In this chapter two different notions, on how each empire saw the world converge and yet differ in one equally important aspect for both cultures: religion. The spiritual conquest was an even more complicated task than the military conquest, where the role of the friars and humanists was pivotal in this transformative process. The permanence and merge of beliefs became the religious basis for the modern Mexicans. The third part of The Conquest series concerns the religious and philosophical differences between the Spaniards and the Mesoamerican cultures, monotheism versus polytheism, individualism versus collectivism. Historians and anthropologists also find similarities as in the concepts of body and soul, and sacrifice; but Christ's crucifixion was the ultimate sacrifice for Christians, while the Aztecs emphasized human sacrifice for political, military and cosmological reasons, using it to control and terrorize their subjects. The advent of the Franciscan monks, sent by Pope Alexander VI to convert and protect the natives, allowed the mestization of the Mexican population, unlike in the Bahamas. Monks like Friar Bernardino de Sahagún and Friar Bartolomé de las Casas preserved the native languages, culture and history from more zealous religious who destroyed Aztec writings, temples and idols in their fire to exterminate all pagan ideas.