Religion In The Comics - 031

[Cartoonist]

Not to be confused with Treasure Chest, the comic published by the Catechetical Guild. This is an anthology comic published by American Boy's Comics. This feature is from Issue #2, cover dated August 1945.





The Untold Story
I feel Christianity is given a free pass here. I know it is only a three page installment of a series (more to follow), but there is no hint of the role religion played in the new land. Here's some tidbits just on Cortes from wikipedia:

In March 1519, Cortés formally claimed the land for the Spanish crown. Then he proceeded to Tabasco, where he met with resistance and won a battle against the natives. He received twenty young indigenous women from the vanquished natives, and he converted them all to Christianity.

And as to those who murmur against the Marqués del Valle [Cortés], God rest him, and who try to blacken and obscure his deeds, I believe that before God their deeds are not as acceptable as those of the Marqués. Although as a human he was a sinner, he had faith and works of a good Christian, and a great desire to employ his life and property in widening and augmenting the fair of Jesus Christ, and dying for the conversion of these gentiles... Who has loved and defended the Indians of this new world like Cortés?... Through this captain, God opened the door for us to preach his holy gospel and it was he who caused the Indians to revere the holy sacraments and respect the ministers of the church.
- a Franciscan, Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinia

So what did this lover and defender of Indians do?
-
In October 1519, Cortés and his men, accompanied by about 1,000 Tlaxcalteca, marched to Cholula, the second largest city in central Mexico. Cortés, either in a pre-meditated effort to instill fear upon the Aztecs waiting for him at Tenochtitlan or (as he later claimed, when he was being investigated) wishing to make an example when he feared native treachery, massacred thousands of unarmed members of the nobility gathered at the central plaza, then partially burned the city

[edhopper]

1. There are many who will tell you

"religion had nothing to do with it".
Despite the Pope's involvement and the active missionary part in all this.

[Lordquinton]

2. Gentlemen Adventurers

That may be going on my business card.

[onager]

3. A "free pass" already exposed by 1843

In the historian William H. Prescott's incredible book History of the Conquest of Mexico.

Prescott made it clear that "conquest for the glory of God" was a load of hokum. Cortes was after Aztec gold. But the "glory of God" stuff made a great politically correct excuse. Prescott covered the same theme with different characters in his equally incredible History of the Conquest of Peru.

Interesting that Prescott noted BOTH the Aztecs and Spaniards launched crusades/holy wars for their very different religions:

The tutelary diety of the Aztecs was the god of war... The soldier, who fell in battle, was transported at once to the regions of ineffable bliss... Every war, therefore, became a crusade; and the warrior, animated by a religious enthusiasm, like that of the ... Christian crusader ... courted... the imperishable crown of martyrdom. Thus we find the same impulse acting in the most opposite quarters of the globe... each earnestly invoking the holy name of religion in the perpetuation of human butchery.

Nobody reads Prescott any more...which is probably why I found his books at a yard sale for twenty-five cents each. It's a shame. He was about 150 years ahead of his time in writing popular history - i.e., not a dry drone of names and dates, but history that jumped right off the page and grabbed you by the throat. (His books are still in print and available at the South American River.)

Prescott also had an incredible personal story. During a food fight at Harvard, he was hit in the eye by a piece of bread. This blinded one eye and weakened the other, so that he was almost totally blind while still a young man. He died in 1859.

/pedant

[AlbertCat]

4. Conquistadores.....

...... dressed like a mash-up of the Keiser , Power Rangers, and Logan's Run.

[edhopper]

5. this seems appropriate.