ABSTRACT
WHEN the Spaniards first penetrated into Peru they were much interested in the religious customs of the people of that land. In particular they observed that at the great feast of Raymi there was placed upon the royal board a cake of fine bread, prepared by the Virgins of the Sun, together with goblets of the fermented liquor of the country. These the Inca himself first tasted and then passed round among the assembled nobles. ‘In the distribution of bread and wine at this high festival,’ says Prescott, 1 ‘the orthodox Spaniards saw a striking resemblance to the Christian communion; as in the practice of confession and penance, which, in a most irregular form indeed, seems to have been used by the Peruvians, they discerned a coincidence with another of the sacraments of the Church. The good fathers were fond of tracing such coincidences, which they considered as the contrivance of Satan, who thus endeavoured to delude his victims by counterfeiting the blessed rites of Christianity.’
