publication of religious texts in Maya that accurately taught the doctrine. Without such books, he claimed that the Mayas “live without light.”1
Both examples are representative in a number of ways. To begin, they illustrate the important role religious texts written in Nahuatl and Maya played in the evangelization of central Mexico and Yucatan. These books allowed ecclesiastics and their assistants to convey something of Christianity to the natives. These two examples, however, also demonstrate that texts could vary in their content and doctrinal accuracy. Some religious texts, like that of Paredes, conveyed Christianity in sufficiently orthodox ways, while others, like those Sánchez de Aguilar discovered, failed to do so. Thus, both examples represent two ends of a spectrum with orthodox native-language religious texts on one end, unorthodox texts on the other, and other Nahuatl and Maya texts somewhere in between.
This book provides the reader with the historical context and English translations of a few of the Nahuatl and Maya religious texts that conveyed the Christian doctrine to the Nahuas of central Mexico and the Yucatec Mayas. The purpose of doing so is threefold. First and foremost, these translations will give the English speaker access to the texts that conveyed Christianity to the natives. Native-language religious texts—sermons, confessional manuals, catechisms, and so on—were instrumental in the evangelization of Mexico and Yucatan. Yet the vast majority of these texts remain hidden to the modern reader, shrouded in general anonymity and the difficulty of translating native languages.2 This book addresses this problem by bringing to light a collection of religious texts in Nahuatl and Maya written between the 1550s and 1860s and gathered from archives throughout Mexico, Europe, and the United States.
The second purpose of this book is to illustrate the diversity of religious texts and their messages. To do so, it brings together English translations of Nahuatl and Maya texts of a similar genre (i.e., catechisms, confessional manuals, sermons) or that discuss a similar theme. This uncommon presentation of the translated texts is necessary for comparative insights into the Nahuatl and Maya works themselves, including authorial influence and their cultural, regional, and temporal adaptations. In a larger sense, a collection of translated Nahuatl and Maya religious texts offers a keener, more comprehensive understanding of the evangelization efforts made in central Mexico and Yucatan.
But evangelization efforts among native peoples were not monopolized by Catholics. Protestant faiths likewise utilized native-language religious texts to aid their proselytization—a largely unstudied fact due to the dearth of surviving works. This book provides a rare glimpse at the Methodist efforts to convert the Yucatec Mayas through a nineteenth-century Methodist catechism translated into Maya. The Methodist tract joins the other texts to enhance our appreciation of the diverse Christian messages native-language texts conveyed.
The third and final purpose of this book is to highlight the range in orthodoxy of religious texts from true and faithful representations of the Faith, to culturally modified redactions of Christianity. Although friars and priests composed religious texts, natives trained in religion and writing also put pen to paper. As a result, many of the texts translated in this book provide insights into how Christian doctrine changed according to the preferences and contributions of both Spanish and native authors. This, combined with the regional, temporal, cultural, and even denominational differences, all gave variety to Nahuatl and Maya religious texts and their translated Christianities.
Religious Texts
Didactic religious texts extend their roots back to the early stages of Christianity. Consider Augustine’s fourth- and fifth-century De doctrina christiana, composed to facilitate an accurate comprehension and teaching of Christian doctrine and the homilies and sermons of the High Middle Ages. By the late fifteenth century the humanism of the Renaissance was sweeping across Europe, calling for reform and renewal through biblical studies and orthodox liturgy. Figures such as Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli and the subsequent Reformation fanned the flames of reform that illustrated, among other ideas, the need for individuals to have a basic understanding of Christian doctrine. For their part, Protestants generally desired individuals to gain personal understandings of the doctrine through vernacular translations of religious texts, including the Bible. The Catholic Church likewise recognized the need to successfully educate its fold and addressed such issues in the Council of Trent (1545–63). But the translation of scripture into the vernacular remained restricted, and the responsibility for the laity’s education primarily fell to ecclesiastics. Trent ordered, for example, that “the bishop shall see to it that on Sundays and other festival days, the children in every parish be carefully taught the rudiments of the Faith.”3
The printing press was a key player in the reformation efforts of both Protestants and Catholics. Since the fifteenth century the printing press was heavily employed to produce didactic religious works intended to direct their audiences in the religion and practice the authors prescribed. Traditionally, the production of religious texts was done by the pen of ecclesiastics and theologians. These handwritten texts ranged from the ascetic treatise of John Climacus’s Spiritual Ladder to the theological teachings of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologica to the Sunday sermon of the local parish priest. Yet ecclesiastical officials had limited control over what was written and thus the content of the text. The printing press, however, provided the church an opportunity to screen the contents of any given work through an extensive editorial process that included a variety of endorsements and approvals from religious authorities.4 In an early modern era of reform that emphasized an orthodox education of the doctrine, the printing press and its religious texts would play a large role—a situation aptly reflected in the Americas.
The ecclesiastics that arrived in Mexico in the 1520s and 1530s did not wait for an operational printing press (1539) to begin producing religious texts. Outnumbered and faced with the enormous task of converting natives in their own tongue, the early friars and their predecessors composed a variety of religious texts, including manuscript catechisms and sermons in Nahuatl, Maya, and other languages to convey basic Catholic prayers and doctrine. Some were translations of European works such as the mid-sixteenth-century Nahuatl translation of Thomas à Kempis’s fifteenth-century On the Imitation of Christ.5 Others were original compositions tailored to local needs such as an 1803 confessional manual written for a Yucatecan friar administering in the Maya parish of Tixcacalcupul.6
Although manuscript works continued to play an important role in religious instruction—particularly in Yucatan, which waited until 1813 for its printing press—ecclesiastical authorities increasingly threw their support behind the printing press to produce works that would unify the Catholic message in New Spain. For example, the small Nahuatl doctrina (book of Christian doctrine) of fray Alonso de Molina saw print in 1546, and subsequent Franciscans suggested that to maintain a consistent message, this be the only such doctrina used for the Aztecs (or Nahuas).7 Nevertheless, many other doctrinas followed, as did many confessional manuals, books of sermons, manuals detailing how to perform the sacraments, and myriad other Nahuatl and Maya religious texts. Different from one another, each text claimed to be the best of its kind and to convey the doctrine in the most effective manner. Simply put, although the printing press succeeded in making religious texts more available, it was unable to unify the message.
Nor was the printing press able to completely replace the production of handwritten native-language religious texts. Despite the increased availability of printed works, ecclesiastics and their native aides throughout the colonial period continued to generate manuscripts tailored to personal preferences and local demands. Some of these texts were handwritten “xeroxes” of printed originals; others represented original compositions. Some contained orthodox teachings; others did not. Because these texts avoided the quality control measures established for printed texts, ecclesiastical authorities were wary of the messages they contained. Certain ecclesiastical authorities and the Inquisition alike recognized the dangers of manuscript texts and confiscated them when discovered.8 For example, in the 1570s Gerónimo del Alamo had a variety of works translated into Nahuatl, including a doctrina, confiscated from him because they were “de mano... [y] sin autor” (handwritten and anonymous).9
Another shortcoming of the printing press was its inability to reach Yucatan. To be sure, religious texts in Maya saw print through the presses in central Mexico, but in numbers that paled in comparison to their Nahuatl counterparts. Whereas Mexican ecclesiastics commonly complained of the abundance of different religious texts, Yucatecan ecclesiastics lamented the shortage of texts. In 1620 Juan Gómez Pacheco encouraged the publication of fray Juan Coronel’s Discursos predicables because there was nothing printed in Maya for priests to use in instructing the natives.10 The lack of printed works in Maya contributed to two consequences. First, the Christian religious education of the general Yucatec Maya population progressed more gradually than that of the Nahuas, allowing the 1722 Yucatecan synod to exclaim that the Yucatec Mayas were “the most barbarous” and possessed few signs of being Christians.11 Second, handwritten manuscripts abounded in Yucatan to assist the local priests and to make up for the lack of printed works.12
The abundance of printed works in central Mexico and their dearth in Yucatan reflects a larger model of evangelization that favored the centers over peripheries.13 Comparatively speaking, unlike in central Mexico, the conquest and settlement of Yucatan was a long, protracted event that postponed the stable presence of ecclesiastics. This delay, along with Yucatan’s location as a periphery to the fast-growing Spanish center in central Mexico, affected the evangelization efforts of ecclesiastics while increasing the autonomy of the Mayas. Consider that in Yucatan, by the end of the colonial period, only approximately 37 percent of the 215 Maya towns had resident priests.14 Generally speaking, although Christianity came to the Yucatec Maya, it did so at a slower pace than that seen in central Mexico, and Nahuatl and Maya religious texts bear the evidence.
Authors and Ghostwriters
Thus far, we have discussed the importance of native-language religious texts in the evangelization of the Nahuas and Mayas, their printed and manuscript forms, and their relative abundance among the Nahuas vis-à-vis the Mayas. But who wrote these texts? The title pages of printed texts propose Spanish ecclesiastics as the sole authors. Yet upon closer examination of the historical record and the texts themselves, the contributions of Nahuas and Mayas as assistants, scribes, ghostwriters, and authors become increasingly apparent.
The plan of many of the early friars included the assistance of natives in composing religious tracts in native languages. In the sixteenth century the Franciscans viewed the religious education of the native youth as instrumental in their overall evangelization efforts. Generally speaking, every town was to have an elderly native collect the youth and deliver them to the church each morning to learn the fundamentals of the Christian doctrine, including the Persignum crucis, or Sign of the Cross, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and other basics. Afterward, the children would return home and assist their parents in their various duties.15 For the common Nahua and Maya, the level of religious instruction would end here with the basic fundamentals of the Faith.
According to the early Franciscans, however, the children of the Nahua and Maya elite had a separate destiny.16 Towns with resident friars and convents (a religious house for either men or women) also typically had schools used to train the children of the native nobility. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the native nobility governed over the spiritual and temporal lives of their towns. To the friars, then, these individuals would continue to serve as rulers, but now as Christians setting a good example and promulgating the message. The children of the native nobility were destined for the schoolroom, where they learned the Christian doctrine and studied reading, writing, and a variety of other subjects that could include Latin, theology, and grammar. Most important, they learned how to assist ecclesiastics in their duties to confess, perform mass, and instruct.17
Some of these religiously trained native nobles would serve as cooks or groundskeepers in the convents and churches; others became singers, or sacristans. Still others returned to their towns to serve as surrogate priests—typically referred to as fiscales for the Nahuas and maestros for the Mayas—who would baptize, catechize, bless, and preach in the frequent absence of the priest. Those with a proven aptitude for reading and writing helped others in learning similar skills and assisted friars still novice in the language.18 In fact, many early Spanish authors recognized the roles native assistants played in writing their texts. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, himself an expert in the language, stated that such assistants “correct for us the incongruities we express in the sermons or write in the catechisms.”19 In his 1560s Coloquios y doctrina cristiana, Sahagún gives credit to the Nahuas Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, and Andrés Leonardo for their assistance.20 Fray Juan Bautista also recognized the native assistants that both he and Molina used to compose their works.21 The situation in Yucatan was similar, where one Maya assistant, Gaspar Antonio Chi, stated, “[I] have taught the said friars... the language of these natives, which I interpret to them... and I have written sermons for them in the language to preach to the said natives.”22
But the contributions of natives increasingly came under fire as the colonial period progressed and as precontact religious practices continued to persist in a Christian society. The First Mexican Provincial Council of 1555 claimed that due to the errors natives commit when translating religious texts and the misunderstandings conveyed, they were no longer allowed to translate or possess native-language sermons. If natives were to be given such texts, the texts themselves had to bear the signature of the ecclesiastic who gave it to them.23 The council then stipulated that native-language religious texts required the approval of ecclesiastical authorities, who would examine the text for mistakes to avoid “great dangers and errors in the mysteries of the Faith.”24 The increasing scrutiny of texts and suspicion of natives and their “conversion” to the Faith, let alone their translation abilities, led to a drastic decrease in their recognition as assistants and authors by the end of the sixteenth century.
Moreover, such factors combined with the scrutinizing conservatism promoted by the Council of Trent to erode the support for the training of native assistants in schools, such as the College of Tlatelolco, and the production of native-language religious texts. Whereas the eloquence and native rhetoric of many sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century printed texts betray the contributions of native assistants, the increasingly shortened and simplified texts published in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries suggest a decline in native-ecclesiastic collaboration. Regardless of such a decline, we may well suspect that oftentimes native assistants continued to work behind the scenes throughout the colonial period to some degree or another. In many cases, a scenario proposed by James Lockhart with regards to the composition of Nahuatl plays likely occurred among other texts, where a Spanish ecclesiastic would write the text in Spanish and then give the text to a native assistant “to translate and realize as he saw fit” without ever looking at it again.25
In other cases, natives autonomously created and composed the contents of their own texts. As mentioned, some of the natives trained in the church schools left to become fiscales and maestros in their own towns. Due to their small numbers vis-à-vis the native population, ecclesiastics relied heavily on these indigenous assistants, particularly in Yucatan.26 The role of fiscales and maestros as surrogate priests granted them a variety of duties that ranged from teaching the doctrine to assisting the dying prepare for death to recording the names of those absent from mass. To assist them in fulfilling such responsibilities, they oftentimes employed Nahuatl and Maya religious texts. Some used printed works; others, although technically forbidden to do so, made their own. When the latter occurred, the doctrinal accuracy of the text depended on the training, interest, and personal preferences of the native author, and this made ecclesiastical authorities nervous.
Although many indigenous authors composed texts that remained within the lines of orthodoxy, others crossed these lines. In recent years scholars have increasingly uncovered native-authored religious texts that represented a form of Christianity that incorporated the natives’ preexisting beliefs with those of their European colonizers.27 Nahua-authored religious plays could alter biblical stories through their adoption of preexisting religious themes, doctrinas could contain heresies, and sermons could take great liberties with Christian doctrine. In a word, in some cases what seemed most important for Nahua and Maya authors was not adhering to doctrinal accuracy but creating a text that conveyed its teachings in ways most familiar and accepted by their native audience. Although ecclesiastics such as Sahagún, fray Diego de Landa, Sánchez de Aguilar, fray Juan Coronel, Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, Juan Gutiérrez, and many others continued to find and confiscate such texts, they continued in production throughout the colonial period (and beyond!) and contributed to the various Christian messages prescribed and preached.28
To be sure, understanding the authors of native-language religious texts assists in understanding the varied content and even orthodoxy of their messages. Yet the texts also provide a better understanding for how Nahua and Maya culture affected the transmission of Christianity. Throughout this book the presentation of Christian doctrine in religious texts betrays their audiences. Divine beings speak in a Nahuatl or Maya rhetoric; the individuals and settings of traditional moralistic stories become localized to central Mexican or Yucatecan surroundings; native epithets and deities are attached to Christian figures. Above all, the worldview of the Nahuas and Mayas continuously influenced the Christian message.29 Admittedly, such influences are generally more evident in texts produced earlier in the colonial period. Yet all Nahuatl and Maya religious texts translated here, to one degree or another, reflect the culture for which they were intended.
I have attempted to provide a smattering of religious texts that not only represents popular genres but also illustrates their diversity and the range of orthodoxy their messages provided. In exploring these messages, the following examples expose the influence of native and European cultures on the content of the texts themselves. Chapter 1 provides an example of a Nahuatl sermon authored by natives without the direct supervision of ecclesiastical authorities. The sermon is an excellent example of how religiously trained Nahuas could modify ancient Christian legends to accommodate a native audience. Chapter 2 reveals a similar situation, but for Yucatan through a variety of Maya Christian tales. The remaining three chapters provide examples of common texts and themes: chapter 3 provides translations of a wide variety of texts meant to instruct on the sacrament of baptism, chapter 4 contains Catholic and Methodist catechisms, and chapter 5 deals with confessional manuals. Throughout these chapters the variation among the texts and the diverse messages and concerns they betray become evident to illustrate the rich and assorted instruction available to natives through the translated Christianities of Nahuatl and Maya religious texts.
1. Sánchez de Aguilar, Informe contra idolorum, 181.
2. Some English translations would be Alva, Guide to Confession; Burkhart, Holy Wednesday; Burkhart, Before Guadalupe; Burkhart and Sell, Nahuatl Theater; Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms; Christensen, “Tales of Two Cultures”; and Christensen, “Nahuatl in Evangelization.” For Maya, see Hanks, Converting Words. Gretchen Whalen has done significant work on Maya religious texts. In particular, see her “Annotated Translation.” For English publications of the Chilam Balams, see chapter 2. Also, Nahuatl and Maya testaments and their religious preambles, although not didactic, can serve as religious texts. For the Nahua, see Cline and León-Portilla, Testaments of Culhuacan, and Pizzigoni, Testaments of Toluca. For the Maya, see Roys, Titles of Ebtun, and Restall, Life and Death. For more on testaments as religious texts, see Ramos, Death and Conversion, 114–15; and Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms, 84, 93–94.
3. Schroeder, Canons and Decrees, 196.
4. For more on the subject, see Nesvig, Ideology and Inquisition, and Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms, 57–59.
5. Tavárez, Invisible War, 28–29.
6. “Modo de confesar en lengua maya,” item 26, col. 700, Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
7. Códice franciscano, 54. Scholars typically prefer the term “Nahua” over “Aztec” for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the latter term is generally used to represent only the Mexica. On the other hand, “Nahua” represents the Mexica and all other native cultures in central Mexico that shared the common language of Nahuatl.
8. Burkhart, Holy Wednesday, 165; Acuña, “Escritos mayas inéditos,” 168–69; Tavárez, Invisible War, 71–3, 129–58; Nesvig, Ideology and Inquisition, 134–63.
9. Fernández del Castillo, Libros y libreros, 488.
10. Coronel, Discursos predicables, xii–xiii.
11. Gómez de Parada, Constituciones sinodales, 39. See also Francisco Eugenio Domínguez y Argáiz’s opinion in his Pláticas, preliminary leaf, unnumbered.
12. See, for example, the observations of José María Meneses in Ruz, Colección de sermones, 9–10.
13. Although a model of centers and peripheries provides a useful framework when speaking of generalities, its ability to prescribe outcomes is limited by exceptions. Surely there were Mayas who surpassed their Nahua counterparts in religious education despite their peripheral location. In Magistrates of the Sacred, Taylor provides a useful analysis, showing the abilities and limits of such a model (45–46).
14. Thompson, Tekanto, 17.
15. Códice franciscano, 56–57.
16. Indeed, the Códice franciscano records the Franciscan’s displeasure with those who teach indifferently and who raise commoners to be rulers in their towns (55–57).
17. For a general treatment of the matter, see ibid., 55–70, and R. Ricard, Spiritual Conquest, 96–101. For more regarding the Yucatecan schools, see Molina Solís, Historia de Yucatán, 1:321–32; and Hanks, Converting Words, 59–84.
18. Códice franciscano, 57–62.
19. Sahagún, Introductions and Indices, 83–84.
20. Sahagún, Coloquios y doctrina, 75.
21. Sell, “Friars, Nahuas, and Books,” 120; Sell, “Classical Age,” 28; Bautista, prologue to Sermonario, preliminary leaf, unnumbered.
22. Landa, Relación, 45, cited in Karttunen, Between Worlds, 94. For more on Antonio Chi, see Restall, “Gaspar Antonio Chi.”
23. This condition would be modified again by the Second Mexican Provincial Council of 1565. See Lorenzana, Concilios provinciales, 201–2.
24. Ibid., 143–44; Sell, “Friars, Nahuas, and Books,” 121n20. See also Mosquera, “Nahuatl Catechistic Drama,” 58–61.
25. Lockhart, Nahuas After the Conquest, 403.
26. For figures on how many friars were sent to Yucatan and Guatemala-Chiapas, see Early, Maya and Catholicism, 134. Early does an excellent job of documenting the important role of maestros today in their communities.
27. For various examples, see Burkhart and Sell, Nahuatl Theater; Tavárez, Invisible War, 71–73, 129–58; Sánchez de Aguilar, Informe contra idolorum, 153–54, 173; and Chuchiak, “Pre-conquest Ah Kinob.” More detailed studies of the contributions of Maya maestros and their composition of “forbidden” or “unregulated literature” include Hanks, Converting Words, 19, 338–64; Knowlton, Maya Creation Myths, 33–51; Bricker and Miram, Encounter of Two Worlds; and Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms, 84–88.
28. Burkhart, Holy Wednesday, 165; Acuña, “Escritos mayas inéditos,” 168–69; Coronel, Discursos predicables, xv; Cogolludo, Historia de Yucatán, 192–93; Ruiz de Alarcón, Heathen Superstitions; Sánchez de Aguilar, Informe contra idolorum, 153–54, 173.
29. For some excellent works illustrating the effects of native worldviews on religious texts and evangelization in general, see, for the Nahuas, Burkhart, Slippery Earth; for the Mayas, Knowlton, Maya Creation Myths; for the Mayas in Guatemala, but also in Chiapas and Yucatan, Early, Maya and Catholicism, and Early, Maya and Catholic Cultures.
