Jonathan Truitt. Sustaining the Divine in Mexico Tenochtitlan

Historical studies of Christianity in New Spain are legion. We have stories of spiritual conquest and millennial urgency. We have stories of syncretism and resistance, of violent iconoclasm and internecine clerical outrage. In most of these stories as told, Spaniards rather than indigenous people are the key players, whether those Spaniards are presented as heroes or villains or as an ambivalent mixture of the two. Part of this imbalance is a natural result of the available sources, as documents in Spanish outnumber those in Nahuatl and are more easily accessible. Another part of this imbalance, which I can attest from personal experience, is that the difficulty of mastering Nahuatl can seem a prohibitive barrier to recovering indigenous colonial voices. A few notable scholars, like James Lockhart and Louise Burkhart, have to a great effect emphasized the perspectives found in indigenous-language documents. In Sustaining the Divine in Mexico Tenochtitlan: Nahuas and Catholicism, 1523–1700, Jonathan Truitt has joined them, overcoming this barrier to entry in impressive fashion and providing a detailed look at the daily practice of indigenous Catholicism in Mexico City.

Ambivalence · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Colonialism · CONQUEST · Iconoclasm · Indigenous · Literature · Nahuatl · Syncretism (linguistics) · Theology · Early Modern Women Writers · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Latin American history and culture · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious studies