Sergio Botta

Comparison has been considered one of the most significant tools in the academic study of religion, regardless of the theoretical and methodological perspective scholars have used in relating different cultures. In one of his fundamental essays, “A Matter of Class: Taxonomies of Religion,” Jonathan Z. Smith (1996) asserts that “cultures and religions themselves continuously engage in comparison and classification as well as becoming objects of our classifications and comparisons” (p. 390). As Smith clearly noticed on a number of occasions, the birth of a comparative interest concerning the plurality of religions at the beginning of modern history is not to be intended as a prescientific curiosity about difference, but as a form of hermeneutic control that facilitates the incorporation of “other” religions into a taxonomic framework (J. Smith, 1978, 1998). Therefore, the academic usage of comparison could generate theoretical challenges and vigorous debates, as comparative patterns manufactured since the beginning of modern history have been largely based on the reproduction of generalized Christian concepts. In the historical and cultural process of selection of those elements or units that ought to be compared, there is usually a third term—a tertium comparationis—which could have been implicit, or even hidden, in the confrontation between different worlds (J. Smith, 1990, p. 51). However, this third term must be considered not as a given fact but as the result of culturally oriented operations. Indeed, it is produced by social actors that have the power to establish the conditions of possibility for comparison and to organize the common space where the differences are conceptually located.

In order to analyze an example of this historical process, this chapter aims to observe the Franciscan construction of a comparative pattern in New Spain as a way to incorporate Mesoamerican gods into a Christian worldview. The main target of the comparative methodology promoted by the Franciscans in New Spain was an indigenous perception of the concept of deity that challenged the alleged universal idea of a unique God. To defend their conceptions—threatened by all the idolaters that were “reappearing” because of European expansion during modern history1—the Franciscans tried to establish the conditions of comparability between religious data that actually did not share any common historical connections: Greco-Roman and Mesoamerican gods.2 Undeniably, this comparative enterprise consisted of a collective process of selecting the comparanda—that is, the units that should be compared. Recovering a Christian apologetic literature against paganism—for instance, Augustine of Hippo’s De Civitate Dei [The City of God]3—the Franciscans in New Spain shaped a discourse that, by means of the promotion of the classical idea of polytheistic God as a “prototype” in the process of confrontation between Mesoamerican and classical data, managed to hide the actual tertium comparationis: a third term that was actually represented by the uniqueness (and therefore the supposed incomparability) of the Christian God.

A secondary effect of this historical process (at least from the perspective of the academic study of religion) is represented by the emergence of a sort of prototheory of polytheism, essentially grounded on Christian theological biases.4 As will be evident, this hermeneutic effort was the outcome of the reproduction of the dramatic encounter between classical religions and Christianity that had taken place during the early centuries of our era. As Lupher (2003) brilliantly noticed, while the Greek and Roman authors were on hand for the conquest of Mexico, they “were not in Mexico to conquer, but to be conquered” (p. 1). Thus the use of a comparative “classical model,” although it was applied differently by distinct social actors, served the Franciscans, not to acclaim Mexican grandeur but to reveal that indigenous religion was grounded on a sort of universal error.

Consequently, any contemporary attempt to use the classical notion of “polytheism” to redescribe pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican religions should come to terms with this controversial history.5 As an effective analytical category, it can be used only if we carefully observe its discursive genealogy and face the risks generated by its uncritical application. To avoid the semantic traps that would be caused by a naive comparison, it is crucial to pave the way for academic research on a hypothetical Mesoamerican polytheism with an exercise in Foucauldian archaeology, which would explore the very nature of the discourses about indigenous “gods” in New Spain.

In 1523, a first group of three Flemish friars reached Mexico Tenochtitlan—the ancient capital of the indigenous reign of the Mexica, defeated by Hernán Cortés in 1521—after Pope Leo X had authorized them to reach the New World with the bull Alias Felicis.6 However, in 1524 a second group of friars known as Los Doce [The Twelve] arrived in New Spain. In 1522, Pope Adrian VI with the bull Exponi Nobis Fecisti had delegated the Franciscan order to administer the evangelization of the Indians. Therefore, Los Doce were chosen from the reformed province of San Gabriel de Extremadura by the minister general of the order, Francisco de Quiñones, and guided to the New World by Friar Martín de Valencia. During the first decades of their presence in New Spain, the friars enjoyed the full support of Emperor Charles V and a fruitful relationship with most of the institutions of New Spain. For instance, under the patronage of Friar Juan de Zumárraga, the first Franciscan bishop of New Spain, a vast ethnographic operation, conducted by friars such as Andrés de Olmos and Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía), was promoted to obtain a better comprehension of indigenous culture and religion. Then, in 1536, the Colegio Imperial de la Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco was founded; under this important pedagogical institution, the Franciscans would eventually educate the descendants of indigenous nobles.

These first years of the Franciscan labor could be seen as an optimistic stage for the confrontation with indigenous people.7 On the one hand, Franciscan discourses on pre-Hispanic religion were inspired by a fervent confidence in a prompt conversion of the Indians, producing a heroic self-representation of their missionary work. On the other hand, however, their interpretations of indigenous religion were infused with an exclusivist rhetoric: indigenous beliefs and practices were considered merely as fábulas [fictions] and ficciones [falsehoods], and friars generally promoted and supported an artificial representation of a completely defeated idolatry.8 However, during the following phases of their missionary work, Franciscans became gradually aware of the unfinished nature of evangelization. As an example of this pessimistic turn, I will focus on the encyclopedic work of Friar Bernardino de Sahagún (1979), written during the second half of the sixteenth century, while I will examine a recapitulative phase of Franciscan labor focusing on the Monarquía Indiana [Indian Monarchy], published by Friar Juan de Torquemada in 1615. Since Augustine of Hippo’s De Civitate Dei (1878, 1928) was one of the most influential examples within antipagan literature, both Sahagún and Torquemada used it for their missionary purposes, in order to offer a renewed representation of indigenous religion by way of comparison between Mesoamerican and classical gods (Laird, 2016; MacCormack, 1995; Olivier, 2002).

Comparison between ancient and Mesoamerican gods had been employed earlier in New Spain, though with different purposes, at least by the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés and by the Dominican Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas. Many contemporary scholars in Mesoamerican studies supported the hypothesis of the Catalan historian Lluís Nicolau d’Olwer (1952, pp. 140–141), according to which Franciscans’ efforts in comparing different gods were the result of simple formulas, inspired by modest literary reminiscences and insignificant similarities. On the contrary, I suggest that it is not merely crucial to detect classical models used by friars to evaluate their different “comparative strategies,” as proposed by Guilhem Olivier (2010, 2016) on several occasions, but it also would be convenient to examine how Franciscan discourses—for instance, by means of a reassessment of the Augustinian interpretation of paganism—managed to incorporate indigenous beliefs and practices, contributing to the construction of an ante litteram comparative theory of polytheism (Botta, 2017).

The work of Bernardino de Sahagún embodied a turn toward a pessimistic self-awareness.9 Sahagún was openly critical of the optimistic understanding of many of his previous confreres and, simultaneously, disapproved of those political institutions that did not recognize the fundamental role played by the Franciscans in maintaining social and political harmony in New Spain. To confront the failure of this missionary phase, Sahagún proposed a counterimage of indigenous religion as a still dangerous and treacherous reality, not yet defeated or eradicated by the previous Franciscan labor. It is precisely in Sahagún’s work that Augustinian arguments appeared in the corpus of Franciscan historical sources, meaning after the failure of the prophetic and eschatological perspective of the first friars (Cipolloni, 1994, pp. 172–173). Sahagún’s pessimism is clearly noticeable in his impressive encyclopedic work, the Florentine Codex (1950–1982, 1979, 1989). The image of indigenous gods contained in its twelve books represented the outcome of a protracted epistemological confrontation—a tormented negotiation that started with the first ethnographic collection of data that Sahagún (1993, 1997) organized in the so-called Primeros Memoriales [First Memorials]; this had been collected thanks to a group of indigenous informants in Tepeapulco around 1558. Later, the hermeneutic confrontation with indigenous religion and culture continued with additional ethnographic research projects conducted in the bigger indigenous town of Tlatelolco and collected in the Códices Matritenses [Codices of Madrid]. Finally, the writing process ended in the late 1560s with the composition of the twelve books in Nahuatl of the Florentine Codex, and lastly with the Castilian translation, known as Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España [General History of the Things of New Spain], concluded by 1577 (Sahagún, 1989).

As regards the anti-idolatrous tools used by Sahagún, it is worth noting a partial continuity with the so-called ethnographic methodology developed by previous Franciscans such as Olmos and Motolinía.10 The failure of those efforts in extirpating idolatry generated in Sahagún the need for a closer look at indigenous gods, as well as a diminished confidence in the success of the missionary labor. However, a deeper analytical capacity did not produce a better understanding of indigenous religion, only its more careful deconstruction.

Concerning Sahagún’s usage of an Augustinian theological framework, it is worth noting that the friar explicitly quoted De Civitate Dei in the prologue to book 3 of his Florentine Codex, which was dedicated to the “origin of the gods” (Sahagún, 1989, Vol. 1, pp. 201–202). As noted by Walden Browne (2000, p. 195), this brief text on Nahua myths “is virtually the only place where Sahagún makes an explicit reference to an author and used a model for his own work.” In this section, the Franciscan devoted himself to a brief account of a few pre-Hispanic myths related to indigenous gods (López Austin, 2000) and, of course, to the deconstruction of a “mythical” or “fabulous” sort of Augustinian theology, founded on the cult of those dioses fingidos [false gods]. The fables and the fictions that the gentiles told about their false gods—as had already happened in the time of classical paganism—revealed that the Indians still believed in diablos mentirosos [lying devils] and engañadores [deceivers]:

No tuvo por cosa superflua ni vana el divino Augustino tratar de la teología fabulosa de los gentiles en el sexto libro de La ciudad de Dios, porque, como él dice, conocidas las fábulas y ficciones vanas que los gentiles tenían cerca de sus dioses fingidos, [los creyentes fieles] pudiesen fácilmente darles a entender que aquéllos no eran dioses ni podían dar cosa ninguna que fuese provechosa a la criatura racional. A este propósito en este Tercer Libro se ponen las fábulas y ficciones que estos naturales tenían cerca de sus dioses, porque entendidas las vanidades que ellos tenían por fe cerca de sus mentirosos dioses, vengan más fácilmente por la doctrina evangélica a conocer al verdadero Dios, y que aquellos que ello tenían por dioses no eran dioses, sino diablos mentirosos y engañadores

[The divine Augustine did not consider it superfluous or vain to deal with the fictitious theology of the gentiles in the sixth book of The City of God, because, as he says, the empty fictions and falsehoods which the gentiles held regarding their false gods being known, (true believers) could easily make them understand that those were not gods, nor could they provide anything that would be beneficial to a rational being. For this reason, the fictions and falsehoods these natives held regarding their gods are placed in this third book, because the vanities they believed regarding their lying gods being understood, they may come more easily, through Gospel doctrine, to know the true God and to know that those they held as gods were not gods but lying devils and deceivers]. (Sahagún, 1989, Vol. 1, p. 201)

By means of Augustinian arguments, Sahagún was able to mobilize an artificial construction of Mesoamerican polytheism. He indicates a sort of fictional translation, a first attempt to promote an adaptation between divine names, founded on alleged cultural proximity between these two worlds. As a result, it would be worth noticing how the transfer of images from one system to another actually gave rise to creative misunderstandings (see Wright-Carr and Marco Simón, in this volume).

In the third chapter of book 6 of De Civitate Dei, Augustine had represented Roman polytheism in accordance with the model that Varro presented in his 41 books, which were divided into divine and human subjects. The 16 books dedicated to the divine described priests, places of worship, times of the rites, and the gods; these were divided into three types: the certain, the uncertain, and the chief and select gods. Undeniably, Augustinian deconstruction of Varronian tripartite theology was one of the most successful polemical devices in Christian anti-pagan literature. Consequently, its authority reinforced the rhetorical strategies used by Sahagún to reveal the falsity of indigenous beliefs and practices, and to facilitate the cultural translation and incorporation of religious diversity, by means of reproducing an ideological representation of Roman religion. However, it is still questionable to what extent this kind of discourse could be effective in producing positive knowledge about indigenous religion. As recently noted by Laird (2016), “the need to convert the Indians was far more pressing than the pursuit of comparative anthropology” (p. 182). He also noticed that in Sahagún’s work, comparison between classical and Mesoamerican gods was never systematic or developed, serving mainly to illustrate the fictitious nature of Mesoamerican deities to a European audience.

This colonial procedure is clearly visible in the practice of a sort of anecdotal comparison between classical and Mesoamerican gods. During his ethnographic work, Sahagún offered only a few examples of comparison in some brief notations in the Códice Matritense del Real Palacio [Codex of the Royal Palace of Madrid] and, finally, he fashioned a more systematic effort in his later Castilian translation of the General History (Olivier, 2002, 2010).11 However, the greater part of his labor revealed an Augustinian inspiration: almost every attempt to compare indigenous and Roman gods was based on the epistemological possibility given by the list of twenty select gods in book 7, chapter 2 of De Civitate Dei.12 At the same time, the classification contained in book 1 of the Florentine Codex, devoted to the description of Mesoamerican gods, reveals the presence of an Augustinian framework, which classified three groups of indigenous gods, goddesses, and minor gods (Olivier, 2010, pp. 402–403). Therefore, the usage of De Civitate Dei served not to establish a device for analyzing and understanding the ethnographic data but to authorize his whole project by presenting a systematic plan of attack against idolatry (Solodkow, 2014, p. 350). Concerning book 3 of the Florentine Codex, it is important to consider that Augustinian arguments were not only directed against myths themselves, but also served to expose a more complex project of deconstruction of the entire indigenous religion. Sahagún’s interpretation permitted the incorporation of indigenous mythology in a broader framework, and the construction of a Mesoamerican tripartite theology: an artificial cultus deorum [cult of the gods], directed toward idolatrous deities, which was capable—as in the case of Roman polytheism—of politically organizing the whole of reality.13 To reveal this wider plan, it is necessary to look at the Augustinian organization of the first five of Sahagún’s books, to reveal the presence of a precise operational device (Browne, 2000, pp. 205–206). As noted by Ríos Castaño (2014) and recently by Bustamante García (2018), while book 3 of the Florentine Codex is devoted to an analysis of the myths that concern the actions of the main gods, books 1 and 2 also seem to fulfil an Augustinian function. For instance, it should also be noted that Sahagún’s arguments in the appendix to book 1 recovered the theological framework used by Augustine to dismantle the Varronian physical or natural theology and to provide a rationalization of the images of pagan gods (Browne, 2000, p. 199), for example, the well-known formula of Psalm 95, “omnes dii gentium demonia” [all the gods of the heathen are devils].14 As Ríos Castaño noted (2014, pp. 132–136), the distribution of the divine subject matter follows, in reverse order, a sort of Varronian framework. If we look in detail at the structure of Sahagún’s work, it should be clear that book 1 (dedicated to the description of the gods) would correspond to books 14–16 of the Varronian Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum [Antiquities of Human and Divine Things]. As explained by the friar, all the books dedicated to indigenous religion, from books 1 to 5, were clearly inspired by an Augustinian model. Book 2, dedicated to the religious rites of the twenty-day cycles, establishes a sort of political or civic theology (Botta, 2021) that has its parallel in the books that Varro dedicated to the divine cult (8, 11, 12, and 13). The appendix to book 2, dedicated to the priests and to the sacred buildings of Mexico Tenochtitlan, would correspond to books 2 to 7 of the Antiquitates. Finally, Sahagún’s books 4 and 5, dedicated to omens and divination, would correspond to the fourth and third by Varro.

Thus, the Augustinian model served Sahagún to construct—or we should rather say invent—a Mesoamerican pantheon formed by twelve major deities, according to the Varronian model, and similar to those of the Romans that were meticulously dismantled in De Civitate Dei. What really mattered in Sahagún’s project is the reproduction of the structure of a generic paganism and not the specific content of different gods. The identities and characters of all Mesoamerican deities were almost irrelevant. On the contrary, it was crucial to offer to his confreres involved in the evangelization of the Indians a way to recognize the survival of an idolatry that was still hidden behind an imperfect Christianity. For this reason, Sahagún’s comparative experiments only appeared in the Castilian translation of his encyclopedic work, the General History; this actually represented the final phase of a project destined to defend the Franciscan work against the attacks of the Spanish Crown, which, especially under Philip II, was openly hostile to all these experiments conducted with and in favor of indigenous people. Here, occasional comparisons between classical and Mesoamerican gods appeared as anecdotal attempts to translate those exotic realities for European readers. Consequently, the efficacy of the Augustinian model was based mainly on its capacity to mobilize a coherent Christian interpretation of the indigenous divine subject matter: on the one hand, it could be organized according to the Varronian model, while on the other, it could be dismantled through the meticulous usage of Augustinian arguments against tripartite theology.

Later, in the midst of the definitive crisis of their pedagogical projects, Franciscan discourses on indigenous religion reached a pessimistic political climax in the work of Gerónimo de Mendieta, represented by his controversial Historia Eclesiástica Indiana [Ecclesiastic History of the Indies], written during the last decades of the sixteenth century. Eventually, a sort of conciliation and recapitulation appeared in Juan de Torquemada’s Los Veintiún Libros Rituales y Monarquía Indiana [The Twenty-One Ritual Books and Indian Monarchy] (1975–1983).15 Concerning the description of indigenous beliefs and practices and despite a systematic use of the “Lascasian net” (Bernand & Gruzinski, 1988; Brading, 1988, pp. 304–322)—as the Dominican had extensively used De Civitate Dei in his Apologética Historia Sumaria [Apologetic Summary History]—Torquemada distanced himself from many of the proposals of his predecessors with his Monarquía Indiana. The friar considered all forms of worship as products of a natural disposition. Under every historical and cultural circumstance, humans would not be able to live without a proper knowledge of God. This statement reinforced a general representation of the religious history of humanity, within which idolatry represented the natural condition of every people in the absence of God’s grace (García Quintana, 1983, pp. 396–400). Starting from this alleged analogy between every kind of religion, in book 6 of the Monarquía Indiana, through a systematic usage of Augustinian arguments, Torquemada developed a careful methodology, rethinking the antipagan tools contained in De Civitate Dei, which enabled an incorporation of indigenous religion into a universal framework. Not only the gentiles but also these Indians fell into a sort of general error, as they worshipped the Sun and Moon and built sumptuous temples, as also did the people of Egypt. So indigenous misrepresentation of the divine was the same as in all “ancient nations of the gentiles” (1975–1983, Vol. 3, p. 52 [6.12]). Nevertheless, familiarity among different forms of idolatry was to be found not just in anecdotal similarities (as happened in Sahagún’s work) but in recognizing alleged regularity between different but uniform pagan gods. Torquemada employed Augustinian arguments and even his lists of classical gods, as devices to create an interpenetration between diverse “paganisms.” This was done because the gods venerated by the indigenous people and by the ancients not only resembled each other, as we previously noted, but were considered as the expression of a unique historical process (Vol. 3, p. 136 [7: prologue]). In fact, every historical and different expression of idolatry should be considered a result of the linguistic differentiation produced after the fall of the Tower of Babel and of the ethnic differentiation following the Deluge.

This change toward a genealogical interpretation of Mesoamerican idolatry originated in and was influenced by a deeply transformed historical context. During the expansion of the Catholic Monarchy, from 1580 to 1640, the connection between civilizations multiplied and produced a globalization of space and time. Therefore, the work of missionary orders represents a perfect “theater of observation” (Gruzinski, 2004, pp. 30–31) to understand the new conditions of possibility for a global discourse on religion. It means that missionary work was no longer just local or ethnographic, but global and anthropological. Consequently, in the Monarquía Indiana, idolatry was no longer an instrument to exclude indigenous religiosity; instead, it represents a sort of universal language, used to favor the incorporation of indigenous beliefs and practices in a comprehensive, but still hierarchical, Christian framework.

Torquemada widely used the Augustinian model to organize indigenous religious matter in his Monarquía Indiana: book 6 is dedicated to idolatry and the gods, book 7 to sacrifice, book 8 to the temples, book 9 to the priests, and book 10 to religious festivals (Frost, 1983, pp. 69–85). As for the description of Mesoamerican gods, Torquemada took the Augustinian framework to its transcendent conclusion, for example when, in comparing indigenous and classical gods, he claimed that in the West Indies the gods were divided into “three parts or classes,” as was done also by the “ancient nations of the gentiles.”16 In this section of his work, Torquemada reconsidered the list and description of Roman gods—provided by Varro, criticized by Augustine, and reproduced by Sahagún—with the aim of assimilating any indigenous gods, as he presumed a complete interpenetration of these two worlds. Concerning the problem of the “select gods,” for example, it should be noted that Torquemada—once again quoting Las Casas—proposed a sort of dialogue with the list in Sahagún’s first book and the one contained in De Civitate Dei. As an example of the recognized importance of Sahagún’s work in New Spain, Torquemada replicated—despite a reversed order—Sahagún’s group of the first five “major” gods: Huitzilopochtli, Painal, Tezcatlipoca, Tlaloc Tlamacazqui, and Quetzalcoatl. Regarding comparative efforts in the Monarquía Indiana, it is worth noting that Torquemada duplicated Sahagún’s analogies in many cases. Among others, Tlazolteotl was compared with Venus (pp. 100–101 [6.32]) and Xiuhteuctli with Vulcan (pp. 93–94 [6.28]). Moreover, Torquemada also showed an interpretative independence. Actually, he changed the meaning of several of Sahagún’s comparative choices: for example, Ceres was identified with Centeotl and no longer with Chicomecoatl (pp. 87–88 [6.25]). Finally, Torquemada looked frequently for original identifications within the list of the selected Augustinian gods that had not been compared by Sahagún: Tezcatzoncatl was Bacchus and Iyacateuctli was Mercury (pp. 93–96 [6.28–29]). However, that independence in comparing was not just the product of a refined rhetorical strategy, capable of better describing a diverse religion for a Western audience. On the contrary, Torquemada used Augustinian arguments as an epistemological tool to interpenetrate Mesoamerican and classical gods (Bernand & Gruzinski, 1988). To observe the consequences of this interpretative model, it could be useful to note that Sahagún’s descriptions and interpretations were in some cases “corrected” by Torquemada through arguments contained in De Civitate Dei. As an example of this dialogue between the different sources, it is worth mentioning the peculiar analysis that Torquemada produced about the nature of the Mexican god Huitzilopochtli.17 In this case, Torquemada reproduced the main elements of Sahagún’s description, but his final interpretation was profoundly divergent. In the first place, Torquemada rejected Sahagún’s identification of Huitzilopochtli with Hercules,18 proposing an alternative analogy with the Roman god of war, Mars (pp. 72–75 [6.21]). On the one hand, Sahagún’s identification of Huitzilopochtli with Hercules served to promote a euhemeristic interpretation that could have exposed the human nature of Huitzilopochtli and revealed his alleged divinity to the idolaters.19 On the other hand, Torquemada’s identification of Huitzilopochtli with Mars seems to proceed coherently with his overall project. Torquemada’s purpose was—as a sort of anticipation of the criollo agenda—to show the positive contribution that an “Indian monarchy” (but definitively Christianized) could have provided to the political and religious project of a universal “Catholic monarchy.” It was in fact crucial to dismantling the very foundation of a dangerous pre-Hispanic political theology, that is, Huitzilopochtli as the patron of the Mexica. To achieve that goal, Torquemada proposed an extraordinary and creative cultural translation: the very nature of Huitzilopochtli was explained, not only by reproducing Augustinian arguments against war among the pagans but also through an intercultural reflection concerning the etymology of the name of Mars (August. De civ. D. 18.10). Torquemada proposed—or we should say that he created this pattern through the usage of comparison—a hypothesis about the existence of transcultural worship of a general god of war, a great intercultural god of battles (p. 74 [6.21]). Therefore, the cult dedicated to these two gods—the Indian Mars and the ancient Mars—would have produced identical features. For example, the name of the Areopagus of Athens, a building related to Ares-Mars, could reveal the symmetrical existence in Mesoamerica of an indigenous Areopagus, that is to say the Templo Mayor, the Great Temple of Mexico Tenochtitlan, on which Huitzilopochtli was actually worshipped (p. 75 [6.21]).

Finally, we can briefly observe another example of this comparative strategy in Torquemada’s discourse about the god Tlaloc, a Mesoamerican deity of water and earth. In the Augustinian interpretation of Torquemada, Tlaloc was part of the group of natural gods, that is, the third lineage of the gods of the gentiles in De Civitate Dei, as they attributed to every natural thing a god, giving them different offices, and so there were as many gods as there were human things (p. 59 [6.16]). The similarities that emerged from the comparison between Tlaloc and Neptune must necessarily be the product of the action of the Devil,20 who must have been the inventor of both (p. 76 [6.23]). However, it is worth noting how the forced comparison with Neptune led Torquemada to think of a marine aspect of the cult of Tlaloc that had not appeared in any work by previous chroniclers. It is evident, then, that this unusual interpretation of the god was not the result of new ethnographic data but was once again the consequence of the theological usage of Augustinian arguments. Again, the analogy with Roman gods does not provide useful elements for a better understanding of indigenous religion. Torquemada’s description is not the outcome of ethnographic research, nor does it represent the fruit of a renewed epistemological strategy to promote a better understanding of pre-Hispanic religion. On the contrary, Torquemada constructed a definitive interpenetration of two worlds, that is to say, that indigenous and classical gods were to be considered as identical. Therefore, after recapitulating Augustinian arguments against the cult dedicated to Neptune, Torquemada affirmed that it was sufficiently proved that these two “demons” were the same: Neptune was Tlaloc and Tlaloc was Neptune (p. 81 [6.23]).

In conclusion, Sahagún showed a sort of balance and symmetry between a rhetorical and a structural function in the use of Augustinian arguments. He carefully used the authority of the Father of the Church to empower his missionary project and, at the same time, to explain to a Western audience the errors of indigenous people in familiar terms. From the point of view of a research project devoted to the reconstruction of Mesoamerican religion, Sahagún’s data offered a useful representation, at least partially. Despite the fact that his comparative enterprise proceeds through metaphors and anecdotes to dismantle the pre-Hispanic religion, it continues to deal with ethnographic data. In contrast, in Torquemada’s work a rhetorical function seems less relevant than a structural one. This happened because the Monarquía Indiana responded to new historical concerns that emerged at the beginning of the seventeenth century. During this missionary stage, by means of comparison Torquemada placed Mesoamerican polytheism at a precise stage of the universal development of human religiosity, in that global and conceptual pattern that Christianity built to authorize control over religious otherness. In this perspective, the prolonged proximity to pre-Hispanic idolatries must have convinced Torquemada that it was possible to recognize traces of a universal history. Actually, the structural use of comparison was legitimized not only by formal analogies between Mesoamerican and classical gods, but also by the construction of a common genealogy, as manifested within the Christian history of salvation. Consequently, in the historical course of the Franciscan labor in New Spain, the third term on which the comparison was grounded—the alleged universality of the Christian notion of God—became increasingly stronger. Instead of opening an epistemological confrontation with religious otherness, Torquemada’s comparison with Mesoamerican ethnographic data consolidated the Christian interpretative paradigm to the point that this comparative process of classification became an effective tool to think about all the different religions of the countless pagan peoples recently discovered. It was the theological result of an extraordinary global endeavor, which would have offered an essential contribution to the transformation of the concept of religion during early modern history.