Spanish Catholicism Research Articles

Irrational Triumph: Cultural Despair, Military Nationalism, and the Ideological Origins of Franco's Spain

A nationalist vision, strongly rooted in Spanish Catholicism and military culture, was one of the most powerful ideological tools of the Franco regime until its demise in 1975. Although nationalist movements in Spain's Basque and Catalan provinces have been closely studied, hitherto little attention has been given to the origins and evolution of nationalism in Spain itself. In this study, historian Geoffrey Jensen examines the complex and richly diverse origins of Francoist nationalism. In the years following defeat in the Spanish-American War, Spain's leading intellectual figures struggled to explain the reasons for their country's decline and to argue over possible means to regenerate the nation. Among these figures were members of Spain's Restoration officer corps, men whose views reflected a surprisingly wide range of ideas and political positions, who participated in the new intellectual movements that attracted much attention elsewhere in Europe, and whose values ranged from extreme conservatism to Nietzschean modernism. The diversity of this military culture, as Jensen demonstrates, gradually narrowed as events in early 20th-century Spain seemed to encourage ever more radical solutions to the social, political and economic unrest of the period. Jensen's pathbreaking analysis of Spain's military culture during the years between 1898 and the establishment of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship in 1923 marks a major contribution to our understanding of subsequent Spanish history. Focusing on the intellectual world of Spain's military elite - its education, values and the writings of some of its leading intellectual figures - Irrational Triumph reveals the evolution of a military culture that ultimately became a principal bulwark for Franco's fascist regime and whose monolithic nationalist vision shaped the fate of Spain and the country's non-Castilian minorities for the rest of the century.

From the Personal to the Transpersonal: Self Reclamation Through Ritual-in-Performance

That which in art reminds us of our greater selves, our unexplored potentials, and our personal mysteries —however beautiful, dignified, humiliating, or painful— ultimately opens us to transpersonal realities of which we are not immediately conscious. Ana Mendieta and Yoko Ono used ritual-in-performance to explore myths and realities of identity toward seeking a greater self. When Yoko Ono began to exhibit and perform in the United States in the early 1960s, she inspired what became the Fluxus movement, with performance and conceptual work that exemplified the risk artists might take to explore such issues as personal boundaries, humility, chance, reverence and trust. In "Cut Piece," (Figure 1) performed in 1964, as she was slowly, ritualistically stripped by members of the audience, her vulnerable, yet stoic disposition exemplified a transpersonal moment. She meditatively sat through the drama of her clothes cutting with no overt anxiety about physical violence. Ana Mendieta's body rituals transgressed personal boundaries in a different way than Ono's. Mendieta assumed the identities of archetypal deities, evoked and transformed rituals from the African-Cuban religious practice Santería, a syncretization of West African (Yoruba) animistic symbolism with Spanish Catholicism.1 (Figure 2) Mendieta recreated rituals that intentionally involved a level of sacrifice in order to fuse body, nature, and art. The ritual process for Mendieta, as for Ono, was a stripping down of ego to manifest a transpersonal moment that is self-empowering through its voluntary self-loss. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Futurist and Dada artists pursued performance over other media to challenge the formality of how art was perceived and engaged in by the audience. It was not until the 1950s that artists returned to favoring performance over other art media, creating work that can be compared with the Baroque sensibility, both wrought with a decadence and a strong impetus for indulgence. Performance artists of the sixties were seminal in re-initiating the mechanism of performance as a creative means for expressing a freedom of the body and the self. This aesthetic, often dismissed as mischievously self-deprecating and narcissistic, was, in fact, a sobering self-revelatory process of reaffirming the body and identity (while inevitably exploiting them). This process of self-inflicted disengagement, manipulation, humiliation, and critical evaluation was an essential part of the process of re-structuring a greater consciousness. Using ritual, Yoko Ono and Ana Mendieta enriched the potentially debilitating deconstructive process of the body projected in performance. The ritual process established a reverence from which they not only achieved a reclaiming of identity on a personal level but also challenged any fixed perception of identity and its relationship to a single culture or nationality. In my examination of their processes, I will demonstrate how the performance work of Ono and Mendieta invigorates the dialogue on identity by re-claiming identity as an experience of totality rather than as a limited, fragmented, or singularly encapsulated, self-indulgent experience.

Gender and Morals in Spanish Catholic Youth Culture: A Case Study of the Marian Congregations 1930–1936

Jesuit-run Marian Congregations proliferated in 1930s Spain. Drawing on literature produced for their members, this article demonstrates how gendered understandings were fundamental to the congregations' symbolic delineation of an uncontaminated Catholic space. Visions of an incorrupt male elite abound, reinforcing the Jesuits' educational mission among future leaders and opinion-formers. In contrast, the purity of women and children was seen as a sign of society's moral health. Modesty was the quintessential female virtue. Yet, the cult of the Virgin Mary suggested that the virginal female body was both tool and symbol in the struggle against a fallen world. Girls were, therefore, charged with the task of moral guardianship. Such campaigns were emblematic of Spanish Catholicism's tendency to proffer religious solutions to social problems.

Constructing identities: Ethnic boundaries and elite preferences in Puerto Rico

This article assesses elite preferences and the objectification of ethnic boundaries from a rational choice approach. Ethnic elites seek markers that distinguish their group from rivals while still maintaining their in‐group privileges. Contending mythmakers in Puerto Rico attempted to culturally objectify the Spanish language and Catholicism. It is contended that selecting language was in the best interest of the island's secular ethnic elites while a religious identity was a suboptimal alternative.

Pestalozzi in Hell: The Response of Conservative and Reactionary Spanish Catholicism to the Figure of Pestalozzi during the First Third of the 20th Century

The creation in Spain, in 1898, of the History of Education as an academic disdpline for the education of teachers (and the consequent publication of the first Spanish text-books on it), as well as the commemoration, in 1927, of the centenary of Pestalozzi's death, together with the conflicts between secularism and Catholicism, gave rise to very diverse and opposed appropiations and receptions of Pestalozzi's figure and works. The analysis reveals the radical position of conservative and reactionary Catholicism and its opposition to the mythification, enthronement and lay sanctification of the Swiss educator undertaken by other ideological sectors.

Betrayal of the Innocents: Desire, Power, and the Catholic Church in Spain by Timothy Mitchell

Betrayal of the Innocents- Desire, Power, and the Catholic Church in Spain. By Timothy Mitchell. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1998. Pp. vii, 178. $39,95 clothbound; $16,50 paperback.) Interpretations of the past sweeping over the centuries often make fascinating reading. But for historians moved by the traditional evidentiary canons of their craft, such grand sallies are the cause of some discomfort. This provocative study by a highly regarded social anthropologist combines the insights of his field with psychological theory and a dose of history to argue that Spanish Catholicism developed over the centuries a powerful set of values identified as authoritarian sexual repression. The imposition of these values on society, he maintains, was damaging to individuals and encouraged patterns of sexual abuse by the clergy ranging from the use of the confessional in the sixteenth century to seduce penitents to cases of clerical sexual abuse brought to light in contemporary Spain. That such cases occurred in the distant and recent past is beyond dispute. Nor is there any doubt that the Spanish Church's traditional dark and pessimistic view of human nature in its sexual dimension verged on the obsessional, perhaps more so in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than in earlier times. To what extent this obsession was a uniquely Spanish phenomenon, as the author argues, is less certain. Similar concerns with upholding rigorous morality in sexual matters were scarcely absent from Protestant Europe until it was submerged by the powerful secularizing currents of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The thesis that the five centuries considered in some detail in this study are connected through an unchanging pattern of authoritarian sexual repression and the clerical abuse that accompanied it rests primarily on psychological arguments that may well have merit, although difficult to prove from an historical perspective. It is more difficult to see a direct historical connection between the abuse of the confessional brought to light by the Inquisition in tile sixteenth century and recent cases of sexual abuse by priests. The author appears to assume that the clergy formed an undifferentiated mass over the centuries when, in fact, it underwent as dramatic a transformation as civil society during the nineteenth century. 711-ie chaotic recruitment of priests, the vastly uneven levels of clerical education, the extraordinarily diverse social backgrounds of the clergy and the attraction of the priesthood for those inspired less by religious motives than the prospect of having a roof over one's head and food on the table in early modern Spain stand in sharp contrast to the more tightly controlled clerical caste formed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It would have been useful for the legitimate indictment of abuses to have been placed in the context of the socio-economic back-grounds of priests and the particular social conditions of each period discussed. The fact is that historians know little of the state of the lower clergy for both the early modern and modern periods. …

Naturaleza, religión y cultura tradicional: Un ensayo sobre el pensamiento rústico

This study focuses on the natural elements in the religious lore of La Rioja, in northern Spain: mainly trees, bulls and bees in myth and ritual. It stresses their sociological and cosmological meanings: patterns of kinship, marriage and group identity, ideas about gender, body and ultimately «nature». Furthermore, it this study proposes on implicit «rustic mind», contemporary wilt but apart from Christian taught (not a mere survival of the past) and discusses the role of this «mind» in the history of Spanish Catholicism.

Prayer for a Sleeping Child: Iconography of the Funeral Ritual of Little Angels in Mexico

The ritual of little angels, known by this name in almost all Hispanic America, refers to the rite of the transit to life beyond this world of children baptized while still alive. According to the Catholic dogma, children die without mortal sin, and go directly to Heaven where they become angels, without having to pass through Purgatory. Consequently, the death of a little angel, in spite of the pain it inflicts on parents, is a happy event. This ancient ritual arrived in this side of the Atlantic as part of the Spanish culture, and rooted perfectly in Mexico through the Prehispanic celebration that the narrator and evangelizer Friar Diego Duran defined as the 'Miccaihuiltontli,' which is a diminutive noun, and means the festivity of dead children, and I understood that it is a celebration for deceased innocent children. As in the case of other cultural elements, when the indigenous people came to realize that the only way to continue celebrating their ritual was assimilating it to that which came from Spain, they readily did so. Similarly, the tenth month of the year, devoted by the mexicas to the adult dead, fused with November 2, Deads' Day of the Catholic tradition, while the Miccaihuiltontli, previously held during the ninth month of the year, was celebrated under a new fashion each November 1 st. Thus, funeral rituals have a prominent place in Mexican popular culture, but they also reflect an undeniable demographic reality. Death was a frequent event, especially among children, and it continued displaying extremely high levels well into the twentieth century. During the government of Porfirio Diaz, life expectation was around 30 years of age, and infant mortality reached 30%. When the provision of medical and educational services was extended to small locations, mortality declined to 22% in 1920, and represented 13% in 1940. In this paper we will indicate the possible origins of this popular Mexican ritual, and inquire about the specific changes it has undergone, based on iconographic representations and, particularly, the incorporation of photography, which is still practicedthough to a lesser extent-to this day. Thus, we will delve into the particular relationship that is established within the popular recreation of the little angels' ritual, between tradition-symbolic forms of the rite-and modernity, characterized by an almost immediate incorporation of the image, and other elements by the photographer who acts as a new master of ceremonies. The Ritual Background and parallelism Foster defines children's funeral rituals as a popular form of Spanish catholicism. Well into the late nineteenth century, when a child died in Spain-along the Mediterranean coastline from Castellon to Murcia, in Extremadura and the Canary Islands, although it had existed since the turn of the century in most of the southern and central regions of the peninsula-the dance of little angels was performed. Friends and relatives of the dead child sang and danced all through the night to the sound of guitars and castanets. While transformed, dance, music and games are also included in the Mexican ritual. This author points out, among other similarities between both versions of the ritual, that of dressing the child in white (a symbol of pureness), and placing a palm leaf on the coffin (to denote virginity). He also transcribes the description of a child's funeral that the French traveler Charles Davillier witnessed in Valencia around 1870. In his account, Davillier told that the little deceased girl-5 or 6 years old-was laid on a table, and a taper was lit on each corner; she was dressed as for a party and wore a crown of orange blossoms around her head. Details about the garment are important since they are the most prominent of the Mexican ritual. However, while the transference-like that of all other European cultural assets and elements-arrived in America from Spain-which is evident in the dissemination of the ritual throughout the whole Ibero American continent and its presence in communities of both indigenous and African origin-there are portraits of death children of the Renaissance and the Baroque period in Italy, England, Holland, France and colonial North America, that could be suggesting the presence of a special ritual. …

South and Meso-American Native Spirituality: From the Cult of the Feathered Serpent to the Theology of Liberation ed. by Gary H. Gossen

1 30BOOK REVIEWS Clarke uses a -wide range of primary and secondary sources to support his work. However, while discounting the work of some other writers who have explored the Irish Catholics in Toronto, he fails to provide sufficient evidence to disprove dieir analyses. For example, while admitting that in contemporary accounts and manuscript material Irish Catholics were stereotypical as drunken brawlers, Clarke takes Kenneth Duncan and Murray Nicolson to task for basing "their respective interpretations on this stereotype rather than exploding it as a myth" (p. 28). Through diis in-depdi study, Clarke has nonetheless opened a door on an ethno-religious community diat contributed to the development of Toronto. It invites new approaches that will lead to a standard work in diis field. Murray W. Nicolson Wilfrid Laurier University Latin American South andMeso-AmericanNative Spirituality: From the CultoftheFeathered Serpent to the Theology of Liberation. Edited by Gary H. Gossen, in collaboration with Miguel León-Portilla. [World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, Volume 4.] (New York: Crossroad . 1993. Pp. xii, 563. $4950 clothbound.) South and Meso-American Native Spirituality offers a sampler of the religious life in a region marked by multiple spiritual traditions, in the preContact period; and by the formation of new traditions from the cultural gifts of Amerindians, Europeans, Africans, and Asians, in the post-Contact era. Coverage includes not only South America and Mesoamerica, but also the Caribbean and other parts ofMexico and ofCentral America. The editor excludes "mainstream Judeo-Christian belief and practice" from consideration; they are "fundamentally linked to the mainstream ofworld religious tradition, and their Latin American expression, in global perspective, is not particularly distinctive " (p. 22). History and cultural analysis combine with emphasis upon spirituality and die religious quest. In part 1, the faiths of the ancient Nahua-Mexicas (Aztecs), Maya, and Incas are described by Miguel León-Portilla, Monro S. Edmonson, and Manuel M. Marzal respectively. In part 2, the spiritual legacy of Hispanic Catholicism enters into both Elsa Cecilia Frost's discussion of die theologians' concept of the indigenous soul and Manuel M. Marzal's description of sixteenth-century Spanish Catholicism. The encounter of Iberian Christianity with Nahua, Mayan, and Inca state religions is die theme of part 3· J- Jorge Klor de Alva considers Aztec spirituality and Nahuatized Christianity, while Louise M. Burkhart examines the legend, image, and devotion to the Virgin BOOK REVIEWS131 of Guadalupe, Mexico. Eugenio Maurer Avalos reports on Maya Catholicism among the Tzeltal in a Chiapas, Mexico, town. Manuel Gutiérrez Estévez describes the spirituality of die Christian Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula past and present. Jan Szeminski's subject is the Peruvian expression of the Thupa Amaro movement in the context of eighteenth-century Andean Indian Catholicism. Contact between Christianity and groups that did not adhere to the great aboriginal state religions is the concern of part 4. Peter T. Fürst presents the central, cosmogonie myth of the Huichol. Didier Boremanse describes the spirituality of the northern group of Lacandon, Chiapas, Mexico; while Louis Faron focuses on the religion ofthe Mapuche ofsouthern-middle Chile. Marcos Guevara-Berger's chapter is an experimental, ethnographic re-creation of a visit to a Bribri Indian shaman in Costa Rica. Part 5 brings together spiritual traditions which are rooted in the historical experience of Latin America and have a substantial following. Peter T. Fürst uses Theodor Koch-Gruenberg's text on magical spells among the Pemon and Taurepan of Venezuela. Gary H. Gossen centers his study of the human condition, spirituality, and moral order among the Chamula Tzotzil of Chiapas, Mexico, on native rendition and exegesis of a sacred text. Carlos Rodriguez Brandäo's survey of the religious spectrum in Brazil focuses on popular Catholicism (not considered "official" [p. 470, n. I]), Afro-Brazilian spiritualistic religions, and Protestant Pentecostalism . Julio Sánchez Cárdenas describes Orisha Religion (Santería) in modern Afro-Caribbean societies. David G. Scotchmer describes the spirituality ofMaya Protestants in Guatemala in the context of Protestantism there. The sampler approaches its close with Mary Christine Morkovsky's chapter on the "spiritual experience of encountering the Lord in the poor" which "sustains liberation praxis . . . and liberation...

Les images miraculeuses du diocèse de Mexico au milieu du XVIIIe siècle

Abstract Since W. Christian investigated the way in which miraculous sanctuaries in modern Spain became rooted in a specific historical and geographical context, it appears interesting to wonder how Spanish Catholicism found itself new references in its mission territories. Finally it becomes obvious that, in mid-eighteenth century, Mexico, clearly differed from Spain, the images of Christ being far more widespread than those of saints and even competing with those of the Virgin. Above all, it appears that Mexican devotion was more closely controlled by the clergy at a time when, contrary to a widespread opinion, very little Christian devotion was taking over pre-Hispanic creeds.

Getting the Job Done Well: African American Students and Catholic Schools

African Americans have affiliated with Catholicism and Catholic schools in the United States since the beginning of the colonial era. Records document that some of the earliest African-Caribbean settlers in the colonies professed Catholicism in the very early 1500s (Davis, 1990). One factor which enhanced this relationship during the 18th century was the Code Noir (1724-1803), which prescribed the more liberal treatment of free African Americans, mulattos, and slaves in the French and Spanish Catholic Louisiana Territory. As a result of the Territory's laws, several African American girls were educated at Ursuline Academy in New Orleans in 1727 (McDermott & Hunt, 1991). Two thousand African Americans, freed under Code Noir, migrated to Louisiana following Santo Domingo's slave revolt in 1791 (Williams, 1983). They were generally characterized as wealthy, educated, French-speaking, and Roman Catholic. One of the oldest Catholic schools founded specifically for African American children is St. Augustine's School in Washington, D.C. The school opened in 1858 to provide a Catholic education for the children of freed slaves. Catholic religious communities opened an impressive number of 76 schools for African American children at the turn of the century between 1890 and 1917 (Benson, Yeager, Wood, Guerra, & Manno, 1986). The First Colored Catholic Congress elucidated the purpose and distinction of Catholic schools for African American youths in its 1889 general statement to the assembly:

Unamuno in England: Four Unpublished Articles (1909), Part 1

In the tenth number of The Englishwoman (November 1909) an editorial note announces the publication of four articles by Unamuno1 in the following terms: Don Miguel de Unamuno, the Rector of the University of Salamanca, a leader in Spain, both because of his own strong personality and of his official position, has written for us four articles, the first two of which we publish today. The third and fourth will be published in our December number, and bear the titles: ‘Spanish Religion’ and ‘Spanish Catholicism’. ‘Spanish anarchism is a product of Spanish despair, and is the ground reached by souls hungry for immortality who have lost their faith; if we cannot attain the highest, let us wreck all. The truly Spanish preoccupation is not of sin, but of grim death; it is not ethical, but religious.’ The temper and tone of these articles are in strong contrast with the usual temper and tone of articles about Spain by non-Spaniards; and we regret that some of the beauty and spirit of the original Spanish, and its...

Review Article : Persecuted and Persecutors: Modern Spanish Catholicism

Review Article : Persecuted and Persecutors: Modern Spanish Catholicism

Catholic Revival in the Eighteenth Century

In his famous essay on von Ranke‘s history of the Popes, Thomas Babington Macaulay remarked that the ‘ignorant enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy… the Catholic Church makes a champion’. ‘Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first General of a new Society devoted to the interests and honour of the Church.’ Macaulay’s general argument that Roman Catholicism ‘unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of dissent’, depends for its force on his comparison of the Catholic Regular Orders with the popular preachers of Nonconformity. As the son of a leader of the Clapham Sect, his witness in the matter has its interest for scholars of the Evangelical Revival, and has been echoed by Ronald Knox in his parallel between Wesley and the seventeenth-century Jesuit, Paolo Segneri, who walked barefoot 800 miles a year to preach missions in the dioceses of northern Italy. More recently the comparison has been drawn again by Owen Chadwick, with the judgement that the ‘heirs of the Counter-Reformation sometimes astound by likeness of behaviour to that found in the heirs of the Reformation’, and Chadwick’s volume on the eighteenth-century Popes contains some fascinating material on the resemblances between the religion of the peoples of England and of Italy. An historian of Spanish Catholicism has compared the Moravians and the mission preachers of eighteenth-century Spain, not least in their rejection of modern commercialism, while an American scholar has traced some of the parallels between nineteenth-century Protestant and Catholic revivalism in the United States. Not that Wesleyan historians have been attracted to study the great movements of revival religion in the Catholic countries in Wesley’s lifetime—a neglect which is hardly surprising. One point of origin of the Evangelical revival was among refugees from Roman Catholic persecution, and for all the popular confusion, encouraged by men like Bishop Lavington, between Methodists and Papists, and for all Wesley’s belief in religious toleration and tenderness for certain Catholic saints and devotional classics, he was deeply hostile to the Roman Catholic Church, as David Hempton has recently shown. Yet there are many points of likeness as well as difference between the enthusiasts of Protestant and Catholic Europe, and both these need to be declared if Catholics and Protestants are ever to attempt to write an ecumenical history.

Todos Santos in rural Tlaxcala: a syncretic, expressive, and symbolic analysis of the cult of the dead

The cult of the dead, centered on Todos Santos, the All Saints Day-All Souls Day celebration, is one of the most important aspects of Mesoamerican Indian and mestizo religion. Focusing on rural Tlaxcala, in Mexico, Hugo Nutini presents a thorough description and analysis of the cult in its syncretic, structural, and expressive dimensions and describes its development from the original confrontation of pre-Hispanic polytheism and Spanish Catholicism, through colonial times, until the disintegration of the system of folk religions that is even now occurring.The discussion of the expressive component of the cult of the dead is a crucial contribution of the study. Professor Nutini shows that symbolism can be an adjunct to expressive studies, but not an end in itself. In addition, he postulates a theory that may serve as a model for studies of the combination and reconciliation of religious beliefs in other contexts. Emphasizing folk theology, teleology, and eschatology, rather than the mechanical and administrative components more frequently studied in works on Mesoamerican Indian and mestizo religions, he concludes that the local system is monolatrous, rather than monotheistic.Originally published in 1988.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750-1874. William J. CallahanSpanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview. Stanley G. Payne

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsChurch, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750-1874. William J. Callahan Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview. Stanley G. Payne Raymond CarrRaymond Carr Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 58, Number 4Dec., 1986 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/243128 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1986 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Introduction: le catholicisme espagnol dix ans après la mort de Franco

In this introduction, A. Nesti lays out the principle characte ristics of the nature and dialectic of contemporary Spanish Catho licism: the dependence of Spain on foreign investments, the role of the monarchy at the time of the change in regime, the forma tion of a political class for whom the anti-Franco struggle was unknown, the impulse in favour of change within the boundaries of civil society and the Church, and the europeanization of the Iberian peninsula.

Stanley G. Payne, "Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview" (Book Review)

Stanley G. Payne, "Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview" (Book Review)

Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview

Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview

Landscape and World View: The Survival of Yucatec Maya Culture Under Spanish Conquest

The religions of contemporary Middle American Indian communities fall neatly enough under the descriptive category we call ‘syncretic’. Myths and rituals, integrated experiences for the participant believers, betray to the outside observer their Spanish and Indian antecedents. This indicates a methodology of analysing the ongoing flow of religious life into its smallest constituent parts—colours and gestures, sacred objects and sacred locations, the structure and language of invocations—the more precisely to identify the ingredients of the ‘mixed’ religion we see being lived out. When enquiry moves to the process of imposition and selection by which the mix was initiated, in the early days of Spanish-Indian contact, the same familiar methodology lies ready to hand: Spanish Catholicism, and what is known of the traditional Indian religion, can be analysed into elements, those elements arranged in parallel, and the likely ease of transferance inferred, being judged to be the highest where a match seems good and where evidence from the ethnographic present appears to offer confirmation.