Translated Christianities. Mark Z. Christensen
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Whalen, “Annotated Translation.”
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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