Nueva teologia es menester: Cultura cristiana y evangelizacion en Mexico. Siglo XVI.

Abstract

Historians have posited two significant stages in the Sixteenth-Century Christianization of New Spain. The beginning period witnessed accommodations between the culture of European friars and that of their religious surcharges. In the subsequent period the increasingly centralized authority of local bishops restricted the influence of the Mendicant Orders, expanding the role of secular clergy. The transition from the first period to the second has been viewed as one of weakened ideals and enthusiasm on the part of religious groups. However, the evidence suggests that the consolidation of Church power did not resolve the questions that continued to daunt friars and parish priests in their dialogue with the Nahuas. From within the evangelization process there arose new ways of thinking about Christianity, which scholars have underestimated. By examining the administration of sacraments I address the tensions which had previously existed in the Christian tradition, and which daily contact between European and indigenous cultures brought to the fore. Chapter One of my dissertation deals with the role of memory in the evangelization process. Spanish priests treated the Nahuas' memory as both a cognitive pathway leading to conversion and a backroad to the traditions of error that needed to be abandoned. Chapter Two focuses on the sacrament of confirmation. Some Spanish friars privileged confirmation over baptism, believing that the former held the key to a generation of Indians secure in their new faith. In explaining this sacrament to the Nahuas, the Franciscan Fr. Alonso de Molina resorted to his knowledge of their ancient rites to convey a new message. Chapters Three and Four address the sacrament of penance, highlighting Spanish reflections on contrition. Chapter Three presents the approaches to this question and the variety of demands that confessors in New Spain could reasonably place on their penitents. Finally, in Chapter Four I examine contrition by focusing on the interface of gesture and verbal communication in the particular context of the confession of the Nahuas.