One God, One Faith, One Baptism

Baptism represents a central moment in any Christian’s life; a moment where they become members of the kingdom of heaven and where they take upon themselves the name of Christ.  Indeed, Christ himself declared the necessity of baptism for salvation.  In efforts to secure the salvation of the Nahuas, the friars of the New World frequently emphasized and performed the sacrament among the natives, and instructed Nahua religious stewards (fiscales) on how to perform the rite in cases of necessity and in the absence of a priest.  Yet the instructions friars gave to such fiscales on how to perform the sacrament varied.  This paper employs Nahuatl religious texts to illustrate the similarities and differences in the instructions given to Nahua fiscales, and how these diverse instructions complicated the colonial Church’s ability to maintain “one baptism.”