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Evangelical Catholicism in Early Colonial Mexico: An Analysis Of Bishop Juan De Zumárraga'S Doctrina Cristiana
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
Shortly after 1546 someone in Mexico was reading a book recently published at the instance of Bishop Juan de Zumárraga. The book was one of the first dozen published in the New World. As he read he occasionally made annotations in the margin. At one place he wrote: “Constantino.” Further on he put: “Constantino es este y no Zumárraga.” At the end of the book he summed up his observations by writing: “Hasta aquí tomó Su Señoría de Constantino doctor.”
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1967
References
1 I surmise that he read the book before Zumárraga’s death in 1548, because he refers to the bishop in his marginal comments as “Su Señoría,” as if he were alive.
2 Icazbalceta, Joaquín García, Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga: Primer Obispo y Arzobispo de México, eds. Spencer, Rafael Aguayo and Leal, Antonio Castro (México, 1947), II, 38.Google Scholar
3 Castillo averred, Francisco Fernández del (Libros y libreros en el siglo xvi [México, 1914], pp. 543-545)Google Scholar that the Mexican Inquisition condemned it on Nov. 3, 1559, and removed it from circulation. Bataillon, Marcel (“Érasme au Mexique,” Deuxième congrès national des sciences historiques, Alger 14–16 Avril, 1930 [Alger, 1932], pp. 32-43)Google Scholar points out that Fernández del Castillo is in error. The book actually removed, and then only for a brief time, was Zumárraga’s Doctrina breve of 1544.
4 Bataillon, Marcel, Erasmo y España: Estudios sobre la historia espiritual del siglo xvi, tr. Alatorre, Antonio (Mexico, 1950), II, 437–438.Google Scholar
5 Gardaí cazbalceta, op. cit., II, 39.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 For further information on the Erasmian portion of the Doctrina, see Bataillon, “Érasme au Mexique,” loc. cit. It should be noted that García Icazbalceta reports (Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga, primer obispo y arzobispo de México: Estudio biográfico [Mexico, 1881], pp. 265–282) the existence of an edition of the Doctrina without the twenty-four folio Erasmian supplement. Apparently the Constantinian portion of the Doctrina was printed first and a few copies were bound before Zumárraga decided to add the Erasmian supplement.
9 Garciaí cazbalceta, Zumárraga (1947), II, 43.
10 A good list of the available titles can be found in Greenleaf, Richard E.’s book, Zumárraga and the Mexican Inquisition, 1536–1543 (Washington, 1961)Google Scholar. See especially the footnotes to Chapter II and the bibliography.
11 The main source for all information in this paper relating to Constantino is my own “Constantino Ponce de la Fuente: The Problem of Protestant Influence in Six teenth-Century Spain” (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1964).
12 Even after his discovery that the first seventy-six folios of the Doctrina belonged to Constantino rather than Zumárraga, García Icazbalceta tried to maintain Zumárragan authorship for the remaining twenty-four folios of the book by stressing their similarity to the Doctrina breve of 1544. (García Icazbalceta, Zumárraga [1947], 38 ff.) Of course, his argument fell with the discovery that the Doctrina breve itself had as its principal sources Erasmus’s Enchiridion and Paraclesis.
13 No one has yet ascertained which of the first three editions of the Suma Zumárraga used in preparing his Doctrina, that of 1543, 1544, or 1545. The time factor involved would seem to favor either of the first two editions, but the 1545 edition used by me (microfilm copy of the volume in the Royal Library of Brussels) is so similar to Zumárraga’s volume, especially the introduction, which bibliographical information reports as being shorter in the 1544 edition, that it cannot be completely ruled out as the source.
14 I calculate that the whole book is about ten per cent shorter than the Suma.
15 García Icazbalceta, Zumárraga (1947), II, 41. Constantino himself on at least one occasion acted as a qualifier for the Inquisition.
16 Six titles were published under Constantino’s name in Seville from 1543 through 1548. They ran through twenty-two editions in Seville, Antwerp, Évora, and Lisbon from 1543 to 1556.
17 Greenleaf, op. cit., pp. 85–86. I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Greenleaf’s conclusion that this trial perhaps “… proves that Zumárraga could not be considered a follower of Erasmus.”
18 With regard to the written word, Zumárraga reproduced Constantino as follows: “Lo que yo hago es procurar de llevar bien leído el evangelio y la epístola de aquel día: y aún si hallo algunos de mis compañeros o [sic] otros que me quieran oir, se lo leo en un libro que tengo de los evangelios en romance, en que lo suelo leer a la gente de casa la noche antes, o aquella misma mañana.” (k iiir, spelling and punctuation modern ized.) Zumárraga’s counsel to his parishoners here on reading the Scriptures in Spanish is a notable instance of his agreement with Erasmus, Juan de Valdés, Constantino, and Bartolomé Carranza as over against the growing hostility of the Inquisition in Spain to the reading of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue.
With regard to the preached word, Zumárraga reproduced Constantino as follows: “Si hay muchos sermones, procuro siempre oir al que con menos interés de su hacienda y de su gloria y con menos respecto del vano contentamiento del mundo predica la palabra de Dios y que con mayor zelo y más sencilla pureza la trata. … En el fin suplico al Señor que asiente su palabra en mi corazon.” (k iiiv-k ivr spelling and punctuation modernized.) The Augustinian emphasis on the “word of God” was also stressed by Constantino. It is quite significant that Zumárraga maintains it here in spite of the importance which the Lutherans attached to it.
19 For a more detailed discussion of Evangelical Catholicism, see Jung, Eva Maria, “On the Nature of Evangelism in Sixteenth Century Italy,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XIV (1953), 511-527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 Twenty-six of the sixty-two chapters in Luis de Granada’s Compendio y explicación de la doctrina cristiana contain passages taken almost verbatim from the Suma.
21 y Pelayo, Marcelino Menéndez, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles, edición dirigida y ordenada por Corso, Félix F. (Buenos Aires, 1945), III, 62.Google Scholar
22 Carreño, Alberto María remarks (“The Books of Fray Juan de Zumárraga,” The Americas, V [1949], 311-330)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “It was only many years after the death of Zumárraga that the limits between orthodoxy and heterodoxy in these matters were authoritatively defined by the Council of Trent.”