Description

A catechism (from the Ancient Greek: κατηχέω, ‘to teach orally’) was traditionally a summary of Christian doctrine used in teaching young people or adult converts, although in modern times it has assumed broader forms of ideological indoctrination. Developed in the 1st century, catechisms experienced a great revival during the Reformation and the Tridentine Reforms, which saw dueling forms of Protestant and Catholic catechisms.

In the New World, catechisms used to evangelize Christianity to the native peoples. What was perhaps the earliest such catechism created in what would become Colombia was the Franciscan Luis Zapata de Cárdenas’ ‘Catecismo’ (1576), employed to indoctrinate the Muisca people.

During the Enlightenment, the catechism format was adapted to teaching secular subjects (ex. sciences, grammar, history, etc.), as well as political (often liberal anti-church) ideologies, the latter being sharpened by the French Revolution. French Enlightenment trends in secular or politically liberal catechisms eventually spread to Latin America.

The Spanish American Wars of Independence (1810 to mid-1820s) saw the creation of political catechisms in various countries. The first such work in Colombia was Juan Fernández de Sotomayor y Pincón’s Catecismo o instrucción popular (Cartagena, 1814), that while not exactly liberal, argued that Spanish rule should be overthrown, and that this would strengthen Roman Catholicism in Nueva Granada.

As Colombia/Nueva Grenada gained its independence, catechisms, both religious and political, became propagandist tools in the conflicts between the Liberal and the Conservative parties that was to dominate Colombia’s destiny for generations (responsible numerous coups and wars). At the risk of being simplistic, the Liberals advocated for Colombia to have a strong secular constitution that enshrined democratic rights and circumscribed the powers of the Church. The Conservatives hewed to the traditional values of strongman government and no real division between Church and state.

On the Liberalizing side, José Grau’s Catecismo político arreglado e la Constitución de la República de Colombia (Bogotá: N. Lora, 1824) was issued to teach young students about the tenets of the 1821 Colombian constitution. While acknowledging Catholicism as the state religion, it explicitly respected the practice of other faiths, while promoting very liberal concepts of individual freedom and the banishing of traditional social hierarchies. This was followed by Juan José Nieto’s, Derecho y deberes del hombre en sociedad (Cartagena, 1834), a political catechism that advocated for liberal freedoms, while showing less reverence to the Church’s traditional central role in society. In the succeeding years, Colombian political catechisms become progressively liberal, leading eventually to Santiago Pérez’s Manual del ciudadano (Bogotá, 1872/3), which was known as the ‘Olimpo radical’ for its boldly unapologetic liberalism.

Additionally, secular catechisms on various subjects, such as geography, history, mathematics and women’s education, etc., were also produced in Colombia, starting with
the anonymously written Catecismo de geografia de la República de Nueva Granada (Bogotá: J. Cualla, 1842).

As of for the Conservative reprise to the Liberal political catechisms, religious catechisms were produced that promoted traditional values, such as the central role of Catholicism in society and respect for established institutions and authority figures, implicitly transcending the socio-political systems that were mandated by the new liberal constitutions.

While, on the surface, the early Independence Era Colombian religious catechisms seemed like innocent recapitulations of a time-honoured art of the Catholic faith, in their heated political context, they were potent rhetorical devices that aimed to indoctrinate Colombia’s youth to support the traditional, conservative order against the new liberalism (by asking and answering leading questions).

When comparing the conservative religious and liberal political catechisms of the era, as observed by Leonardo Tovar González (‘Catecismos políticos del siglo XIX’, p. 127), “…we can schematize the ideological debate developed in the 19th century. The catechetical instruction of children, young people and all the faithful on sacred doctrine served as a device to preserve the traditional morals and religious values of the Colombian population, against the sinful modernist attacks of liberalism. For Catholic spokesmen, the United States of Colombia was just another of the territories where the struggle was waged between the good, oriented in the name of Jesus Christ by the clergy with the Pope at its head, and the perverse secularizing theses derived from the Reformation and the French Revolution.”

The Present Catecismo in Focus

This Catecismo ortodoxo was created by Dr. José Maria Cogollos Luque, the vicar of the village of Zapatoca, in the Santander Department of northeastern Colombia, to instruct youth on Roman Catholic religious principles. It was published by the small printing house of Vicente de Baños in Tunja, the capital of Boyacá Department and an important regional centre in the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, around 130 km northeast of Bogotá.

While superficially Cogollos’ catechism seems innocuous enough, following a time-honoured form of Catholic writing, it its contemporary context, it sent a powerful message to the youth of the country to respect established religious orthodoxy and authority systems. In thinly veiled terms, it defends the union of Church and state, implicitly placing it on a collision course with liberal constitutionalism.

The work commences with an essay, ‘Compendium of the Plan of Religion’ (pp. 3-11), a brief overview of religious events from Genesis to the foundation of Christianity and its tenets.

The bulk of the text is comprised of ‘On the Foundations of Faith’ (p. 11-83), comprised of 22 chapters of Q & A on defined topics, and which is dated, Villa de Zapatoca, September 7, 1838. Most of the chapters follow a conventional form and content, although the overarching message is clear: ‘One must obey the Roman Catholic Church and its leaderships and faithfully follow its spiritual precepts’.

They chapters are as follows: Chapter 1 – On the Existence of God; Chapter 2 – On the Existence of Good and of Moral Evil; or the Freedom and Free Will of Man; Chapter 3 – On the Necessity and Existence of Religion (with God as the “Supreme Being”); Chapter 4 – On the Necessity of Revelation; Chapter – On the Divinity of the Books of the Old Testament; Chapter 7 – The Enduring Nature of the Laws of Moses; Chapter 8 – On the Promise, and the Coming of the Messiah; Chapter 9 – It is demonstrated that Jesus Christ is the Messiah as predicted by the Prophets; Chapter 10 – On the Authenticity, Truth and Divinity of the Evangelical Books; Chapter 11 – On the Wisdom and Holiness of Jesus Christ; Chapter 12 – On the Beauty, Excellence and Holiness of the Law of Jesus Christ; Chapter 13 – On the Divinity of Jesus Christ proven by his Miracles; Chapter 14 – On the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; Chapter 15 – On the Marvelous Establishment of the Christian Religion in the World; Chapter 16 – On the Marvelous Conservation of the Christian Religion; Chapter 17 – On the Amazing Revolution that the Christian Religion has made in the World; and Chapter 21 – Where it its manifested that the Roman Catholic Church is the true church of Jesus Christ because it has all the characteristics of a true church that are indicated in the Gospels and the Symbol of Nicaea; and Chapter 22 – On the Truth of the Eternal Punishments of Hell.

A few chapters are blatantly political. Chapter 18 – On the Necessity, and Existence of a Society of Christians is the True Church of Jesus (pp. 72-3) advocates religious totalitarianism (very much against Liberal principles) by opining that, while there are other Christian Churches (Lutherans, Calvinists, Coptic Greeks, etc.), “no one can be saved… except only in the true one [the Roman Catholic Church], which is the orthodox church that we call the true Church of Jesus Christ”.

In Chapter 19 – On the Authority of the Church (pp. 73-7) makes clear that the people should obey the leaders of the Catholic Church who maintain great power over society as ordained by the Saviour. Here it is variously written that “Jesus Christ established the authority of the Church” and that “Jesus Christ gave government power to the apostles and their successors” and that “Jesus Christ has told the apostles that the Pope and the bishops are the successors to him”. It then goes on to express disapproval of the Protestants and the flawed 1824 Bible which they distributed in Latin America. Chapter 20 – On the Invisible Head of the Church (pp. 77-8), notes that the “invisible head” is the “Redeemer” but under him is the “primacy of the Pope”.

In a short section ‘Genealogy of Impiety’ (pp. 83), Cogollos advocates an intolerant spiritual totalitarianism, by deploying quick ‘one-liners’ to refute competing belief systems (or a lack thereof), including Protestantism, Deism, Atheism (Materialism); Pyrrhonism; Skepticism; and Benthamism.

On the final page, it is noted that the catechism was approved by the censor on December 1, 1838, while a small section entitled ‘Documento’, features a letter of appreciation for the work from Manuel José Mosquera-Figueroa y Arboleda-Salazar (1800 – 1853), the Metropolitan Archbishop of Bogotá (in office, 1835-53), a great defender of the Church’s traditional privileges in Colombia against Liberal opposition.
Early Printing in Tunja

This history of printing in Tunja began in 1813, during the New Granada Civil War (1812-4), on offshoot of the Colombian War of Independence, when Tunja was a major centre of the ultimately victorious Federalist cause. That year José Joaquín Justo Camacho y Rodriguez de Lago (1766 – 1816), the prominent journalist, lawyer, and future President of Nueva Granada (1814-5), founded Tunja’s first press, La Imprenta el sol del sabio caldas. Camacho’s press was followed, later in 1813, by the Imprenta del Congreso de la Nueva Granada, which issued important Federalist periodicals, such as the Boletín de Tunja and El Argos de la Nueva Granada.

The official local government press, the Imprenta del departamento de Boyacá, was created in Tunja in 1825, and not only issued official documents and decrees, but also executed private commissions.

Vicente de Baños, who printed the present catechism, was a boutique Tunja publisher who specialized in religious works. He started out in the late 1820s subcontracting his titles to the Imprenta del departamento, but by 1835 had established his own printing house.

All printing in Tunja remained a on small scale, with a very limited quantity of titles issued in small print runs, until the 1850s. Henceforth, there was a relative proliferation of printing, with an increased number of printing houses issuing several newspapers, as well a healthy selection of pamphlets and official documents. Not many examples of these works remain today, especially those from before the 1850s.

A Note on Rarity

The present catechism is exceedingly rare, in line with most provincial Colombian imprints of the first half of the 19th century. It would have had a very limited print run and a low survival rate. We cannot trace the current location of any other examples, although the work is cited, with no institutional reference given, in Leonardo Tovar González’s article, suggesting that there must be at least one example in a Colombian library. Moreover, we cannot trace any sales records for any other examples, nor can we find any bibliographic citations beyond the Tovar González article.

References: No examples located; however, an example is cited (with no institutional location reference given) in: Leonardo TOVAR GONZÁLEZ, ‘Catecismos políticos del siglo XIX’, in Rubén Sierra (ed.), El Radicalismo colombiano del siglo XIX (Bogotá: Unibiblos, 2006), 119-146, esp. p. 125.