Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Franciscan Habits: The Art of Dying in Late Sixteenth-Century Spanish-Indigenous Cholula
Monday, January 5, 2015: 11:40 AM
Bryant Suite (New York Hilton)
On May 23, 1596, in the city of Cholula, New Spain, a small crowd gathered around the prone figure of doña María Tlaltecayoa, an india principal who lay on her death bed in the home she shared with her Spanish husband.[1]In the presence of the notary and a Nahuatl interpreter, she dictated her will, leaving alms to cover the cost of her funeral procession, her burial, an unspecified number of open casket masses, and a Franciscan habit. Why would she include the latter? So that she may be buried in it. This final request appears in 21 of the 26 Spanish-language wills I analyze in this paper, which illustrates the art of death and dying in late sixteenth-century San Pedro Cholula, a former Mesoamerican holy site and shrine of Quetzalcoatl worship appropriated by Franciscan friars in 1528. As this pious request indicates, concern with the state of one’s soul remained of paramount importance to those contemplating death. Forming just one part of the Church’s highly-ordered death ritual in New Spain, the writing of one’s will captured the most pressing concerns of those on the brink of meeting their creator. Lying in the throes of their final illness and unable to avoid the inevitability of death, Cholula’s residents arrange their business affairs on earth so that their souls might expire in peace. To ensure a holy death and to increase their chances of avoiding eternal damnation or the fires of purgatory, these testators request not only the customary requiem masses, but also the habit of St. Francis as their burial shroud. Functioning as a remedy both physical and spiritual, this garment’s power transcends this world, leading pious souls to the beatific vision in the next.
[1] An india principal was a high-ranking native person whose lineage pre-dated European arrival.
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