Comparing the New World and the Old: Fray Juan Bautista and the Languages of the Spanish Monarchy

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-258
Author(s):  
Daniel I. Wasserman-Soler
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Spain ◽  
New World ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Language Strategies

Abstract Born in New Spain, fray Juan Bautista Viseo (b. 1555) authored perhaps a dozen books in Nahuatl, Castilian, and Latin, making him one of the most prolific writers of the colonial period in Mexico. While many are lost, his available texts provide a valuable window into religious conversion efforts in the Spanish monarchy around 1600. This paper investigates his recommendations regarding how priests and members of religious orders ought to use indigenous languages. In the sixteenth-century Spanish territories, Church and Crown officials discussed language strategies on several fronts. This paper also compares Juan Bautista’s ideas about language use in Mexico to similar discussions elsewhere in the Spanish kingdoms. Existing scholarship has highlighted parallels in how the Spanish monarchy dealt with Native American and Islamic communities. However, an examination of Juan Bautista’s writing, together with that of contemporary churchmen, suggests fundamental differences in the ways that Spanish officials thought about and approached Amerindians and Moriscos.

Opposition to the Third Mexican Council

1968 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-149
Author(s):  
Stafford Poole
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
The Third ◽  
Civil Authority

The study of the opposition to the Third Mexican Council of 1585 provides a fascinating picture, not only of the determined efforts to undo the work of the most important ecclesiastical meeting of colonial New Spain but also of the various hostilities and animosities, intrigues and rivalries, that were at work in New Spain toward the end of the sixteenth century In the Third Council, the bickering of secular and religious priests, the opposition of bishops to the exorbitant privileges of the religious orders, the encroachments of the civil authority into the domain of the ecclesiastical, and the determination of clerics to defend their privileges and jurisdiction, all converged on the questions of (1) should the Council be permitted to publish its decrees and (2), once published, could they be put into execution?

scholarly journals Sixteenth-century Mexican Monasteries and Art. An Anthropological Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-124
Author(s):  
Monika Brenišínová
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Monastic Architecture ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of

Abstract This paper deals with sixteenth-century Mexican monastic architecture and art. Mexican monasteries were constructed all over the territory of New Spain (1635-1821) in relation to the need to evangelize the native American populations. The article discusses the place of this architecture and art in the historiography of the history of art taking into consideration the changes of paradigms and putting particular emphasis on anthropology and its approaches. In terms of method, it is interdisciplinary and combines synchronic and diachronic perspectives.

An Introduction to the Archaeology of Francophone Communities in the Americas

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Native American ◽  
New World ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Ancien Régime

This chapter provides a historical and geographical background and situates the volume’s contributions in the context of previous archaeological research into the French in the New World. The chapter discusses the ways in which French settlers made their presence felt on the landscape and on Native groups through a wide range of settlement types, economic and social networks, and successive generations of habitation. The chapter reviews both the well-studied French colonial period and the lesser known post-Conquest period, after the Treaty of Versailles and after the ancien régime fell, during which communities of Francophone peoples (ethnic French, Native American, and African) continued to live in the New World.

Weakening the sex

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-116
Author(s):  
Yarí Pérez Marín
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Female Body ◽  
New World ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Physiological Processes ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Medical Traditions ◽  
European Women ◽  
Medical Books

Chapter 3 addresses the link between colonial ideas on femininity and period understandings of gendered physiology. Similar to their European counterparts in that they deemed women to have a weaker constitution compared to men, medical authors in New Spain, however, began linking arguments on the female body to American environments specifically. Descriptions of physiological processes favoured stricter controls of women’s diets and behaviour under the guise of ensuring their good health. The rising numbers of European women in Mexico are reflected in the fact that the two locally printed medical books that went into second editions in the sixteenth century—Alonso López de Hinojosos’s Svmma (1578, 1592) and Agustín Farfán’s Tractado breve (1579, 1592)—both revised and abridged their first versions in order to make way for sections focused on the treatment of women and children. My analysis traces notions on gender, particularly in the case of ‘exceptional’ gestational processes resulting in 'manly women' and 'effeminate men', showing how authors in the New World brought together under a colonial prism older medical traditions that had taken divergent paths in Europe.

Tradiciones, paradigmas y escuelas

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 11-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ascensión Hernández Triviño
Keyword(s):  
Central Region ◽  
New Spain ◽  
New World ◽  
American Continent ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Mesoamerican Languages

Summary After “discovering” a New World at the end of the 15th century, missionaries soon began to produce grammars of the languages spoken there. It can be said that ‘missionary linguistics’ was born and thus the nature of the American languages was becoming known. In this paper the author proposes to analyse a corpus of fifty-six grammars from Mesoamerica, i.e., the central region of the American continent. In the analysis, the author distinguishes five schools according to the established religious orders in New Spain: Franciscan, Dominican, Jesuit, Augustinian, and the secular Church. Although the grammars written in these schools are almost exclusively based on the Latin tradition, many of them contain innovative descriptions of the specific structures found in these Mesoamerican languages.

The Native Encounter with Christianity: Franciscans and Nahuas in Sixteenth-Century Mexico

2008 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
OFM Morales Francisco
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Indigenous Population ◽  
Folk Art ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Native Population ◽  
Indelible Mark ◽  
Continuous Growth ◽  
Ecclesiastical Authority ◽  
The Many

Among the nations of the New World, Mexico is probably the country in which the Franciscans worked most intensively. Having been the first missionaries to arrive in Mexico, they covered most of its territory and worked with numerous native groups: Nahuas, Otomies, Mazahuas, Huastecas, Totonacas, Tarascans, Mayas. Their intense missionary activity is evident in the many indigenous languages the Franciscans learned, the grammars and vocabularies they wrote, the numerous Biblical texts they translated, and the catechisms they wrote with ideographical techniques quite alien to the European mind. This activity left an indelible mark in Mexico, a mark still alive in popular traditions, monumental constructions, popular devotions, and folk art. Without a doubt, in spite of the continuous growth of the Spanish and Mestizo populations during colonial times, the favorite concern of Franciscan pastoral activity was the indigenous population. Thus, Franciscan schools and colleges, hospitals, and publications were addressed to it. For their part, the native population showed the same preference for the Franciscans. To the eyes of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, Franciscans and natives appeared as an inseparable body, an association not always welcomed by the Spanish Crown. In fact, since the middle of the sixteenth century bishops and royal officials tried to separate them, assigning secular priests in the native towns and limiting the ecclesiastical authority of the friars.

Spanish Hidalgos and America: The Ovandos of Cáceres

1987 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ida Altman
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
New World ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Occupational Groups ◽  
Spanish Family

The image of the lone and footloose venturer, all but penniless, striking out for the Indies seeking immediate enrichment, has long since given way to a more balanced picture of the Spanish settlers of the New World in the sixteenth century. This revised picture suggests that the Spanish emigrants had their origins principally in a wide middle sector of social and occupational groups, ranging from hidalgos below the level of the high nobility, professionals and officials, to artisans and tradespeople of all sorts, farmers, and an impressive number of “servants.” One component of the earlier image of Spanish emigrants—the down-on-his lick hidalgo whose pride and sense of honor propelled him to the Indies in hope of improving his fortunes—survived the transition to the revised idea now accepted, his reputation somewhat rehabilitated but his presence undeniable. Stereotypes notwithstanding, the image of the cadet sons of hidalgo families and of relatively poor hidalgos going off to the Indies has considerable basis in fact; it is a reflection of the realities of Spanish family and social structure that sent the same type of individual into religious orders, universities, or the army. But while a basic truth gave rise to the longstanding cliche, we still know relatively little of what lies behind it—nor, for that matter, do we know very much about the hidalgos and provincial nobility of Spain, the sector (as opposed to the high titled nobility) that entered into the Indies venture in the sixteenth century in some numbers.

Sixteenth-Century Reading in the Indies

1957 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Torre Revello
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
American Continent ◽  
The People ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

Among the many books destined for children, the one preferred in America during the colonial period was the Fables attributed to the Phrygian slave, Aesop. Translated into Spanish, it was found in the hands of travelers and colonists throughout the Spanish empire. The simplicity of the tales and the morals which they point out made them the delight not only of children but also of adults, who explained the precepts with purposeful wit.Aesop was one of the authors most read in the New World, according to what we can deduce by consulting the numerous lists of books which were sent to various parts of the American continent. His fables were also circulated in Latin and Greek, surely for pedagogical purposes. In Spain there was no lack of poets who devoted part of their work to fables, such as the Archpriest of Hita with his Enxiemplos, up to the culmination in the eighteenth century with Félix María Samaniego and Tomás de Iriarte, whose works it is logical to suppose were brought to the New World with many others of various kinds. By that time the shores of America were being swept by other ideas, distinct from those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which brought unrest to the minds of the people, ideas foreign to the calm and well-being of the two previous centuries.

scholarly journals Lengua de los indios, lengua española:Religious Conversion and the Languages of New Spain, ca. 1520–1585

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (4) ◽  
pp. 690-723
Author(s):  
Daniel I. Wasserman-Soler
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Religious Landscape ◽  
Insight Into

This article examines the language policies of sixteenth-century Mexico, aiming more generally to illuminate efforts by Mexican bishops to foster conversions to Christianity. At various points throughout the colonial era, the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church propagated the use of Castilian among Amerindians; leaders of these institutions, however, also encouraged priests to study indigenous languages. That Spanish authorities appear to have never settled on a firm language policy has puzzled modern scholars, who have viewed the Crown and its churchmen as vacillating between “pro-indigenous” and “pro-Castilian” sentiments. This article suggests, however, that Mexico's bishops intentionally extended simultaneous support to both indigenous languages and Castilian. Church and Crown officials tended to avoid firm ideological commitments to one language; instead they made practical decisions, concluding that different contexts called for distinct languages. An examination of the decisions made by leading churchmen offers insight into how they helped to create a Spanish-American religious landscape in which both indigenous and Spanish elements co-existed.

The Ordenanza del Patronazgo in New Spain, 1574-1600

1986 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Frederick Schwaller
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
New Spain ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Secular Clergy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

The history of the Church in Mexico has seen an ongoing confrontation between the secular and the regular clergy. During various periods one or the other side would achieve ascendency, only to decline at a later date. The religious orders have chronicled the exploits of their brothers and friars, yet to this day the activities of the secular clergy have remained largely unknown. One critical period in the development and expansion of the secular clergy occurred between the promulgation of the Ordenanza del Patronazgo in 1574 and the end of the sixteenth century. In this quarter century many of the basic institutions of the diocesan establishment came into being, and in general the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy felt the changes. This essay specifically will focus on the implementation of the Ordenanza del Patronazgo and its effect on the secular clergy.

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