Mexican Inquisition

Convent of San Diego which contains a plaque in memory of Inquisition victims that were burned alive here.

The plaque says "In front of this place was the quemadero (burning place) of the Inquisition. 1596-1771"

The Mexican Inquisition was an extension of the Spanish Inquisition into the New World. The Spanish Conquest of Mexico was not only a political event for the Spanish, but a religious event as well. In the early 16th century, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and the Inquisition were in full force in most of Europe. The Spaniards had just re-conquered the Iberian Peninsula, giving them special status within the Roman Catholic realm, including great liberties in the conversion of the native peoples of Mesoamerica. When the Inquisition was brought to the New World, it was employed for many of the same reasons and against the same social groups as suffered in Europe itself, minus the Indians to a large extent. Almost all of events associated with the official establishment of the Holy Office of the Inquisition occurred in Mexico City, where the Holy Office had its own “palace”, which is now the Museum of Medicine of UNAM on Republica de Brasil street. The official period of the Inquisition lasted from 1571 to 1820, with an unknown number of victims.^[1][2]

Spanish Catholicism

The Mexican Inquisition was an extension of what had been going on in Spain and the rest of Europe for some time. Spanish Catholicism had been reformed under the reign of Isabella the Catholic (1479– 1504), which reaffirmed medieval doctrines and tightened up discipline and practice. She also introduced the Holy Office of the Inquisition in 1480, combining secular and religious authority in the matter. Much of the zeal to reaffirm traditional Catholic tenets came from the history of the Reconquista. Those who overthrew Muslim domination of the peninsula were very committed to the purpose of making Catholicism completely dominant wherever they could.^[1] After the discovery and conquest of the New World, this effort to spread the faith included the belief that the non-Christians there would benefit from instruction in the “true faith.”^[3]

Introduction of Christianity to New Spain

This intermingling lead to the Spanish crown’s complete domination of religious matters in New Spain. Pope Alexander VI in 1493 and later Pope Julius II in 1508 gave the crown extensive authority over this domain with the goal of converting the Indians to Catholicism. Spanish officials appointed religious authorities in Mexico and even had ability to reject papal bulls there.^[3] The evangelization process and later Inquisition had political motivations. The objective of Christian conversion was to strengthen alternative sources of legitimacy to the traditional authority of the tlatoani, or chief of the basic political unit of the city-state.^[1]

Franciscan friars began the work of evangelization in the mid-1520s and continued under the first Bishop of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumarraga in the 1530s. Many of the Franciscan evangelists learned the native languages and even recorded much of native culture, providing much of the current knowledge about them.^[1] The Dominicans arrived as well in 1525. They were both seen as intellectuals and agents of the Inquisition, due to their role as such in Spain.^[3] These two orders, along with the Augustinians, provided most of the evangelization effort in Mexico. By 1560, these three orders had more than 800 clergy working in New Spain. Later the Jesuits would arrive in 1572. The number of Catholic clergy grew to 1,500 in 1580 and then to 3,000 by 1650. In the early years, the clergy’s attention would be focused on the conversion of the Indians. In the latter years, however, emphasis on struggles between religious orders as well as segments of the European society would take precedent.^[1]

A series of three ecclesiastical councils met during the course of the 16th century to give shape to the newly established Church in New Spain. In 1565, the Second Mexican Ecclesiastical Council met to discuss how to implement to the decisions of the Council of Trent (1546–1563). The Catholicism being imposed here was heavily influenced by the Counter-Reformation and required total assent from its believers. Its main thrust was not on individual belief or conscience but on collective observation of clerically ordained precepts and practices. This combination of authoritarianism and collectivism became transferred to the Indies during the course of the 16th century.^[1]

This sense of collectivism allowed for a certain amount of laxity in the conversion of the Indian population^[1] as many outward practices were indeed similar. Both systems intertwined religious and secular authority, practiced a type of baptism with subsequent renaming of the child and the practice of communion had parallels with eating replicas of Aztec divinities with blood.^[3] Franciscan and Dominican studies of Indian culture and language led to a certain amount of appreciation for it. It was definitely different from the Islam that the Reconquista had created such hatred for. Instead, indigenous religion was branded as paganism, and as an authentic religious experience but corrupted by demonic influences. Much of this was helped by the fact that many parallels could be drawn between the gods and the cults of the saints as well as the Virgin Mary. For this reason, evangelization did not result in a direct onslaught against indigenous belief but rather more an attempt to shift existing belief into a Christian paradigm. In the end, while in theory Christianity was to have absolutely supremacy in all things religious, in practice, the Church did not oppose any practices that did not directly conflict with doctrine.^[1]

Indigenous adaptation to new religion

The native population adjusted to those aspects of Christianity that accorded itself to the view of the cosmos they already knew, including the notion of the intertwining of both religious and secular authority. Many European and indigenous practices continues side-by-side and many indigenous beliefs and practices were redesigned with Christian names and references. The goal was to preserve as much of the ancient symbols that had always given meaning to the universe. The further away a community was from direct Church intervention, the thinner the Christian veneer was. Pre-Hispanic beliefs and practices therefore survived in the new religion and colored its expression. The most famous example of this may be the emergence of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Franciscan Fray Bernardino de Sahagún suspected it was a post-Conquest adaptation of the Aztec cult of Tonatzin, a mother goddess. There was even some speculation at the time that the god Quetzalcoatl was being refashioned as the Apostle Thomas.^[1]

However, not all native reaction was docile. There was strong resistance early on in Tlaxcala. The Oaxaca sierra violently resisted until the late 1550s as well as the Otomi and peoples in parts of Michoacan state as late as the 1580s.^[1]

Arrival of Inquisition

At the time of the discovery and conquest of the New World, Cardinal Adrian de Utrecht was the Inquisitor General of Spain. He appointed Pedro de Cordoba as Inquisitor for the West Indies in 1520. He also had inquisitorial powers in Mexico after the conquest but did not have the official title. When Juan de Zumarraga became the first Bishop of Mexico in 1535, he also had these duties. One of Zumarraga’s first act as inquisitor was the prosecution of an Aztec lord who took the name of Carlos upon baptism. He was likely a nephew of Nezahualcoyotl. Zumarraga accused this lord of reverting back to worship of the old gods and had him burned at the stake on 30 November 1539. However, this persecution was not considered prudent by either the Spanish secular or religious authorities and Zumarraga himself was reprimanded for it. For a number of reasons persecution of the Indians for religious offenses was not actively pursued.^[2] First of all, since many native practices had parallels in Christianity, and since this “paganism” was neither the Judaic or Islamic faiths that Spanish Christians had fought so zealously against, ecclesiastical authorities opted instead to push native practices in Christian directions. Also, many of the monks sent to evangelize the native peoples became protectors of them from the extremely cruel treatment at the hands of secular authorities.^[1] This would contrast sharply with treatment of European heretics later in the colonial period. However, as a practical matter it was probably not prudent to pursue such rigid enforcement in an environment where native peoples vastly outnumbered the European conquerors, who also needed to rule through indigenous intermediaries.^[4]

This is part of the reason why the Inquisition was not formally established in New Spain until 1571. However, this is not to say that Inquisition-like tactics were never used after the Aztec lord Carlos’ execution. Antagonism with the Spanish led to the Maya resistance in the Yucatan in 1546-1547. The failure of this movement prompted more aggressive evangelization, with the Franciscans finding out that despite their efforts much of traditional beliefs and practice survived. They, under the leadership of Fray Diego de Landa, decided to make an example of those they considered back-sliders without regard to proper legal formalities. Large numbers of people were subjected to torture and as many of the Maya sacred books as could be found were burned.^[1]

Colonial period Inquisition

When Holy Office of the Inquisition had been established in New Spain in 1571, it exercised no jurisdiction over Indians, except for material printed in indigenous languages.^[1] Its first official Inquisitor was Pedro Moya de Contreras, who established the “Tribunal de la Fe” (Tribunal of the Faith) in Mexico City. By this, he transferred the principles of the Inquisition set by Tomas Torquemada in Spain.^[2] However, the full force of the Inquisition would be felt on non-Indian populations, such as the “Negro,” “mulatto” and even certain segments of the European.^[4] Historian Luis Gonzalez Obregon estimates that 51 death sentences were carried out in the 235–242 years that the tribunal was officially in operation. However, records from this time are very poor and accurate numbers cannot be verified.^[2]

One group that suffered during this time were the so-called “crypto-Jews” of Portuguese descent. Jews who refused to convert to Christianity had been expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1537. When Spain and Portugal united shortly thereafter, many converted Portuguese Jews came to New Spain looking for commercial opportunities. In 1642, 150 of these individuals were arrested within three or four days, and the Inquisition began a series of trials. These people were accused of being ‘judaisers,’ meaning they still held Judaic beliefs. Many of these were merchants involved in New Spain’s principal activities. On 11 April 1649, the viceregal state staged the largest ever auto da fe in New Spain, in which twelve of the accused were burned after being strangulated and one person was burned alive. Most of the remainder were ‘reconciled’ and deported to Spain.^[1]

The best known case of this type was that of Luis de Carvajal. Born Jewish in Spain in the 16th century, he was a sincere convent to Christianity. However, he was married to a woman who would not give up her Hebraic faith even though he tried to convert her. Finally, when she decided to stay behind as he went to the West Indies to trade wine, he moved on to New Spain. There he became a businessman but was more noted as a soldier. He fought for the Spanish against the Indians in Xalapa and the Huasteca areas. Having made something of a name for himself, he brought a number of his family over from Spain to live there. His economic and political fortunes gradually reversed themselves as businesses failed and it was rumored that the family were secretly practicing Judaic rites.^[4] He was brought before the Inquisition and had 22 chapters of charges read against him but the main charge was reverting back to the Judaic faith. Under torture he not only confessed to abandoning the faith, but denounced associates and even members of his own family. On 8 January 1596, he was executed in the Zocalo along with his mother and three sisters.^[2]

After a series of denunciations, authorities arrested 123 people in 1658 on suspicion of homosexuality. Although 99 of these managed to disappear, the Royal Criminal Court sentenced fourteen men from different social and ethnic backgrounds to death by public burning, in accordance to the law passed by Isabella the Catholic in 1497. The sentences were carried out together on one day, 6 November 1658. The records of these trials and those that occurred in 1660, 1673 and 1687, suggest that Mexico City, like many other large cities at the time had an active underworld.^[1]

The last group that had to be careful during this time was scholars. Early attempts to reform the educational curriculum to keep pace with contemporary European influences were exterminated during the 1640s and 1650s by the Inquisition. The central target was Fray Diego Rodriguez (1569–1668), who took the First Chair in Mathematics and Astronomy at the Royal and Pontifical University in 1637, and tried to introduce the scientific ideas of Galileo and Kepler to the New World. For thirty years, he argued the removal of theology and metaphysics from the study of science. He was the leader of a small circle of academics that met semi-clandestinely in private homes to discuss new scientific ideas. Political struggles of the 1640s, however, brought the suspicions of the Inquisition down upon them and a series of investigations and trials followed into the middle of the 1650s. When academics worked to hide books banned by the Holy Office’s edit in 1647, the Inquisition required all six booksellers in the city to subject their lists to scrutiny under the threat of fine and excommunication.^[1]

Those sentenced under the Inquisition usually had these punishments carried out in a ceremony called the “auto de fe,” almost all of which were carried out in Mexico City. For such, all notables and most of the populace would turn out in their finest garb. The Church set up a stage with pulpits, rich furnishings for the noble guests, tapestries, fine cloth draped for decoration and to serve as a canopy over the stage. No expense was spared in order to show the power and the authority of the ecclesiastical authorities in this matter. In addition, all nobles from the viceroy himself, his court, and all others in position of authority would be conspicuously in appearance.^[2] The ceremony began with a sermon and a long declaration of what constituted the true faith. The assembly was required to swear to this. The condemned were led onto the stage dressed capes with marks showing their crime and their punishment. They also were a kind of dunce cap. They were given a chance to repent, in many cases, to modify their sentences, such as strangulation instead of burning alive at the stake. Then sentences were carried out.^[4]

The Inquisition remained officially in force until the early 19th century. It was first abolished by decree in 1812. However, political tensions and chaos led to something of its return between 1813 and 1820. It was abolished for good in 1820.^[2]

See also

• Converso

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Hamnett, Brian R. (1999). Concise History of Mexico. Port Chester NY USA: Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 63–95. ISBN 9780521581202. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Jose Rogelio Alvarez, ed. "Inquisicion" (in Spanish). Enciclopedia de Mexico. VII (2000 ed.). Mexico City: Sabeca International Investment Corp.. ISBN 1-56409-034-5. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d} Kirkwood, Burton (2000). History of Mexico. Westport CT USA: Greenwood Publishing Group Inc. pp. 48–57. ISBN 9780313303517. 
4. ^ ^{a b c d} Benitez, Fernando (1984). Historia de la Ciudad de Mexico. Mexico City: SALVAT. ISBN 968-32-0202-0. 

External links

• Survey of Mexican Inquisition Documents
• List of conversos executed dead link