Content area
Friar Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía) (c. 1482-1565) had the devil on his mind when he arrived in New Spain in May of 1524. King and Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (1500-1558) had ordered the twelve Franciscan “apostles” to proclaim Christ and chase Satan from among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Reports of cannibalism had stoked evangelical zeal across Spain. Worst of all, Indigenous sacraments of maize and human blood seemed a gruesome pantomime of the sacred eucharist, wheat and wine, which constituted the body and blood of Christ. This work will examine Motolinía’s references to maize in his chronicle of Franciscan evangelization, A History of the Indians of New Spain. The history spans years 1524-1539 when the order held a royal mandate and broad authority to uproot Indigenous practices incompatible with a Christian utopia. Yet his pages reveal a surprising acceptance of the “pagan” grain. Motolinía’s approbation is especially intriguing given the early modern Catholic penchant for discovering the devil in others: Jews, Muslims, Protestants. Written by order of his superiors and submitted as a report to both the Emperor and the Pope, Motolinía’s chronicle witnesses the endurance of this quintessentially American staple, reflecting the resilience of its people and their culture. The predominance of maize as both staple and symbol among the Mesoamericans prompted Franciscans to accept it as godly food, despite its “unsavory” past. The hermeneutics of maize in Motolinía’s chronicle demonstrates the influence of the Native crop in preserving Mesoamerican identity and creating a distinctly colonial faith.