1539: Don Carlos Ometochtzin, Aztec heretic

ExecutedToday.com ^ | November 24, 2010 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1539, the Spanish Inquisition had Aztec noble Don Carlos Ometochtzin (or Don Carlos Chichimecatecuhi, or Don Carlos Ahuachpitzactzin) burned at the stake for reverting to the pre-Columbian indigenous religion.

Just another Mesoamerican depredation?

Surprisingly, this execution stands out as an exception in the first generations of its conquest. It even cost the first bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumarraga, a reprimand for his excess severity. Why?

Certainly any European Christian would have had trouble with the Inquisition if, like Don Carlos (Spanish Wikipedia entry | English), he had been caught with idols of Xipe Totec in his place.

But it was precisely the point that these weren’t Europeans. In 16th century “New Spain,” syncretisms of Christianity and the native Mexican cults still in living memory were the norm, a scenario recalling early Christianity co-opting the pagan rites it supplanted.*

Respect Xipe Totec’s authoritah! And that created for the Spanish a problem: how stringently to insist upon an alien orthodoxy for its new subjects? The problem was pragmatic at least as much as it was theological, because the business of winning converts for Christ had to coexist with the business of running an empire. No sense provoking civil war just because the newest souls in the fold don’t have the Te Deum down; Cortes himself, in his initial conquest, had prohibited human sacrifice but not risked closing native temples.* That wasn’t done until 1525....

[aces]

Man knows nada..a to z, alpha to omega

https://rumble.com/vpowzz-golden-calf.html

Worships the golden calf

[Little Ray]

Xipe Totec, the flayed god?
The one they sacrificed men to by skinning them alive, then the priest would wear the skin until it rotted and fell apart?
That Xipe Totec?
I would have burned him alive, too.

[Verginius Rufus]

I read once that in the Spanish colonies, the Inquisition never sentenced any of the indigenous people to death (only those of Spanish origin). This would be an exception.