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Franciscans, Indian Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in New Spain, 1536–1543
PATRICIA LOPES DON
San Jose State University
| In the years 1536–1543, the Spanish crown gave authority to the bishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, to establish an Episcopal Inquisition in Mexico City.1 With the urging of the Franciscan community, the bishop used his inquisitional authority to hold nineteen trials for religious crimes against mostly Indian leaders living in and around the Mexico Valley—a phenomenon called the Indian Inquisition.2 Both before and after this brief campaign, the trials of Indians for paganism or idolatry were either absent or few and always sporadic and lacking the support of the crown in Spain. The Indian Inquisition, however, was the most concerted effort of the Spanish colonial authorities to apply the full powers of the institution to the indigenous population in New Spain. Indians suffered a range of punitive punishments from flogging and lengthy jailing to banishment and, in the case of one indigenous leader, Don Carlos of Texcoco, burning at the stake.3 No sooner had this small but well-sanctioned legal assault on paganism begun, however, when questions emerged about its advisability. By the early 1540s, a consensus developed in councils of the Spanish government that the use of the Inquisition to induce religious orthodoxy among the new converts was inappropriate and possibly dangerous for the security of the colony. The Indian Inquisition ended when the Council of the Indies revoked the bishop's inquisitional powers in 1543. In 1571, when Philip II formally established a Holy Office in New Spain, he specifically prohibited trials against indigenous colonists. Most historians have attributed this decision to the failure of the earlier Indian Inquisition.4 |
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Why did colonial authorities regard inquisitional actions against the Indians necessary in the Spanish colony of the 1530s but not forty years later? And, since the colonial authorities were so quick to undermine the bishop's campaign, how and why was Zumárraga led down the path of applying the heavy cudgel of Inquisition to the indigenous neophytes? This paper will answer these questions by presenting a narrative, including turning points and intellectual conditions that were present in the Mexico Valley, leading up to the first trials of the Inquisition. Additionally, it will examine more closely the second trial against the native sorcerer Martin Ocelotl. The Indian Inquisition resulted from a confluence of interrelated intellectual tensions. Questioning of the indigenous capacity to Christianize led Franciscans in New Spain to defensively and rigorously enforce Christian living among the indigenous in the Mexico Valley in the 1530s. The campaigns in the indigenous towns and villages created tensions that led to an antagonistic dynamic that pitted some indigenous nobles against the friars. The bishop Zumárraga implemented his Inquisition in this tense environment and was persuaded to bring Martin Ocelotl to trial. Ironically, in the trial, the friars learned how alive and well paganism was in the very communities on the eastern side of the Mexico Valley where they had invested most of their missionizing efforts. Tensions escalated, and a steady drumbeat of trials followed that were clearly leading to a potential holocaust of indigenous leaders, until the Spanish Old World authorities stepped in and removed the bishop's inquisitorial powers. |
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The Dilemma of Conversion | |
| As Spain began to cope with the concept of converting large numbers of indigenous people in its newly conquered territories, two intellectual currents intersected that were critical to the emergence of the Indian Inquisition. One was Spain's perceived historical imperative to compel religious orthodoxy within its empire, in order to secure the empire. The other was the practical reality of converting people whose willingness and capacity to convert were in question and the more immediate concern of what this might mean for the security of an unwieldy empire. The Spanish monarchy's conversion policy often waffled between these two questions; the Inquisition in the New World was bound to become tangled in the process. Therefore, it is useful to review this conversion dilemma. |
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