The Spiritual Conquest of the New World

1
The Spiritual Conquest of the New World
2
Introduction The Spanish Reconquest and Militant
Christianity

• Roman and Visigothic Spain
• Moorish Invasion, 7 11 A.D.
• Santiago Campostelo
• Commencement of Reconquest
• To Granada, 1492

3
The Origins of Christianity in the New World

• Voyages of Christopher Columbus

Searching for Sea Route to the East (see maps
next slide) Struck the Americas Instead Set the
Stage for the Spanish Conquest
4
The Caribbean Sea, islands and adjoining
mainlands where Catholicism first arrived.
5

• Isabella the Catholic

6
Bulls of Pope Alexander VI, May, 1493

• The Papal donation
• to next page

7
La primera bula Inter coetera de Alejandro
VI(1) 3 de mayo de 1493   El documento cuya
traducción damos a continuación ha tenido un peso
notabilísimo en la historia de la presencia de
España en América. El mismo sirvió durante mucho
tiempo como base jurídica del dominio español
sobre las tierras descubiertas por Cristóbal
Colón en 1492 e impropiamente llamadas "las
Indias". El Sumo Pontífice, después de alabar el
celo apostólico de los reyes Fernando de Aragón e
Isabel de Castilla, su deseo de extender la fe
católica, deseo que había quedado patente con la
entonces reciente recuperación del reino de
Granada de manos de los árabes, reconoce
finalmente el papel fundamental que les ha cabido
en la empresa colombina atendiendo pues a todos
estos antecedentes y haciendo uso de la "plenitud
de la autoridad apostólica" resuelve donar y
conceder las tierras recientemente descubiertas y
las que en el futuro se descubrieran a los reyes
Isabel y Fernando y a sus legítimos sucesores en
las coronas de Castilla y Aragón, imponiéndoles
al mismo tiempo la obligación de evangelizar a
los pobladores de dichas tierras. Mucho se ha
discutido sobre el fundamento jurídico en el que
se apoyó el papa Borja para hacer semejante
"donación", algunos autores quieren ver en este
documento un exponente preclaro del monismo
hierocrático, mientras que otros ven en él un
simple mandato misionero(2). Lo que parece
incontrovertible es que los reyes españoles
solicitaron este documento a la Sede Apostólica
con la finalidad de resguardar a los territorios
recientemente descubiertos, de las posibles
pretensiones de otros príncipes cristianos(3).
8
Treaty of Tordesillas

• go to link

9
In the meantime, Spaniards and Indians.
Tainos Arawak
10
The Encomienda

• "The natives, finding themselves intolerably
  oppressed and overworked, with no chance of
  regaining their liberty, with sighs and tears
  longed for death. Many went into the woods and
  having killed their children, hanged themselves,
  saying it was far better to die than to live so
  miserably serving such ferocious tyrants and
  villainous thieves... finally, out of two million
  inhabitants, through suicides and other deaths
  occasioned by the excessive labour and cruelties
  imposed by the Spanish, there are not a hundred
  and fifty now to be found."
• Theodore De Bry included a graphic engraving with
  this text, illustrating the various methods of
  suicide, from hanging to clubbing children to
  death to self-mutilation. Such images, along with
  other evidence such as Las Casa's Brief Account
  of the Destruction of the Indies (1552)

11
Origins of the Black Legend
12
1511

• The Sermon of Father Antonio de Montesinos, OP

13
Montesinos in His Own Words

• SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT, 1511--"I am the voice of
  one crying in the wilderness...You are in mortal
  sin and live and die in it because of the cruelty
  and tyranny that you use against these innocent
  peoples. Tell me, by what right, with what
  justice do you hold these Indians in such cruel
  and horrible servitude? On what authority have
  you waged such detestable wars on these peoples,
  in their mild and peaceful lands, where you have
  consumed such infinitudes of them, wreaking upon
  them this death and unheard-of havoc?....And what
  care do you take that anyone catechize them, so
  that they may come to know their God and Creator,
  be baptized, hear Mass, observe Sundays and Holy
  Days? Are they not human beings? Have they no
  rational souls? Are you not obligated to love
  them as you love yourselves? Do you not
  understand this?...How is it that you sleep so
  soundly, so lethargically?"

14
The Epiphany of Bartolomé de las Casas

• Cuba, 1514
• Massacre at the River Caonao

15
Early Christianization of the Indies (Part 1)

• The regular orders Franciscans, Dominicans,
  Augustinians
• Secular clergy
• Christianization as the context for conquest and
  colonization, no matter how contrived and
  hypocritical in some instances.
• Syncretic forms of Christianity

16
Church of Santo Domingo, Cuzco, Peru

• SANTO DOMINGOCHURCH and CONVENT
• Due to the significant participation of the
  Dominicans in the conquest of Peru, the Spaniards
  couldn't have chosen a better place to build the
  church of the order than over the base of the
  most important monument of the Tawantinsuyo the
  Koricancha, which is the largest Indian temple to
  worship the Sun. According to the chronicles,
  it was one of the most magnificent constructions
  of the Incan Cusco. In the inner part, the
  precincts' walls, made of finely polished stone,
  were entirely covered with gold and silver
  sheets, idols and the representation of the sun.
  After receiving the old temple's plot during
  the lots distribution that took place in October
  1534, Juan Pizarro, brother of the conqueror,
  ceded it to the Dominican congregation. The first
  prior of the convent was Friar Juan de Olías, who
  occupied this cloister together with a group of
  Mexican missionaries. next page for image

17
(No Transcript)
18
Another Form of Syncretism, Mestizaje

• The Revelations exhibition includes paintings
  depicting the colonial caste system, which
  described the complex racial mixing of the people
  of Latin America. Above, De Mestizo y de India,
  Coyote or "A mestizo and an Indian woman
  produce a coyote" 1763, Mexico.

19
Christianity in Spanish Colonial America

• Real Patronato, or Royal Patronage
• Missionary orders vs. secular clergy
• Syncretism (already mentioned)
• All layers of culture and society imbued with
  Christianity
• Education
• Charity/Philanthropy (cont. with next slide)

20
Christianity in Spanish Colonial America, 2

• Hospitals
• Festivals
• Church leading financial institution
• Expansion of monastic life across urban Latin
  America
• Inquisition
• Control of wealth, haciendas, Jesuits, Paraguay,
  Mexico for example
• Beginnings of loss of prestige and power in
  eighteenth century

21
Christianity in Spanish Colonial America, 3

• Expulsion of the Jesuits, mid-eighteenth century
• Presence of missionaries as frontier institutions
  in North America, those lands that later passed
  to the United States.
• Frontier society and competition for Indian
  loyalties by Europeans, etc.
• To the Wars of Independence