"Confession in the preconquest Nahua world did not invoke the same sense of individualization as Catholic confessional rites. Rather, one would confess to losing one's way along the path, tripping, taking a detour, tour, or entering the tlazolli complex when it was not ritually appropriate to do so.
The logic of the confession that Molina had wanted to impart to the Nahuas [sic] was that one had to give to the confessor one's inner sense of self; one had to impart the truth of oneself, never hiding sin. One's own truth, he would go on, had to come from a searing search within oneself, within one's heart. Then one could properly confess and effectively avoid the fires of hell. In a similar vein, an early confessional manual, published by the Dominicans in Mexico in 1548, begins: "I, who am a sinner, confess before God," where the word for confess, yolcuitia, means "to name the heart;' suggesting the internalization of the self and the creation of a confessing being who will reveal all before the priest, God's representative."
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