“Mary Magdalene was not like a dog”. A seventeenth-century Guatemalan sermon in Nahuatl

Abstract

This paper presents the transcription and translation of Chapter III of the Teotamachilizti, an anonymous collection of sermons in Nahuatl printed in Guatemala probably inthe late seventeenth century. This hitherto unpublished document evolves around the life of Jesus Christ and closely follows the text of the gospels. A brief introduction tothis source describes particular traits of its language and comments on the resources used to transmit the Christian doctrine. It also focuses on the figures of Mary Magdaleneand Judas, whose stories served its author to build the moral lesson presented in this fragment.