Evangelical Catholicism in Early Colonial Mexico: An Analysis of Bishop Juan de

Zumárraga's Doctrina Cristiana

William B. Jones

The Americas, Vol. 23, No. 4. (Apr., 1967), pp. 423-432.

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 EVANGELICAL CATHOLICISM I N EARLY COLONIAL

MEXICO: A N ANALYSIS O F BISHOP J U A N DE

ZUMARRAGA~SDOCTRINA CRZSTIANA

HORTLY after 1546 someone in Mexico was reading a book re-

S cently published at the instance of Bishop Juan de Zumirraga.'
The book was one of the first dozen published in the New World.
As he read he occasionally made annotations in the margin. At one
place he wrote: " Constantino." Further on he put: " Constantino es
este y no Zumirraga." At the end of the book he summed up his obser-
vations by writing: " Hasta aqui tom6 Su Sefioria de Constantino
doctor." '
The book in the hands of the anonymous reader was a religious
manual entitled Doctrina cristiana: mris cierta y verdadera para gente
sin erudicibn y letras. Since no author was listed on its title page, the
reader had begun it on the assumption that it had been written by Fray
Juan de Zumirraga, first bishop and archbishop of Mexico. The bishop's
name appeared at the bottom of the title page as having ordered its
impression. But the content of the book reminded the anonymous
reader of another volume printed in Seville which he had recently read,
the Suma de doctrina cristiana by Constantino Ponce de la Fuente. By
the time he finished the Docmina he knew that it was nothing more than
a condensation, and only slightly condensed at that, of the Sevillian book.
Whoever the reader in Mexico was, he must have kept his observa-
tions to himself, for the Doctrina continued to circulate freely even
when a decade later Constantino's recognized works were placed on the
1ndex.Tonstantino died in an inquisitorial jail, was posthumously de-
clared a Lutheran heretic, and his books condemned to be burned. The
book burning reached as far as Mexico City. One bookseller there
complied with the strictures against Constantino's works by using the
I surmise that he read the book before Zumirraga's death in 1548, because he refers
to the bishop in his marginal comments as " Su Seiioria," as if he were alive.
Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, Don Fray J mde Zuma'rraga: Primer Obispo y
Arzobrspo de Mkxico, eds. Rafael Aguayo Spencer and Antonio Castro Leal (Mexico,
1947), 11, 38.
Francisco Fernindez del Castillo averred (Libros y libreros en el siglo xvi [Mdxico,
19141, pp. 543-545) that the Mexican Inquisition condemned it on Nov. 3, 1559, and
removed it from circulation. Marcel Bataillon (" Brasme au Mexique," DewciPme con-
gr2s national des sciences historiques, Alger 14-16 Avril, I930 [Alger, 19321, pp. 3243)
points out that Fernindez del Castillo is in error. The book actually removed, and
then only for a brief time, was Zumirraga's Doctrina breve of 1544.
volume in his possession for cooking fueL4 O n the contrary, the Doc-
trina cristianu continued to circulate unhindered in Mexico. It was
generally recognized as Zumirraga's until the late nineteenth century.
Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta wrote his pioneering biography of Zumir-
raga in 1881 under the impression that it was the work of the b i ~ h o p . ~
It is said that the wheels of the gods grind slowly but that they grind
exceedingly fine. In the case of the anonymous reader mentioned earlier,
the wheels ground slowly until more than three centuries later his
annotated volume fell by chance into the hands of a certain Pbro. D.
Manuel SolC. In a magazine article (1887) SolC mentioned the marginal
observations in his book which attributed its contents to Constantino.
H e stated emphatically, however, that he did not give them credence.
H e could not believe that the good bishop would have plagiarized the
work of a Lutheran heretic. Sol6 referred to the unknown sixteenth-
century reader as a " maltvolo anotador."
Other scholars were not as hesitant as Sol6 in following up the mean-
ing of the clues which he had uncovered. Garcia Icazbalceta secured a
copy of Constantino's Suma and compared Zumirraga's Doctrina with
it. H e commented on his comparison as follows: " Resultado del cotejo
f u t convencerme de que el ' maltvolo ' anotador habia dicho la verdad.
. .
. . La Doctrina de 1546 . . no es mis, de principio a fin, que una
simple reimpresi6n de la Sunza de Doctrina Cristiana del Dr. Constantino
Ponce de la Fuente, sin otra diferencia que ligeras variantes y ciertos
cones hibilmente hechos para transformar en narraci6n seguida el
diilogo de la obra original.'' Since Garcia Icazbalceta's revelations, no
one has seriously doubted the provenance of the Doctrina of 1546.
It is a work of Constantino modified slightly by Bishop Zumirraga and
printed in Mexico to serve as a catechism for his charges.
The Doctrina itself is a two-part work. The first part consists of the
seventy-six folio section taken from Constantino's Suma. It is followed
by a twenty-four folio supplement, most of which is taken from two of
Erasmus' ~ o r k s .The
~ same anonymous reader who centuries before
Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y Espmia: Estudios sobre la historia espin'tual del siglo xvi,
tr. Antonio Alatorre (Mbxico, 1950), 11, 437-438.
Garcia Icazbalceta, op. cit., 11, 39.
lbid.
7 lbid.

For further information on the Erasmian portion of the Doctrina, see Bataillon,
" firasme au Mexique," loc. cit. It should be noted that Garcia Icazbalceta reports ( D o n
Fray Juan de Zuma'rraga, primer obispo y arzobispo de Me'xico: Estudio biogra'fico
[Mexico, 18811, pp. 265-2821 the existence of an edition of the Doctrim without
the twenty-four folio Erasmian supplement. Apparently the Constantinian portion of
had provided the clue which led to the eventual solution regarding the
true authorship of the first part of the book also provided the clue to
the correct identification of the author of the second part. H e wrote:
" Erasmo facit." Later investigators proved him right again.
The question today is not whether Zumhrraga used Constantino and
Erasmus but how his use of them is to be interpreted. A number of
scholars have devoted their attention to the Erasmian side of the ques-
tion. Literature on the subject, though not voluminous, is readily
available." But about Constantino little has been written, or what has
been written has been based on explanations of his life and work which
have been superseded by more recent studies.ll Thus, in addition to
the scarcity of treatments dealing with the relationship of Constantino
and ZumLrraga, the new state of historical knowledge regarding the
Sevillian theologian demands that the problem of his literary relationship
to the Mexican bishop be reconsidered.
A convenient starting point in discussing the problem is to ask why
ZumLrraga did not acknowledge Constantino as the true author of the
Doctrina. It was somewhat embarrassing, to say the least, to those who
had previously delineated and praised the bishop's theology to find out
later that the books containing that theology were not his own." The
least complimentary answer to the question is that Zumirraga wanted to
raise his own status as a theologian by palming off Constantino's book
as his own. Unflattering as it may be, the supposition is quite plausible
in the case of the Doctrina and must be examined fully.
Constantino's Suma, from which the Doctrina was taken, begins with
a dedication to the Archbishop of Seville and a sixteen-page introduc-
tion to the reader. Zumhrraga omitted the dedication. But he transferred

the Doctrina was printed first and a few copies were bound before ZumBrraga decided
to add the Erasmian supplement.
9 Garcia Icazbalceta, Zum'rraga (1917), 11, 43.

loA good list of the available titles can be found in Richard E. Greenleaf's book,
Zum'rraga and the Mexican Inquisition, 1536-1543 (Washington, 1961). See especially
the foomotes to Chapter I1 and the bibliography.
l l T h e main source for all information in this paper relating to Constantino is my
own "Constantino Ponce de la Fuente: The Problem of Protestant Influence in Six-
teenth-Century. Spain
.
" (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1964).
12 Even after his discovery that the first seventy-six folios of the Doctrim belonged
to Constantino rather than ZumBrraga, Garcia Icazbalceta tried to maintain Zumirragan
authorship for the remaining twenty-four folios of the book by stressing their similarity
to the Doctrina breve of 1544. (Garcia Icazbalceta, Zum'rraga [1917], 38ff.) Of
course, his argument fell with the discovery that the Doctrim breve itself had as its
principal sources Erasmus's Enchiridion and Paraclesis.
the introduction almost intact to the Mexican volume.13 The significance
of the action is that there it appeared to be Zumkraga's. Constantino
had written it in the first person singular. Once the bishop removed
Constantino's name from the title page and eliminated the dedication,
which contained Constantino's signature, the personal nature of the
introductory remarks to the reader could only be attributed to Zumir-
raga himself. His was the only name which appeared on the title page.
The innocent reader would naturally suppose that the personal pro-
nouns in the introduction referred to the bishop by whose order, as the
title page says, the book had been printed. One would have to hypothe-
cate a great deal of naivete to the bishop to suppose that he was unaware
of what he had done.
In spite of the possibility of this answer, it is not the main reason
for Zumirraga's having suppressed Constantino's name. It does not fit
in with what is known otherwise about Zumirraga's character. H e was
not a person concerned to promote his own reputation by any means at
hand. In addition, one must consider seriously the fact that he did not
claim to have written the book. The colophon reads: " E l qua1 fue
impress0 enla [sic] muy leal y gran ciudad de Mexico por mandado dl
reuerendissimo seiior d6 fray Juan qumarraga: primer obispo Mexico.''
The bishop may not have objected to the fact that many attributed the
book to him but he did not explicitly claim it as his. At the same time,
he could not disclaim it without being forced to reveal its true source.
This fact raises another interesting question. If he was not really claim-
ing the book for himself, why was he unwilling to reveal its true source?
A second answer as to why Zumirraga suppressed Constantino's
authorship of the book is that he did not want to put out a revised
edition under Constantino's name without the latter's permission. Un-
able to communicate with Constantino, he published the book anony-
mously rather than claim it for himself or publish as Constantino's an
edition of it which he had not seen. This answer suggests that the
omission of Constantino's name was an act of honesty rather than of
duplicity. Zumirraga did not equate it with plagiarism. The modern-
day notion of plagiarism did not hold in the sixteenth century. The
use by one author of another's material without proper attribution was
1 % N o one has yet ascertained which of the first three editions of the Su7lza Zumirraga
used in preparing his Doctrina, that of 1543, 1544, or 1545. The time factor involved
would seem to favor either of the first two editions, but the 1545 edition used by me
(microfilm copy of the volume in the Royal Library of Brussels) is so similar t o
Zumirraga's volume, especially the introduction, which bibliographical information
reports as being shorter in the 1544 edition, that it cannot be completely ruled out
as the source.
common practice. ZumSrraga's act must be judged by the norms of the
sixteenth century rather than by the copyright laws of the twentieth.
Though this answer may be true, it does not have much force. It may
help to save the bishop's reputation but it does not explain why he
was moved to publish a revised editiofi in the first place. W h y did he
not order the book directly from Spain? It was very popular there
and sufficient quantities of it could have been secured. It went through
three Sevillian editions in as many years. Another alternative would
have been to reprint the book in Mexico as Constantino's without any
changes, as was done in Annverp a few years later (c. 1550). Since
Zumirraga did not change it sigdcantly in his own edition, one won-
ders why he changed it at all. Certainly he did not edit out objection-
able theological ideas. There is not an omission in the book which is
significant enough to warrant the supposition that it was omitted solely
because it was theologically obnoxious to Zumirraga. Neither is the
Mexican edition much shorter than the original. In fact, one chapter
is even a sentence longer.14 Zumkraga made no additions of his own
regarding anything other than form and style. The entire extent of his
changes was to suppress Constantino's name, to omit the dedication and
table of chapter headings, and to change the dialogue style of the book
to continuous narrative. H e also added the Indians to Constantino's
list of intended readers. Except for these changes, Zumhrraga's edition
is the same as the original. One can read paragraph after paragraph
without encountering any difference other than in minor details.
The most likely reason for Zumirraga's suppression of Constantino's
name, while still printing his book almost intact, was to allay any
possible suspicion as to its theological content. The bishop knew that
he could not print Constantino and Erasmus in a Mexican edition under
their own names. Erasmus was already suspect in Spain. Constantino
was a member of the Erasmianizing portion of the Spanish clergy. His
book clearly revealed his debt to the Dutch scholar. Yet it was the
interpretation of basic Catholicism of Constantino and Erasmus which
Zumhrraga wanted for the members of his diocese. T o make it avail-
able, he printed it in an anonymous edition, the Doctrina of 1546.
This hypothesis is opposed to that advanced by Garcia Icazbalceta
at the end of the last century, when the true provenance of the Doctrina
first became known. H e suggested that Zumhrraga printed the book
innocently, not knowing that he was dealing with dangerous ideas and
authors. After all, Constantino's book had been approved by the In-
'4 1 calculate that the whole book is about ten per cent shorter than the Suma.
quisition in Spain.'"umSrraga, so the argument runs, printed it not
because it necessarily expressed a particular religious viewpoint which
he wanted to promulgate but simply because it appeared to be a good,
standard catechism and was available.
However sound this argument may seem, it is based on a questionable
assumption. It assumes that Zumirraga was unaware of the controversial
nature of the material which he included in the Doctrina. Such a premise
is untenable. Even if one could suppose that the ex-inquisitor was not
perspicacious enough to recognize the latent Erasmianism in Constan-
tino's Suma, he could not escape the fact that the twenty-four folio
supplement to the Doctrina was taken from Erasmus himself. ZumSr-
raga knew that the use of Erasmus was frowned upon by the Inquisition.
A full decade earlier the Colloquies had been forbidden in both Spanish
and Latin. Other works of the Dutch master soon joined it. Unless he
had felt some real sympathy for the religious ideas of Erasmus, he would
not have risked using him at all.
Juan de Zumkraga was an offshoot of that Christian humanism which
took firm root in Spain during the sojourn of Charles V there in the
1520's. H e was one of the Erasmianizing prelates whom Charles favored
during this period. Upon his appointment in 1527 as bishop of Mexico,
he tried to carry out in the New World the Christian humanist program
to which he had been converted in Spain. With Vasco de Quiroga and
other missionaries who shared his vision, he set up schools to minister
to the Indians and encouraged the establishment of model communities
of the utopian variety. H e was instrumental in introducing the first
printing press in the New World and in publishing a series of books
to provide appropriate reading and instructional material for his new
charges. H e also entered the lists actively against the civil authorities
whose conception of the proper way to run a model society was to
institute in Mexico the notions of hidalguia and privilege which existed
in Spain.
It has been argued that Zumirraga's role as Apostolic Inquisitor in
Mexico militates against the possibility of his having interpreted ortho-
doxy in a Christian humanist sense. Richard Greenleaf, in his book
Zumdrraga and the Mexican Inquisition, 1J36-lJ43, has made the
bishop's inquisitorial activities well known. Zumkraga sanctioned some
use of force in matters of religion. O n the other hand, Erasmus was
definitely opposed to its use. The bishop's willingness to use it would
thus make him non-Erasmian.
16 Garcia Icazbalceta, Zum'rraga (1947)' 11, 41. Constantino himself on at least one
occasion acted as a qualifier for the Inquisition.
 The answer to this argument is to be found in an understanding of
the type of Christian humanism which developed in middle sixteenth-
century Spain and in which Zumirraga participated. It was a Christian
humanism which was more respectful of traditional ecclesiastical prac-
tices than was that of Erasmus. In many circles it also adopted certain
Augustinian notions foreign to the master's thought.
Christian humanism in Spain was definitely Church oriented. Else-
where in Europe it generally tended to exist on the fringes of the
Church, though sometimes on very important fringes. Such was not the
case in Spain. Christian humanism there battled full force for its ideas
within the structure of the Church. It could claim many important
clerics as its adherents. Constantino was one of these. During the
1540's he was one of the most important religious authors in the coun-
t r y . ' W e travelled through Europe for three years as chaplain of Prince
Philip and Charles V ( 1548-155 1) . H e was elected magistral canon in
Seville by the unanimous action of the cathedral chapter. He, unlike
Erasmus from whom he took many of his ideas, spent his life directly
within the Church. H e preached regularly before its congregations and
performed other pastoral functions.
This life within the Church caused Constantino and others like him
to modify Christian humanism to the exigencies of day-to-day Church
life in a way which Erasmus would not have been able to understand.
Contrary to the master, they approved of a judicious use of the Inqui-
sition. Archbishop Manrique of Seville, during whose administration
Constantino was invited to Seville, was Inquisitor General. Archbishop
Carranza of Toledo, who accompanied Philip I1 to England for his
marriage to Queen Mary I, was known there as the " Black Friar " for
his unwonted zeal in the use of the Inquisition to restore the English
Church to papal obedience. Constantino in Germany counselled Juan
de Encinas to return to Spain, though he was aware of the fact that
Encinas was under indictment by the Inquisition there.
Zumirraga's activities as inquisitor cause no difficulty in understand-
ing him as a Christian humanist. They would disqualify him as one
who followed Erasmus a1 pie de la letra, but at this point his disqualifi-
cation would be in agreement with the path followed by most Spanish
Christian humanists.
Zumkraga as inquisitor prosecuted zealously but without undue
18 Six titles were published under Constantino's name in Seville from 1543 through
1548. They ran through twenty-two editions in Seville, Antwerp, kvora, and Lisbon
from 1543 to 1556.
severity. Some authorities have condemned his prosecution of Indians,
but even this can be interpreted as substantiating another side of his
Christian humanist conviction. He, like most Christian humanists, looked
on Indians as being responsible creatures, fully human, thus subject like
every Spaniard to the Inquisition. It is interesting to note that during
Zumkraga's administration Erasmianism was not prosecuted as a crime.
It is true that one person under investigation for heresy indicated that
some of the heretical propositions with which he was charged had
come from one of Erasmus's books, but his indictment was not for
Erasmianism.lT
If Christian humanism was more ecclesiastical in Spain than elsewhere,
it was in certain circles also more Augustinian. Here again Constantino
is representative. In his S u m he laid strong emphasis on a personal
sense of sin as the prerequisite for grace. H e stressed the absolute char-
acter of God's will and the consequent incapacity of man's will in the
work of salvation. H e gave great importance to the doctrine of pre-
destination as the theological basis for the unmerited character of grace.
H e emphasized the action of God through the written and preached
word in bringing about repentance and regeneration.'' In short, al-
though his theology was orthodox enough to win inquisitorial appro-
bation, it had a strong Augustinian flavor which ran against the current
of the developing Tridentine orthodoxy.
In recent years the term " Evangelical Catholicism " has been applied
to that modification of Christian humanism just described as being char-
acteristic of Constantino's thought. Evangelical Catholicism was akin
11 Greenleaf, op. cit., pp. 85-86. I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Greenleafs
conclusion that this trial perhaps ". . . proves that Zumirraga could not be considered
a follower of Erasmus!'
18 With regard to the written word, Zumirraga reproduced Constantino as follows:
" L o que yo hago es procurar de Ilevar bien leido el evangelio y la epistola de aquel dia:
y alin si ha110 algunos de mis compafieros o [sic] otros que me quieran oir, se lo leo
en un libro que tengo de 10s evangelios en romance, en que lo suelo leer a la gente de
casa la noche antes, o aquella misma maiiana." (k iiir, spelling and punctuation modern-
ized.) Zumirraga's counsel to his parishoners here on reading the Scriptures in Spanish
is a notable instance of his agreement with Erasmus, Juan de Valdks, Constantino, and
Bartolomt Carranza as over against the growing hostility of the Inquisition in Spain to
the reading of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue.
With regard to thc preached word, Zumirraga reproduced Constantino as follows:
" Si hay muchos sermones, procuro siempre oir a1 que con menos interts de su hacienda

y de su gloria y con menos respecto del van0 contentamiento del mundo predica la
palabra de Dios y que con mayor zelo y mlis sencilla pureza la trata. . . . En el fin
suplico a1 Sefior que asiente su palabra en mi corazon." (k iiiv-k ivr spelling and punctu-
ation modernized.) The Augustinian emphasis on the "word of God " was also stressed
by Constantino. It is quite significant that Zumlirraga maintains it here in spite of the
importance which the Lutherans attached to it.
to but not equivalent to the Christian humanism out of which it arose.
It was more oriented toward Augustinian theology, more ecclesiastical,
and more concerned to propagate its views among the common people
than was Christian humanism.'' Constantino Ponce de la Fuente was
an Evangelical Catholic, in my opinion.
Zumhrraga's use of Constantino suggests that he sympathized strongly
with the latter's views. H e purposely set out to reproduce them in his
Doctrim. H e knew that they sounded Erasmian, and where not Eras-
mian, Augustinian, which was not currently in favor because of the
Protestant emphasis on certain Augustinian motifs. Because of this
fact, he surmised that they might encounter opposition. Therefore, he
modified Constantino's Suvm so that it would not be attributable to the
Sevillian theologian. H e then published it under his authority but with-
out putting his name as author. When looked at from this point of view,
Zumirraga's failure to attribute the book to Constantino loses its force
as an act of deception because of the daring required to publish the
book at all.
Constantino was later charged with Lutheranism. H e was almost
certainly innocent of the charge. But the general hysteria in Spain
toward the end of the lSSO's, generated by the discovery of several small
Protestant or quasi-Protestant groups in Valladolid and Seville, pro-
vided an atmosphere in which his Evangelical Catholic views were
equated with Lutheranism. H e had earlier suscitated the enmity of the
Archbishop of Seville, Fernando de ValdCs y Ilano, who was also In-
quisitor General, by winning an election (1556) as magistral canon in
the Archbishop's own cathedral against the latter's candidate. Con-
stantino died in jail before his trial was concluded. H e was burned in
effigy and posthumously condemned as a Lutheran (1560).
Luis de Granada, later Superior of the Dominican Order in Portugal,
was also forced to defend himself before the Inquisition during the
perilous period of Constantino's imprisonment and death. His case is
especially instructive for comparative purposes with that of ZumSrraga.
He, like ZumSrraga, plagiarized Constantino liberally in one of his
Portuguese writings in 1559, the year Constantino was jailed.'O He, like
ZumSrraga, failed to acknowledge his debt to Constantino. And his
book, like that of Zumkraga's, was not recognized for its plagiarism
'9For a more detailed discussion of Evangelical Catholicism, see Eva Maria Jung,
" On the Nature of Evangelism in Sixteenth Century Italy," Journal of the History of
Ideas, XIV (1953), 511-527.
Twenty-six of the sixty-two chapters in Luis de Granada's Compendia y explica-
cidn de la doctrina cristinna contain passages taken almost verbatim from the Suma.
until modern times. Ironically, his book was translated back into Spanish
in 1580. Thus, Constantino's Sunza, banned by the Inquisition in 1560,
lived on in Portugal, Spain, and Mexico in the versions of Juan de
Zumhrraga and Luis de Granada, bishop of Mexico and provincial of
the Dominican Order in Portugal respectively.
Nevertheless, ZumLraga's orthodoxy is not a matter which can be
settled by either blaming or absolving him for his use of Constantino.
So eminent a Catholic scholar as Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo says
that the Sunza ". . . contains very few propositions of Lutheran flavor,
and these very hidden. . . ." H e adds the tribute that "it is the best
written of the Castilian Catechisms. . . . " " Everything in the S u m is
Catholic. Nothing in it is uniquely Lutheran, though some of its ideas
can be found in Luther.
The nature of orthodoxy itself was under scrutiny in early and middle
sixteenth-century Spain.22 Zumhrraga participated in the great debate
by publishing in Mexico as catechisms for his constituents the theological
works of those authors with whom he most agreed, Erasmus and Con-
stantino. The final theological position of the Church was settled by
the Council of Trent. In comparing the contents of Zumtirraga's Chris-
tian humanist-Evangelical Catholic Doctrina of 1546 with later Triden-
tine orthodoxy, one can say that it did not run contrary to but certainly
emphasized different points from Tridentine formulations.
What the bishop would have done with his Doctrina had he lived
long enough to learn that the principal author from whom he took it
had been proclaimed a heretic is, of course, not known. But if he had
followed the course of action taken by Luis de Granada, who did live
long enough to be faced with the same problem, he would have simply
remained silent and hoped that no one would discover Constantino's role
in his book. And if he had done so, he could have rested secure. Because
though someone did discover the relationship, he did not reveal it-until
three hundred years later, that is.
WILLIAM B. JONES
Southwestern University,
Georgetown, Texas

2 1 Marcelino Menkndez y Pelayo, Historia de 10s heterodoxos espnfioles, edici6n diri-

gida y ordenada por Fklix F. Corso (Buenos Aires, 1945), 111, 62.
*ZAlberto M u i a Carreiio remarks ("The Books of Fray Juan de Zurndrraga," T h e
Americas, V [19491, 311-330): " I t was only many years after the death of Zumirraga
that the limits between orthodoxy and heterodoxy in these matters were authoritatively
defined by the Council of Trent."