Spreading the Faith

Penyak

PART III Conversion

Systematic conversion of New World peoples to Catholicism commenced during and

immediately following military conquests. Priests accompanied Columbus, Cortés, Pizarro, and

other conquistadores throughout the Americas. Pedro de Arenas may have celebrated the first

Mass in the Bahamas in 1492, though some scholars credit Franciscan Fray Bernardo Buil for

having done so in Hispaniola on the feast of the Epiphany (January 6), 1494. Bartolomé de

Olmedo went with Cortés to Mexico in 1519, and Vicente de Valverde accompanied Pizarro to

Peru in 1532. Twelve Franciscans, under the leadership of friar Martín de Valencia, arrived in

Mexico less than three years after the fall of Tenochtitlan. Dominicans came two years later,

followed by Augustinians in 1533. Franciscans established monasteries in Quito and Lima in

1534 and 1535. Twelve Dominicans, under the leadership of friar Francisco Toscano, undertook

missionary activities in Peru in 1540. Mercedarian fathers established monasteries shortly

thereafter. Secular clergy organized parishes in Brazil in 1532. Six Jesuits, under the leadership

of Manuel de Nóbrega, initiated missionary activities in Brazil in 1549. Ultimately, Spain divided

its overseas possessions into ten archdioceses and thirty-eight dioceses, Santo Domingo

becoming the first in 1511. Franciscan Juan de Zumárraga became the first bishop of New Spain

in 1530 and Dominican Vicente de Valverde the first bishop of Cuzco in 1537. The Portuguese

established the diocese of Brazil in 1551.1

Many early missionaries convinced themselves that this fortuitous opportunity to

convert millions of Amerindians to Christianity surely signaled Christ's imminent second

coming. This millenarian spirit and awesome responsibility, states John F. Schwaller, made it

more practical “to baptize the masses and concentrate later on their spiritual preparation.”2

Priests learned native languages and wrote catechisms and confessionals to teach church

doctrine. They used songs, plays, and dances as vehicles to instill Christian values. Parishes were

organized in already-existing Amerindian population centers. Because of the shortage of

priests, they generally administered the sacraments in outlying communities only once or twice

a year. In their absence, native community leaders called fiscales oversaw daily church

operations. Each community usually established a cofradía, or lay brotherhood, whose dues-

paying members sponsored annual festivals, venerated the local saint in a public procession,

and received proper Christian burials at death.3

Some scholars question the depth of Amerindian conversion to Christianity and, instead,

emphasize that syncretism was in fact the real result of the process. Peter Bakewell, for

example, explains how Christianity was “absorbed into earlier beliefs, just as the deities of

native invaders have typically been added to a conquered people's pantheon of gods in pre-

Colombian times.”4 During the first century of Spanish rule, Amerindians in Peru continued to

make offerings to huacas, or stones carved into human and animal form, and to practice

ancestor worship of mummies preserved in caves. Maya peoples worshipped “idols” and

guarded sacred writings. Others offered gifts of cacao, maize, guinea pigs, or chickens to images

of saints. Some even hid ancient religious objects in Christian altars. But, by the end of the

colonial period, according to Bakewell, most Amerindians came to accept and acknowledge

Catholicism as their religion and as a powerful symbol of their own identity. As William B. Taylor

suggests, colonial priests had learned to be flexible; if they “had no intention of compromising

on fundamental matters of doctrine such as monotheism and the Trinity…[they had] learned to

live with the local sorcery and spirits,” thereby sanctioning a syncretism characterized by a

dominant Catholic veneer or ethos.5

Spanish and Portuguese monarchs considered priests, friars, and monks of regular

religious orders especially apt to undertake evangelization during the first decades of

colonialism. As men who took special vows and lived according to a rule of life, regula in Latin,

they already possessed the type of internal structure needed to convert millions of Amerindians

in a methodical and organized fashion. Pope Adrian VI permitted members of regular orders to

serve as parish priests by virtue of the bull Exponi Nobis Omnimoda of 1522. The earliest and

most powerful orders included the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Mercedarians.

Each tended to predominate in different urban areas, though all had churches, monasteries,

and schools in viceregal capitals. New expeditions into hostile Amerindian areas usually

included at least one or two regular clergy to minister to the spiritual needs of the conquerors

and to commence evangelization. Many other orders such as the Hieronymites, Carmelites, and

Bethlehemites became numerous with time. The latter, founded by Rodrigo de Arias

Maldonado (1637-1716), was the only order founded in Spanish colonial America, receiving

papal confirmation and royal approval in 1687 and 1696, respectively. Ordinary parish priests,

or “secular” priests, served under the direction of the local bishop and were considered to live

in “the world,” or saeculum. These seculars grew in importance during the second half of the

colonial period at the expense of the regulars.6

The Society of Jesus, founded by the Spaniard Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) and

recognized by Pope Paul III in 1540, arrived as missionaries to Brazil in 1549, Florida in 1565,

and to other regions of Spanish America in 1572. As with other regulars, Jesuit priests and lay

brothers took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but they also made an additional vow

of obedience to the pope. Worldwide membership in this highly centralized and energetic order

grew from 936 in 1556 to more than 15,000 in 1626. By the second half of the eighteenth

century there were approximately 2,600 in Portuguese and Spanish America. They gained

prominence as missionaries to Amerindians on the fringes of empire (most notably in

Paraguay); owned many lucrative haciendas, cattle ranches, textile mills, and sugar plantations;

and became the teachers of wealthy male youth in cities.7

As the colonial period matured, the Habsburg monarchs of Spain sought to curb the

influence of the regular orders. The Crown had needed the organizational skills and dedication

of the regulars during the initial, precarious phase of colonialism, but once royal authority was

firmly established it feared their strong presence and growing influence. In addition, the Crown

could more easily control secular priests by virtue of its Royal Patronage, whereas members of

the regular orders reported to their prior, abbot, provincial, and ultimately to their head in

Rome. In 1574 Philip II issued the Ordenanza del Patronazgo, which firmly placed members of

religious orders under episcopal authority and began the long and sometimes bitter process of

replacing regulars with seculars in parishes.8

Most curates preferred the excitement and refinement of the city, and few sought posts

in the countryside. In the seventeenth century, fortunate prelates might hold Mass in

magnificent baroque churches, whose interiors radiated with gold-plated altars, frescos and

paintings, and silver chalices, monstrances, and candelabra. Wealthy parishioners

demonstrated, as Pamela Voekel states, “unrestrained ostentation” at every opportunity.9

The ethnic and racial composition of priests changed slowly. While Spaniards usually

received the highest positions, Creoles (children of Spaniards born in the New World) joined

religious orders and became a majority by 1700. Income requirements kept mixed-blood

peoples from entering the priesthood, and caste laws prevented blacks and Amerindians from

doing so during most of the colonial period. Young men needed to secure a guaranteed income

or sufficient education for a benefice prior to ordination. Some mestizos and mulattoes

acquired dispensations to join the priesthood, but, once there, their ancestry stymied their

mobility.10

University professors incorporated the ideas of the Enlightenment into their lectures,

began to teach in Spanish and Portuguese rather than in Latin, and offered classes in physics,

chemistry, and mathematics, in addition to the traditional ones in arts, theology, canon law,

civil law, and medicine. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were fifty colegios, or

high schools, and twenty-three universities in Spanish America, seven of which were public

institutions. Though it can be said that all students received a Catholic education, all institutions

were under royal authority. The Jesuits in Spanish America staffed thirty-five of the colegios

and eight universities, such as those in Córdoba, Lima, and Mexico City. The Brazilian colegios of

the Jesuits in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro prepared students for possible future study at the great

Jesuit University of Coimbra in Portugal. In all, notes John Tate Lanning, more than 150,000

students received academic degrees in Spanish America between 1550 and 1821. It is not

surprising that wealthy white males received most of the formal educational opportunities,

though poorer and even illegitimate boys who showed aptitude might be accepted, especially

into Jesuit institutions, during the waning years of colonial rule.11

20. Tupi Innocence?

Pero Vaz de Caminha (c. 1437-1500), secretary for Pedro Alvarez Cabral's fleet, which stumbled upon Brazil in 1500, writes an account of the first glimpse and evaluation by the Portuguese of the inhabitants of the New World. What does this account reveal about European cultures and values in this era?

They seem to me to be people of such innocence that, if we could understand them and they us, they

would soon become Christians, because they do not seem to have or to understand any form of

religion…. For it is certain that this people is good and of pure simplicity, and there can easily be

stamped upon them whatever belief we wish to give them. And furthermore, Our Lord gave them fine

bodies and good faces as to good men, and He who brought us here, I believe, did not do so without

purpose…there were among them three or four girls, very young and very pretty, with very dark hair,

long over the shoulders, and their privy parts so high, so closed and so free from hair that we felt no

shame in looking hard at them…one of the girls was all painted from head to foot with that [bluish-

black] paint, and she was so well built and so rounded, and her lack of shame was so charming, that

many women of our own land seeing such attractions, would be ashamed that theirs were not like hers.

21. Jesuits and Tupi

Arriving in Brazil in 1553, José de Anchieta, S.J. (1534-1597), became a schoolmaster in the newly established colegio (school), São Paolo, which ultimately gave its name to that town and province. In response to a complaint against the Jesuits to the Mesa de Conciencia (the royal council in Lisbon with responsibility for religious affairs in Brazil) by Portuguese colonizers for the Jesuits’ “enslaving” of Amerindians, Anchieta gave a detailed description (c. 1560) of the Jesuit aldeias, the Amerindian villages in which the Jesuits implemented their program of religious instruction and acculturation. What did that program of acculturation entail? What were some reactions of the Amerindians to its demands? Keep in mind the nature of the Tupi Amerindians, who were wandering and warring hunters and gatherers when the Portuguese arrived.

Every day, in the morning, the Fathers teach the Indians doctrine and say mass for those

who want to hear it before going to their fields; after that the children stay in school, where

they learn reading and writing, counting, and other good customs pertaining to the Christian

life; in the afternoon they conduct another class especially for those who are receiving the

sacred sacraments. Daily the Fathers visit the sick with certain Indians assigned for this purpose,

and if they have some special needs they attend to them, and always administer to them the

necessary sacraments. All this they do purely for love of God and for no other interest or profit,

for the Fathers get their food from the colegio, and they live with the Indians solely because of

love of their souls, which have such great need of them. The Fathers make no use of them on

plantations, for if the colegio needs them for certain tasks, and they come to help, they work

for wages…and not through force but of their own free will, because they need clothing or

implements. For although it is their natural tendency to go about naked, all those who have

been raised in the Jesuit schools now wear clothes and are ashamed to go about naked. It is not

true, as some say, that the Fathers are the lords of the villages.

When the Portuguese come to the villages in search of Indian labor, the Fathers help them

all they can, summoning one of the Indian headmen to take the Portuguese to the houses of

the natives to show them the goods they have brought, and those who wish to go they permit

to leave without impediment. If the Fathers object at times, it is because the Indians have not

finished their farm work, and they have to do this for the sake of their wives and children. In

other cases, the Indians are not getting along with their wives, and once they leave for the

homes of the Portuguese they never return; such Indians the Father also restrains from going,

so that they may continue living with their wives….

The Indians are punished for their offenses by their own magistrates, appointed by the

Portuguese governors; the only chastisement consists in being put in the stocks for a day or

two, as the magistrate considers best; they use no chains or other imprisonment. If some Indian

who went to work for the Portuguese returns before completing his time, the Father compels

him to return to work out his time, and if the Indian cannot go for some good reason the Father

arranges matters to the satisfaction of his employer.

The Fathers always encourage the Indians to cultivate their fields and to raise more

provisions than they need, so that in case of necessity they might aid the Portuguese by way of

barter; in fact, many Portuguese obtain their food from the villages. Thus one could say that the

Fathers are truly the fathers of the Indians, both of their souls and of their bodies.

22. Rigorous Evangelization of Adult Amerindians

Despite the reference to himself in the third person (in the third paragraph) the following letter was probably written by António Pires, S.J., in September 1558 to the Jesuit father general in Rome. This letter may be regarded as a more straightforward account than Anchieta's necessarily defensive one of 1560 refuting unfounded accusations against the Jesuits (see previous reading). The letter provides an excellent insight into the manner in which the Portuguese, lay and clerical, perceived their mission in Brazil, the measures this mission mandated for the Amerindians, and the responses of the latter.

Pires writes approvingly of the provincial governor's using “fear” to “subjugate” Amerindians to “the law and servitude.” This “fear” will allow the Amerindians to learn of Christ and the “kindness [of] Our Lord,” enabling them “to remain a strong and stable people.” This language allows the reader to understand the Jesuit technique in evangelizing adult Amerindians and their optimism about its effects. It is important that the reader enter into and understand the European mind of the era without judging it with twenty-first-century sensibilities.

Why were these Portuguese so confident in their rigorous treatment of the adult Amerindians? Why would they be so optimistic about the effects of that treatment? They are even more optimistic about the effects of their program on Amerindian children. Why are they so sanguine? What may they have not considered?

Religion in Latin America: A Documentary History . Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.

Since the letter written on July 19, 1558, from Bahia, the Governor has continued zealously

in his efforts and Our Lord has given him rewards for his efforts.

He continued to punish the wrongdoers with such prudence and temperance that he builds

up the community and does not destroy it, and for that reason he has been able to subjugate all

to the law and servitude whom he wanted.

Thus, from far away they [the Indians] send requests for priests to indoctrinate them

because they want friendship with Christians and to change their habits for ours. In this way

four large settlements are already constructed for them; but for the present only two of us

reside among them in the newly constructed churches because there are only three of us in this

Captaincy who can say mass and we are scattered in the following three areas: in the College of

Bahia resides João Conçalves with a few Brothers, Father Nóbrega is in São Paulo, and Antônio

Pires is in São João. The other two settlements are awaiting aid.

Besides these, other settlements are being prepared in more remote parts where the

Christians never imagined it possible to enter and subjugate, and we are taking care of this

slowly until there are enough Fathers to reap the great harvest there. It is certain that if there

were enough people to teach and to maintain them, we could easily establish 20 or 30 churches

around which we could settle all the Indians from an area many leagues square.

All these are losing their habit of eating human flesh; and if we learn that some are about

to eat flesh, we order them to send it to us. They send it, as they did several days ago, and they

bring it to us from a long distance so that we can bury or burn it. In this way they all tremble

with fear of the Governor, a fear which, although it may not last a lifetime, is enough so that we

can teach them; it serves us so that we can tell them of Christ, and the kindness which Our Lord

will show them will cause all human fear to flee so that they will remain a strong and stable

people. This fear makes them more capable of being able to hear the word of God. Their

children are instructed; the innocent ones about to die are all baptized; they are forgetting their

habits and exchanging them for good ones. Proceeding in this way a noble Christianity will be

inculcated at least among the youngsters.

With much diligence the children are being taught good habits, reading, and writing, and

there are some very intelligent ones among them. From these we hope to have some good

students, because, since they can no longer wander around and now remain among us, they

will not be able to forget what they have learned. Those of São Paulo, the first settlement built,

are all Christians, that is the children up to 14 years of age, and every day more are baptized

because those who are born again bring others for baptism and there are more than two

hundred of these. We do not baptize the older ones who may already have committed some

mortal sins unless they confess and live in a manner acceptable to Our Lord, and of these older

ones many are living orderly lives so that already we have baptized and married a large

number. This good order is encountered throughout the other Indian settlements we have

created.

There are a great many things which I could tell your Paternity and all the Brothers which

would please you very much, but I will concentrate only on two things. The first is that one of

the boys whom we brought up some years ago and taught to weave is in São Paulo with his

loom and is making cloth. The concern which before they all had for their feasts of human flesh

and for their wars and ceremonies has been converted to the planting of cotton. They weave it

and thus dress themselves. This now is their principal concern. All have begun to clothe

themselves and many of them go around dressed now.

23. Brazilian Slavers and Jesuit Missionaries

Some seventy years after the auspicious start of Jesuit evangelization (1630) comes this shocking report by two Jesuits about the actual status of the aldeias and the “heathen” Amerindians who were positively disposed to the Jesuits. The account is so specific and detailed that exaggeration is unlikely. Arrogance, wanton cruelty, massive kidnappings, incineration of Indian villages, brazen collusion by magistrates—how is it possible that these entradas (the term given to such raids against the Amerindians) could have characterized the growing Portuguese colony?

Most disturbing to the two Jesuit authors is the image of their order in Amerindian eyes—an image of the Jesuits in collusion with the brutal bandeirantes (the raiders in the entradas) to enslave the entire Amerindian population—which would preclude the possibility of any further successful evangelization of the Amerindians. Does this depiction of the maturing colony suggest the actual reality of the colonization process, whether Portuguese or Spanish? How would that, in turn, affect the process of “conversion”?

For forty years the inhabitants of São Paulo have flaunted the laws of the King Our Lord

with no regard for them, nor for their great offense against God, nor for the punishment which

they deserve. In their raids they continually capture and carry off by force of arms the free and

emancipated Indians whom they keep for their own slaves or sell. Lately their boldness has

been even greater than in years past, and for two principal reasons: first, this time they have

gone out in greater numbers than ever, emboldened by the little or no punishment inflicted on

them for their continual and unjust entradas in the past; second, they have assaulted the

reductions of the Fathers of the Company of Jesus of the Province of Paraguay and taken all the

people whom we were instructing.

With regard to the first point: In the beginning of the month of August, 1628, some nine

hundred Portuguese left the town of São Paulo with muskets, swords, cotton armor, bucklers,

machetes, and much ammunition of shot and powder, and other arms. They were accompanied

by two thousand two hundred Indians, unjustly taken captive on previous occasions, and also

among them were the two judges of the same town of São Paulo, Sebastião Fernandes

Camacho and Francisco de Paiva; two aldermen, Maurício de Castilho and Diogo Barbosa; the

Procurator of the Town Council, Cristóvão Mendes; and the son, son-in-law, and brother of

Amador Bueno, the senior judge of the town. […]

With regard to the second point: The men of the company of Antônio Rapôso Tavares who

committed these injuries which we are recording here had said many times before setting out

from São Paulo that they had decided to plunder and destroy our settlements, and thus they

purposely took the route to the Plains of the Iguaçu. Here, far removed from the towns of the

Spaniards and isolated in these lonely regions, where twelve reductions or Indian settlements

have already been built and others, for lack of priests, merely planned, we were settling and

instructing the Indians in their own lands with infinite toil and lack of necessities, being content

to carry on for the love of God and for the salvation of those heathen. We suffered the poverty

of the land in food and dress, planting vineyards and sowing wheat so as to have the host and

wine for saying Mass.

When these bandits, then, had crossed the River Tibajiva on the 8th of September of that

same year 1628, they built their palisade or fort of wooden stakes close by our villages. And—to

show clearly the intention they had from the beginning—Antônio Pedroso, Captain of the

advance guard of this Company, as soon as he arrived in these parts chanced upon some

seventeen Christian Indians from our settlement of Encarnación on the Ñatingui, who had left

their wives and children in the village under the protection of the Fathers and gone to the

woods to collect mate, which they drink with warm or cold water after grinding it into powder.

Pedroso seized them and carried them all off….

Thereafter, although they continued most cruelly to capture the heathen who, for lack of

Fathers, had not yet been settled in reductions, wounding, killing, and mangling many old

caciques and unbaptized children, they left us in peace with our wards for four months; and we

treated them with friendliness, for in this way, although we could not arrest the many evils they

were committing, we at least protected our reductions as best we could and those Indians who

were again coming to us. And when it was necessary to dispatch some Indians of our village

elsewhere we simply gave them a note begging the Portuguese to let them pass as our own

sons; thus we treated the thief as a loyal friend, and they let them pass. Furthermore the

Fathers went now and again to their palisade and baptized the children and the sick (for there

were many afflicted with pox) to save them from eternal captivity since they could not be saved

from the temporal one. The Portuguese themselves also sent for Father Pedro [Mola], who was

in the village of San Antonio a day's journey from their palisade, to confess a Portuguese who

was dying, although God would not allow it, depriving him of speech and reason the whole time

the Father remained with him.

This false peace lasted until a very great cacique called Tatabrana who had many vassals—

and whom Simão Álvares, a citizen of São Paulo, had unjustly captured a few years previously

but who, desiring his freedom, soon fled and returned to his lands—came to deliver himself

with all his people to the same Father Mola. They were Christians whom we had won over,

shortly before the Portuguese entered those parts, by gifts and celebrations given in their

honor when they entered our villages to see us, attracted by the good word which had gone

forth concerning the peace and contentment enjoyed by the Indians who lived in them with us.

Then the Portuguese, thinking that they now had some pretext to carry out their wicked

intention, sent to ask the Father for Tatabrana. And as the Father replied that he could not be

turned over to them since he was free and in his own lands, they advised Captain Major

Antônio Rapôso Tavares requesting his approval, and then, on the 30th of January, 1629, they

came to take by force not only Tatabrana but also all the others whom the Father was

instructing in the village of San Antonio. Thus, as they themselves admit, they took from it four

thousand Indians or burden bearers along with a crowd of others, and they destroyed the

entire village burning many houses, plundering the church and the Father's house, and

desecrating an image of Our Lady. With great violence they removed the Indian men and

women who had taken refuge in the Father's house, and they killed an Indian at the very door

of the house, as well as another ten or twelve persons in the same village. They took most of

the Father's meager belongings, including a few shirts, two blankets, shoes, hats, napkins,

tablecloths, spoons, knives, ten or twelve iron wedges, and six or seven chickens that he had.

They killed one of three cows they found, and took other small things….

What is of gravest concern in this whole affair is that the Holy Gospel is now so

disesteemed and its Preachers so discredited that—with the door now completely closed to the

preaching of the Gospel among all those heathen—the Indians imagine and repeat that we did

not gather them to teach them the law of God, as we told them, but to deliver them by this

subterfuge to the Portuguese. They also say that we tricked them by telling them so often that

they were safe with us and that the Portuguese, being Christians and vassals of the same king,

would not touch nor harm those who were with the Fathers, for they were then Christians and

children of God. Therefore, since an action so atrocious goes unpunished and with no effective

remedy, it seems to me that we shall be forced to abandon all these heathen, whom year after

year we have been gathering together and instructing by order of His Holiness and His Majesty

with so much labor and hardship….

And so that the multitude of the infidels which was already disposed to settle with the

Fathers and embrace the Holy Faith may be better appreciated:

In the village of Jesús María alone, Father Concovado had almost five thousand warriors

not counting their crowd of women and little ones. Besides this, the caciques of Caayu…saw

that because of the lack of Fathers (who, in villages as densely populated as those, were almost

all distributed one by one) they could not achieve their good hopes of having priests in their

lands to instruct them; so they themselves with their vassals went to the village of San Antonio,

just recently plundered, to be there with the Father. They had not known of the shameless

action of the Portuguese there, but when they saw the village destroyed, the houses burned

and so many killed, they returned to their lands and now, from what they have seen, imagine

that we are traitors and deceivers, and that we have secret intelligence with these Portuguese.

And therefore, as some Indians who met these people on a journey have affirmed to us, many

of them are now traveling in a band looking for Fathers to kill them….

What we saw along the route [to São Paulo] was the inhumanity and cruelty with which

[the Portuguese] treated the Indians. For the poor creatures were overworked and sick at heart

to find themselves slaves with little hope of regaining their liberty. Against their will and

resistance they were leaving their lands where they had lived most contentedly and amid great

plenty; and they now had to cross many rivers, swamps, lakes, and mountains, making this long

march on forty consecutive days from the palisade to São Paulo, carrying their little ones on

their backs, seeing them turn sick and die from hunger, cold, exertions, the maltreatment of the

Portuguese, and the rigors of the journey. They ate only the little that the Portuguese

sometimes gave them, stolen from their own farms and plots, or else what they themselves had

to search for in the forests and woods, fatigued from the day's journey—although not all were

permitted to do this for fear they would escape. Besides all this, the Portuguese loaded them

with their burdens, and many caciques as well as vassals (especially those from our reductions)

were taken in chains to São Paulo. All day they were scolded and at night the Portuguese kept

them from sleeping, wearing them out with constant shouting and sermonizing which they

themselves did or ordered their Tupi to do, or else some of the recently captured caciques. The

latter were on the one hand promised, to discourage their escaping, that they would have a

very good life, both temporal and spiritual, with their houses and lands in São Paulo (as if

perpetual captivity could be designated a life), and, on the other hand, the Indians were

threatened that if they fled they would be killed, and in fact when someone did run away they

sent their Tupi after him and when he was brought back he was cruelly whipped….

Two Indians whom the Portuguese released to us after persistent importunities assert that

when the Portuguese left the palisade they set fire to the huts and settlements, burning with

them some of the aged and infirm, and, if some did manage to escape so as not to die in the

flames, the Tupi in the presence of their masters forced them to return to the fire to expire in it.

In this regard we might say here that the cruelty of the Tupi was no less than that of their

masters and that they no less deserve to be punished than the Portuguese….

But let us return to the Portuguese and consider the wiles they employ to deceive the

courts and avoid the punishment which they deserve. This does not require much effort, for

they have as companions in crime not only all the people of São Paulo but also the very judges

and administrator of the council of this same town. However, so that they might have a way of

deceiving the higher magistrates of the state (if it can be called deceit, against persons who

witness enough cases of the constant entradas, carried out with so many wrongs and cruelties,

to have no illusions about such clear and open deceits) they requested I know not what sort of

legal writs. […]

What we aspire to and came to seek on such long and wearying journeys by land and sea,

with such toil and hardship, is some effective remedy for the past and for what is to come. For

the past, we feel that there can be no proper satisfaction unless all the captured Indians are

given their freedom, and unless all or most of them are returned to their lands and the

reductions. In this way they can bear witness to those of their lands that we are innocent, that

we did not deliver them to the Portuguese, and that we took measures here to try and secure

their freedom. And moreover they can remove the bad opinion which the infidels not yet in

reductions have already formed of us of the Company, that we are traitors and deceivers, and

thus we would regain the credit which we enjoyed with them and without which it seems

impossible to convert them to Our Holy Faith. As for the future, let some very exemplary

punishment be fixed, or in some other fashion let an order be given that extortions and

enslavements such as the men of São Paulo have carried on for so many years be henceforth

prevented….

It is said that simply the band of Antônio Rapôso Tavares which plundered our villages

carried away as many as twenty thousand souls, and it is therefore certain that if a very genuine

remedy is not supplied in the briefest time, they will soon destroy everything and depopulate

these populous lands as they have done in most of the state of Brazil….

There were those who for five, and others…who for seven continuous years, and even

those who for eighteen years neglected their salvation and remained in those wilds capturing

Indians and living in concubinage with as many Indian women as they wished. […] In this City of

Salvador Bahia de Todos os Santos, October 10, 1629. SIMÓN MACETA—JUSTO MANSILLA

24. António Vieira Promotes Human Rights

António Vieira, S.J. (1608-1697), may be considered the most remarkable Portuguese personality, public servant, writer, orator, and “human rights” advocate of the early modern era. Amerindians, Jews, Africans—all were subjects of his concern and compassion despite his nation's and era's images of them.

In this Lenten sermon of 1653, Father Vieira plays the roles of both prophet and pastor and apparently demonstrates their incompatibility. The prophetic Vieira celebrates human freedom in the first two-thirds of the reading (up to the paragraph ending “your own sweat than from the blood of others”). The final third reveals Vieira's

attempt, as pastor to the Portuguese colonizers as well as defender of the Amerindians, to lure the former into salvation. But to achieve success in this endeavor, what does Vieira have to do? Are the prophetic and the pastoral indeed incompatible? Again, how would Vieira's “solution” affect the Amerindians’ understanding and reception of “conversion”?

Christians, nobles, and people of Maranhão, do you know what God wants of you during

this Lent? That you break the chains of injustice and let free those whom you have captive and

oppressed. These are the sins of Maranhão; these are what God commanded me to denounce

to you. Christians, God commanded me to clarify these matters to you and so I do it. All of you

are in mortal sin; all of you live in a state of condemnation; and all of you are going directly to

Hell. Indeed, many are there now and you will soon join them if you do not change your life.

Is it possible that an entire people live in sin, that an entire people will go to hell? Who

questions thus does not understand the evil of unjust captivity. The sons of Israel went down

into Egypt, and after the death of Joseph, the Pharaoh seized them and made slaves of them.

God wanted to liberate those miserable people, and He sent Moses there with no other escort

than a rod. God knew that in order to free the captives a rod was sufficient, even though He

was dealing with a ruler as tyrannical as Pharaoh and with a people as cruel as the Egyptians.

When Pharaoh refused to free the captives, the plagues rained down upon him. The land was

covered with frogs and the air clouded with mosquitoes; the rivers flowed with blood; the

clouds poured forth thunder and lightning. All Egypt was dumbfounded and threatened with

death. Do you know what brought those plagues to the earth? Unjust captivity. Who brought to

Maranhão the plague of the Dutch? Who brought the smallpox? Who brought hunger and

drought? These captives. Moses insisted and pressed the Pharaoh to free the people, and what

did Pharaoh respond? He said one thing and he did another. What he said was, I do not know

God and I do not have to free the captives. However, it appears to me proper and I do declare

them free. Do you know why you do not give freedom to your illicitly gotten slaves? Because

you do not know God. Lack of Faith is the cause of everything. If you possessed true faith, if you

believed that there was an eternal Hell, then you would not take so lightly the captivity of a

single Tapuya. […]

Any man who deprives others of their freedom and being able to restore that freedom

does not do so is condemned. All or nearly all are therefore condemned. You will say to me that

even if this were true they did not think about it or know it and that their good faith will save

them. I deny that. They did think about it and know it just as you think of it and know it. If they

did not think of it nor know it, they ought to have thought of it and to have known it. Some are

condemned by their knowledge, others by their doubt, and still others by their ignorance…. If

only the graves would open and some who died in that unhappy state could appear before you,

and in the fire of their misery you could clearly read this truth. Do you know why God does not

permit them to appear before you? It is exactly as Abraham said to the rich miser when he

asked him to send Lazarus to this world: Habent Moysen et Prophetas (Luc. 16.29). It is not

necessary for one to appear on earth from Hell to tell you the truth because you already have

Moses and the Law, you have the prophets and learned men. My brothers, if there are any

among you who doubt this, here are the laws, here are the learned men, question them. There

are in this State, three religious orders which have members of great virtue and learning. Ask

them. Study the matter and inform yourselves. But it is not necessary to question the religious:

go to Turkey, go to Hell, because there is no Turk so Turkish in Turkey nor no devil so devilish in

Hell who will tell you that a free man can be a slave. Is there one among you with natural

intelligence who can deny it? What do you doubt?

I know what you are going to tell me…our people, our country, but government cannot be

sustained without Indians. Who will fetch a pail of water for us or carry a load of wood? Who

will grind our manioc? Will our wives have to do it? Will our sons? In the first place, this is not

the state into which I am placing you as you soon will see. But when necessity and conscience

require such a thing, I answer yes and repeat again yes. You, your wives, your sons, all of us are

able to sustain ourselves with our own labor. It is better to live from your own sweat than from

the blood of others! […]

I have studied the matter carefully and in accordance with the most lenient and favorable

opinions and have come to a conclusion by which, with only minor worldly losses, all the

inhabitants of this state can ease their consciences and build for a better future. Give me your

attention.

All the Indians of this State are either those who serve as slaves or those who live as free

inhabitants in the King's villages, or those who live in the hinterlands in their natural or free

condition. These latter are the ones you go upriver to buy or “to rescue” (as they say), giving

the pious verb “to rescue” to a sale so involuntary and violent that at times it is made at pistol

point. These are held, owned, and bequeathed in bad faith: therefore they will be doing no

small task if they forgive you for their past treatment. However, if after you have set them free,

they, particularly those domestics whom you raised in your house and treated as your children,

spontaneously and voluntarily wish to continue to serve you and remain in your home, no one

will or can separate them from your service. And what will happen to those who do not wish to

remain in your service? These will be obliged to live in the King's villages where they also will

serve you in the manner which I shall mention. Each year you will be able to make your

expeditions into the interior during which time you can really rescue those who are prisoners

ready to be eaten. Those justly saved from death will remain your slaves. Also, all those

captured in just wars will be made slaves. Upon this matter the proper judges will be the

Governor of the State, the Chief Justice of the State, the Vicars of Maranhão or of Pará, and the

Prelates of the four orders: Carmelite, Franciscan, Mercedarian, and the Company of Jesus. All

of these who after judgment are qualified to be true captives, will be returned to the

inhabitants. And what will happen to those captured in a war not classified as just? All of them

will be placed in new villages or divided among the villages which exist today. There, along with

the other village Indians they will be hired out to the inhabitants of this State to work for them

for six months of every year alternating two months of hired work with two months devoted to

their own labors and families. Thus, in this manner, all the Indians of this State will serve the

Portuguese either as legitimate slaves, that is those rescued from death or captured in a just

war, or those former slaves who freely and voluntarily wish to serve their old masters, or those

from the King's villages who will work half the year for the good and growth of the State. It only

remains to set the wages of those village Indians for their labor and service. It is a subject which

would make any other nation of the world laugh and only in this land is not appreciated. The

money of this land is cloth and cotton, and the ordinary price for which the Indians work and

will work each month is seven feet of this cloth which has a market value of about twenty

cents. An Indian will work for less than a penny a day. It is an insignificant amount and it is

unworthy of a man of reason and of Christian faith not to pay such a slight price to save his soul

and to avoid Hell.

Could there be anything more moderate? Could there be anything more reasonable than

this? Whoever is dissatisfied or discontent with this proposal either is not a Christian or has no

understanding.

28. Mission Zeal Declines

The first reading below makes clear the kinds of problems faced by Alonso de Montúfar (c. 1489-1572), second archbishop of Mexico. (The archbishopric was a large region in the valley of Mexico, which included Mexico City.) What were the problems Montúfar faced during his eighteen-year tenure as archbishop? What categories do they fall into? What does this suggest about the “conversion” process?

The second reading is by Jerónimo de Mendieta, O.F.M. (1525-1604), missionary, mystic, historian, anthropologist, and scourge of Jews, Muslims, heretics, and idolaters. He spent some forty-five years in New Spain. By 1596 he had completed a vast account of the conversion and current religious state of the Amerindians, the famous Historia Ecclesiastica Indiana.

Does Mendieta confirm, refute, or modify Montúfar's account of the status of the church in the archdiocese of Mexico? Compare the two accounts of the reality of the conversion process by these highly committed friars, Dominican and Franciscan, whose mentality was typical of Christian Europe at the time, with the accounts by Motolinía and Moguer. Compare them also with Motolinía's version of Las Casas's position on the correct procedure for conversion.

Religion in Latin America: A Documentary History . Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.

[Mendieta]

From what we see and hear in our congregations, everywhere the superiors are resigning.

In visiting the convents one hardly finds a single monk who is content and happy. Discontent is

manifest everywhere; many are seeking leave to return to Spain. It is a miracle to find a friar

who is seriously trying to learn the language, for those who know it use it with so little

satisfaction and profit…. The old fervor and enthusiasm for the salvation of souls seems to have

disappeared. The primitive spirit is dead. The newly converted Indians no longer throng the

churches to hear the word, confess or receive the sacraments, etc.

29. Serpentine Prudence

In the prologue to book 4 of the Historia, Sahagún makes the intriguing declaration printed below.

Does that “serpentine prudence” appear in the manner in which any of the four previous authors (Motolinía, Moguer, Montúfar, and Mendieta—readings 25, 26, 28) criticize the evangelization process? How do the four authors’ criticisms compare with Sahagún's analysis of Mexica religious culture? Are they concerned with the same issues? What does the comparison comparison reveal about Sahagún, whose sympathy for Mexica culture is evident in his meticulous description of all its aspects?

They (the first evangelists) did not forget in their preaching the warning that the Redeemer

left his disciples and apostles when he told them: estote prudentes sicut serpentes et simplices

sicut columbae: be prudent like serpents and simple as doves. And though they proceeded with

caution in the second, they failed in the first, and even the idolaters themselves noticed, in that

they (the first evangelists) lacked that serpentine prudence and thus with their sly humility they

quickly offered themselves to receive the faith that was being preached to them. But they

remained deceitful in that they did not detest or renounce all their gods with all their customs,

and thus they were baptized not like perfect believers but as fictitious ones, who received that

faith without leaving the false one they had of many gods. This cover-up was not understood in

the beginning, and the main reason for this was the opinion that the above-mentioned

preachers had of their perfect faith, and thus they affirmed it to all the ministers of the gospel

who happened to preach to these people….

All of us were told (as had already been told to the Dominican fathers) that this people had

come to the faith so sincerely and were almost all baptized and so wholly in the Catholic faith of

the Roman Church that there was no need to preach against idolatry because they had

abandoned it so truly. We accepted this information as very true and miraculous, because in

such a short time and with so little preaching and knowledge of the language, and without any

miracles, so many people had been converted…. It was discovered after a few years very

evidently the lack of serpentine prudence that there was in the founding of the new Church,

because they were ignorant of the conspiracy that had been made among the principals and

native priests, to receive Jesus Christ among their gods as one of them and to honor him like

the Spaniards honor him, according to their ancient custom wherein when foreigners arrived to

settle near those who were already settled, when it pleased them they would take as a god the

one brought by the recently arrived and in this manner they say the Tezcatlipoca is the god of

those from Tlalmanalco, because they brought him with them, and Huitzilopochtli is the god of

the Mexicans because they brought him with them….

In this fashion they easily accepted as a god the god of the Spaniards, but not in order to

leave their ancient ones, and this they hid during the catechism when they were baptized, and

during the catechism when they were asked if they believed in God the Father, the Son, and the

Holy Spirit, along with the other articles of the faith, they would respond “quemachca,” yes, in

accordance with the conspiracy and custom that they had; and asked whether they disowned

all the other gods they had adored, they would also respond “quemachca,” yes, deceitfully and

lying…. and thus this new Church was established over a false foundation, and even after having

put some buttresses, it is still damaged and ruined.