Naming the Trinity: From Ideologies of Translation to Dialectics of Reception in Colonial Nahua Texts, 1547-1771

After more than 60 years of well-deserved prominence, Robert Ricard’s seductive characterization of Central Mexican evangelization projects as a “spiritual conquest” has gradually given way to a number of detailed ethnohistorical and linguistic studies in which the dialectical nature of evangelization attempts and the considerable variety of missionary results and native responses erode the certitude of such a triumphant metaphor (Aramoni 1992; Aguirre Beltrán 1963; Boone and Mignolo 1994; Burkhart 1989, 1992, 1996; Farriss 1984; Gruzinski 1988, 1993; Lockhart 1992). Instead of depicting colonial evangelization as a single event in which Christian meanings and behaviors were implanted on native populations, these studies present various facets of what may be seen as a social, ideological and linguistic experiment of colossal proportions. As both object and medium of evangelization campaigns, native languages played a leading role in this experiment. In fact, by opening the door to evangelization and litigation in indigenous languages in New Spain during the 1520s and 1530s, Spanish ecclesiastical and civil authorities set in motion an unmasterable series of translation projects whose dialectics, stakes and outcome may have become comprehensible to all parties involved only after several generations of indigenous converts took stock of these translations and incorporated them in their devotional practices. Throughout the sixteenth century, a handful of missionaries to New Spain faced a formidable task. Not only were they burdened with the indoctrination of millions of natives, but they faced a threefold challenge: breaking through multiple language barriers, understanding indigenous cultural categories, and producing viable descriptions of indigenous languages through the transcription and grammatical practices afforded them by the intellectual repertoire of early Renaissance Europe. This momentous collision between native cultural categories and early Renaissance intellectual culture was negotiated by the early missionaries through educational projects that required a degree of compromise and transformation from both instructors and pupils. Jacob of Tastera, a French missionary who in 1529 abandoned a coveted teaching position in Seville to participate in the evangelization of Mexico, characterized the hardships of this