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The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain: A Study in Jurisdictional Confusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Richard E. Greenleaf
Richard E. Greenleaf*
Affiliation:
University of the Americas, Mexico, D. F.
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Extract

The question of the jurisdiction of the Holy Office of the Inquisition over the native populations in New Spain and the rest of the empire has been one of controversy and confusion since the earliest days of the conquest. The perplexing problem of enforcing orthodoxy among the recently converted Indians was linked with the debate over whether or not the Indian was a rational human being who had the capacity to comprehend the Roman Catholic faith and enjoy the full sacramental system of the Church. As in the case of the rationality controversy, the position of the Indian vis-à-vis the Holy Office of the Inquisition was not resolved articulately, and after the first decades of the spiritual conquest the question took on added importance as the Mexican clergy discovered recurrent idolatry and religious syncretism among their flocks.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , October 1965 , pp. 138 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1965

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References

1 For a documented resumé of the antecedents of the Mexican Tribunal of the Holy Office and the evolution of the episcopal Inquisition in New Spain see Greenleaf, Richard E, Zumárraga and the Mexican Inquisition 1536–1543 (Washington, D. C., 1962), pp. 3–25.Google Scholar

2 See Icazbalceta, Joaquín García, Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVI (México, 1954), p. 452,Google Scholar and the more complete account of Gibson, Charles, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, 1952), pp. 34–37.Google Scholar Civil jurisdiction over idolatry and pagan practices of the early post-conquest era can be examined in Scholes, France V. and Adams, Eleanor B., Proceso contra Tzintzicha Tangaxoan el Caltzontzin formado por Nuño de Guzmán, año de 1530 (México, 1952).Google Scholar

3 For a full treatment of Zumárraga’s Indian Inquisition see Greenleaf, , Zumárraga, pp. 42–75.Google Scholar

4 For the reprimand see Icazbalceta, Joaquín García, Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga, primer obispo y arzobispo de México (4 vols.; México, 1947), 5, documents 18 and 19.Google Scholar

5 García, Genaro, El Clero en México durante la dominación española (México, 1907), pp. 40–44.Google Scholar

6 A whole series of Oaxaca Inquisition documents are found in AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 37, exps. 5–12. Expedientes 5–9 have been extracted for ethnological materials by Moreno, Wigberto Jiménez and Higuera, Salvador Mateos, Códice de Yanhuitlán (México, 1940), pp. 37–47,Google Scholar but much additional information remains to be studied in the documents.

7 It is obvious that for this era there is not a complete collection of Indian trials in the Mexican Inquisition archive. Those listed above can be located as follows: Proceso de la justicia eclesiástica contra Melchor, indio, vecino de la Ciudad de Santiago de Guatemala, por blasfemo, 1560, AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 16, exp. 11; Proceso del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición contra Tomás, indio natural de Tecoaloya y María india con quién se había casado antes de la conquista conforme a los ritos de su gentilidad, acusados de mancebía, 1547, AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 34, exp. 6; Información de la justicia eclesiástica contra don Pablo Tecatecle, indio del pueblo de Zumpango, por haber hecho “ciertos sacrificios y ceremonias según sus ritos antiguos,” 1547, AGN Inquisición, Tomo 40, exp. 9.; Proceso del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición contra Antón, sacristán, por haberse robado unos libros prohibidos, 1561, AGN, Inquisición Tomo 42, exp. 18. The 1560 Oaxaca trials are known to us through the chronicler Burgoa and Gay, José Antonio, Historia de Oaxaca (4 vols.; México, 1950), 629–634.Google Scholar

8 Most of these documents were discovered and published by Scholes, France V. and Adams, Eleanor B. in Don Diego de Quijada Alcalde Mayor de Yucatán (2 vols.; México, 1938).Google Scholar These two volumes have an illuminating introduction which should be studied along with the interpretative summary of the documents in Scholes, France V. and Roys, Ralph L., Fray Diego de Landa and the Problem of Idolatry in Yucatan (Washington, D.C., 1938).Google Scholar

9 Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias (Madrid, 1681), Ley 35, título I, libro VI. As the process of racial mixture continued in the late sixteenth century and the succeeding one, the question of what constituted an “Indian” was difficult to answer. The Holy Office, however, adopted a strict construction of the rules as can be seen from a letter of November, 1595, by Inquisitor Alonso de Peralta to the Consejo of the Suprema y General Inquisición in Madrid: “… que de los mulatos, negros y mestizos conoce el Santo Oficio, conforme a la instrucción que se dió cuando se fundó aquí, en que solamente se nos prohibe conocer de los Indios.” See Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid (AHN), Inquisición de Méjico, Legajo 1049, 58r.

10 AHN, Inquisición de Méjico, Legajos 1734, 1735. See Greenleaf, Richard E., “Mexican Inquisition Materials in Spanish Archives,” The Americas, 10 (April, 1964), 416–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 One example of materials of this nature is the correspondence with the Holy Office of the Alcalde Mayor of Chiapas, Juan de Mesa Altamirano in 1580. Mesa charged that, even though the natives of the Tzendal area were not instructed properly, the friars were hazing them in a manner similar to the Inquisition. Letters on Mesa’s conflict with the Dominicans yield considerable data on paganism in the area. AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 89, exps. 35 and 39.

12 These were collected, edited with commentaries and published by Francisco del Paso y Troncoso in 1892. The most recent edition of six of the treatises is Tratado de las Idolatrías, Supersticiones, Dioses, Ritos, Hechicerías y Otras Costumbres Gentílicas de las Razas Aborígenes de México (2 vols.; México, 1954), including the studies of Pedro de la Feria, Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar, Pedro Ponce, Jacinto de la Serna, Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, and Gonzalo Balzalobre.

13 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 467, ff. 436–442.

14 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 302, exp. 17B.

15 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 303, ff. 357–365.

16 See: Cartas de Juan Núñez Mendizabal, Comisario de Guadiana, avisando de los daños causados por los indios tepehuanes sublevados, 1617, AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 312, exp. 4; Descripción de los bailes de los indios guastecos, 1629, AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 303, ff. 255–256 bis; Carta de Fray Juan de la Anunciación sobre las costrumbres heréticas que tienen los indios de Pánuco, 1624, AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 303, exp. 38.

17 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 458, f. 68.

18 The treatise was reprinted in the late nineteenth century as: Balzalobre, Gonzalo, Relación auténtica de las idolatrías, supersticiones y vanas observancias de los indios del obispado de Oaxaca (México, 1892).Google Scholar The Balzalobre study, along with extensive documentary research in the Inquisition Archive of Mexico, has been extracted for ethnological data by Berlin, Heinrich, Las Antiguas Creencias en San Miguel Solá Oaxaca (Hamburg, 1957).Google Scholar Berlin integrates documents dealing with San Miguel de Solá and analogous materials from AGN, Inquisición, Tomos 431, 437, 438, 442, 445, 456, 457, 458, 571, 572, 573, 575, and 584. Only in the expedientes of 442, 445, and 458 listed above did the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition intervene in the San Miguel proceedings. The other materials are incomplete and are often bound in with unrelated matters. For a useful interpretive summary of the Berlin monograph and the Balzalobre study, see Carmichael, James H., “Balzalobre on Idolatry in Oaxaca,” Boletín de Estudios Oaxaqueños, 13 (1959), 1–13.Google Scholar

19 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 437, exp. 3, f. 97r.

20 For a certified text of the original cédula see AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1037, exp. 6, f. 293rv. The King takes note of the fact that, prior to the erection of the Tribunal of the Holy Office in Mexico in 1571, the ordinary jurisdiction did function in an inquisitorial capacity and use Inquisition titles and paraphernalia. He proceeds to indicate that the continuance of this practice after 1571 in the Bishopric of Oaxaca with the Bishop calling himself “Inquisidor Ordinario” had impeded the work of the Holy Office and confused the populace. To normalize the situation the King commanded that henceforth the Bishop should cease to use the title personally or in any edicts or decrees issued from his office. He was expressly forbidden to intervene in any affairs pertaining to the Holy Office, and told to dismiss any subordinate officials he had appointed as commissaries. Any incumbent prisoners were to be remanded, along with their procesos, to the Tribunal in Mexico City.

21 Father Mariano Cuevas, in his analysis of the initial exclusion of the Indian from inquisitorial jurisdiction, expounded the theory that the exclusion was temporary, and that logically the Holy Office would reassume power over the natives in time. To support his thesis Cuevas cited an undated document of the second half of the sixteenth century from AGI (Sevilla), 58–5–8 of Lic. Sancho Sánchez de Muñón: “… que por agora se suspendiese la Inquisición cuanto a los naturales, por ser tan nuevos en la fe, gente flaca y de poca sustancia.” Cuevas reasoned that this statement was made in the late 1560’s. Cuevas, Mariano, Historia de la Iglesia en México (5 vols.; México, 1947), 1, 430.Google Scholar

22 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 510, exp. 133. Other Indian trials carried on by the Holy Office or its commissaries are scattered throughout the Inquisition archive for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jurisdictional reasons for these trials are not defined clearly. It is assumed, however, that, in areas where there were no delegates of the Provisor, the Holy Office Commissaries carried on the work of extirpation of idolatry and paganism among the natives. This was certainly true in the seventeenth-century New Mexico colony where the Franciscan prelates acted as Holy Office Commissaries and tried cases among the Pueblo Indians. See the two volumes of Scholes, France V., Church and State in New Mexico 1610–1650 (Albuquerque, 1937)Google Scholar and Troublous Times in New Mexico 1659–1670 (Albuquerque, 1942). Both studies are based primarily on the papers of the AGN Inquisition archive.

Other sections of the Archivo General de la Nación as well as Mexican provincial archives yield Indian Inquisition cases carried on by the Holy Office and its commissaries. After 1571 a possible explanation for these apparent infringements on the jurisdiction of the Provisorato, and the failure to forward the procesos to the secretary of the Holy Office in Mexico City, may have been that the Inquisition personnel felt disposed to keep such matters confidential. The documents paleographed and copied by Julio de la Fuente in the Villa Alta archives of Oaxaca (see infra, n. 26) and procesos in AGN, Papeles de Bienes Nacionales, legs. 586, 596, and 663 for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seem to indicate that this was the case.

23 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 304, exp. 39.

24 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 303, ff. 78–80.

25 de Alarcón, Hernando Ruiz, Tratado de supersticiones y costumbres gentílicas que hoy viven entre los indios naturales de esta Nueva España (México, 1892).Google Scholar

26 See de la Fuente, Julio, “Documentos para la etnografía e historia zapoteca,” Andes del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 3 (1949), 175–197.Google Scholar These are extracts of eleven documents (1666-1736) concerning idolatry and other offenses. Eight are copied from the Villa Alta archives near Oaxaca. The originals are no longer extant.

27 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 734, ff. 418–440.

28 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 530, Exp. 13.

29 de Guijó, Gregorio M., Diario:1648–1664 (2 vols.; México, 1952)Google Scholar and de Robles, Antonio, Diario de Sucesos Notables (1665–1703) (3 vols.; México, 1946).Google Scholar Similar chronicles help document the Provisor’s activities in the eighteenth century and will be cited below.

30 Guijó, I, 45.

31 Robles, I, 78, 84, 137; II, 36, 93, 239.

32 Cuevas, , Historia de la Iglesia, 4, 271.Google Scholar Such claims are well exemplified in AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 48, exp. 1, Proceso contra Juan Bautista Becerra, labrador, y contra María, india, por blasfemo y amancebados, 1574.

33 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 287, exps. 7 and 8 give prime examples of this attitude: Proceso contra Francisco Hernández, mestizo, natural de Tecamachalco, por bígamo, se suspendió el proceso porque resultó indio, and Proceso contra Francisco Rojas, mestizo, pueblo de Xaltepec, natural de Guarangero que después pareció ser indio. Both cases are dated 1610. See also AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 372, exp. 14, for a 1631 case: Información contra Sebastián Fabián, indio, por idólatra y hechicero.

34 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 486 ff. 451–458, Proceso contra Juana Isabel, india o mestiza, hija del Gobernador de Tlaltelolco, por brujerías, 1621.

35 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 372, exp. 14, “… que traía un ídolo al cual adoraba y hablaba y lo dió al declarante, para lo mismo y con su ayuda alcanzar mujeres.”

36 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 684, exp. 11.

37 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 715, exps. 18 and 19.

38 AHN, Inquisición de Méjico, Leg. 1733, exp. 15.

39 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 552, exp. 2.

40 During 1721 the Holy Office investigated idolatry in Campeche and tried groups of Indians and mestizos who bore guilt by association with the ceremonies, AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 789, exp. 31. The Tribunal continued to amass data on paganism in Oaxaca as evidenced from a 1739 probe recounted in AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 876, exp. 41. Testimonies were gathered on superstitious practices in Zacatecas in 1745, and reported to the Inquisitors in AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1341, exp. 2.

41 A brief note on the Provisor’s auto of 1723 was made by the Tribunal of the Holy Office in AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 803, exp. 52. For the detailed data, see de Villaseñor, Joseph Antonio, Teatro Americano, Descripción General de los Reynos y Provincias de la Nueva España … año de 1748 (2 vols.; México, 1952), 2, 268–270.Google Scholar See also Cabo, Andrés, Los Tres Siglos de Méjico (Jalapa, 1870), p. 262.Google Scholar

42 Icazbalceta, García, Bibliografía Mexicana, pp. 461–462,Google Scholar gives data on fifteen autos de indios staged by the Provisorato and reported in the Gacetas and Diarios of the era 1731–1785. These notes were used by Medina, José Toribio, Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en México (México, 1954), pp. 297–302,Google Scholar without careful delineation of the Inquisition as opposed to the Ordinary functions.

43 See: Autos remitidos por el Provisor de los Indios de este arzobispado, por resultar en delitos de brujería contra distintas personas cuyo conocimiento—toca a este Santo Oficio, 1718, AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 776, exp. 25. For inventories of matters sent by the Tribunal of the Holy Office to the Provisor de Indios consult AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1349, exp. 8, “Estos son negocios del Santo Oficio, y de causas de fe contra indios que dependieron del provisorato de México, lo cual indica aquí en compendio Fray Antonio de la Rosa Figueroa, Notario Apostólico como notario del Santo Oficio, 1741.”

44 AGN, Cédulas Reales, Tomo 14, exp. 46, Para que los Tribunales del Santo Oficio de las Indias sin embargo de la cédula que se cita, conozcan privativamente del delito de Polygamia, y las Justicias Reales puedan hacer Sumarios, prender a los delincuentes, y remitir a uno, y otro de los mismos Tribunales, ó a sus Comisarios, en la forma que se expresa. In this order issued by Charles III on September 8, 1766, the history of deliberations for over a decade on the matter of jurisdiction in Indian bigamy cases is recounted.

45 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1037, exp. 6, Expediente formado con motivo de haber el Doctor Mariano Yturria Cura Vicario y Juez Eclesiástico de Tlalnepantla la Quahutenga, puéstose en una consulta que hizo a este Tribunal Revisor y Expurgador y Juez Comisario del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición ordinaria y de los indios y chinos de este Arzobispado, 1766.” This extremely important administrative document of the Mexican Holy Office’s activities gives a step-by-step case study of the procedures followed in discerning and solving problems of competence. Outside of several documents in AHN, Inquisición de Méjico, it is the only such procedural manuscript on basic operation.

46 The term “Chino” did not mean Chinese or the usual Novo-hispano designation of an offspring of a Morisco (Mulata mother and Spanish father) with a Spanish woman. In the Inquisition limpiezas it merely referred to the pure-blood inhabitants of the Philippines who had not suffered the process of Spanish mestizaje. See AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1037, exp. 6, f. 288.

47 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1037., exp. 6, f. 260v.

48 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1037, exp. 6, f. 288 (impreso).

49 The cédula of Charles III, Aranjuez, May 13, 1765, to which Barrientos alludes is found in AGN, Reales Cédulas, Tomo 86, exp. 140, ff. 298–307. In this royal decree Charles III reviews the several reports made to him by the Archbishop concerning idolatry in Yautepec. More than 160 Indians were involved. Some had been jailed but a majority had fled, with their idols, to caves in the Amecameca area, and farther up into the mountains near Popocatepetl. Officials of Chalco and Yautepec pursued them, along with the Inquisition Commissary, and many were arrested. The Provisor assumed control of the matter and staged an auto de fe. As there was evidence of great laxness in enforcing orthodoxy on the part of clergy and alcaldes alike, the Archbishop asked the King for special powers in this area. Charles III and the Council of the Indies granted the request and allowed circulars to be sent throughout the jurisdiction to regular and secular clergy giving the Provisorato the right to punish Indians “con el mayor rigor.”

The most accessible edition of the legal code to which Barrientos Lomelín referred is the revised edition of 1804 which superseded the earlier compilations. See Novíssima Recopilación de las Leyes de España en que se Reforma la Recopilación Publicada por el Señor Don Felipe II en el Año de 1567, Reimpresa Ultimamente en el de 1775: y se Incorporan las Pragmáticas, Cédulas, Decretos … No Recopilades y Expedidas hasta el de 1804. Mandada Formar por el Señor Don Carlos IV (Madrid, ed. 1804), Título VII. Laws IV and X of title VII of the Novissima Recopilación deal with Inquisition matters and stress the cooperation of the ordinary and Inquisition jurisdictions.

50 The correspondence series and other records in the Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid) do not treat with the Barrientos Lomelín controversy. The matter must have reached the ears of the Councilors of the Indies, however, because several decrees emanated from that body supporting the Holy Office’s position. See two cédulas of April 16 and 18, 1769, in AGN, Reales Cédulas, Tomo 94, exps. 78 and 84 for a reiteration of the privileges, prerogatives, and exclusive jurisdictions of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. There is scant evidence that the decrees were circulated widely in New Spain.

51 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1037, exp. 6, ff. 295–297.

52 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1168, exp. 16.

53 Gaceta de México, June 9, 1785. See Castro de Santa Ana as summarized by Icazbalceta, García, Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVI, 462.Google Scholar

54 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1256, exp. 1.

55 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1037, exp. 6, f. 299. See also the treatment of Medina, Inquisición en México, p. 302.

56 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1421, exp. 9.

57 Other provincial cases of Indian orthodoxy were carried on in the years 1817 and 1819 and can be studied in AGN, Papeles de Bienes Nacionales, Leg. 663, exps. 19 and 30.

58 AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 1421, exp. 30.

59 AGN, Obispos y Arzobispos, 18 tomos (1664–1819).