SOURCE: Zavala, Silvio. “The American Utopia of the Sixteenth Century.” The Huntington Library Quarterly 10, no. 4 (August 1947): 337-47.

[In the following essay, Zavala argues that Thomas More's Utopia served as an early model for the relatively humanistic treatment of Indians in Mexico in the sixteenth century by the Spanish jurist and bishop Vasco de Quiroga.]

The subject to be discussed here draws attention to the Europe of the Renaissance. Instead of dwelling upon the enthusiasm felt by the Renaissance man for the literary and artistic values of the ancient world, we shall stress the attitudes which he adopted when he incorporated them into his own life. For it is obvious that it was not possible out of so distant and diverse an environment to achieve a complete restoration of the classical world. Thus a return to antiquity was translated into an expression of the intimate needs of the new man.

We may recall that in Florence during the second half of the fifteenth century, Plato's philosophy was recognized as the finest flower of ancient thought. Marsilio Ficino, who was entrusted with the education of Lorenzo de Medici, said that without Plato it was not easy to be either a good Christian or a good citizen.

The names of the Italians Pico della Mirandola and Lorenzo Valla may be matched, each with his own idiosyncrasies, by humanists in other countries—William Budé, Erasmus, Peter Giles, John Colet, Thomas More, and their like. Some of them were not forgetful that in the republic of Plato the common welfare prevailed over the claims of the individual. This legacy from classical thought became associated with an ardent desire to restore the simple and generous Christianity of the first centuries after Christ.

Spain's contribution to the Renaissance was not negligible. Menéndez y Pelayo notes that in addition to the marked Platonism of the Spanish mystics, Platonic trends were shown by the theologians and the Scholastic philosophers, even granting that in the schools Aristotle's authority, and method, always predominated.

In the thought of Luis Vives, Alonso and Juan de Valdés we have unmistakable Spanish counterparts to the yearnings of European humanism.

We must also consider the influence that Erasmus exercised upon the religious and lay intellectuals of Spain in the sixteenth century, as well as of America, mainly in Santo Domingo and in the orbit of the bishop of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumárraga.

Américo Castro in studying the culture of Cervantes has cited “that mystical fervor of the Humanists who dreamed of a world sufficient unto itself, free from the ugly coating with which time, error, and the passions had covered it; as pure and as gleaming as when it first emerged from the stamp of God and Nature.”¹ This zeal turned, on the one hand, toward a chimerical past, the Golden or Saturnine Age—a theme which the Renaissance inherited from the ancient world; on the other hand, it led to an idealization of the present. Therefore, children and their games; the people, their songs and sayings; the aborigines unspoiled by civilization; and rural life in contrast to that of the court, were all extolled.

The political fruits of this atmosphere were the Renaissance Utopias. Thomas More opened his with this daring foreword: “How would it be if I were to propose a government on the style of that which Plato defines in his book De Republica, or like that which is practiced in Utopia, so different from the manner of our government which is based upon the rights of property?”

Campanella proposed nothing less in drawing up the plan for his ideal City of the Sun where all goods were to be held in common.

Let us not forget that the discovery of America coincided with that intense agitation in European thought. As a vast continent full of unknown natural resources, peopled by men whose civilization was strange to the Occidental, it was bound to stir the imagination of the Utopians. An accident of geography offered them a material opportunity to try to fulfill their longings, not entirely satisfied either with the chimerical past of the Golden Age or the opportunity to adapt the conventions of humanism to the spent and sophisticated atmosphere of Europe.

That humanistic vision of America still remains a vast subject for exploration.

More read the descriptions of Amerigo Vespucci, and in his Utopia he marveled at the amazing discoveries.

One night in the autumn of 1532, as the Spanish humanist Juan Maldonado was standing high on a tower in the walls of Burgos, he abandoned himself to his dreams and evoked a newly Christianized America. The noble savages, he dreamed, had acquired within ten years the purest of orthodox faith. They were marvelously predisposed to it by their paradisiacal existence—blessed by Nature, free from the taint of fraud and hypocrisy. He was not dismayed that in their ceremonies the Indians failed to comply to the letter with all the demands of Christian ritual; the Spaniards would teach them all that they needed to know. Meanwhile, he prayed that they might keep intact their simplicity and their purity of heart.

In Mexico, Vasco de Quiroga revealed the same spiritual attitude when in 1535 he wrote simply and aptly: “for not in vain, but with much cause and reason is this called the New World, not because it is newly found, but because it is in its people and in almost everything as was the first and golden age …”² This assiduous student of More was to advocate the adoption of the Utopian rule in regulating the life of the Indians, placing himself in a rarefied political atmosphere where the world of ideas became confused with reality.

It is unfortunate that in tracing the spiritual biography of Vasco de Quiroga we are left in darkness about the course of his education. Both his older and his modern biographers have failed to tell us at what university he studied, who his teachers were, how he developed his taste in reading. According to a recently published document, he held a degree in canonical law, but not in theology. Where did he first feel the stirrings of humanism? Was it in Spain, perhaps through the influence of men from Alcala de Henares who were highly esteemed at the court of Charles V, or in Mexico, while he enjoyed the favor of Bishop Zumárraga, whose writings have completely established his own acquaintance with Erasmus? Who protected Quiroga in Spain and set his feet upon the path to obtaining the high temporal and ecclesiastical offices which he later held?

Let us leave these questions unanswered and turn to the man at the moment when his spiritual characteristics may be studied, and let us follow him to the final flash of his humanistic zeal.

It is known that Quiroga went to New Spain (Mexico) in 1531 as one of the jurists chosen to open the Second Audiencia—primarily the highest judicial body in the colonies, though it had other functions as well. To this court were also attached as counsels Salmerón, Maldonado, and Ceynos, and later the learned Don Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal. Some ill-informed writers believed that Quiroga was a missionary. This term refers, in fact, to the brothers of the evangelical orders, but it would not be entirely applicable to a man who acted as a judge of the Audiencia and who was later promoted to the bishopric of Michoacan, that is, to an office pertaining to the secular and not to the regular clergy in an order. This does not mean that Quiroga was devoid of a temperament both religious and charitable, or that his activities were wanting in their apostolic aspects. But such facts do not allow us to confuse concepts and categories. Motolinia, Gante, Betanzos, and many others form a well-defined group of missionaries that no one in the sixteenth century would have confused with Quiroga, who was a counsel and a bishop.

When the judges reached Mexico, they found an arduous task awaiting them. The country was not yet free from the immediate effects of the Conquest, which had taken place a decade earlier. The adjustments between the Spanish and the aboriginal elements still contained many difficulties which had to be smoothed out in accordance with the ideals of Christianity and of a high-minded policy. The condition of the slaves, the organization of the encomiendas (groups of Indians apportioned by the Crown to various individuals) and of the corregimientos or regional royal districts, the use to be made of the tamemes, or carrier Indians, the regulation of tributes, the status of the native chieftains, the establishment of villages and cities, government, justice, the Church, and fiscal affairs, were all matters which called for strength, prudence, and shrewdness on the part of the men in government. A new and complex society, in which the warp and woof that later would constitute the very essence of the historic entity of Mexico were beginning to be woven, must be incorporated into the Spanish monarchy—a spiritual and temporal fabric of Occidental culture.

It is not our task here to probe into all the minutiae of the problem. For our purpose it is sufficient to distinguish the incipient nature of that society, which could not be governed in accordance with traditional models. The humanistic aspirations of Quiroga would soon find occasion to be made manifest.

On the 14th of August he wrote to the Council of the Indies that the life of the natives should be regulated by placing them in villages “where by working and tilling the soil, they may maintain themselves with their labor and may be ruled by all the good rules of policy and by holy and good and Catholic ordinances; where there may be constructed a friar's house, small and not costly, for two or three or four brothers, who may not leave their task until such time as the natives may have acquired the habits of virtue and this has become a part of their nature.” He wanted to establish a village in each district. He talked hopefully of the simplicity and humility of the aborigines: men barefoot, bareheaded, and long-haired “as the Apostles went about.” Once the villages were established, he offered, with the help of God, “to place and plant righteously the kind of Christians as in the primitive Church, for God is as powerful now as He was then to do and to fulfill all that which may serve Him and which may conform to His will.”³

Not long after having written the above letter, Quiroga expounded more extensively his humanistic program based upon More's Utopia, which, in his judgment, should serve as the Magna Charta of European civilization in the New World.

The Crown ordered the Second Audiencia to send a detailed description of the provinces and villages of New Spain. Such a geographical and statistical study would serve the central government as a basis for the general division of the encomiendas among the Spaniards in perpetuity. This prize had been offered before this time, but the Emperor, wary of the strength that would thus be given the Conquistadors by such perpetual manorial grants, maintained them as temporary. Hence the constant and urgent petitions of the Conquistadors and the Spanish settlers which were frequently supported by the religious and juridical groups. The description was to be accompanied by the opinion of each judge regarding the organization which he believed suitable to the new kingdom.

On the 5th of July, 1532, the members of the Audiencia informed the Empress that they were sending the description and account of the land and the personnel of the Conquistadors and the settlers. New Spain was to be divided into four provinces. They had discussed with the prelates and the clergy the system which the Emperor should set up in order that the land might be settled and maintained. The collective and individual opinions of the judges and the clergy were sent with the rest of the papers.⁴ A letter from the Audiencia, dated September 17 of the same year,⁵ states that the vessel in which the descriptions were sent sailed from San Juan de Ulua at the end of July, but returned to port at the beginning of September because it was taking in water. On the next sailing, the description would be sent in duplicate as His Majesty wished. President Ramírez de Fuenleal finally wrote, on the third of November,⁶ that the counsels Matienzo and Delgadillo were sailing for Spain, carrying the documents with them.

The Queen replied to the Audiencia from Barcelona, April 20, 1533: “A wooden case in which you sent the depositions which you took from Nuño de Guzmán and Counsels Matienzo and Delgadillo and other private persons was received in council, and the description of that land as well, and also the several opinions, yours and those of certain religious persons and of other people of that land dealing with the said description, excepting only that of Counsel Salmeron who came here, and because my lord the Emperor will be in these kingdoms during all the month of April at the latest, when this welcome to me comes, His Majesty will be given a long and particular account, and he will order to be provided whatever may be proper.”⁷

Consequently, the individual opinion of Vasco de Quiroga must have reached Spain in the wooden case received in Council. The opinions of Ramírez de Fuenleal and of Ceynos have been found and published, but so far as I know the whereabouts of Quiroga's manuscript is still unknown.

To a certain extent the omission is not irreparable thanks to the data which Don Vasco set forth in a legal brief of 1535. He explains that the particular opinion concerning the description was drawn up as a “pattern” from the very good republic proposed by Thomas More—“an illustrious and ingenious man, more than human.” Quiroga stressed in his manuscript that, the Indians being scattered singly through the countryside, they were suffering privations and were lacking the necessities of life; and he proposed to bring them together in order by cities: “for one alone may be but ill secure and the man who has neither a craft nor a trade may be very bad for himself, if not for others.”⁸

He invited the Royal Council to lay down laws and ordinances suited to the quality, manner, and condition of the land and its people, who were simple and docile. To this end, he suggested the laws which his reading of More's Utopia had inspired. He believed that the Spanish government possessed the means to impose the said beneficial reforms, and he pointed out the object which might be attained by organizing the cities: “that the natives may have enough for themselves and for those whom they must support; that they may be sufficiently well kept and that they may be properly converted, as they should be”; that is, he was aiming for economic well-being, a rational political system, and Christian faith. The republic he contemplated was to be the product of the art of mixed policy, because by that both the temporal and the spiritual aspects of man would be satisfied; once political order and humane relations were established, the roots of all discord, luxury, covetousness, and sloth would be cut out; and peace, justice, and equity would reign. Quiroga, like other inspired politicians of the Renaissance, not only gave due weight to the problems of property and labor, but he also made the enjoyment of spiritual values rest upon a satisfactory solution of them. From the birth of the modern world, he foresaw clearly that an egoistical and needy society could not know the sweets of peace and of justice.

In the Indian Utopia, the ministries would be perfect. A city of six thousand families—each family composed of from ten to sixteen couples—would be ruled, regulated, and governed as though it were a single family. The father and mother would control the families. Each magistrate would take care of thirty families. Each governor would preside over four magistrates. In addition, there would be two ordinary mayors and a tacatecle.⁹ The magistrates would be chosen according to a method copied from the Utopia. At the head of the whole organization would be a mayor-in-chief, or a Spanish corregidor, appointed by the Audiencia which would be the supreme temporal tribunal.

The religious orders, in these cities, would instruct as many of the people as possible.

Quiroga complained that this opinion may have been disregarded, or at least forgotten, by those who must have examined it in Spain.

After writing his opinion of 1532, Vasco de Quiroga did not give up the ideas which he had conceived regarding the life of the Indians. On the contrary, he resumed his humanistic readings and sent the Court, on the 4th of July, 1535, his full legal opinion.¹⁰ This was prompted by the issuance in Toledo of a royal decree, on February 20, 1534, which favored the enslavement of the Indians. Quiroga opposed the arguments of the pro-slavery group with all the weight of his juridical knowledge. At the same time he insisted upon the suitability of adopting his forgotten Utopian opinion and reenforced it brilliantly with new arguments.

Between his first reading of the Utopia and the opinion of 1535, Don Vasco tells us that he came upon Lucian's account of the Saturnalia, that is, of the transcendental humanistic theme of the Golden Age: “so often mentioned and praised by all in these our times.” He explained that never before had he seen or heard those original words of Lucian, and the circumstances in which he encountered them, taken in conjunction with More's republic, moved him to think that Providence had brought them to his attention “perchance to seal and cap and to make finally understood this in my opinion so ill-understood thing of the lands and the people, the property and the quality of this New World.”

Lucian had been translated by Erasmus and More, so that there is no doubt but that Quiroga knew the version rendered by the English humanist, for he cites it literally. His reading convinced him that the simple people of New Spain would be found capable of dwelling in the state of innocence of that Golden Age, and in accord with the virtues of a “renascent Church.” For the Indians were good, obedient, humble, fond of festivities and drinking, idle and naked, like the people of the time of the Kingdoms of Saturn. With their very great freedom of life and of soul, they despised the superfluous. In short, such a people—so gentle, so new, so unspoiled and so like soft wax—were ready for whatever one might care to make of them. Europe, on the other hand—a civilization of iron—had lost much of its simplicity. It was inaccessible to what the newly discovered Humanism could accomplish on this earth, for covetousness, ambition, pride, pomp, vainglory, drudgery, and sorrow abounded there.

The task of civilization in the New World should therefore consist, not in transplanting the old culture among the newly discovered peoples, but in elevating them, in all their natural simplicity, to the ideal standards of humanism and of primitive Christianity. The instrument of that uplifting would be More's Utopia, for its laws were the most suitable for regulating this enthusiastic task of bettering mankind.

Quiroga's project is distinguished by the will to apply the noblest political idea of the Renaissance. He had observed at close hand the life of the Indians, and he exalted the civilizing mission of Occidental man to heights of moral purity which have few equals in the history of colonizing thought.

The Royal Council did not welcome the idea on this occasion any more than it had accepted earlier the opinion of 1532.

Quiroga, grown impatient, founded two hospital-villages which he called Santa Fe, putting his own resources behind them and availing himself of the help of the Indians. One village was near Mexico City and the other beyond Michoacan, where he made a beginning of his experiment with a new social life. He dispensed with the continental plan he had drafted in the manuscript which he sent to Spain, but he did finally transplant the program to Mexican soil.

On the 30th of June, 1533, the enterprise had been discussed in the municipal council of Mexico, and it was said that Counsel Quiroga began the work “under the pretext and claim of undertaking what could be pointed out as a pater familias enterprise.”¹¹

The rules set forth in the opinion of 1532, drawn from More's Utopia, were somewhat modified, for as yet there was no question of cities of thousands of inhabitants, but of small villages. Don Vasco converted the regulations into ordinances for the hospital-villages of Santa Fe.¹²

In his last will, he took pains to explain that he founded the two villages: “being a judge for His Majesty … in the Royal Chancery, who resides in the City of Mexico, and many years before he became a member or received any income from the Church …”¹³ That is, he initiated his work before he gained the increased income which came to him as bishop of Michoacan. His election to this higher office took place in the year 1537. He was then able to establish new hospitals in the diocese and to begin the teaching of crafts to the Indians.

The date when Quiroga established and put into effect the ordinances for the hospital-villages of Santa Fe is unknown. The text discovered and published by Juan José Moreno, in the eighteenth century, is incomplete at the beginning and at the end. It can only be stated that the ordinances antedated the authorized testament of 1565.

I established the parallel between More's Utopia and the ordinances of Quiroga in a book published some time ago,¹⁴ and I have nothing to add to it. The result is that the ordinances, according to the words of Don Vasco, set forth on various occasions, faithfully transmitted the theory of More, but translated it from the atmosphere of theoretical speculations to immediate application. Undoubtedly the Chancellor of England would have been interested to know how the Indians of Mexico City and Michoacan were faring in their life based upon his Utopia. But on the 5th of July, 1535, the day after Quiroga wrote his opinion, More was beheaded by the executioner of Henry VIII of England.

In his villages of Santa Fe, Quiroga established the common ownership of property; the integration of large families; the systematic alternation between the urban and the rural people; work for women; the six-hour working day; the liberal distribution of the fruits of the common labor according to the needs of the inhabitants; the foregoing of luxury and of all offices which were not useful; and the election of the judiciary by families.

He survived the founding of the hospital-villages by about thirty years, and he was able to observe the course of his experiment. In his testament of 1565, far from contemplating the demise or abandonment of his applied idealism, he recommended carrying out the ordinances and “not yielding at any point.”

So it was that Vasco de Quiroga, through his opinions and his establishments, gave to humanistic thought an unexpected American orientation, and ennobled for a time the relations between the Europeans and the aborigines, thanks to a doctrine overflowing with generosity.¹⁵

Notes

1. A. Castro, El Pensamiento de Cervantes (Madrid, 1925), pp. 177-78.

2. Colección de Documentos Inéditos del Archivo de Indias (hereafter referred to as D.I.I.) (Madrid, 1864-89), X, 363.

3. D.I.I., XIII, 420.

4. Epistolario de Nueva España (México, 1939), II, 180-82.

5. Ibid., 197-201.

6. D.I.I., XIII, 250.

7. Vasco de Puga, Cedulario (México, 1563), fol. 83v (2d ed., México, 1878-79, I, 291-92).

8. D.I.I., X, 376. And Don Vasco de Quiroga (México, Editorial Polis, 1940), p. 303.

9. This refers to an office in the indigenous, pre-Hispanic administration.

10. MS in Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, No. 7369. D.I.I., X, 333-513. Don Vasco de Quiroga, pp. 291-406.

11. Actas de Cabildo de México (México, 1862-89), III, 41.

12. Reglas y Ordenanzas para el gobierno de los hospitales de Santa Fe de México y Michoacán (México, Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1940), XVIII, 38 pp.

13. N. León, D. Vasco de Quiroga (México, 1903), pp. 75-103.

14. S. Zavala, La Utopia de Tomás Moro en la Nueva España (México, 1937).

15. See also the following: Juan José Moreno, Fragmentos de la Vida y Virtudes del V. Ilmo. y Rmo. Sr. Dr. D. Vasco de Quiroga (México. En la Imprenta del Real y más antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 1766); Silvio Zavala, Ideario de Vasco de Quiroga (México, El Colegio de México, 1941); “Letras de Utopía. Carta a don Alfonso Reyes,” in Cuadernos Americanos, Vol. II, No. 2 (México, March-April 1942), pp. 146-52.