the languages of Mexico and its peoples. It was written in both Nahuatl and Spanish, and must be regarded as one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the entire Renaissance. But it aroused the opposition of his colleagues, and in 15/7 Philip Il ordered its confiscation, though one copy was to be sent to the Council of the Indies for examination; no one was to be allowed to ‘describe the superstitions and customs of the Indians’. Barnadino died without knowing what had happened to his life's work, and the manuscript was not recovered until 1/7/79; two similar studies were made, but none was printed until modern times. Nevertheless, some of the friars, especially the Franciscans, persisted in native studies; some could preach in three dialects, and by 15/2 there were 109 publications (that we know of) in ten different native languages, most of them in Nahuatl, which the friars tried to raise to a Jingua franca. The Holy Office seems to have disliked all publications for the Indians, even catechisms, especially if they were in translation; and the crown, too, tried to insist on Spanish, ‘that the Indians be instructed in our Castilian speech and accept our social organization and good customs' (1550). The intrinsic difficulties of finding the exact translation for Christian concepts were greatly increased by fear of heterodoxy. The seculars, who took virtually no part in the missions, and who hated the friars, were always on the watch; and in each order there was a rigorist group in sly contact with the authorities at home. In 1555 the first Mexican synod ordered the seizure of all sermons in the native language; and ten years later a further synod forbade the Indians access to the scriptures, in any language. We come here to some of the central problems which confronted mission work, which indeed have always bedeviled efforts to spread Christianity. To what extent should Christianity, in penetrating new societies and cultures, take on a native coloration and adapt its presentation of the essential truth? There is very good reason to believe, as we have seen, that the earliest Christian missionaries, spreading in Africa, Asia Minor and southern Europe, developed modulations and varieties which assisted the rapid dissemination of Christian ideas, and which were only later, in the course of three centuries, reconciled to a standard. It is hard not to believe that this was the apostles’ intention; it is certainly adumbrated in Paul's Epistles. But by the sixteenth century, a millenium and a half of increasingly narrow doctrinal definition had deprived Christianity of its flexibility and ambiguities. And then, in its homeland, Christianity itself was locked in dispute over points of doctrine which had come to seem momentous. Any divergence was held to entail torture and death in this world and eternal horror in the next.: Moreover, arrogant and insistent state power was involved: Christianity was identified with a national culture whose export was the whole point of the conquest. In Spanish and Portuguese America, the missionary friars (and later the Jesuits) were far too closely supervised by state and church authorities to attempt, or permit, a marriage between Christian and local culture. They did what seemed to them the next best thing: attempted to effect a separation between the native Christians and the Spanish settlers and half-castes; and this was made possible because it was both Official and ecclesiastical policy to gather the Indians in new villages. In Mexico all the orders, but especially the Augustinians, were enthusiastic founders of new villages and towns: This reorganization and separation of the people allowed the friars to impress their leadership on the Indians in their own way. Thus the Franciscan Antonio de Roa went barefoot, wore nothing but a coarse robe and slept on boards, took no wine, meat or bread, and in the sight of the Indians, threw himself on burning coals, had himself singed with a torch, and scourged himself every time he saw a cross. By such methods the Franciscans, says Suarez de Peralta, ‘were almost worshipped by the Indians'. Scourging was one of the aspects of Christianity the Indians seem to have adopted eagerly. Missionaries were asked: ‘Why do you not order me to be whipped? after confession; and natives adopted the custom of scourging themselves in Lent, and in times of drought or epidemic. (Even today, in Tzintzuntlan, the natives scourge themselves, on occasion, for several hours with nail-studded straps.) 7