The Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation by Peter Marshall

Author:Peter Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199595488
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2014-11-21T16:00:00+00:00

In the case of Mesoamerica, the favourable political climate was brilliantly engineered by Hernan Cortés (1485–1547). The conquistador was able to exploit Tlaxcallan determination not to accept Aztec hegemony in Mesoamerica to the extent that Tlaxcallans supplied 90 per cent of the army which successfully besieged the Aztec capital, Technochtitlán. Only then were first Franciscan (1523) and then Dominican (1528) and Augustinian (1533) friars able to commence their millenarian-inspired ‘Spiritual Conquest’. In fact, Giovanni Botero (c.1544–1617), in his 1589 treatise Della ragion di stato (Concerning Reason of State), singled out Cortéz for his astute use of religion to strengthen colonial rule. Similarly, Francisco Pizarro was able to secure a favourable political context for the spread of Christianity in South America. He made his entrance in the immediate aftermath of the death in 1527—most probably from ‘Western’ smallpox—of the Inca ruler Huayna Capac, an event which had precipitated his empire collapsing into a civil war fought between his two sons. A process of gradual Christianization followed, with the Jesuits taking a prominent role in the late 1570s, though even in the mid-seventeenth century it was felt necessary to launch a vigorous campaign against pagan idolatry.

‘annunciation’ from juan de rocha sj, Metodo de Rosario (Song nian zhu gui cheng). This is an example of local appropriation and adaptation of the corresponding image from Nadal’s illustrated version of the gospels. Here the annunciation is depicted by a Chinese artist as the first of the five joyful mysteries of the Rosary

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