Racial Apocalypse

The Cultivation of Supremacy in the Early Modern World

José Juan Villagrana

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780367774578
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000587876
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book reveals the relationship between apocalyptic thought, political supremacy, and racialization in the early modern world. The chapters in this book analyze apocalypse and racialization from several discursive and geopolitical spaces to shed light on the ubiquity and diversity of apocalyptic racial thought and its centrality to advancing political power objectives across linguistic and national borders in the early modern period.

By approaching race through apocalyptic discourse, this volume not only exposes connections between the pursuit of political power and apocalyptic thought, but also contributes to defining race across multiple areas of research in the early modern period, including colonialism, English and Hispanist studies, and religious studies.

1 Apocalypse and Racial Assimilation in Spanish Colonial Texts

Motolinía, Mendieta, and Acosta

DOI: 10.4324/9781003171478-2

This chapter examines the writings of the Franciscans Toribio de Benavente Motolinía (1482–1568) and Gerónimo de Mendieta (1525–1604), and those of the Jesuit José de Acosta (1540–1600). Motolinía, author of the Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, came to New Spain along with eleven Franciscan friars in 1524 with Hernán Cortés, the conquistador of Mexico. His account is an ecclesiastical history of the foundation of an Amerindian Christian church in New Spain that primarily advertises the Franciscans’ successes in transforming Mexico from a land of idolatry to a model for global Christianization. A member of the subsequent generation of Franciscan missionaries to arrive in Mexico in 1554, Mendieta wrote his own history of the Franciscans’ activities, the Historia eclesiástica indiana. For his part, the Jesuit José de Acosta joined the mission to the Spanish Kingdom of Peru in 1572, traveling also to Mexico before returning to Spain in 1587. Known primarily for the Historia natural y moral de las Indias, Acosta wrote extensively about the Christianization of Amerindians and prophetic eschatology in De procuranda indorum salute (On the salvation of the Indians) and De temporibus novissimis (On the End Times). Although these figures’ presence in the Americas spans numerous decades in the sixteenth century and encompasses various regional and political contexts, they collectively theorize through an apocalyptic perspective how Black Africans’, Europeans’, and Amerindians’ perceived inherent biological and behavioral characteristics factor into Spain’s military, political, and evangelical dominance of the Americas. While there has been a longstanding scholarly interest in the role of millenarianism in sixteenth-century Spanish colonialism and evangelization, especially as it concerns Motolinía and Mendieta, there has not been a substantive account of the relationship between race and colonial apocalyptic thought. This chapter places racialization and the expression of racist power objectives at the center of the study of sixteenth-century Spanish colonial apocalypticism. An analysis of the writings of Motolinía, Mendieta, and Acosta reveals how their various discourses on apocalypse and colonial power generate enduring caste hierarchies in their efforts to build an exmplary Christian church.¹

That the Franciscans explicitly couch their ecclesiastical and political histories of the Americas within apocalyptic universal history has garnered the attention of critics who wish to identify the intellectual origins of Motolinía and Mendieta’s eschatology. The two main positions within the scholarly debate about the origins of the colonial Spanish Franciscans’ eschatology can be summed up as those who propose Joachimist millenarianism versus those who posit a variety of biblical and popular eschatological ideas as the main ideological influence on the Franciscans. In the influential views of Georges Baudot and John L. Phelan, the eschatological beliefs of sixteenth-century Spanish Franciscan colonial missionaries can be traced to the influence of the Cistercian abbot Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) on the Spiritual Franciscans of the thirteenth century.² Since the Franciscans’ inception in the early thirteenth century, according to Phelan, the Spiritual movement within the order demonstrated a commitment to the “the image of the Apocalypse and the sanctification of poverty,” and it brought them and “the followers of Joachim of Fiore into a working alliance.” The Spirituals’ influence, Phelan argues, lasted into fifteenth-century Spain and found its way into Mendieta’s writings. At the same time, Phelan concedes that “although Mendieta did not cite Joachim, … his mysticism is permeated with a Joachimite spirit.”³ Baudot, for his part, explains that “the connection between the Joachimist teachings … and [the first Franciscan missionaries’] interest in the pre-Columbian world” stems from “a need to tie the Indians … to Adam’s descendants and to the peoples of the Old Testament” in “preparation for the approaching arrival of the Millennium” as a “fulfillment of the promises of the Apocalypse.”⁴ Phelan stresses the significance of Joachimist spirituality in Mendieta’s advocacy for a universal Spanish monarchy, while Baudot suggests that Joachimist spirituality was significant for Motolinía and Mendieta because, as chroniclers, they were intent on incorporating Amerindians into a universal spiritual history by studying their origins and carving out their role in the Church Militant.

Furthermore, Baudot’s seminal volume Utopia and History in Mexico is emblematic of scholarship that imputes the works of Motolinía and Mendieta with the presumed millenarian belief that they were initiating a utopia of sorts, a New Jerusalem, in Mexico. José Antonio Maravall’s Utopía y reformismo en la España de los Austrias argues explicitly that the Spanish Franciscan missionaries held a utopian outlook that encompassed political and religious institutions in Mexico, noting that Thomas More’s Utopia was among the books of Juan de Zumárraga, the first bishop of Mexico. At the same time, Maravall points out that Mendieta’s utopian hopes were tempered by his view that if it were not for it being an article of faith that all humankind, including Amerindians, were descended from Adam and Eve, he would believe that Amerindians were an entirely different “species” because he perceived them as strange and different.⁵ If the Franciscans held a utopian vision of the political and religious institutions they helped shape in Mexico, it was not one that promoted social parity between Amerindians and Spaniards. While utopian thinking was part of the idealizing impulses of the Franciscans, whether in the form of the millenarian New Jerusalem or More’s text, the Franciscans’ proposed idealized political and religious structure in colonial Mexico was for the Spaniards, not the Native peoples. The Franciscans’ misgivings about Amerindians’ bodies and behaviors fashions a society, unlike the one promised in Revelation, in which social disparity is the point. In contrast to Phelan, Baudot, and Maravall, it is my contention that apocalyptically minded European evangelical and colonial activity in the Americas and throughout the world can be understood independently of millenarian exegesis by accounting for the common political and mercantile interests that inform the variety of apocalyptic ideas. In reality, the vast differences in apocalyptic beliefs—whether they were Augustine’s view that the millennium was already underway or Joachim’s view that a spiritual millennium was to be inaugurated through human agency—espoused by the Spanish writers did not alter their avowed objectives to establish political, ideological, and commercial dominance in the Americas and throughout the world.

In a revision of Baudot’s and Phelan’s positions, Delno C. West asserts that evidence of a direct debt to Joachim is elusive in the colonial writings of Mendieta and Motolinía, arguing instead that their eschatological thought emerges out of “other, more general, apocalyptic expectations in this period.”⁶ Simone Fracas concurs with West’s conclusion that “explicit references to Joachim’s thought in Mendieta’s writings … seem completely absent.” Fracas does not discount the possible influence of Joachimist apocalyptic spirituality on the sixteenth-century Franciscans, but instead argues that it is suffused amongst expressions of apocalyptic themes gathered from the Gospels and the Pauline epistles as well as Revelation and the Old Testament prophets. Fracas holds that whereas Joachim’s writings criticize the institutions of the church and temporal political power, “in Mendieta’s writings, apocalypticism is but a narrative tool to support Franciscan action” in Mexico that advances Spanish imperial objectives:

Mendieta’s ideas about the Franciscan mission in New Spain rely strongly on the conviction that the new Indian Church, since the very beginning, was a return to the prototypical model [of early Christianity] …. This conception stands in direct opposition to Joachim’s thought, as Gioacchino relentlessly insist[s] on the progressive action of the Trinity through history.⁷

For its part, this chapter posits that the Franciscans’ apocalyptic ideas are varied and diffuse, and that they are sourced from various biblical episodes—ranging from Exodus, to the prophetic works of Isaiah and Daniel, the Psalms, to the Gospels. Moreover, while Fracas and West note the wide array of the Franciscans’ sources, they fail to account for how such a plurality of biblical sources and themes are central to the racialization of the Native peoples of the Americas, Black Africans, Ottoman Turks, and Europeans. In its analyses of various episodes contained within Motolinía and Mendieta’s histories, this chapter demonstrates how these authors imbued various eschatological biblical episodes with their immediate preoccupations about the embodied and behavioral traits of Amerindians. By espousing an apocalyptic outlook to their colonial proselytizing, they authoritatively enact a vision of the world where Spaniards and Native peoples, Ottomans, and Black Africans form one Christian church that is nonetheless organized in a highly differentiated caste system under Spanish subjection.

Motolinía and Mendieta’s evangelical work was guided primarily by the eschatological passages in the Gospels, especially those that invoke geographical, linguistic, and ethnic differences between “tribes” and “nations.” In Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that “this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony to all nations, and then shall the consummation come.” In the meantime, Jesus predicts, there will be times of desolation, tribulation, and false prophets. To the stalwart elect, he promises salvation upon his return when “all tribes of the earth … shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and majesty” (24.13, 14, 30). Although the Franciscans believe their evangelical efforts contribute to hastening Christ’s return, they do not speculate about when Christ will return. They hold a general belief that they are in the last days—a belief they have in common with Christ’s early disciples—because they understood Europeans’ newly acquired awareness of Native peoples’ existence as a providential sign that uncovers those nations that have yet to hear the Gospel. Moreover, Motolinía organizes his history of the conversion of the Amerindians in parallel to biblical history, and he figuratively compares Amerindians, Spaniards, and Black Africans to biblical figures and nations. He uses the Book of Exodus to describe Native peoples’ condition of idolatry and slavery before the arrival of the Spaniards, and to tell how they were liberated by Spanish conquest and Christian baptism. He then likens the newly established Amerindian Christian church in the Americas to a holy Jerusalem, and he implies that it prefigures the military defeat of Ottoman Muslims and the conversion of Jews and Muslims to Christianity that will occur in Jerusalem.

Notably, the evangelical-apocalyptic passages in the Gospels that Motolinía and Mendieta cite as the inspiration for the mission were widely considered by fellow sixteenth-century Spanish colonial thinkers. The Dominican Domingo de Soto held that Christ’s command to “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16.15) gave Spaniards the right to dwell in lands claimed by others for the purpose of preaching while maintaining their own security based on the principles of open commerce and intercourse between nations. However, in contrast to the Franciscans’ position, he argued that the command to preach the Gospel “to every creature” did not confer to the Spanish Emperor the right to universal dominion. His objection is grounded in considerations about private property and sovereignty, saying that “seizing [Indians’] goods and subjecting them to our Empire” is incompatible with the biblical commandment.⁸ Similarly, Las Casas’ introduction to his treatise on the conversion of the Amerindians, Del único modo (1537), echoes the eschatological passages in the Gospels that God’s chosen

should be culled from every race, every tribe, every language, every corner of the world …. Some of them, be they few or many, are to be taken into eternal life. We must hold this to be true also of our Indian nations.⁹

Soto and Las Casas agreed with Motolinía and Mendieta that the broad preaching of the Gospel to distinct peoples and nations would precede Christ’s return, but they opposed the view that the Spanish crown held universal sovereignty.

As a counterpoint to the Franciscans’ optimistic evangelical histories, the chapter concludes with an examination of the Jesuit Acosta’s writings that discuss the evangelization of the Amerindians with regard to Jesus’ prophecy that the end will come when all nations have heard the Gospel. Acosta argues that Europeans’ increasing awareness of diverse languages, lands, and peoples throughout the world is evidence that the Gospel’s reach has been relatively limited, and the time when the Gospel will have reached all peoples is not likely to be near at hand. Furthermore, whereas Motolinía and Mendieta indicate in both figurative and literal terms that God exerts his influence in support of the Franciscans’ mission, Acosta argues vehemently that God works no miracles in the conversion of the Amerindians for the benefit of alleviating missionaries’ labor. This point is significant with regard to Acosta’s racialization of various peoples. Because God does not perform miracles, Acosta holds, Spanish missionaries must labor arduously to appeal to Native peoples’ reason because their native languages and customs are a barrier to Christian doctrinal instruction that the missionaries must help them overcome. As evidence for Amerindians’ potential for embracing Christianity, Acosta holds up the conversion of Black Africans to Christianity, positing that Black Africans possess inherent deficiencies that Christian missionaries have labored to improve. Although Acosta’s apocalyptic outlook differs extensively from that of the Franciscans, his views on universal history and his appraisals of Amerindians and Black Africans nonetheless mirrors theirs by producing a system of apocalyptic racialization that promoted Spanish colonization and dominion.

The Origins of Motolinía’s Political Eschatology

Motolinía’s observations of and interactions with the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Hispaniola as well as his political relationships with his fellow Spanish colonists shaped his political eschatology. While an influential critical tradition holds that the eschatology of Motolinía and Mendieta belongs to a distinct spiritual Franciscan eschatological tradition indebted to the medieval exegete Joachim of Fiore, the analyses of Motolinía and Mendieta’s writings throughout this chapter reveal that these missionaries looked to a broad patchwork of apocalyptic themes that they sourced from the Old and New Testaments. By using such a broad array of biblical examples to convey the history of conquest and conversion of Amerindians in figurative and spiritual terms, the Franciscans avail themselves of a variety of frameworks of biblical racialization that they harness in service of their apocalyptic outlook.

Joachim of Fiore’s Structural View of Universal History

Before turning to a discussion of the origins of the Franciscans’ colonial apocalyptic ideology, it is necessary to outline Joachim’s teachings to provide a starting point of contrast. In the Expositio in Apocalypsim (Explication of the Apocalypse), Joachim espouses a mystical view of universal history of the church according to a fiv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: “All nations and kindreds”
• 1. Apocalypse and Racial Assimilation in Spanish Colonial Texts: Motolinía, Mendieta, and Acosta
• 2. Goths and Magog: Asserting and Disputing Spanish Global Supremacy in Spanish Ethnic Origin Myths and English Black Legend Polemic
• 3. Making a Prophet: Greville, Sidney, Drake, and the Cultivation of English Colonial Supremacy
• Coda: The Legacy of Apocalyptic Racism
• Bibliography
• Index