Translated Christianities. Mark Z. Christensen
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religious authorities.4 In an early modern era of reform that emphasized an orthodox education of the doctrine, the printing press and its religious texts would play a large role—a situation aptly reflected in the Americas.
The ecclesiastics that arrived in Mexico in the 1520s and 1530s did not wait for an operational printing press (1539) to begin producing religious texts. Outnumbered and faced with the enormous task of converting natives in their own tongue, the early friars and their predecessors composed a variety of religious texts, including manuscript catechisms and sermons in Nahuatl, Maya, and other languages to convey basic Catholic prayers and doctrine. Some were translations of European works such as the mid-sixteenth-century Nahuatl translation of Thomas à Kempis’s fifteenth-century On the Imitation of Christ.5 Others were original compositions tailored to local needs such as an 1803 confessional manual written for a Yucatecan friar administering in the Maya parish of Tixcacalcupul.6
Although manuscript works continued to play an important role in religious instruction—particularly in Yucatan, which waited until 1813 for its printing press—ecclesiastical authorities increasingly threw their support behind the printing press to produce works that would unify the Catholic message in New Spain. For example, the small Nahuatl doctrina (book of Christian doctrine) of fray Alonso de Molina saw print in 1546, and subsequent Franciscans suggested that to maintain a consistent message, this be the only such doctrina used for the Aztecs (or Nahuas).7 Nevertheless, many other doctrinas followed, as did many confessional manuals, books of sermons, manuals detailing how to perform the sacraments, and myriad other Nahuatl and Maya religious texts. Different from one another, each text claimed to be the best of its kind and to convey the doctrine in the most effective manner. Simply put, although the printing press succeeded in making religious texts more available, it was unable to unify the message.
Nor was the printing press able to completely replace the production of handwritten native-language religious texts. Despite the increased availability of printed works, ecclesiastics and their native aides throughout the colonial period continued to generate manuscripts tailored to personal preferences and local demands. Some of these texts were handwritten “xeroxes” of printed originals; others represented original compositions. Some contained orthodox teachings; others did not. Because these texts avoided the quality control measures established for printed texts, ecclesiastical authorities were wary of the messages they contained. Certain ecclesiastical authorities and the Inquisition alike recognized the dangers of manuscript texts and confiscated them when discovered.8 For example, in the 1570s Gerónimo del Alamo had a variety of works translated into Nahuatl, including a doctrina, confiscated from him because they were “de mano... [y] sin autor” (handwritten and anonymous).9
Another shortcoming of the printing press was its inability to reach Yucatan. To be sure, religious texts in Maya saw print through the presses in central Mexico, but in numbers that paled in comparison to their Nahuatl counterparts. Whereas Mexican ecclesiastics commonly complained of the abundance of different religious texts, Yucatecan ecclesiastics lamented the shortage of texts. In 1620 Juan Gómez Pacheco encouraged the publication of fray Juan Coronel’s Discursos predicables because there was nothing printed in Maya for priests to use in instructing the natives.10 The lack of printed works in Maya contributed to two consequences. First, the Christian religious education of the general Yucatec Maya population progressed more gradually than that of the Nahuas, allowing the 1722 Yucatecan synod to exclaim that the Yucatec Mayas were “the most barbarous” and possessed few signs of being Christians.11 Second, handwritten manuscripts abounded in Yucatan to assist the local priests and to make up for the lack of printed works.12
The abundance of printed works in central Mexico and their dearth in Yucatan reflects a larger model of evangelization that favored the centers over peripheries.13 Comparatively speaking, unlike in central Mexico, the conquest and settlement of Yucatan was a long, protracted event that postponed the stable presence of ecclesiastics. This delay, along with Yucatan’s location as a periphery to the fast-growing Spanish center in central Mexico, affected the evangelization efforts of ecclesiastics while increasing the autonomy of the Mayas. Consider that in Yucatan, by the end of the colonial period, only approximately 37 percent of the 215 Maya towns had resident priests.14 Generally speaking, although Christianity came to the Yucatec Maya, it did so at a slower pace than that seen in central Mexico, and Nahuatl and Maya religious texts bear the evidence.
Authors and Ghostwriters
Thus far, we have discussed the importance of native-language religious texts in the evangelization of the Nahuas and Mayas, their printed and manuscript forms, and their relative abundance among the Nahuas vis-à-vis the Mayas. But who wrote these texts? The title pages of printed texts propose Spanish ecclesiastics as the sole authors. Yet upon closer examination of the historical record and the texts themselves, the contributions of Nahuas and Mayas as assistants, scribes, ghostwriters, and authors become increasingly apparent.
The plan of many of the early friars included the assistance of natives in composing religious tracts in native languages. In the sixteenth century the Franciscans viewed the religious education of the native youth as instrumental in their overall evangelization efforts. Generally speaking, every town was to have an elderly native collect the youth and deliver them to the church each morning to learn the fundamentals of the Christian doctrine, including the Persignum crucis, or Sign of the Cross, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and other basics. Afterward, the children would return home and assist their parents in their various duties.15 For the common Nahua and Maya, the level of religious instruction would end here with the basic fundamentals of the Faith.
According to the early Franciscans, however, the children of the Nahua and Maya elite had a separate destiny.16 Towns with resident friars and convents (a religious house for either men or women) also typically had schools used to train the children of the native nobility. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the native nobility governed over the spiritual and temporal lives of their towns. To the friars, then, these individuals would continue to serve as rulers, but now as Christians setting a good example and promulgating the message. The children of the native nobility were destined for the schoolroom, where they learned the Christian doctrine and studied reading, writing, and a variety of other subjects that could include Latin, theology, and grammar. Most important, they learned how to assist ecclesiastics in their duties to confess, perform mass, and instruct.17
Some of these religiously trained native nobles would serve as cooks or groundskeepers in the convents and churches; others became singers, or sacristans. Still others returned to their towns to serve as surrogate priests—typically referred to as fiscales for the Nahuas and maestros for the Mayas—who would baptize, catechize, bless, and preach in the frequent absence of the priest. Those with a proven aptitude for reading and writing helped others in learning similar skills and assisted friars still novice in the language.18 In fact, many early Spanish authors recognized the roles native assistants played in writing their texts. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún,