Christian Texts for Aztecs: Art and Liturgy in Colonial Mexico is a
cultural history of the missionary enterprise in sixteenth-century
Mexico, seen primarily through the work of Catholic missionaries
and the native populations, principally the Aztecs. Also known as
the Mexica or Nahuas, speakers of the Nahuatl tongue, these
Mesoamerican people inhabited the central plateau around Lake
Texcoco and the sacred metropolis of Tenochtitlan, the site of
present-day Mexico City. It was their language that the mendicant
missionaries adopted as the lingua franca of the evangelization
enterprise. Conceived as a continuation of his earlier,
well-received City, Temple, Stage, Jaime Lara's new work addresses
the inculturation of Catholic sacraments and sacramentals into an
Aztec worldview in visual and material terms. He argues that
Catholic liturgy-similar in some ways to pre-Hispanic
worship-effectively "conquered"the religious imagination of its new
Mesoamerican practitioners, thus creating the basis for a uniquely
Mexican Catholicism. The sixteenth-century friars, in partnership
with indigenous Christian converts, successfully translated the
Christian message from an exclusively Eurocentric worldview to a
system of symbols that made sense to the indigenous civilizations
of Central Mexico. While Lara is interested in liturgical texts
with novel or recycled metaphors, he is equally interested in
visual texts such as neo-Christian architecture, mural painting,
feather work, and religious images made from corn. These, he
claims, were the sensorial bridges that allowed for a successful,
if not wholly orthodox, inculturation of Christianity into the New
World. Enriched by more than 280 color images and eleven appendices
of translations from Latin and Nahuatl, Lara's study provides rich
insights on the development of sacramental practice, popular piety,
catechetical drama, and parish politics. Song, dance, flowers, and
feathers-of utmost importance in the ancient religion of the
Aztecs-were reworked in ingenious ways to serve the Christian
cause. Human blood, too, found renewed importance in art and
devotion when the indigenous religious leaders and the mendicant
friars addressed the fundamental topic of the Man on the cross. An
important work on worship, liturgy, and the visual imagination,
Christian Texts for Aztecs: Art and Liturgy in Colonial Mexico is a
vivid look at a unique cultural adaptation of Christianity. "I have
deeply enjoyed and have been intellectually enriched by reading
Jaime Lara's Christian Texts for Aztecs: Art and Liturgy in
Colonial Mexico. This book will transform how we understand the
process of evangelization of Mexico in the sixteenth-century.
Clearly written and persuasively argued, Lara reveals how metaphor
allows for cross-cultural communication as the deepest level of the
Human experience, religious belief. This is demonstrated by a
nuanced but richly documented history of the period. Drawing upon
architecture, painting and a variety of different kinds of primary
sources, this study blends a deep understanding of Aztec religious
beliefs so as to articulate the very complex development of
Colonial Mexican Christianity. Most importantly, Lara demonstrates
how Aztec beliefs and practices were not only incorporated into
Catholic teaching and ritual practice, but how they transformed
that teaching and practice. Moreover, Lara makes so very evident
the centrality of Music and Art in this complicated
interaction."-Thomas Cummins, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of the
History of Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art, Harvard University. "We
have seen many interpretations of the story of the faith in
America; some have called it 'black,' and others 'white' or 'grey.'
Whatever version one may appropriate, Jaime Lara has provided us
with a unique, rich focus: the worship experience of a people
called to be renewed by Christianity and the creative expressions
of Christian faith in unique images and paintings. Jaime Lara's
book is a treasure to cherish for many years, an addition to any
personal or public Library, and a legacy that engages readers to
embark on a journey in which history, liturgical theology, and good
art become one's traveling companions."-Rev. Fr. Juan J. Sosa,
Presidente, Instituto Nacional Hispano de Liturgia, Inc.
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