Industrial schools, compulsory education, these seem to us usually modern ideas; but these old teachers knew something of object teaching, of adapting methods to varying conditions. Thus:
They completed the instruction by the use of signs, and it may be imagined that the result was little or nothing. Desirous of hastening the instruction and realizing that what enters by the eye engraves itself more easily upon the mind, they devised the idea of painting the mysteries of religion upon a canvas. Friar Jacob de Tastera, a Frenchman, was the first, it seems, who tested this method. He did not know the language, but he showed the Indians the chart and caused one of the brighter among them, who knew something of Spanish, to explain the meaning of the figures to the others. The other friars followed his example and the system continued in use much time. They were also accustomed to hang the necessary charts upon the wall, and the missionary, as he made the doctrinal explanations, indicated with a pointer the corresponding chart. The Indians accustomed to painting hieroglyphs adopted them for writing catechisms and prayerbooks for their own use, but varying the old form and interspersing here and there words written with European letters, from which there resulted a new species of mixed writing, of which curious examples are preserved, some of which are in my possession. They made use of the same method of jotting down a record of their sins that they might not forget them at the time of going to the confessional. The use of the pictures was so pleasing to the Indians that it lasted all that century and a part of the following. In 1575 Archbishop Moya de Contreras substituted with announcements in pictures, papal bulls which failed to come from Spain; and the well known French writer, Friar Juan Bautista, caused figures to be engraved—after the seventeenth century had begun—for use in teaching the Indians of that time the doctrine.
THE UNIVERSITY OF MEXICO.
The famous University of Mexico was opened in 1553, almost seventy years before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Literary contests of a public character were not infrequent:
The doors of the university opened, there entered by them a great number of youth, who waited with impatience the moment of commencing or prosecuting their studies. So Cervantes Salazar testifies in the description which he wrote of the institution, the year following its establishment. Soon the literary exercises began and notable was the ardor with which the students engaged in scholastic disputations, to which, as Cervantes says, night alone put an end. The learned men who were already in Mexico hastened to connect themselves with the university, among them Archbishop Montufar. Nothing was omitted to add to the luster of the new school, since there were given to it the privileges of the University of Salamanca and the title Royal and Pontifical. From it sallied many alumni as teachers, or to occupy high positions in church and state. It was really, as its founders had planned, a source of supply (nursery) of educated men, which in large measure obviated the necessity of bringing such from Europe, and there were even some who there brilliantly displayed the education which they had received in the schools of Mexico.
A LITERARY FESTIVAL.
In the year 1578, on the occasion of the arrival at Mexico of a great quantity of sacred relics, presented by Pope Gregory XIII. to the Jesuits, it was decided to celebrate a brilliant festival. Upon the announcement of this, many distinguished persons and a multitude of others betook themselves to Mexico. An official proclamation, given forth beforehand with much ceremony, announced a program of seven literary controversies. The procession with the sacred relics sallied from the cathedral, and on the way to the Church of the Jesuits, where they were to be deposited, there were reared five magnificent triumphal arches ‘at least fifty feet high.’ Besides these more important ones, the Indians constructed more than fifty, made of boughs and flowers according to their custom. All the doors and windows of the houses were adorned with rich tapestries, Flemish stuffs embroidered with gold and silk. In the arches, as at the corners, and in the little ornamental shrines which decorated the line of march, there were displayed placards and shields with inscriptions, sentences, and poetical verses in Latin, Spanish, and even in Greek and Hebrew. At each arch the procession paused to see and hear dances, sports, music, and poems. During the space of eight days, in the afternoons, upon platforms erected for the purpose, the students of the different schools in turn represented religious plays. One of these was the tragedy of the persecution of the church under Diocletian and the prosperity which followed, with the reign of Constantine. This drama, which still exists in printed form, was undoubtedly a work of the Jesuit professors. Delighted with its rendition the populace demanded its repetition, which took place the following Sunday.
INDIAN LANGUAGES.
An immense field is opened before my view, in the linguistic and historic works, which we owe to the sixteenth century. On their arrival the missionaries found themselves face to face with a language entirely unknown to the inhabitants of the Old World; and as they progressed with their apostolic labors they discovered with pain that this land, where the curse of Babel seems to have fallen with especial weight, was full of different languages, of all forms and structures, some polished, others barbarous, for which they had neither interpreters, nor teachers, nor books, and for the most part not even a people of culture who spoke them. That difficulty in itself would suffice to discourage the most intrepid mind; but there did not in the world exist anything which could quench the fire of charity with which the missionaries were aglow. They undertook the contest with the hundred-headed monster and vanquished him. Today the study of a group of languages, or even of one tongue, raises the fame of the philologist to the clouds, although he usually finds the way pathed out for him by previous labors; but the missionaries learned, or rather divined all, from the first beginnings; a single man at times attacked five or six of these languages without analogy, without a common filiation, without known alphabet, with nothing that might facilitate the task. Today such investigations are made, for the most part, in the tranquillity and shelter of the study; then, in the fields, the groves, upon the roads, under the open sky, in the midst of fatigues of the mission journey, of hunger, of lack of clothing, of sleeplessness.
The missionaries did not undertake such heavy tasks to attain fame; they did not compare the languages, nor treat them in a scientific way; they tried to reduce them all to the plan of Latin; but they went straight to the practical end of making themselves comprehensible to the natives, and laid firm foundations, upon which might be reared a magnificent structure. The linguistic section of our literature is one of those which most highly honor it, and this, although we know but a portion of it. Countless are the writings which have remained unpublished, either for lack of patronage to supply the cost of printing or because they were translations of sacred texts which it was not permitted to place in vulgar hands. Father Olmos is a notable example of the sad fate which befell many of these writers. It is believed that he knew various Chichimecan dialects, because he was a long time among them, and it is certain that he wrote without counting other books, grammars, and vocabularies of the Aztec, Huastec, and Totonac languages. Of such great works only his Aztec grammar has survived, which, after circulating during more than three centuries through public and private libraries, has finally been saved, thanks to the beautiful edition of it which was published, not in Mexico, but in Paris in 1875. In a history of Mexican literature, notices and analysis of the books on the native languages—today so much esteemed and studied in foreign lands—claim a place of honor.