Robert Forster (editor) - European and non-European societies, 1450-1800. Volume II

An Expanding World
Volume 27

European and Non-European Societies, 1450-1800

The European Impact on World History, 1450-1800

General Editor: A.J.R. Russell-Wood

EXPANSION, INTERACTION, ENCOUNTERS

TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE

TRADE AND COMMODITIES

EXPLOITATION

GOVERNMENT AND EMPIRE

SOCIETY AND CULTURE

THE WORLD AND EUROPE

Please note titles may change prior to publication

An Expanding World
The European Impact on World History 1450-1800

Volume 27

Volume II: Religion, Class Gender, Race

edited by
Robert Forster

First published 1997 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2019 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright Taylor & Francis 1997 and Introduction by Robert Forster. For Copyright of individual articles refer to the Acknowledgments

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number:

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-33571-4 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-429-44360-2 (ebk)

Nicholas Griffiths

The task of repressing native Andean religions in the viceroyalty of Peru during the colonial era was not undertaken by the traditional defender of orthodoxy, the Holy Office of the Inquisition, but rather by a separate organization, deriving from archiepiscopal authority, which has come to be known as the "Extirpation." Despite the separation of jurisdictions, both the intellectual bases and the procedure of the Extirpation derived greatly from the model of the Inquisition to such an extent that historian Pierre Duviols has called the Andean variant "the bastard child of the Inquisition" and a "true Inquisition of the Indians." In Peru, however, there is no evidence that Indians were ever tried by the Inquisition. Instead, the prohibition of 1571 was circumvented by the establishment of a parallel organization, which was truly quasi-inquisitorial in that it shared the goal of enforcing orthodoxy through institutionalized intimidation. Thus, if the jurisdiction of the Holy Office was not to be directly applied to the Indians, at least the inquisitorial model could be adapted to the Andean situation. It is hardly remarkable, of course, that the repression of native religion should take the Inquisition as its prototype. It is more significant to appreciate how the Extirpation diverged from its model as a result of the wholly different context within which this "bastard child" was forced to function. The most striking difference between the two organizations was that the Andean variant was never as effective in the task of imposing religious orthodoxy; indeed, the evidence of idolatry trials indicates its failure to suppress native religious deviance by means of retribution and repression. The paradox is that, despite imitating a highly effective example, the Extirpation remained a fundamentally flawed structure. Its flaws will be the subject of this paper.

Pierre Duviols, Cultura andina y represin: procesos y visitas de idolatras y hechiceras, Cajatambo, siglo XVII (Cuzco: Centro de estudios rurales andinos "Bartolom de las Casas," 1986), lxxiii; Duviols, La lutte contre les religions autochtones dans le Prou colonial: "l'extirpation de l'idoltrie" entre 1532 et 1660 (Lima: Institut franais d'tudes andines; Paris: Editions Ophrys, 1971), 221-24.

For the grounds for Indian exclusion from inquisitorial jurisdiction, see Duviols, La lutte, 217; Jos Toribio Medina, Historia del Tribunal de la Inquisicin de Lima: 1569-1820, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Santiago: Fondo histrico y bibliogrfico J.T. Medina, 1956), 1:27-28; Juan de Solrzano Pereira, Politica indiana, Biblioteca de autores espaoles, 5 vols. nos. 252-56 (Madrid: Compania Ibero-Americana de Publicaciones, 1972), 3:364.

The Franciscan friar inquisitors, Martn de Valencia and Friar Juan de Zumrraga, tried and executed Indian religious deviants in Central Mexico during the 1520s and 1530s. Although the death penalty for Indians was prohibited by royal decree in 1540, inquisitorial persecution of native delinquents continued under Francisco Tello de Sandoval, among the Mixtee Indians of Oaxaca in the 1540s, and reached a climax with the trials under the Franciscan Diego de Landa in Yucatn between 1559 and 1562. Even after the royal decree of 1571, the tribunal continued to act as a fact-finding agency in the uncovering of Indian transgressions. However, jurisdiction over prosecutions of Indians fell to the local provisors (vicars-general) of the dioceses and archdioceses. See Richard E. Greenleaf, "The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain: A Study in Jurisdictional Confusion," The Americas, 22 (1965):138-66; Greenleaf, "Historiography of the Mexican Inquisition: Evolution of Interpretations and Methodologies," in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, Mary E. Perry and Anne J. Cruz, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 260-62; J. Jorge Klor de Alva, "Colonizing Souls: The Failure of the Indian Inquisition and the Rise of Penitential Discipline," ibid., 3-22; Roberto Moreno de los Arcos, "New Spain's Inquisition for Indians from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century," ibid., 23-36.