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A New Millenarian: Georges Baudot

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Elsa Cecilia Frost
Elsa Cecilia Frost*
Affiliation:
El Colegio de México
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Extract

Georges Baudot has written a lengthy book (554 pages) which bears a beautiful and suggestive title: Utopia and History in Mexico. In publishing this work, he seems to have had two very clear purposes in mind. The first is to fill an enormous gap since “strange as it may seem, the authentic sources for most of our knowledge about pre-Columbian civilization in central Mexico have never been studied.” (p. ix) The second, is to demonstrate the grandeur of the Franciscan work in the sixteenth century, impelled by millenarian fervor.

With respect to the manner in which Baudot fulfills his first and commendable purpose, there is nothing more to be said after the two articles Dr. Edmundo O'Gorman has published in Historia Mexicana. With regard to the second, I must admit that the reading of the book provoked in me, in almost equal measures, amazement and envy. I will explain. It amazes me (and not just a little) that an author who confronts what is for me, at least, such a difficult topic as Franciscan millenarianism can establish the antecedents of this tendency in only twenty pages (71-90) and utilize for it only a single biblical citation (p. 78, note 14: Revelations XX:4-6). Envy presents itself after concluding that such frugality must be due to the vast culture of the French public to whom the work is addressed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , April 1980 , pp. 515 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1980

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References

* Baudot, Georges, Utopie et histoire au Mexique. Les premiers chroniqueurs de la civilisation mexicane (1520–1569) (Toulouse: Privat ed., 1977).Google Scholar

1 Cf Historia Mexicana XXVII:3 (Jan.-March 1978), 446-478; and XXVII:4 (April-June 1978), 637–658.

2 Cf. st.Irenaeus, , Adversus baereses, 3, iii, 4,Google Scholar where he tells the anecdote about St. John and Cerinthus heard from the lips of St. Polycarp.

3 Cf. sections 80, 81. At the beginning of the first paragraph he concludes: “I, for my part, and some other Christians of good judgement, not only accept the future resurrection of the body but also the 1000 years of Jerusalem, reconstructed, beautified and extended as Ezequiel, Isaias and other prophets promised it.” and in number 81 he assures us, “In addition there was among us a brother by the name of John, one of the apostles of Christ, who in revelation of what was done, prophesied that those who had believed in Christ would spend 1000 years in Jerusalem and that afterward would come the universal resurrection.” (The text is taken from the edition of the B. A. C, Padres apologistas griegos (Madrid, 1954), pp. 445–448.

4 Cf. section 52: “The second coming, when He will come in glory from heaven accompanied by his army of angels, is when He will raise up the bodies of all men who have lived, and to those who are worthy, He will invest them with immortality, and to the evil ones, for eternity, he will send them together with the demons to eternal fire.” (Ibid., p.239).

5 Phelan, John L., The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1956).Google Scholar Frost, Elsa Cecilia, “El milenarismo franciscano en México y el profeta Daniel,” Historia Mexicana 26: 1 (July-Sept. 1976).Google Scholar I attempted to establish here a link between the specific vision of our missionaries and the tradition of the “spirituals” maintaining, however, the complete orthodoxy of the evangelizers of New Spain. I believe, nevertheless, that the attempt failed by not having taken into account all of the conceptual “baggage” involved in the term “milenarismo”.

6 Text of Motolinia

(Historia de los indios, III, 2, 288)
Y vínole a la memoria la conversión de los infieles…
Y decía el siervo de Dios entre si: “ ¡Oh! ¿Y cuándo será esto? ¿Cuándo se cumplirá esta profecía? ¿No sería yo digno de ver este convertimiento, pues estamos en la tarde y fin de nuestros días, y en la última edad del mundo?”
Text of Mendieta
(Historia eclesiástica indiana, V, la. parte, 1 IV).
Y a traer a la memoria la conversión de los infieles…
Y decía hablando consigno mismo “ ¿Cuándo será esto? ¿Cuándo se complirá esta profecía? ¿Cúando será esta tarde? ¿No sería en este tiempo? ¿No sería yo digno de ver este convertimiento, pues ya estamos en las vísperas y fin de nuestros días, y en la última edad del mundo?”

7 Phelan, op. cit., p. 71

8 Speaking of “subtleties”, perhaps it may not be superfluous to add that Baudot’s text contains errors that can not be attributed to mere printing errors. Thus, for example, on page 256, note 55, it is said that Eulalia Guzmán believed she had found the remains of Cuauhtemoc in 1950. In fact, it was September 26, 1949. See Moreno, Wigberto Jiménez, “Los hallazgos de Ichcateopan,”Historia Mexicana, 12:2 (Oct.-Dec. 1962), 161–181.Google Scholar On page 398, note 29, Juan Badiano, an Indian of Xochimilco, appears as the editor of the codex which bears his name. But Badiano was merely the translator to Latin; the text came from Martín de la Cruz, also an Indian. On page 502, Baudot concludes that “just a year after Motolinia’s death”, that is to say, 1570, the Jesuits arrived along with the Inquisition, but the date does not correspond either to the foundation of the Holy Office,1571, (Even the first cédula was dated January 25, 1569 and the second was August 16, 1570) nor to the arrival of the first fathers of the Company, 1572.

9 “Le complot’ franciscain contre la première audience de Mexico,” Caravelle number 2 (Toulouse, 1964)

10 There also exists on this theme, the previous work of the author, “L’institution de la díme pour les Indiens du Mexique. Remarques et documents,” en Melanges de la Casa de Velazquez (Paris, 1965).