Nahua Intellectuals, Franciscan Scholars, and the Devotio Moderna in Colonial Mexico

Abstract

In 1570, the Franciscan friar Jerónimo de Mendieta bestowed a rare gift on Juan de Ovando, then president of the Council of Indies. Mendieta placed in Ovando's hands a small manuscript volume in superb Gothic script with illuminated initials and color illustrations, one of several important manuscripts he had brought to Spain for various prominent recipients. Were it not for its contents, one could have thought it a meticulous version of a breviary or a book of hours, but its contents were unprecedented. This tome contained a scholarly Nahuatl translation of the most popular devotional work in Western Europe in the previous century. It was Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ, which caught Iberian Christians under its spell between the 1460s and the early sixteenth century by means of multiple Latin editions and translations into Portuguese, Catalan, and Spanish, including a version in aljamiado (Spanish in Arabic characters). Indeed, a decisive turning point in the Iberian reception of this work had taken place three decades earlier, through the 1536 publication of Juan de Ávila's influential Spanish-language adaptation.

Connected global intellectual history and the decolonisation of the curriculum

“…While Franciscans had been involved in destroying Amerindian culture, they were also engaged in its documentation and preservation. Franciscans established an Amerindian school in Tlatelolco in 1536, and such institutions provided some sanctuary for indigenous intellectuals (see McDonough, 2014; Tavárez, 2013). Here Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590) worked with indigenous scribes and artists to produce the monumental twelve volume codex, La Historia Universal de las cosas de Nueva España ( The Universal History of the Things of New Spain ), or Florentine Codex.…”

OLD WORDS AND THE NEW WORLD: LIBERAL EDUCATION AND THE FRANCISCANS IN NEW SPAIN, 1536–1601The Whitfield Prize Winner

“…This classic of the devotio moderna was often associated with Erasmus's Enchiridion militis Christiani (1501), but spared its infamy. 57 Under this Erasmian regime, the students' progress in grammar and rhetoric impressed their teachers and confounded detractors. 58 In October 1584, for instance, Alonso Ponce (fl.…”

“Big-Old Long Lips, Big-Old Jar Nose”: Ancient Mesoamerican Monsters and Clowns and the Transformation of Christianity in Early Colonial Mexico

“…One subcategory of this corpus, however, remains under-studied: the diverse spectrum of writing of a religious nature, which includes Indigenous-language doctrinas (catechisms), sermonarios (collections of sermons), and literature of a devotional nature. Despite important contributions (Alcántara-Rojas 2005, 2013; Burkhart 1989, 1996, 2020; Christensen 2013, 2016; Tavárez 2011, 2013), the study of colonial Nahua “Christianities” through the translation and analysis of Nahuatl religious texts is a field with many opportunities for new research. Texts of this class contain a wealth of cultural and linguistic data, as each of the studies referenced above attest.…”