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Comments on the Evangelization of the New World*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
Dr. Silvio Zavala is to be congratulated on his draft chapter dealing with the history and influence of religion in the New World. The topic covers the planting of Christianity on American soil and, under its influence, the birth of a new society that was to be Christian in its institutions, in its culture, and, for several centuries, in all outward manifestations of its thought. In summarizing so broad a subject in few pages, Dr. Zavala leads us to ponder many extremely important points. The pages that follow are the product of a good deal of thinking, with regard both to the provisional text and to the subject in general. What a pity that meditation does not always succeed in fully clarifying our ideas and in completely dispelling our doubts!
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1958
Footnotes
*
Nicolau D’Oliver formerly held the post of Ministro de Economia and Gobernador General del Banco de España. He is also a Research Fellow of the Colegio de Mexico. He is a council member of the International Committee of Historical Science of Paris, and a member of the Institut d’Etudis Catalans. Author of many important works on Catalan history and literature, he has also published Historiadores de América: Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, 1499–1510 (México, 1952) and Fray Toríbio de Benavente [Motolinía]. Relaciones de la Nueva España (México, 1956). Address: Cerrada de Mazatlán 12, México, D. F.
References
1 Other of these areas, smaller in size, population, and importance, are or were: (A) the Orthodox inhabitants of Alaska; (B) Protestant Indians on U. S. Reservations; (C) the “reductions” established by the Jesuits in Paraguay; (D) the zambo groups (not studied), which, though Christian to all outward appearances, combined mestizo and mulatto features. Small groups remained that were never converted to Christianity or that returned to their former cults.
2 Other religious beliefs or attitudes toward religion—those held by Jews, agnostics, etc.—made sporadic appearances in the colonial period, but they are to be considered individual matters.
3 Phelan, J. L., The Millenial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World. A Study of the Writings of Gerónimo de Mendieta (1525–1604) (Berkeley, 1956).Google Scholar See also Weckmann, Luis, “The Middle Age in the Conquest of America,” Speculum, XXVI (January, 1951).Google Scholar
4 “… these customs and idolatries, at least most of them, took the friars more than two years to overcome and root out, with the grace and aid of God and with the sermons and admonitions they constantly offered” (Motolinia, Historia, I, iv).—“During the first two years, the friars seldom left the villages where they lived, both because of their unfamiliarity with the land and the language and because they were fully occupied at home” (Ibid., II, i). “For five years the Mexicans remained very unreceptive” (Ibid.).
5 Sahagún, Arte Adivinatoria, prólogo ( Icazbalceta, García, Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVI [Mexico, 1886]; pp. 314–323), p. 314.Google Scholar “They had many other demoniacal witchcraft practices and illusions in which the devil snared them, and those they have left behind so completely that by only seeing them one could be convinced of the great Christian spirit and devotion that lie within all these natives” (Motolinia, Historia, III, viii). “Indians, whose idols are as forgotten as if a century had passed” (Idem., Ill, xx).
6 Sahagún, Coloquios (in Revista Mexicana de Estudios Históricos, I [1927], Appendice, p. 111).
7 Loc. cit.
8 Loc. cit.
9 Motolinía, Historia, I, iii.
10 Sahagún, Arte Adivinatoria, Prólogo, p. 317.
11 Sahagún, Arte Adivinatoria, Cap. I, p. 323.
12 Sahagún, Arte Adivinatoria, Prólogo, p. 318.
13 Ibid., p. 319.
14 Ibid.
15 Sahagun, Calendario Mexico, Latino y Castellano (García Icazbalceta, Bibliografía, XI, xii, p. 6.
16 Sahagún, Calendario, Al Lector, p. 316.
17 I should like to inject a personal comment. Shortly after my arrival in Mexico, I attended the wake of a young bride, where I heard a devout and extremely creole matron attempt to console the widower by saying “Don’t grieve; your wife is in heaven because she died in childbirth.” I was surprised by this remark, so foreign to the popular Christian beliefs in Spain; but I was more surprised to discover in Sahagún that it was an Aztec belief, a subject to which he devotes an entire chapter in his Historia (VI, xxix, “How women who die in childbirth are canonized by the gods”).
18 Anales del Museo Nacional de México, Vol. VI (1900). Idolatrías y Supersticiones de los Indios. Contains: “Breve relación de los Dioses y Ritos de la Gentilidad,” by D. Pedro Ponce; “Informe contra Idolorum Cultores de Obispado de Yucatán,” by Dr. Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar (1613); “Tratado de las Supersticiones de los Naturales de Esta Nueva España,” by Dr. Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón (1629); “Relación de las Idolatrías del Obispado de Oaxaca,” by Dr. Gonzalo de Balsalobre (1554); “Memorial de Ministros de Indios para el Conocimiento de las Idolatrías y Extirpación de Ellas,” by Dr. Jacinto de la Serna (1656); “Idolatrías de Chiapas,” by Fray Pedro de Feria (1584). See also Villavicencio, Jaime Ricardo, Luz y Método de Confesar Idólatras y Destierro de Idolatrías (Puebla de los Angeles, Imprenta de Diego Fernández de León, 1692; Moxó y de Francolí (Benito María de), Cartas Mejicanas (Genoa, 1837; 2nd ed., “corregida y enmendada,” Genoa, 1839?).Google Scholar
19 From the office of the ultra-conservative Minister of Spain in Mexico, Angel Calderón de la Barca (June 26, 1840) : “From the time of the declaration of independence, two secret societies began to rend this country asunder and to bathe it in blood. One was called the Scottish Masons and it is said to have been established by General O’Donojú’s officers, who brought this pestilence with them. The other was first known as the Black Eagle and, later incorporated into the Yorkish rite under the baneful influence of the Anglo-American Minister, Mr. Poinsett—a sad day for Mexico—it took the name of Yorkinos because they adopted the New York rite to which that pernicious agent belonged. The Yorks and Scots formed two bitter parties. The former stood for extreme democracy; the latter, more temperate ideas, the interests of the landowners.” (Relaciones Diplomáticas Hispano-Mexicanas 1839–1898). Serie I. Despachos Generales 1. 1839–1841 (México, 1949), p. 109.