Words Worth Noting - September 18, 2026

“1492, the year of Granada’s fall and of Columbus’ first voyage, had witnessed another fateful step in the preparation of Spain for its mission to bring the gospel to the world. The Jews, whose conversion was destined to presage Christ’s return, had been given the choice of becoming Christian or going into exile. Many had opted to leave Spain; more, including the chief rabbi of Castile himself, had accepted baptism. It was hardly to be expected, then, three decades on, that agents of the Spanish monarchy would spare the altars of the people who knew nothing of the God of Israel. Traveling to Mexico in Cortés’ wake, Franciscans were revolted by the demands of sacrifice imposed by the Mexicans gods. None doubted they were demons. There was Huitzilopochtli, the great patron of the Mexican who is temple in Tenochtitlan, it was said, had been consecrated with the blood of eighty thousand victims; Xipe Totec, ‘the flayed one’, whose devotees wore the skins of those offered to their patron, and stabbed their penises with cactus thorns; Tlaloc, the god of the rains, whose favors could be won only by the sacrifice of small children who had first been made to weep. Such cruelties cried out to the heavens. ‘It was the clamor of so many souls, and so much bloodshed is an affront to their Creator,’ wrote one Franciscan, that had inspired God to send Cortez to the Indies – ‘like another Moses in Egypt.’ Yet even Cortés himself had lamented the cost.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World