Introduction

1

The cult of the Virgin Mary, near-universal in pre-Reformation Christianity, was especially pervasive on the Iberian Peninsula. This emphasis on the cult of the mother of Jesus was, at least in part, related to the Reconquista, during which the figure of Mary took on important aspects related to political and even military power, as well as to the conversion of non-Catholics (Hall 2004, 17–44). In the same fateful year of 1492, which saw the end of the Reconquista, three ships under the command of Christopher Columbus—himself an ardent Marian devotee—reached the islands of the Caribbean. The flagship of this first Spanish expedition to what was to become the Americas was known under two names: one of them was La Gallega, ‘The Galician,’ the other—unsurprisingly—Santa María.

2

The following decades saw the beginning of a new chapter in the history of both the Iberian Peninsula (as well as the rest of Europe) and of the Americas. The kingdom of Castile, united with Aragon and free from the ideological obligation to wage a religious war on the peninsula, began to expand overseas. In this enterprise, the Virgin Mary was a constant companion of the settlers and the conquistadores, who turned to her in their moments of triumph and despair alike (Hall 2004, 45–79). Whenever their efforts proved successful, they were followed by ecclesiastics whose objective was bringing the new subjects of the Castilian Crown over to the Catholic faith. As a result of these processes, the forms of Marian devotion popular on the Iberian Peninsula took root in the Americas, where they developed under the conflicting influences of Indigenous religiosity, on the one hand, and the ideas and practices of Catholic Reformation, on the other.

3

Such was also the case in the Spanish military, political, and religious expansion into the territory of Tawantinsuyu, or the so-called Inca Empire in the Andean and Pacific coastal region of South America. After two previous unsuccessful expeditions, in 1524 and 1526 respectively, a small host of 168 conquistadores and an unknown number of Indigenous auxiliaries under the command of Francisco Pizarro successfully subjugated the empire by taking its iure victoris ruler, the Sapay Inqa Ataw Wallpa, hostage in 1532. Although success was far from definitive, and the following decades were marked both by Indigenous resistance and infighting between the various factions of the conquistadores, Spanish domination in Peru became a fact.

4

The subsequent Christianization of the Indigenous population was—from the point of view of the Spaniards—a religious obligation, never called into question; in fact, it served as an ideological justification (as well as an honest, if certainly not exclusive, motivation) of the political and military expansion. This enterprise, considered within the ideological constraints of sixteenth-century Catholicism, required the enormous effort of making the Catholic discourse understandable and attractive to people whose languages, vision of the world, symbolic code, and material reality were very different from those which co-evolved with Western Christianity. The native people, as a rule, did not resist these efforts actively; instead they tended to adopt and reinterpret elements of the new official religion, fitting them into their own metaphysical and symbolic framework.

5

The figure of the Virgin Mary, so revered by the Spaniards, proved to be immensely attractive also to the Indigenous peoples of Peru. Perhaps one of the most conspicuous differences between the traditional Andean religion and Christianity was a much more limited role of female figures—both human and supernatural—in the new religion (Silverblatt 1987). Christianity lacks female deities, and the role of female religious specialists is arguably less pronounced than in the traditional Andean religion. It therefore comes as little surprise that the cult of the Virgin Mary in Peru borrowed elements of precontact cults of female deities, as well as those of reverence to the Quya, the sister and consort of Inca, who was the living embodiment of the feminine sacred (Hall 2004, 137–38).

6

This paper presents an analysis of selected late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century printed religious texts in Quechua with regard to the mechanisms of translating the Marian language, symbolism, and theology as embraced by their authors. Specifically, the analysis focuses on three aspects of the figure of the Virgin Mary which were, for theological, psychological, emotional, and even political reasons, especially pronounced in the source material, as well as within the broader context of Catholic belief and practice: her motherhood—both literal, as the mother of Jesus, and symbolic, as a collective mother figure of all believers—her physical and hamartiological purity, and her queenship. The object of the analysis includes Quechua words used to convey the concepts specific to Catholic thought, as well as the choice of subjects discussed in the texts and the rhetorical devices employed in their presentation to Indigenous audiences. The objective is twofold: to identify the strategies of the Catholic and European authors of these texts employed in order to deliver the Marian doctrine and imagery in Quechua, and to reconstruct the manner in which this doctrine and imagery could have been construed by the Indigenous addressees of these texts, operating within a very different ideological and symbolic framework.

Background

7

One of the greatest obstacles to the enterprise of Christianization in colonial Peru was of a linguistic nature: preaching Christianity requires a common language between the preacher and the potential convert. Although both the ecclesiastic and secular authorities would have undoubtedly welcomed the Hispanicization of their new subjects, the urgent matter of Christianization could not, of course, be postponed to the point when it could be conducted in Spanish. Preaching in Indigenous languages was therefore the default standard in Spanish colonies. The de facto policy both of the Crown and the Church consisted of picking a language in each region of the Spanish colonial empire which was particularly widespread and converting it into an official language of colonial administration and Christianization efforts in this region. In the territory of the Viceroyalty of Peru, Quechua, as the most widespread of the local languages, was chosen for this role.

8

This was, however, only the beginning of the process of finding a common linguistic ground. The project of Christianization required much more than the practical knowledge of Quechua on the part of the friars: they had to find a way to translate the Christian vision of the world to a language that embodied a very different worldview. Despite the self-proclaimed universalism of the Catholic religion, its fundamental concepts derive from the cultures of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean: the Hebrew Bible, the Greek philosophy and the Roman law. Moreover, the language of Catholic devotion is based on a net of symbolic allusions and images whose evocative power does not rely on the denotations of the words but on their linguistically and culturally specific connotations. Thus, the enterprise of Christianization required not so much a translation of the fundamental texts of the Catholic faith, as—using a term coined by Silverstein (2003, 85)—their transduction, understood as a process in which “both source expression and target expression” are made to “point to appropriate contexts and create effective contexts in systems of use as verbally mediated social action.”

9

Additional challenges to the translation project were caused by the fact that Quechua is a language family rather than a single language. In accordance with sixteenth-century European linguistic ideologies, a standard language needed to be created. The variety of Central Quechua used in parts of the Pacific coast, which served as a lingua franca in the Inca times, was first adopted as a means of Christianization; however, in 1570s and 1580s, the language appropriated for their use by the colonial authorities was finally based on a standardized variety of Southern Quechua as used in the Cuzco area at the time (Durston 2007, 46).

10

According to Estenssoro Fuchs (2003), in the history of the Christianization of Peru, two periods can be distinguished. First, the so-called primera evangelización, or ‘first evangelization,’ started at some point after the arrival of the Spaniards, but began to gain momentum only in the 1540s and early 1550s. Unfortunately we have at our disposal only two sources for studying the language used in this period (i.e., the aforementioned standard based on the Inca lingua franca), namely the Lexicon o vocabulario de la lengua general del Perú and Gramática o arte de la lengua general de los Indios de los reynos del Perú by fray Domingo de Santo Tomás (Durston 2007, 68–69). Each contains only one, and very brief, continuous text in Quechua: the translation of Confiteor in the former and a short exemplary sermon in the latter. Consequently, several words of the Confiteor referring to the Virgin Mary and some fragments of Ave Maria used by Santo Tomás as examples in his grammar are the only testimony of Marian devotion in Quechua in the times of the primera evangelización.

11

The period of the primera evangelización ended in 1570s, when the local ecclesiastic authorities embraced a set of new policies implementing the decisions of the Council of Trent. These policies were codified during the Third Lima Council, held in the years 1582–1583. As a direct result of the council, a corpus of catechetical texts in Quechua and Aymara was created and printed by Antonio Ricardo in Lima, under Jesuit supervision (Durston 2007, 88). Two of the texts belonging to this corpus, Doctrina cristiana y catecismo and Tercero catecismo, are among the sources used in this paper.

12

The Third Lima Council marks a new period in the history of Christianization of the Indigenous people of the Viceroyalty of Peru. It stands in stark contrast to the previous period on many levels. First, linguistically, the nascent standard based on the Inca lingua franca has been abandoned and a new one, based on a form of Southern Quechua used in Cuzco and its immediate surroundings, has been adopted. This decision was at least partially caused by a demographic disaster suffered by the populations of the Pacific coast on whose language the Inca lingua franca had been based (Itier 1991, 47–48). Another characteristic of the post-Council period is a much less liberal approach to incorporating any elements of the precontact Andean culture into Christian religious practice. This manifested itself, among other things, in the denouncement of religious terminology based on patrimonial Quechua words and used during the primera evangelización; instead, numerous Spanish loanwords have been introduced (Durston 2007, 92–93).

13

The Third Lima Council set the tone of the evangelizational efforts of the following decades. Nevertheless, texts published in the first half of the seventeenth century also testify to at least a partial revision of its policies, such as, for example, some deviations from the standardized Southern Quechua in favor of its coastal varieties in the regions where they were spoken, or a return to the Indigenous terms, rhetoric, and imagery in devotional texts. As Christianity slowly but steadily took root among the native populations of the Viceroyalty of Peru, the repertoire of the forms of religiosity and of the topics raised in the texts expanded. It is, therefore, in this period when Marian devotion started to play a more significant role in the religious life of the Indigenous people, as can be seen by the prescription of the Angelus Domini and Salve Regina together with a Marian litany as obligatory public prayers, held every day and every week, respectively (Durston 2007, 139).

Source Material

14

The source material of the present article comprises four doctrinal texts in pastoral Quechua created between 1585 and 1631 and published in print in Lima. The two chronologically earlier texts were created in the Jesuit milieu in the aftermath of, and as a result of, the Third Lima Council and represent an attempt at standardizing doctrinal materials in Quechua and purging them of any potentially theologically dangerous remains of the period of the primera evangelización (Durston 2007, 91–93; Haimovich 2017). Doctrina christiana y catecismo para instrucción de los Indios y de las demás personas (published in 1584) is a trilingual work in Spanish, Quechua, and Ayamara; it contains the most important prayers, the explanation of the basics of Catholic doctrine, and two catecismos in the form of questions and answers: one, shorter, intended for ‘the crude and busy’ (los rudos y ocupados), and another, more detailed one for ‘those who are more capable’ (los que son mas capaces). Interestingly, it contains also short texts discussing both Indigenous languages used in the text, as well as concise dictionaries.

15

Tercero cathecismo y exposicion de la Doctrina Christiana por sermones (published in 1585) is similarly a trilingual work in Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara. It is organized into 31 sermons in which the basic tenets of Christianity (the mysteries of the faith, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, prayers, and the four last things of man) are explained. Each sermon is divided into paragraphs, first in Spanish, and then, parallel in two columns, in Quechua and Aymara.

16

Since both texts cover the very basics of the Catholic religion, they contain relatively few references to the Virgin Mary. The Doctrina Christiana contains two Marian prayers (Ave Maria and Salve Regina); in the Tercero Cathecismo, the Virgin Mary is mentioned mainly in Sermon III, which describes the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and in Sermon XXIX, dedicated to the most important prayers, including Ave Maria. Nevertheless, they are the earliest preserved sizable sources for the study of pastoral Quechua and represent a crucial point in its development, thus their inclusion in the present work is indispensable.

17

The two remaining sources were created during the period following the Council, by authors with connections to mendicant orders; they represent an elaboration and partial revision of the strategies employed in the Jesuit texts. Compared to other texts from the period, they are also characterized by a considerable focus on Marian devotion, their richness of the forms of expression, and their originality. The Símbolo Católico Indiano was written by a Franciscan fray Luís Gerónimo de Oré (and published in 1598). Its main part consists of a series of seven canticles (cánticos), one for each day of the week, written in Quechua, in blank Sapphic stanzas; each canticle is preceded by an explanation, or declaración, of its contents in Spanish prose. Of special interest to the present article are canticles III and V, which deal with the annunciation of Mary and the incarnation, birth, and infancy of Christ, but also VI, narrating his passion and death, as well as describing Mary’s suffering under the cross. The latter part of the text contains, among other short texts, several prayers in Quechua (some of them also in Aymara), including Ave Maria, Salve regina, meditations on the mysteries of the Rosary, a Marian hymn in rhyming Quechua stanzas titled Lira a Nuestra Señora del Rosario, and a litany to the Virgin Mary (based on, but not identical to, the Lauretan litany). It is the only text which followed the publication of works created as a result of the Third Lima Council that was officially recognized by synodal legislation in the dioceses of Cuzco and Huamanga (Durston 2007, 148).

18

Ritual Formulario e institución de curas (published in 1631) is, chronologically speaking, the last of the selected sources; it is also the most extensive one. It was written by Juan Pérez Bocanegra, a Franciscan tertiary, who had, nevertheless, strong ties to the Dominican order (2007, 154). It contains several Marian prayers in Quechua, including Angelus Domini and Ave Maria, as well as some original ones. Three of these prayers are artful hymns, under the incipits Hupaicuscaiqui Maria, Huacchaicuyac Maria, and—undoubtedly the one which is most widely known, thanks to the fact that it is set to a four-voice choral melody—Hanacpachap Cussicuinin.

Mother

19

It is not at all surprising that the most common Quechua word used to refer to Mary is mama, ‘mother,’ ‘lady.’ Being the mother of Jesus in a literal, biological sense is, after all, the very reason for her prominence and the reverence towards her in the Catholic religion. Following the established language of the Spanish—and, more generally, Catholic—devotion, the Indigenous converts were also encouraged to see Mary as their mother, and that of all the faithful Christians. The Biblical source of this idea was the passage from the Gospel of John (19:25–27), in which Jesus on the cross entrusts one of his disciples to Mary as his mother; this passage was traditionally (at least from the times of Origen) interpreted as a synecdochic act of entrusting to her all the faithful (Carroll and Jelly 2003). In the late fifteenth century, the doctrine of Mary’s spiritual maternity of the faithful was incorporated into official Catholic teaching (Cole 2003).

20

The most prominent title used for Mary in the Catholic and broader Christian discourse is ‘mother of God,’ used at least from the fourth century onward. In 431, the council of Ephesus, convoked in the context of the Nestorian controversy, officially adopted the Greek term θεοτόκος ‘she who gave birth to God’ (Hoelle and Fields 2003). In Latin, this term was rendered as Dei genitrix (cf. gigno, -ere ‘to give birth’), used beside mater Dei ‘mother of God’; in Spanish however, madre de Dios was and continues to be far more popular than the literal translation of θεοτόκος and Dei genitrix, i.e., Deípara.

21

In all of the texts constituting the source material, the most common term referring to the role of Mary as the mother of God incarnate is, unsurprisingly, Diospa maman; although in Quechua this phrase can be also understood also as ‘mother/lady belonging to God’ or ‘caused by God’ (Jan Szemiński, personal communication), it was almost certainly intended as a literal translation of the Spanish madre de Dios. There are also other variants attested, such as Diosñinchic maman ‘mother of our God,’ or Diospa çapay maman ‘the only mother of God,’ both used in the Símbolo Católico. The same text also uses the phrase Sancta Christop maman ‘holy mother of Christ,’ rendering, without doubt through its Latin and Spanish translations, the Greek Χριστοτόκος, as well as its paraphrases, such as Diospa churin maman ‘mother of the son of God,’ and Diospa churip llumpac maman ‘pure mother of the son of God.’ Pérez Bocanegra’s Ritual formulario contains Iesu Christo yayaypa maman, ‘mother of my father/lord, Jesus Christ.’ Since the word yaya ‘father’ was understood as corresponding to the Spanish amo and señor (cf. Gonzáles Holguín 1608), it could be a rendering of yet another title of Mary, Mater Domini ‘mother of the Lord.’

22

Another variant used by Oré is diosta huachac mama, lit. ‘mother/lady who gives birth to God’ (cf. wachay ‘to give birth’) with the word dios in its accusative form; this rather inventive term renders in Quechua both θεοτόκος/Dei genitrix and mater Dei/madre de Dios. In the Spanish translations of the Quechua cánticos, this term corresponds both to Madre de Dios and to various descriptive Spanish phrases: madre que pariste a Dios, madre parida de Dios. In the text of the litany, the twice repeated Diospa maman corresponds to Latin mater Dei of the Lauretan Litany, while Dei genitrix is translated as Diosta huachac maman.

23

Although the Quechua word mama is, of course, the natural way to translate Spanish and Latin words meaning ‘mother,’ one cannot but notice that already at this point the differences between the European languages and Quechua begin to manifest, subtly changing the meaning of the text not necessarily in line with the authorial intention. First, even the everyday usage of the Quechua word mama is not identical to that of Spanish madre, as it can refer also to the mother’s sisters (Webster 1980, 186); it is also used as a general honorific when referring to women (Manley 2015, 17). González Holguín (1608) gives señora and ama among its meanings. More importantly, in the traditional religion, it forms part of names of many female divinities (e.g., Mama Killa ‘Mother Moon’ and Mama Qucha ‘Mother Sea’) and Inca ancestresses (such as the four sisters of Manco Qhapaq: Mama Uqllu, Mama Waqu, Mama Rawa, and Mama Kura); the use of it for Virgin Mary, therefore, suggests perhaps her belonging to the same category of beings.

24

Apart from these simple phrases translated from Spanish and/or Latin, the works of Oré and Pérez Bocanegra also contain various descriptive and symbolic ways of referring to Mary’s motherhood of God by comparing her to various types of buildings and containers, as well as to natural phenomena associated with the notion of fertility. Both of these symbolic clusters are well-grounded within the Catholic tradition; in the Quechua texts, however, the use of particular words assists in grounding the Virgin within the Andean reality.

25

For example, in the Ritual formulario, Pérez Bocanegra refers to Mary as Diospa rampan ‘the sedan chair of God’ and cori huantu Dios purichec ‘the golden litter which carries God.’ Most probably, these expressions have their source in the tradition of referring to Mary as ‘the Ark of the Covenant,’ e.g., in the Lauretan Litany. This Old Testament motif would probably convey little meaning to the Quechua audience; however, the manner in which the Ark is described in the Bible and traditionally represented in Western art makes it similar to a sedan chair used in the precontact times, such as the one pictured in Guaman Poma’s Nueva corónica on the illustration representing quispi ranpa or andas del Inga. Wantu, on the other hand, was a litter used to transport both live people and the mummies of ancestors (Gregory Haimovich and Jan Szemiński, personal communication), such as the one depicted on Guaman Poma’s illustration showing aia marcai quilla or la fiesta de los difuntos. Within the European symbolic imagination, Mary is the Ark which contained the incarnate word of God, just as the literal Ark of the Covenant contained the word of God inscribed on stone tablets. Translated into Andean terms, she becomes a rampa or wantu which contains the divine human—Jesus—just as the q’ispi rampa (‘the sedan chair of precious stones’) contained the divine-human Inca and as the wantu contained the venerated ancestors.

26

Similarly grounded in the traditional language of Catholic devotion is the practice of using architectural imagery and equating Mary, whose body was inhabited by God, to a temple or a palace. In the Símbolo Católico, Mary is called God’s house, e.g., camta huacinpac, llumpac huchanacta ‘his (God’s) house, pure and without flaw (accusative),’ collanan templo Diospa capac huasin ‘noble temple, God’s kingly house,’ or Diospa llactan ‘city of God.’ Pérez Bocanegra employs also terms which are more specific to Andean realities, e.g., Sanctissima Trinidadpa cuiusmancco templo huasin ‘the kuyusmanqu (ceremonial site), temple-house of the Holy Trinity.’ He did not even hesitate to use proper names of buildings, referring to Mary, such as suntur huaçi, i.e., Suntur Wasi or the House of Council, a renowned building in precolonial Cusco.

27

The imagery of flowers, plants, and elements of landscape is likewise very prominent; many such epithets invoke connotations of fertility and fruit-bearing. One must remember, however, that not every plant-based epithet necessarily falls under this category: such Marian symbols as the lily or an enclosed garden serve to assert her virginal purity rather than her maternal fertility (see below), while others can simply serve as general expressions of praise. Nevertheless, the symbolic expressions of Mary’s motherhood which use this type of imagery abound, especially in Pérez Bocanegra’s three Marian hymns, where she is called yupai rurupucoc mallqui ‘the tree of uncountable fruit,’ mirac suyu ‘fertile land,’ and ñucñu ruruc chunta mallqui ‘the palm tree which bears sweet fruit,’ among others. Símbolo católico calls her camac allpa ‘life-giving soil’ (paraphrased in Spanish as tierra bendita y fertil) and çumac orco ‘beautiful mountain.’

28

From the Catholic point of view, such symbols are not necessarily controversial or even innovative, the oldest example being the words of Elizabeth in Luke 1:42 which refer to Jesus as καρπός ‘fruit’ of Mary’s womb. In the Andean cultural context, however, the earth was understood to be a female divinity; the same can be said about various crops, which were personalized in the form of divine mothers, such as Sara Mama ‘Mother Corn’ or Aqshu Mama ‘Mother Potato’ (Silverblatt 1987, 21–31). In the epithet camac allpa, one cannot but notice a similarity to the name of the famous wak’a Pacha Kamaq—the words pacha ‘world’ and allpa ‘land’ are not so far from each other semantically, and the remaining part of both phrases is identical, being an agentive derived from the verb kamay ‘to give life, to create’; we must, however, note that Pacha Kamaq was an unambiguously male deity.

29

The equivalence between Virgin Mary and a mountain is much less ingrained in the traditional Catholic discourse than the symbolic of vegetation and even fertile ground; it is not, however, without precedents on the Iberian peninsula (Gentile Lafaille 2012, 1151). Nevertheless, iconographic representations of Mary in the form of a mountain—particularly the silver-bearing Cerro Rico near Potosí—seem particularly popular in the Colonial-era Andes; the most famous of them being the canvas painting of Virgen del Cerro de Potosí held in the Museo de la Moneda in Potosí. The devotion to the representations of this type was not, however, limited to the Indigenous sectors of the population (Gisbert and Mesa 2003, 27). The symbolic identification of Mary as a mountain who gives birth to a precious stone identified with Jesus is also present in a Spanish-language work of a Huamanga-born Criollo Agustinian friar Alonso Ramos Gavilán. While Gisbert (2004) asserts that this type of symbolic representation led to identification of Virgin Mary with the precontact Andean chthonic divinity Pachamama, this is questioned by Gentile Lafaille (2012). However, mountains did play an important role in the precontact Andean religion, being thought of as living and divine beings, some of them masculine and some feminine (Besom 2009). It seems therefore that the indentification of Mary with a mountain allowed the Indigenous people to construe her as analogous, or perhaps even identical, to the mountain female divinities. It may be worth noting that one of the names used for the Cerro Rico de Potosí in modern Quechua—Sumaq Urqu—is the same that Oré uses for Virgin Mary.

30

Another series of epithets for Mary as a mother figure refers not to her relationship to her divine son but to the mortal and sinful human. The sixth cántico of the Símbolo católico indiano, which describes the passion and death of Jesus, also contains the following passage, elaborating on the words of Christ on the cross in which he entrusted Mary and one of the apostles (here, as it is universally done in the Catholic tradition, identified with John the Evangelist) to each other as mother and son:

31

Testamentopi, sanctissimo Christo,
çaquepuaycu Virgen mamayquicta,
ñocaycuctari, huahuancunapactac,
camachihuaycu.

32

Virgen Maria çapay mamayquicta,
mamay cancampac chazquillahuaycu
chay pacham ari san Iuampa mamanpac,
camtac corcanqui.

33

(In the testament, o, most holy Christ, leave us your mother, the Virgin, and remake us into her children. Send us your only mother Virgin Mary so that she be our mother, as when you gave her to Saint John as his mother.¹)

34

The Virgin Mary becomes then, through the testament of her son, the mother of all believers, to whom the Indigenous devotees can refer as çapay mamanchic ‘our unique mother’ and cauçac cunap maman ‘mother of the living.’ In a similar vein we can consider titles such as cuyapayac mama, llaquipayac mama, and huaccha cuyac mama, all of which can be translated roughly as ‘merciful mother.’ They are used in the Quechua litany to translate, respectively, mater charitatis ‘mother of charity,’ mater pietatis ‘mother of pity,’ and mater misericordiae ‘mother of mercy’ (cf. khuyapayay ‘to be compassionate,’ llakipayay ‘to pity,’ wakcha khuyay ‘to be loving to the poor’). These are not, however, literal translations of Latin terms: the Latin genitive constructions were rendered with the use of Quechua agentive deverbal forms in the attributive function. As a result, the Quechua titles become, perhaps, more substantial; instead of being an abstract ‘mother of mercy,’ Mary becomes the merciful, compassionate mother of the faithful.

Virgin

35

Another aspect of the figure of Mary which is continuously evoked in Catholic theological and devotional texts—including the ones in Quechua—is that of her unique and absolute purity, understood in two ways. First, as sexual chastity: despite her being married to Joseph and—a paradox constantly addressed in the analyzed texts—despite having conceived and given birth to Jesus, Mary remains a virgin throughout her life. Her purity has, however, also a second, more abstract meaning: unlike every other human being except Jesus himself, Mary is (perhaps even from the very moment of her conception) untainted by sin, both by the original sin and by any personal one.

36

The concept of the perpetual virginity of Mary developed significantly throughout the history of the Church. The Bible does not mention it; the Gospels of Luke (1:27) and Matthew (1:23) call Mary a ‘virgin’ (Greek παρθένος), but only in reference to the particular moment of her life when she conceived Jesus. The first formulations of the idea that Mary remained a virgin during and after the birth of Jesus appear in the second-century Protoevangelium of James and in the writings of Origen. It was, however, only in the fourth century when the ascetic tendencies of Christianity created the new understanding of the issue: in the writings of Ambrose and Jerome, the virginity of Mary became proof of the superiority of abstinence over sexual activity within marriage (Hunter 1993). The belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary was proclaimed at the Lateran Council in 659. In the Western part of the Christian world, this notion was expressed by the Latin phrase ante partum, in partu, post partum ‘before the birth, during the birth, after the birth’ (Carroll and Jelly 2003).

37

Similarly to the concept of perpetual virginity, the idea of Mary being free from sin underwent significant development in the history of Christianity. Although the holiness of Mary was always assumed, the early Church did not hold that she had never sinned or that she was free from the original sin. In the West the idea of Mary’s immaculate conception was firmly opposed, on theological grounds, by Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas, among others. In the late Middles Ages, it gained a widespread support, especially in Spain; however, it was only defined as dogma of the Catholic Church by Pius IX in 1854 (O’Connor 2003).

38

Needless to say, any controversies regarding these matters are not addressed in the analyzed corpus of texts. Even without delving into theological subtleties, however, the introduction of both ideas to the Indigenous people of Peru was not an easy task. If the peoples of the Inca Empire recognized virginity as a desirable trait in a woman at all, it was only in specific social contexts but not in others (Silverblatt 1987, 101–8). Even this is not, however, indisputable; it seems, for example, that the akllakuna, or ‘chosen women’ of the precolonial times, were allowed sex as long as it remained non-procreative (Artzi 2016, 235–39). In Catholic thought and mores, on the other hand, the concept of virginity has its own idiosyncratic understanding as universally superior to sexual activity and inherently connected with moral perfection. The difficulties in intra-cultural translation were even more pronounced in the case of the ideas of freedom from sin and of the immaculate conception.

39

The word virgen, borrowed from Spanish, is the default term used in reference to Mary as a virgin in all of the analyzed texts; in three of them, it is also the only one. The exception is Pérez Bocanegra’s Ritual formulario, in which uses also the phrase purum tazque, coined from patrimonial Quechua words. Most often, the word virgen appears as part of fixed collocations borrowed from Spanish as a whole, such as sancta virgen, sanctissima virgen, virgen sacrosanta, virgen santa Maria. Similar collocations with Quechua elements are also numerous, e.g., ñucñu virgen Maria (cf. ñukñu ‘sweet, tasty, delicate thing’), samioc virgen (‘blessed, fortunate virgin,’ cf. sami ‘fortune, luck’), or çapay virgen (cf. sapay ‘the only, unique’). Sometimes an additional adjective or a longer explanatory phrase are added in order to emphasize, quite redundantly, the notion of sexual purity already connoted by the word virgen, e.g., purun virgenman ‘to the pure* (purum, lit. ‘wild, uncultivated’) Virgin’ or mana chancascam virgen* ‘virgin untouched.’ These phrases correspond to equally redundant Spanish phrases virgen pura or virgen no tocada but, unlike in Spanish, in Quechua they could have possessed an additional explanatory value, reminding the Indigenous listeners of the meaning of the loanword virgen. The Símbolo católico indiano also uses, in addition to the Spanish noun virgen, its derivations virgindad and virginal, e.g., Sancta Mariap virginidadñinta manam Diosñinchic huacllichupucanchu ‘our God did not damage the virginity of Saint Mary’ or virginal vicçampi ‘in her virginal womb.’ It is unclear to what extent these terms were understood by the Quechua audience.

40

In all of the above uses the word virgen is used less as a common noun denoting ‘a sexually uninitiated woman’ and more as a kind of a title or designation of the particular person, Mary, e.g., Ioseph virgenta viñay sirvinampac ‘so that Joseph would always serve the Virgin’ (Símbolo Católico, fourth cántico); this usage has been, of course, transplanted directly from Spanish devotional discourse. Only rarely can virgin be translated as ‘a virgin’ (as opposed to ‘the Virgin’), e.g., in the explanations that Mary gave birth to Jesus virgen captin ‘being a virgin.’

41

Símbolo católico indiano uses the term virgin several times not for the Virgin Mary, but nevertheless in a context clearly emphasizing the sacred aspect of virginity, as in the following stanza:

42

Obispo cuna, sacerdotecuna,
confessorcuna, virgencunahuampas:
llapantin sancto, cari, huarmi cacpas,
Diospa templonmi.

43

[Bishops, priests, confessors and virgins, all the saints who are men and women, are the temple of God.]

44

The same word is also used for the category of saints in the litany from the Símbolo católico, where Mary is called virgencunap reynan ‘queen of the (saint) virgins.’ When ordinary sexually uninitiated women are referenced, other terms appear instead. Compare the Quechua verse urging men and women of various ages to praise Mary with its Spanish paraphrase (declaración) in prose (emphasis on the corresponding words added):

45

Llapantin runa, maycan viñay cacpas,
huamra, huaynapas, yuyac, machucacpas
tasque, cipaspas, payapas, virgenta,
muchaycussunchic.

46

[All the people, in whatever age, children, young men, adult men, old men, girls, young women, old women, let us adore the Virgin].

47

Todos los hombres de toda edad, niños, moços varones y viejos, las virgenes y ancianas alabemos y adoremos ala Virgen gloriosa.

48

The Spanish version uses the same word, virgen, twice, employing capitalization and the adjective gloriosa for distinguishing the Virgin from other virgins. In Quechua, only Mary is called virgen; the young women exhorted to venerate her are referred to using two Quechua words for different age categories of women.

49

On other occasions, the word doncella, also a loanword from Spanish, is used, as in the example from the short confessionary included at the end of the Símbolo católico: hayca donzellahuantacmi ‘and how many times [have you sinned sexually] with virgins’; the same word is used, in the same function, in the Ritual formulario. It seems therefore that, while the word virgen was not exclusively used as a title or a designation of Mary, the authors preferred to use this word only in close relation to her or to other virgin-saints, reserving other terms for sexually uninitiated ordinary women. It can be conjectured that in this way the word virgen became a term with strictly religious connotations (see Durston 2007, 214).

50

Pérez Bocanegra’s Ritual formulario stands out among the analyzed sources in that, in addition to virgen, it also uses another term for the same concept: purum tazque. This practice is characteristic of the more general tendency on the part of Pérez Bocanegra to use to ecclesiastical Quechua terms based on the patrimonial vocabulary—a practice attested for the period of the primera evangelización, but discouraged by the Third Lima Council (Durston 2007, 156). The Quechua translation of Confiteor included by Domingo de Santo Tomás in his Lexicon o vocabulario de la lengua general del Perú—one of the very few preserved Christian texts in Quechua from the period prior to the Third Lima Council—translates señora sancta Maria virgen as señora sancta Maria tazqui. Also Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, in Chapter XXV, Book II of the second part of his Comentarios Reales ([1917] 1919, 3:327–28), includes it on his list of Quechua titles for Mary, and explains it as virgen pura. In the secular meaning (i.e., referring to virgins in general and not to the virgin-saints or the Virgin), the word thaski was used by Guaman Poma (Harrison 1993) and, as we have seen above, in the Símbolo católico indiano. Colonial-era dictionaries, however, translate thaski as muchacha (Torres Rubio 1619), or more specifically as muchacha de nueue a diez años (Arte y vocabulario, 1586) and muchachos [sic!] de seys a treze años (Gonzáles Holguín 1608). It seems, therefore, that the primary connotation of the term in the precontact period was young age, not sexual chastity, and that ‘girl’ is a better approximation of its meaning than ‘virgin.’ Even though girls referred to as thaski were probably too young for being sexually active, it seems unlikely that it would be the primary connotation of the term.

51

The word purum is, in this context, perhaps even more interesting. Its original meaning seems to be that of ‘wild, uncultivated, deserted, barren’; a number of collocations attested by González Holguín evidences a strong connotation of ‘being foreign, uncivilized’ (e.g., Purum runa poques. Barbaro salvage sin ley ni Rey). The metaphorical extension to ‘chaste, pure’ (in a sexual sense) is undoubtedly based on a perceived analogy between uncultivated land and a sexually inactive woman. It is unclear whether this extension was already present in precontact Quechua; if so, the word purum, when used in reference to a woman, would probably have negative connotations (Haimovich 2016–2017). One can also wonder whether the phonetic similarity to the Spanish adjective puro, -a could have played any role in this process through the phenomenon of phono-semantic matching. In any case, the word purum is used in the meaning of ‘pure’ also outside the fixed collocation purum thaski, both by Oré (purun virgenman ‘to the pure Virgin’) and Pérez Bocanegra (purun donzellamampas ‘and also to a pure virgin’). It is worth noting that there are two cases in the Ritual Formulario where both the loanword and the Quechua term are juxtaposed: purum taçque coya, Virgen Maria ‘the virgin queen,’ ‘the Virgin Mary’ and purum tazque Virgen ‘virgin,’ ‘the Virgin.’ Especially in the second case, the tautological character of such expressions is evident and a good testimony to the almost mechanical use of the word Virgen as a fixed epithet or title of Mary with little regard to the context. It is also possible that this juxtaposition serves the purpose of explaining the loanword through the Quechua term.

52

Other words beside purum can be used as an equivalent of the Spanish puro, -a (and Latin purus, -a, -um). The adjective llumpac, lit. ‘clean,’ appears several times in the Símbolo Católico, e.g. llumpac virgenpa ‘of the clean/pure virgin,’ çumac ucunta, llumpac animanta ‘her beautiful body, her clean/pure soul’ (accusative). One of the Marian hymns from the Ritual formulario addresses Mary as quespi llullpac purum taçque ‘crystal clear pure girl/virgin.’ It may seem unexpected that words such as llumpaq and llullpaq, which semantically correspond very well to the literal meaning of Spanish puro, -a, did not gain wider popularity. One must remember, however, that the identification of ‘sexual abstinence’ with ‘cleanliness’ is a culturally specific concept, which in itself constitutes a metaphorical extension (based on the notion that sexual activity is, in a figurative way, dirty and soiling). It is possible that the use of the word purum was deemed more appropriate from the point of view of comprehensibility. Yet another way of asserting the sexual purity of Mary was by negative statements based on the verb chhankay ‘to touch (lightly),’ as exemplified by Oré: mana chancascam viñay queparircan virgen cayñinca ‘she remained forever an untouched virgin.’ One can safely assume that such phrases are straightforward calques from Spanish virgen no tocada or Latin virgo intacta.

53

The perpetual character of Mary’s virginity is most often referenced simply by adding the adverb wiñay ‘always’ before the noun meaning ‘virgen,’ in a direct translation of Spanish siempre virgen and Latin semper virgo. The examples of the collocation viñay virgen in various inflectional forms and with some slight differences in spelling can be found in all four analyzed texts. For a more extensive explanation, translations of the Latin formula ante partum, in partu, post partum (virgo) were given, as in the Doctrina cristiana y catecismo: Cay virgen S. Maria Iesu Christocta manarac huachaspa, huachanimpi, ña huachaspapas viñay virgen mana carip chayaycuscan captinmi ‘this Virgin Saint Mary always being a virgin to which a man has never come, not yet having given birth to Jesus Christ, giving birth (to him) and having already given birth.’ The Símbolo católico indiano repeats this formula almost verbatim: manarac huachaspa, huachaynimpi, ña huachaspas viñay virgen captin.

54

The Símbolo católico indiano invokes a series of poetic images taken from European theological and devotional literature, elaborating on the topic of Mary’s virginal purity. The following passage uses an analogy to a sunbeam passing through q’ispi (‘transparent or precious thing, crystal,’ here, as we will see, probably intended to mean ‘glass’) and invokes the translation of the familiar Latin formula as a sort of climax:

55

Intip huachimpas quespiman chayaspa,
mana paquispam, quespicta quespiric:
canchac rupaypas, mana racrachispam
huacman quespiric.

56

Hinam Diosñinchic, virgempa viccampi
runa tucuspa: çumac inti hinam
pacarimurcan: llumpac virgenmantam
ricurimurcan.

57

Sancta Mariap virginidadñinta,
manam Diosñinchic huacllichupurcanchu
huachayñimpìpas, manarac huachaptin
ña huachaptimpas.

58

[Like the beams of the sun, arriving to the crystal and not breaking it, pass through the crystal; like the shining sunbeam, not causing it to break, passes through to the other side, this way our God, becoming human in the womb of the Virgin, just like the beautiful sun was born, appeared from the pure virgin. Our God did not damage the virginity of Saint Mary, in his birth, when he was not yet born, or having already been born].

59

The comparison of the virginity of Mary during her conception and delivery of Jesus to a glass pane, which retains its integrity even though light passes through it, is not an invention of Fray de Oré. Although theologically risky, it was commonplace in the devotional literature of the Middle Ages and beyond; its oldest known attestation is a fifth- or sixth-century Latin sermon misattributed to Augustine of Hippo (Breeze 1999). From the point of view of the author of the Símbolo católico, this poetic image was probably just a time-tested topos repeated after innumerable sermons and artworks. One should note, however, that this equation of the Christian God with Inti ‘Sun,’ one of the most important deities of precontact Andean religion and one also connected symbolicaly to q’ispi, or crystal (MacCormack 1993, 261), probably resonated very well with Indigenous religious imagination.

60

Another poetic image invoking the notion of Mary’s perpetual virginity is contained in the second Marian hymn of Pérez Bocanegra’s Ritual formulario:

61

Comir charvi raurachcaspa
ninampa mana chancascan.
Vsutannac sichpaicuspa
Tucui allimpac ricuna.

62

[Green entanglement, burning continuously, is not consumed by the fire, to be approached without sandals, for all the good to see.]

63

It is a clear allusion to the burning bush from the book of Exodus (3:2–4:17), made all the more unequivocal by a reference to taking off one’s sandals. The biblical burning bush not consumed by the flames was likened to Mary, who conceived and gave birth without losing her virginity. This poetic comparison is another locus communis of medieval and early modern religious poetry drawn from the exegetic tradition which originated with the Church Fathers (Nishino 1991). It is worth noting that, unlike in the previous example, the comparison—based on rather subtle theological reasoning, as both the burning bush and the body of the Virgin Mary were instruments through which God revealed himself to his people—is not explained in any way. One can only wonder how such a poetic image could have been understood by the Quechua audience or, for that matter, if the biblical allusion itself was not lost on most of them.

64

The same can be said of the epithets quenchasca muya ‘closed garden,’ used in the Símbolo Católico, and vichcaicusca cussi muya ‘closed garden of joy’ in Pérez Bocanegra’s hymn Hanacpachap cussicuinin. Equally well-grounded in Catholic devotional discourse, they are allusions to Cant. 4:12 and translations (literal in the Símbolo católico) of the Latin hortus conclusus and Spanish huerto cerrado. In the medieval European tradition of exegesis of the Song of Songs, this phrase was commonly interpreted as referring to the body of Virgin Mary, which is closed, i.e., intact (Yoshikawa 2014). However, in both texts, this phrase is surrounded by other epithets invoking the imagery of trees, flowers, fertile ground, and mountains which, presumably, also resonated well with Indigenous imagination and sensitivity (Durston 2007, 265–67), but perhaps more within the range of associations with fertility and motherhood than with purity.

65

References to the immaculate conception of Mary are almost absent from source texts. This is understandable given that this idea is quite abstract and hard to explain without using specialized theological language, as well as the fact that the idea was not yet universally accepted within Catholicism. As an exception from this rule, the litany included in the Símbolo católico contains the phrase huchanacta mamayqui chichussuscayqui raycu ‘by your mother’s sinless act of conceiving you,’ corresponding to per immaculatam conceptionem tuam of the Lauretan Litany. Apart from that, the sources opted for simpler and theologically less controversial statements that Mary is ‘without sin’: mana huchayoctam ‘not a sinner (accusative),’ llumpac huchanacta ‘pure, without sin (accusative),’ sancta huchanacmi viñay carcanqui ‘you were always a saint without a sin.’ Such statements asserted that she has not committed any sin in her life and that she was free from the original sin, but not necessarily conceived as such. It is worth noting that in all these phrases, and universally in pastoral sources, the word hucha is used in a semantically innovative meaning (Haimovich and Szemiński 2018, 58). Originally, it meant ‘obligation’ and it is more than probable that the Indigenous audience of the texts would not understand it in accordance with the intention of the author.

66

Finally, there are some Marian epithets which, while denoting the general idea of ‘purity,’ do not make it clear whether they refer to Mary’s virginity, her sinlessness, or to both, such as Diospa churin llumpac maman ‘pure mother of the son of God’ in the Ritual formulario. Also abundant are poetic images, adopted from the European discourse, which are traditionally symbols of purity. So, for example, among the titles of Mary contained in the litany from the Símbolo católico, apart from rosa and lirio, there is also yurac hamancay ‘white hamanq’ay flower.’ Similarly, in one of Pérez Bocanegra’s hymns, the lyrical subject refers to her as mana chancasca hamanccai ‘untouched hamanq’ay flower.’ The identification between the hamanq’ay flower (amaryllis, Hippaestrum sp.) and European lilies (Lilium ssp.), well-attested in colonial dictionaries, makes it clear that the author’s intention was to render in Quechua the symbolism of the lily, a flower which, in European culture, is connected to purity and especially to the Virgin Mary. While this symbolic meaning of lily was obvious for a sixteenth-century Spaniard, it is unclear whether the amaryllis would convey similar meanings for the Quechua audience, or whether it was just one of the many flowers to which Mary is compared to in these texts (such as chihuanhuay, probably ‘Clinanthus sp.,’ in the Símbolo católico and achinqaray ‘Begonia sp.’ or hayrampu, probably ‘Opuntia sp.,’ among many others, in the Ritual formulario). In an even more jarring example, the Símbolo católico indiano refers to Mary as a pearl, another well-established European symbol of purity, using (as in many other places of the text) loanwords from Spanish: canmi preciosa margarita canqui ‘you are a precious pearl.’

Queen

67

The practice of attributing a wide range of aristocratic and royal titles, such as regina ‘queen,’ domina ‘lady,’ and their counterparts in the vernacular languages, belongs to the oldest elements of Marian devotion in Western Christianity (Carroll 2003). Throughout medieval Europe, including the Iberian Peninsula, the reverence of Mary as the queen was intrinsically tied to the monarchical political order (Hall 2004, 20). In medieval times, three Marian antiphons entitled Salve Regina, Ave Regina caelorum, and Regina Caeli enjoyed immense popularity, which continued into the early modern period; also the Lauretan Litany bestows upon her a list of regal titles, naming her queen of the Angels and of various categories of saints.

68

In the analyzed source material, the references to Mary as the ‘queen’ and ‘lady’ (both using Spanish loanwords and their approximate Quechua counterparts) are ubiquitous. The term encountered most often, appearing in all four analyzed sources, is quya, which in precontact times referred to the main consort of the Inca. Just like her husband, she was not only a secular ruler, but a living embodiment of the divine. In accordance with the Andean view of gender, the ruling couple formed a balanced whole in which the Inca, the son of the Sun and the intermediary between the mortals and his father, represented the masculine principle, and Quya, the daughter of the Moon, represented the feminine divine (Silverblatt 1987, 52–66).

69

The colonial dictionaries recognize the word quya as corresponding to the Spanish reyna, and also to emperatriz and princesa. The Quechua translation of Salve Regina contained in the Doctrina cristiana y catecismo addresses her as çapay coya ‘the only quya/queen.’ In the Tercero catecismo, the sermon exhorting the Quechua Christians to recite Ave Maria uses the term hanacpachap coyan ‘the queen of the upper world,’ using the neosemanticism hanaq pacha ‘the upper world in Andean cosmology; Heaven in Christian cosmology’ to translate the Latin phrase regina caeli and Spanish reyna de los cielos. In many cases, coya is paired with another word or several words, resulting in strings of titles such as virgen coya Sancta Maria or purum taçque coya, Virgen Maria in Ritual formulario.

70

Interestingly, the term coya is common even in the two texts created in the immediate aftermath of the Third Lima Council, which tend to use the Quechua terms sparingly and generally prefer Spanish loanwords. The only text which consistently uses the borrowed word reyna alongside coya is the Símbolo católico, where Mary is referred to as angelcunap reynan ‘queen of the Angels,’ seraphinpa reynan ‘queen of the Seraphim,’ cherubimpa reynan ‘queen of the Cherubim,’ patriarchap reynan ‘queen of the Patriarchs,’ prophetap reynan ‘queen of the Prophets,’ apostolpa reynap ‘queen of the Apostles,’ martircunap reynan ‘queen of the Martyrs,’ confessorpa reynan ‘queen of the Confessors,’ virgencunap reynan ‘queen of the Virgins,’ and llapa sanctocunap reynan ‘queen of all the Saints.’

71

Often the word quya is supplied with the numeral adjective sapay ‘the only one, unique,’ as in the example from Salve Regina discussed above. The use of this word is undoubtedly linked to the precontact manner of referring to the ruler and his main consort, as sapay inqa ‘the only Inca’ was the title of the sovereign of Tawantinsuyu. Interestingly, apart from the collocation sapay quya, the same numeral adjective is also used in connection with other nouns, such as mama ‘mother,’ e.g., diospa çapay maman in the Tercero catecismo or Diospa çapay virgen ‘the only virgin of God’ in the Símbolo católico. Although the use of phrases such as virgo unica or unica mater in reference to Mary is not unheard of in Catholic devotional practice, the Quechua sources employ it with remarkable frequency, much too often for it to be simply an artifact of translation. It seems possible, therefore, that the word sapay is used here as a kind of general honorific, perhaps dictated by its precontact use. This impression is further reinforced by examples such as padre de Oré’s seventh cántico, where çapay mamantam is translated in the prosaic decclaración as su sanctissima madre. However, since the word mama can refer to aunts and other older female relatives, it is also possible that the phrase sapay mama serves to indicate that Mary was the ‘only, true,’ mother of Jesus, i.e., the one who has given birth to him (Jan Szemiński, personal communication).

72

Another word which in precontact times served as a part of the titulature of the sovereigns of Tawantinsuyu, and in the analyzed sources is used in reference to Mary, is qhapaq. In colonial dictionaries it is translated variously as the nouns rey and emperador, but also in conjunction with adjectives such as rico, poderoso, and ilustre. It is also widely present as part of the names of numerous Inca sovereigns, from the very first mythical Manqu Qhapaq to the last undisputed ruler of the entire Tawantinsuyu, Wayna Qhapaq. Interestingly, all this data points to qhapaq as having been a male title; yet in the Catholic texts it is used in reference to the Virgin Mary. For example, in the Símbolo católico, she is called capac coya and capac Diospa maman (reyna gloriosa and gloriosa madre de Dios, respectively, in the Spanish paraphrase).

73

The same source includes also the phrase capac ñusta, translated in the declaración as princesa gloriosa. The word ñusta in the precontact reality referred to the women of the ruling dynasty; colonial dictionaries translate it as princesa and señora. It would be tempting to interpret the use of this word as an attempt at translating the ubiquitous practice of addressing Mary as ‘lady,’ domina in Latin and señora in Spanish. These titles, however, are most often used in European languages as parts of collocations meaning ‘our lady,’ whereas the word ñusta in reference to Mary never bears possessive suffixes. In the analyzed corpus, only the Tercero cathecismo refers to Mary as ‘our lady,’ using exclusively the Spanish loanword, e.g., señoranchictam ‘our lady (accusative),’ and most often borrowing the entire phrase, as in the phrase nuestra señora sancta Mariap, where the only Quechua morpheme is the genitive suffix -p.

74

The ever-present references to mercy and compassion as attributes of Mary have, without doubt, important and sound grounding in Catholic theology and devotional practice. Mary’s mercy and her role as a loving intercessor between the people and God are one of the most important aspects of the figure of Mary. Titles such as mater misericordiae, mater divinae gratiae, virgo clemens, refugium peccatorum, or consolatrix afflictorum belong to the core repertoire of the language of Marian devotion in Western Christianity. It can be argued, however, that the language used for the purpose of referring to this aspect of Mary in Quechua texts has its source in the precontact titulature of the Inca sovereigns.

75

In Chapter XXVI of Book I of the first part of his Comentarios reales ([1609] 1918), Inca Garcilaso de Vega mentions Huác Chacúyac among other titles of the Sapa Inca, explaining it as amador y bienhechor de pobres. The word wakchakhuyaq is an agentive form derived from wakcha ‘poor person, orphan’ and khuyay ‘to love’; the colonial-era dictionaries translate it unanimously as misericordioso. In the religious texts, this word appears commonly, in various spellings, in reference to the Virgin Mary, who is huacchaicuyac mama in the Doctrina cristiana and Símbolo indiano (rendition of mater misericordiae), as well as huacchaicuyac Diospa maman and huacchaicuyac Maria in the Ritual formulario (the latter phrase is the incipit of one of Pérez Bocanegra’s three Marian hymns). Other adjectives with similar meaning, such as cuyapayac and llaquipayac, are also used; nevertheless, were we to believe Inca Garcilaso de la Vega that wakchakhuyaq served as one of the titles of the Inca sovereign, the adoption of this term (which has no grammatical gender in Quechua) to the Quechua Marian vocabulary fits, perhaps inadvertently, the tendency to use traditional aristocratic titles in reference to the Virgin Mary.

76

Apart from direct references through titles and epithets, the motherhood and virginity of Mary were also, as we have seen, touched upon by the means of symbols and poetical images. The means of expression of this type are less pronounced in the case of Mary’s queenship, although it can be argued that the popularity of astronomical imagery, discussed by Durston (2007, 263–65), has its source in the function of Mary as regina coeli. Another important group of epithets present in the analyzed texts refers to Mary symbolically using terms related to the domains of civilization, state power and organization. In the hymns from the Ritual formulario, Mary is referred to as pucarampa quespi puncun ‘crystal door of his (i.e., God’s) pukara/fortress,’ capac puncu ‘royal door,’ capac tambo ‘royal tampu/inn,’ and diospa hatum capac llactan ‘great royal city of God’; the phrase Diospa llactan ‘city of God’ appears also in the Símbolo católico. The origin of many, or even all, of these phrases can be traced to the Latin and Spanish Catholic discourse; for example, the ‘great God’s city’ is probably supposed to refer to New Jerusalem. However, by using culturally loaded Quechua terms, these phrases evoke a distinctly Andean cultural landscape of llaqtas, tampus, and pukaras. Even more overt allusions to the precontact realities can be seen in such Marian epiteths, also used by Pérez Bocanegra, as cuiusmancco ‘ceremonial site’ and suntur huaçi ‘House of Council, proper name of a building in Inca Cusco.’

Discussion

77

Among the analyzed texts, a clear distinction can be drawn between the Jesuit texts created immediately after the Third Lima Council and the two later sources. The Doctrina cristiana y catecismo and the Tercero cathecismo dedicate relatively little space to the figure of Mary, focusing instead on the most central elements of Catholic doctrine; however, both texts include basic Marian prayers that teach, at least, about her perpetual virginity and her motherhood of Jesus. The titles used for Mary in these texts are few, and among them loanwords from Spanish predominate. Nevertheless, even these sources use such titles as Diospa maman, huacchaicuya mama, mamanchic, hanacpachap coyan, and çapay coya, which were perhaps evaluated as safe from the doctrinal point of view (see also Durston 2007, 92).

78

The works of Gerónimo de Oré and Juan Pérez Bocanegra comprise an incomparably wider repertoire of titles, epithets, and symbols referring to Mary. This is undoubtedly a testament to the belief that, once the Indigenous people of the Viceroyalty of Peru would have become familiarized with the basic tenets of Catholic doctrine, they were also to be introduced to the less central, but still essential, elements of the faith. At the same time, the figure of Mary as compassionate mother served as a powerful vehicle for the propagation of the new religion, proving as attractive to the Andean peoples as it has been to the Spaniards and other Europeans. Far from diminishing the role of Mary in Catholic devotion, the authors strove to translate the language and imagery of Marian doctrine and devotion in its integrity, including—especially in the case of the Símbolo católico—the topoi popular in European art and religious literature, based on the Bible and the works of the Church Fathers.

79

The translation of the Christan imagery, particularly in the works of de Oré and Pérez Bocanegra, is characterized by a significant degree of linguistic and cultural creativity. As a rule, the European tradition provided general models of describing the Virgin Mary which were further developed using Quechua and elements of Andean reality. Often, this seems to be merely a matter of the impossibility of a direct translation—since there are no lilies in South America, the amaryllis is substituted for it. In other cases, however, it is rather clearly a conscious move on the part of the authors: the Marian symbolism of the lily and the rose constitutes a precedent which allows for the similar use of Andean plants, such as the begonia or the prickly pear. Durston (2007, 261–67) describes the same mechanism employed in relation to stars and constellations. This translational strategy had profound consequences, some of which were probably unforeseen by the authors of the texts.

80

There is little doubt that the intention of the authors was to provide the Indigenous people with instruction and means of devotion in accordance to the orthodox Catholic religion. Even when they were employing words and poetic images culturally significant for the Andean people, they strove to provoke—in accordance to the spirit of the post-Tridentine Catholic Reformation—appropriate emotional responses on the part of the Indigenous faithful. The goal of this effort was, therefore, of a decidedly appropriative character: the elements of the Andean culture were used by the European authors in order to further the goal of religious conversion.

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Mannheim (2015, 202), writing about the translation in ethnographic context, proposes a term “appropriative transduction” for this strategy of “evoking the contextualizatons of one culture-and-language in another.” Mannheim characterizes the appropriative transduction as serving the social, political, or cultural interests of the Other—i.e., the translator and their speech community. While it may seem, in the light of what has been stated in the previous paragraph, that this is precisely the case of the analyzed texts, the situation here is more complicated, even paradoxical. The very connotations of the words used when translating, or transducing, to Quechua the texts of Catholic Marian devotion caused it to become culturally Andeanized: by appropriating the elements of the Indigenous culture, the authors introduced them into the version of the Catholic doctrine and devotion that they were trying to impose on their Andean audience.

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When writing about the process of religious translation to Nahuatl in the colonial New Spain, Lockhart (1999) coined the term “double mistaken identity,” referring to a situation where both sides of the culture contact mistakenly assume that certain word, symbols, and concepts mean the same thing in the culture of the Other as they do in their own. It seems that this description also fits the situation analyzed here. The Christian authors of the texts employed Quechua words and phrases which they intended to be equivalent to the Spanish and Latin expressions they were translating, while ignoring—and, perhaps in some cases, being ignorant of—some of their connotations which went against this intention. The Indigenous audience, on the other hand, presented with the linguistic image of Virgin Mary thus created, could only assume that the culturally and religiously loaded Quechua expressions were supposed to convey the same meaning in the new context as they did in the old one.

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That at least some of the authors of the Quechua religious texts were conscious of the risk of this happening is evidenced by the decision to refrain from using the Quechua Christian terminology created during the period of the primera evangelización in the texts originating from the works of the Third Lima Council. Even in these texts, however, this strategy has not been employed consistently. The intentions of the authors notwithstanding, their understanding of Quechua language and culture was necessarily filtered through their own cultural presuppositions about what is religious and what is profane. As a result, they employed several Marian epithets which, in the framework of the Andean culture, evoked profound religious associations: describing her as the coya of Heaven and calling her huaccha cuyac mama, which from the European point of view was simply a translation of the titles regina caeli and mater misericordiae, permeated her figure with the aura of sanctity which surrounded the sovereign couple of Tawantinsuyu.

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This austere strategy of refraining from using Quechua terms potentially evocative of the Andean religion was therefore difficult to employ consistently even in simple doctrinal texts and translations of rudimentary prayers. It apparently proved too limiting to be of use in texts which strove to provoke an emotional reaction by aesthetic means. Even in the work of fray de Oré, who—the risk of incomprehensibility notwithstanding—does not shy away from employing Spanish loanwords, one encounters epithets and poetic images that could have easily helped the Indigenous speaker to associate the Virgin Mary with Andean fertility and mountain divinities, as well as Jesus with the divine Sun, Inti. This is even more pronounced in the work of fray Pérez Bocanegra, where words, phrases, and images evoking Indigenous religious concepts abound.

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It is, of course, impossible to know for certain how the Indigenous audiences of the analyzed texts interpreted them. But a careful reading of the texts in Quechua presents a linguistic image of Virgin Mary which in all probability resonated very well with the Andean religiousness. So, the Quechua Mary is a mama ‘mother, lady,’ just like numerous female deities; epithets such as miraq suyu ‘fertile land’ and kamaq allpa ‘life-giving soil’ allow for construing her as a chthonic fertility deity, one of the kind which were also called ‘mothers.’ As the kuyusmanqu ‘ceremonial site,’ tampu ‘inn’ (also understood as a mythical place of origin), or sumaq urqu ‘beautiful mountain,’ she takes an aspect of elements of the natural and man-made landscape venerated as wak’as. She is also the quya: the word which, for the Christian authors, was just an equivalent of the European notion of ‘queen,’ but for the Quechua speakers carried a whole host of sacral connotations. Just like the power of the Inca sprouted from him being the son of Inti, the Sun, the Quya was the daughter of the Moon and presided over all the women in the Inca empire (Silverblatt 1987, 54). Other epithets reinforce this partial overtaking on the part of Virgin Mary of the sacral character of the Inca sovereignty: she is referred to as a sedan chair of the Inca and as the ceremonial litter of the ancestor’s mummies.

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Noticeably, and perhaps not surprisingly, the set of Marian epithets that lends itself the least to such alternative interpretations is the one referring to her sexual and hamartiological purity. The technical explanations of those notions in Quechua were often based heavily on forced neosemanticization, as best seen in the case of the phrase purum thaski, or alternatively, just on lexical borrowing from Spanish. More importantly, perhaps, while the aspects of Mary as the mother and as the queen had analogies in culturally and religiously important Andean figures of mother deities and the Quya, there was none such analogy for Mary the Virgin.

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If the attempts to translate the European symbols of purity resonated with the audiences at all, it was probably by associations very different from the intended ones. And so, the pseudo-Augustinian metaphor of a sunray and a glass pane, when translated to Quechua by fray de Oré, invokes rather the traditional Andean conceptual connection between the divine Sun-Inti and q’ispi, ‘crystal,’ than the idea of virginal purity. The floral epithets employed by Pérez Bocanegra, although based on the European meaning of lily as a symbol of purity, particularly in combination with chthonic and vegetal poetic images used elsewhere by the same author, when heard by Quechua speakers, probably rather invoked connotations of motherly and agricultural fertility.

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The traditional Andean worldview was—and continues to be—a fundamentally dualistic one. From the everyday domestic and economic activities ascribed to women and men to the cosmic forces of a male or female nature, the world of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Indigenous people of the Andean region was organized along the lines of gender division; although this did not entail any form of gender equality, it explicitly gave each gender a place of its own in every aspect of reality (Silverblatt 1987). By contrast, Catholicism—as well as Christianity in general, at least in its historically mainstream currents—generally presents a much more one-sided (gender-wise) vision of the ultimate reality. Its God is explicitly masculine and lacks any female counterpart: the Holy Trinity consists of the Father and the Son (as well as the Holy Spirit, neuter in Greek, but masculine in Latin and Spanish), but no mother. Its central figures—from Jesus Christ through the apostles and the Church Fathers to the popes—tended to be male and, for the most part, celibate. There is no doubt that woman devotees played an important, even pivotal role in the development of early Christianity; also the later history of the Roman Church is full of woman saints, mystics and thinkers. Nevertheless, both in theory and practice, women in the Catholic church were relegated to a secondary and subordinate role. The Spanish colonial agents who brought it to the Andean world—both the conquistadors and the friars—were men responding to an exclusively masculine state and church hierarchy and preaching a masculine God Father and his Son.

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The figure of Virgin Mary constitutes a sort of anomaly in this masculinized world of ideas and practices. Although she is not considered a divine being, the attributes ascribed to her by theology, and the ardent devotion directed to her, incomparable to those of any other saint, set her apart from the rest of the humanity. The importance of her figure in the Catholic thought and ritual mitigated the gender imbalance of the new religion, making it more congruent with the Andean worldview. If the devotion to God the Father and Jesus Christ were to supplant the cult of male figures—nonhuman and human, as the Inca—it had to seem only natural to the recently Christianized Andean people that the cult of female ones, the mother deities and the Quya, was to be similarly supplanted by the devotion to the Mother and the Queen, Virgin Mary.

Conclusions

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The analysis of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century doctrinal sources in Quechua shows that their use of culturally and religiously loaded Quechua words results in creating a linguistic image of Virgin Mary in her aspects as the mother (of God and of all the faithful) and as the Queen of Heavens, which is comparable to the powerful and sacred female figures of the Andean world: the mother deities and the Coya. This is present even in these texts created in the aftermath of the Third Lima Council, whose authors—as indicated by both the internal and external evidence—strove to purify the language of Christian devotion from the potentially heterodox elements created during the period of primera evangelización, and to an even greater degree in later works of fray de Oré and fray Pérez Bocanegra. By contrast, the vocabulary and imagery used to convey the idea of her purity and virginity operates mainly on neologisms and loanwords which do not resonate with the Andean religious ideas; this reflects the fact that these Catholic concepts do not have their Andean counterparts.

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The process of creating the language of Catholic doctrine in devotion in Quechua was based on what Mannheim (2015) calls appropriative transduction. There is little doubt that the intention of the authors was to teach the Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxy and that they appropriated the linguistic elements of Quechua to express them. However, they could not control the connotations conveyed by these elements for the Indigenous people, thus opening the way for the audience to understand them in accordance to their own religious and cosmological ideas.

Acknowledgements

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This work was supported by the National Science Center, Poland, under Grant No. 2015/18/E/HS3/00106, “Andean Women and Their Role in Pre-Columbian and Early Colonial Peru: Castillo de Huarmey Imperial Tomb Case Study.” The author would like to thank Prof. Jan Szemiński, Dr. Patrycja Prządka-Giersz, and Dr. Gregory Haimovich for revising the manuscript and providing valuable comments, Dr. Bat-ami Artzi for sharing results of her research, as well as Dr. Maren Freudenberg and Przemysław Szkodziński for linguistic editing.