TRANSLATED CHRISTIANITIES
TRANSLATED CHRISTIANITIES
Nahuatl and Maya Religious Texts
Mark Z. Christensen
The Pennsylvania State University Press
University Park, Pennsylvania
Portions of chapter 1 previously appeared in “The Use of Nahuatl in Evangelization and the Ministry of Sebastian,” Ethnohistory 59, no. 4 (2012): 691–711. Copyright 2012, American Society for Ethnohistory. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Duke University Press (www.dukeupress.edu). Material from chapter 1 also appeared in “The Tales of Two Cultures: Ecclesiastical Texts and Nahua and Maya Catholicisms,” The Americas 66, no. 3 (2010): 353–77.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Christensen, Mark Z., author.
Translated Christianities : Nahuatl and Maya religious texts / Mark Z. Christensen.
p. cm—(Latin American originals ; 8)
Summary: “English translations of Nahuatl and Maya religious texts, including sermons, catechisms, and confessional manuals. Includes commentary examining the various Christianities presented to the colonial Aztec (Nahua) and Yucatec Maya, the origins and purpose of the texts, and their authors and the messages they intended to convey”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-271-06361-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Aztecs—Religion.
2. Mayas—Religion.
3. Christian literature, Spanish—Translations into Nahuatl.
4. Christian literature, Spanish—Translations into Maya.
5. Christianity and culture—Mexico—History.
I. Title. II. Series: Latin American originals ; 8.
F1219.76.R45C54 2014
299.7’8452—dc23
2013046801
Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802-1003
The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
This book is printed on paper that contains 30% post-consumer waste.
To Cade
whose smile needs no translation
CONTENTS
Introduction: Native-Language Religious Texts
1 Saint Paul and Saint Sebastian in the “Nahuatl Bible”
3 Nahuatl and Maya Baptismal Texts
4 Nahuatl and Maya Catechisms
5 Nahuatl and Maya Confessional Manuals
Bibliography
Index
Latin American Originals (LAO) is a series of primary source texts on colonial Latin America. LAO volumes are accessible, affordable editions of texts translated into English—most of them for the very first time. Of the eight volumes now in print, five illuminate aspects of the Spanish conquests during the long century of 1494–1614, and three push our understandings of the spiritual conquest into surprising new territories.
Taken in the chronological order of their primary texts, LAO 7 comes first. Of Cannibals and Kings presents the very earliest written attempt to describe the native cultures of the Americas. An early ethnography, written by a Catalan named Ramón Pané, is packaged with complementary Spanish texts about the Caribbean societies of the late 1490s. Together they offer startling new insight into how the first Europeans in the Americas struggled from the very start to conceive a New World.
Following the chronological sequence of their source materials, LAO 2 comes next. Invading Guatemala shows how reading multiple accounts of conquest wars (in this case, Spanish, Nahua, and Maya versions of the Guatemalan conflict of the 1520s) can explode established narratives and suggest a conquest story that is more complicated, disturbing, and revealing. LAO 1, Invading Colombia, challenges us to view the difficult Spanish invasion of Colombia in the 1530s as more representative of conquest campaigns than the better-known assaults on the Aztec and Inca empires.
LAO 3, The Conquest on Trial, features a fictional embassy of native Americans filing a complaint over the conquest in a court in Spain—the Court of Death. That text, the first theatrical examination of the conquest published in Spain, effectively condensed contemporary debates on colonization into one dramatic package. LAO 4, Defending the Conquest, is a spirited, ill-humored, and polemic apologia for the Spanish Conquest written by Bernardo de Vargas Machuca, a lesser-known veteran conquistador, and submitted for publication—without success—in 1613.
Volumes 5, 6, and 8 all explore aspects of Spanish efforts to implant Christianity in the New World. LAO 5, Forgotten Franciscans, casts new light on the spiritual conquest and the conflictive cultural world of the Inquisition in sixteenth-century Mexico. Both it and LAO 6 show how there
