greatly mistreat, who produce for you what you need, whom you greatly mistreat, our lord God does not want it so.”
And after he (Sebastian) had told them this, they became angry about it; thereupon they (the nobles) said, “What are you saying to us Sebastian? It is bad. When we were baptized, you told us, ‘Because of it God will have mercy on you.’ And after we were baptized, now you tell us, ‘Get rid of your wives; give all your property, all that is in your homes and your houses, to those without houses, all those who are poor.’ After we give it to them, where will we go, for we will no longer have property? In what will we appear as rulers when we have served the poor? And now we do not want this to be done; we had really believed your words, but now we no longer believe; we abandon what you had taught us; we no longer believe and still we will love those you do not yet take to be gods; still before our gods we will kill people; it will again be like it was before you came here.”
After the wicked had said this to Sebastian, God’s beloved was very sad and wept. He told them, “Listen evildoers! What are you saying? Is it not a sin that you want to break our lord God’s commandments?”
But the wicked no longer listened at all to him at that point; still he tried to restrain them, but they said, “Although it is sin, did we ask you about it? We really no longer want what you tell us; we no longer want you to live here. Go to your home, to where you came from.”
When they had said this, then Sebastian kneeled and joined his hands and prayed to our lord God; when he prayed to him, he said, O elluhe. dĩẽ,13 O God, O Giver of Life,14 how can it be that wretched I behaved inconsiderately toward you and offended you and did not do my duty with your holy commands so that people were not able to retain what they were taught? Have me burned, may I see the torments of hell. As for the people, may you be merciful with them O lord.”
Then our lord God himself replied to him and said to him in turn, “O Sebastian, weep no longer, no longer be so sad. I saw the wicked, you did not sin; you redeemed yourself, you did your duty. They broke my commandments on their own.... Try them again!15 Never... was in vain... when no longer they consent, you are to tell me again.”
After our lord had declared this to him, then... replied... Sebastian told him..., “Thank you, let me try them out again.”
Then, he goes to try them; when he reached the people he said to them, “Listen you people! You say you really do not love the words, the commandments of our lord God. Today I came at his bidding; maybe I will try you out another time. May you judge it well!”
1. An excellent example would be the 1713 manuscript of Joseph Antonio Pérez de la Fuente’s manuscript “Relación mercurina,” no. 10, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Garrett Collection of Mesoamerican Manuscripts (C0744), Princeton University Library.
2. The manuscript is mentioned in Gómez de Orozco, Catálogo, 157–58; Glass, “Census,” 175; and Horcasitas, Teatro náhuatl, 447–59, 601–3, which includes a transcription and loose Spanish translation of the text by Faustino Galicia Chimalpopoca. My transcription, however, varies from that found in Horcasitas’s work.
3. Acts 9:3–5, 10 (AV). Not until Acts 13:9 is Saul referred to as Paul.
4. See, for example, Dante, Inferno, canto 2, line 32.
5. For more of a comparison of the Nahuatl and medieval tale, see Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms, 199. Silverstein provides an excellent study of the text in his Visio Sancti Pauli. See also Sautman, Conchado, and Di Scipio, Telling Tales, 109–10. The act of God showing a sinner the pains of hell to inspire repentance was a common theme in many European didactic tales throughout the Middle Ages (see chapter 2). For a few examples, see Gayangos, Escritores, 478–79.
6. Flos sanctorum, fols. 40r–42r; Jacobus, Golden Legend, 50–54.
7. Morgan explains the close and symbiotic relationship between sermons and hagiographies in his Spanish American Saints, 35–36.
8. Sahagún, Psalmodia christiana, 47–51.
9. Fernández del Castillo, Libros y libreros, 55, 264–81; Nesvig, Ideology and Inquisition, 237–41; Mathes, First Academic Library, 4–5. Interestingly, the Inquisition banned the 1558 edition printed in Zaragoza.
10. Don, Bonfires of Culture, 167, 89. For more on the Franciscan’s morals campaign, see ibid., 146–74, and Gruzinski, Man-Gods, 31–62.
11. Philologically and orthographically the manuscript points to distinct preferences among the native writers. Both writers tend to use abbreviations incorrectly and interchange the u and the n throughout. The first writer is prone to omit syllables, which sometimes he catches and writes in. Also confirming the early date of the text is its occasional use of the huehuetlatolli form of rhetoric in a phrase for “thank you.” My thanks to James Lockhart for his insights.
12. Nahua municipal community or town.
13. Unknown epithet.
14. Ipalnemohuani. This is an epithet for Nahua creator deities such as Tezcatlipoca and even Quetzalcoatl.
15. Here and in a few other places the manuscript has been damaged by water, rendering a transcription and translation of certain words difficult, if not impossible.
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All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them.
—Matthew 13:34
As seen in the previous chapter, religious texts employed stories, however unorthodox, to convey their messages. The short story is perhaps the most enduring and popular genre of didactic literature throughout time. Aesop, Chaucer, Dickens, Shakespeare, and the Brothers Grimm all understood the value of an engaging tale—whether fictitious or factual—to convey a message or simply to entertain. The efficacy of the short story to educate was not lost on Christianity.
