Tercero catecismo y exposición de la doctrina cristiana por sermones (Third Provincial Council of Lima, 1583; approved 1584)
A council of the Peruvian church commissioned thirty-one model sermons for parish priests and had them translated into the general language of Cuzco. Its preface is a manual of how to preach to Andean congregations — plain style, short clauses, no rhetoric borrowed from the court — and it says, without embarrassment, that the book exists because many doctrina priests lacked the language, or theology, or both. It also tells them to study Andean religion thoroughly in order to discredit it.
Why this wins its question: The Lima catechisms are usually summarised in one clause — the Church in Peru produced a trilingual catechism — with the sermon book left as a title and its preface unread. The preface is where the policy actually is, and it is quoted here: how long the clauses may be, what to repeat and how often, why a priest who preaches like a university man does harm, and the frank statement that the volume exists for priests lacking "Lengua ó Letras, ó ambas cosas". The same pages carry what a favourable summary drops. The hearers are called rude disciples and a soft people in the sentences that prescribe kindness to them; and the instruction to learn Andean rites "de raiz" is given for the express purpose of discrediting the specialists who kept them. The title page adds a fact no summary carries: a council of 1773 ordered the thing reprinted, and a Paris house was still selling it in 1867.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page states the book's authority and its whole transmission chain at once: sermons "para que los curas y otros ministros prediquen, y enseñen a los indios y a las demas personas, conforme a lo que se proveyó en el santo concilio provincial de Lima el año de 1583", then "MANDADO REIMPRIMIR POR EL CONCILIO PROVINCIAL DEL AÑO DE 1773", and the imprint of the sheets actually read — Paris, Librería de Rosa y Bouret, 23 calle Visconti, 1867. A pastoral instrument of 1583 was still being reissued by order of a council 190 years later, and reprinted commercially 284 years later.
The approbation is signed by the archbishop of Lima and dated. Toribio Alfonso Mogrovejo, "por la gracia de Dios, y de la Santa Iglesia de Roma, Arzobispo de los Reyes, y del Consejo de Su Majestad", having seen the text and the pareceres of the theologians commissioned to examine it, approves the sermons "por de católica y sana doctrina, y por muy útiles y provechosos", and orders them published and printed with the Catecismo "segun, y como están escritos, y se contienen en este Original que nos ha sido exhibido". Given "en la villa de Arnedo del Perú á veinte y tres dias del mes de Julio de mil quinientos ochenta y cuatro años".
The sermons were translated, and by a named body rather than ad hoc. The Proemio states that they "se han traducido en la Lengua general del Cuzco por los mismos que el Sínodo nombró para la traduccion del Catecismo, aunque no todos" — by the same men the synod had appointed to translate the catechism, though not all of them served, absence and other occupations having prevented their all meeting. Translation into an Andean language is treated as a conciliar act with an appointed commission behind it.
The Proemio is a homiletics manual, and its central charge is against Spanish preachers. Those who exceed "la capacidad, y necesidad de los oyentes" and set about "predicar á Indios cosas exquisitas, ó en estilo levantado, como si predicasen en alguna corte, ó universidad" do not help but "hacen gran daño; porque ofuscan, y confunden los cortos, y tiernos entendimientos de los Indios". The prescription follows: the style "se requiere ser fácil, y humilde, no alto, ni levantado. Las cláusulas no muy largas, ni de rodeo. El lenguage no exquisito, ni términos afectados."
The condescension is in the same sentences as the pastoral care and is not separable from it. The hearers are "como que son discípulos rudos"; the Catecismo Menor exists so that all Indians "por rudos que sean" may have it by heart; and the rhetorical advice rests on the claim that "los Indios, como gente de suyo blanda, en sintiendo en el que les habla algun género de afecto, oyen, y gustan, y se mueven estrañamente."
The instruction on content makes the book an instrument of extirpation and says so plainly: besides examples from Scripture, the preacher is to undertake "sobre todo el descubrirles sus errores, y mostrarles la burleria y falsedad que contienen; y desautorizar á sus maestros los hechiceros, declarando sus ignorancias, y embustes, y malicias" — and this, the text adds, "es muy fácil de hacer, como se tenga cuidado de saber de raiz sus ritos y supersticiones". The command to study Andean religion in depth and the command to destroy its authority are one instruction.
The book states who it is for, and the admission is unusual in an official text: "Pueden aprovechar estos Sermones, lo primero, á los que son faltos de Lengua ó de Letras, ó de ambas cosas: porque con tomarlos de memoria, y predicarlos con buen afecto, podrán sin duda hacer gran fruto en los Indios." The council is legislating around parish clergy who could not preach in Quechua and had not the theology to compose a sermon.
The sermons were not made binding. Unlike the Catecismo they are "no cosa de obligacion... sino de pura voluntad del que quisiere aprovecharse de este trabajo", each priest keeping the liberty to preach the same doctrine "por el modo y palabras que mejor le pareciere". The Proemio defends preaching from another man's paper by citing Augustine, De doctrina christiana book 4, and calls the volume "un breve Cartapacio, ó Sermonario de Indios".
Its structure is pedagogical and stated: thirty-one sermons in all, running from the mysteries of the faith through penance, the sacraments, the ten commandments and Christian custom to the Last Things; a suma at the head of each sermon so the main points can be picked out; foundations first and narrative after, "que es el mejor modo de catequizar, como San Agustin enseña". The essential points are to be repeated until the hearers "estén muy enterados en ellos, y no lo sepan como poco mas ó menos".
The third catechism was an afterthought of the Council rather than one of its acts. The Proemio records that "durante el Concilio Provincial no se hizo este tercero Catecismo, como los otros que el dicho Concilio aprobó y publicó", but that, the prelates' intention being clear, the men who had drawn up the other catechisms by commission of the synod were asked to make this one too, and it was published with the metropolitan's approval.
What the sheets read cannot show. This is an 1867 Paris setting of a reprint ordered in 1773, so the wording is at two removes from whatever the Lima press produced in the 1580s; no page opened here carries the original imprint, and no printer or date of the first edition is asserted. The volume prints the Spanish alone: the Quechua translation the Proemio describes does not appear in it, so nothing here is evidence about the translated wording.