I thank Barry Sell for his support at the outset of my work on the Náhuatl Imitatio. I am also indebted to Louise Burkhart, Susan Schroeder, Martin Nesvig, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, John F. Schwaller, Maarten Jansen, liona Heijnen, and Martha Few for providing very valuable comments regarding this article. I also wish to acknowledge the substantial feedback provided by two anonymous reviewers, and the efforts of the editorial staff of The Americas.

1. See Tarsé, J., “La traducción española de la ‘Imitación de Cristo,’” Analecta Sacra Tarraconcncia 15 (1942), pp. 101–125,Google Scholar which attributes this 1536 Spanish translation to Avila, although it had commonly been regarded as a work by Luis de Granada. See also Kempis, Thomas à, Imitación de Cristo por Tomas de Kempis y Devocionario por Andrés Pardo, Martín Hernández, Francisco, ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1975);Google Scholar Cepeda, Isabel Vilares, A linguajjem da “lmitaçào de Cristo”: versào portuguesa de Fr. Joào Alvares (Lisboa: Instituto Alta Cultura, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1962);Google Scholar Kempis, Thomas à, La Imitado de Jesu-crist del venerable Tomas de Kempis. Traducciò catalana de Miquel Perez, novament publicada per A. Miguel y Planas serons la edicto de l’any 1482 (Barcelona: L’Avene, 1911);Google Scholar and Harvey, L., “El Mancebo de Arévalo and his Treatises on Islamic Faith and Practice,” Journal of Islamic Studies 10:3 (1999), pp. 249–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Some authors insist that Granada authored the 1536 translation of the Imitatio. See, for instance, Cultural Trans¬lation in Early Modern Europe, Burke, Peter and Po-chia Hsia, R., eds. (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univer¬sity Press, 2007), p. 85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. See Schwaller, John F., “Conversion, Engagement, and Extirpation: Three Phases of the Evangeliza¬tion of New Spain, 1524-1650,” in Conversion to Christianity from Late Antiquity to the Modern Age: Con-sidering the Process in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, Kendall, Calvin B., Nicholson, Oliver, Phillips, William D. Jr., and Marguerite, Ragnow, eds. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2009), pp. 259–292.Google Scholar

3. See for Luis Weckmann, instance, The Medieval Heritage of Mexico, vol. 1 (New York: Fordham Uni¬versity Press), p. 517;Google Scholar and Gruzinski, Serge, The Conquest of Mexico: The Incorporation of Indian Societies into the Western World, 16th-18th Centuries (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1993), p. 60.Google Scholar

4. Santa Cruz, established north of Mexico City in the altepetl (Nahua state) of Tlatelolco in 1536, was the first and most important educational institution open to natives in sixteenth-century New Spain.

5. Tavárez, David, “A Banned Sixteenth-Century Biblical Text in Náhuatl: The Proverbs of Solomon,” Ethnohistory 60:4 (2013), pp. 759–762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Rincón was the author of Arte Mexicana, a Náhuatl grammar printed in 1595 that served as an important precedent for the publication of Horacio Carochi's monumental Arte de ¡a lengua mexicana in 1645. See Karttunen, Frances, “La contribución del trabajo de Antonio del Rincón a la lexicografía náhuatl del siglo XX,” Revista Latina de Pensamiento y Lenguaje 2-2B (1995-1996), pp. 391–405;Google Scholar Carochi, Grammar of the Mexican Language with an Explanation of Its Adverbs (1645) [1645], Vol. 89, James Lockhart, ed. and trans. (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Studies Series, 2001); and Guzmán Betancourt, Ignacio, “Antonio del Rincón (1566–1601): primer gramático mexicano,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 33 (2002), pp. 253–265.Google Scholar

7. Burkhart, Louise, Holy Wednesday: A Nahtia Drama from Early Colonial Mexico (Philadelphia: Uni¬versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 57–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Maria Kobayashi, José, La educación como conquista: empresa franciscana en México (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1974).Google Scholar

8. See Nesvig, Martin, Forgotten Franciscans: Works from an Inquisitional Theorist, a Heretic, and an Inquisitional Deputy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011).Google Scholar

9. Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, Concilios Provinciales Primero y Segundo, celebrados en la[…] ciudad de México […] en los años de 1555y 1565 (Mexico: Imprenta del Superior Gobierno, 1769), pp. 143-144. See also Schwaller, John F., The Church and Clergy in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987).Google Scholar

10. AGN Inquisici6n [hereafter AGN Inq.], vol. 43, no. 6, fs. 197r-230v.

11. Antonio Lorenzana, Francisco, III Concilium Mexicanus (Mexico: Imprenta del Superior Gobierno, 1769), p. 14.Google Scholar

12. For a detailed discussion of these factors, see Poole, Stafford, Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571–1591 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).Google Scholar

13. For a brief Náhuatl text on the conversion of Paul, produced before 1560, see Christenscn, Mark Z., “The Tales of Two Cultures: Ecclesiastical Texts and Nahua and Maya Catholicisms,” The Americas 66:3 (2010), pp. 353–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a Christian narrative and a translation from sections of the Scriptures, see Burkhart, Louise, “The Voyage of Saint Amaro: A Spanish Legend in Náhuatl Literature,” Colonial Latin American Review 4 (1995), pp. 29–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Viseo, Juan Bautista, Sermonario en lengua mexicana (Mexico: Casa de Diego López Dávalos, 1606), fs. 12 r-v.Google Scholar

15. Bautista’s career can be traced in part through and from the introductions he wrote for three of his works: the Confesionario, the Libro de la miseria, and the Sermonario. Born around 1555 in New Spain, Bautista took the habit of Saint Francis in 1571 in Mexico City and trained as a scholar of Náhuatl under Miguel de Zárate and Jerónimo de Mendieta. His activities as author and compiler were supported in institu¬tional terms by his distinguished career in the Santo Evangelio Franciscan province. By 1597, he was named guardian of the Tetzcoco convent, and he also served as guardian of the convent of Tlatelolco between 1598 and 1603, rising to the position of definidor (councilor in a province) in 1603–1605. In 1605–1607, he served as guardian of the convent of Tacuba, and by 1607 he was back again in Tlatelolco as a reader in the¬ology. Bautista probably died between 1607, the date of his last known collaborative work, the Comedia de losreyes, and 1613—the date of completion of Torquemada’s Monarquía Indiana ([1615] 1969), which men¬tions Bautista’s death. See also Gárate, Román Zulaica, Los franciscanos y la imprenta en México en el siglo 16 [1939] (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1991), pp. 217–221.Google Scholar

16. Bautista, Sermonario, fs. vii r; ix r-xi r.

17. Ibid., fs. vii r-ix r.

18. d’Olvver, Lluís Nicolau, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, 1499–1590 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), pp. 33, 36, 40; Burkhart, Holy Wednesday, p. 66.Google Scholar

19. For a recent discussion of indigenous scholars associated with Santa Cruz, see SilverMoon, , “The Imperial College of Tlatelolco and the Emergence of a New Nahua Intellectual Elite in New Spain (1500-1760)” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2007).Google Scholar

20. Bautista, Sermonario, f. viii r. For Valeriano’s successful political career, see Connell, William F., After Moctezuma: Indigenous Politics and Self-Government in Mexico City, 1524-1730 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), pp. 65–89.Google Scholar

21. Burkhart, Holy Wednesday, p. 61.

22. Bautista, Sermonario, f. vii v.

23. Fuller, Ross, The Brotherhood of the Common Life and Its Influence (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), pp. 81–93.Google Scholar

24. Post, R., The Modern Devotion (Leiden: Brill, 1968), pp. 314–342, 521–525.Google Scholar

25. A more distant possibility is that it was written by Giovanni Gersen, a poorly known Italian abbot. For details about this authorship debate, see Post, R., The Modem Devotion, pp. 525–531.Google Scholar

26. Gregory, Brad, “Persecutions and Martyrdoms,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 6, Reform and Expansion 1500-1660, Hsia, R. Po-chia, ed. (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 268;Google Scholar Creasy, William C., The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis: A New Reading of the 1441 Latin Autograph Manuscript. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2007), p. 13.Google Scholar

27. Bataillon, Marcel, Erasmo y España: estudios sobre la historia espiritual del siglo XVI [1937] (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica 1966), p. 48.Google Scholar

28. For an edition of the Imitatio featuring a Book III with 64 chapters, see for instance a 1496 Span¬ish-language version entitled Libro de remedar a Christo, printed in Seville and attributed to Gerson, at Houghton Library, Harvard University, Incunabula. 9523.5.

29. See Morales, Francisco, “New World Colonial Franciscan Mystical Practice,” in A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism, Kallendorf, Hilaire, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 71–102.Google Scholar

30. Bataillon (in Erasmo, pp. 213, 359) discusses Ignatius Loyola’s preference for the Imitatio over Erasmus’s Enchiridion, and notes that the Imitatio is one of the vernacular devotional works highly recom¬mended by Valdés to his readers.

31. de Mendieta, Gerónimo, Historia eclesiástica Indiana, Antonio Rubial García, ed. (Mexico: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1997), vol. 1, pp. 74–75.Google Scholar

32. Mendieta, , Historia, Voi.1, pp. 32–33.Google Scholar

33. See Rodríguez Rivas, Gregorio, “El Libro de miseria de omne, version libre del De contemptu mundi,” Livius4 (Leon: Universidad de León, 1993), pp. 177–191.Google Scholar

34. Bautista, Sermonario, f. χ r.

35. Códice Franciscano, Icazbalceta, J. García, ed. (Mexico: Editorial S. Chávez Hayhoe, 1941), p. 60.Google Scholar

36. Fernández de Sevilla, F. Javier Campos y, Catálogo del fondo manuscrito americano de la Real Bib¬lioteca del Escorial (San Lorenzo de El Escorial: Ediciones Escurialenses, 1993), pp. 59–66.Google Scholar

37. Mendieta, Historia, Vol. 1, p. 34.

38. Ibid., pp. 74–75.

39. Torquemada, Juan de, Monarquía Indiana [1615] (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1969), p. 436.Google Scholar

40. The aforementioned Diego de Estella’s 1562 Libro de las vanidades del mundo, also known as Con-temptus mundi, comprised only three books.

41. This fact is also recorded in Còdice Franciscano, 1941, p. 131.

42. Vetancurt, Agustín de, Teatro Mexicano [1698] (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1982), p. 150.Google Scholar

43. Mendieta, Historia, vol. 2, p. 228.

44. Tavárez, “A Banned Sixteenth-Century Biblical Text in Náhuatl.”

45. Nesvig, Martin, Ideology and Inquisition. The World of the Censors in Early Mexico (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 153–157.Google Scholar The reference to Ecclesiastes appears in the questionnaire (AGN Inq., vol. 43, no. 4, fs. 133-136). These authors were split according to their order: while Molina praised Rodriguez’s translation of the Proverbs and argued that it was not fair to deprive natives of “the spir¬itual consolation of devotional books for their souls and salvation” and Sahagún shared his views, Anunciación felt that a ban of the Ecclesiastes translation would not be detrimental to indigenous evangelization. Anun-ciación’s Nahuatl-language Doctrina Christiana breve y compendiosa was printed in 1565.

46. La Viñaza, Conde de, Bibliografìa española de lenguas indígenas de América (Madrid: Sucesores de Ribadeneyra, 1892), p. 255.Google Scholar See also Beristáin de Souza, José Mariano, Biblioteca hispano-americana septen¬trional (Mexico: A. Valdés, 1816–1821).Google Scholar

47. Tavárez, David, The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 93.Google Scholar

48. The term exhortatio also referred to brief, simple speeches commonly used by Franciscan preachers. See Roest, Bert, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent (Leiden: Brill, 2004);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Senocak, Neslihan, The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209-1310 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49. Real Biblioteca del Escorial [hereafter RBE] d-IV-7, lr: “In nomine domini nostri iesu xpi incipit liber primus huius tractatuli aurei et quam vtilis ad v[er]am et p[er]fectam imita.[ti]onem xpi. ad lectorem.”

50. However, the absence of the last 23 chapters of Book III in the Escorial Imitatio does bring to mind Mendieta’s assertion that the Contemptu mundi authored by Rodriguez lacked the last 20 chapters of Book III.

51. See Carochi, Grammar of the Mexican Language.

52. I thank one of my anonymous reviewers for noting that in the JCB Imitatio the reduction of double fs into single ones is done only for verbal forms, thus bringing it into conformity with Molina’s orthography.

53. I thank Barry Sell for sharing with me his transcription of some sections of RBE.IV.7. I revised and checked Sell’s transcription against a microfilmed copy of this document. Given the manuscript’s tight bind¬ing, some letters are difficult to transcribe. I have used the character pair < > to indicate transcription doubts, and the pair [ ] to transcribe most abbreviations. This is my own translation, and it favors the lexical choices that appear in Molina’s 1571 Vocabulario.

54. See Burkhart, Louise “The Solar Christ in Náhuatl Doctrinal Texts of Early Colonial Mexico,” Eth-nohistory 35:3 (1988), pp. 234–256.Google Scholar

55. This trope resembles a later description of the persignum crucis is a feathered headband that Nahua Christians place on their heads in Sahagún’s Psalmodia Christiana.

56. See Isaiah, 40:18–20,Google Scholar 44: 9–20; Jeremiah 10:1–5; and Habakkuk 2:18–19. For analysis of this trope in Nahua and Zapotee doctrinal texts, see Tavárez, , Invisible War, p. 15.Google Scholar

57. See Alastair J., Minnis, "Material Swords and Literal Lights: The Status of Allegory in William of Ockham's Breviloquium on Papal Power," in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, Walfish, Barry D., and Goering, Joseph W., eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 292–308.Google Scholar

58. Molina, Alonso de, Vocabulario en lengua Castellana y Mexicana y Mexicana y Castellana [1571] (Mexico: Porriia, 1992), p. 65r,Google Scholar renders tezcatl necoc xapo as “espejo de dos haces,” where xapo is the passive form of a verb. Sahagún’s translation of this phrase in the Historia General, “espejo luciente y pulido de ambas partes,” implies that this verb is “to polish,” although its shape does not resemble any attested Náhuatl verbs with that meaning. See also Sahagún, Bernardino de, The Florentine Codex: Ten, Book, Anderson, Arthur J. O. and Dibble, Charles E., trans, and eds. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1961), p. 87.Google Scholar 1 follow Sahagún in my translation. Miguel León-Portilla, in La filosofía náhuatl estudiada en sus fuentes (Mexico: Uni¬versidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1959), pp. 65-66) prefers to render the phrase as “espejo agujereado por ambos lados.” This view was supported by Arthur J. Anderson, who interprets xapo as the passive of xapotla, “to bore or break through something,” and translates this phrase as “the broad mirror pierced through.” See Sahagún, , Bernardino de Sahagún’s Psalmodia Christiana [1593], Anderson, Arthur J. O., trans, and ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993), p. 41.Google Scholar

59. For an interpretation of this prayer to Tezcatlipoca, see Olivier, Guilhem, Mockeries and Metamor¬phoses of an Aztec God: Tezcatlipoca, “Lord of the Smoking Mirror” (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 2003), p. 251.Google Scholar

60. Sahagún, , The Florentine Codex: Book Six, Anderson, Arthur J.O. and Dibble, Charles E., trans, and eds. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1969), p. 54.Google Scholar

61. Sahagún, Book Ten, pp. 11, 29. A final, nonmetaphorical and partial recurrence of this phrase is found in Book Ten, chapt. 24, p. 87. It states that the tezcanamacac, “mirror seller,” quinamaca in tezcatl, in iaoaliuhqui, in iaoltie necoc xapo “sells mirrors, round ones, round and polished on both sides.”

62. Sahagún, Psalmodia Christiana, p. 40.

63. The relationship between Sahagún and the “solar Christ” in doctrinal Nahua texts is discussed in Burkhart, “Solar Christ.”

64. Molina’s 1555 Spanish-Nahuatl Vocabulario is narrower in scope than his 1571 work, and the metaphors and idioms that accompany some of the entries for his 1571 dictionary rarely appear in the 1555 text. I have not yet analyzed any links between the Escorial Imitatio and Molina’s 1571 Arte.

65. In a different context, Sell has noted the connection between two Náhuatl linguistic projects asso¬ciated with the Jesuit author Horacio Carochi, and with his most important collaborator, the Nahuatl-speak-ing author and curate Bartolomé de Alva. On the one hand, Alva deployed intricate samples of polite speech in his Náhuatl rendition of Lope de Vega’s play The Animal Prophet and the Fortunate Parricide; on the other, some of these phrases appear as grammatical examples in Carochi’s 1645 Arte de la lengua Mexicana. Sell, Barry, “Two Eminent and Classical Authors of the Discipline: Father Horacio Carochi SJ, and Don Bartolomé de Alva, Náhuatl Scholars of New Spain,” Náhuatl Theater, Volume 3: Spanish Golden Age Drama in Mexican Translation, Sell, Barry, Burkhart, Louise, and Wright, Elizabeth R., eds. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), pp. 26–34, esp. p. 31.Google Scholar

66. See also de Alarcón, Hernando Ruiz, Treatise on the Heathen Institutions that Today Live Among the Indians Native to this New Spain (1629), Andrews, J. Richard and Hassig, Ross, trans and eds. (Norman: Uni-versity of Oklahoma Press, 1984), pp. 114, 165, 185.Google Scholar

67. Vetancurt, Teatro Mexicano, p. 140.

68. A less likely possibility is that Vetancurt conflates here the JCB Imitatio with a very different work. Vetancurt authored a Náhuatl work on the Via Crucis; it is said to have been printed twice by Francisco Rodriguez Lupercio, but survives only as a copy made in 1738 from a 1680 original. See John F. Schwaller, “Fray Agustín de Vetancurt and the ‘Via Crucis en mexicano,’” a paper presented at the 53rd meeting of the International Congress of Americanists, Mexico City.

69. Bautista, Sermonario, f. viii r. In the following paragraph, Bautista also names Esteban Bravo as a Nahua Latinist who was a contributor to “this labor,” a phrase that could refer either to the Contemptus mundi, or to Bautista's works in general.

70. Ibid., f. xi r.

71. Groult, Pierre, “Un disciple espagnol de Thomas a Kempis: Diego de Estella,” Les Lettres Romanes 5 (1951), Part I, pp. 287–304;Google Scholar 6 (1952), Part II, pp. 23-56; and Part III, pp. 107-128. Unfortunately, Groult continues to attribute this 1536 Spanish translation to Granada, in spite of a growing consensus that identifies Juan de Avila as its author. See Tarse, “La traducción española.”

72. See Sagüéz Azcona, Pío, Fray Diego de Estella (1524-1578). Apuntes para una biografía critica (Madrid, 1950); and Juan M. Bujanda, Diego de Estella (1524-1578). Estudio de sus obras castellanas (Rome, 1970).Google Scholar

73. Groult, “Un disciple espagnol.” The eight works by Kempis that also had an impact on Estella’s volume are Libellas de recognitione propriae fragilitatis, Sermones ad novicios, Recommendatio humilitatis, Dis¬ciplina claustralium, De solitudine et silentio, Libellus spiritualis exercitii, Vallis liliorum, and Brevis admonitio spiritualis exercitii.

74. Groult, in “Un disciple espagnol,” also argues that the work of another Dutch devotional author, Brabançon Harphius, was reworked and adapted by the Franciscan authors Bernardino de Laredo y Juan dc los Angeles, who in turn made an impact on Santa Teresa de Jesús.

75. Viseo, Juan Bautista, Libro de la miseria (Mexico: Emprenta de Diego López Daualos, 1604), pp. 146–148;Google Scholar Granada, Luis de, Libro de la oracióny meditación (Madrid: Andrés García, 1676), pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

76. This work bore licenses from the viceroy, the general commissary of the Franciscans in New Spain, and a chair in Theology at the Royal University of Mexico, in addition to the approval of Mendieta, who was Bautista’s mentor. It was dedicated to Santiago del Riego, a member of the audiencia of Mexico.

77. Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Fonds Mexicain 410, pp. 122 ff.

78. Sell, Barry, “‘Perhaps our Lord, God, Has Forgotten Me’: Intruding into the Colonial Nahua (Aztec) Confessional,” in The Conquest All Over Again: Nahuas and Zapotees Thinking, Writing, and Paint¬ing Spanish Colonialism, Schroeder, Susan, ed. (Sussex: Sussex Academic Press, 2010), pp. 191, 202.Google Scholar

79. Béligand, Nadine, “Lecture indienne et chrétienté: La bibliothèque d’un alguacil de doctrina en Nouvelle-Espagne au XVI siècle,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velazquez 31 (1995), p. 70.Google Scholar The original testament is in AGN Tierras, vol. 2222.

80. Spores, Ronald, The Mixtee Kings and Their People (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967), pp. 241–244;Google Scholar Terraciano, Kevin, The Mixtees of Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 284,Google Scholar 464. Terraciano suggests that the Contemptus mundi owned by don Gabriel could be a ver¬sion of Diego de Estella’s popular Libro de las vanidades del mundo. Given the broad diffusion of the Imita¬tio in the sixteenth century and the fact that it went by the title listed in this will, it is also possible that don Gabriel's book was an Imitatio.

81. Nesvig, Martin, “The Epistemological Politics of Vernacular Scripture in Sixteenth Century Mexico,” The Americas70 (2013), pp. 165–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

82. See Tavárez, David, “Naming the Trinity: From Ideologies of Translation to Dialectics of Reception in Colonial Nahua Texts, 1547–1771,” Colonial Latin American Review 9:1 (2000), pp. 21–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83. Poole, Moya de Contreras, p. 213.