{"id":1516,"date":"2018-11-03T09:40:21","date_gmt":"2018-11-03T09:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.uccronline.it\/eng\/?p=1516"},"modified":"2018-11-03T09:40:21","modified_gmt":"2018-11-03T09:40:21","slug":"the-forced-christianisation-of-the-americas-some-historical-clarifications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/eng\/2018\/11\/03\/the-forced-christianisation-of-the-americas-some-historical-clarifications\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cforced Christianisation\u201d of the Americas? Some historical clarifications."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Some talk about the forced evangelisation of the Americas. This was done yesterday by historian Edmondo Lupieri in his Identit\u00e0 e conquista<\/em>\u00a0(Feltrinelli 2005).\u00a0We read about \u201ccolonialism\u201d, \u201cChristian conquests\u201d, and \u201cimposition of Christianity\u201d. What is true about that?<\/p>\n

Things should be historically clarified, and we did so in our specific dossier<\/a><\/strong> dedicated to the topic: relating the Catholic religion to colonialism is a controversial operation. Beside the fact that many \u201cCatholic\u201d sovereigns \u2013 those of Spain, France, and Portugal \u2013 were such in quite nominal<\/strong> a way (whilst England, the Netherlands, and other countries had already adhered to the Reformation), the authorities of the Church were often elected and governed directly by the king and not by the Pontiffs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Popes, in any cases, already in 1435 (with the bull \u201cSicut\u00a0Dudum\u201d<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Eugene IV),\u00a0condemned the enslavement of indigenous people under threat of excommunication (here<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>the in-depth analysis) and, since 1537 with the bull\u00a0\u201cVeritas Ipsa\u201d<\/a><\/em>, wiped out the appetites for slavery over the populations of the New World by proclaiming that \u201cIndios veros homines esse\u201d<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em> A queen deemed historically a genuine Catholic was Isabella of Castile<\/strong>. Since 1493, some months after the discovery of America, Isabella asked Christopher Columbus that the Indios be treated \u201cin a lovely way\u201d (textual words present in the original document of 1501), by looking on them \u00abas the other inhabitants of our kingdom<\/em>\u00bb. She would herself send back to the Antilles as free men the slaves that Columbus \u2013 dismissed by her \u2013 had sento to Europe to be sold.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the \u201cimposition of Christianity<\/strong>\u201d and on \u201cforced conversions<\/strong>\u201d committed by colonisers towards the indigenous people, we perceive a sense of great injustice. What happened to the culture of the won? We get things into the right perspective when reading one of the main scholars of Aztec and Mayan civilisations<\/strong>, Australian historian and anthropologist Inga Vivienne Clendinnen<\/u>: <\/strong>the disappearance of the Aztec empire, she wrote, causes displeasure to her more or less like the defeat of the Nazis after World War II. Indeed, the Nazi extermination system was decisively softer than the innumerable weekly human sacrifices<\/strong> occurring in Tenochtitl\u00e1n, Aztec capital. (I.V. Clendinnen,\u00a0The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society: Essays on Mesoamerican Society and Culture<\/em>, Cambridge University Press 2010). Clendinnen is amongst the first scholars of the Aztec and Mayan world and, several years after, she also published a book dedicated to the Shoah (awarded by the New York Times<\/em> as the best book in 1999). It is therefore difficult to have a wider and more accurate perspective on this panorama.<\/p>\n

The Australian anthropologist thus explained the only animal that was slain and publicly sacrificed was the<\/strong> human being<\/strong>, with the active participation of all the social classes: every in Tenochtitlan<\/strong> was built so as to celebrate the killing of the human being. \u00abTo shed blood everyday on the steps of the enormous temples, there was this obsessive anxiety not to let the world end, an anxiety that culminated every fifty-two years, when the threat of catastrophes became more concrete and imminent<\/em>\u00bb (B. Diaz del Castillo,\u00a0La conquista del Messico<\/em>, Longanesi 1968). The film Apocalypto<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Mel Gibson was accurate in the description of the two-century-long Aztec world. \u00abPeople<\/em>\u00bb \u2013 wrote Clendinnen: \u00abwere involved in the care and preparation of the victims and of their bodies: the dismemberment, the distribution of head and limbs, the division of flesh, blood, and the flayed skin<\/em>\u00bb. The whole Aztec, Inca, and Mayan culture was built around mass human sacrifice<\/strong>. \u00abOn occasion of fertility rituals<\/em>\u00bb \u2013 added anthropologist George Clapp Vaillant: <\/strong>\u00abwomen and children were killed in order to ensure the growth of plants. Sporadically there were also cases of ceremonial cannibalism. To inflict oneself bloody wounds was another way of ensuring the divine favour. People did horrible penitences by mutilating themselves with blades or by piercing their tongue with thorny twines<\/em>\u00bb (G.C. Vaillanti,\u00a0La civilt\u00e0 Azteca<\/em>, Einaudi 1962, p. 184-188). Recent is the news<\/a><\/em> of the discovery of Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire: a huge cluster of skulls<\/strong> (among which many were women\u2019s and children\u2019s) offered to the Aztec god of the Sun, of war, and of human sacrifices, deposed inside a tower after the exposition to the public on a wooden structure.<\/p>\n

This is what the the conquistadores<\/em><\/strong> found in front of their eyes. They managed to defeat the Aztecs by finding a prompt alliance with the indigenous populations victim of the cruel Aztec dominion (prisoners of war were the first to be flayed alive and sacrified to capricious Aztec gods). The instauration of Christianity<\/strong> also served to endow these men \u2013 totally subject to the whims of their cruel deities \u2013 with a more humane moral, so as to distance them from religious violence. The Aztec people, as has been indeed demonstrated, ceased to perform mass killings and other violent autochthonous forms of cult exactly thanks to the Christian conversion of many of them (Koschorke,\u00a0A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America<\/em>\u00a02007, pp. 31\u201332; McManners,\u00a0Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity<\/em>\u00a01990, p. 318).<\/p>\n

Conquistador Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s <\/strong>was greedy for money and riches and was heinous when combating the indigenous warriors, but also disgusted by their mass sacrifices, so as to feel, for this reason, a real liberator. Often the fury of war came to prevail, but let us consider that there were also monks and priests (like Bartolom\u00e9 de Las Casas<\/strong>, protector of the Indios) opposing the non-rare violence of the same conquistadores. In Paraguay, the Jesuits loved and educated, the local populations and defeated the colonisers: the most classical examples is the famous Battle of<\/strong> Mboror\u00e8<\/strong>.\u00a0The Jesuit missions were heavenly oases compared the Aztec dominion and that of the \u201cwhite men\u201d.<\/p>\n

There is, however, no record of official requests of forced conversions. On the contrary, the first Council of America<\/strong>, the one of Lima in 1552, established: \u00abWe order that nobody baptise Indios<\/strong> beyond the age of 8, without verifying that he gets voluntarily baptised and out of love for what he asks for and receives, and that he understands the sacrament. Indian children below the age of reason or against the will of their parents or guardians shall not be baptised<\/em>\u00bb. It is also necessary to consider the statement<\/a><\/em> by French historian Jean Dumont<\/strong>, amidst the most eminent expert of Spanish history between the XVIth and XVIIth Century: \u00abThere is enough of it to say that the evangelisation of the Indios was<\/strong> not forced and not even superficial<\/strong>, as has been often written, unfortunately. Entire and very important Indian peoples immediately embraced the Christian faith automatically [\u2026]. In Peru, the Christianisation of the Indios would be so deep that the great rebellion against the colonial power, the one of Topac Amaru at the end of the XVIIIth Century, will be led in the name of Christianity, in a complete overturning of the Indios\u2019 religious references. In Mexico, from 1925 to 1930, it would be the Indios\u2019 Catholicism that would oppose, with heroic resistance, the attempt of violent dechristianisation by the godless Jacobins and Bolsheviks<\/em>\u00bb.<\/p>\n

Lights and shadows<\/strong>, as always. This is men\u2019s history. But reality is more complex, and, when someone becomes (rightly) indignant about Western people submitting primitive civilisations, they should also recognise how the Christian values civilised violent people, dominated by blood and murders. Even today Bishops keep fighting on the side of the Indios, thus paying the consequences thereof. This happened some years ago<\/a><\/em> to Brazilian Msgr.<\/strong> Pedro Casaldaliga,\u00a0<\/strong>menaced of death because of his forty-year commitment in defence of the rights of the Xavante tribe.<\/p>\n

The Editorial Staff<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some talk about the forced evangelisation of the Americas. \u00a0We read about \u201ccolonialism\u201d, \u201cChristian conquests\u201d, and \u201cimposition of Christianity\u201d. What is true about that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":84,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[844,1238,1243,1239,1245,1240,603,1246,1241,1244,1242],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-against-christianity","tag-americas","tag-aztec-people","tag-aztecs","tag-baptise-indios","tag-church-colonialism","tag-colonialism","tag-council-of-america","tag-forced-conversion","tag-indios","tag-instauration-of-christianity"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe \u201cforced Christianisation\u201d of the Americas? 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