CHAPTERS 6 Adam’s World Tree and Paul’s Idols

[Priests should use] … an abbreviated catechism, scrupulously extracted from the Roman one so that the faithful receive the pure and sound Doctrine of the Church with uniformity and with the authority accordant to the Provincial Council.… [T]herefore, with luck, random works destitute of legitimate authority and revision in matters so grave will not circulate such important material.

—IV Mexican Provincial Council (1771)²

It would be very useful to have printed books in the language of these [Maya] about Genesis and the creation of the world; because they have fables, or very harmful histories, and some of these they have written, and they guard them and read them in their meetings. And I had one of these notebooks that I confiscated from a maestro named Cuytun of the town of Sucop, who escaped. And I could never have him to know the origin of this his Genesis.

—Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar (1615)³

When in the late eighteenth century the prelates of the Fourth Mexican Provincial Council ordered all clergy to strictly employ their newly printed catechism, they provided a valuable description of the colonial Church and its relationship to unofficial ecclesiastical texts. The Fourth Provincial Council’s call for the faithful to receive the doctrines of the Church in a sanctioned and uniform manner acknowledged the presence of a variety of Catholic discourses that stemmed from colonial religious works deemed to be “destitute of legitimate authority and revision.” Such unofficial ecclesiastical texts avoided the editing process that both the clergy and Crown established to ensure the orthodoxy of all printed religious material. In so doing, the texts could convey diverse, unorthodox interpretations of Catholicism—a reality Aguilar addresses in his above concern over the Maya’s “notebook” accounts of Genesis.

How did these manuscripts explain Catholic doctrine? The following provides an intimate look into how native-authored, Category 3 texts instructed Nahuas and Mayas on important figures and events in Christianity. Numerous native-language religious texts speak of the Creation, or quote Paul or Adam. Yet the following manuscripts demonstrate how unofficial texts could explain the importance and position of such figures and events in Catholicism in varied and unorthodox ways. Moreover, as natives authored these texts outside direct ecclesiastic supervision, the texts reflect more clearly native understandings of Catholic beliefs. It is these native-authored, unofficial ecclesiastical texts, and the role they played in both producing and reflecting multiple versions of Catholicism, that are the focus of this chapter.

Penned over the space of eight folios in eloquent Nahua handwriting, the redaction of the conversion of Paul is found in a small, makeshift book sewn between two limp, vellum covers, one of which likely came from an old choirbook leaf. On the inside of the front cover is a piece of amatl—fig tree bark paper—where sixty-four profiles of Nahua heads are arranged in eight-by-eight lines and drawn in black with some colored in blue-green, and pink.⁴ Although the text has been identified as “a translation of several chapters in the Acts of the Apostles dealing with the conversion of Saint Paul,” my translation of the Nahuatl text proves otherwise.⁵ The work itself is a sermon with two topical themes—one concerning the conversion of Paul, the other regarding the ministry of Sebastian—and neither is a translation of biblical verse.⁶ My transcription and translation of the manuscript did not uncover its date, author, or provenance.⁷ However, philological examinations of its terminology and orthography by both James Lockhart and me suggest its creation sometime before 1560 by two distinct Nahua writers.⁸

According to the Nahuatl manuscript, as Paul was traveling on horseback, God struck his horse causing Paul’s body to crumble and turn to dust. As demons collected his body-turned-dust in a cloak, Paul found himself in heaven and facing God. God questioned Paul as to why he killed Sebastian who righteously built holy temples and swept the roads that lead to heaven. After lecturing Paul on the privileged position of the poor and meek who in heaven receive golden seats and houses, God commanded his angels to take Paul to hell to witness the torments imposed on sinners. Among the fire and smoke that “reeks badly,” Paul stood on hot coals for what seemed like twenty years, and witnessed devils and demons use iron tongs to cut up sinners and place their bodies in metal tubs. As he sobbed at the scene before him, the angels told Paul to no longer venerate his gods, before whom he had bled himself and cut his ears.

Muttering the phrase, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” Paul regained consciousness, startling his companions who were keeping his body-turned-dust in a cloak. After reassuring his followers that he was neither a bad omen nor something monstrous, Paul informed them that their killing of Sebastian was a sin and that they should retrieve Sebastian’s body from where they had executed him with arrows. Upon arriving at Sebastian’s body, however, Paul’s followers found Sebastian alive and unharmed—a miracle ascribed to the angels of God—and led him to Paul’s home.

When Sebastian arrived, Paul greeted him with the story of his journey to hell. Immediately following the tale, Paul gathered all his idols, burned them in the patio, and asked to be baptized. Sebastian refused arguing that Paul was to be baptized by one named Peter who lived far away. Upon Sebastian’s request, Peter came to Paul’s house where—similar to Sebastian—he was greeted with the narrative of Paul’s journey to hell. After hearing the story, Peter baptized Paul, changed his name from “Paul” to “Pablo” (also Paul), and taught him how to read, write, pray, and live respectfully on earth.

To conclude, the text uses the first-person voice to explain why natives should venerate and pray to St. Paul, who, after all, is similar to them. The text states:

cenca : tictlatlauhtizque : yn tixquichtin : yn totatzin : yn Sa. Pablo yehyca : y cenca tictlatlauhtizque : yn çatepan : tlaneltocac : Auh yn tehuatin ca ça no tepan : yn otitlaneltocaque : yn otiqu1̅tlatique : yn otiquiteotiaya : yn tlahuelliloque : yn tlatlacatecollo : camo çan toceltin Camo çaN iyoque : yn iuhqui : oticchiuque ca no yuhqui yn quichiuh : yn totatzin : yn Sa pabla [sic] : yehyca : yn cencan : tictlatlauhtizque : In ilhuitzin yn1̅pan yn totecuiyo : ca no topampa : quimotlatlauhtilliz : yn totte°. d.s Ca ye yxquich yn tlatolli huel pielloz :⁹

[W]e all will earnestly pray to our father St. Paul. The reason that we will earnestly pray to him is that he believed afterward, and with us too it was after we believed that we burned the evil demons we had taken to be gods. We are not alone or the only ones who have done it this way; for our father St. Paul did it the same way, for which reason we will earnestly pray on his feast day to our lord. Also, he (Paul) will pray to our lord God for us; that is all of the statement; it is to be observed well.

The conditions under which the manuscript was created are ambiguous and offer a variety of plausible possibilities. Stories and legends about the lives of the saints and honorable Christians from the early ages of Christianity inspired colonial native-language religious texts. Medieval works such as Clemente Sánchez de Vercial’s The Book of Tales by A.B.C. (1400s) and Johannes Gobius’s fourteenth-century Scala celi influenced Nahuatl texts on Mary.¹⁰ The Flos sanctorum, a popular hagiography derived from Jacobus de Voragine’s thirteenth-century Legenda aurea or The Golden Legend, inspired the playwright Lope de Vega Carpio whose plays in turn inspired a number of Nahuatl translations. Moreover, sections of Sahagún’s Psalmodia derived directly from The Golden Legend.¹¹ Even the fables of Aesop would find a Nahuatl translation.¹²

More relevant here, the Vision of Saint Paul—a text originally created in the third century—likely played a role in inspiring sections of the Nahuatl sermon. In the Vision of Saint Paul, Paul has a vision where an angel escorts him to heaven and hell to witness the rewards of the righteous and the punishments of the wicked. In heaven, Paul viewed a land of milk and honey where the poor and meek received thrones and jeweled crowns. In hell, Paul witnessed a variety of gruesome torments that sinners endured, each receiving a punishment according to his crime. For example, mockers of the Church were seen surrounded by fire and devouring their own tongues.¹³ Although the fifth-century Church historian, Salminius Hermias Sozomen, and St. Augustine both disapproved of the tale, the text became widely popular throughout the Middle Ages and no doubt was known to the early friars of central Mexico and, as it appears, some of their Nahua students.

In creating the sermon, Nahua aides could have copied the text from another existing document, or penned the account as dictated by a friar. It is true that the text contains many obvious influences from indigenous culture, but this could be the result of a friar modifying his sermon to his audience. Yet the sermon’s misspelling and confusion of names and its unorthodox events make this possibility less probable. It is hard to believe that a friar or priest would have knowingly allowed such glaring errors to be preached. Moreover, the sermon’s conclusion in the first-person voice associates the author with the idolatrous parishioners and their culture:

The reason that we will earnestly pray to him (Paul) is that he believed afterward, and with us too it was after we believed that we burned the evil demons we had taken to be gods. We are not alone or the only ones who have done it this way; for our father St. Paul did it the same way” (emphasis mine).¹⁴

It is unlikely that a friar or priest would use such rhetoric.

Finally, the Nahua profiles on the inside front cover strongly suggest the indigenous authorship of this small book. Each of the eight lines of profiles concludes with a larger head and a name sign (see Figure 6.1). Federico Gómez de Orozco notes that the profiles resemble those on tribute censuses. He also comments that Nahua fiscales used similar lines of profiles to represent native parishioners and their corresponding tutor or instructor.¹⁵ Believing the manuscript was a religious drama, John Hubert Cornyn posited that the heads represented the names of the actors.¹⁶ Yet the figures also resemble those seen in select pictorial catechisms, or testerians.¹⁷ Perhaps the cover is just that—a cover, taken from a separate manuscript and used to cover this text. Regardless of their meaning, the presence of such profiles in a manuscript written by, and/or intended for a priest’s personal use, seems unlikely.

More likely, Nahua fiscales or assistants, either under their own or an ecclesiastic’s charge, penned this manuscript for their own personal, local use to recount the conversion of Paul in a way that would be familiar to a Nahua audience, endear Paul to them, and encourage them to end idolatrous practices.¹⁸In the process, the authors drew upon medieval tales, used the names and stories of key Christian figures, and intentionally, or unintentionally, conflated and rearranged them to relate a new, unorthodox, Nahua version of the account.

The Maya account is a small excerpt of a larger discourse on the Creation found in the Morley Manuscript. Bequeathed to the Museum of New Mexico by Sylvanus Morley, and recently translated by Gretchen Whalen, this codex contains a compilation of writings on a variety of Christian topics written in Yucatec Maya. Although the provenance of the manuscript is unknown, the inscription “año 1576” appears below a heading on one of the pages and analysis of the manuscript indicates that the book is a late eighteenth-century copy of an earlier original likely penned in 1576. Moreover, Whalen notes that sections of the manuscript were translations from Las preguntas que el emperador hizo al infante Epitus (a publication of medieval literature, circa 1535 to 1540, banned by the Inquisition in 1559) and inspired from the medieval works of Voragine and Sánchez.¹⁹ Upon further examination of the manuscript, I found additional connections not only to the works of Voragine and Sánchez, but also to St. Gregory’s Dialogues (590s), the Flos sanctorum, and Gobius’s Scala celi. This is not overly surprising considering that various medieval tales found their way into Category 3 Maya texts, including the Chilam Balams.²⁰

The Maya tract on the creation of Adam states that after discussing the matter, the Holy Trinity decided to make an Earthly Paradise where God’s creations could reside. In the center of this paradise, God created the first tree of the world and made it the greatest of all his wondrous creations. In the midst of the tree was a spring from which poured very sweet water and at whose source was a chair for a ruler under the command of Jesus Christ. The commentary mentions that the spring is “really wondrous to be seen, the marvel, the delight of the garden.”²¹ As the Holy Trinity stood in the middle of Earthly Paradise, they discussed among themselves their desire to make man in their own image. Retreating to the back of Earthly Paradise, they gathered from the very center of the earth the best earth anywhere called “Damascene,” meaning from Damascus. God used the Damascene earth to mold Adam’s body; a body that could not move, see, hear, or speak, and that lacked skin and hair. After creating the body of Adam, God blew into him the breath of life and commanded him to see. Immediately, Adam could see and his hair and skin began to appear, as well as his veins. Then, God spat into the palm of his hand and placed his saliva on Adam’s mouth and ears to open both. The story concludes with Adam declaring that he will give thanks to God for creating his body and the earth.²²

Although the work’s 346 pages fail to mention their author, the orthography of the manuscript, its misspelling of common Spanish words, its confusion and conflation of various biblical events, and its command of Maya rhetoric strongly indicate a Maya author, likely a maestro serving as a school master teaching indigenous youth—a common duty of indigenous religious stewards.²³ In fulfilling their duties to instruct the cah in Catholicism, Maya maestros oftentimes used locally made handwritten books (cartapacios) that couched Christian concepts within precontact history and tradition.

As seen in the quote at the beginning of the chapter, the early seventeenth-century priest, Aguilar, mentions his confiscation of such books from maestros due to their erroneous depictions of the creation of the world according to Genesis. Cogolludo’s Historia similarly cites this event while providing another example. He claims that upon his arrival from Spain, he heard mention of a fray Juan Gutiérrez who had seen Maya cartapacios that described the creation of humans as being made from earth, grass, or thin straw, and whose bones, flesh, beard, and hair were made from grass or straw mixed with earth. Cogolludo then states how many such examples of cartapacios surely exist, and that various accounts of the Creation can be found scattered throughout the Chilam Balams and other Maya manuscripts.²⁴ The Morley Manuscript is likely such a book modifying and editing the Genesis account to better accommodate Maya culture.²⁵

Although both tales represent biblical stories, distinct native traditions from two Mesoamerican cultures have influenced their retelling in unique ways. In the Nahua account of the conversion of Paul, Sebastian’s sweeping of the roads to heaven, the golden seats awarded to the meek, and the tendency for Paul’s followers to fear him as a bad omen or something monstrous after his extraordinary restoration are but a few of the many indigenous characteristics that betray its Nahua origins. For the Nahuas, sweeping held the practical and spiritual significance of removing the unclean from public and private spaces. Nahua priests routinely swept the temples of their gods.²⁶ This precontact practice continued in the colonial period as the duty of Nahua sacristans and stewards of Catholic churches. Moreover, when Nahua testators of the Toluca Valley bequeathed household saints in their testaments, they occasionally included the request that the recipient sweep around the altar of the saint. In one instance, to ensure that his wife and children swept for his saint, a testator requested that his brothers “yell at them to sweep.”²⁷ Here, Sebastian’s service of sweeping the roads to heaven would have made perfect sense to Nahua listeners.

In the Vision of Saint Paul, the meek receive golden thrones and jeweled crowns. Here, the Nahua sermon focuses on the golden seats awarded to the faithful. This reference to golden seats appeals to both the Nahua’s appreciation of gold, considering it the “excrement of the gods” for its beauty, and their association of seated figures with rulers.²⁸ Indeed, the phrase petlapan ycpalpan nica, “I am on the reed mat, the seat,” served as a metaphor for governing.²⁹ The use of golden thrones as an image of power and privilege granted to the worthy surely resonated among Nahuas and was not uncommon as Gante’s 1553  Doctrina Christiana states how Christ will give the righteous golden thrones.³⁰

Finally, Paul’s plea for his followers not to take his sudden and miraculous restoration as a bad omen reflects the Nahua belief in anything frighteningly extraordinary or unexpected as portents of calamity.³¹ Sahagún recorded that someone who unexpectedly heard animal cries would either die or experience other misfortunes.³² Likewise, in Molina’s Nahuatl/Spanish Confessionario mayor the priest asks the Nahua penitent, “cuix noço tictetzamma yn chiquatli, yn tecolotl, yn coçamatl, yn pinahuiztli, yn tlalacatl, yn epatl, omiex mochan … yn anoço tixpapatlaca, yn anoço motozqui choco, yn anoço teucchoua? Aço tictetzamma yn tletl tlatlatzca, xixittomani, yn icoyoca” (did you take as a bad omen the barn-owl, the owl, the weasel, the black beetle, the big, russet beetle, the skunk that made a stink in your home, … or when your eyelids tremble, or you hiccup, or you sneeze? Perhaps you took as a bad omen the fire loudly crackling and exploding?).³³

Overall, the Nahua sermon on the conversion of Paul employed precontact elements to create a mental performance in the minds of the listeners that would allow them to place an unfamiliar Catholic tale within a familiar cultural setting. Indeed, unlike a traditional sermon that resembles a lecture, and similar to precontact Mesoamerican traditions that employed oral discourse and imagery to accompany forms of writing, the Nahua sermon with its characters speaking and interacting with one another in Nahua-familiar ways truly would have allowed the listeners to think of Paul as a fellow Nahua and ex-idolater who would understand their struggling efforts to convert.

However, in the second tale concerning the creation of Adam, the discursive nature of the Trinity, Adam’s lack of sight, speech, and hearing, the world tree, and the spring of water are key characteristics that betray its Maya origins.³⁴ Similar to the actions of the Trinity, Maya creation myths typically include a group of deities that first discuss the creation of the earth and humans, and then perform such creations in a series of cycles. For example, a Maya creation myth recorded in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel states that before the creation of the world a group of individuals pondered the question, “How shall we make manifest and see man upon the road?”³⁵ Moreover, Whalen comments how the Morley Manuscript resembles a passage in the Popol Vuh detailing how at the beginning of creation the deities Tepeu and Gucumatz “talked then, discussing and deliberating; they agreed, they united their words and their thoughts.”³⁶

Furthermore, the Maya redaction seems to conflate various Maya myths that describe the creation of man as a series of processes starting with a sightless, speechless man made out of mud, and finishing with a man in possession of all his senses and faculties that could adequately venerate the gods.³⁷ In the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, the creators of the earth shaped man from moistened earth, but the humans lacked the ability to speak “for their organs of speech were not yet opened.” God then subsequently “said for speech to emerge.”³⁸ Moreover, the Popol Vuh details the progressive process by which man was formed ranging from mud-men to wooden effigies. Yet all such attempts were “merely an experiment, an attempt at people,” for they “did not possess their hearts nor their minds; they did not remember their Framer, or their Shaper; they walked without purpose.”³⁹ Finally, the gods succeeded when they created humans from maize, who, like Adam, would praise and venerate their creators. Certainly, then, a Maya listener of this tale on the creation of Adam could relate to a trinity of deities discussing both the creation of the world and Adam who gradually obtained his human form and faculties to eventually praise his creator.

The tale’s emphasis on the greatness of the first tree of the world situated in the middle of Paradise strongly resembles the world tree of the Maya. Seen inscribed throughout most pre-Columbian Maya sites, the world tree was a symbolic axis mundi rooted in the underworld, extending through the middleworld, and reaching the upperworld with its branches.⁴⁰ For a Maya parishioner, it would seem only fitting that the world tree appear as the central, most grandiose creation in Earthly Paradise.

The placement of the ruler’s seat at the source of the spring of water would also appeal to a Maya audience, and likely derives inspiration from Revelations 22:1 which discusses the foundation of a New Jerusalem following the Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgement: “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Similar to central Mexico, the Maya associated seated figures with rulers. Yet here, the account emphasizes not the seat but its location at the source of a spring. Devoid of many rivers, lakes, or streams, the Yucatec Maya survived their arid climate with the aid of cenotes, wells, and natural springs.⁴¹Such natural water sources served as the cosmological center of many Maya settlements including Palenque, Dos Pilas, and Chichén Itzá. Moreover, water sources held religious significance as entrances to the underworld and the residences of deities, especially the chaaks or rain gods. The connection of these water sources to the “other world” also endowed them as sites of ancestor worship.⁴² Thus, seating a ruler at the source of a spring in the center of paradise resonated theologically and spatially with Maya culture.

Finally, inserting a spring into the tale and describing it as the marvel and delight of the garden reflects Maya culture on a number of levels. Springs are rare in Yucatan, making any such appearance a “marvel” and pleasant “delight.” Also, the Maya considered water originating from springs as the most pure and without pollution, and water from the center of the source was especially coveted for ritual purposes.⁴³ In a place termed “Paradise” where sin and misery had yet to enter, the purest water—spring water—would be the logical type found in the garden.

Overall and similar to the Nahua tale, the Maya manuscript employs pre-contact traditions and culturally specific elements to produce an oral discourse that would evoke a mental performance in the minds of the listeners, and that place foreign characters and events within a Maya setting. Indeed, one can imagine the maestro reading aloud the tale to a native audience that surely used the story’s Maya-specific additions to make sense of the creation of Adam along familiar lines of thought. Speaking of the Nahua’s evangelization, Burkhart states that “Christian teaching was effective only to the extent that it was compatible … with preexisting belief and practice.”⁴⁴ These two tales provide unique examples that exemplify her statement and extend its application to the Maya.

Yet despite whatever success the texts enjoyed in allowing Nahuas and Mayas to make sense of Catholicism on their own terms, the religious instruction both tales delivered was rife with heterodox doctrine. Such unorthodoxy becomes apparent when juxtaposing the tales with their biblical originals. According to the biblical account of the conversion of Paul, as Saul—the man who held the cloaks of those who stoned the prophet Stephen—journeyed to Damascus to persecute the disciples of Christ, a bright light from heaven surrounded him, and he heard the voice of Jesus. As a result, Saul lost his sight and his companions took him to Damascus. There, a man named Ananias blessed Saul and returned to him his sight after which Saul was baptized and began learning and preaching of Christ. In later chapters of the Bible, Saul is referred to as Paul, but although the exact moment this change took place is unclear, it did not happen at his baptism.⁴⁵ Contrary to the Nahua version, then, in the biblical account Saul never kills and subsequently meets with Sebastian, nor did Peter ever baptize Saul or change his name. Moreover, Saul never cut and bled his ears before his gods to venerate them, or owned a houseful of idols (see Table 6.1).

All such unorthodox elements originate from one of two sources. As seen above, the first derives from the tale’s inclusion of Nahua-specific elements into the account. The second stems from misrepresentations of the biblical and medieval accounts. The Nahua tale’s neglect to distinguish between the names “Saul” and “Paul” could be a simplification of the story’s characters, or reflect the ambivalence of representing the unfamiliar “s” syllable in Nahuatl, although generally speaking Nahuatl texts typically use “x” for “s.”⁴⁶ Furthermore, the tale melds two religious histories. Although Paul does (however passively) take part in the death of a Christian, it was Stephen, not Sebastian. According to Voragine’s hagiography, Sebastian was a Christian who lived hundreds of years later and was shot full of arrows by Roman soldiers at the end of the third century. Although he miraculously survived, he was subsequently beaten to death.⁴⁷

Certainly the Vision of Saint Paul inspired the Nahua account of Paul’s visit to heaven and hell. However, the sermon modifies considerably the medieval account, which itself was seen as containing questionable doctrine by religious authorities. Whereas the original account results from a vision that Paul experienced after his conversion and as a credit to his faithfulness, the Nahua sermon places the event as a part of his conversion experience where, as a sinner, Paul is among those tortured. In the end, the Nahua tale employs elements from biblical and medieval accounts to create an unorthodox Nahua version of Paul’s conversion that allows him to visit heaven and hell, and martyr, retrieve, and take Sebastian to his home where he meets Peter. The author(s) are either only superficially familiar with Paul’s vision, Sebastian’s legend, and Peter and Paul’s biblical story, or simply disregard orthodoxy to create an eclectic interpretation of Paul’s conversion story.

In the biblical account of the creation of Adam, God formed Adam from the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils and gave him life, and placed him in the Garden of Eden where in the midst stood both the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The garden also had a river.⁴⁸ Although the phrase in Genesis 1: 26, “let us make man,” indicates plurality in the Creation, the Trinity never discusses at length Adam’s creation, nor is earth from Damascus used to create him. After its creation, Adam’s body does not lack skin, hair, or the ability to see, hear, or speak. The world’s first tree is not planted in the garden, nor is it God’s greatest creation, and although the biblical account mentions a river that flows through the garden, the river does not originate from a spring in the midst of the first tree of the world, nor is there a chair for a ruler at the source of the river (see Table 6.2).

Similar to the Nahua account, then, the unorthodoxy in the Maya tale stems from both cultural adaptations and misrepresentations of the biblical account. The Morley Manuscript appropriated common biblical names, such as Christ and Damascus, and included them in the tale. Although the use of Christ to add clout to the story is understandable, the purpose of using Damascene earth remains puzzling as the ancient city holds no real biblical significance other than as the birthplace of Eliezer, Abraham’s steward; the residence of Naaman the Syrian who Elisha cured of leprosy; and as part of the history of Paul.⁴⁹ The Maya account also melds biblical accounts in its redaction of the Creation. For example, God spitting into the palm of his hand and using the spittle to unstop Adam’s mouth and ears strongly reflects the biblical accounts of Christ giving sight to a blind man and healing a deaf man by anointing both with his spittle.⁵⁰

Truly these were unpublished, unofficial ecclesiastical texts “destitute of legitimate authority and revision” written by natives, under little or no ecclesiastic supervision, for natives. Both tales not only reflect distinct Nahua and Maya influences on and understandings of Christianity, but also illustrate the possibility for ecclesiastical texts to contain heretical messages. For the authors of both tales, orthodoxy paled in comparison to conveying a message that appealed to the listener. Certainly for the Nahua author(s), the goal was to increase devotion to Paul and decrease idolatry, not give an accurate retelling of the biblical or traditional accounts. Similarly, the Maya author seems more preoccupied with familiarizing the creation of Adam and promoting man’s veneration of God than providing a faithful translation of Genesis. Ultimately, these unofficial religious texts produced culturally specific versions of Catholicism that strayed greatly off the straight path of orthodoxy that the Fourth Provincial Council desperately wanted to preserve, and allowed a Nahua Paul to kill a road-sweeping Christian prophet, and a Maya Adam to rule from a spring under the shade of the world tree.