The Index of Prohibited Books in Sixteenth Century Mexico: Theological Conservatism and Adaptive Responses to Censorship

Abstract

In this article the author discusses two principal themes: (1) the ways in which the Inquisition in Mexico exercised its power to censor books and to remove suspect or forbidden books from circulation; and (2) the ways in which this process was less effective and omnipotent than is generally assumed. The time frame for this article is mostly the sixteenth century with some consideration of the early seventeenth century.

KEYWORDS:

• Inquisition
• Index
• censorship
• Mexico

Acknowledgments

I thank many helpful suggestions, comments, and criticisms from the anonymous reviewers of this article which, hopefully, have made this a better article. Friends and colleagues have commented on various aspects of this work and I thank, in particular, Dave and Sasha Cook, Susan Deeds, Raphael Folsom, Pedro Guibovich, Mary Lindemann, Jim Muldoon, Bianca Premo, Cynthia Radding, Pedro Rueda Ramírez, Stuart Schwartz, Victor Uribe, Paul Vanderwood, Ken Ward as well as the long-suffering students of my seminars on the trans-Atlantic book trade who endured drafts and discussions of this material. Mark Stover has been a gracious and patient editor. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

Notes

1. Archivo General de Indias (AGI), México 212 n. 22.

2. López de Rebolledo's tenure spans several dozen volumes of material in the Inquisition archive of the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) in Mexico City. His blood purity statement (to prove he was not descended from Jews and which was required to obtain a post in the Inquisition) and his appointment to the post of deputy are found in AGN, Inq., vol. 65, exp. 9 and AGN, Inq., vol. 74, exp. 3.

3. Peter Gerhard, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain, rev. ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 360–67.

4. The term seems to have been coined by Julián Juderías in his Leyenda negra: Estudios acerca del concepto de España en el extranjero (Barcelona: Editorial Araluce, 1943). For a comprehensive overview of the origin and development of the Black Legend, see Ricardo García Cárcel, La leyenda negra: Historia y opinión (Madrid: Alianza, 1998).

5. Even a short listing would be extensive. The traditional Black Legend version of the Inquisition is expressed most eloquently by Henry Charles Lea in History of the Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols. (New York: MacMillan, 1906–07). Challenges to this version are numerous. For an extremely brief listing of introductory studies of the Inquisition, see Joaquín Pérez Villanueva, Bartolomé Escandell Bonet, et al., Historia de la Inquisición en España y América, 3 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos; Centro de Estudios Inquisitoriales, c. 1984–2000); Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Richard Greenleaf, The Mexican Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969); Solange Alberro, Inquisición y sociedad en México, 1571–1700 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988); Jaime Contreras, El santo oficio de la inquisición en Galicia, 1560–1700: Poder, sociedad y cultura (Madrid: Akal, 1982); Stephania Pastore, Il vangelo e la spada: L’inquisizione di Castiglia e i suoi critici (1460–1598) (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2003); Adriano Prosperi, L’Inquisizione romana: Letture e richerche (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2003).

6. See Martin Nesvig, Ideology and Inquisition: The World of the Censors in Early Mexico (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). This article is informed by that work and draws on its research, though I have tried to synthesize some of that discussion and place it in the context of a discussion about information and its uses. I have also discussed the trans-Atlantic book trade in the context of theories of heretical infection and censorship. See Martin Nesvig, “‘Heretical Plagues’ and Censorship Cordons: Colonial Mexico and the Trans-Atlantic Book Trade,” Church History 75 (2006).

7. AGN, Inq., vol. 84, exp. 31, f. 161: “las Epístolas y euangelios en Romançe y las oras en romançe las quemara en lugar secreto que nadie lo vea por el escándalo que se podría reçiuir de ver quemar libros de que por tan tiempo usa la yglesia.”

8. Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen, “Forty-Four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540–1700): Analysis of a Historical Data Bank,” trans. Anne Bonn, in The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe, eds. Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi in assoc. with Charles Amiel (De Kalb, Ill.: University of Northern Illinois Press, 1986). For a discussion of the relative incredulity about the existence of witches and the reluctance to execute them in Spain, see Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition, 1609–1614 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980).

9. There is a lot of debate about executions and the relative violence of the Spanish inquisitions, but the 2% rate was fairly constant in Spain and the Americas after the 1530s. For example, an internal 1630 memoria (report) drawn up by the Mexican Inquisition's archivist lists twenty-five executions for 1527–1630, but we also know that don Carlos de Texcoco had been executed on Zumárraga's orders in 1539, though he is not listed in the 1630 memoria: AGN, Inq., vol. 77, exp. 35. By 1630 the Mexican Inquisition had adjudicated 1,563 cases (see appendix 3 of Nesvig, Ideology and Inquisition), for an execution rate of 1.7%. It remains unclear exactly how many people were executed in person by the Mexican Inquisition, but all the available evidence suggests that between forty-four and forty-nine were executed. García-Molina (below) finds evidence for thirty-nine executions for the period 1571–1820, and the 1630 memoria includes four more for the period 1527–70, to which don Carlos de Texcoco can be added, for a total of forty-four. For figures on the 1659 auto-de-fe and for the total of executions, see Antonio García-Molina Riquelme, “El Auto de Fe de México de 1659: El saludador loco, López de Aponte,” Revista de la Inquisición 3 (1994), and the Relación del Auto General de la Fee (Mexico City: n.p., 1659). Seymour Liebman argues for 49 executions in “The Abecedario and a Check-List of Mexican Inquisition Documents at the Henry E. Huntington Library,” Hispanic American Historical Review 44 (1964). Contreras and Henningsen produced a now-famous discussion of the overall composition of the Spanish Inquisitions’ various trials and executions, concluding that just under 2% of the convicted were executed, which is the same as for Mexico. See their essay “Forty-Four Thousand Cases.”

10. AGN, Inq., vol. 85, exp. 14.

11. See Francisco Peña, comment. 1, 2a pars, in Nicolau Eimeric, Directorium Inquisitorum (Venice: apud Marcum Antonium Zalterium, 1595): “pertinax is dicitur, qui persistit in errorem, quem sub reatu culpae deserere tenetur, cum nec is solum dicatur pertinax, qui falsam asserit.”

12. Diego de Simancas, De catholicis institutionibus Liber ad praecauendus, et extirpandas haereses admodum necessarius (Ferrara: Typis Bernardini Pomatelli, 1692 [1552]), tit. 38, nu. 10: “Multae autem sunt causae, propter quas libri haereticorum in ignem mittendi sunt … Deinde, semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum; at scripta per multa secula durant et posteros etiam inficere queunt. Denique voces haereticorum civitatem unam replere vix possunt; libri vero de Populo in Populum, de Regno in Regnum per facile transeunt.” Simancas stole the line from Horace, Epistulae, 1.18.71: “Semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum.”

13. See Pérez and Escandell, Historia de la Inquisición en España y América.

14. For a good overview, see Greenleaf, Mexican Inquisition.

15. Pérez and Escandell, Historia de la Inquisición.

16. See José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, El arzobispo Carranza y su tiempo, 2 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Guardarrama, 1968).

17. See J.M. de Bujanda, Index de 1559 in Index des livres interdits, 11 vols. (Sherbrooke, Quebec: Centre d’études de la Renaissance, Editions de l’Université de Sherbrooke; Geneva: Droz, 1984)

18. See discussions in Virgilio Pinto Crespo, Inquisición y control ideológico en la España del siglo XVI (Madrid: Taurus, 1983), passim.

19. For a brief listing of discussions of the Salamanca Dominicans, see Juan Belda Plans on the intellectual florescence of the “school of Salamanca” in La escuela de Salamanca y la renovación de la teología en el siglo XVI, 2 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2000); the discussion of the rivalry between the Jesuits and Dominicans and the disputes over free will in Vicente Beltrán de Heredia, Domingo Báñez y las controversias sobre la gracia: Textos y documentos (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto “Francisco Suárez”, 1968); and on the rivalry between Loyola and Cano in Terence O’Reilly, “Melchor Cano and the Spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola,” in Ignacio de Loyola y su tiempo, ed. Juan Plazaola (Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, 1992).

20. See Greenleaf, Mexican Inquisition.

21. See Francisco Fernández del Castillo, ed., Libros y libreros en el siglo XVI (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1914).

22. See Joaquín García Icazbalceta, “La destrucción de antigüedades,” in Obras, vol. 2 of 10 (Mexico: Imp. V. Agüeros, 1896) for discussion of Zumárraga's destruction of Nahua pictographs. For discussion of trials against don Carlos and other Mexica elites by the Franciscan-led Inquisition, see Patricia Lopes Don, Bonfires of Culture: Franciscans, Indigenous Leaders, and the Inquisition in Early Mexico, 1524-1540 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010). For the attack on Zumárraga's Doctrina, see Fernández del Castillo, Libros y libreros, 1–4.

23. The data is recorded in Martin Nesvig, “Pearls before Swine: Theory and Practice of Censorship in New Spain, 1527–1640” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2004), appendix 2. For Montúfar's political biography, see Magnus Lundberg, “Unity and Conflict: The Church Politics of Alonso de Montúfar, O.P., Archbishop of Mexico, 1554–1572” (Ph.D. diss., Lund University, 2004).

24. For an excellent intellectual and political biography of Mexico's first inquisitor general, see Stafford Poole, Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571–1591 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

25. The report is found in two places, though the original first two pages seem to have been lost. In 1914 Fernández del Castillo published a transcription of the document, an inventory, but with no explanatory discussion, introduction or correspondence, which suggests that the copy he was working with was not entirely complete either. See Fernández del Castillo, Libros y libreros, 473–95. The copy of the document which I have used is now located in AGN, Jesuitas, III–26, exp. 22. I have used Fernández del Castillo's data to supplement the current extant archival document, taking his copy on good faith, especially since it matched the portion of the document I have seen nearly word for word.

26. AGN, Inq., vol. 60, exp. 4, vol. 1486, exp. s/n, f. 52.

27. AGN, Jesuitas, III–26, exp. 22.

28. For discussions of the layout, construction, and scale of the monasteries, see Ryan Crewe, “Building a Visible Church: The Mexican Mission Enterprise in the Early Spanish Atlantic, 1521-1600” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2009); Jaime Lara, City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004); Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, trans. Leslie Byrd Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

29. AGN, Inq., vol. 88, exp. 1.

30. AGN, Inq., vol. 1A, exp. 41, vol. 43, exp. 4.

31. AGN, Inq., vol. 450, exp. s/n, fs. 575–76.

32. The premier inquisitional theorist of the day, Francisco Peña, member of the Roman Congregation of the Index and editor of the widely distributed inquisitional manual (of 1376) by Eimeric, Directorium Inquisitorum (see note 11 above), had written a discussion (c. 1577) of the need to review and potentially censor errant commentary on the canon law: “De expurgendis juris consultorum libris abolendisque falsis eorum dogmatibus. Facilis et breuis methodus,” Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Nunziature Diverse 264.

33. For biographical information on Wild, see Enciclopedia cattolica (Vatican City: Ente per l’Enciclopedia cattolica e per il Libro cattolico, c. 1950), 5: 1210; Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 4: 273–74; Anscar Zawart, The History of Franciscan Preaching and of Franciscan Preachers (1209–1927): A Bio-Bibliographical Study (New York: J.F. Wagner, 1929), 419–23.

34. Johann Ferus, Exegesis in Epistolam Beati Pauli ad Romanos (Paris: apud Gulielmum Desboys sub Sole Aureo, et Sebastianum Niuellium sub Ciconiis, via Iacobea, 1559).

35. See Carlos M.N. Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth Century Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

36. See discussions of the relative severity of the Roman Index in Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo: La censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti Della Scrittura (1471–1605) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997).

37. Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y España: Estudios sobre la historia espiritual del siglo XVI, trans. Antonio Alatorre (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1966), 524–40.

38. Collections of such documents are found in George Baudot and María Águeda Méndez, eds., Amores prohibidos: La palabra condenada en el México de los virreyes: antología de coplas y versos censurados por la Inquisición de México, prologue by Elías Trabulse (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1997) and María Águeda Méndez, Ricardo Camarena Castellanos, Fernando del Mar, and Ana María Morales, eds., Catálogo de textos marginados novohispanos. Inquisición: Siglo XVII. Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico: Archivo General de la Nación, 1997).

39. AGN, Inq., vol. 169, exp. 2.

40. AGN, Inq., vol. 471, exp. 36, f. 112.

41. Antonio Palau y Dulcet, Manual del librero hispano-americano: Bibliografía general española e hispano-americana desde la invención de la imprenta hasta nuestros tiempos con el valor comercial de los impresos descritos, 28 vols. (Barcelona: n.p., 1948–1977), 7: 30.

42. See Carlos Alberto González Sánchez, Los mundos del libro: Medios de difusión de la cultura occidental en las Indias de los siglos XVI y XVII (Seville: Diputación de Sevilla; Universidad de Sevilla, 1999); Pedro Rueda Ramírez, Negocio e intercambio cultural: El comercio de libros con América en la carrera de Indias (siglo XVII) (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla; Diputación de Sevilla; Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 2005).

43. For a discussion of the cramped quarters of these ships, see Pablo Pérez Mallaína, Hombres del océano: Vida cotidiana de los tripulantes de las flotas de Indias, siglo XVI (Seville: Sociedad Estatal para la Exposición Universal Sevilla 92; Diputación de Sevilla, 1992).

44. See González Sánchez, Los mundos del libro, 213–22.

45. AGN, Inq., vol. 43, exp. 12, vol. 172, exp. 3.

46. AGN, Inq., vol. 172, exp. 2.

47. See Rueda Ramírez, Negocio e intercambio cultural, passim and González Sánchez, Los mundos del libro, 213–56.

48. Rueda Ramírez, Negocio e intercambio cultural, passim.

49. AGN, Inq., vol. 172, exps. 12–15, vol. 173, exp. 1, exps. 3–7.

50. AGN, Inq., vol. 257, exp. 2.

51. Irving Leonard, Baroque Times in Old Mexico: Seventeenth-Century Persons, Places, and Practices (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), 1–20.

52. AGN, Inq., vol. 452, exp. 9, fs. 121–232.

53. AGN, Inq., vol. 276, exp. 13, vol. 291, exp. 6a. Irving Leonard, in Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1949), chronicles the way copies of Don Quijote made their way as far as the rural hinterlands of Peru before 1610. The first to show definitive proof that copies of the first edition of Don Quijote arrived in the Americas appears to be Francisco Rodríguez Marín, in El “Quijote” y don Quijote en América (Madrid: Librería Hernando, 1911).

54. González Sánchez, Los mundos del libro, 223–26.

55. AGN, Inq., vol. 470, 1a parte, exp. s/n, fs. 170–308.

56. Leonard, Books of the Brave.

57. AGN, Inq., vol. 78, exp. 20, f. 334.

58. AGN, Inq., vol. 141, exp. 88, vol. 142, exp. 7.

59. AGN, Inq., vol. 140, exp. 15.

60. AGN, Inq., vol. 142, exp. 27: “en algunas partes de ese obispado no se terna notiçia del cathálogo General y porque en algunas poblaçiones de españoles sería possible auer algunos libros prohibidos por él se le embía con ésta la memoria de los que verissímilmente puede auer.”

61. AGN, Inq., vol. 140, exp. 15.