Promises and Deceits: Marriage among Indians in New Spain in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Even a brief look into the historiography on Indian marriage in New Spain will reveal how infrequently scholars have devoted themselves to this topic. On the one hand, there are texts written from the perspective of canon law, such as those by Federico Aznar Gil, Paulino Castañeda, Daisy Rípodas Ardanaz, and Guillermo Floris Margadant, but these authors address canonical development in Spain as well as Spanish America and use mainly references from councils and synods, especially pastoral sources.¹ On the other hand, there are anthropological studies, such as those of David Robichaux, Danièle Dehouve, Pierre Ragon, and Serge Gruzinski that compare pre-Hispanic marriage to Christian marriage.² Using confessionaries for Indians as reference, these authors handle this topic from the perspective of the history of mentalities without regard for the legal context in which such documents were produced. They may also undertake lineage studies supported by the same kinds of sources.³ However, at least for the viceroyalty of New Spain, there is a lack of research on indigenous marriage that systematically uses and analyzes ecclesiastical sources, particularly pastoral tools.⁴ Thus, I do not consider in this paper the beginning of evangelization and its specific issues. Instead, I focus on the assimilation of Indian marriage into the establishment of the Catholic Church in Mexico as documented in parish records and the instructions provided to parish priests.

As is widely known, the 1570s are considered the point of departure between the first evangelization stage, or foundational evangelization, and the establishment of the diocesan Church. Prior to the 1570s, evangelization was exclusively in the hands of mendicant orders. In the 1570s, the first secular-clergy bishop in Mexico, Moya de Contreras, was appointed, the Inquisition was established, and the real cédula governing patronage was issued. Thus, it can be said that the consolidation period of the Catholic Church in New Spain started in this decade.⁵ A review of the way in which the marriage sacrament was handled in pastoral writings makes it clear that during the first half of the sixteenth century, evangelizers, canon lawyers, and ecclesiastical authorities were mainly concerned with problems related to the adaptation of pre-Hispanic marriage habits, mixed marriages, and how to implement the Pauline privilege (governing marriages involving unbaptized parties). Therefore, what appear most strongly in these writings are issues particularly related to Indians.⁶

Meanwhile, the later part of the period of foundation evangelization was linked to the disappointment of missionaries, whose providential dreams had led them to believe they could create a new and reformed Christianity in New Spain, similar to that of the very first Christians. Problems emerging among new converts, including those related to marriage, forced clergymen to develop more realistic plans.⁷

It is for this reason that my analysis focuses on pastoral tools from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by which time Christian marriage had already been assimilated among Indians. The sources studied here are the documents printed throughout these centuries that recorded the pastoral experience of secular and regular clergymen from different religious orders. Thus, the article will provide a broad and varied vision based on the testimonies of agents belonging to diverse spiritualities and using different evangelization methods. Among these are Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and secular clergy, who carried out their ministries among both Indians living in important cities of the viceroyalty and Indians living in remote regions.

This study is also based on analysis of 28 pastoral tools, in particular those addressed to the parish priests of New Spain’s Indians from 1572 to 1789. Their authors, all of them experienced in pastoral activities, carried out their ministry within the ecclesiastic province of Mexico.⁸ The province included Guadalajara, Puebla, the Valley of Mexico (including the towns surrounding Mexico City), Oaxaca, Michoacán, and Chiapas.⁹ These documents portray life at the parishes or doctrinas, describing Indians’ marriage habits and the most frequently occurring problems associated with them, as well as the unique and complex cases a priest of Indians could face. In...