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Religious Discourse In Colonial Mexico: A Comparative Between the Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisition in Colonial Mexico

Allegheny College Department of History

By: Albrando Lorenzo Lucino Jr, BS, BA

During the process of researching the religious establishments in colonial New Spain and the other viceroyalties in the south, I came across the topic of the Inquisition in the New World as a tool to control the inhabitants of the Spanish dominions. From prior knowledge through my research in my original topic, I became rather interested in the religious discourse of Colonial New Spain and the reasons why the Spanish throne and the Catholic Church utilized the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. This in its own right led me to study the Spanish Inquisition itself in the Peninsula through primary as well as secondary sources and compare the institution of the Inquisition in Spain proper during the late 15th to 16th centuries to the Inquisition in Colonial New Spain, particularly present day Mexico during the 17th to 19th centuries.

The Inquisition in both Spain and Colonial Mexico, targeted those who were of different religious backgrounds, those who practiced customs deemed heretical by the Roman Catholic Ecclesiarchy through the blessings of Rome. The Inquisition also targeted not only non-Catholics, but those who were of a different ethnicity who challenged the authority of the ‘Catholic Spanish Kingdom’. In Spain, immediately after the Reconquista, it was the Moors as well as the Jews who were specifically targeted by the Holy Office of the Inquisition; and in New Spain respectively, non-catholic Indians, Mulattoes as well as Jews who fled Spain to the new world were targeted during the early 16th to the 17th centuries by the Episcopal Inquisition. From the 18th to the early 19th centuries, the Holy Office of the Inquisition targeted mostly Mestizoes, mulattoes and some Indians who continued to utilize idolatry as well as mystic and paganistic rituals aside from the Spanish-patronized Roman Catholicism. Indeed there was evidently religious discourse in New Spain, but to fully understand the religious discourse in Spain and New Spain, one has to define and understand the meaning of ‘Inquisition’, which in the Latin “Inquisitos” means to inquire and understand.

 The Inquisition was a Roman Catholic tribunal for discovery and punishment of heresy, which was marked by the severity of questioning and punishment and lack of rights afforded to the accused. Initially a tribunal would open at a location and an edict of grace would be published calling upon those who are conscious of heresy to confess; after a period of grace, the tribunal officers could make accusations. Those accused of heresy were sentenced at an auto-da-fe, Act of Faith. Clergyman would sit at the proceedings and would deliver the punishments. Punishments included confinement to dungeons, physical abuse and torture. Those who reconciled with the church were still punished and many had their property confiscated, as well as were banished from public life. Those who never confessed were burned at the stake without strangulation; those who did confess were strangled first. There is a historical reason for the inquisition in Europe, primarily due to the rampant heretical cults during the dark ages and the ever looming threat of Islam.

An example of this is when the Turks in 1480 attacked the south Italian city of Otranto. 12,000 people were killed, the rest made slaves. The Turks killed every cleric in the city and sawed the archbishop in two. So Queen Isabella sent a fleet to Italy. In September of 1480, when it was clear the Turks might do the same to any coastal city, King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella established the Inquisition. During this period, the West was in danger of following the fate of Constantinople and falling under the sword of Islam. It was under this threat that the Pope Sixtus IV authorized the Spanish Inquisition in 1478 if it should be needed. The kings of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand, instituted it two years later. The establishment of the Spanish Inquisition led to the forced conversion of Jews and Muslims to Christianity. These so called new converts or in Spanish, Conversos (Secret Jews) and New Christians were targeted because of their close relations to the Jewish community, many of whom were Jews in all but their name. It was the fear of Jewish influence that led Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to write a petition to the Pope asking permission to start an Inquisition in Spain. In 1483 Tomas de Torquemada became the inquisitor-general for most of Spain, he set tribunals in many cities. Also heading the Inquisition in Spain were two Dominican monks, Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin. It should also be noted that during the span of the Spanish inquisition, more than 13,000 Conversos were put on trial during the first 12 years of the Spanish Inquisition. Hoping to eliminate ties between the Jewish community and Conversos, the Jews of Spain were expelled in 1492, many fleeing to Eastern Europe, to Portugal and others fleeing to the New World. An estimated 31,912 heretics were burned at the stake, 17,659 were burned in effigy and 291,450 made reconciliations in the Spanish Inquisition. In Portugal, about 40,000 cases were tried, although only 1,800 were burned, the rest made penance.

The Inquisition in Colonial New Spain in a way is an extension of the Spanish Inquisition in that many of the targeted people by the Episcopal Inquisition were Jews or Conversos who were thought to have been secretly maintaining the Jewish lifestyle. Such a large wave of Conversos migrated to the new world that triggered the attention of the Holy Office; Due to the shortage of secular clergy in the New World, the pope issued the Bull Omnimoda in 1522, and granted special permission to the prelates of the monastic orders in the New World to perform, in the absence of bishops in the vicinity, all Episcopal functions except ordination. Torquemada's organizational and administrative abilities and his zeal for the preservation of the faith set the course of the Spanish Inquisition for the 341 years of its existence. As the activities of the Holy Office expanded, it became necessary to establish branches throughout Spain and the New World with the Suprema as the head office. The need of a tribunal of the Holy Office in Mexico was expressed as early as 1532. In fact, the first auto de fé in Mexico was held in October 1528, with Fray Vicente de Santa Maria presiding. Two Jews were burned at the stake, and two others were reconciled. On January 25, 1569, Philip II decreed the establishment of the first two formal Dominican tribunals in the New World, one for New Spain (Mexico) and one for Peru. They were known by the full title of "El Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición". Clearly it is evident that throughout the existence of El Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion, the 16th and 17th centuries focused primarily in the pin pointing of Jews who hid under the banner of Catholicism such as the Carvajal family. Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, known as "el Conquistador", governor of the New Kingdom of León in northern Mexico, was arrested at the behest of the Inquisition and by personal order of the viceroy of New Spain. Carvajal and his wife Guiomar were of partial New Christian descent. Personally, Carvajal was the devoutest of Catholics. Unknown to him, his wife was a secret Jewess; his sister Francisca and her husband, Francisco Rodríguez de Matos, both of whom he had brought to Mexico, were committed judaizers. Examples like these indicates the ‘completeness’ of the Inquisition in New Spain in weeding out not only Judaizers, but those who were related to Jews and or sympathized that faith.

Unlike the Spanish inquisition that took place in the peninsula, the Inquisition in Colonial Mexico had two phases that clearly defines the religious discourse in society. The first phase of the Colonial Inquisition revolved around the targeting of members of jewery, which subsided in extremity in the 18th century. The second phase of the Inquisition was on the contrary race-practice based in that the Inquisition targeted blacks, mulattoes as well as Indios for the most part during the late 18th to the early 19th centuries. In the racially mixed Mexican society of the first part of the 18th century Mulattoes and Blacks stood out as the object of most acts of repression on the part of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. For an idea of the attitudes generated by those in power towards Blacks and Mulattoes in Mexican colonial society, one has to take into account the interrelation of religion, politics, and the concept of social order in Mexican colonial society. Viceroy Marqués de Mancera requested the collaboration of the Inquisition in 1660 to suppress Black slave insurrectionary moves. Blacks and Mulattoes, both free and slave, were the object of Inquisitorial persecutions right after periods of anti-Conversos (i.e. anti-Portuguese) trials. In reference to the notice given to the Tribunal about the incident in 1665 of a group of Blacks who had toasted "a nuestra salud, y a que el año que viene, governemos este Reyno," a directive of Viceroy Mancera orders the officials of the Inquisition to use their powers of secrecy to preempt any attempt of rebellion.

Unfortunately for the indigenous natives of Colonial Mexico, they too were targeted by the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Colonial New Spain. The Holy Office of the Inquisition that had tried Indians focused primarily on grounds of recurrent idolatry, and religious syncretism. During the remainder of the colonial period and until 1818, the Holy Office continued to investigate Indian transgressions against orthodoxy and to provide the modern researcher with unique documentation for the study of mixture of religious beliefs. Though countless numbers of indios were tried and given punishment in accordance to religious orthodoxy; punishing those of chanting old pagan prayers for good agriculture, sodomy activity, sorcery as well as superstition. An example of this was in the 17th century when the Inquisition charged the daughter of an Indian Governor of Tlaltelolco, of sorcery and dispensing superstitious rites. Such examples of Indian and mestizo religious discourse permeated throughout the Colonial Mexico and exists to this day. To this day, the Catholic rituals are linked with clearly paganistic idolatry and superstitious beliefs upheld by the indios and Mestizoes; surviving the threat of the Inquisition through the centuries. The same can also be said about the Inquisition in Spain. Though the Inquisitorial staff in Spain targeted people active in the Jewish faith, and dispensed punishment against such, the faith remained strong on some people and resisted the actions of inquisition; many converting to Christianity but secretly practicing the faith.

It is evident that the Inquisition in Spain and in Colonial Mexico were utilized to strengthen the catholic identity of the kingdom as well as to strengthen the power of the state; the inquisition in a way proved as a political tool to silence those who would have subverted the power of the Spanish monarchy and correct those who would not convert to Catholicism. Both inquisitions targeted those who were considered subverters and led to the forced conversion of masses, both inquisitions targeted the threat of Judaism and as an effect to both inquisitions, religious discourse and religious resistance took effect and formed pockets of resistance to the ecclesiarchy (Converts who still practiced Judaism in Spain; Indians who practiced Catholicism yet maintained indigenous pagan idolatry, prayers and mysticism. The main difference that can be noted is that it was the Inquisition in New Spain that had multiple phases targeting Jews at first, then mulattoes, negroes as well as Indians and Mestizoes as society progressed whereas the Inquisition in Spain primarily targeted heretics who were practicing Muslims and Jews, which eventually died off in the 18th and 19th centuries when the Enlightenment took effect. The Inquisition in New Spain retained its importance as a matter of controlling the population, and became a political tool until independence. One can say that the dualist nature of Mexican Roman Catholicism within the Indian communities as well as most Mexicans is a product of the Inquisition’s effect in religious discourse.


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