Mexican Inquisition
The Mexican Inquisition was an extension of the Spanish Inquisition into New Spain. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was not only a political event for the Spanish, but a religious event as well. In the early 16th century, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the Inquisition were in full force in most of Europe. The Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon had just conquered the last Muslim stronghold in the Iberian Peninsula, the kingdom of Granada, giving them special status within the Catholic realm, including great liberties in the conversion of the native peoples of Mesoamerica. When the Inquisition was brought to the New World, it was employed for many of the same reasons and against the same social groups as suffered in Europe itself, minus the Indigenous to a large extent. Almost all of the events associated with the official establishment of the Palace of the Inquisition occurred in Mexico City, where the Holy Office had its own major building. The official period of the Inquisition lasted from 1571 to 1820, with an unknown number of individuals prosecuted.
Although records are incomplete, one historian estimates that about 50 people were executed by the Mexican Inquisition. Included in that total are 29 people executed as "Judaizers" between 1571 and 1700 for practicing Judaism.
Spanish Catholicism
The Mexican Inquisition was an extension of the events that were occurring in Spain and the rest of Europe for some time. Spanish Catholicism had been reformed under the reign of Isabella I of Castile, which reaffirmed medieval doctrines and tightened discipline and practice. She also introduced the Holy Office of the Inquisition in 1478 with the permission of Pope Sixtus IV, combining secular and religious authority. Much of the zeal to reaffirm traditional Catholic tenets came from the history of the Reconquista. Those who overthrew Muslim domination of the peninsula were very committed to the goal of making Catholicism completely dominant wherever they could. After the discovery and conquest of the New World, the effort to spread the faith included the belief that non-Christians would benefit from instruction in the "true faith."Introduction of Christianity to New Spain
The Spanish crown had total domination of political and religious matters in New Spain. Pope Alexander VI in 1493 and later Pope Julius II in 1508 gave the crown extensive authority over New Spain, with the goal of converting the Indigenous peoples to Catholicism. Spanish officials appointed religious authorities in Mexico and even had the authority to reject papal bulls there. The evangelization process and later Inquisition had political motivations. The objective of Christian conversion was to strengthen alternative sources of legitimacy to the traditional authority of the tlatoani, or chief of the basic political unit of the city-state.Franciscan friars began the work of evangelization in the mid-1520s and continued under the first Bishop of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumárraga in the 1530s. Many of the Franciscan evangelists learned the native languages and even recorded much of native culture, providing a great deal of our current knowledge of life in Mesoamerica. The Dominicans arrived in 1525. They were seen as both intellectuals and agents of the Inquisition, paralleling their role in Spain. These two orders, along with the Augustinians, provided most of the evangelization effort in Mexico. By 1560, the three orders had more than 800 clergy at work in New Spain. The Jesuits arrived in 1572. The number of Catholic clergy grew to 1,500 by 1580 and then to 3,000 by 1650. In the early years, the clergy's attention would be focused on the conversion of the Indigenous peoples. In the latter years, however, struggles between religious orders as well as segments of European society emerged and took precedence over conversion activities.
A series of three ecclesiastical councils met during the course of the 16th century to give shape to the newly established Church in New Spain. In 1565, the Second Mexican Ecclesiastical Council met to discuss how to implement the decisions of the Council of Trent. The Catholicism being imposed here was heavily influenced by the Counter-Reformation and required total assent from its believers. Its main thrust was not on individual belief or conscience but on collective observance of clerically ordained precepts and practices. This combination of authoritarianism and collectivism was extended to the Indies during the course of the 16th century.
This sense of collectivism allowed for a certain amount of laxity in the conversion of the Native American population as many outward practices were indeed similar to Catholic practices. Both systems intertwined religious and secular authority, practiced a type of baptism with subsequent renaming of the child and the practice of communion had parallels with eating replicas of Aztec divinities with blood. Franciscan and Dominican studies of Native American culture and language led to a certain amount of appreciation for it. It was definitely different from the Islam that the Reconquista had subdued, toward which so much Christian hatred was directed. Instead, the indigenous religion was branded as paganism, but was regarded as an authentic religious experience that had been corrupted by demonic influences. Much of appreciation of the indigenous religion was helped by the fact that many parallels could be drawn between the gods and the cults of the saints as well as the Virgin Mary. For this reason, evangelization did not result in a direct onslaught against indigenous beliefs. Rather the evangelizers attempted to shift existing belief into a Christian paradigm. While in theory Christianity was to have absolute supremacy in all things religious, in practice, the Church did not oppose any practices that did not directly conflict with doctrine.
The native population more easily adjusted to aspects of Catholicism that were similar to their previous beliefs, including the notion of the intertwining of religious and secular authority. Many European and indigenous practices continued side-by-side with indigenous beliefs. Indigenous practices were redesigned with Christian names and references. Pre-Hispanic beliefs and practices therefore survived in the new religion and colored the new religion's expression. The most famous example of this may be the emergence of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Franciscan Fray Bernardino de Sahagún suspected it was a post-Conquest adaptation of the Aztec cult of Tonatzin, a mother goddess. However, the archbishop of Mexico, Fray Alonso de Montúfar, who was a member of the Dominican Order, promoted the cult. There was even some speculation in the early colonial period that the Nahua god Quetzalcoatl was being refashioned as the Apostle Thomas.
However, not all native reactions were docile. There was strong resistance early on in Tlaxcala. The Oaxaca sierra violently resisted until the late 1550s. The Otomi and peoples in parts of Michoacán state as late as the 1580s also resisted.
Episcopal Inquisition
At the time of the discovery and conquest of the New World, Cardinal Adrian de Utrecht was the Inquisitor General of Spain. He appointed Pedro de Córdoba as Inquisitor for the West Indies in 1520. He also had inquisitorial powers in Mexico after the conquest, but did not have the official title. When Franciscan Juan de Zumárraga became the first Bishop of Mexico in 1535, he exercised inquisitorial powers as bishop.One of Bishop Zumárraga's first acts as episcopal inquisitor was the 1536 prosecution of a Nahua man, baptized Martín, with the indigenous name of Ocelotl. He was prosecuted as a nahualli, a priest with supernatural powers, as well as for heretical dogmatism and concubinage. The trial record of his case was published in 1912, This early case prosecuting a Nahua holy man attracted the attention of scholars.
Another of Bishop Zumárraga's inquisitorial prosecutions was that of Nahua lord of Texcoco, who took the name of Carlos upon baptism. He is known in the historical literature as Don Carlos Ometochtzin. The trial record was published in 1910. It is the main source for this high-profile case. Don Carlos was likely a nephew of Nezahualcoyotl. Zumárraga accused this lord of reverting to worship of the old gods. Following a trial with indigenous witnesses and Don Carlos's own testimony, the Texcocan lord was declared guilty. He was burned at the stake on 30 November 1539. However, the Spanish secular and religious authorities did not consider the prosecution of the case prudent. Zumárraga himself was reprimanded for it.
For a number of reasons persecution of the Indians for religious offenses was not actively pursued. First of all, since many native practices had parallels in Christianity, and since this "paganism" was neither the Judaic or Islamic faiths that Spanish Christians had fought so zealously against, ecclesiastical authorities opted instead to push native practices in Christian directions. Also, many of the friars sent to evangelize the native peoples became protectors of them from the extremely cruel treatment at the hands of secular authorities. The lighter treatment of indigenous peoples contrasted sharply with treatment of European heretics later in the colonial period. However, as a practical matter it was probably not prudent to pursue rigid enforcement of ecclesiastical rules in an environment where native peoples vastly outnumbered their European conquerors, who also needed to rule through indigenous intermediaries.
The above considerations help explain why the Inquisition was not formally established in New Spain until 1571. However, this is not to say that Inquisition-like tactics were never used after the execution of Nahua lord Don Carlos. Antagonism toward the Spanish led to the Maya resistance in the Yucatán in 1546–1547. The failure of this Maya movement prompted more aggressive evangelization, with the Franciscans finding out that despite their efforts many traditional beliefs and practices survived. Under the leadership of Fray Diego de Landa, the Franciscans decided to make an example of indigenous people they considered back-sliders without regard to proper legal formalities. Large numbers of these people were subjected to torture and as many of the Maya's sacred books as could be found were burned.