CHAPTER 19

OF THE SACRIFICES OF MEN THAT THEY MADE

But what is most painful about the unhappy lot of these wretched people is the vassalage that they paid to the devil, sacrificing men to him, who are made in the image of God and were created to enjoy God. As has been said above, in many nations they had the custom of killing, to accompany their dead, the persons who had been most pleasing to them and who they imagined could best serve them in the other life. Apart from this, in Peru they used to sacrifice children of from four to six years, up to the age of ten, and this was most frequently done in matters concerning the Inca, such as procuring health for him in his illnesses, and also when he went to war, to attain victory. And when the tassel was given to the new Inca, which was the insignia of the king just as the scepter or crown is here, they sacrificed as many as two hundred children from four to ten years of age, a ruthless and inhuman spectacle. The way they sacrificed them was to strangle them and bury them with certain grimaces and ceremonies; at other times they cut their throats and smeared themselves from ear to ear with their blood. They also sacrificed virgins from among those brought to the Inca from the monasteries, which we described above. A very great and widespread abuse of this kind existed, which was that when some Indian either important or ordinary was ill, and the soothsayer told him that he must surely die, they would sacrifice his son to the sun or to Viracocha, telling the god to be content with him and not to wish to take the father's life. Such cruelty resembled that which Scripture tells us was used by the king of Moab when he sacrificed his firstborn son upon the wall in sight of the Israelites, who thought this act so tragic that they refused to press him further and so returned to their homes. Divine Scripture tells that this same kind of cruel sacrifice was used among those barbarous nations of Chanaanites and Jebusites and the others written about in the Book of Wisdom: they call it peace to live in so many and so terrible evils, such as sacrificing their own children or making other hidden sacrifices, or staying awake all night doing mad things; and so they neither maintain cleanliness in their lives or in their marriages, but one man takes the life of another out of envy, another takes a man's wife and he has no objection, and everything is confused: blood, deaths, thefts, deceits, corruption, unfaithfulness, riots, wrongs, mutinies, forgetfulness of God, contamination of souls, changing sexes and birth, changing of marriage partners, and disorder of adulteries and filthiness, for idolatry is an abyss of all the evils. The sage says this of the people about whom David complained that the children of Israel were learning those customs, even sacrificing their sons and daughters to devils. God never wanted this, nor was it pleasing to him, for because he is the author of life and made all things for man he is not pleased when men take the lives of other men; and, although the Lord tested and accepted the willingness of the faithful patriarch Abraham, he by no means consented to the killing of Abraham's son. From this we can see the malice and tyranny of the devil, who in this has tried to surpass God, for he loves to be worshiped with the shedding of human blood and by this means attempts men's perdition in soul and body because of the ferocious hatred that he feels toward men as their cruel adversary.