Jesuits, Nahuas, and the Good Death Society in Mexico City, 1710-1767

Hispanic American Historical Review 80.1 (2000) 43-76

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Jesuits, Nahuas, and the Good Death Society in Mexico City, 1710-1767 *

Susan Schroeder

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This congregation was established in 1710. On the first Sunday of February an election of officers was held, not by voting but at the discretion of the Father Prefect [who] selected individuals who are the most pious and diligent in fulfilling their responsibilities; and so it will always be. These are the officers for this year.

-- Libro de la Congregación de la Buena Muerte

The epigraph is telling of Nahua Christianity in an eighteenth-century Jesuit milieu. By all accounts the privilege and esteem of the Good Death Society, a Jesuit-sponsored sodality for the benefit of Mexico City Nahuas, was cause for celebration ¹ ; in fact, the resignation of the indigenous sacristan, who recorded the Society's first election in a long series of entries in Spanish and Nahuatl in the official book of the Congregación de la Buena Muerte at the Colegio de San Gregorio, the Jesuits' secondary school for Indians in Mexico City, reflected the cultural paradox of the juxtaposition of Indians and Spaniards. ² Furthermore, the semantics and praxis of elections differed between Spaniards and Nahuas. Nahuas had a cultivated corporate identity; the Spaniards also enjoyed common identification, but it was determined by a very different sort of social exclusivity. ³

Brought to me by accident at the Archivo Histórico in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, I glanced through the Buena Muerte manuscript as I waited for the page to locate the correct volume. Puzzled by the eighteenth-century Nahuas' interest in a European formula for a "good death" ⁴ but not surprised by their diligence in listing the name, provenience, and office of each member of the Good Death Society year after year--a list made all the more conspicuous by its significant increase in the use of Nahuatl as time passed--I wondered what might have provoked local Jesuits to seek approval from Rome to bring the institution to the Colegio de San Gregorio or compelled Nahuas to join and work so hard to keep the Congregation operational. It is important to point out that the Society held "elections" until May 24, 1767, and this suggests that neither the Jesuits nor the Nahuas anticipated the sea change in the events that followed. ⁵

In this article I argue that an analysis of the Nahuas' Congregation of Good Death serves as a means to better understand the lives of indigenous peoples in eighteenth-century Mexico City. The manuscript, one of a pair, the other (now missing) presumably for financial accounts, ⁶ is a rich store of information about Nahuas affiliated with the Jesuits and their Colegio de San Gregorio. As annals covering the period from 1710 to 1767, ⁷ the membership register reveals much about indigenous naming patterns, social dynamics and polity affiliations, the continuing importance of titles and officeholding, gender roles and parity, and Nahua Catholicism. ⁸ Assuredly, the sodality exemplified Nahua cultural vitality even toward the end of the eighteenth century.

What was the context for the Jesuits' Roman Bona Mors at San Gregorio? Is there evidence of the urban cofradía as a devolution of the ancient Nahua polity, or was it just another branch of another European confraternity? Finally, what can be gleaned about Nahua life at their Colegio, and in what ways did the Good Death Society influence indigenous concepts of life and death in and around Mexico City?

Jesuit Sodalities in Rome and Mexico City

The cultural distance between the Eternal City in Rome and the Imperial City in New Spain at the beginning of the eighteenth century was not as great as might be expected. European confraternities had been flourishing in both hemispheres for centuries, and in some ways the operation of the Jesuits' sodalities resembled those of their religious counterparts. All the Jesuit groups were, however, affiliated with one of their colleges and its church and were...