page_title: History of the Catholic Church in Mexico
section_title: The first evangelists to the indigenous
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Catholic Church in Mexico / Early period: The Spiritual Conquest 1519–1572 / The first evangelists to the indigenous
caption_attribution_description: Español: Convento de San Miguel Arcángel en Huejotzingo, Puebla
context_page_description: The history of the Catholic Church in Mexico dates from the period of the Spanish conquest and has continued as an institution in Mexico into the twenty-first century. Catholicism is one of the two major legacies from the Spanish colonial era, the other being Spanish as the nation's language. The Catholic Church was a privileged institution until the mid nineteenth century. It was the sole permissible church in the colonial era and into the early Mexican Republic, following independence in 1821. Following independence, it involved itself directly in politics, including in matters that did not specifically involve the Church.
  In the mid-nineteenth century the liberal Reform brought major changes in church-state relations. Mexican liberals in power challenged the Catholic Church's role, particularly in reaction to its involvement in politics. The Reform curtailed the Church's role in education, property ownership, and control of birth, marriage, and death records, with specific anticlerical laws. Many of these were incorporated into the Constitution of 1857, restricting the Church's corporate ownership of property and other limitations.
context_section_description: In the early conquest era of Mexico, the formal institutions of Church and State had not been established. But to initiate the spiritual conquest even though the episcopal hierarchy (the diocesan clergy) had not yet been established, Cortés requested that the mendicant orders of Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians be sent to New Spain, to convert the indigenous. The Twelve Apostles of Mexico as they are known were the first Franciscans who arrived in 1524, followed by the Dominican order in 1526, and the Augustinian order in 1533.
  Mendicants did not usually function as parish priests, administering the sacraments, but mendicants in early Mexico were given special dispensation to fulfill this function. The Franciscans, the first-arriving mendicants, staked out the densest and most central communities as their bases for conversion. These bases (called doctrina) saw the establishment of resident friars and the building of churches, often on the same sacred ground as pagan temples.
  Given the small number of mendicants and the vast number of indigenous to convert, outlying populations of indigenous communities did not have resident priests but priests visited at intervals to perform the sacraments (mainly baptism, confession, and matrimony). In prehispanic Central Mexico, there had been a long tradition of conquered city-states adding the gods of their conquerors to their existing pantheon so that conversion to Christianity seemed to be similar.
  In general, Indians did not resist conversion to Christianity. Priests of the indigenous were displaced and the temples transformed into Christian churches. Mendicants targeted Indian elites as key converts, who would set the precedent for the commoners in their communities to convert. Also targeted were youngsters who had not yet grown up with pagan beliefs. In Tlaxcala, some young converts were murdered and later touted as martyrs to the faith.
  In Texcoco, however, one its lords, Don Carlos, was accused and convicted of sedition by the apostolic inquisition (which gives inquisitorial powers to a bishop) headed by Juan de Zumárraga in 1536 and was executed. His execution prompted the crown to reprimand Zumárraga and when the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in Mexico in 1571, Indians were exempted from its jurisdiction. There was a concern that Indians were insufficiently indoctrinated in Catholic orthodox beliefs to be held to the same standards as Spaniards and other members of the República de Españoles. In the eyes of the Church and in Spanish law, Indians were legal minors.
  The arrival of the Franciscan Twelve Apostles of Mexico initiated what came to be called The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico. Many of the names and accomplishments of earliest Franciscans have come down to the modern era, including Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, Bernardino de Sahagún, Andrés de Olmos, Alonso de Molina, and Gerónimo de Mendieta. The first bishop of Mexico was Franciscan Juan de Zumárraga. Early Dominicans in Mexico include Bartolomé de Las Casas, who famously was an encomendero and black slave dealer in the early Caribbean before he became a Dominican friar; Diego Durán and Alonso de Montúfar who became the second bishop of Mexico. It was not until Pedro Moya de Contreras became archbishop of Mexico in 1573 that a diocesan cleric rather than a mendicant served as Mexico's highest prelate.
  The friars sought ways to make their task of converting millions of Indians less daunting. By using existing indigenous settlements in Central Mexico where indigenous rulers were kept in place in the post-conquest period, the mendicant orders created doctrinas, major Indian towns designated as important for the initial evangelization, while smaller settlements, visitas, were visited at intervals to teach, preach, and administer the sacraments.
  Friars built churches on the sites of temples, transforming the ancient sacred space into a place for Catholic worship. Some of these have been recognized by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites under the general listing of Monasteries on the slopes of Popoc
caption: Indigenous mural painting in the Exconvento de Huejotzingo (former Convent Huejotzingo) which represents six of the twelve first Franciscan missionaries to New Spain.
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