they may well call a paganized Christianity. In many cases the same idol has served for both forms of idolatry when reclothed, renamed and well sprinkled with holy water. Tomantzin—"Our Mother"—was once worshiped by crowds in the very spot now sacred to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the tutelar divinity of Mexico.
The land must have been full of idols. The Franciscans boasted that in eight years they had broken twenty thousand images. On a high mountain in Miztec one of the Dominican friars found a little idol called "the Heart of the People." It was a beautiful emerald four inches long and two wide, engraved with snakes and other sacred devices. Knowing its great value as a gem, a Spanish cavalier tried to buy it, but the pious friar was horror-struck at the idea, and, proceeding with what he considered his duty, he ground it to powder and strewed it to the winds.
In this respect the early Fathers were a great contrast to those who followed them. One of the first acts of Cortez as governor-general had been to propose a plan for the conversion of the Indians, and one of its prime requisites, in his opinion, was that no prelate or bishop should be sent to New Spain, since the first object of such officials would be to make money. "They will use," he says, "the estates of the Church in pageants and other foolish matters, and bestow rights of inheritance on their sons or relatives." He told the king very plainly that if the Indians had an opportunity to compare the honest, moral lives of their old priests with those led by the corrupt dignitaries of Rome it would be worse for the latter: "If they, the pagans, understood that these were the ministers of God who were indulging in vicious habits, as is the case in these days in Spain, it would lead them
