Mexican Inquisition - Introduction of Christianity To New Spain

Introduction of Christianity To New Spain

This intermingling lead to the Spanish crown’s complete domination of religious matters in New Spain. Pope Alexander VI in 1493 and later Pope Julius II in 1508 gave the crown extensive authority over this domain with the goal of converting the Indians to Catholicism. Spanish officials appointed religious authorities in Mexico and even had ability to reject papal bulls there. The evangelization process and later Inquisition had political motivations. The objective of Christian conversion was to strengthen alternative sources of legitimacy to the traditional authority of the tlatoani, or chief of the basic political unit of the city-state.

Franciscan friars began the work of evangelization in the mid-1520s and continued under the first Bishop of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumarraga in the 1530s. Many of the Franciscan evangelists learned the native languages and even recorded much of native culture, providing much of the current knowledge about them. The Dominicans arrived as well in 1525. They were both seen as intellectuals and agents of the Inquisition, due to their role as such in Spain. These two orders, along with the Augustinians, provided most of the evangelization effort in Mexico. By 1560, these three orders had more than 800 clergy working in New Spain. Later the Jesuits would arrive in 1572. The number of Catholic clergy grew to 1,500 in 1580 and then to 3,000 by 1650. In the early years, the clergy’s attention would be focused on the conversion of the Indians. In the latter years, however, emphasis on struggles between religious orders as well as segments of the European society would take precedent.

A series of three ecclesiastical councils met during the course of the 16th century to give shape to the newly established Church in New Spain. In 1565, the Second Mexican Ecclesiastical Council met to discuss how to implement to the decisions of the Council of Trent (1546–1563). The Catholicism being imposed here was heavily influenced by the Counter-Reformation and required total assent from its believers. Its main thrust was not on individual belief or conscience but on collective observation of clerically ordained precepts and practices. This combination of authoritarianism and collectivism became transferred to the Indies during the course of the 16th century.

This sense of collectivism allowed for a certain amount of laxity in the conversion of the Indian population as many outward practices were indeed similar. Both systems intertwined religious and secular authority, practiced a type of baptism with subsequent renaming of the child and the practice of communion had parallels with eating replicas of Aztec divinities with blood. Franciscan and Dominican studies of Indian culture and language led to a certain amount of appreciation for it. It was definitely different from the Islam that the Reconquista had created such hatred for. Instead, indigenous religion was branded as paganism, and as an authentic religious experience but corrupted by demonic influences. Much of this was helped by the fact that many parallels could be drawn between the gods and the cults of the saints as well as the Virgin Mary. For this reason, evangelization did not result in a direct onslaught against indigenous belief but rather more an attempt to shift existing belief into a Christian paradigm. In the end, while in theory Christianity was to have absolutely supremacy in all things religious, in practice, the Church did not oppose any practices that did not directly conflict with doctrine.