The Spiritual Conquest Reexamined

Baptism and Christian Marriage in Early Sixteenth-Century Mexico

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2829663
AutoresSarah Cline (autor de correspondencia), Sarah A Cline (autor de correspondencia)
Año1993
Volumen73
Número3
Páginas453
Fecha de publicación1993-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2517698
OpenAlexW4239474909
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas16

A corpus of six Nahuatl-language household censuses from the Morelos region, ca. 1535-40, collectively titled the Libro de Tributos, gives unique insight into aspects of conversion, particularly baptism and Christian marriage, from an indigenous point of view. The data on individuals’ baptismal status and, to a lesser extent, the number of couples joined in Christian marriage, can be analyzed to trace the contours of the spiritual conquest in a central Mexican region approximately 20 years after the fall of Tenochtitlan. Divorce was permissible, and so was marriage to more than one wife simultaneously. The mendicants tried to institute the Christian sacrament of marriage, but they were far less successful, even superficially, than they apparently were with baptism. Language may be an indicator of shifts in native perceptions of what constituted marriage. The paucity of positively identified Christian marriages in the Morelos censuses is difficult to interpret

Ancient history · Art · Baptism · CONQUEST · Early Christianity · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Archaeology and Natural History · Classics · Early Modern Women Writers · History · Latin American history and culture · Philosophy · Religious studies