170 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy
Spain in 1554; he devotes three chapters to his eyewitness
accounts of the religious celebrations of the community of
Mexico-Tenochtitlan that he saw, and participated in, in
San Francisco. 7 (His younger Franciscan colleague, Juan
de Torquemada [1564–1624], reproduces these chapters
in his Monarchia indiana but swaps in details from what
he saw at Santiago Tlatelolco.) 8 In discussing the festivi-
ties, Mendieta underscores the central importance of the
seven-naved chapel of San José de los Naturales that sat
within the larger walled compound of San Francisco, as
did his colleague Diego Valadés (b. 1533), who wrote about
the city some two decades earlier. San José served as the
parish church to the city’s indigenous community, “and
within celebrated all the divine offices and feasts as in a
Cathedral Church.” In particular, Mendieta highlights the
celebration of Holy Thursday. His Historia is not with-
out argument: through it he sought to demonstrate the
open-hearted acceptance of Christianity by the native
population, implicitly rebutting critics who claimed that
mendicant evangelization was a superficial affair; or as he
puts it, “It is clearly visible that they are not like the Moors
of Grenada, but true Christians.” Beyond his larger rhetori-
cal claim, Mendieta’s account shows us the important role
of native elites in the religious life of the city’s indigenous
population. In a description of Holy Thursday events he
saw in 1595, he writes that the friars would first gather in
the church of San Francisco and then process, presumably
to the adjacent altar at San José. After the reading of the
Gospel, twelve impoverished indigenous people, chosen
for the occasion, would file out to three basins filled with
hot, rose-scented water, where the priests would wash
their feet, after which the indigenous lords would emerge
bearing elegant mantles to clothe the twelve selected. The
newly elevated poor would be led to a table laden with food
that the lords had provided. Not only would these twelve
be fed, but so too would other poor people invited to the
feast. “It is a sight to see, the abundance of the food that
the Indians have spread out in the patio, from food stewed
in the pots or vessels that they use, and bread and fruit,
so that all the poor were satiated that day.” 9 Much of the
symbolism of the ceremony is expressly Christian—the
twelve people are like the twelve apostles who gathered
with Jesus at the Last Supper, and their change in status,
going from badly dressed and hungry to richly clothed and
fed, recalls the Gospel passage where Jesus says, “Blessed be
ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). In
washing their feet, the Franciscans engaged in a traditional
rite of Holy Thursday, the reenactment of Jesus’s washing
of the apostles’ feet during the Last Supper, as told in John
13:1–17.
But the elegant clothes and feast provided by the lords
are something that harken back to pre-Hispanic rites, as
many of the important veintena celebrations of the ritual
year featured similar feasting. Offering a compelling paral-
lel are the veintena feasts of Tecuilhuitontli and Hueyte-
cuilhuitl, the Small Feast of the Lords and the Large Feast
of the Lords, which fell in June and July. The last feast
was the most memorable, as the poor were invited in and
served “tamales made of maize treated with lime; or else
with some fruit, some tamales of maize blossoms; or with
twisted ends, or sweetened with honey . . . and this feast-
ing went on for seven days. And for this reason was this
done—purely that the tlatoani might show benevolence to
others by giving his bounty to his vassals.” 10 Holy Thursday
was not the only occasion of large-scale giving in the post-
Conquest period, and historical records are punctuated
with accounts of specific feasts in Mexico-Tenochtitlan
that testify to indigenous patrons’ largesse as well as the
ubiquity of these events: in 1572, at the feast of All Souls,
the city’s indigenous community provided 5,000 loaves
of bread, 3,000 to 4,000 wax candles, 25 arrobas of wine,
a large number of hens and eggs, and great quantities of
fruit; some of this was given to feed the resident friars, who
numbered about 100 at the end of the century, but much
was given out to the poor or those who asked, and this
custom was repeated year after year. 11
While Mendieta does not specify in his description of
Holy Thursday or other religious celebrations that the
food was a gift from the tecpan, the quantity of foods and
organization of the delivery suggest that it was, especially
since the lords are specified as giving away the mantles.
Had the city’s Spanish cabildo been regularly sponsoring
such feasts, we would find clear evidence of payments
made, as we do for the annual feast they sponsored for San
Hipólito. For the native governors, the religious celebra-
tions sponsored by the Franciscans at San José would have
offered both a physical and social space for the continuance
of practices of ceremonial feasting—those extravagant
and impressive giveaways—that we have seen taking place
mostly among elites. And these were not without politi-
cal effect, as the native governors’ ability to give away huge
quantities of goods reaffirmed their status as recognized
leaders and offered them a chance to reassert political
relationships through such symbolic representations. For