From the Epistolae et Evangelia (c. 1540) to the Espejo divino (1607): Indian Latinists and Nahuatl Religious Literature at the College of Tlatelolco*

In 1536, fteen years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Imperial College of Santa Cruz was founded in Santiago Tlatelolco, an Indian enclave to the north of Mexico City. The students at the college, who were drawn from native elites, received an advanced education in Latin from Franciscan missionaries. The present discussion will explain why such a training was provided to those indigenous youths, and clarify the nature of their accomplishments (1). A discussion of the translations of biblical texts into Nahuatl made at the College of Santa Cruz (2) will be followed by a survey of original religious texts produced there in the Mexican language, many of which had identi able Latin precedents (3). The concluding section then o ers some tentative general re ections on the part played by Latin Christian humanism in shaping early Nahuatl literature, arguing that it bears some comparison to the way Latin had already underscored the development of vernacular literature in early modern Europe (4).

knowledge, Latin still remained of fundamental importance as the language of the Church and of education. Confessionals, catechisms and artes (manuals) of Amerindian tongues, for example, even when written in the Spanish vernacular, all presupposed and demonstrated the centrality of Latin. Another illustration of this is provided by the institution of the College of Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco, where Mexican students, trained in Latin, were engaged in the production of Christian texts in Nahuatl and sometimes in other Mesoamerican languages.
The present discussion will describe the translation of Latin sources into Nahuatl in Tlatelolco and show how Latin learning also provided a matrix for the creation of an original Christian literature in the Mexican language. The opening section (1) will explain why indigenous scholars were educated at Santa Cruz and clarify the nature of their accomplishments. A brief description of biblical translations made at the College (2), will be followed by a survey of some texts which were authored for the rst time in Nahuatl-in addition to those which had identi able Latin models (3). The concluding section (4) will o er some tentative general re ections on the part played by Latin Christian humanism in shaping early Nahuatl literature, arguing that it bears some comparison to the way Latin had already underscored the development of vernacular literature in early modern Europe.

Status of the Nahua scholars and their work
The Imperial College of Santa Cruz was inaugurated in 1536, at Santiago Tlatelolco, a native enclave to the north of Mexico City. The purpose of the institution was to prepare students, drawn from the Nahua nobility, for a career in public service as magistrates and community leaders. In this way the Spaniards could consolidate their control over Mexico's newly subjugated population by creating an appropriately trained 'Indian' governing class. 1 But the Franciscan friars who founded and taught at the College had an agendum of their own: they needed the assistance of informed native speakers of Mesoamerican languages-especially Nahuatl which was perceived as a potential lengua general of New Spain-to make precise translations from Latin of the religious texts that were needed for the conversion and ministry of indigenous populations. 2 The Nahua collegians at Tlatelolco were aware of their high social standing and their noble ancestries, but the world of their ancestors was something of which they could have had no personal experience or memory: born after the Spanish conquest, separated from their parents at an early age and fully Christianised, they studied a curriculum based on those adopted in European schools. 3 That curriculum, a version of the trivium streamlined by Erasmus' and Vives' methods for acquiring uency in Latin, was designed to equip the students to serve as useful deputies in a Christian colonial society. A few surviving examples of letters and other writings by alumni of the College provide clear evidence of their skills at communication in Latin, which were also recognised outside Franciscan circles. 4 The primary motive for teaching composition in Latin was (as it still is) to ensure that pupils could readily read and understand it. The pro ciency they acquired enabled them to make appropriate and reliable translations of Christian texts into their own languages. For the Indian students, the challenge of making these translations lay not in comprehending the Latin source texts-they would have come to understand these at least as well as their Franciscan instructors-but in nding the appropriate idioms to convey the content in Nahuatl. That process involved not only the correct identi cation of corresponding terms but also a capacity for innovation and circumlocution in situations when, as will be shown in examples to follow (2), no direct correspondents existed.
It was necessary to ensure that renderings of Christian texts were free from error or potentially perilous misunderstandings. Writing in the 1570s, the renowned missionary linguist Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, who had been involved with the College of Santa Cruz from its foundation, described the vital assistance of the indigenous scholars in the preparation of evangelical material: They have helped and still help in many things in the implanting and maintaining of our Holy Catholic Faith, for if sermons, postillas and catechisms [doctrinas] have been produced in the Indian language, which can appear and may be free of all heresy, they are those which were written [in collaboration] with them. And they, being knowledgeable in the Latin language, inform us as to the properties of words, the properties of their manner of speech. And they correct for us the incongruities we express in the sermons or write in the catechisms. 5 Some thirty years later, Fray Juan Bautista Viseo, who oversaw the publication of numerous religious works in Nahuatl at the College, also emphasised the importance of the assistance he received from native Latinists in the Prologue to his Sermonario en lengua mexicana (1577). There he provided more detailed information about particular individuals: I have been helped in this task by some accomplished natives very well trained in Latin, especially by one Hernando de Ribas (one of the rst sons of the Royal College of Santa Cruz founded in the Convent of Santiago Tlatilulco in Mexico) local to the city of Tetzcuco, a very good Latinist, who with great dexterity could translate anything from Latin and from the Spanish vernacular [romance] into the Mexican language, paying more attention to the sense than the literal meaning. What he wrote 3 Richard C. Trexler The capacity for "paying more attention to the sense than to the literal meaning" (atendiendo más al sentido que a la letra) is a quality Bautista praised in comparable terms elsewhere. 7 The classical and humanist predilection for ad sensum rather than ad verbum translation for the sake of elegance went back to Cicero. 8 But the importance of the application of that principle to the rendering of sacred texts in late antiquity tends to be overlooked by early modern intellectual historians. Ad sensum translation had had a di erent function for Jerome and early Christian authors, who eschewed literal translation not for stylistic reasons, but because they were aiming at delity to their original sources-and this concern was still shared by the Franciscan missionaries in the 1500s. 9 As well as revealing more about individual Nahua scholars than any other source, Bautista's Prologue is of value because it speci es the skills which were required of the native translators. A description of the ways in which the friar was assisted by Antonio Valeriano, Sahagún's best known collaborator, gives way to some illuminating re ections: He helped me a great deal, both with speci c things I consulted him about and with the etymology and meaning of many [Nahuatl] terms, explanations of which have gone into the text of my Sermonario, better to advise ministers who would not be able to discover them without e ort. That is because in today's world the Indians whom one can ask things about their language are so few that they can be counted, and many of them employ corrupt forms of speech, just as Spaniards do. This is something that anyone whose knowledge of this language has an accurate and systematic grounding is bound to notice; and so it is necessary to proceed cautiously in asking things and getting advice, especially about words and expressions involving mysteries of the faith and moral matters. I have come across an Indian with Latin and a good degree who, in conversing with me, said 'Dios italneltoquilitzin', which means 'the faith which God believes', when he should have said 'Dios ineltococatzin', 'the faith in which God is believed in', and I These considerations lead Fray Juan Bautista then to single out the ability of another assistant of Sahagún as a scribe, editor and typesetter: Agustín de la Fuente, a native of Tlatelolco and teacher at Santa Cruz, was praised for his "excellent comprehension, reasoning and precise knowledge of his language and its peculiarities." 11 Unfortunately, the Nahua scholars could never be credited as authors or co-authors of the texts on which they worked. Their translations and writings were either anonymous or attributed to individual Franciscans directing the particular enterprise: in the latter case, though, the friars often named their Indian collaborators in their prefaces, sometimes providing extensive acknowledgements. But there was at least one native translator, Don Pablo Nazareo of Xaltocan, who drew attention to his own e orts, as part of a Latin petition he made to Philip II: sic noctes, diesque summopere laboraui vt que per anni totius discursum in ecclesia leguntur euangelia et epistolas in linguam maternam traducerem, nec hec solum sed et complurima alia e latino in nostram ydioma transferre procuraui, que omnia correcta judicio ac censura peritorum, precipue theologie candidatorum, nostraeque lingue peritorum passim habentur apud fere omnes sacros concionatores, religiosos et clericos qui nostra opera fruentes, sudorisque nostri fructum degustantes multis prosunt indiarum incolis […] 12 Endeavours in translation such as those Nazareo described continue to receive scant recognition. Historians concerned with Nahuatl texts written at the College of Santa Cruz have focussed largely on material of putative pre-Hispanic origin: the ethnographic appeal of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún's Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España or 'Florentine Codex' has diverted attention from dozens of diligently prepared Nahuatl texts on Christian themes-including those overseen by Sahagún himself. A widespread misconception that the College of Santa Cruz was founded to train an indigenous clergy (and that it failed in such an unlikely objective) has also diminished understanding of what the Nahua students really achieved. 13 They were not theologians but linguists, with a valuable range of broader 10 Bautista, Sermonario, 475. 11 Ibid., 476: "Es de muy buen entendimiento y razón, y sabe su lengua e idiotismos de ella con gran propiedad." 12 "So I toiled to the utmost night and day, to translate the Gospels and Epistles into my mother tongue to be read in church over the course of the whole year. Not only these: I also took the trouble to translate a very large number of other texts, all of which have been emended in accordance with the discretion and judgment of experts, especially those quali ed in theology and acquainted with our language. These translations are now widely circulated amongst almost all the holy preachers, friars and clergy who are helping many inhabitants of the Indies by using my works and sampling the fruit of my labour…" Nazareo, Heréndira Téllez Nieto, who discovered this manuscript (see g. 1), has shown that it was de nitely copied by 1561, the year in which it was brought to Spain by Fray Francisco de Bustamante-and it could have been copied several years before. 20 In accordance with the Roman Rite, lectionaries customarily begin with the Sunday Epistle and Gospel readings at the start of the church liturgical year on the First Sunday of Advent, opening with the Epistle from Romans 13: 11-14. The initial verse (13: 11) of that reading is as follows: Fratres: Scientes, quia hora est jam nos de somno surgere. Nunc enim propior est nostra salus, quam cum credidimus. 21 Here, as on some other occasions, the Latin text of the Roman Rite diverges slightly from the Vulgate. 22 The three manuscripts detailed above provide slightly di erent Nahuatl renderings 20 Heréndira Téllez Nieto, "La tradición gramatical clásica en la Nueva España: estudio y edición crítica del Arte de la lengua mexicana de Fray Andrés de Olmos" (PhD diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2015), 171. 21 "Brothers, knowing that it is now the hour for us to arise from sleep, / For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed." 22  There are discrepancies between these versions. The most notable is in the Milan manuscript where the last part of the second sentence is di erent from the others: ynamoyuh yehuecauh iniquac çanoc titlaneltocaya. But, in general, despite the di erent orthographic conventions in play, these versions exhibit remarkable uniformity, given the real potential for far more radical variation a orded by translation from Latin into a very di erent Mexican language. Such uniformity suggests the translations had a common provenance.
That provenance can only have been the College of Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco, as Sahagún indicated in his account (excerpted above) of the important role indigenous collegians had in the preparation of evangelical material: And whatever is to be rendered in their language, if it is not examined by them, if it is not written congruently in the Latin language, in the vernacular [romance] and in their language, cannot be free of defect. With regard to orthography, and good writing [buena letra], there are none who write it other than those reared here. 24 The di culties faced in Christian antiquity by the rst translators of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin without doubt acquired a new salience in Mexico. 25 The most familiar and foundational phrases in liturgy could be challenging. Ecce agnus Dei, "Behold the Lamb of God," from John 1:36 was uniformly rendered: 23 Biondelli, Evangeliarium, 251 has: Notciccahuane, yeanquimomachitya, cayeimman yequalcan intiçazque, intitoquetzazque. Auh inaxcan cacenca yeizca intomaquixtiloca, inamoyuh yehuecauh iniqua çanoc titlaneltocaya. 24  Izcatqui in yichcatzin Dios. 26 The Franciscans used the Spanish Dios as the word for God in Nahuatl, to avoid any confusion or association with pre-Hispanic conceptions of the divine. 27 But [y]ichcatzin was the possessed form of the noun ichcatl, a word for cotton or wool which had come to designate sheep, an animal introduced to Mexico by Europeans. Once established, equivalences such as this would soon have become absorbed by converts who came to be familiar with many new expressions. 28 Some must have been obvious choices, like ātequiā, "water-sprinkle," for baptise; while others were less so, such as nezcaliliztli, "a reviving" or "coming to one's senses," for resurrection. 29 It is likely that as Nahuatl-speakers accommodated these usages in the context of their conversion, the language they employed in other situations may have undergone change as a result. The Nahuatl lectionaries sometimes show more notable departures from the text of the Roman Rite. The traditional opening verses of John 1: 1-2 for the Christmas mass, for example, were in precise accord with the wording of the Vulgate: But those verses were given in Nahuatl as follows: In ipan peuhcayotl moyetzticatca in tepiltzin Dios, auh inyehuatzin itlantzinco catca inDios, auh inyehuatzin inipiltzin Dios cateotl. Inin moyetzticatca inipan peuhcayotl itlantzinco inDios. 31 Verbum, the Word, which had long replaced sermo, discourse, as the standard equivalent to logos in the Greek text of John's Gospel, was thus translated as tepiltzin Dios, "God the Son," or literally, "God the child." 32 The Nahuatl tlatolli was the obvious term to convey verbum or 26 "Here is God's sheep. " Biondelli,Evangeliarium,241 [my translation]. The text of the Toledo lectionary, fol. 168v, only di ers in orthography: Jzcatqui ynichcatzin Dios. 27 Verónica Murillo Gallegos, "En náhuatl y en castellano: el dios cristiano en los discursos franciscanos de evangelización," Estudios de cultura náhuatl 41 (2010) sermo, but it must have had a value which was deemed inappropriate or insu cient for the sense of the Incarnate Word. 33 On the other hand, forms and cognates of tlatolli commonly recur elsewhere in the lectionaries, and they denote language as well as speech in the reading from Acts 2 for the Feast of Pentecost: The gift of tongues was obviously connected to the missionary enterprise. The in uence of Erasmus' moral interpretation of the Babel story pervaded prefaces of artes and vocabularies of Amerindian languages, but importance was also attached to Pentecost for its original association with baptism in Christian antiquity. 36 A short clari catory phrase in verse 11 of the Nahuatl reading above may be relevant to these considerations, as it makes the biblical text inclusive of native Mexicans: in izquican in altepetl ipan tihualehua, "we come forth from all altepetl (towns)." The fact that this additional phrase-which was never in the Latin source-appears in other manuscript translations of the same passage from Acts is important: it suggests that all the lectionaries now known shared a common model, despite 33  the apparent variations between them. Di erent manners of transcription are more likely to be the cause of those variations than a succession of recensions. In the absence of much needed further investigation, the Nahuatl "Epistolae et Evangelia (c. 1540)" can be provisionally conceived of as a single work rather than as a plurality of separate translations. Dictation would have been the quickest way of obtaining multiple copies and that might well account for di erences of orthography between manuscripts as well as errors within them. 37 Sahagún recounted preparing in exactly this manner a commentary in Nahuatl on the Epistles and Gospels, along with a set of religious canticles: Also at this time I dictated [dicte] the Postilla and the Cantares. The Latinists wrote them down, in the same village of Tepepulco. 38 The Postillas sobre las Epistolas y Evangelios de los Domingos de todo el año, thus written in collaboration with "four Latinists [who] taught grammar in the College of Santa Cruz in Tlatilulco," were supplemented with an "appendix" which incorporated admonitions in a similar style to the traditional Nahuatl discourses Sahagún would later assemble and translate in his Historia general. 39 Some religious canticles in Nahuatl published more than 20 years later as the Psalmodia christiana (1583), were designed to supplant older Nahuatl songs "which praised false gods." 40 These new cantares, which were to be sung on feast days through the year, transmitted biblical stories and the exemplary lives of saints. Further digests and retellings of biblical episodes and saints' lives and exegeses of speci c passages of scripture, for which the same or other Indian collaborators must have given their assistance, were written in Spanish and Nahuatl. 41 The use of scripture in such texts, like the incorporation of Gospel and Epistle readings in the Nahuatl lectionaries, had been permitted, but translation of the Bible became increasingly controversial over the course of the sixteenth century. The issue loomed large in debates about biblical reform at the Council of Trent in the spring of 1546. Cardinal Pacheco had vehemently opposed the translation of scripture into any mother tongue, deeming that in itself to be an "abuse," but his views met with much opposition, and the Council made no pronouncement on the matter. Vernacular Epistolas y Evangelios remained popular in Spain 37 Biondelli, Evangeliarium, xvii deemed that dictation accounted for the nature of the scribal errors he corrected in the Milan manuscript: "Sed ipsa errorum indoles clarius ostendit codicem ex dictantis voce fuisse exaratum. Sic exempli gratia, chipahuac (purus) pro chicahuac (fortis)  at any rate, and the steady run of new printed editions continued unabated through the 1550s. 42 The preparation and dissemination of vernacular bibles was neither condoned nor condemned, so that di erent jurisdictions could be directed to act in accordance with their speci c needs. 43 It would have been in the wake of this compromise that Fray Luis Rodríguez, some time before he left New Spain in 1562, undertook the translation of the Proverbs of Solomon into Nahuatl. 44 A variorum manuscript presenting lemmata of the Vulgate text of Proverbs 2: 1 -15: 23 with a Nahuatl translation and commentary was discovered and identi ed in 2013 as a copy of Rodríguez's work, dating to the mid-1500s. 45 This unusual example of a version of a sustained passage of scripture is of interest because it shows how European conventions of scholarly biblical exegesis could be applied in Nahuatl-at least before legislation moved towards the explicit suppression of such endeavours.
In 1564 Pope Pius IV had published the bull Dominici gregis custodias which stated that the reading of vernacular bibles required the written permission of a local bishop or inquisitor. 46 Rodríguez's Nahuatl text of the Proverbs of Solomon was banned in 1577-the same year in which the Suprema, or General Council of the Spanish Inquisition, extended the prohibitions of the 1559 Index to ban a manuscript translation of Ecclesiastes "into an Indian language," along with all translations of the Bible in Amerindian languages. 47 In 1577 the Mexican inquisitors circulated a questionnaire to friars adept at Nahuatl, including Sahagún and Alonso de Molina, in order to establish which books of Holy Scripture had been translated, and whether their suppression would have any detrimental consequences for the indoctrination of the Indians. 48 While the Indian Pablo Nazareo had proudly called attention to his translations of the Gospels and Epistles in his letter to Philip II in 1556, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún's later testimonies in the 1570s were far more circumspect, giving emphasis to production of sermons and catechisms instead.

Religious Literature in Nahuatl: Translations and New Compositions
It might be assumed that the restriction of biblical translation greatly reduced the need for native scholars to know Latin. Yet Latin was indispensable, even for the rendering of Spanish texts into Nahuatl. This can best be illustrated by a well-known example of missionary literature, the The collegians involved were named as Antonio Valeriano of Azcapotzalco, Alonso Vegerano of Quauhtitlan, Martín Iacobita of Tlatelolco and Andrés Leonardo, also from Tlatelolco. Scrutiny of any surviving part of the Colloquios y doctrina christiana soon reveals why such pro cient Latinists were required to turn the text from Spanish into Nahuatl, and the celebrated speech in chapter 7 in which a Mexica 'satrap' defended his gods will be brie y surveyed here. Declaring that he will reply to and contradict the words of the missionaries with two or three arguments, the representative of the Mexica sets about opposing the charge that the powers worshipped by his people are not gods: their ancestors told them no such thing, and the gods live amidst owers and greenery in Tlalocan, a realm unknown to mortals. His refutation consists of three admonitions: it would be unwise to change laws of ancient standing; the gods might be provoked and the people rise up; it is advisable to proceed slowly and calmly. These appeals to what is practical, safe, and prudent correspond to the topoi of utile, tutum, and prudens in European classical oratory.
The speech is widely revered as an authentic articulation of "Aztec thought" by scholars who presuppose that the Nahuatl text was the source text for the Spanish, despite Sahagún's clear testimony to the contrary in his Prologue. 51 Yet its formal refutation of the friars' argument is in the style of a dialectical disputatio, and its structure-an exordium, partitio, narratio, con rmatio, and conclusion-conforms perfectly to the dispositio ("layout") recommended by Cicero and Quintilian. Clinching evidence of European artistry is the mention in Spanish of "captando la benevolencia" for which the Nahuatl text could only provide a loose equivalent: qujmmotlapalhuj in teupixque, tlatlatlauhti, achi veyx yn jtlatol […] 52 The application of dialectic and rhetoric to the satrap's speech depended on knowledge that could only be acquired from sources and manuals in Latin-it was for this reason that the indigenous scholars who produced the Nahuatl text needed to be "'adept and accomplished in the Latin language." Such sustained application of classical rhetoric to texts in Nahuatl has important implications: on the level of discursive organization at least, such a text must have represented something strikingly new, as Latin learning had a part in transforming the Nahuatl tlatolli into a Latinate oratio. The Colloquios y doctrina christiana was by no means the only text which involved this process, akin to what the missionaries called "reducción." The prohibitions of scriptural translation probably contributed to the generation of a more original, or at least a more diverse Christian literature in Nahuatl from the 1560s to the early 1600s. The very fact that doctrines, confessional manuals and lectionaries had been among the earliest texts to be written in Nahuatl may have had the e ect of dignifying subsequent texts in the language by association, enhancing them with an aura of canonicity and authority. In contrast to far more numerous writings in Spanish which were often of a functional or ephemeral nature, works in Nahuatl-very much like those in Latin which they replicated-would be perceived as more hallowed vehicles of wisdom, painstakingly crafted and composed.
Two incomplete but distinct Nahuatl translations of Thomas à Kempis' Contemptus mundi or Imitation of Christ dating from the 1560s, are a case in point: "these translations elevated the humble Imitatio to the place of Scripture or of a received commentary on it, following the model of the catena in medieval and early modern scholarly texts." 53 At least parts of two popular books in Spanish which had been closely modelled on Kempis' Imitation of Christ also seem to have been put into Nahuatl: Fray Luis de Granada's Libro de la oración y meditación, rst printed in Salamanca in 1554, and Fray Diego de Estella's Libro de la vanidad del mundo, originally published in Toledo in 1562. There are Nahuatl renderings of the "nocturnal meditations" from Luis de Granada's text in Fray Juan Bautista's Libro de la miseria y brevedad de la vida del hombre y de sus postrimerías (1604). Granada's authorship of those sections was not acknowledged but Bautista did report in the prologue to his Sermonario en lengua mexicana (quoted in (1) above) that the native Hernando de Ribas helped him to translate "gran parte de las Vanidades de Estela [sic]"-although the translation was never printed and is not extant. 54 This cluster of Nahuatl texts has been convincingly identi ed by David Tavárez as evidence of a concerted attempt to propagate tenets of the devotio moderna, which had originated among the Brothers of the Common Life in Windesheim in the Netherlands. 55 The founder 52 "He greeted the priests, he entreated, his speech was a little long." Sahagún, Coloquios, 144. 53 Tavárez, "Nahua Intellectuals," 215-18 describes the manuscript versions of Books 1-2 of Kempis' Imitatio in the John Carter Brown Library and the version of Books 1-3 of the four books in the El Escorial monastery library, noting at 234 that the latter was produced before 1570. Mendieta, Historia 4.14, 411 recounted that he himself took to Spain this text "in lettering by an Indian, well formed, even and gracious" in that year and later mentioned the earlier translation initiated by Fray Luis Rodríguez (before 1562, when Rodríguez left Mexico for Spain) which was left un nished and "recently" (shortly before 1595) completed by Fray Juan Bautista. 54 Bautista, Sermonario, fol. viii r, quoted in part (1) above. Bautista goes on to state Don Francisco Bautista de Conteras, native governor of Xochimilco, also assisted with the translation of the Vanidades del Mundo. 55 Tavárez of that quasi-monastic community, Gerard Groote, stressed the importance of learning as well as private contemplation: Thomas à Kempis, Andreas Vesalius, Rudolph Agricola, Martin Luther and Erasmus were among the Brothers' associates or pupils. That movement for simple piety and apostolic renewal had found an enthusiastic reception in Spain where the popularization of mysticism followed that of scripture and patristic writing, owing much to the wide appeal of Kempis' Imitatio. 56 The passage of the devotio moderna to Mexico may have begun even earlier, with the arrival in 1523 of the rst Franciscan missionaries: Fray Johann Dekkers, Fray Johann van den Auwera and a lay brother, Pieter de Muer or Pedro de Gante, a renowned teacher of the Indians who possibly received his own education from the Brothers of the Common Life in Flanders. 57 But the later status of the movement in New Spain, and the implementation of its practices in the College of Santa Cruz would have been a concern for the viceroyalty as well as a potential issue for a counter-Reformation Inquisition: the indigenous students were expected to put their talents to the service of the colonial hierarchy rather than to develop a contemplative, intellectual faith.
Yet it is evident that many of the disciplines of the devotio moderna, which included penance, prayer, meditative reading, scholarly work and, notably, the copying of manuscripts, were being fostered in the College at Tlatelolco. Tavárez has also linked two original Nahuatl dialogues which originated there to the movement, suggesting that both of them were modelled on book 3 of Kempis' Imitatio, in which Jesus was in conversation with a disciple. 58 The rst, Fray Juan de Gaona's Colloquios de la paz, has a collegian being instructed by a friar or Padre; while Fray Juan de Mijangos' Espejo divino consists of a set of conversations between a natural father and his son. Indians were expected to treat and address friars as "fathers" (or padreme in Nahuatl). 59 Hernando de Ribas, the Nahua scholar who assisted Fray Juan Bautista, helped Gaona prepare a manuscript in the 1540s, which was later published in 1582 as Colloquios de la paz, y tranquilidad christiana (see g. 2), with signi cant revisions by Fray Miguel de Zárate. 60 Despite external evidence for Gaona's skill as a dialectician, the twenty exchanges which make up the work are didactic expositions rather than philosophical disputations. 61 The Nahuatl text has never been translated and no Latin or vernacular source for this work has yet been successfully identi ed. 62 But the Tractatus de pace by the thirteenth-century Franciscan Guibert de Tournai has many themes in common with the Colloquios de la paz and should 56   be considered as a possible in uence: Gaona, who had studied in Paris, would have known Guibert's treatise which continued to circulate widely. 63 The lack of an obvious model for the Colloquios is all the more remarkable given that classical gures are named in the earlier manuscript of the Nahuatl text (see g. 3) as well as in the embellished printed version. In Chapter 5 "on the varied forms of knowledge in the soul … and the desirability of knowledge," the Greek "sage" (tlamatini) Plato is invoked along with Pythagoras, Archytas and Apollonius of Tyana. 64 Traversari's Latin translation of Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers-listed as "Diogenes de vitis" in a 1584 book inventory at Tlatelolco-would have provided those names. 65   disparages the pagan philosophers. 66 The Colloquios de la paz printed in 1582 also elaborated on Hannibal and Alexander as cautionary exempla-Alexander for the impetuous killing of his friend Clytus, in chapter 13 "on the de nition of patience"; and the unworldliness and poverty of Stilpho, Diogenes the Cynic, Zeno and Socrates are recalled in chapter 17 "on the loss of temporal things." But a remark attributed to Stilpho, conveying that he only needed eloquence and wisdom rather than material possessions, is not in Diogenes Laertius: Omnia mea bona, mecum porto. quitoznequi. Inixquich naxca, çan nitic in nicpie. 67 Seneca the Younger had ascribed such a comment to Stilpho, but the precise Latin wording used here must come from a Renaissance digest or commonplace book, possibly Erasmus' Adages or Alciati's Emblemata. 68 Even though it was primarily an instructive guide to spiritual discipline, the printed edition of the Colloquios de la paz, y tranquilidad christiana drew attention to the work's literary or rhetorical qualities-perhaps to detract from any potentially controversial asceticism in its content. 69  highlighted exempla, comparationes or gurae in the Nahuatl text. A set of Latin poems was specially composed by Fray Agustín de la Cruz to frame the 1582 publication: elegiacs and Sapphic stanzas were addressed respectively to the opus and to the reader, while his introductory hexameters, Ad laudem Auctoris (see g. 4), praised the editor, Fray Miguel de Zárate, without any mention of Juan de Gaona, let alone of the native translator. Fray Juan de Mijangos' Espejo divino, rst published in Mexico City in 1607, was also written in collaboration with a Nahua assistant who was emphatically thanked by Mijangos on the last page of the volume: The Corrector of the Language was Agustín de la Fuente, native of Santiago Tlatelolco, very skilled, (who, in this work and in all the others done by Father Fray Juan Bautista of the Order of the seraphic father Saint Francis, has helped a great deal and served our Lord) may He reward him and keep him many years.
A still more profound acknowledgement to Agustín de la Fuente is implicit: the father whose dramatised discourse constituted by far the greater part of the book is named "Augustin." The son, to whom he o ered guidance, was called Joan, a variant of Mijangos' own Christian name, Juan. The apparent homage could re ect Agustín de la Fuente's seniority in age-he had assisted Fray Bernardino de Sahagún more than 20 years earlier-and it could also be a tribute to the Indian's learning. 70 The title, Espejo divino, "Divine Mirror" might appear to recall the convention of didactic speculum or "mirror" literature, which had originated in the Middle Ages and continued into the 1600s. Yet despite the variety of medieval and Renaissance specula for priests and may have rendered such 'aesthetic' justi cation unnecessary, although the associated Nahuatl sometimes digresses markedly from the declared liturgical model. 70 Compare Bautista, Sermonario, on Agustín de la Fuente quoted in (1) above.
princes-of history, chivalry, human life, salvation, morality, government and so on-no prior publication in Europe was ever entitled Espejo divino or Speculum divinum. The Spanish title was a loose gloss of a coinage on the rst page of the Nahuatl text: Nican vmpehua (tlaçomahuiztlacaè) ontzinti, centlamantli tenonotzaliztlahtolli, intlacahuapahualoni tlacazcaltiloni teoyotica tezcatl tocayotilo, nepanotl mononotzihui ce tlacatl tettatzin itoca Augustin yhuan ce tlacatl ipiltzin, itoca Joan. 71 David Tavárez has observed that a metonymy for wisdom, in coyauac tezcatl necoc xapo, "the wide mirror polished on both sides," had designated the teacher's words in the Nahuatl version of De contemptu mundi. 72 That translation, dating from the 1560s, was a crucial precedent for Mijangos' text and the title of the latter thus derived from the longstanding Mexican association of the mirror with divinity (and divination), exempli ed by the name of the allknowing pre-Hispanic deity Tezcatlipoca, "Smoking Mirror." 73 The Espejo divino is a textual cornucopia, interspersing prayers and sermons with the preceptive dialogues between father and son. 74 Printed marginal notes do not just highlight similes: they contain Latin citations of scriptural passages and sources ranging from Saint Augustine to Seneca and Aesop-large portions of some biblical books can be reconstructed from the Nahuatl translations. 75 The conversation in the Espejo divino was designed to be engaging as well as enlightening. The reprinting of the book in 1626, nearly twenty years after its rst publication, indicates that its appeal endured.
The contrived elegance of the Colloquios de la paz and the Espejo divino, quite absent from the austere Latin texts likely to have inspired them, invite comparison with another Nahuatl work printed in 1601 at the Convent of Tlatelolco: the Huehuetlahtolli, "Speeches of old," published by Fray Juan Bautista (see g. 5). 76 The speeches the volume contained were presented as the talks [pláticas] native fathers and mothers gave to their children, and rulers to their subjects. Such pláticas had already attracted the attention of missionaries and chroniclers, notably Fray Andrés de Olmos, whose collection apparently provided the basis for Bautista's. 77 But Bautista had "added and inserted new, important and necessary contents" so that the 29 speeches in Nahuatl and six translations in Spanish conveyed a Christian message, and most of them addressed Christian themes. 78 Although they are in monologue form, the discourses-of fathers to sons, of sons to fathers and (implicitly) of missionaries to convertsshow an obvious community with the dialogues of the Espejo divino and the Colloquios de la paz, in terms of the pious instruction they provided.
Moreoever, like those dialogues, the Huehuetlahtolli are also commended by their editor as much for their style as for their moral quality: Bautista thus highlighted the "cultivation, urbanity, respect, courtliness, good diction and elegance in the speech of Indians of old" and later commented that "the Mexicans had seemingly learned and imbibed all the colours of Rhetoric." 79 These commendations recalled the way Sahagún had framed his own larger manuscript collection of apparently more authentic Nahuatl pláticas which he himself translated into Spanish in 1577. 80 That collection had been calculatedly entitled Rethorica, philosophía moral, theologia de la gente mexicana and later appeared as the sixth book of the Historia general-the only book in the twelve-book history to be digni ed with an elegant dedication in Latin. The e ect of the Latin verse panegyrics which heralded the printed version of Gaona's Colloquios de la paz only ve years later was rather similar. The general trend is clear: Nahuatl texts were becoming aestheticised and endowed with the hallmarks of Christian humanist literature.

Closing re ections: Latin humanism and Nahuatl literature
The standard use of the term gramática for "Latin" in the sixteenth-century Hispanic world re ected the general identi cation of the Latin language with grammar itself. Latin was not seen as the historical source of the romance vernaculars, but as an arti cial medium which was re ned from every language: though it had to be learned and acquired, it was a universal langue. 81 Everyday spoken tongues, whether they were European or Amerindian, could only be systematised by artes, which were based on the categories of grammar or Latin. 82 The very existence of written literature was also subject to grammar, because the most fundamental, atomic unit of grammar was the alphabetic letter, littera. 83 Nahua scholars who recognised Latin as the language of the church and of knowledge, and who had also seen how its alphabet (which the Spaniards called "Latin" or "Roman") could be used for other languages, including their own, attached importance to litterae, letters: praedecessores suae tempore gentilitatis fuere admodum rustici, abiecti, nudi et corporis et animae dotibus, inter quas primas habent virtutes ac litterae, quas profecto ne per somnium quidem novere. 84 From letters and words (dictiones) to discourse (oratio), Latin laid the ground for writing in Nahuatl because the tra c of written translation was almost always in one directionfrom Latin, or from Spanish via Latin, to Nahuatl (with Spanish texts rendered into Nahuatl often being adapted via Latin). The collegians of Tlatelolco, who were trained to play an instrumental role in the indigenous government of Mexico as regidores and judges, were just as instrumental in facilitating the government of Nahuatl by Latin.
Yet the texts surveyed above show that Latin's capacity to govern Nahuatl was not comprehensive or complete-and could sometimes be threatened. Just as the earliest missionary linguists soon found that the distinctive "excellences and design" [primores y buen arti cio] of Nahuatl challenged the universality of Latin, the Mexican tongue could not always compliantly convey the language of scripture: thus there is some irony about the lack of an equivalent for the Verbum or the Incarnate Word in John 1: 1. 85 Conversely, the potency of teoyotica tezcatl indicates that it was the source for the formulation of Espejo divino in Spanish, and not derived from it. One consequence of all the rst printed texts in Nahuatl being Doctrinas and Confesionarios was noted in (2) above: the 'canonisation' of such texts through translation also elevated the language of Nahuatl itself. The e ect of translating texts from modern European languages into Latin was actually comparable-as well as enhancing the status of a given text, the translation a rmed and contributed to the standing of the target language as a medium. The authority and importance of the Nahuatl lectionaries was signalled by their ne lettering and occasional decorative illumination: the copy of the Epistolae et Evangelia recently identi ed in the Chapter Library of Toledo Cathedral is particularly striking (see g. 1). The careful design and execution of the manuscripts containing translations of the Proverbs of Solomon and the De contemptu mundi also indicate the high value accorded to their content. The original Nahuatl dialogues described above-the Colloquios y doctrina christiana, Colloquios de la paz and the Espejo divino-were adorned in quite a di erent way, with explicitly signalled rhetorical ourishes and evocations of classical as well as Christian sources. An obvious mechanism for this accommodation was provided by the versatility of dialogue: In the sixteenth century in particular, everything from rhetorical handbooks to medical treatises to travel narratives to manuals on duelling to erotic ction to utopias can be found in dialogue form. Dialogue became a convention, even an institution for representing the margins of what could be represented in the Renaissance literary system of generic codes and forms. That dialogue would also gain greatly in prestige in the eyes of the Renaissance from its origins in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy is not hard to understand. 86 The application of humanist learning to dialogues in Nahuatl and even to Bautista's Huehuetlahtolli could be seen as a kind of reverse appropriation rather than as a demonstration of Latin's capacity to govern Nahuatl. The vernacular literatures which had emerged in Europe in the previous centuries had depended on Latinate conventions of genre, rhetorical structuring, poetical devices and classical references. As there had been no alphabetically written texts in Mexico before the Spanish incursion, such conventions were automatically commandeered for the far more rapid institution of a Nahuatl literary canon within only fty years. 87 The process would continue in the 1600s: the indigenous author Chimalpahin superimposed the annalistic format of Isidore of Seville's Chronicon on the model of indigenous records (which employed a pictographic year-count) in order to construct his Relaciones. That Mexican history in Nahuatl employed classical exempla and comparanda, and even cited authors like Sophocles and Diogenes Laertius. 88 Latin and Nahuatl alike were integral to the culture of the College of Santa Cruz, where the two languages had a sustained and intensive connection. Ethnohistorical research on colonial Mexico has naturally accommodated study of Catholicism and the missionary enterprise in New Spain. 89 But the traditions and practices of Christian humanism-grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, poetics, antiquarianism, translation and textual