"Tears of the Indians" or Superficial Conversion?: José de Acosta, the Black Legend, and Spanish Evangelization in the New World

The author analyzes the changing English perceptions of Spanish evangelization in the Americas, arguing that Jose de Acosta's work marked a fundamental shift in English attitudes toward Catholic claims of native conversions. Whereas the earliest Black Legend sto- ries had emphasized Spanish rapacity and native rejection of Christianity, later English controversialists seized on Acosta's admissions of superficial conversions to argue that Spaniards had succeeded in partial conversions only because Catholicism was marked by the same forms of idolatry and superstition as native religions.Keywords: Acosta,Jose de; Black Legend; missionaries; religionbyUpon these lambes [the Indians] so meeke, so qualified et endowed of their maker and creator, as hath bin said, entred the Spanish incontinent as they knewe them, as wolves, as lions, et as tigres most cruel of long time famished: and have not done in those quarters these 40. yeres be past, nei- ther yet doe at this present, ought els save teare them in peeces, kill them, martyre them, afflict them, torment them, et destroy them, by straunge sortes of cruelties.1So wrote the controversial champion of native rights, the Dominican Bartolome de Las Casas, unintentionally injecting the "tears of the Indians" motif into the virulent and persistent anti-Spanish tradition known as the Black Legend-the enduring English characterization of Spaniards as intolerant, cruel, and violent religious fanatics.2 Given Las Casas's obvious importance in forming English perceptions of Spain in the Americas, it is no surprise that scholars of the Black Legend have focused so heavily on him and the two things that his scathing pen so acerbically denounced: Spanish rapacity and cruelty.3 Perhaps less appreciated is the fact that to a large degree, Englishmen also formed their first impression of the Indian from Las Casas's tract. Docile and intelligent, Las Casas's native was ready at any moment to adopt Christianity if only it was brought to him by a gentle and will- ing soul.Thus, as Englishmen gobbled up the continual reprints of Las Casas's general indictment of the Spanish conquest, they were sup- plied in turn with a ready-made indictment of Spanish evangelization; in short, it was widely believed that Spanish greed and cruelty had ruined a promising situation for Christianity.As will be seen, the tropes of Spanish rapacity and Indian docility did not go away. However, these were not the only tropes that seeped out of Spanish sources. As historians of colonial Latin America have noted, optimism about the potential for native conversion did not last. Spanish clergymen like Jose de Acosta slowly began to understand that many natives had only been superficially converted to Christianity. When Acosta's admissions were transmitted to England, English thinkers seized on them to argue that Spaniards had succeeded in par- tial conversions primarily because of the essential congruity between Catholicism and the superstitious Indian religions. Moreover, if Englishmen had absorbed the conception of the docile, blank-slated Indian from Las Casas, then just as quickly did they absorb the oppo- site from Acosta. Acosta's Indian was a weak creature, often irrational and frequently in the snares of the devil.4 Accepting this characteriza- 31 tion, English Protestants exploited the fact that many Indian seemed to take so readily to Catholicism to argue that Catholicism was - like Indian religion - essentially "savage" and pagan. In the process, they were able to pair this new argument with old staples of antipopery (such as the charge that Catholics were idolaters5); to sharpen their views on emerging elements of antipopery (such as the claim that miracles were not a necessary feature of the true Church); and to adopt novel categories of antipopery (such as the charge that transubstantiation was theoretically akin to Indian cannibalism). In the end, these charges helped to demarcate more sharply between Roman Catholic and English creeds by linking the presumed exotic savagery of the natives to the more familiar savagery of Catholic doctrine. …