Sustaining the Divine in Mexico Tenochtitlan

Nahuas and Catholicism, 1523-1700

Bibliographic Data

ID2836374
AuthorsLouise M Burkhart (University at Albany, State University of New York, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume99
Issue4
Pages738-740
Publication date2019-11-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-7787313
OpenAlexW2982334760
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Jonathan Truitt explores the impact of Christian evangelization not so much on the hearts and minds of colonial Nahuas as on their prestige and their purses. Focusing on the Nahua altepetl of Mexico Tenochtitlan (that is, excluding the northern sector, Tlatelolco) from the coming of the first Franciscans to the close of the Hapsburg era, Truitt explores how the city's residents developed their own means of engaging with the Christian sacred despite sharing their island with Spaniards and the colony's administrative apparatus. The evangelizing friars depended on indigenous people to build chapels and convents, write doctrinal texts and keep other records, staff the churches, organize rites and festivals, and even weave the friars' habits. By participating—well beyond the obligatory labor drafts that built churches and other structures—Nahuas facilitated the establishment of Roman Catholicism, but did so with one eye on cultural continuity and the other on communal and personal benefit. While the survival strategies of Nahuas under colonial rule have been extensively documented by James Lockhart and others, this book is the most in-depth examination to date of everyday religious practice in colonial central Mexico. Writing clearly and without jargon, Truitt builds meticulously on earlier research while introducing the reader to a wide range of individual Nahua actors whose names and actions enliven the narrative. A number of tables provide useful lists of, for example, religious officials, charitable donations, and Nahuatl wills and their archival locations.The capacious chapel of San Josef de los Naturales, established by Mexico's first Franciscan friars, dominated Nahua religious life in the city throughout this period, even after the original, single parish was subdivided and other religious orders, and eventually secular clergy, took on the supervision of some parishes. Truitt re-creates life at San Josef as extensively as possible, while information about the surrounding community and Nahuas beyond the city contributes to the larger picture. Research in multiple archives and documentary genres—testaments, confraternity records, petitions and letters, maps, and more, plus published chronicles and annals—yields data on diverse religious activities and, importantly, grants adequate attention to women's participation. Fifty testaments from Nahua women (in contrast to forty from men) proved particularly useful for the latter endeavor, helping to compensate for the underrepresentation of women in the larger documentary record. Through chronicles we meet some other exemplary local women, such as Francisca de San Miguel, a servant in a convent whose desire for a crucifix of her own was met when mysterious men in white surprised her by delivering a life-size one, and María López, a chocolate seller who spearheaded a successful movement to have an abusive friar removed from San Josef.One cluster of Nahua religious activity surrounds the daily operation of San Josef and other chapels. Each needed a staff, led by the fiscal and including a choirmaster and singers, a notary, sacristans, and others, the number varying with the size of the parish. Nahuas adopted alphabetic literacy, and some mastered musical notation. Performing choral music with European instruments and putting on plays were two activities that Nahuas adopted enthusiastically and that fell largely under their own purview. Processions were another valued, and avidly defended, activity. Many of these were sponsored by cofradías, religious sodalities that account for another cluster of activities. These highly popular organizations offered prestigious leadership positions to men and women and also functioned as mutual aid societies that supported hospitals, funded funerals for members, and granted other benefits provided that members followed the cofradías' codes of conduct.A particularly valuable line of investigation tracks the production, marketing, and inheritance of religious paraphernalia: paintings or statues of saints, clothing and ornaments for those images, rosaries, candles, and other goods. These were needed for the chapels but also for the altars that Nahuas began to incorporate into their households, of their own volition. As women vendors dominated the markets and also—judging from bequests in wills—were more invested than men in the acquisition and maintenance of saints' images, these practices represent what must have been a meaningful as well as economically beneficial arena of women's devotions, and one consistent with preconquest practices of making, dressing, and tending to deity images.Though indigenous men very rarely became priests, and the first convent for indigenous nuns did not open its doors until 1724—and then to noblewomen only—Nahuas found many other ways to make themselves essential to the colonial church and to make Catholicism useful in their civic and domestic lives. Some were paragons of piety; others monetized their artistic or mercantile talents to earn a living. Many earned some prestige while attuning themselves to a lively round of ritual activity. Truitt does the field a service by detailing how diversely Nahuas sustained the divine and how little this sustenance relied on any profound adoption of orthodox Catholic doctrine

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Ceremony · Chapel · Colonialism · Divinity · Indigenous · Literature · Nahuatl · Narrative · Theology · Archaeology and Natural History · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American history and culture · Philosophy

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