CHAPTER 14 THE RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS OF MESOAMERICA 519the new Christian doctrine, they did so in highly diverse ways that were subject to local
practice (on this topic, see again Chapter 5). In effect, Christianity became the new
great tradition to which all were obliged to pay lip service. Little traditions, whose re-
ligious practices had been for millennia focused on rituals of home, lineage, field,
and waterhole, did not lose their vitality, though these local foci of religious practice
received a new overlay of Christian ideas.
Even God and associated central doctrines of Christianity did not reach the newly
converted in ways that the missionaries expected, for they (the Christian concepts)
often merged as new semantic overlays with what were already, prior to the conquest,
complex, polyvalent ideas. Thus, for example, throughout Mesoamerica in the Colo-
nial period and even today in thousands of Indian communities, Jesus Christ has be-
come one of several manifestations of the ancient sun god. Similarly, the Virgin Mary
has become merged with multiple expressions of the ancient moon goddess and
other female deities. The Christian saints also became associated with various pre-
Christian concepts and deities (as they had in Spain when Christianity encountered
native Iberian belief systems).
A good example of this syncretic phenomenon comes to us from Chiapas, where
the contemporary Tzotzil Mayas have assigned to Saint Jerome the care of people’s
animal soul companions in the mountains and in the sky (for more on the Tzotzil
Mayas, see Chapters 8 and 13). This association appears to be related to the popu-
lar Spanish iconographic portrayal of Saint Jerome in the company of a docile lion,
an image that is linked to the medieval legend of the saint’s life. However, the “suc-
cess” of this Spanish saint among the Tzotzil Mayas appears to be tied less to his
virtues as a Christian martyr than to his affinity with the lion. The belief in super-
natural coessences (among them, animals) that share with individuals a kind of pre-
destination was, even in the sixteenth century, a very ancient Mesoamerican concept,
being manifest in written hieroglyphic texts dating from around A.D. 150. Saint
Jerome’s association with this belief system is thus a relatively recent facet of an old
and a complex Native American spiritual idea. Similar local transformations occurred
as the Christian concepts of Satan and the angels were assimilated into local belief
and practice. Satan has merged with countless pre-Columbian forces and beings that
were hostile to the order-giving power of the sun god. Christian angels have been as-
similated in diverse regions of modern Mesoamerica into various pre-Columbian
cults to the earth and rain. Thunder and lightning, for example, are known in many
contemporary Indian communities of Mesoamerica by some form of the Spanish
word for angel (“ángel”).
When one multiplies all of the preceding by a factor of many thousands of vil-
lages that were subject to Christianization, it becomes clear that the new great tra-
dition, Christianity, was just that and only that. Local practices, little traditions,
assimilated Christianity in countless different ways, often with minimal doctrinal
maintenance and daily offices left in the hands of Indian sacristans of the village
churches. Thus, although some church authorities spoke publicly of the success of
the “spiritual conquest,” many local priests themselves realized that they were deal-
ing with unfavorable odds (as seen in Box 14.2).