The Monk and the Mariposa: Franciscan Acculturation in Mexico
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The Monk and the Mariposa: Franciscan acculturation in Mexico 1520-1550 Thesis submitted for the degree of MPhil, University of Kent October 2015 Penelope Reilly 1 Acknowledgements I would like to thank William Rowlandson for his unfailing enthusiasm and encouragement and inspiring conversations throughout the past three years. I would also like to thank Beatriz Aracil Varón for kindly sending me texts of her work. I would like to thank the British Library. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, John, for persuading me to undertake this project in the first place, and for showing such great interest particularly in the autos. 2 Abstract Acculturation by the Franciscan Friars in Mexico from 1520-1550 This thesis sets out to examine the process of acculturation as experienced by the Franciscan friars during the first years of their mission in Mexico at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It will suggest that the acculturation was a two-way affair; that the Franciscans were as much changed by their contact with the indigenous people as were the natives by their contact with the friars. It begins with a study of the various changing interpretations of the notion of ‘acculturation’ and argues that beside the classical linear interpretation such expressions as ‘reverse acculturation’, ‘transculturation’ and ‘co-acculturation’ may be more appropriate for these particular circumstances. It then examines how the friars came to be in Mexico and the Aztec culture which they encountered which both shocked by its human sacrifice and yet provided striking examples of parallels with the Christian religion, thus indicating an early example of possible mutual accommodation. Next the thesis looks at the ways in which the friars prepared the ground for their mission: destroying many of the temples, settling the natives in ‘pueblos’ and above all, learning a range of local languages so that they could both converse with the Aztecs and preach to them. This can be seen as an excellent example of how the missionaries themselves were open to the process of acculturation; instead of insisting on the language of the coloniser, as was the practice of later missionaries, they carried the word to the natives by speaking their own tongues. The thesis goes on to examine the process of evangelizing, suggesting that in this area the greatest degree of ‘transculturation’ can be observed. Shortages of resources and manpower and sheer pressure of numbers made it necessary to take ‘short cuts’ in the administration of the sacraments, adopting for instance a ‘missa secca’ (where there was no wine) and dispensing with the use of white gowns and salt, which were in short supply, for the baptismal ceremony. In cultural areas of their work the friars found themselves exposed to another form of ‘acculturation’ – a phenomenon which might be termed ‘co-acculturation’. Thus in some of the songs of Pedro de Gante Christian and Aztec references sit side by side. Monastic architecture combines classical Spanish design with innovations like the ‘capilla abierta’. The Tlaxcaltecans, having been taught by the missionaries the art of using perspective, used this same art to extract more favourable terms from the Spanish authorities. However, it is in that astonishing art form the auto that the best example of both ‘trans-acculturation’ and ‘co-acculturation’ can be found. Here an attempt has been made to show that what are basically well-known Bible stories have been overlaid by Aztec religious and cultural references which are not only a form of ‘hidden resistance’ to Spanish rule but the most impressive example of the blending of two cultures under the aegis and inspiration of the Franciscan friars. The result is a moment of sublime dramatic co-operation which was never to be repeated. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................. 2 Abstract ................................................................................................................................................ 3 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter One ‘The Highest and Holiest deed’ (Cortés: Cartas 1V) ............................................... 13 Chapter two The shock of first contact ......................................................................................... 27 Chapter Three Preparing the ground ................................................................................................ 43 Chapter Four The Mission .............................................................................................................. 56 Chapter Five Education .................................................................................................................. 66 Chapter Six The pueblo-hospital...................................................................................................... 76 Chapter Seven ‘You taught me language …’ (The Tempest Act 1 Sc. 2) ........................................ 81 Chapter Eight The play’s the thing (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2) ......................................................... 91 Chapter Nine The Flowering ........................................................................................................ 104 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 137 Bibliography..................................................................................................................................... 143 4 Introduction When Cortés landed with a group of companions at Ulúa on Maundy Thursday, April 21st, 1519, the first thing he did was to order the erection of a cross. Mexico’s long process of religious acculturation had begun. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the nature of this ‘acculturation’ and the Franciscan friars’ role in it. It will ask the question how thorough was it, how deeply did it penetrate into the psyche of the Mexica, how much resistance, if any, did it meet and what was the effect of this evangelizing mission on the friars themselves. It will also consider the nature of the religious legacy which the friars left behind them and the effect which this legacy might have had on the later history of Mexico. Why have the Franciscan friars been chosen as the topic for this discussion? What was special about them? It is not that they were all saints. They were not. Studies of the period contain instances of their squabbles with the other Orders and their harsh treatment of the natives. Neither have they been used as a defence of colonialism, most of which is indefensible. It is rather a study of the peculiar qualities of the Franciscans which set them apart from the other missionaries of the sixteenth century and made their interpretation and implementation of religious acculturation unique. To begin with, they were the first to arrive in Mexico. Chosen by Cortés, endorsed by the Spanish King Charles V, facing many and great dangers, they found themselves implanted in a strange and hostile land. They were charged, to paraphrase Canning’s speech to the House of Commons in December, 1826, with the responsibility of bringing the Faith to the New World to redress the failures of the Old, the consequences of which were to change the character of Mexico for ever. In the execution of this grave responsibility one has to admire their courage and shining idealism which found expression in the most astonishing energy. They built over 70 convents and monastic houses by 1570, including vast, imposing churches. They were responsible for the introduction of the first printing presses in Latin America, on which they wrote sermons, treatises and grammars in both Latin and the native languages. Despite all this, and one of the reasons for selecting them as the subject of this thesis, is the fact that since the seventeenth century, the Franciscans seem to have been largely forgotten in the Mexican national narrative, as the neglected state of many of their churches and monasteries suggests. Scholars have written in full on the evils of the Conquest, the encomienda and repartimento systems but remarkably little credit has been given to the friars for their achievements. This may be due in part to a legacy of anti-clericalism. In Mexico’s troubled subsequent history the struggle between liberals 5 and conservatives, between Church and state, bedevilled relationships until 1867 when Mexico was finally declared a secular country and church lands expropriated. It is no doubt also due to anti-colonialism, which frequently goes hand in hand with anti-clericalism and whose views were best expressed in the 1950s and 1960s and as late as the 80s by philosophers like Fanon, Sartre and Paz. The first two were writing in the shadow of the struggle for independence in Algeria where colonialism was dying and most of their opinions were coloured by their attitude to the French colonial masters. Writing in the preface to Albert Memmi’s ‘The Colonizer and the Colonized’ Sartre stated: ‘Colonialism denies human rights to people it has subjugated by force and whom it keeps in poverty and ignorance, therefore in a state of subhumanity’ (1964:3). Yet in Mexico in the sixteenth century, it was the friars’ declared intent to save the souls of the natives and to educate and enlighten them rather