Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 41:1, Winter 2011 DOI 10.1215/10829636-2010-013 © 2011 by Duke University Press a “A dish fit for the gods”: Mexica Sacrifice in De Bry , Las Casas, and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Edward M. Test Boise State University Boise, Idaho The true God gives his fesh. Idols demand yours of you. — Les Murray For sixteenth-century Europeans, human sacrifce and cannibalism existed literally (and often literarily) in one place: the Americas. In Shakespeare’s England, contemporary descriptions, debates, and images of human sac- rifce came from printed texts about New World explorations, specifcally those describing the “Venice of the Americas,” Mexico-Tenochtitlan. 1 The Mexica Empire, frequently compared to ancient Rome, was widely depicted in accounts by authors such as José de Acosta (Historia natural y moral de las Indias ), Bartolomé de las Casas (Apologética historia sumaria), and Theodor De Bry ( America) as a civilization with a penchant for human sacri fce. 2 Whether portraying the Spanish cruelties inficted upon Native Americans, or the cannibalism and sacrifcial rituals conducted by Amerindians, one of the common elements in the engravings of Theodor De Bry’s multivolume America (1590 –1624) is the depiction of corporal violence. Indeed, the human body takes center stage in the debate over Spanish colonization of the New World, from juridical justi fcations for conquest and slavery to the legiti- macy of mass slaughter through a just war. Signifcantly, in De Bry’s Amer- ica the Protestant Europeans (whose colonial explorations De Bry’s edition advocates) appear to be free of extreme violence, unlike the Spanish Catholics and Amerindians. Indeed, the foremost proponent of English colonialism, Richard Hakluyt, “inspired De Bry to erect a printed monument against Spanish tyranny.” 3 By limiting severe corporal violence to the Amerindians and Spanish conquistadors, De Bry creates a visual equation of the “savage” Indian with the “savage” Catholic, thus elevating Protestants above the fray of horrifc colonial violence. Likewise, Bartolomé de las Casas’s excoriating Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies Published by Duke University Press