[2] Monro S. Edmonson, Los Manitos: A Study of Institutional Values (Publ. 25, Middle American Research Institute; New Orleans: Tulane University, 1950), p. 43.
[3] Alexander M. Darley, The Passionists of the Southwest (Pueblo, 1893).
[4] E. Boyd, Curator of the Spanish-Colonial Department, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, states that Jesús Trujjillo in 1947 furnished information on other penitente officers, including one man who uses the matraca and one who acts as a sergeant at arms.
[5] Edmonson, loc. cit.
[6] George Wharton James, New Mexico: Land of the Delight Makers (Boston, 1920), lists concisely the Biblical and historical references to religious mortification practiced by New Mexican penitentes.
[7] Darley (op. cit., pp. 8 ff.) gives an exhaustive list of methods of mortification said to be used by penitentes.
Origins of the Penitente Movement
By 1833, bodily penance practiced in lay brotherhoods of Hispano Catholics attracted criticism from the Church in New Mexico and resulted in the pejorative name penitentes.[8] Historically, however, within the traditional framework of Hispanic Catholicism, the penitentes had precedents for their religious practices, including flagellation.
Penitente rites were derived from Catholic services already common in colonial New Mexico. Prayers and rosaries said before altars comprised an important part of Hispano religious observances, and processions of Catholics and penitentes alike were announced by bell, drum, and rifle in Hispano villages. In particular, penitentes used via crucis processions to dramatize the Passion, portrayed in every Catholic church by the fourteen Stations of the Cross. Penitentes also maintained Catholic Lenten practices by holding tenebrae services, the tinieblas rites mentioned above, and by flagellation.
These parallels between Catholic and penitente religious observances caused Edmonson to theorize that "the autonomous movement originated within the Church."[9] Variations, however, between the two religious traditions led Edmonson to discover "an important thread of religious independence and even apostasy in New Mexican history."[10] Edmonson's study of 1950 has established the persistence of penitente activity in Hispano culture.