In 1511 Juan de Valdivia’s expedition from Panama to Santo Domingo was shipwrecked on the Yucatan peninsula. As many histories of the conquest of Mexico relate, the few men who escaped drowning reached shore only to be captured, enslaved, or sacrificed and eaten by the Maya inhabiting the land. Jerónimo de Aguilar, a Spaniard and ordained Franciscan priest, was one such survivor who was enslaved rather than killed or sacrificed. Living as a slave for eight years, he eventually became almost indistinguishable from his captors, wearing not much more than a threadbare loincloth and cloak, his hair grown long and matted. The only characteristics that set him apart from the Maya were his full beard and – depending on which history one reads – a tattered book of hours he carried in a sack slung over his shoulder. Indeed, in 1519 when Aguilar was rescued by Cortés, who was looking for a translator to facilitate his expedition, the Spanish troops only recognized him after he uttered several words in Castilian and brandished his book of hours like a talisman proving his Christianity (Gómara 1932, 117–18; Díaz del Castillo 1960, 102–3). Yet in histories where the book of hours is absent, performative acts usually replace the devotional text, chosen to emphasize equally well Aguilar’s cultural difference from the Amerindians, and his firm Christian faith in spite of the bodily and spiritual temptations he faced as a captive among infidels.
Whether featured prominently or mentioned briefly, Jerónimo de Aguilar appears in numerous histories of the conquest of Mexico. Colonial-era historiographers wrote and rewrote his narrative, minimizing or emphasizing the role of the book of hours in his rescue according to what best supported their own agendas.1 Through a close analysis of the intertextual relationships between several versions of this episode, I argue that this text becomes an ambivalent signifier, paradoxically marking both Aguilar’s religious and literate superiority over the Amerindians, and his liminality to both Spanish and Mayan societies after eight years of captivity. To this end, I discuss how the authors deploy (or decline to deploy) the book of hours within their histories, and the slippage that occurs in such employment. The result of this slippage may come to embody the displacement and distortion of the book’s meaning caused by the colonial encounter (Bhabha 1994, 105),2 and thus take on meanings that undermine the authors’ ideological frameworks.
I will begin my investigation by considering two Spanish historians who note the presence of the book of hours among Aguilar’s belongings: Francisco López de Gómara, a historian and priest who never travelled to the New World and yet was able to write his history based on what he learned as Cortés’s chaplain (Jiménez 2001, 15); and Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a conquistador who participated in three expeditions to New Spain, including that of Hernán Cortés (Díaz del Castillo 1960, 39–80). It is neither surprising nor unusual that both of these authors include a book of hours in their histories, since this small, illustrated, yet relatively inexpensive religious text was a medieval and early modern best-seller (Reinburg 1993, 20). In placing it on Aguilar’s person, they describe a common, almost quotidian sight in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that would have been quite familiar to their readers. Books of hours first appeared in the late thirteenth century as an adaptation of the psalter portion of the breviary (Calkins 1983, 243), and were meant to provide the laity with a text they could use to follow along with Mass or read at home as part of a daily religious practice. By the late fifteenth century, cheaply printed editions became widely available and formed part of the Catholic Church’s attempt to develop and improve lay catechization and even clerical education (Nalle 1999, 133–5).
Like the breviary, the book of hours was divided into eight canonical hours, but was usually organized thematically rather than temporally. However, while individual books of hours tended to have similar components, their exact contents differed according to each book owner and the religious preferences popular within a given geographical region (Calkins 1983, 243). Common elements present in most editions included psalms; the Offices of the Virgin, the Passion, the Trinity and the Dead; the Hours of the Cross and Holy Spirit; a calendar marking saints’ feast days; and a rubric. The calendar – the section which Aguilar uses, as I discuss later, to help him keep track of time during his captivity – showed the reader which day to recite the corresponding Offices, while the rubric included instructions on how to correctly use the text (Calkins 1983, 245; Saenger 1989, 147–8). Books of hours were available both in Latin and the vernacular; however, the rubric, calendar, and liturgical responses were usually in the vernacular3 so that the reader could understand them completely and thus use the text correctly (Saenger 1989, 147–8). Laity and clergy with little education tended to own vernacular editions, while educated laity and clergy tended to own Latin editions (Reinburg 1988, 40); yet even illiterate owners were able to grasp much of the content based on the illustrations contained within, which visually hinted at the meaning of the printed words (Boureau 1989, 16). In addition to the sections found in most books of hours, owners often added religious pamphlets, pliegos (loose sheets of paper), and other devotional materials, turning their books into individualized works in progress (Reinburg 1988, 40).
Of the several historians under investigation, Gómara and Díaz del Castillo are the only two who mention the devotional text. Yet this correspondence is hardly unexpected when we consider that, in addition to the best-seller status of books of hours, Gómara was widely used as a source by later conquest historiographers. In fact, Díaz del Castillo is recognized for both criticizing his predecessor – denouncing him by name and identifying specific inaccuracies in a chapter devoted exclusively to the topic – and using him extensively as a source (Chicote 2003, 270; Díaz del Castillo 1960, 79–80).4 In both authors’ histories, the book of hours functions primarily as a symbol of difference between Aguilar and the indigenous people who accompany him to Cortés’s camp. The text’s presence sets him apart from the natives in three essential ways: intellectually, because it suggests he knows how to read alphabetic script, while the indigenous are illiterate in the strict Western sense of the word; in terms of religious belief, because the book’s subject matter reinforces a Christian faith that is perhaps in doubt due to his long captivity among a group the Spaniards considered to be heathens (Rico 2000, 96; Romero 1992, 355); and physically, because without the book it would be difficult to tell him apart from the Mayans based solely on exterior appearance.
Gómara comments on Aguilar’s physical appearance in the Historia general de las Indias. Cortés’s troops watch as a mysterious canoe lands on the coast and from it disembark “cuatro hombres desnudos en carnes, sino era sus vergüenzas, los cabellos trenzados y enroscados sobre la frente” [four men, naked except for their parts of shame, with hair braided and coiled around their foreheads] (1932, 72).5 It is not until Aguilar asks in Castilian, “Señores, ¿sois cristianos?” [Sirs, are you Christians?], that they are finally able to distinguish him from his companions and respond to his question in the affirmative (1932, 72). Upon hearing their answer, Aguilar
[a]legróse tanto con tal respuesta, que lloró de placer. Preguntó si era miércoles, porque tenía unas horas en que rezaba cada día. Rogóles que diesen gracias a Dios; y él hincóse de rodillas en el suelo, alzó las manos y ojos al cielo, y con muchas lágrimas hizo oración a Dios, dándole gracias infinitas por la merced que le hacía en sacarlo de entre infieles y hombres infernales, y ponerle entre cristianos y hombres de su nación.
[became so happy at this response that he cried with joy. He asked if it were Wednesday, because he had a book of hours with which he prayed every day. He begged them to give thanks to God; and he knelt on the ground, lifted his hands and eyes to the heavens, and with many tears prayed to God, giving infinite thanks for the mercy he showed in removing him from among infidels and devilish men, and placing him among Christians and his countrymen.] (1932, 72)
Díaz del Castillo likewise notes the physical similarity between Aguilar and the Amerindians in his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, explaining that the Spaniards
le tenían por indio propio, porque de suyo era moreno y tresquilado a manera de indio esclavo, y traía un remo al hombro, una cotara vieja calzada y la otra atada en la cintura, y una manta vieja muy ruin, y un braguero peor, con que cubría sus vergüenzas, y traía atada en la manta un bulto que eran Horas muy viejas. Pues desde que Cortés los vió de aquella manera también picó, como los demás soldados, que preguntó a Tapia que qué era del español, y el español, como le entendió, se puso en cuclillas, como hacen los indios, y dijo: “Yo soy.”
[they thought he was an Indian because he was dark-skinned and his hair was shorn like an Indian slave’s, and he carried a paddle on his shoulder, was wearing one old sandal and had the other tied at his waist, an old ragged cloak, and a worse loin cloth, with which he covered his shame, and carried, tied up in the cape, a bundle that was a very old book of hours. When Cortés saw him like this, he was deceived like the other soldiers, and asked Tapia where the Spaniard was, and the Spaniard, because he understood, crouched down like an Indian, and said, “I am.”] (1960, 102–3)
These two passages narrate first-hand accounts of Aguilar’s anti-anagnorisis – the Spaniards’ failure to recognize him as a compatriot due to his unfamiliar physical appearance – a recurring theme in the captive’s return (Voigt 2009, 120). Rather than physical difference, it is speech that sets Aguilar apart from the natives and leads to his being recognized (2009, 92). Gómara’s troops and Díaz del Castillo’s Cortés are only able to identify Aguilar as a fellow Spaniard and Christian after exchanging words in Castilian with this apparent indio. The book of hours supports his oral language, physically signalling Aguilar’s mother tongue and patria with its briefly mentioned presence.
Yet although the religious text points to Aguilar’s cultural origin in both histories, there are subtle differences in the work it does for each author: in Gómara’s Historia de la conquista it is much more active, while in Díaz del Castillo’s Historia verdadera it plays a more latent role. In the former, both the historical characters and the author himself make the book of hours more prominent. When Aguilar arrives at the Spanish encampment, he asks the troops “si era miércoles, porque tenía unas horas en que rezaba cada día” [if it were Wednesday, because he had a book of hours with which he prayed each day] (1932, 72). Demonstrating his active stance – it is he who initiates contact and conversation with the Spanish troops – the rescued slave announces his attempts to mark the passing of Christian time during his captivity by praying each day with his book of hours. In fact, he is so sure of the accuracy of his count and by extension of his own faith that he does not wait for an answer to his question about the day of the week, but instead assumes that he is correct. The readers know he is not, for Gómara states several paragraphs earlier that it is the first Sunday of Lent, but the soldiers do not disabuse Aguilar of this notion. His confidence that he successfully maintained liturgical time among pagans, as well as his physically and verbally expressed relief at being rescued – demonstrated by falling to his knees and offering a prayer of gratitude – accentuates his firm religious faith (Castillo Sandoval 1992, 186).
In contrast to Gómara’s work, in Díaz del Castillo’s account the book does not explicitly aid in Cortés’s recognition of the captive, nor does Aguilar give it a vital role in revealing himself to his countrymen or confirming his purity of faith. The conquistador historian’s more quietly reserved captive responds only when he is implicated in the conversation (Gaylord 2000, 75) and refrains from ostentatious displays of piety such as falling to his knees and praying, or verifying that he has been correctly following the Christian calendar in captivity. The fact that Aguilar himself does not bring up the book of hours is surprising, given that Díaz del Castillo goes to the trouble of declaring its presence, and that Gómara, whom the conquistador historian uses as a source, does have Aguilar explicitly refer to the object. Instead, the book remains untouched, seemingly forgotten, in the bulto on Aguilar’s back. Nevertheless, by including it in his detailed description of the captive, the conquistador historian hints at his own preoccupation with the importance of the written word in creating authority and legitimacy. As he explains in the prologue to his Historia verdadera,
lo que yo vi y me hallé en ello [la conquista] peleando, como buen testigo de vista yo lo escribiré, con la ayuda de Dios, muy llanamente, sin torcer a una parte ni a otra, y porque soy viejo de más de ochenta y cuatro años y he perdido la vista y el oír, y por mi ventura no tengo otra riqueza que dejar a mis hijos y descendientes, salvo esta mi verdadera y notable relación
[what I saw and found fighting in it [the conquest], I will write as a good eyewitness, with the help of God, very clearly, without twisting from one part to another, and because I am an old man of more than eighty-four years and have lost my sight and hearing, and because of my bad fortune I have no other riches to leave to my sons and descendants except for this, my true and notable history] (1960, 38)
Thus he presents his eyewitness version of events as the authoritative history, creating at the same time a physical legacy for his descendants and solid, tangible evidence in support of his account. The book of hours takes on a similar significance within the Historia verdadera itself, serving for Díaz del Castillo and the reader – if not for Cortés or the shipwrecked captive – as physical proof of Aguilar’s oral assertion that he is Spanish and Christian.
When Gómara depicts Aguilar falling to his knees, raising his hands to the sky, and thanking God for delivering him from the infidels, the historian is actually describing an image of the Annunciation commonly found in books of hours. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, two Annunciation illustrations were in fact widespread. One shows Mary kneeling with her hands raised towards the angel Gabriel in prayerful supplication; in the other, she is quietly reading a book of hours with her hands near her heart in prayer position when the divine messenger interrupts her study. Early modern readers of Gómara’s history would have immediately recognized such familiar images, also found in religious art from stained glass windows, paintings, and pamphlets (Saenger 1989, 152). In his narration of Aguilar’s return to Spanish society, Gómara fuses the two styles – Mary praying and Mary reading – by describing Aguilar’s oral and outward display of faith, and his use of the book of hours for silent daily prayer according to the canonical hours. In this way, Gómara doubly affirms the captive’s faith.
In spite of the variations in the authors’ representations of Aguilar and how he treats his book of hours during the anagnorisis scene, both utilize the devotional text to underscore the importance of the written word in certifying the captive’s Christian and Spanish identity (Roa-de-la-Carrera 2005, 172). During the protracted history of religious wars and skirmishes between Christian and Muslim Iberia and North Africa, kidnapping and ransoming captives had become a common established practice with well-known procedures (Voigt 2009, 8–9). Upon returning to Spain, the ransomed captive was expected to write an información, a document on “his life and habits during his captivity not only on his personal services, but also as a proper justification vis-à-vis the civil authorities and the Inquisition of having sustained his Catholic faith and not having renounced it among the infidels” (Garcés 2005, 99). Although this was not an established practice for Spaniards returning from the New World because the Amerindians were not considered as big a threat to Catholicism as the Muslim infidels, Gómara and Díaz del Castillo, as well as the captive himself, would have been aware that upon returning to Spain, Aguilar may have been asked to file just such a written report in order to reaffirm his Catholic faith and loyalty to the Spanish Crown and its projects in the New World. The book of hours, a Catholic devotional text, is another written document whose very possession bolsters such a claim.6
Indeed, outwardly visible manifestations of piety were an important component of medieval faith because they demonstrated to the rest of the world interior beliefs that were otherwise invisible. In order to outwardly and ostentatiously display their own Christian piety, noblemen and other members of the upper class often commissioned beautifully bound and illuminated books of hours to flaunt in their homes, while members of the lower classes who could not afford such volumes were still able to show their devotion by bringing their cheaper editions with them to Mass and following along with the sermon (Poos 1988, 34). However, although it was important to prove one’s faith via outer signs, clerics were aware of and troubled by the fact that such displays could be deceiving. Friars involved in the New World evangelization project such as Bernardino de Sahagún often expressed concern that newly converted Amerindians, although they correctly practised the visible aspects of Catholicism, in fact hid idolatrous beliefs in their hearts (Sahagún 1999, 1).7
As I have argued, in depicting Aguilar with a book of hours Gómara and Díaz del Castillo take advantage of its recognizability and obvious religious function as a way to materially declare Aguilar’s faith, which his ambiguous outer appearance and time in captivity undermine. A closer look at the talismanic properties of this devotional text will help shed light on other possible reasons why Gómara and Díaz del Castillo use this narrative strategy. Constant daily use, along with the cheap paper and materials used to print and construct editions marketed to the middle and lower classes, means that few books of hours of this type survive today (Peña Díaz 1996, 539). This fact, along with their eclectic, individualized composition, makes it difficult to reconstruct the exact contents of Aguilar’s personal volume. However, considering that it survived shipwreck followed by eight years of captivity in the wilds of the Yucatán peninsula, it was probably damaged, possibly to the point of being illegible. This may explain why Díaz del Castillo’s Aguilar leaves it untouched in his pack, although Gómara affirms that he was able to read the calendar and the associated daily prayers, common sections in most books of hours.
Yet even if Aguilar could no longer read his book of hours, it could still fulfil an important function for him. In addition to physically manifesting his faith, which his long captivity puts into question, the devotional text’s presence helps explain his apparently miraculous survival. When he recounts the story of his captivity to Cortés in both authors’ histories, Aguilar reports that all but two of the shipwreck survivors from Valdivia’s expedition have perished (Gómara 1932, 72–3; Díaz del Castillo 1960, 103).8 Gómara and Díaz del Castillo may have believed that Aguilar survived such brutal conditions due to the nature of his treasured possession. Because the book of hours contains excerpts from scripture and other holy texts supposedly written by Jesus himself, as well as apostles and saints, in the medieval and early modern periods the physical object itself was considered to have sacred properties (Boureau 1989, 16–17). Even if the owner could not read the book in the sense of obtaining complete comprehension of the written contents, leafing through it or merely carrying it on one’s person could protect the bearer from physical and moral harm, and even miraculously heal illnesses and injuries (Saenger 1989, 156). Thus, for Gómara and Díaz del Castillo, Aguilar’s book is a talisman of protection that keeps him from bodily harm and reaffirms the providential nature of the conquest: just as God watches over Cortés’s expedition and ensures its success, he keeps Aguilar alive so that he can subsequently save the Amerindians’ souls.
Indeed, both authors report that Aguilar works to evangelize the natives once he has reunited with Cortés’s troops. Gómara describes a sermon that Aguilar gives to the indigenous of Cozumel before leaving for the mainland with the Spanish expedition. His sermon, given in their native Chontal Maya, the language of his former captors, immediately convinces the Amerindians of the island to convert to Catholicism (Gómara 1932, 75); Díaz del Castillo relates a conversation with the local caciques in which he advises them to have “reverencia a la santa imagen de Nuestra Señora y a la cruz” [reverence for the holy image of Our Lady and the cross] and teach this reverence to their subjects (1960, 104).
However, narrative traces indicate that the book of hours, rather than acting as a constant reminder of and guide for his faith, may not necessarily have signified the same for Aguilar as captive. As an ordained Franciscan priest and practising Catholic, Aguilar would have used the book of hours to guide his daily devotions and observances of holidays, feast and saints’ days (Reinburg 1993, 21) because closely following the liturgical calendar was an important component of medieval and early modern Catholicism (Nalle 1992, 141). Yet living with a Mayan tribe he had no external social or calendrical structure to help him accurately monitor the passing of Catholic time. Indeed, the Mayans had their own holy days and celebrations with which they order their existence.
Both Gómara and Díaz del Castillo let slip this evidence of Aguilar’s possible lack of synchronicity with Catholic time, although in different ways. In Gómara’s history, a more proactive Aguilar declares his continuing use of the book of hours according to its intended purpose, and yet he is also unable to maintain and exercise the order and authority contained within its structure.9 That is, although he attempts to monitor the date using the liturgical calendar, he ultimately fails in this venture. As Gómara tells us, when Aguilar first approaches the Spanish troops, he “[p]reguntó si era miércoles, porque tenía unas horas en que rezaba cada día” [he asked if it were Wednesday, because he had a book of hours with which he prayed each day] (1932, 72). Although Aguilar is allowed to continue on oblivious to his error – none of the Spanish soldiers corrects him – Gómara has already informed the reader several paragraphs earlier that it is not Wednesday, but the first Sunday of Lent (1932, 71). That is, he has been praying the wrong prayers and celebrating feast days on the wrong dates, putting himself out of sync with the Catholic world.
In Díaz del Castillo’s Historia verdadera, the book’s possibly differentiating significance is expressed in another way: the book of hours is mentioned only once, and in that instance by the narrator, not the captive. This lapse could be due to the eight years Aguilar has spent in a foreign culture that lacks the structures necessary for the volume to signify as “book” in the Spanish sense of the object, and even less in the sense of a religious artefact (Mignolo 2003, 81; 118). As Walter Mignolo describes in The Darker Side of the Renaissance, the materiality, social role, and conceptualization of things such as “book,” “reading,” and “writing” vary among cultures (2003, 76). In this situation, therefore, Aguilar perhaps does not mention his book to his countrymen because it may remind him of his isolation in a culture where it does not signify. By not referring to the book of hours again, even though it plays a more prominent role in one of Díaz del Castillo’s source texts, Aguilar’s obliviousness to the book slung in a sack over his shoulder hints that it is no longer useful to him, which marks his difference from his original position in the literate European culture he seeks to rejoin.
Alternatively, Díaz del Castillo may have chosen to leave out the reference to the calendar in the book of hours in order to obscure the alienating or transformative effects that a prolonged New World experience can have on Christians. As a soldier with extensive New World experience – unlike Gómara, who has none – he would have a better sense of what Aguilar’s daily life was like. He reports in detail the difficulty of existence in the New World during the various expeditions in which he participated, facing violent and often fatal skirmishes with the Amerindians while attempting to gather the water and food necessary to maintain shipboard life (Díaz del Castillo 1960, 42–60). If he referenced Christian time, like Gómara does, he would draw attention to the fact that Aguilar was unable to keep track of it due to the arduous process of survival. This in turn reveals to the Spaniards that he no longer practises a chronologically regulated Catholicism, an indication of his difference from his countrymen as a result of his captivity (Voigt 2009, 12).
Thus both historians, perhaps inadvertently, reveal that during his captivity Aguilar has lived – although without intending to – according to indigenous time, which has idolatrous resonances due to its religious calendar regulating sacrifices to pagan gods. Moreover, he is out of step with the Western world, suggesting partial integration – whether voluntary or involuntary – into a pagan culture. In this way, the book of hours reveals itself as a double and ambivalent symbol, and highlights the rupture caused by the colonial encounter. As Spaniards and members of the colonizing society, Gómara and Díaz del Castillo situate the text as a sign marking Aguilar’s intellectual, cultural, and religious difference from his indigenous captors (Roa-de-la-Carrera 2005, 172). However, the book is no longer within its original context in the Yucatán peninsula and therefore lacks the social supports necessary to maintain its significance outside of Aguilar’s individual perception. It is at the same time, accordingly, a sign of the captive’s displacement and of the turmoil colonization causes. It serves as a reminder of his origins while simultaneously emphasizing his solitude and isolation from them. Although it may be situated as a sign of European alphabetical superiority (Roa-de-la-Carrera 2005, 172), therefore, the book of hours is also a sign of difference and displacement. The colonizers’ authoritative position, expressed in these triumphalist historical narratives, is much less consolidated or unequivocal than previously assumed.
The concern Gómara and Díaz del Castillo express for marking Aguilar’s firm faith and Spanish origin in spite of his native-like physical appearance is mirrored in one history in which the book of hours is omitted, the Historia de la nación chichimeca by Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, a mestizo letrado [learned mestizo] from the Anáhuac region of Mexico.10 Although Gómara and Díaz del Castillo are two of the few authors who include the book of hours, Ixtlilxóchitl’s omission is striking in its turn because of the apparent extent to which he uses Gómara as a source for his version of Aguilar’s rescue. It is not uncommon to see Gómara cited as a reference in colonial histories; in fact, his work is lauded – and criticized – by many of his contemporaries, especially Díaz del Castillo. Ixtlilxóchitl himself explicitly cites Gómara in numerous chapters (1985, 223, 224, 233, 266), as well as in the one recounting Aguilar’s appearance. Indeed, he praises Gómara’s in-depth elaboration of Cortés’s life and conquest of Mexico, referring the reader several times to the Historia general de las Indias for a more complete version of the account than the one Ixtlilxóchitl himself offers (1985, 223, 233).
Ixtlilxóchitl thus clearly respected Gómara enough, in spite of some veiled criticisms,11 to consult him as an authority.12 In fact, in his section describing Aguilar’s anagnorisis several concordances strongly indicate that the mestizo author used Gómara as a direct and exclusive source. These striking similarities become evident when we compare a passage quoted above from Gómara and its equivalent from Ixtlilxóchitl :
[Aguilar] dijo luego en castellano: “Señores, ¿sois cristianos?” Respondieron que sí y que eran españoles. Alegróse tanto con tal respuesta, que lloró de placer. Preguntó si era miércoles, porque tenía unas horas en que rezaba cada día. Rogóles que diesen gracias a Dios; y él hincóse de rodillas en el suelo, alzó las manos y ojos al cielo, y con muchas lágrimas hizo oración a Dios, dándole gracias infinitas por la merced que le hacía en sacarlo de entre infieles y hombres infernales, y ponerle entre cristianos y hombres de su nación.
[[Aguilar] said then in Castilian: “Sirs, are you Christians?” They responded yes and that they were Spaniards. He became so happy at this response that he cried for joy. He asked if it were Wednesday, because he had a book of hours with which he prayed every day. He begged them to give thanks to God; and he knelt on the ground, lifted his hands and eyes to the heavens, and with many tears prayed to God, giving infinite thanks for the mercy he showed in removing him from among infidels and devilish men, and placing him among Christians and his countrymen.] (Gómara 1932, 72)
[Aguilar] comenzó a hablar en español y dijo: “señores, ¿sois cristianos?” de que se maravillaron los nuestros y respondieron: “sí somos y españoles.” Entonces se puso de rodillas y dijo llorando de placer: “infinitas gracias doy a Dios que me ha sacado de entre infieles y bárbaros. ¿Qué día es hoy señores?, que yo pienso que es miércoles.” Respondiéronle que no era sino domingo.
[[Aguilar] began to speak in Spanish and he said: “Sirs, are you Christians?” at which our men marvelled and responded, “Yes we are, and Spaniards.” Then he knelt and said crying with joy: “Infinite thanks I give to God, who has taken me from among infidels and barbarians. What day is today sirs? I think it is Wednesday.” They responded to him that it was not Wednesday, but Sunday.] (Ixtlilxóchitl 1985, 225–6)
The several correlations between these histories include use of analogous vocabulary; parallel syntax; and identical events in almost the same order, including the conversational exchange between Aguilar and the Spaniards; Aguilar crying for joy; kneeling and praising God for delivering him from the infidels; and his question regarding the day of the week. This last detail is so striking, not because both authors include it, but because they are the only two historians to locate it within Aguilar’s speech, and because Ixtlilxóchitl’s Aguilar makes no follow-up explanatory reference to the book of hours. What is more, Gómara’s Aguilar is not directly told that his day count is incorrect; as I mentioned above, the reader is only aware of the miscalculation because Gómara mentions several paragraphs earlier that it is the first Sunday of Lent (1932, 71). Ixtlilxóchitl’s Aguilar, on the other hand, is immediately informed of his error and told the correct day: when he asks if it is Wednesday, they “[r]espondiéronle que no era sino domingo” [responded to him that it was not Wednesday, but Sunday] (1985, 226). And finally, although the mestizo author closely follows Gómara’s order of events, he moves the question about the date to the end of the anagnorisis sequence, rather than placing it towards the beginning as the Spanish historian does.
Given the close resemblance between the two versions, it seems that Ixtlilxóchitl purposely chose to make these alterations, which in turn have several consequences. In Gómara’s history, the book of hours accounts for Aguilar’s question because it offers a concrete way to count his days in captivity. It also creates a clear connection between Aguilar’s relief at being rescued from idolatrous natives and his own unwavering faith, particularly because he begins to pray immediately after bringing up his book. Yet Gómara does not portray the Spanish troops as informing Aguilar of the correct date, suggesting that he does not want to overly emphasize the fact that the captive could not maintain proper daily religious observances. Ixtlilxóchitl, on the other hand, relocates the question, disrupting what had been until now his close parity with Gómara, and drawing even more attention to the gap he leaves by omitting the book of hours. Nor does Ixtlilxóchitl hesitate to reveal that Aguilar has lost count of the days and been living according to indigenous time; to the contrary, he explicitly reveals this fact when the troops correct Aguilar’s error. What is more, when he deletes the book of hours, the question about the date becomes a non sequitur. Unlike in Gómara, the inquiry, “¿Qué día es hoy señores?” follows, rather than precedes, his prayer of thanks for being reunited with his countrymen. The question itself is not followed by any reference to the connection between religious faith and calendrical time; a connection the presence of the book of hours implicitly puts forward. Instead, the scene changes and Aguilar is taken to Cortés, whom he informs about the circumstances leading up to his shipwreck (Ixtlilxóchitl 1985, 226). Ixtlilxóchitl’s omission thus disconnects Aguilar’s question from any explanatory context, and creates a question for us. Why did the mestizo author omit the book of hours when he so closely follows Gómara as a source?
One possible answer is that by eliminating the book, he avoids the ambiguity that may arise due to its nature as a symbol of both colonial power and the displacement of this power. Instead of indicating the captive’s unwavering Christian beliefs and cultural superiority with a devotional text, he relies more heavily on oral and performative signs of Aguilar’s religious dedication during his eight years with the Maya.13 An oral sign of his Christianity appears in the words exchanged during his reunion with the Spanish troops, when the captive asks his countrymen, “¿sois cristianos?” [are you Christians?] (1985, 225). To further cement his dedication to the colonial evangelization project, the mestizo author, like Gómara, has Aguilar give a sermon to the indigenous people at Cozumel before the troops depart for the mainland. His homily, spoken in the Amerindians’ language, unsurprisingly leads to the rapid conversion of all (Ixtlilxóchitl 1985, 226). Thus, unlike the two Spanish historiographers, Ixtlilxóchitl does not accentuate the role of European literacy in the conquest via the book of hours; instead, he focuses on Aguilar’s evangelical and translating functions. However, both narrative strategies, the use of the book and his speech acts, serve a similar purpose: to eliminate any doubt in the reader’s mind that Aguilar’s eight-year captivity weakened or corrupted the strength and purity of his faith.
It may also be that Ixtlilxóchitl wishes to deemphasize the book of hours, an object of European alphabetical culture that Gómara uses as a sign of European alphabetical superiority over the Amerindians (Roa-de-la-Carrera 2005, 172), in order to implicitly valorize indigenous record-keeping methods and sources that he himself uses to compose his history. Indeed, Walter Mignolo and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra argue that Ixtlilxóchitl positions indigenous and graphic systems as equal in value to European texts, in the sense that they, too, are capable of accurately recording and preserving the past (Mignolo 2003, 93; Cañizares-Esguerra 2001, 65). One could counterargue that when Ixtlilxóchitl writes his account, albeit from an indigenous point of view, he is using the very forms – the codex and the roman alphabet – whose dominance he seeks to mitigate. However, rather than completely rejecting the colonizing culture, Salvador Velazco contends that Ixtlilxóchitl seeks a new transcultural space in which both cultures can become integrated.14 One such transcultural space is his history itself, which he wrote using early modern Western organizational format and topical conventions for writing history, yet incorporating indigenous sources such as pictorial manuscripts and oral reports that Europeans did not always accept as valid, trustworthy, historiographical sources (Mignolo 2003, 127).
Another possible reason for the book’s omission can be found in Ixtlilxóchitl’s purpose in writing the Historia de la nación chichimeca. As Edmundo O’Gorman and Velazco demonstrate, in his book Ixtlilxóchitl offers a providential indigenous history in which Anáhuac is implicitly compared to an Old Testament pre-Christian settlement open to receiving the word of God (Velazco 2003, 44). In an effort to portray the Texcocans as ready for conversion, he minimizes indigenous cultural elements that could suggest perplexing differences, one of which is their alternate method of record-keeping, which included a rich oral tradition and complex pictorial manuscripts but lacked a phonetic alphabet capable of representing human speech (Mignolo 2003, 127). As I have mentioned, books of hours were an important component of medieval and early modern Catholicism because they outwardly manifested the bearer’s inner piety. Texcocan culture, however, does not have an equivalent object which could replace the book of hours in making public the Amerindians’ acceptance of Catholicism. If Ixtlilxóchitl were to give Aguilar a book of hours, he would draw attention to a cultural difference he attempts to minimize in order to portray the Texcocans as easily brought into the Christian fold.
The historiographers discussed in this article, Francisco López de Gómara, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, utilize a part of early modern material culture – the book of hours, or the striking gap its absence creates – as a narrative strategy designed to further their historiographical projects. Although all three underscore Jerónimo de Aguilar’s purity and strength of faith in order to portray his role as communication facilitator and priest as essential to the colonial evangelization mission, only the two Spanish authors take advantage of the book of hours to do so. For them, the book additionally serves to differentiate the captive from his indigenous captors, because the effects of eight years of captivity have left his skin tanned, his hair matted, and his clothes ragged to such a degree that he is no longer physically distinguishable from them. The religious text, then, whether mentioned by Aguilar himself or only by the narrator, is an alternate sign of Aguilar’s cultural difference, marking his Christianity, ability to read Roman text, and therefore his intellectual superiority.
In addition to being positioned as a sign of religious faith and cultural difference, the book of hours also indicates the importance of literacy in the conquest for the two Spanish authors. On one level it differentiates and marks as alphabetically superior the colonizers from the colonized, while on another level, it legitimates and confers importance on the historians’ own record-keeping efforts. As historians writing new versions of the conquest of Mexico, which several other authors had already published, Gómara and Díaz del Castillo believed they, too, had something valuable to contribute to the written archive, and indeed that the archive itself was a vital contribution to imperial expansion. In this way, Aguilar’s book of hours becomes a synecdoche for the historiographers’ own texts.
However, in spite of Gómara’s and Díaz del Castillo’s efforts, the book of hours also carries alternate meanings that actually detract from their representation of Aguilar as a pious Catholic and one of the first evangelists in the New World. Because the text lacks the social supports necessary for it to sustain an exclusively Western significance in the Yucatán peninsula among the Maya, it takes on distinct implications beyond the authors’ control. As a result, it also implies the rupture caused by Aguilar’s captivity and isolation from European culture. Indeed, both Gómara and Díaz del Castillo reveal (albeit in different ways) that the book of hours has failed to fulfil its intended liturgical calendrical function. In placing the question about the day of the week in Aguilar’s mouth, Gómara divulges that he has lived according to indigenous time. Díaz del Castillo may have chosen to reference the book of hours only once and to leave out any date references that would reveal Aguilar’s error, in order to disguise the fact that life in the New World hinders Catholic observances. But he, too, is still unable to obscure the possibility that Aguilar may have been in misstep with Catholic time. Thus, on another level the book of hours emphasizes his difference from his countrymen as well as his difference from the Mayans, even though the authors present it as a sign of his maintenance of Christianity and a European identity.
When Ixtlilxóchitl so closely follows Gómara in his version of Aguilar’s anagnorisis yet erases all trace of the book from the pious captive’s hands, he further supports his own goals in writing a Texcocan history of the conquest. Like Gómara and Díaz del Castillo, he is still concerned with showing Aguilar’s firm faith, but rather than using the book of hours to do so, he relies more on the captive’s performative role as evangelizer and cultural translator. In this way, Aguilar implicitly becomes a synecdoche for Ixtlilxóchitl himself. Like the captive, he retrospectively “evangelizes” the pre-Cortesian Texcocans in his own historical narrative; as a mestizo historian eager to incorporate his own people’s history into the European conception of world history and create a transcultural space within his own work, he, too, is a cultural translator. Moreover, rather than accepting the book as a sign of European alphabetic superiority, as Gómara utilizes it, Ixtlilxóchitl’s omission leaves space for his indigenous sources to be given more equal footing as legitimate historical sources alongside European alphabetical works such as Gómara’s.
Investigated in a comparative framework, we therefore see how these three historians exemplify literacy’s varying uses in supporting Catholicism and its diffusion in a foreign setting, as well as how it can serve as an aid in constructing a new, transcultural environment. We also see how Díaz del Castillo and especially Ixtlilxóchitl read, critique, and build upon Gómara’s more popular and influential history, gaining insight into how they use this intertextual relationship in order to construct their own arguments and put forward their own, in their opinion more accurate, versions of the conquest.
1 Sabine MacCormack and Patricia Seed have investigated the role of the European religious text in the Peruvian colonial situation, focusing specifically on the Inca ruler Atahualpa’s reaction to Fray Valverde’s Bible during Francisco Pizarro’s expedition (MacCormack 1989; Seed 1991).
2 Concepts of the distortion and displacement of the colonizer’s power structures and cultural beliefs, including the socially constructed meaning of texts and reading, have been developed by postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha. In his study, The Location of Culture, he explores the role of the book and literacy within the colonial British context, identifying text as an ambivalent hybrid symbol. Through an example of native appropriation of a Bible in Hindi, Bhabha explains that the book is a double and therefore equivocal sign: the colonizers believe it to be an accurate and exact representation of their power and superiority over the colonized; but at the same time it is a displacement, distortion, and repetition of this representation, since it now operates within a different culture and therefore context (1994, 103, 107). Although he focuses specifically on the British colonial situation, it shares clear parallels with the Spanish American context, where literacy also played a role in the conquest and colonization of the continent.
3 Castilian, in the case of Aguilar.
4 See Nora Edith Jiménez for a discussion of Díaz del Castillo’s attitude towards and treatment of Gómara.
5 All translations are by the author unless cited in passage.
6 In 1573, fifty years after Aguilar was rescued with his book of hours, the Inquisition banned many editions, hoping to reassert control over personal scriptural interpretation and private, individualized religious practices that had become uncomfortably opaque and heterodox (Nalle 1999, 136–7). Just fifty years later, then, Aguilar’s book of hours would have labelled him as a dissident rather than affirming his orthodox belief. Gómara and Díaz del Castillo, however, wrote before these major reforms began to take effect.
7 The problem of being unable to trust visible manifestations of faith arose in Iberia with the issue of conversos, or Jews who were forced by Isabel and Ferdinand in 1492 to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. Many conversos continued to practise Judaism secretly, in spite of outwardly displaying adherence to the Christian faith (Coleman 2003, 45).
8 Aside from Aguilar himself, the other survivor is the (in)famous Gonzalo Guerrero, a Spaniard who “goes native” and refuses to return to Spanish society because he has pierced and tattooed his body, married an indigenous woman, and has several children (Gómara 1932, 73; Díaz del Castillo 1960, 103–4).
9 Bhabha explains that for the colonizers, the European book functions to maintain civil order within a foreign social order, which can seem chaotic to Europeans. He offers the example of Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in order to illustrate this idea. Marlow is travelling to the heart of the African jungle, and the journey is slowly pushing him towards madness because he perceives the jungle as an uncontrollable, chaotic, and therefore threatening force. But when he discovers an English book about navigation, reading it gives him an ordered refuge according to the Western social norms to which he is accustomed (Bhabha 1994, 106). The book of hours fulfils a similar function for Aguilar during his captivity among the indigenous people. But it is not enough to impose Christian order upon the outside world, for Aguilar still loses count of the days.
10 Ixtlilxóchitl was the son of a Spaniard and a mestizo Texcocan Amerindian who was descended directly from Moctezuma II, the last tlahtoani (ruler) of Tenochtitlán. He wrote several relaciones, or histories, of pre-Cortesian Mexico and the conquest and relied heavily on Amerindian oral and material sources to do so (Vázquez 1985, 19, 28).
11 Although Ixtlilxóchitl praises the Spanish historians’ thoroughness, he gives two reasons for either refusing to write his own or providing an alternate version: “Y porque los autores que han escrito las conquistas que estos señores tuvieron, especificadamente nos las cuentan por extenso, porque las hallaron en sus historias […] sólo refiero lo que me pareció convenía tratar de ellas, según las pinturas y anales que tengo citados” [and because the authors who have written about the conquests of these gentlemen, specifically they recount them [the conquests] extensively to us, because these conquests are found in their histories […] I only relate what seems to me convenient to treat, according to the paintings and annals that I have cited] (1985, 215). Through his praise of such comprehensiveness, Ixtlilxóchitl implicitly criticizes these same historians for being long-winded while simultaneously omitting the indigenous historical perspective that his own sources relate. Instead of rewriting histories that he considers praiseworthy – albeit to a limited degree – his purpose is to write an indigenous history of the conquest (Vázquez 1985, 36). In doing so, he aims not only to preserve this history for posterity, but also to incorporate an indigenous past into the European conception of world history (Velazco 2003, 54).
12 Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, an Amerindian historian and copyist who, like Ixtlilxóchitl, hailed from a region near Tenochtitlán, also wrote an alternate conquest history based on Gómara’s work and indigenous sources (Voigt 2006, 14–15, 21).
13 Some of these oral and physical signs (oral confirmation of cultural origin and religious affiliation, a sermon for the local Amerindians, change of clothes) are also present in the histories of Díaz del Castillo and Gómara.
14 Ixtlilxóchitl further promotes cultural mestizaje when he (erroneously) claims that Aguilar married Marina, or La Malinche, an Amerindian woman with whom he formed a translating team on Cortés’s expedition (Ixtlilxóchitl 1985, 229).
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