Building Colonial Cities of God: Mendicant Orders and Urban Culture in New Spain 9780804783255

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Building Colonial Cities of God

Building Colonial Cities of God Mendicant Orders and Urban Culture in New Spain

Karen Melvin

;

stanford university press stanford, california

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. This book has been published with the assistance of The Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Bates College. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Melvin, Karen, author. Building colonial cities of God : mendicant orders and urban culture in New Spain / Karen Melvin. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8047-7486-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Friars—Mexico—History—17th century. 2. Friars—Mexico—History— 18th century. 3. Colonial cities—Mexico—History—17th century. 4. Colonial cities—Mexico—History—18th century. 5. Catholic Church—Mexico— History—17th century. 6. Catholic Church—Mexico—History—18th century. 7. Mexico—Church history—17th century. 8. Mexico—Church history—18th century. 9. Mexico—History—Spanish colony, 1540–1810. 10. Spain— Colonies—America—Religious life and customs. I. Title. bx2820.m45 2012 271'.06072—dc22 2011005472 Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/12 Sabon

This race we have distributed into two parts, the one consisting of those who live according to man, the other of those who live according to God. And these we also mystically call the two cities, or the two communities of men, of which the one is predestined to reign eternally with God, and the other to suffer eternal punishment with the devil. —Augustine, City of God

Contents

List of Illustrations, ix Acknowledgments, xi Note on Titles and Names, xv Introduction, 1 part one: cities, orders, ministries 1.  Ordering Cities: Urban Convents and Friars, 1570–1808, 23 2.  Distinguishing Habits: Mendicant Identities and Institutes, 76 3.  Serving Cities: Orders and Their Urban Ministries, 119 part two: urban catholicism 4.  Defining Religions: Mendicant Connections and Disconnections in Urban Society, 185 5.  Loving Complaints: Orders and the Making of Urban Culture, 232 Conclusion, 267 List of Abbreviations, 277 Notes, 279 Glossary, 319 Bibliography, 323 Index, 357

Illustrations

Map New Spain’s cities with multiple mendicant convents, xvii

Figures 1.  Percentage of orders’ foundations by period, 29 2.  Page from a libro de profesiones from the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province, 49 3.  Professions per year, 51 4.  Number of friars by province, 53 5.  Genealogía franciscana (1731) from the Franciscan church in Puebla, 78 6.  Eighteenth-century statue of San Pedro Nolasco outside the Mercedarian church in Celaya, 82 7.  Scapular of Our Lady of Carmen, 87 8.  Orders’ emblems, 91 9.  Frontispiece to the original version of Bernal Díaz’s Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, 190 10.  Printed image of Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, 204 11.  Saint Maria Magdalena de Pazzi receiving the stigmata from Christ, from the Carmelite church in Puebla, 217 12.  Saint Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata from Christ, from the Franciscan church in Puebla, 218 13.  Printed image from an eighteenth-century novena for Saint Dominic’s feast day, 229

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Illustrations

Tables 1.  Foundations by period, 28 2.  Average number of friars professing per year, 50 3.  Provincial populations, ca. 1675 and ca. 1775, 70 4.  Carmelite and Augustinian masses, 137 5.  Orders’ most important devotions in New Spain, 139 6.  Mercedarian alms remitted from New Spain, 1787–1804, 164 7.  Mercedarian and Carmelite masses, 1758–1780, 238

Acknowledgments

The many thanks I owe to those who have supported me and this project over the past ten years is a testament to how generous people in my chosen profession can be. Financial support has come from the University of California, Berkeley, through its History Department, Graduate Division, and Center for Latin American Studies. The Muriel McKennit Sonne Chair, Peder Sather Chair, a Mellon Fellowship, an O’Donnell Fellowship, and a Tinker Summer Research Grant made possible research in Mexico and gave me time to think and write. A Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellowship from the John Carter Brown Library provided access to its rich collection. Bates College and a 2007 Faculty Development grant allowed me to visit archives in Spain and revisit archives in Mexico. Mexican archives’ reputation as hospitable places to work is well deserved, and I am grateful to their staffs for help and advice as much as for not-so-small kindnesses like a shared birthday cake and a cheerful conversation at the end of a long day. Among those who deserve special mention are Don Roberto Beristáin and the staff of the AGN’s Galerías 4 and 5; Gloria Luebbert Ruiz, Genaro Díaz Fuentes, and Cristina ­Peñaloza at the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia; Fr. Gustavo ­Watson Marrón, Berenise Bravo Rubio, and Marco Antonio Pérez Iturbe at the Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado de México; Dr. Luis Ramos Medina at Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Carso; Francisco López ­Rivera, SJ, and Lic. Leticia Ruiz Rivera at the Biblioteca Eusebio ­Francisco Kino; Padre Fr. Efraín Gutiérrez, OSA, and Irma Ríos Mena at the Augustinians’ Mexico City archive; Padre Fr. Salvador Rodríguez, OP, in Querétaro; Padre Fr. Alfredo Quintero Campoy, OdeM, Padre Fr. ­Osvaldo Vivar Martínez, OdeM, and Juan Manuel Hernández R., OdeM, at the Mercedarians’ Mexico City convent; and Padre Fr. Alfredo Vega, OFM, Padre Fr. Francisco Morales, OFM, Padre Fr. Enríque Muñoz Gutiérrez, OFM, and Ana María Ruiz Marín at the Franciscans’ Mexico

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Acknowledgments

and Michoacán provincial archives. Not to be outdone by their counter­ parts in Mexico are Martha Whittaker at the Sutro Library; Norman Fiering and the staff at the John Carter Brown Library; and especially Walter Brem, Theresa Salazar, and David Kessler at the Bancroft Library. I also owe many thanks to fellow historians and researchers whom I met in Mexico and who helped me navigate archives, explained how things really worked, and shared their wisdom on topics related and unrelated to mendicants. These colleagues include Isabel Estrada, Padre Fr. Roberto Jaramillo, OSA, Alicia Mayer, Manuel Ramos Medina, Luis Ramos, Gabriela Silva, Padre Fr. Eugenio Torres, OP, Daniela Traffano, and Benedict Warren. Linda Arnold ought to receive a prize for translating her superlative knowledge of the AGN into the guides that she has so generously shared with other researchers. Finally, Francisco Morales deserves special mention for his many kindnesses and for sharing his extensive knowledge of Franciscans. To those of you who read parts of the book in its various stages and incarnations, I have done my best to take your good advice and apologize if I did not take enough of it. The generous souls who did this reading and advising include Megan Armstrong, Janet Burke, Rachel Chico, Joe Hall, Gladys McCormick, Sean McEnroe, Michelle Molina, Matt O’Hara, Hillel Soifer, Randy Starn, Nicole von Germeten, and Suzanne Walker. Members of the Berkeley Colonial Studies Working Group discussed two of the book’s chapters with goodwill and suggestions; participants in the 2006 Harvard Atlantic World Seminar offered feedback and new perspectives; and Jeffrey Burns kindly allowed me to present an early version of Chapter 2 as part of the Academy of American Franciscan History’s seminar series. Elizabeth Honig and Tom Brady were excellent guides through readings that helped me think about mendicants in larger contexts. At first I was resistant to Mark Healy’s suggestion for a title, but after spending some time with Augustine, I saw the light. Margaret Chowning has been a demanding reader in the best of ways, and it is her annoyed voice that I hear whenever I am tempted to fall back on a lazy answer. Her ability to see the big picture and to help me see it in my own work has made this a better book. Of all my debts, none is greater than what I owe to my Maine neighbor, Bill Taylor, and not just for reading this manuscript at least twice. He has been nothing short of a role model, and the time and attention he has given his students, his curiosity over a range of subjects, and his approach to the profession have taught me as much as has his scholarship. I count myself fortunate with my colleagues at Berkeley and now at Bates. On my initial visit to Berkeley, Kristin Huffine’s hospitality, ­Rachel Chico’s storytelling, and Paula de Vos’s enthusiasm convinced me

Acknowledgments

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I would be in good company, and I was not wrong. Rachel and Nicole von Germeten, good friends and travel companions, have supplied excellent advice on archives, hotel amenities, taquerías, and, of course, Mexican history. My colleagues in the Bates History Department—John Cole, Margaret Creighton, Liz Foster, Dennis Grafflin, Joe Hall, Atsuko Hirai, Hilmar Jensen, Michael Jones, and Caroline Shaw—have been as friendly and supportive as anyone could hope. Whether from Berkeley, Bates, or beyond, I’d also like to thank Aslaug Ásgeirsdóttir for her help with regression analysis and for watching my dog when her country’s volcano left me stranded in Brussels; Matt Duvall and the Bates College Imaging Center for creating graphs and maps; the Bates Library staff for keeping me well supplied with reading material; Karin Vélez for helpful comments and a willingness to ask nuns about Saint Rita’s ear; Stephanie Ballenger for honest opinions and always interesting discussions; Simon Ditchfield for last-minute encouragement; and Fritz Schwaller and Leo Garofalo for generously responding to urgent pleas for photos. It has been a pleasure to work with Carolyn Brown and Sarah Crane Newman at Stanford University Press, and I am particularly grateful to Norris Pope for his support through the long process of finishing this project. Finally, many thank-yous to the large collection of aunts, cousins, siblings, uncles, and others who make up my family. I will happily pour any of you who actually read this book a glass of good wine. My parents, Patrick and Janice, have supported me through a lifetime of decisions, even the ones like applying to graduate school that probably didn’t make much sense to them. I thank you for your love, encouragement, good example, and care packages. This book is dedicated to you and to the memory of your parents.

Note on Titles and Names

The titles of Spanish-language works published prior to 1810 have been left unaccented and with their original spelling. Only names of wellknown saints, kings, and popes have been translated into English. Friars’ names were typically written with the prefix Fr. (Friar) or, if they were priests, the more honorific P. Fr. (Father Friar). To simplify, I have kept only the former (e.g., Fr. Juan de Salas).

New Spain’s cities with multiple mendicant convents

Introduction Colonization, then, was largely a labour of “urbanization.” —Richard Morse, Cambridge History of Latin America If we had to choose a single, irreducible idea underlying Spanish colonialism in the New World, it would undoubtedly be the propagation of the Catholic faith. —Adriaan C. van Oss, Catholic Colonialism

; Scholars have long recognized that Spanish colonialism was inseparable from cities and Catholicism. Cities were a fundamental unit of Iberian society and functioned as cultural hubs, serving as repositories of all that was civilized—law, religion, and the institutions that ensured their diffusion among the people. Catholicism extended into all aspects of Spanish society, shaping laws, culture, and customs as well as people’s systems of belief. Together, cities and Catholicism had served as crucial weapons in the Reconquista (reconquest) of the Iberian peninsula, providing bases for the expansion of Spanish territory and culture, and they served similar functions in the Americas. One has only to think of Hernán Cortés founding the city of Veracruz in order to legitimize his campaign into the interior, a campaign launched with the battle cry, “Brothers and comrades, let us follow the sign of the Holy Cross in true faith, for under this sign we shall conquer.”1 Over the following centuries, Spaniards established scores of cities and erected thousands of churches in an effort to create what might well be called an empire of Catholic towns. The rituals of laying out a city on a grid with its central plaza marked a place as “Spanish,” but what mattered most was not the physical city but its civitas, its people, institutions, and culture.2 For the Spanish colonial project was an ambitious one that sought a wholesale transformation

2

Introduction

of American society, remade into a European likeness. In the words of an adviser to Charles V, the goal was to “give to those strange lands the form of our own.”3 Creating a city thus required more than setting up a familiar pattern of buildings; it required establishing institutions and the ongoing work of creating a citizenry imbued with Spanish culture. This book is about these cities, their religion, and their religious institutions, and its protagonists are a group of organizations that took a leading role in creating an empire of Catholic towns: mendicant orders. It focuses on central New Spain, where mendicants—Observant and Discalced Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Discalced Carmelites, and Mercedarians—constituted one of the largest branches of a wealthy and powerful church. Any city of respectable size had a mendicant presence, and most important cities were home to multiple orders. Mexico City and its environs alone included approximately twenty mendicant churches by the 1730s. The orders prospered in these urban locales. From the late sixteenth century onward, the majority of friars lived in urban convents, which were among the orders’ wealthiest houses and home to some of their most ornate churches. In cities, friars ministered to residents of all races and social standings, serving as preachers, confessors, spiritual directors, alms collectors, educators, scholars, and sponsors of charitable works. They were deeply embedded in urban social and cultural life. To think of these orders as urban is not the conventional view. Their starring roles in most histories of central New Spain have been as missionaries working in Indian settlements during the sixteenth century and on the frontiers of the viceroyalty thereafter. As these accounts go, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians, who had arrived in New Spain with the charge of bringing the land’s native inhabitants to the Catholic Church, experienced a sixteenth-century golden age. They expanded rapidly throughout central New Spain to hundreds of pueblos de indios (Indian towns) where, with an unusual mandate from the crown, they established temporary Indian parishes called doctrinas de indios. These locations, where friars functioned like diocesan priests, provided fodder for intense conflicts with diocesan clergy over mendicant privileges. Mendicants in charge of parishes ran contrary to the vision of the church established at Trent, and by the 1560s the Spanish crown had come to prefer more easily controlled diocesan priests. By the 1570s, conventional accounts have it, the mendicants’ golden age had ended. Their expansion halted, they were forced to give up some of their doctrinas, and then they watched their positions in society erode until the mid-eighteenth century when the crown allied with the mendicants’ adversaries, the diocesan clergy, to deal the orders a death blow by forcing them to relinquish their remaining doctrinas.4

Introduction

3

The problem with this version of events is not so much its characterization of the orders’ precarious position in doctrinas as that it overlooks the mendicants’ turn to urban work. Focusing solely on the orders’ roles as missionaries obscures important parts of their history and overemphasizes the themes of conflict and uninterrupted decline after the sixteenth century. To better understand what happened to New Spain’s mendicant orders, I have taken a different perspective. I begin after the so-called golden age, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; shift the focus to cities; examine mendicant purposes beyond Indian evangelization; and include additional orders besides the frequently studied Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians. The result is a very different tale. From the late sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, New Spain’s mendicant orders underwent a number of transformations, none of which was more dramatic than their urbanization. Even as the orders struggled to keep their doctrinas, the number of urban convents grew throughout the colonial period. Whereas in 1570 most of their houses were in ­Indian towns, two centuries later nearly all were in cities. Not only did the original three orders begin to put new emphasis on urban locations but Discalced Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Discalced Franciscans arrived in New Spain during the last two decades of the sixteenth century, and they established their houses almost exclusively in cities. The seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were a time of expansion and prosperity for the mendicants, when populations of friars increased, new houses were founded in cities throughout New Spain, and friars built up the range of services they offered from those locations. Without the special privileges that friars held in doctrinas, urban friars focused on traditional mendicant activities, such as preaching, offering confession, celebrating masses, and praying. Urbanization thus transformed friars from missionaries into more conventional mendicants who had more in common with their European counterparts than with their sixteenth-century predecessors. Although this book is about a group of institutions, it is not a traditional institutional history concerned, for example, with administrative structures or finances. I am more interested in these corporate bodies as they interacted with society, what they meant to that society, and how they influenced religious practice. To assess these roles, I examine the orders from a comparative perspective. How did Franciscans differ from Dominicans? Did Discalced Franciscans and Mercedarians work in similar ministries? What did it mean to attend an Augustinian instead of a Carmelite church? Each order had its own corporate identity, history, patriarch, saints, devotions, and particular ways of doing things. At the same time, these orders all saw themselves as mendicants with similar features. They required the same three vows of poverty, chas-

4

Introduction

tity, and obedience and worked toward the same ultimate goal: helping people achieve salvation. The combination of the orders’ distinctiveness and commonalities translated into pastoral work. Each order engaged in the same core mendicant functions, such as preaching and offering confession, but also branched out to activities that fit its particular institute (way of proceeding), such as the Augustinians’ labors in education or the Franciscans’ urban missions. How an order went about providing services also mattered, and friars sought to convince people that their order’s approaches and devotional programs offered the surest path to salvation. So, walking into a mendicant church afforded a specific type of Catholic experience, one shaped by that order’s institute and one differentiated from that of any other church in town. These variations in religion as it was practiced, rather than as it was prescribed, are captured in a series of moving images: a woman pursuing sanctity along a Carmelite model, a group of men passing an afternoon in a store debating orders’ methods of confession, a woman scolding a Dominican for his condescending explanation of Mary’s birth. Here was the mendicants’ influence in action. The messages conveyed in an order’s sermons, the images displayed in its churches, and the teachings of its schools informed people’s beliefs and guided local religious practice. For the most part, these forms of Catholicism as espoused by the orders and as experienced by the faithful coexisted if not harmoniously then peacefully, but collisions did occur. Run-ins were not simply the result of ideological differences among the orders, although these mattered a great deal, but also of the environment in which they took place. The timing, the combination of orders present, the level of support from influential officials, connections to the laity, and even the proximity of churches to one another factored into how the politics of religion evolved in a particular place. Institutions, ideologies, and local religion were tightly connected. Mendicants’ influence on cities was also felt in other enduring if less immediately personal ways. Churches were tangible signs of a city’s ­status, demonstrating that it was someplace Spanish, Christian, and civilized. Mendicant churches were special points of pride, bringing prestige and identifying the city as an important place, one that was worthy of hosting more than a parish church. To the many residents who took pride in their patria chica (little fatherland), orders thus brought more than their services. Mendicants also helped construct urban culture and identity. Their saints often became the city’s patrons, honorary residents who watched over and protected the city from their heavenly vantage point. Their festivals, celebrated in repeating annual cycles, marked local time. Images in their churches drew people seeking their miraculous powers. Much of

Introduction

5

what identified a location and distinguished it from other cities came from the influence of its religious institutions. The city as home to the sacred had a long-standing place in Catholic traditions. Perhaps the most famous example is Augustine’s City of God, an account of human history from Genesis to the Last Judgment told as a tale of two cities. Whereas the City of Man was concerned with worldly things, the City of God was an earthly manifestation of the heaven­ly city of saints, and its residents were the ones who would be saved. Mendicants, whose work was geared toward the goal of salvation, were crucial to the Spanish colonial version of this history with its alliance of religion and urbanism. These orders, in their many urban roles, shaped what religion looked like in its local contexts. They were among the chief architects and builders of these colonial cities of God.

narratives and mendicants The mendicants’ urban story suggests some ways of rethinking traditional narratives of early modern Catholicism and colonial Mexico. First, even conceptually sophisticated histories of the early modern church and religion have had difficulty avoiding old teleologies that assume “medieval” mendicants were supplanted by more “modern” institutions like the Jesuits or a diocesan clergy revitalized after the Council of Trent (1545–1563).5 General histories of medieval Europe refer to the birth of mendicant orders and the concurrent rise of the city as defining elements of the thirteenth century, but mendicants have yet to find their place in historical narratives of early modern Europe.6 Compare, for example, the centrality of Jesuits and the near absence of mendicants in two recent overviews of early modern Catholicism by R. Po-Chia Hsia and Robert Bireley. Hsia opens with Trent, that “moment of synergy” from which the Jesuits emerged, and concludes with their suppression, an initial blow struck by irreligious forces of change and revolution that would destroy the work of Trent. Bireley argues that over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Catholicism transformed from a religion separate from the world (e.g., housed in monasteries) to one more intimately accessible to the populace. He thus begins his book with “The New Orders,” a chapter principally about the Jesuits, in which he argues new orders had a closer relationship with society than the mendicant orders that came before them. In contrast, mendicants’ place in these works is on the fringes, providing a few exceptional men at Trent and missionaries to distant lands, but not significant players in the reform that defined the age.7 Mendicants’ place at the heart of New Spain’s urban society dur-

6

Introduction

ing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries suggests that they deserve a more prominent role in histories of early modern Catholicism than they have been given. This history also suggests some ways to reinterpret chronological markers of New Spain’s history. Older historiographies emphasized an early sixteenth-century conquest phase that gave birth to most colonial structures. It was followed by a period of institutional status quo until Bourbon reforms and independence reconfigured society. These two pivot points of the 1570s and mid-eighteenth century thus bookended a long period with little change and only minimal importance.8 Few put stock in such interpretations anymore, yet they still seem to apply when mendicants are under discussion. On one chronological end, mendicants brought Christianity to Indians until the late sixteenth century, when the Jesuits replaced these orders in importance and new conflicts arose with diocesan clergy. Robert Ricard ended his influential history of mendicants, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, in 1572 with the arrival of the Jesuits. It rarely happens in history that one finds a chronological sequence so clearly and naturally delimited. During this period [1523–1572] the conversion of Mexico was almost exclusively entrusted to the three so-called Mendicant Orders. . . . The Jesuits brought a spirit of their own and their own preoccupations. . . . It is therefore not arbitrary . . . to hold that the establishment of the Jesuits in 1572 brings one period to a close and opens another.9

Similar interpretations continue to appear even in works with very different historiographical positions. Solange Alberro’s El águila y la cruz, which tracked the religious origins of creole identity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century New Spain, examined mendicants’ roles in this process until the late sixteenth century. With the arrival of the Jesuits, “the most dynamic and modern order of the age,” she abandoned the mendicants, which, she argued, were often seen as overwhelmed by the new challenges of the period.10 I agree that the years around 1570 were indeed a time of substantial transformations in New Spain, but to see the arrival of the Jesuits as the watershed event of this time attributes a disproportionately important role to them. This was a time of institutional changes more generally, including expanding state bureaucracies, a strengthened diocesan clergy led by more powerful bishops, and new church bodies like the Holy Office of the Inquisition (established 1571). In addition, epidemics ravaged native populations, leading to major demographic, economic, and cultural transformations. At the same time cities were filling with growing populations of creoles (people of European descent born in the Americas) and castas (people of mixed racial ancestry) and became home to greater amounts of

Introduction

7

wealth. Urban residents sought the services and prestige that came with the establishment of convents, so orders sought to situate themselves in these locations of growing significance. It was this combination of circumstances that attracted Jesuits as well as Mercedarians, Discalced Carmelites, Augustinians, Dominicans, and Observant and Discalced Franciscans to New Spain’s cities. Periodizations that define the midcolonial era as static do not fit mendicants either. The real story of this period was the mendicants’ urban prosperity. Rather than hunker down in their doctrinas or sit idle inside their convents, mendicants turned to pastoral work in cities. They expanded to all of New Spain’s cities, and the number of friars filling their convents grew substantially. This was also the period when orders were most heavily invested in public debates about forms of religious practice. They and their messages were highly visible. These patterns fit with recent scholarship that has given new attention to a long seventeenth century and the development of baroque religious practices. Baroque practice, focused on “outward gesture and ritual observance,” sought to inspire through emotion, not just instruct. Many of its rituals were physical, using the body as a link to Christ and his sufferings; many of its ­rituals were communal, connecting the faithful to each other as well as to God.11 David Brading described the period from the 1640s to the 1750s as one of spiritual renewal when “post-Tridentine, baroque Catholicism sank deep roots in New Spain”; William Taylor found 1580 to 1620 to be the formative period in the development of shrines and miraculous images; and flourishing forms of popular urban religion appear in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century confraternities and visionaries studied by Nicole von Germeten and Nora Jaffary.12 On the other chronological end of conventional periodizations, scholarship has spotlighted the damage done by Bourbon reforms and the mendicants’ futile struggles with diocesan clergy, especially in the wake of decrees in 1749 and 1753 that forced mendicants to turn over (secularize) their doctrinas to diocesan clergy.13 In addition to demonstrating the effects of lost doctrinas, Nancy Farriss and Luisa Zahino Peñafort have shown how the state during the final decades of colonial rule brought mendicants under closer control through inspections of the orders, ­powers of appointment, the judicial system, and revocation of ecclesiastical immunity.14 Although this scholarship has demonstrated conclusively that mid-eighteenth-century state reforms had serious consequences, the focus on doctrinas and the orders’ institutional status misses important dimensions of the orders’ histories. The mendicants’ epoch of prosperity may have come to a close after the 1730s, but their place in cities remained largely intact, and the only urban convent lost

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Introduction

to the reforms was a poor, small house that the Mercedarians willingly relinquished. Some orders also showed signs of recovery or even growth during the century’s final decades. Recent scholarship has added a new dimension to discussions of eighteenth-century reforms’ effects on mendicants, tracking, in addition to state efforts, those internal to the church. Beginning in the 1760s, as reformist churchmen attempted to replace what they viewed as overly extravagant and emotional forms of piety with more sedate ones, they disparaged many of the baroque practices that mendicants cultivated, such as elaborate saints’ day celebrations, ornate church burials, and the communal devotions of confraternities.15 Yet orders kept providing these services, and the faithful kept seeking them out. On one level, the contrast between reformers’ complaints and mendicants’ busy churches indicates bishops’ limited ability to regulate regular orders (male orders including mendicants) without the muscle of the state. More broadly, it suggests the limited inroads that their Enlightened Catholicism had made into New Spain during the eighteenth century, lending credence to the conclusions of scholars such as Brian Larkin, Pamela Voekel, and Matthew O’Hara that prelates’ calls to modernize religious practice went largely unheeded by their flocks, and baroque forms of Catholicism continued to prevail.16 Finally, the orders’ urban ministries did not create the same sorts of tensions with secular clergy as did their work running doctrinas, and bishops as well as their parish priests frequently welcomed mendicants’ contributions. In fact, regular-secular relationships were not always as adversarial as standard accounts suggest.

mendicant origins and backgrounds In order to understand mendicants’ place in colonial society, some background on their origins, shared traditions, and operations is needed. Mendicant orders were one of the most notable expressions of a medieval poverty movement that included renewed enthusiasm for modeling religious life on Jesus and the Apostles. Attempts to implement two essential characteristics of this model, ministry to laypersons and the renunciation of worldly goods, resulted in a new form of male religious life. Unlike monastic orders such as the Benedictines and Hieronymites, whose strictly cloistered monks were supposed to lead contemplative lives devoted to prayer, mendicant friars were to work “in the world” as well. They did maintain the monastic tradition of praying the daily office as a community, but outside the convent friars traveled from place to place, going wherever they were needed, preaching, confessing, and minister-

Introduction

9

ing to the laity. The decision to follow a life of both contemplation and work in the world, to become, in a phrase the friars borrowed from the gospel of Luke, “both Marthas and Marys,” led them to found their houses in urban locations. Whereas monastic orders built their monasteries in remote locations removed from the sins and temptations of the laity, mendicants established their churches in cities and towns where they could reach greater numbers of people. They would also be able to find sources of financial support. Unlike the wealthy monastic orders, mendicant orders originally eschewed endowments and property ownership. Even though all monks and friars swore the same three vows that included individual poverty, mendicants also adopted a Rule of corporate poverty. Monasteries supported their monks from their properties and income earned through their investments, but mendicant friars, as the name suggests, were supposed to live off alms or their own work. During the mendicants’ first years of existence, there were even debates about whether they could have their own churches, but the ideal of poverty had its practical limits and all but the Franciscans eventually came to own extensive properties beyond their own church buildings.17 The two orders generally recognized as the first mendicants are the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans) and Order of Preachers (Dominicans). Each had its origins in a person who was celebrated among his contemporaries, and the early histories of these orders are inseparable from the lives of Francis and Dominic. The two orders were established within a few years of each other in the early thirteenth century, and Francis and Dominic, in fact, knew and influenced each other. According to Franciscan tradition, the order began when Francis, a layperson who experienced a spiritual awakening, gathered twelve of his followers and traveled to Rome, where in 1209 Pope Innocent III approved his Rule (a canonically approved collection of precepts that guided life in the order). The order attracted both new members and devotees throughout Europe, establishing a position it held throughout the ensuing centuries as the largest of the mendicant orders. From the beginning, one of the order’s hallmarks was an emphasis on strict poverty. According to Francis, Christ had voluntarily chosen poverty, and so, too, must they if they were to follow his holy example.18 Francis was not a priest, and initially education and formal preaching were not central to his order’s mission. Instead, by living a model life that included poverty, Franciscans sought to provide the laity with a model for how to live, often referred to as preaching by example. Just how far they were supposed to take their poverty and austerity was already a point of fierce debate during the final years of Francis’s life. The concept of poverty had long been controversial in the church more generally—trying to balance biblical references to

10

Introduction

Jesus’ poverty in an organization that had acquired great wealth—and intense debates among Franciscans over how to follow the Rule splintered the order. These splits eventually resulted in the creation of the Discalced Franciscans (1517).19 The Discalced family (discalced, meaning “barefoot,” a symbol of poverty) followed a stricter interpretation of the Franciscan Rule than the main or Observant branch, and it was not supposed to accept doctrinas (although it did so in the Philippines), nor were its friars to accept outside offices. The Dominicans also accepted an ideal of poverty, but they placed more emphasis on formal preaching and education than the Franciscans. The founder, Dominic of Guzmán, had come from a noble Spanish family, was well educated, and, unlike Francis, was ordained a priest. According to Dominican foundation stories, after preaching against the Albigensian heresy in France, he decided to establish an order dedicated to restoring souls to the church, especially through preaching. The order’s first Rule was confirmed by Pope Honorius III in 1216; an early constitution noted, “Our order was instituted principally for preaching and for the salvation of souls.”20 Preaching required education, so when friars were not attending offices or working outside the convent, they were supposed to be studying. Dominicans quickly established a reputation as scholars, and Dominican schools of theology were among the most influential of the late medieval church. Generally more concerned with orthodoxy and combating heresy than Franciscans, Dominicans were also closely associated with the establishment and subsequent functioning of different Inquisitions. Despite the differences between the two orders, their early histories were often intertwined. Franciscan views of poverty influenced the development of ideals of poverty in the Dominican order, similar to how the Dominican focus on preaching influenced the growth of this function within the Franciscan order.21 Just as Franciscans and Dominicans shared similar origins, Augustinians and Carmelites followed parallel paths to becoming mendicant orders, transforming themselves from eremitical communities and creating new histories for themselves in the process. The Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine originated in 1256 when Pope Alexander IV merged under a common Rule and constitution the eremitical communities that had been living throughout Italy under variations of the Rule of Saint Augustine. Influenced by Franciscans, Dominicans, and the same trends that produced these orders, the Augustinians—not without great conflict—abandoned their eremitical origins in favor of a combination of contemplative life and active ministries. They expanded rapidly throughout France, Germany, and Spain and engaged in similar ministries as the Franciscans and Dominicans, even if they were never as large as either

Introduction

11

order. When the Second Council of Lyons (1274) threatened to extinguish any order founded after 1215, the Augustinians survived thanks to carefully cultivated papal support. Augustinians were some of the strongest advocates for papal power, a position that was politically expedient, certainly, but also part and parcel of the order’s developing identity as the heirs of Augustine, a fifth-century bishop and one of the chief formulators of church doctrine. Over the course of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Augustinians constructed a history of their order that transformed Augustine from the author of a frequently adopted Rule into the order’s founder, a figure akin to Francis or Dominic. As sons of Augustine, Augustinians strongly emphasized intellectual life with the goal of making themselves better preachers and teachers in the world. The order’s emphasis on education, not just of its members but also of the faithful, was one of its defining characteristics. Finally, Augustinians accentuated communal life, especially singing the daily office as a community, which they viewed as one of their legacies as the true heirs to the founder of a monastic Rule.22 The Carmelites also began as an order of hermits, probably in the early thirteenth century in Cyprus. When the Second Council of Lyons threatened their existence, they developed a history based on their place of origin, locating their founding in the time of the Old Testament prophet Elias.23 The Carmelites’ story as generally told was that Elias, having prophesized aspects of Christ’s and Mary’s lives, began living with followers as a monastic community on Mount Carmel. In asserting origins prior to the birth of Christ, the Carmelites took a controversial position but could also claim to be the first mendicant order. The order expanded rapidly through western Europe after a mid-thirteenth-century Rule change allowed them to live in urban areas. Since the order already prohibited common property ownership, this revision effectively transformed it into a mendicant order, a status bolstered by papal bulls granting traditional mendicant privileges such as the rights to preach, confess, and bury dead in its cemeteries. It developed an active ministry, and increasingly more of its members were also priests. A papal bull of 1432 allowed the Carmelites to relax their original eremitical Rule, most notably freeing friars from reclusion in their cells and allowing them to move about the convent. A controversial change, the point became an issue in various reform movements, including that of the Discalced Carmelites in the sixteenth century. This movement began among Carmelite nuns led by Teresa of Avila, who sought to revitalize cloistered life by emphasizing daily meditation and mystic practices. Among those who adopted the reform was a Carmelite friar, John of the Cross, who sought to reestablish original elements of his order’s eremitic life, particularly the cell, alongside its

12

Introduction

a­ ctive life. John and, especially, Teresa developed popular followings, and the Discalced Carmelites quickly developed into one of the most popular orders, especially in Spanish kingdoms. Even so, the reform was highly contested within the order. To settle the dispute, the pope allowed the Discalced movement to establish its own hierarchy within the order in 1580 and granted full independence in 1591. The Mercedarians, although also founded in the thirteenth century, did not receive official recognition as a mendicant order until 1725. The order’s origins are murky, but according to Mercedarian tradition, Pedro Nolasco, a layman, was collecting alms to ransom Christians captured by Moors when the Virgin Mary simultaneously appeared to him and King Jaime I and instructed them to create the order. From early in its history, it was closely connected to the Aragonese and later Spanish crowns through its support of campaigns against the Moors, with friars serving as chaplains on expeditions or, more important, collecting alms used to redeem captives. This redemptive work was the key element in the order’s identity; in addition to the standard three vows, its friars took a distinctive fourth vow: the redemption of captives. Perhaps the defining moment for the order was a late sixteenth-century reform movement through which the Mercedarians consciously reinvented themselves, replacing their nebulous past with a history that reflected new aspirations for the order. By the early seventeenth century, rewritten foundation legends and a series of paintings commissioned from Francisco de Zurbarán stressed the order’s mendicant and evangelical character as well as its votive mission of redeeming captives.24 Even before the Mercedarians’ official classification as a mendicant order, they saw themselves as mendicants, and because the pope had granted the order all the privileges of the other mendicant orders, it was already functioning as though it were one. Despite the varied origins of the five orders that eventually came to New Spain, their histories shared some important features. They, or at the least their original branches, were established in the thirteenth century, and they took the same three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. All five orders laid claim to important founding figures, even if they had to rewrite or create new histories to acquire them. In establishing their origins with Elias, the Carmelites gave themselves a distinctive identity, but also a figure that other orders may have been less willing to accept. On the other hand, the Augustinians’ patriarch was, as a doctor of the church, universally accepted (even if he might have been interpreted differently), but in some ways, he did not lend as unique an identity as his fellow patriarchs. For example, he did not represent the extreme poverty of Francis; the learned preaching in defense of orthodoxy of Dominic; the redemptions of Nolasco; or even the prophetic controversy of Elias.

Introduction

13

By the end of the thirteenth century, all were urban orders with active ministries, even if this meant abandoning eremitic traditions and even if Mercedarians’ emphasis on redeeming captives was a form of service different from the pastoral work of the others. Finally, by the late sixteenth century, when they all had established a presence in New Spain, most of their friars were priests whose ministries centered around preaching and the administration of sacraments.

american beginnings: new spain’s provinces and their friars A few friars, such as the Mercedarian Bartolomé de Olmedo and the Franciscan Pedro de Gante, were already living and working in New Spain when the first official groups of male religious arrived. Their arrivals were clustered in two groups: the first consisted of Franciscans (1524), Dominicans (1526), and Augustinians (1533); the second, of Discalced Franciscans (1580), Discalced Carmelites (1586), and Mercedarians (1593) as well as their Jesuit rivals (1572). Although the timing of the orders’ arrivals affected their status and roles in colonial society, they all faced the same daunting tasks of establishing new institutional structures and attracting enough friars to carry out their work. One of the crucial steps in this process was the creation of new provinces, the administrative units that contained all the convents within a geographic region. Within a few years of the orders’ arrivals in New Spain, the Franciscans established five provinces (Mexico, Michoacán, Jalisco, Yucatán, and Zacatecas); the Dominicans, three (Mexico, Oaxaca, and Puebla); the Augustinians, two (Mexico and Michoacán); and the Discalced Carmelites, Discalced Franciscans, and Mercedarians, one each. These provinces were built along the same lines as their European counterparts and, like them, enjoyed a great deal of autonomy. Although mendicant provinces were subject to the order’s elected head and council in Spain or Rome, they elected their own officials, and their friars made most of the decisions about how their province was run. In order to fill these new provinces, they set up novitiates to train new friars. During the first half of the sixteenth century, the majority of friars came from Spain, but by the 1570s, fewer missions of friars, combined with the growth of a creole society, meant increased numbers of American-born aspirants. The process of becoming a friar began with a request to enter the order. The aspirant was supposed to meet the basic requirements of being able bodied, of legitimate birth, and of pure blood (meaning previous generations of his family had been good Christians,

14

Introduction

and not, for example, Indians, Jews, or Muslims), and he was supposed to be joining of his own volition. To enter, he would take simple vows (vows that did not incur mortal sin if broken) and begin a probationary period as a novice. A seventeenth-century Franciscan chronicler described this year-long novitiate as a forge that melted down men and made them into friars.25 The novice, under the direction of the master of novices, would be expected to put away his old identity, giving up clothes for the order’s habit. He should learn how to follow the rules and observances of the order, participating in the cycle of prayers and imitating the virtues of model friars. He would also be subject to a deeper investigation of his background. If his superiors found his heritage and behavior acceptable, the novice would make his profession into the order. In a ceremony that family and friends would often attend, he would have his head shaved into a tonsure, don a new habit, and swear solemn vows (irrevocable vows that incurred mortal sin if broken) of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Mercedarians would also take their fourth vow to redeem captives. Even though there is no single archetype for who became friars, some general patterns have emerged.26 Most prospective friars entered the order between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, although it was not uncommon to join later in life, sometimes even after starting another career or after a wife had died. In one case, albeit rare, the beatified Franciscan Sebastián de Aparicio entered the order at age seventy-two after having been married twice. The requirements of pure blood and especially legitimacy were not always enforced; some novices in the Franciscans’ Mexico Province had professed even though their petitions for entry were rejected for failing to prove their pure blood. Even so, it was not common practice for Indians, mestizos, and mulattos to join, at least in the case of the Franciscans’ Mexico Province. Francisco Morales found that of twelve hundred petitions for entry during the seventeenth century, only about fifty were from men labeled “mestizos” and ten from men labeled “Indians.” He also found that most entrants were from families with moderate resources, such as artisans, landowners, merchants, and royal officials who had already provided their sons with basic educations and were now seeking career paths for them. One of the most important factors in an aspirant’s admission was his place of birth, and often-intense rivalries between factions of creoles and peninsulares (European-born Spaniards) led them to try to fill convents with men of their own backgrounds. A government dominated by peninsulares, for example, might strive to limit the number of creoles allowed in the novitiate. Friars were divided into those who were priests and those who were not. When friars finished their novitiate, they would profess either as choristers, who would continue their studies toward the priesthood, or

Introduction

15

as lay brothers, who would not. Lay brothers performed, or at least oversaw, much of the labor that kept convents and the provinces functioning. They might tend to sick brothers in the infirmary, administer a kitchen that fed scores of friars, or collect alms used to support the province and its charitable aims. Most lay brothers were of lower social standing, but there are also examples of pious friars who chose this route out of humility. Choristers studied Latin, arts, philosophy, and theology until they met the qualifications to obtain the four minor orders and then the major offices of subdeacon and deacon. Only then were they eligible for ordination as priests.27 The time expected to fulfill these requirements was about six years, although exceptional friars might complete the process in only two or three years, and those who were less dedicated might take decades or perhaps never finish. For example, Fr. Manuel Alcalde, a Mercedarian who entered the historical record for having fled his convent in a dispute with his superiors, had been in the order for fourteen years but had completed only the four minor orders.28 Religious life was organized hierarchically, with greater freedoms and privileges accruing to those of higher status. The Carmelite Fr. Juan de la Anunciación explained in a 1689 advice book that priests held a more important place in convent life than lay brothers, comparing their roles: That of the priests is to sacrifice to God, placing themselves as mediators for the whole world and absolving sins. These things are all very high and very dignified. That of the lay brothers is to work in the kitchen, ask alms, care for the buildings, and serve in exterior parts of the convents. These things are all very low, at least in comparison to those [of priests]. Therefore, it would be folly for these lay brothers to want to be equal with priests and not be inferior to them and to consider themselves as such.29

Priests also had more privileges than novices and choristers, and convents were organized to reflect these distinctions. Choristers typically lived in dormitories, but priests might eventually gain their own cell, which they might equip with nothing more than a rustic bed and table for study or elaborately furnish with expensive woods and silks. Novices were not allowed to leave the convent; choristers were supposed to do so only for special reasons; and priests were allowed to do so within the particular rules of the province, such as before dark and accompanied by another priest. Novices and choristers were supposed to attend the communal prayers offered throughout the day and night, but priests often received dispensations from these responsibilities on the grounds of age or infirmity, or for their preaching, academic, or administrative duties. Honorific titles and administrative offices could bring additional privileges and further raise the status of priests. They could earn titles such as

16

Introduction

lector, presentado, or maestro del orden after a certain amount of study or service (although this could be reduced for exceptional friars or those who could purchase the title). Especially coveted was the status of de número or de voto, which gave a limited number of friars in each province the right to vote for the province’s administrative offices. Elections were typically held every three years, and friars would assemble from all over the province for three or four days of campaigning, scheming, and often purchasing of offices. At these provincial chapter meetings, the most important elected offices were the provincial (head of the province), definidores (members of the definitory, a powerful board that determined provincial policies), and heads of individual convents (depending on the order, called priors, guardians, or commanders). Because these offices could be valuable assets, providing their holders and their families and friends access to wealth and influence, they were of interest to people outside the order. Secular men often attended the proceedings, trying to influence the results, and on more than one occasion the viceroy or his representative attended in order to monitor elections, push his own agenda, and quell the sometimes raucous behavior of the different factions.30 For the most part, the orders’ organizations in the Americas resembled those in Europe. The administrative structures of convents and provinces formed the basic building blocks of the order, men followed similar paths to becoming friars, and many of the same distinctions in status marked friars’ places in the orders’ hierarchies. These American branches were, as creole writers continued to stress throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, equal parts of the same organizations. However, certain elements were characteristic of New Spain. Some convents administered doctrinas, and, even if it was not common, some men of Indian or mestizo backgrounds became friars. Perhaps the most significant difference in the organizational life of the orders in Spain and America was the institutionalization of creole-peninsular rivalries. By the end of the sixteenth century, as increasing numbers of creoles entered the orders, peninsular friars worried about losing their leading role in government. They complained about the creoles’ less stringent discipline and expressed fears that creole governance would lead to decay and the orders’ ruin.31 After years of complaints and petitions, royal decrees established that provinces would follow an alternativa, in which creoles and peninsulares alternated holding major offices. The exceptions to this policy were the Carmelites, Mercedarians, and the Franciscans’ Mexico Province. The Carmelites and Mercedarians were exempted, and the Franciscan province followed a ternativa, in which creoles and peninsulares had to share this rotation of offices with a third group of friars, hijos de provincia (sons of the province), who had been born in Spain but entered the order in New

Introduction

17

Spain.32 Despite these efforts, peninsulares were never able to wrest back control of American provinces, loosening the direct institutional links of the sixteenth-century missionary phase.

organization This book covers a great deal of ground: five orders in dozens of cities over more than two centuries. In order to make this broad approach possible, some topics have not been given the attention that they deserve, such as theologies, education of friars, and what was happening in doctrinas, including urban ones. The book says little about orders’ political maneuverings, their finances, or how they governed their provinces. Nor does it give close attention to divisions within the orders, such as reform movements, generational conflicts, or creole-peninsular rivalries. In addition, the only orders that have been included are those with mendicant status, which means that other male religious organizations, such as monastic orders, hospital orders, and the Jesuits, are excluded except in specific ways related to mendicant orders.33 Although enough significant differences between mendicants and monastic and hospital orders make this exclusion easily defensible, eliminating the Jesuits was not so simple, given all that they did share with mendicants. They, too, were highly urban and arrived in New Spain during the period of urban expansion that brought the Discalced Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Discalced Franciscans, and Jesuits were involved in many of the same sorts of activities as mendicants. On the other hand, Jesuits’ methods of governing their order were different, and they did not share the same prohibitions on wealth as mendicants. They had a distinct official status; they and many of their contemporaries conceived of the order as something unique, different from mendicant orders. For example, a satire from the eighteenth century described the Jesuits’ carefully constructed distinctiveness: [A priest’s] title will not be friar but father; their lay brothers will not be called brothers but coadjutors; they will not attend choir and in the end nothing about them can be confused with the rest of the Religions; neither will they mix with the clergy in processions, burials, and other public functions, and in this way neither will they be friars nor secular clergy, only that which they want: that is to be originals without copy.34

Finally, the Mercedarians have been included despite their not being officially classified as mendicants until the early eighteenth century. They were, however, already mendicants in their own and in many of their

18

Introduction

contemporaries’ eyes. The pope had granted them all the privileges of a mendicant order, and they functioned like one, even administering doctrinas in Central and South America. In fact, whereas in New Spain to speak of the three mendicant orders meant the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians, to use the same phrase in Guatemala meant Franciscans, Dominicans, and Mercedarians. The book keeps its focus on the orders’ urban houses, which I define according to two criteria. First, they were in settlements with a population concentration of enough size or status to have earned the legal title of a villa (a notable town) or ciudad (a city), places distinguished from less prestigious ones in part by having a substantial population of Spaniards. Second, the convent did not function primarily as a doctrina de indios but served a broader population. This definition includes cities such as Oaxa­ca, Toluca, and San Luis Potosí where orders administered doctrinas but excludes places like Texcoco (Franciscans) and ­Yurirapúndaro (Augustinians) that had large Indian populations and supported important convents but functioned primarily as doctrinas de indios.35 Such divisions were recognized by contemporaries, and friars referred to the two types as conventos de españoles or lugares de españoles (convents of Spaniards or places of Spaniards) and conventos de indios or lugares de indios (convents of Indians or places of Indians). Royal officials also made these distinctions. In 1603 some officials in New Spain questioned a royal gift of vestments and a chalice to the Mercedarians’ Puebla and Oaxaca convents. They argued that such support had been granted only to churches in pueblos de indios but never to one in a pueblo de españoles.36 The distinctions continued to be made even into the eighteenth century, such as when a royal cedula (administrative order) from 1726 ordered the Augustinians not to hold their provincial chapter meetings in convents located in places that were “purely Indian” but in places where Spaniards, mulattos, and mestizos lived and “where the principal justices are also Spaniards.”37 I have organized the book topically: Part 1 lays out the orders’ evolving status and roles in colonial society, tracking the orders’ institutional presence in cities, defining their ways of proceeding, and analyzing their urban functions; Part 2 investigates interactions among the orders and urban residents and depicts some of the competing strands of urban Catholicism as it was lived and practiced. Chapter 1 establishes the broad patterns of the orders’ urban presence in New Spain, addressing the question of how orders whose initial work was done primarily in doctrinas de indios became almost exclusively urban communities by the late eighteenth century. I analyze the orders’ urbanization through two sets of markers: foundations of convents and numbers of friars. What emerges are clear patterns of growth and retrenchment,

Introduction

19

beginning with a major expansion during 1570–1630 followed by a century of growth until new challenges in the 1730s reined in expansions and curtailed populations of friars. Within these general patterns, not all orders fared equally, and how well an order’s purposes fit the state’s current interests affected its institutional well-being. Through the vicissitudes of two long centuries, and despite the challenges of the late eighteenth century, the orders were, on the whole, larger, stronger, and more deeply entrenched urban institutions in 1800 than they were in 1570. Chapter 2 turns to the nature of individual orders, introducing them as corporate entities. It demonstrates how they described themselves and their institutes as well as how they presented themselves as families governed by patriarchs, supported by Mary, and linked across time and space through their genealogies. These depictions are crucial for understanding what made, for example, Franciscans Franciscans or Mercedarians Mercedarians. At the same time, orders also recognized they shared a common bond as mendicants. To better highlight the salient characteristics of this mendicant identity, I compare the orders to other groups of male religious, finding a common identity rooted in shared vows and the balancing of contemplative duties and priestly ministries. Chapter 3 addresses how the orders’ institutes translated into practice. The core of each order’s urban functions consisted of the traditional slate of mendicant services: preaching, confessing, celebrating masses, providing devotional opportunities, and praying. Orders’ work in these areas changed little during the period, and differences among orders were mostly a matter of emphasis. Outside these areas, orders were more flexible, adapting to their circumstances, such as with the revival of urban missions at the end of the seventeenth century or new roles in education at the end of the eighteenth century. That the orders’ urban services remained in demand throughout the colonial period provides a counterpoint to their more difficult institutional histories of the later eighteenth century and helps clarify what the state was trying to curb (the orders’ institutional size and wealth) and what it was not (their services). The chapter’s final section also suggests some correctives to views of relationships between regular clergy (members of orders) and secular clergy (diocesan clergy). Although these groups wrestled over the right to administer doctrinas, secular clergy typically welcomed friars’ contributions to cities, and disputes over urban roles instead centered on bishops’ right to oversee the orders’ active ministries. As a consequence of the mendicants’ urbanization, cities now had multiple convents, bringing mendicants into closer proximity with each other and providing new opportunities for conflict and cooperation. The chapters in Part 2 use these interactions to examine what forms Catholi-

20

Introduction

cism took in colonial urban life, how they varied in practice, and how global issues played out in local contexts. Chapter 4 concentrates on a series of public issues that allied and divided the orders: published accounts of the orders’ arrivals in New Spain, celebrations of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, Bishop of Puebla Juan de Palafox y Mendoza’s campaigns against regular orders, foundations of rival convents, and depictions of the stigmata. Besides revealing fault lines and alliances among the orders, the chapter connects the timing of the most intense public debates, which took place during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, to the orders’ institutional vigor. Many of the factors that determined how these relationships played out were local. Chapter 5 turns to Toluca, where during the eighteenth century emboldened Carmelites challenged Franciscan dominance in battles for the laity’s spiritual devotion. Zooming in on a particular location reveals how religious institutions shaped local religion and demonstrates some of the ways both local and wider circumstances affected the place of religion and the church in society. The Conclusion connects the mendicants’ story in New Spain to changes in the early modern Catholic Church more generally. Recent works have defined one of its chief characteristics as its expansion outside Europe, especially with the founding of the Jesuits and the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Although studies of missions to places like Africa, China, and Brazil have demonstrated Catholicism’s dissemination around the world, places like New Spain, where the church established strong institutions of its own, suggest that the globalization of Catholicism should not be equated with missions. Mendicants and their institutes offer another model for understanding the nature of this transcontinental institution and how it maintained connections and retained coherency across great distances.

chapter one

Ordering Cities Urban Convents and Friars, 1570 –1808 I also charge all the Priors and friars of this Our Province to be punctual in the confessional and in works of neighborliness, especially in places of Spaniards, because from here comes devotion and credit to Convents, affection to friars, and edification to all the faithful. Nor neglect that His Majesty sent us to the spiritual conquests and that His Holiness conceded us various Immunities and Privileges for this purpose. . . . Because to occupy ourselves in acts of brotherly charity obligates us to exercise similar works in the foundations in cities, and that doing the opposite would result in our being useless to the Catholic Church and of no benefit to the Christian Republics. —Fr. Augustín de Muños, provincial, Augustinian Michoacán Province, 1707

; The emphasis Fr. Augustín placed on his order’s role in the spiritual conquest, its special papal privileges, and its benefits to Christian republics echoes how Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans wrote about themselves and their labors during the sixteenth century. What sets his statement apart from these earlier works, however, is its exhortation to ministries directed to the edification of an urban and not necessarily Indian population. Fr. Augustín’s perspective is representative of one of New Spain’s mendicant orders’ most significant transformations during the colonial era: from missionaries in Indian towns to more conventional mendicants in urban areas. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the orders that had come to New Spain for the purpose of converting Indians had became almost exclusively urban entities. The mid-eighteenth-century loss of doctrinas played a role in this transformation, but New Spain’s mendicants began their focus on cities much

24

Ordering Cities

earlier. Not only did Fr. Augustín’s instruction come decades before this loss but the mendicant orders also founded more than two-thirds of all their urban convents before 1630. This chapter examines the changing status of New Spain’s mendicant orders between the late sixteenth and the end of the eighteenth century by focusing on their institutional presence in cities. This urban presence can be divided into two periods, a time of expansion and general prosperity from 1570 to 1730 and a period of new institutional challenges from 1730 through the end of the colonial period. The earlier era began when significant changes in the church and in colonial society more generally helped turn mendicants to urban occupations. They opened new convents in cities throughout New Spain, and increasing numbers of friars filled their houses. If the sixteenth century was the mendicants’ golden age in Indian towns, then the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were their golden age in cities. New or intensified difficulties confronted the orders beginning in the 1730s. Many of these challenges came from statesponsored reforms that sought to convert orders into what the crown thought they should be: smaller, less powerful, and more compliant. The reforms did not have the universally devastating effects with which they have often been credited, and their impact varied considerably, depending on the order and province. Nor did the reforms seek to undermine mendicants’ roles in urban society. They instead targeted the orders’ finances and autonomy so that by the end of the eighteenth century, most orders found themselves facing more serious structural problems, but their roles in urban society remained largely intact.

the golden age in cities, 1570–1730 To determine how orders fared in their urban environments, I have tracked two sets of institutional markers: foundations of urban convents and populations of friars. The discussion opens with the orders’ urban roots in the sixteenth century and the process of founding urban houses. It unfolds chronologically, tracing patterns and tracking surges and lulls in where and when orders established new houses. It then turns to populations of friars, examining the ingress of new friars as well as total numbers of friars in the orders’ provinces. Numbers rose across the orders throughout this period, paralleling in many ways the growth of convents so that by 1730 the number of friars in New Spain was at its peak. The period between 1570 and 1730 was an unquestioned success story.

Ordering Cities

25

Sixteenth-Century Roots Upon arriving in New Spain, the Franciscans (1524), Dominicans (1526), and Augustinians (1533) headed to Mexico City, where each order established a convent that served as its most important administrative center and the base for its expansion throughout central New Spain. Over the next decades, the three orders founded as many houses as they could in order to claim territory in what was essentially a first-come, first-served competition. By the end of the sixteenth century, the orders managed to establish a staggering 274 houses, mostly in pueblos de indios. The Franciscans, with 141 houses, secured more than half (51.4 percent) of all these foundations, followed by the Augustinians with 83 (30.3 percent) and the Dominicans with 50 (18.2 percent).1 The Franciscans gained this sizable territorial advantage because they were the first order to establish a permanent presence in New Spain and had greater manpower than the other orders thanks to the larger influx of friars from Spain.2 More important, early Franciscans proved willing to adapt and curtailed their contemplative duties in favor of evangelical ones. The head of the order, Fr. Francisco de los Ángeles, instructed the first group of Franciscan missionaries to New Spain to “hurry down now to the active life.” He continued by exhorting friars to “pay back your neighbor fourfold with the active life together with the contemplative, the shedding of your very blood for the Name of Christ and for the salvation of men’s souls— which He regards and weighs fourfold compared with contemplation alone.”3 The convents founded by these early Franciscans were clustered around large Indian populations in Mexico City, Tlaxcala, Texcoco, and ­Huejotzingo, and afterward the order expanded west into Michoacán and northwest into New Galicia.4 The Dominicans had a slower start because of their fewer numbers and because of internal debates about whether the best way to evangelize was to establish houses in Indian pueblos or to send out expeditions from a few major convents. The Dominicans’ first vicario general, Fr. Domingo Betanzos, preferred that friars be concentrated in fewer houses so they could better follow the order’s constitution and more perfectly observe monastic discipline. Fr. Vicente de Santa María, who arrived in New Spain in 1528 with the same vicario general title as Betanzos, put more emphasis on work among Indians and, therefore, favored more houses, even if they accommodated fewer friars. After a few years Fr. Vicente’s faction gained the upper hand, and the order intensified the pace at which it established houses, centering its efforts away from those of the Franciscans.5 The order anchored itself to the south and southeast of Mexico City, particularly concentrating on areas around Puebla and

26

Ordering Cities

Oaxaca. Throughout the colonial period, it maintained a near monopoly in many of these territories, especially in the Bishopric of Oaxaca. The Augustinian order, as the last of the original three orders to arrive, was, in the words of Robert Ricard, “obliged to mold itself into the inevitable lacunae of the Franciscan and Dominican apostolate.” Most of its establishments were located around Mexico City, to its northwest, and into Michoacán, so the order’s territorial competition was more with the Franciscans than the Dominicans.6 The orders administered these areas through a system of doctrinas that, by the last third of the sixteenth century, had come under attack. The Council of Trent sought to untangle a complicated church structure by privileging diocesan structures over the church’s many other types of corporate bodies, including mendicant orders, and it specifically prohibited friars from serving as parish priests. Although this mandate did not directly alter the orders’ legal position regarding doctrinas, it did indicate growing preferences within the church for diocesan over mendicant clergy in ministries to the laity. After Trent, Philip II, who might otherwise have preferred a less expensive, nonbeneficed, mendicant-run church in the Indies, offered increased support to diocesan structures in their struggles with the mendicant orders.7 A major shift in mendicantdiocesan power relations came with the 1574 Ordenanza del Patronazgo that placed doctrinas under bishops’ supervision and inspired new struggles to define what that supervision entailed, struggles that continued as long as the orders held on to their doctrinas.8 Also around 1570 the first of New Spain’s doctrinas were secularized (turned over to diocesan clergy) when the archbishop of Mexico forced all three orders (although the Franciscans were most affected) to give up some of their doctrinas around Mexico City. Another royal cedula of 1583 decreed that diocesan clergy were to be favored over friars for positions in parishes or doctrinas, and at the Third Mexican Provincial Council (1585), which attempted to implement the decrees of Trent, administration of doctrinas became one of the most controversial issues.9 Such challenges by no means led the mendicant orders to turn away from work in doctrinas. Over the next two centuries friars valiantly argued their orders’ legal rights to administer doctrinas as well as the advantages of mendicant-run doctrinas over diocesan-run parishes. These events, which highlighted the precariousness of the mendicants’ rights to manage doctrinas, were not without effect, and around this time the orders turned more attention to urban areas. Despite mendicants’ medieval and European origins as city dwellers, before the 1570s orders had few urban convents in New Spain. The orders had not abandoned their long-standing urban traditions, however,

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and they placed administrative centers in the few cities where Spaniards were concentrated. Within a few years of arriving, each order had established a convent in New Spain’s two most important cities, Mexico City and Puebla, as well as one in a major city near its strongest concentration of doctrinas. The Franciscans added a convent in Guadalajara (1544), the Dominicans one in Oaxaca (1528), and the Augustinians one in Valla­dolid (now Morelia, 1550). Highlighting the importance of these convents is that each one, with the exceptions of the Franciscans’ and Augustinians’ Puebla houses, later became a convento grande, the capital of its province. In addition to ministering to local residents, these convents were meant to support the orders’ mission in doctrinas, and they housed the novitiates, schools, and infirmaries that prepared and supported friars in this work. These urban convents were the only ones the Dominicans and Augustinians established before 1570, but the Franciscans had founded the majority of theirs by this date, inaugurating nineteen (70 percent) of their twenty-seven urban convents (Table 1 and Figure 1). This unique pattern is less an anomaly than it seems since most of these foundations were made in pueblos de indios that later became sizable, multiethnic cities. During the orders’ sixteenth-century scrambles for territory, the prime locations were those with large settled populations, and the Franciscans took advantage of their head start and manpower advantage to secure the more attractive pueblos. As an early Augustinian provincial explained with some hyperbole but not without an element of truth, “And as the friars of the order of St. Francis came first, they built their convents in large pueblos; and to us fell small pueblos in harsh and hot lands.”10 Over the following centuries, as places like Atlixco and Toluca grew into cities with significant non-Indian populations, the houses that the early Franciscans founded as doctrinas also became urban convents. Founding Urban Houses During these first decades of expansion in New Spain, orders founded houses with little or no regulation, but as bureaucracies and hierarchies became better established in the colony, the process of founding an urban house became far more complex, time-consuming, and politically fraught. Now, in addition to requiring support from within the order and from local residents, foundings involved bishops, bureaucrats in New Spain, and royal officials in Spain as well. The factors in a successful foundation thus included the circumstances of individual orders, local conditions, and the miter’s and crown’s willingness to grant licenses.11

Total

pre-1570 1570–1630 1630–1680 1680–1705 1705–1730 1730–1765 1765–1812

27

19 5 0 0 0 0 3

Franciscans

10

3 5 0 2 0 0 0

Dominicans

14

3 10 0 0 1 0 0

Augustinians

table 1

15

0 7 1 3 0 4 0

Discalced Carmelites

20

0 11 1 3 0 5 0

Mercedarians

Foundations by period

15

0 9 3 2 0 1 0

Discalced Franciscans

6

0 0 0 2 0 2 2

Franciscan missionary colleges

107

25 47 5 12 1 12 5

Total

100

23 44 5 11 1 11 5

Percentage of total foundations

figure 1 Percentage of orders’ foundations by period.

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The houses founded in urban locations could have different official designations—conventos (convents), casas de recolección (houses of seclusion), or hospicios (hospices)—depending on their purpose and status within the province. The majority of urban houses were conventos, which were supposed to maintain at least eight friars in permanent residence.12 Most provinces also had one or two houses designated as casas de recolección where friars could focus on their contemplative duties or take time from their worldly responsibilities to complete retreats or spiritual exercises. Hospicios might have a few friars in permanent residence and function like a small convent, or they could be unstaffed houses that temporarily sheltered friars while they traveled, collected alms, conducted business, or ministered to local lay organizations.13 Because conventos were larger and took a more active role in urban life, they were more tightly regulated and difficult to found. The process of establishing any of these types of houses began with local supporters, who were crucial for funding the project as well as for convincing people in the bureaucratic chain that a foundation was necessary. In the early years of the colony, the crown offered subsidies for new churches, but this practice was already rare by the end of the sixteenth century. Local supporters stepped in and provided sites for the church, donations of cash, and income-producing properties. Personal connections, devotions to a particular saint, or a special affinity for an order often played a role in determining which orders were invited to found a convent. For example, Pedro Romero de Terreros, the first conde de Regla, was dedicated to Franciscan causes, especially missionary colleges, and his support helped transform the Discalced Franciscans’ convent at Pachuca into such an institution.14 Similarly, one of the founders of the Carmelites’ Puebla convent was Melchor de Bonilla, a vecino (resident, typically of Spanish ancestry) originally from Brihuega, Spain. Ida Altman, in her study of the large Briocense population that came to Puebla in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, suggested that these immigrants sought out familiar religious institutions because they fostered a sense of continuity or connection between the religious life of the two places. At that time, the only male order in Brihuega was the Carmelites.15 Orders rarely refused offers of support, but internal divisions within an order could prevent their acceptance, as happened with the Carmelites and a potential foundation at Guadalajara. When in 1649 a resident there offered to support a foundation and the bishop agreed to give his license, some of the province’s leadership wanted to accept it, but the provincial, who prioritized other locations, declined.16 Even when residents and orders forged agreements, the foundation could be derailed by the local bishop’s or the king’s refusal to grant a

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license. Bishops denied permission for, among others, a Dominican house at Salvatierra, a Carmelite house at Orizaba, and a Mercedarian house at San Luis de la Paz. In the case of San Luis, vecinos wrote to the bishop of Michoacán in 1784 noting that the villa had grown extensively during the past twenty years and had lost its only convent with the 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits. The parish priest supported the new foundation, and residents offered two houses in which they had invested forty-five hundred pesos of principal. Despite the strong local backing, the bishop denied his license. Even when the bishop was supportive, foundations could still fall through at the next step, royal approval, which happened when Mercedarians and the residents of San Miguel el Grande tried to establish a house in the late eighteenth century. In 1797 San Miguel’s parish priest, Don Ygnacio Palacios, wrote to the bishop championing the foundation, noting the Mercedarians would offer much-needed services to the mine workers and a grammar school to the local Indian community. The town’s república de indios (Indian government) offered land and labor to build a convent, and the town’s vecinos agreed to supply all the materials. The bishop, Fr. Antonio de San Miguel, consented to the foundation and even wrote a letter of support to the king in which he noted that the town’s other male and female convents approved. San Miguel’s ­corregidor (district governor) sent a follow-up letter of support, but in 1799 the Mercedarian provincial wrote to the bishop that his order was relinquishing possession of its chapel because the king had refused a license.17 The king might refuse to grant a license if the viceroy, whose recommendation typically carried a great deal of weight, did not support the foundation. For instance, Viceroy Álvaro Manrique de Zúñiga (1585– 1590) and his successor, Viceroy Luis de Velasco II (1590–1595), were generally supportive of the Carmelites and their projects, but with the arrival of Viceroy Gaspar de Zúñiga y Acevedo, conde de Monterrey (1595–1603), the province found that much of its backing disappeared. Although the province established six convents between 1585 and 1597, it did not manage another until 1613. In 1593 it also had to relinquish its Guadalajara convent only a few years after taking possession of it because the king denied a license. Monterrey also opposed the order’s expansion into New Mexico missions, which later prompted an accusatory Carmelite chronicler to write, “The Conde de Monterrey, although he was a very great viceroy in this New Spain and was always very compliant, wealth was his political objective, and for this he hindered our friars, going against royal cédulas.”18 With so many moving parts in the process of founding a house, there were plenty of places for things to go wrong, but everything did come together more than one hundred times over two long centuries of urban expansion.

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Patterns of Urban Expansion: The Big Boom, 1570–1630 Of the 107 urban convents in central New Spain’s cities, 65 came into existence between 1570 and 1730, but this expansion did not occur at a constant pace. As described in Table 1, these foundations occurred in three clusters: 1570–1630, 1680–1705, and 1730–1765. Because the establishment of new convents required local support, financial backing, and ecclesiastical and royal licenses, orders’ abilities to found houses heavily depended on economic circumstances, social conditions, and royal policies. Within the scope of these general trends, each order also followed its own trajectory. As with their doctrinas, orders pursued deliberate strategies in the founding of their urban houses, and these strategies, along with what supporters and bureaucrats valued about particular orders, defined the patterns that emerged.19 The fruits of the most dramatic period of growth between 1570 and 1630, when close to half of all urban convents were established, were widely distributed; each of the orders founded houses then. Residents collaborated on foundations with the three orders that had so far primarily focused their efforts on native evangelization as well as with the three orders that had only recently arrived in New Spain: Discalced Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Discalced Franciscans.20 This early development took place as New Spain was becoming a more urban society. Growing populations of people of Spanish (either European or American birth) or racially mixed backgrounds settled in towns and cities, and the crown implemented programs to bring scattered Indian populations into settlements, even establishing rules designed to regularize these settlements, especially the Ordinances for the Discovery, New Settlement, and Pacification of the Indies (1573). Existing cities grew, new ones emerged, and these urban locations were enhanced by an infusion of capital from industries such as textiles in Puebla or recently discovered mines in Zacatecas.21 Thanks in part to declining Indian populations and new crown policies for the sale of land, Spaniards were also acquiring more property. By 1620 they owned about one-half of the arable land in the Valley of Mexico. David Brading, in his study of haciendas and ranchos of the Bajío, found that 1570 to 1630 was the “crucial phase” in the region’s agricultural development, as landowners amassed land and consolidated wealth.22 That this consolidation of landed wealth coincided with the expansion of urban convents was no accident, especially given that a majority of the new foundations took place in and around the Valley of Mexico and the Bajío. Not only did both landowners and mendicant orders benefit from many of the same circumstances but the consolidation of wealth also provided the capital to support new foundations. Indeed, as cities grew in population and

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wealth, their residents, including many owners of rural properties who preferred the culture and refinements of urban life, sought the prestige and services that came with the foundation of convents, and orders vied for the spiritual and financial opportunities of serving these urban populations. During this early period, local support and official licenses were, in general, readily forthcoming, so orders encountered few obstacles to founding new houses. The most significant factors in where and when the orders founded their houses were how people perceived the individual orders and their contributions. Although each order significantly increased its number of urban houses, these expansions followed distinct patterns. New Spain’s most prominent urban order continued to be the Observant Franciscans, who by 1630 possessed almost twice as many urban convents as their next-closest rival. The order’s new foundations differed from their pre-1570 urban establishments in that they were founded in lugares de españoles rather than pueblos de indios. As the crown established garrison towns along New Spain’s northern frontier, Franciscans took advantage of their strong presence and manpower in this region to expand into these new settlements. The order founded new convents in Celaya (1573), León (1589), San Luis Potosí (1591), and Salvatierra (ca. 1610). These houses, along with a convent in Acapulco that the Discalced Franciscans turned over in 1614, were the last urban convents— other than missionary colleges—the order would found in central New Spain until the late eighteenth century. Franciscans retained their characteristically strong emphasis on work with Indians in these places, and the order administered important doctrinas in all these cities except Acapulco. Another attribute shared by all these Franciscan convents was a site either at or near the city center. In their pastoral capacity, the order’s churches often claimed a place on the central plaza along with municipal offices, jails, and water fountains, but even in places where a diocesan church possessed this central position, the Franciscans’ early arrivals meant they often had first crack at the next-best location. The Dominicans, by contrast, had the most limited presence throughout New Spain’s cities, founding only ten urban convents in eight cities during the whole of the colonial period. Unlike the Franciscan strategy of stretching the order’s resources over numerous convents, the Dominicans never completely abandoned their strategy of working out of major centers. This difference was not just a remnant of the early debates in New Spain but a continuation of the order’s long-standing centralized approach, as an adage from medieval Europe indicates: “Bernard liked the valleys, Benedict the mountains, Francis the towns, Dominic the cities of renown.”23 The three convents that Dominicans founded before 1570, Mexico City, Puebla, and Oaxaca, would each become the capital

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of a province, and none of the order’s other urban convents ever rivaled them in importance. Of the five convents established between 1570 and 1605, two were seminary colleges located in Puebla (1596) and Mexico City (1603), and one, Veracruz (ca. 1600), was primarily a stopping point for friars traveling to and from Europe. The other two, Guadalajara (1603) and Zacatecas (1604), were in important cities, but, perhaps because they were located so far from the Dominicans’ strongholds in the south, they never acquired great prominence in the order. Dominicans were also unlike Franciscans in that they administered only one urban doctrina (Oaxaca). Their urban friars were also more likely to attend to intellectual pursuits, often serving as agents or censors for the Inquisition, examiners for bishops, and teachers at the Royal University or their own colleges—the sorts of activities that were concentrated in major administrative centers like Mexico, Puebla, and Oaxaca. Of the original three mendicant orders, the Augustinians made the most concerted effort to focus on cities once the major expansion of doctrinas had ended. Between 1570 and 1630 they founded ten urban convents, accounting for almost three-quarters of all their urban houses. One reason for this new interest in urban convents was an Augustinian tradition that emphasized communal and contemplative obligations, and Augustinians saw an opportunity to rebalance their early missionary endeavors. Writing in the early 1620s, Juan de Grijalva connected this tradition to his province’s foundation strategy in an explanation for why the province gave up a house in Minas de Zacualpan (located in what is now the southwestern part of the state of Mexico). The location had not grown as expected, and the provincial leadership did not want “to encumber the province with many convents except those that could sustain enough friars for the observance of the holy ceremonies of monastic life, and more in pueblos de españoles, where there is a particular need for them and where the obligations are greater than can be satisfied with few [friars].”24 The order’s hierarchy attempted to ensure that there were enough of these convents, and as early as 1563 the Mexico Province’s definitory mandated that “there are at least four or five large convents that have an abundance of friars.”25 Most convents in lugares de españoles were located in the midst of the order’s concentration of doctrinas in Michoacán and the Bajío. With new convents established in Guadalajara (1573), Zacatecas (1576), Pátzcuaro (1576), San Luis Potosí (1599), Celaya (1609), and Salamanca (1615), friars could more easily move back and forth between their evangelical duties in doctrinas and their heavier contemplative responsibilities in cities. Despite important differences in motivation and timing, the urban establishments of Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians shared an

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important feature in their connections to the orders’ pastoral work in doctrinas. Franciscans founded houses in as many large Indian settlements as possible; even their convents in new population centers like Celaya included important doctrinas. Dominicans established their most important houses as administrative and educational centers that supported their doctrinas. Augustinians viewed their urban convents as spiritual home bases to ensure that friars complemented their active work with their contemplative responsibilities. Discalced Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Discalced Franciscans also founded most of their houses before 1630. The Discalced Carmelites established seven convents (47 percent of all their houses in New Spain); the Mercedarians, eleven (55 percent); and the Discalced Franciscans, nine (60 percent). Their founding strategies differed from those of the three original orders because, without doctrinas, they did not need to mesh two types of functions or houses. Even so, a simple division between missionary orders who ministered to Indians and urban orders who did not does not hold. Just as Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians integrated their work in doctrinas and cities, these new orders did not arrive solely for the purpose of ministries to urban or non-Indian populations. Discalced Franciscans founded their first house as a resting point for friars traveling to their missions in the Philippines; the first Discalced Carmelites in New Spain briefly administered a doctrina in Mexico City and planned on staffing New Mexico missions; Mercedarians attempted to obtain doctrinas in New Spain like those they possessed in Central and South America. By the time of these orders’ arrivals, however, the time for acquiring doctrinas in central New Spain was over. When members of the Audiencia of Mexico wrote to the king in 1600 about the Mercedarians and their potential role in New Spain, they claimed that the order would be unable to administer doctrinas because “all [the pueblos de indios] are distributed and commissioned to other religions and clerics.” 26 Not only had the existing orders already secured most available locations and opposed any newcomers to the enterprise but also the post-­Tridentine church in New Spain was much more likely to take away doctrinas from mendicant orders than grant them new ones. That the later-arriving ­orders retained their overwhelmingly urban character was no accident. Carmelites eventually became known as an urban order with close connections to Spaniards, but during the Mexico Province’s early years, it maintained an interest in working in both lugares de indios and lugares de españoles. Some Carmelites considered the doctrina that they had been granted upon their arrival in Mexico City only the first of many, and the province was establishing the infrastructure to support work in northern missions, including a house in Celaya (1597) that was supposed to pro-

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vide a resting point for friars making the journey to New Mexico.27 Interestingly, the foundation was approved even though this relatively new villa was not especially populous and was already home to convents of Franciscans and Augustinians.28 The decision to establish the convent in a lugar de españoles with existing convents rather than someplace where Carmelites might have ministered to Indians indicates just how connected the province was to urban, Spanish locations, even in these early years before the business of doctrinas and missions had been abandoned. The province’s urban endeavors were only emphasized further after 1607, when the new provincial, Fr. Juan de Jesús María, surrendered the Mexico City doctrina and curtailed efforts to obtain missions. External opposition to the order’s missionary projects was one factor in their eventual abandonment, but there was also a sense, both within and outside the order, that the Carmelites were particularly well suited to urban needs.29 Viceroy Monterrey, admittedly not a supporter of the province’s missionary activities, described the Carmelites in a letter to the king as better suited to work other than missions, noting that “being poor persons so penitent and exemplary, they will bring more benefits to pueblos de españoles.” He then went on to suggest Oaxaca, Zacatecas, and Veracruz as better potential sites for new convents.30 Foundations in lugares de españoles were, in fact, a critical part of the Carmelite order’s modus operandi since its arrival in New Spain. Its first convents in New Spain—Mexico City, Puebla (1586), Atlixco (1589), Valladolid (1593), and Querétaro (1614)—were in cities that friars described as having Christian (gente religiosa) and racially pure, Spanish populations (muy limpia gente).31 In addition, Discalced Carmelites supported themselves through chaplaincies and properties such as haciendas, which meant they required an initially larger financial outlay that might have been more difficult to secure for locations outside cities.32 A final reason the Carmelites stayed in major cities was their conspicuously close connections to New Spain’s peninsular community, the majority of whom lived in these places. In Puebla and Valladolid, Carmelites took up residence in chapels that confraternities of Spaniards had donated to them, and friars described their early patrons in these places as Spanish immigrants.33 In addition to the aforementioned vecino from Brihuega who supported the Puebla convent, the chronicler Diego de Espíritu Santo wrote that “[our Valladolid convent’s] foundation and growth was greatly aided by the devotion that the Spanish conquerors of these lands had to Our Lady of Carmen.”34 These sorts of connections may also have played a role in the founding of Atlixco, an agricultural and commercial town established and populated by Spaniards. The chronicler Madre de Dios explained that the founding stemmed from

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its residents’ desire to replicate the Carmelite mission in two other New Spanish cities: The reason for the foundation was none other than the feverous desire of the pueblo’s vecinos (who are very Christian people) to run swiftly along the path of the commandments to the fragrance of our Carmelites’ good example and to the fervor of their words. With benefits coming to the cities of Mexico and Puebla, the vecinos wanted also to enjoy the same in their villa.35

The order with the second-largest urban presence in New Spain was the Mercedarians, thanks in large part to the eleven convents the order founded between 1570 and 1630. These foundings were a long time coming, however. The Mercedarians were the last order to establish a permanent, official presence even though one of their own, Fr. Bartolomé de Olmedo, had been on the Cortés expedition and was the first friar to set foot in New Spain. After Olmedo’s untimely death a few years later, Mercedarian efforts to found a house were stymied until 1574, when six recently professed Mercedarian friars from Guatemala moved into a small house so they could study at the university in Mexico City. Nearly twenty years later, the head of the Guatemala province requested the viceroy’s license “to form in the said house, a colegio, in which the student friars [from Guatemala] could live.” The license was granted but only on the condition that there be no more than twelve students and that the colegio not inconvenience any other religious house in the city. Shortly thereafter in a 1594 response to a petition from the Mercedarian general, Philip II decreed that the convent should exist “without any limitation” in numbers or in its services to God and king.36 Once established in Mexico City, the order expanded rapidly into New Spain’s cities with significant Spanish populations. The Mercedarian chronicler Francisco de Pareja explained that his order had deliberately chosen this course for pragmatic and financially motivated reasons: In this time, we tried to found some convents in diverse parts and places populated by Spaniards, since never have we tried to found convents in the villages where only Indians live; for one because the priests who administer them will not consent and also because they do not have conveniences in them to provide ordinary support, it is only enough for the parish priest who administers them, and in the said [Spanish] places there are alms from Spaniards and methods of obtaining some chaplaincies and annual rents.37

Philip II’s license allowing foundations at Puebla (1598) and Oaxaca (1601) noted these two cities were suitable locations for Mercedarian houses “for being large towns and of Spaniards.”38 The order’s other foundations during the early phase were also places with sizable Spanish populations: Valladolid (1604), Colima (1607), Atlixco (1613), Vera-

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cruz (1613), San Luis Potosí (1628), and Guadalajara (1629). By 1615 the order possessed enough houses in New Spain to establish an independent Mexico Province separate from Guatemala.39 No order founded more houses between 1570 and 1630 than the Mercedarians, but this success had its limitations. The order was unable to establish houses outside cities founded by Spaniards and failed in attempts to move into Indian towns and mining centers. It was not just that the order was unable to establish houses in smaller pueblos de indios, but it also failed in larger communities that included racially diverse populations. Tellingly, Mercedarians tried to make the case for foundations in two such locations, Texcoco and Pátzcuaro, by arguing that not just Indians but many Spaniards lived there. The witnesses who testified in support of the order’s petition agreed that these locations would benefit from a Mercedarian convent, because even though they were “ciudades de yndios,” they had many Spanish vecinos.40 Neither foundation was approved. The province also encountered roadblocks in establishing houses in mining centers. In 1612 the order purchased the Augustinians’ house in the minas de Zacualpan “with the church bells and retablo and with all that pertains within.” A few days after the letter of sale was signed, the Mercedarians took possession of the church and convent in a ceremony with friars of both orders as well as some “indios y negros” who resided there. The viceroy’s fiscal, however, refused to approve the sale.41 The Mercedarians remained limited to ciudades de españoles. The association between Mercedarians and Spanish cities did not, however, mean their closest connections were to peninsular Spaniards, as it did with the Carmelites. Mercedarian houses were often at the edges of cities and typically in poorer neighborhoods. Convents in Mexico City and Veracruz were described, respectively, as “not very close to the center of the city but very populated and with mostly poor residents” and “situated on the extremity of the city, where the poor abound.”42 Similarly, the bishop of Oaxaca wrote to the king in support of royal alms to help pay for the construction of a new Mercedarian church in Oaxaca, noting that it would be of much consolation, “especially to those of the neighborhood in which the convent or church is located which [is] distant from the center of the city and very populated with poor people.”43 Residents of these areas included some poor Spaniards, but the majority were castas and acculturated Indians. Although Mercedarian writers congratulated their province for its charitable decision to work among these populations, establishing houses in their neighborhoods may not have been the order’s choice. Because Mercedarians were often the last of the mendicant orders to arrive in cities, the more desirable locations were already taken.44

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The first Discalced Franciscans in New Spain were missionaries resting on their journey from Spain to the Philippines, but they quickly realized the advantages of establishing a permanent presence. Friars would have a place to recuperate during their travels, argued Fr. Pedro de Alfaro in a 1577 letter to Philip II, and a convent in Mexico City could receive novices to provide additional friars for the Asian missions.45 In 1579 Discalced Franciscans who had been living in a house outside Mexico City in the pueblo of San Cosme obtained permission to found a convent in the nearby pueblo of Churubusco.46 These first two houses were located in pueblos de indios, not because the order was involved in missionary work there but because many people opposed adding yet another mendicant convent in Mexico City itself. When in 1594 the order was finally allowed to construct a convent in the city, it relinquished its San Cosme house. Although Discalced Franciscans justified these initial foundings around Mexico City for “the conversions in China and Japan,” friars also had designs on expanding their presence in New Spain. A group of missionaries explained in a 1580 letter that they served New Spain’s residents well, noting that “although they [Discalced Franciscans] are not assigned doctrinas like the other orders, they—as adjudicators who apostolically circulate, preaching and teaching in parts where there is most need with their good example and doctrine—bring and will bring many benefits.”47 Indeed, the separation of the mission in New Spain from that in the Philippines came about quickly. In 1602 the order created a Mexico Province, and in 1614 this new province relinquished its convent in Acapulco (the port of departure for Asia), suggesting just how much it had shifted its focus from sheltering traveling missionaries. By 1630 the Discalced Franciscans possessed nine convents distributed over New Spain’s four major cities: Mexico City, Puebla (1591), Oa­ xaca (1592), and Querétaro (1613); three mining centers: Taxco (1592), Pachuca (1596), and Sultepec (1599); and two smaller pueblos: Churubusco and Texmelucan (1615). The order’s ability to establish houses in mining centers and pueblos made it unique among the orders that did not administer doctrinas, largely because of its financial austerity. Because Discalced Franciscan convents did not own properties, they relied heavily upon alms for support and sent out alms collectors over large territories so that convents did not rely solely upon local populations.48 This practice made them particularly well suited to places with smaller populations, like Sultepec, described by Baltasar de Medina long after its sixteenth-century mining boom as “an abyss of poverty.”49 Furthermore, Discalced Franciscans’ austere lifestyle was valued for providing a model to Spanish and non-Spanish populations alike. As a group of friars wrote to their superiors in Spain, “With [the friars’] poverty and

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scorn of earthly things they confound the vanity of this kingdom and win over souls to the true path of salvation.”50 The period of intense mendicant urbanization between 1570 and 1630 marked an important divide between the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians and the three later-arriving orders—Discalced Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Discalced Franciscans. For the original three, it marked the culmination of their great expansions. With the exception of Franciscan missionary colleges, these orders would found a combined total of only six convents during the next 170 years. In line with their founding strategies, Franciscans possessed houses in most urban locations, Dominicans had convents in New Spain’s most important cities, and Augustinians were well represented in the urban areas of their Mexico and Michoacán territorial concentrations. Despite having achieved some degree of saturation, these orders did attempt new foundations, but their combined total of approximately three hundred urban and rural houses as well as their status as doctrineros (administrators of doctrinas) worked against them. For example, when in 1620 the Franciscans requested royal license to establish a casa de ­recolección in Puebla, word came back from Madrid that the foundation had been denied “because in New Spain there is a great number of [Franciscan] friars and convents and to augment this number can only be detrimental.”51 Furthermore, these orders simply may not have been able to effectively counter arguments by other orders that administering doctrinas interfered with their other pastoral duties. In a 1655 petition for two new houses, the Discalced Carmelites argued that their province was “taking great pains in places where there are Friars, but also in surrounding areas of Spaniards and of Indians, for without the inconveniences of Doctrinas, friars respond, without differentiation, to [the faithful’s] Spiritual well-being.”52 Many of the characteristics and patterns established during this period continued to hold for Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Discalced Franciscans throughout the rest of the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century. Discalced Franciscans and their focus on poverty supported by alms collection suited them to work in locations besides large cities, and their work in pueblos and mining centers set them apart from their fellow ­orders. In contrast, Carmelites and Mercedarians struggled to found houses anywhere besides ciudades de españoles. Their places in those locations were decidedly different, however. Whereas Carmelites were closely connected to Spanish and especially peninsular populations, Mercedarians more typically found themselves on the outskirts of cities ministering to poorer residents such as acculturated Indians and castas.

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Patterns of Urban Expansion: The Cycles of 1630–1730 Foundations of new mendicant convents came to an abrupt stop around 1630. None were established during the next decade, and only five convents during the ensuing half century. Less prosperous economic conditions and, in particular, declining production in New Spain’s silver mines meant less wealth was available to endow foundations. Production in San Luis Potosí fell after 1620, in Parral after 1635, and in Zacatecas from the late 1630s, beginning a chain reaction that one contemporary resident of Zacatecas explained: “By means of [the mines], New Galicia and New Spain are sustained and when the said mines decline, the effect is felt in all New Spain.”53 Just as the orders benefited from expanding regional silver economies between 1570 and 1630, now they were adversely affected. An even more immediate impact came from the severe flooding in Mexico City in 1629. Shortly afterward the Mercedarian provincial, Fr. Juan de Herrera, wrote to Spain describing “the ruin and desolation of the beautiful city of Mexico (and in it of all the kingdom of New Spain).”54 With so many buildings destroyed, parts of the city remaining underwater for several years, and the accompanying disease, migration, and population loss, New Spain’s administrative, economic, and social center found itself in difficult circumstances. So did mendicant orders, which were all based there. Because of the city’s decreased population, lamented Fr. Juan, the orders lacked alms, and to make matters worse, they also lost the rents from the properties that had been destroyed. Furthermore, he continued, they had to repair their own churches and convents and were now devoting more of their reduced resources to help feed and care for the poor. Under these conditions, fewer donors would have been able to fund new foundations, and bishops and royal officials would probably have been reluctant to give licenses for them, but it was several years before the orders even attempted any.55 Of the five houses founded between these economic disruptions and the beginning of another cluster of foundations around 1680, the Discalced Franciscans established three. It is no coincidence that an order that did not require large initial donations of cash or lands founded them. Although little evidence remains for the reasons behind the timing of these houses at Cuautla (1640), Guanajuato (1663), and Aguascalientes (1667), the locations certainly fit the province’s pattern of establishing houses in smaller settlements. The pueblo of Cuautla was located in a sugar-­ producing region with a small Spanish and large Afro-Mexican population. Guanajuato was a growing mining town, but not yet the major center that it would become in the eighteenth century.56 Aguas­calientes was a rapidly growing cattle center, and in addition to the Discalced Fran-

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ciscan house, it acquired a Mercedarian convent (1654) during this time. The main impetus behind this Mercedarian foundation was one that the majority of the order’s foundations would share during the next several decades. As towns grew enough to support new institutions, residents often sought schools for their young sons and solicited mendicant orders to run grammar schools. The terms of the Mercedarians’ Aguascalientes foundation thus specified that in addition to preaching, confessing, and assisting the parish priest, their friars would establish and staff such a school.57 The choice of Mercedarians was connected to the order’s recent reform movement that gave new importance to education. In contrast, the town’s first choice to found the house, the Discalced Carmelites, turned down the offer because, as the provincial explained, the nature of the foundation was outside the province’s jurisdiction, a reference to the order’s prohibitions against running schools for the laity.58 The final foundation during the period was a new Carmelite house in Salvatierra (1644), described by a Carmelite inspector traveling through there in the 1670s as a “wretched place with few Spaniards and the majority of them poor.” The continuation of Fr. Isidro de la Asunción’s description offers the reasons behind this foundation: the convent administered three large and highly profitable haciendas nearby.59 During the seventeenth century, the Carmelites emerged as major landholders in the Bajío region, and these properties were their crown jewels.60 The Salvatierra foundation was possible because it needed no outside sources of funding. The few foundations during the period between 1630 and 1680 emphasize the close link between foundations and economic conditions. Three of the five foundations were made by the austere Discalced Franciscans, all in places where local economies based on sugar, mining, or the provisioning of mining centers were healthy enough to support foundations. Similarly, the Carmelites’ foundation at Salvatierra was made possible by the order’s status as a major landholder in the area. Two trends that emerged in these foundations, connections to the mining boom at Guanajuato and the Mercedarians’ role in basic education, continued to be factors throughout the remainder of the colonial period. A short-lived burst of foundations between 1680 and 1705 resulted in twelve new urban mendicant houses, but unlike the previous boom cycle, which bore fruit for all six groups of mendicants, this one favored those without doctrinas. For Mercedarians, Carmelites, and Discalced Franciscans, these foundations mostly followed established patterns. Mercedarians continued to found convents in or near sources of wealth, as they did in Lagos (1685) and Teocaltiche (1692). Both were settlements of Spaniards in a region of haciendas and ranchos south of Aguascalientes, and the latter was the site of an important market. Education also re-

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mained a key to these establishments. Provincial Fr. Francisco Antonio de Xara noted that teaching the “first rudiments of grammar” was one of the primary reasons residents requested these foundations.61 The order also established a new convent in Zacatecas (1702) that was, following a familiar pattern, located on the outskirts of the city.62 Discalced Franciscans continued to found in smaller towns, adding a convent at Córdoba (1685), a villa near Veracruz established in 1618 by Spaniards concerned about uprisings by the region’s large Afro-Mexican population, and a novitiate at Tacubaya (1697), a pueblo outside Mexico City.63 Carmelites also founded a house just outside the growing city of Mexico at Tacuba (1689) as well as convents in the ciudades of Toluca (1698) and Oaxaca (1699). These eight new houses came about partly as a result of regional economic upturns and the beginning of native population recoveries in the later seventeenth century. The other major factor in the new round of foundations was the 1680 Pueblo Indian revolt in New Mexico and heightened fears of Indian uprisings that rekindled interest in mobilizing friars in missions.64 During this time the first Franciscan missionary college in New Spain was established at Querétaro (1683), a city with an especially strong Franciscan presence. The Franciscans’ interest in missions was by no means new, but historians have pointed to a revitalization of the order’s missionary spirit in New Spain during the second half of the seventeenth century.65 Nor was the idea of a college to train friars for missions a new one. In 1610, Pope Paul V had directed orders to establish missionary colleges, and the Franciscans’ Mexico Province had attempted to found one at Tlateloco in the 1660s. But the Pueblo revolt seems to have gotten the ball rolling on approval of the Querétaro college.66 The Franciscans’ original petition requested that the college be instituted at San Juan del Río, a town southeast of Querétaro and a point of entry into the Sierra Gorda, a mountainous region with a generally un-Hispanicized Indian population. The town seemed a good candidate for the college since it possessed no mendicant convents and only a year earlier, its vecinos, with the support of the parish priest, had requested a Franciscan casa de recolección in a petition that included an impressive three pages of signatures.67 The crown, however, still refused to allow the Franciscans any new houses and ordered them to establish the college in an existing house.68 The resulting College of the Propagation of the Faith of Santa Cruz de Querétaro began in a Franciscan chapel outside the city limits and functioned as an independent house separate from all Franciscan provinces. It prepared friars as itinerant missionaries who targeted two groups: neophyte Indians, including those in the New Mexico missions, and residents of local towns and villages. The former would be made into Christians; the latter, into bet-

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ter Christians. The Querétaro college was staffed primarily by European friars, and twenty years later, a sister house in Zacatecas (1704) provided similar positions for American-born friars, and among its territories were the Texas missions. Although Franciscans were the mendicant order best known for missionary work, Dominicans and Augustinians also participated in the late seventeenth-century missionary revival. Their only foundations during the remainder of the colonial period were related to this work, most of which was focused on the Sierra Gorda. The Augustinians’ Mexico Province took charge of some missions there during the 1670s, and the Dominicans soon followed suit. In 1687 the crown granted the Dominicans permission to found in Querétaro an enfermería, a place for friars on missions to rest and recover. In 1690 Dominicans petitioned to upgrade its status to a colegio, comparing the work of its friars to that of the Franciscans in their new missionary college. Franciscan opposition to a Dominican house, let alone another college, in their Querétaro stronghold seems to have prevented the upgrade, but whatever the house’s official designation, its purpose was to support the order’s missions. It had help in this endeavor when, in 1689, the Dominicans opened a convent in nearby San Juan del Río, site of the failed Franciscan foundation.69 The Augustinians also sought to found a house in Querétaro and used the Sierra Gorda missions to support their case. Divisions within the order over whether the house should belong to the Mexico Province, which administered the missions, or the Michoacán Province, which was a better geographic fit, combined with Franciscan opposition to frustrate these efforts until 1728.70 This short boom cycle of 1680–1705 was largely a continuation of the earlier (1570–1630) one for Mercedarians, Discalced Carmelites, and Discalced Franciscans. Once economic conditions improved, their foundations resumed along familiar lines. Meanwhile, the only way Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians found to participate was through their claims to missions. For Augustinians and Dominicans, these claims quickly lost their allure, and neither founded another house during the rest of the colonial period. For a time, however, they were not alone in their inability to establish new houses; the eighteenth century opened with a twenty-five-year period without any foundations. Unlike the previous dry spell triggered by New Spain’s economic difficulties, this one was closely connected to the difficulties of the Spanish monarchy. In the wake of the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the royal government took a more fiscally cautious approach toward the orders that put new foundations on hold. A good indication of the monarchy’s position regarding the orders can be seen in the alms it provided them. Shortly after the orders’ arrival in

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New Spain, the crown began supplying alms to cover the expenses of wine and oil used for celebrating masses and keeping the Holy Sacrament illuminated. After Philip V assumed the throne in 1700, his government stopped making these payments. This suspension of payments was not simply a case of a new monarchy introducing new ideas, since various proposals to limit these payments had surfaced during the last years of Hapsburg rule. For example, in 1696 a royal cedula noted that these alms were not as necessary as they had once been because the orders had “augmented their incomes, with acquisitions of considerable numbers of haciendas, Anniversary masses, and Chaplaincies in their convents, and this especially in large settlements.”71 The royal treasury eventually resumed these payments sometime around 1720, but in the interim the orders were left with substantial gaps in their income. A document from 1683 indicates the size of these royal payments. When four mendicant prelates submitted requests for the previous year’s alms for their provinces in New Spain, the Franciscans asked for 12,326 pesos; the Augustinians, 5,605; the Dominicans, 3,936; and the Mercedarians, 2,122.72 The Franciscans were especially hard hit not only because they received more alms but also, as they reminded the king, because they did not possess the wealth of the other orders. An April 30, 1714, letter from a Franciscan official in Madrid to the Michoacán provincial, Fr. Andrés Quiles Galindo, lamented the effects of losing this important source of income, noting that because of their current poverty “the foundation of convents is currently unattainable.”73 Another set of obstacles to establishing convents came from new regulations. Royal cedulas of 1704 and 1717 prohibited foundations of new convents, and convents that had been in existence for decades now had to verify that they possessed royal licenses.74 This proved to be a problem for the Mercedarians’ Mexico Province, which could not locate those licenses for ten of its sixteen convents. In 1709 provincial officials wrote to Philip V apologizing for the “confusion of papers” and offered a resourceful solution. If the crown would grant these ten licenses, plus additional licenses for new convents in Celaya, San Miguel el Grande, Querétaro, and Havana (Cuba), the order would provide the crown with 8,000 pesos—2,000 to cover the cost of the new licenses and the rest as a demonstration of their loyalty during the king’s “great wars.”75 In addition, these ten convents plus the four new ones would cede their rights to alms for wine and oil, including the 18,464 pesos owed for the years 1702 to 1708. A follow-up letter in 1710 noted that Mercedarians were the only order to make such an offer, but the issue was not quickly resolved, and between 1718 and 1720 the order arranged to have a series of letters sent from bishops, town councils, mayors, and parish priests lauding the

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work of the ten convents. As late as 1724, the king’s fiscal was recommending that the king make sure that all convents had licenses from the local bishop and that everything else was in order before granting his own licenses.76 It is difficult to imagine the crown turning down offers of cash, and since the ten convents maintained their status, the crown may well have issued the new licenses. On the other hand, only two of the four new foundations the Mercedarians requested, Querétaro and Celaya, eventually came to fruition, and they never obtained convent status. Between 1570 and 1730, the number of mendicant houses increased from twenty-five in twenty cities to ninety in thirty-two cities. The ­orders had expanded to more locations, and more of those locations had multiple convents, further magnifying mendicants’ urban presence. The major wave of foundations after 1570 took place in conjunction with New Spain’s own urbanization, when the growth of new cities and industries created new demand and financing for their services. The foundations dried up with the economic downturns of the 1630s but resumed according to regional economic growth and population recovery during the 1680s. When they resumed, however, it was with a clear difference from the earlier period, and the royal government was more selective in issuing licenses. The original three orders were now largely shut out of new foundations, and Discalced Franciscans, Carmelites, and Mercedarians founded houses only according to criteria specific to their order. During the early eighteenth century, royal licenses dried up, less from a lack of support for the orders than as a result of the crown’s pressing financial circumstances. The big change that was to come in the 1730s was that the state abandoned this cautionary holding pattern for more interventionist policies. Growing Populations of Friars, 1570–1730 Mirroring the increase in numbers of new urban convents between 1570 and 1730 was the growth in numbers of friars, especially those living in urban convents. Populations of friars grew slowly as long as the provinces relied upon missionaries from Spain for most of their men. Although the orders established novitiates and began receiving novices soon after their arrivals, not until New Spain developed a significant creole population did populations of friars notably increase. Studies of both the Franciscans and Augustinians point to the 1570s as the turning point in the growth of creole professions. Francisco Morales found that during the Franciscans’ first twenty years (1524–1544) in New Spain, approximately 180 of 200 friars came from Spain, but between 1570 and 1579 the number of new friars was equally balanced with 140 who entered in

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Spain and 140 who entered in New Spain. This balance quickly tipped in favor of creoles. In the 1580s, 150 men took the habit in New Spain, but only 6 came from Spain, a comparable proportion to that in the following decades.77 Antonio Rubial García traced similar patterns for the Augustinians’ Mexico Province, where of the 179 professions between 1551 and 1571, only 56 were made by creoles. After the last big mission of friars from Spain in 1575, no more than a handful of peninsulares arrived, so increased numbers of creole professions accounted for the growth of the province.78 The Augustinian chronicler Juan de Grijalva also noticed this trend. He wrote in the early 1620s that the province had grown so much from increased numbers of creoles that “from this tri­ennium [1566–1569] could have begun another epoch, and I would like to begin another book [here], because without doubt the manner of all the Province changed.”79 To Grijalva, himself a creole, the biggest impact of the influx of creoles was that prelates could no longer govern the province personally but instead had to rely upon laws and directives. This was a more positive view than that of some who saw the 1570s as a time of declining observance, less vigorous evangelization, and the end of the mendicants’ golden age. One of the most outspoken critics of this new generation of creole friars was the Franciscan Gerónimo de Mendieta. To Mendieta, creoles were ill suited to the priesthood because most were infected by the same vices as were Indians, such as their inclination to drunkenness and disobedience. He and some fellow peninsulares even worked with friars in Spain to limit the number of creoles in the province, proposing stringent limitations on creole professions. Others suggested that creoles be sent to missions outside New Spain, such as those in the Philippines. Such efforts were to little avail, and the number of creoles continued to grow throughout the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century. In the Franciscans’ Mexico Province, for instance, 2,281 men entered its novitiates during the seventeenth century, whereas only 175 missionaries came from Spain.80 The exception to the pattern of creole-fueled growth was the Discalced Carmelite order, which continued to be filled by peninsulares throughout the colonial period. During the seventeenth century, 12 percent of the men who professed as choristers were creoles, a percentage that fell slightly to 10 percent during the eighteenth century. Even so, these men differed from early missionaries in that most had come to the Americas before entering religious life and received their training in New Spain’s novitiates.81 Because orders relied upon their novitiates rather than missions of Spaniards after the 1570s, the number of friars who professed into these novitiates can be used to track some general trends in the provinces’

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populations. Each convent that housed a novitiate kept a libro de profesiones (book of professions), which each new friar and his prelates signed as part of his profession ceremony. Occasionally elaborate works of art but always highly valued and carefully protected, these books recorded ­friars’ basic information, including their place of birth, parents’ names, and date of profession (Figure 2). Using the information from surviving libros de profesiones and a contemporary Dominican document summarizing a libro, I have calculated the number of friars who entered each year into the Franciscans’ Mexico City, Puebla, San Cosme, and ­Valladolid convents; the Augustinians’ Valladolid convent; the Dominicans’ Mexico City convent; and the Carmelites’ Mexico City convent. The number of professions in a given year could be affected by shortterm factors such as particularly tough masters of novices who drove out the men he did not find well suited for convent life, or provincial officials who, as part of creole-peninsular rivalries, attempted to increase or limit the number of creole entrants.82 Even something as simple as whether the profession ceremony for a group of friars was held at the end of December or the beginning of January affected these numbers. To analyze long-term trends beyond these fluctuations, I have used two types of calculations. I averaged data for extended periods of time, and these results are shown in Table 2. To visualize these trends more clearly, I have charted the raw data using regression analysis (Figure 3). The most striking trend is the dramatic increase in the number of friars professing during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These increases are demonstrated in the four convents with available data for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the Franciscans’ Puebla and ­Valladolid convents, the Carmelites’ Mexico City convent, and the Augustinians’ Valladolid convent. The average number of professions in the Franciscans’ Puebla convent increased from 4.7 friars per year between 1570 and 1629 to 8.0 per year between 1630 and 1737; the average for the Augustinians’ Valladolid convent grew from 3.5 per year between 1576 and 1653 to 5.7 per year between 1654 and 1740. Professions in the Carmelites’ Mexico City convent increased twice, the first time from 3.6 friars per year between 1585 and 1629 to 6.7 between 1630 and 1685, and the second time to 11.4 friars per year between 1686 and 1742. The growth during the seventeenth century stands in contrast to the period between 1630 and 1680 when no new convents were founded. It was much easier for the orders to admit friars than establish houses, in part because they did not need any approvals from outside the order, such as episcopal and royal licenses. Nor did admitting friars carry the same high cost as a new convent, and, in fact, admitting someone who was well connected could actually improve an order’s financial position.

figure 2 An especially elaborate page from a libro de profesiones from the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province. source : APPAM, Libro C-03-02-02.

table 2 Average number of friars professing per year Franciscans, Mexico City convent Average professions/ Years year

Dominicans, Mexico City convent Average professions/ Years year

1659–1731

12.6

1723–1737

10.3

1732–1771

8.0

1738–1809

5.3

1772–1809

3.3

Franciscans, Puebla convent Average professions/ Years year

Augustinians, Valladolid convent Average professions/ Years year

1570–1629

4.7

1576–1653

1630–1737

8.0

1654–1740

5.7

1738–1809

3.4

1741–1777

3.6

1778–1803

1.4

Franciscans, San Cosme convent Average professions/ Years year

3.5

Carmelites, Mexico City convent Average professions/ Years year

1712–1736

5.1

1585–1629

3.6

1737–1773

2.8

1630–1685

6.7

1686–1742

11.4

1743–1758

7.1

1759–1797

11.8

Franciscans, Valladolid convent Average professions/ Years year

1599–1628

2.8

1629–1752

5.7

1753–1800

1.9

sources : BNAH FF, vols. 24–29; BNAH, Colección Rafael y Jerónimo Porrúa Troncoso, rollo 11, doc. 3; BNAH GO, leg. 70; AHPCD, Libros manuscritos noviciados 6, 7, 8; APPAM, ­L ibros de profesiones 1, 2, 3, 5, 7; AHPFM Provincia, Conventos, Morelia, cajas 1–4. not e : The data were analyzed for statistical significance using a Pearson’s t-test, which is a confidence measurement that tests whether the difference in the means of two data sets are statistically significant. All data above exceed the t-value for a 99.9 percent confidence level, except those from the final two periods of the Augustinians’ Valladolid convent, which exceed the value for a 95 percent confidence level.

figure 3 Professions per year. Data were analyzed using a LOWESS smoother, a smoothing function for scattered data. Each line represents a locally weighted regression based on neighboring values to each point in the graph.

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More professions were made possible by a growing supply of potential friars and a demand for new ones. On the supply side, despite declines in New Spain’s overall population during the seventeenth century, the groups that fit the criteria for entry into these orders—urban residents of at least partial European descent—were growing in size. Furthermore, the orders’ properties, chaplaincies, investments, and alms provided substantial income that was used to support additional friars. With this ability to support more friars, prelates stipulated that more young men could be admitted to the novitiates. In the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province, for example, various acts from the early and mid-seventeenth century allowed for eighteen novices per triennium. In 1709 and 1712 this number was increased to twenty-four, and, in 1715, 1718, and 1721, prelates were given permission to admit as many novices as they wanted.83 Scattered data on the number of friars in each province support the trends indicated by the numbers of professions.84 As shown in Figure 4, from the late sixteenth through the mid-eighteenth century populations of friars increased substantially, in some cases tripling in size. In their respective Mexico provinces, Franciscan populations grew from 225 to 840 friars between 1569 and 1730, Dominican ones from 207 to 400 between 1663 and 1735, and Mercedarian ones from 100 to 350 between 1600 and approximately 1710. Increases for the Augustinians’ ­Michoacán and Carmelites’ Mexico provinces are more difficult to gauge, not only because figures are unavailable for the mid-eighteenth century but also because the few available figures include only priests, excluding the lay brothers counted in the other tallies. Thus the Carmelites’ province undoubtedly grew by more than the approximately 80 men indicated by provincial counts of 92 friars in 1600 and 178 priests in 1686. For instance, in 1600 approximately 63 percent of friars in the province were priests, and if that percentage still held in 1686, then the province would have housed 281 friars.85 In fact, by the 1730s the province had grown so much that convents were running out of space, and in 1737 the prior of Puebla asked to build fifteen new cells because the convent “did not have sufficient cells in which friars could comfortably live.” 86 Similarly, the Augustinians would have grown by more than 35 members between 1658, when the province was home to 190 friars, and 1709, when it was home to 223 priests. The strongest impact of increased populations was on urban convents. While nearly all Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Discalced Franciscans lived in cities, more friars from the three doctrina-administering orders now lived in urban convents. Because numbers of friars assigned to rural houses rarely increased, as populations of friars grew, urban houses absorbed the increases. Antonio Rubial García found that between 1571

figure 4 Number of friars by province. sources : Franciscans: BNAH, caja 89, exp. 1379; caja 106, exp. 1461; caja 127, exp. 1645; caja 139, exp. 1718; Morales, Ethnic and Social Background, pp. 58, 74; Ocaranza, Capitulos, appendix. Dominicans: BN AF, caja 140, exp. 1725; BNAH Antigua, 320; Melcón, Integración dominicana, pp. 81–82; Arroyo, Episcopologio; Medina, Los dominicos, pp. 40–42; León, Bibliografía, vol. 2, pp. 308, 525. Augustinians: AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, XVII, Augustinos, caja 11, exp. 1; AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, XVIII, Augustinos, caja 196, exp. 9; caja 197, exp. 14; caja 206, exp. 214; AGN RCO, vol. 122, exp. 132; APPAM, Libro C-03-01-08, f. 96v. Carmelites: BNAH Lira, vol. 9; BNAH Guzmán, leg. 73, no. 7; AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, XVIII, Carmelitas, caja 213, exp. 32; AGN INQ, vol. 114, exp. 172. Mercedarians: Ochoa, t. I, ff. 41–43, 212; t. II, f. 112; t. III, f. 107; Pérez, t. I, p. 334; t. III, pp. 117, 209. * Priests only.

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and 1598 the percentage of priests living in doctrinas in the Augustinians’ Mexico Province fell from 78 to 64 percent.87 Data on individual Franciscan and Dominican convents demonstrate that while doctrinas generally stayed the same size, most urban convents had expanding populations, such as the Franciscans’ Querétaro convent, which grew from 12 friars in 1620 to 37 in 1696; or the Dominicans’ Oaxaca convent, which increased from 25 friars in 1578 to 61 in 1723.88 By the 1730s most provinces were at or near their peak populations. The creole-fueled growth that took place over the previous 150 years paralleled the expansion of urban houses. On one level, these increases were a sign of the orders’ institutional vigor, but they also correspond to the evolution of a society in New Spain that now was willing and able to support more friars in more locations. The mendicants’ presence in cities had never been stronger.

mendicants and reform, 1730–1800 The 1730s began a period of often intense change for New Spain’s mendicant orders. Issues that had been smoldering were now ignited as the crown took a more hands-on role in attempting to implement its new vision of the church. The Bourbons’ efforts to augment royal power and revenues, including curbing the independence of the church and its roles in secular affairs, had significant effects on New Spain’s mendicant ­orders.89 The orders possessed greater independence from the crown than did diocesan clergy, and the Bourbons sought to remedy this situation by forcing the orders to submit to additional royal and diocesan authority and by reducing and changing their roles in society. In addition, reformers within the church, most notably archbishops of Mexico Francisco de Lorenzana (1766–1772) and Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta (1772– 1800) and bishop of Puebla Francisco Fabián y Fuero (1765–1773), had their own conceptions of mendicants and their place in the church. Reformist churchmen shared many of their predecessors’ interest in subjugating mendicants to diocesan authority, but they also sought a more general overhaul of the church and religious practices, such as bringing the church back to its original purity by emphasizing interior piety, discipline, and strict observance. Some, especially during the 1760s and 1770s, were also regalists who thought that the best way to achieve this church was in partnership with a crown that (they believed) would defend ecclesiastical authority, just as they defended that of the crown. During the midcentury, but especially during the episcopates of Lorenzana and Fabián y Fuero, church reformers and the crown found themselves

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allied in a number of projects and initiatives, including curbing the power and independence of male orders.90 Until the 1730s, the crown’s intrusion into mendicant affairs was fairly limited. On occasion, royal officials had intervened directly in the governance of orders to quell disputes and factionalism, for instance, issuing decrees that limited who could vote in provincial elections or that installed systems whereby creoles and peninsulares alternated important provincial offices.91 In addition, the king and his representatives both in Spain and New Spain frequently mediated mendicants’ conflicts with diocesan clergy over language exams, licenses to preach and confess, payment of tithes, inspections of doctrinas, and appointment of doctrineros. For the most part, however, the crown’s mediations in diocesan-­regular disputes were relatively even-handed, especially considering Trent’s strong privileging of diocesan over regular clergy.92 This situation started to change in the 1730s when the state began withdrawing support from the orders in their conflicts with bishops and issued the first orders regulating the size of provinces. An even more decided turn came under Ferdinand VI (1746–1759) and Carlos III (1759–1788) when the crown brought a new set of issues to the table. The decision with deepest impact on the orders was the secularization of doctrinas. The orders’ administration of doctrinas had always been a sticking point with diocesan clergy, but until the mid-eighteenth century, secularization of doctrinas had occurred only with the efforts of a few particularly ambitious bishops, most famously bishop of Puebla Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (1639–1647). Two royal cedulas of 1749 and 1753 transformed these regional efforts into a near-universal loss for the mendicants, which were ordered to turn over all but one or two doctrinas in each bishopric. After an initial burst in which bishops commandeered some especially convenient or lucrative locations, the transfers took place gradually over the next decades as doctrineros died or resigned their offices. Not unexpectedly, the two cedulas produced a torrent of impassioned protests from Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Mercedarians (in support of their doctrinas in Central and South America). In one of these pleas to the crown, the heads of Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian provinces in New Spain lamented the decrees’ ruinous effects on Indians, who were being virtually abandoned without sufficient numbers of priests, let alone ones who knew them and their languages. The friars continued with a warning of the harm that was being done to the orders themselves. Dominicans and Augustinians had lost the rents and properties held by all those convents, and those that remained were not enough to support all the provinces’ friars. Franciscans were even worse off because they did not

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own properties, so without the income from doctrinas, their continued existence would be impossible. The prelates then concluded with the sensationalist statement that the orders had been treated worse than the Moors or Jews when they were expelled from Spain. 93 Although mendicant protests did not reverse the secularization of doctrinas, they did manage to win back some concessions and limit their losses. A new cedula of 1757 allowed the orders to keep any convent with at least eight friars in residence, even if its doctrina had been secularized.94 This cedula in particular demonstrated the distinction the crown made between supporting mendicants as doctrineros and supporting them in their traditional urban roles. A new phase of reform efforts that began on the heels of the Jesuits’ expulsion from Spanish territories presented a new set of threats to mendicants. In 1768, Archbishop Lorenzana and Bishop Fabián y Fuero sent letters to Spain vehemently attacking clerical abuses, especially the regular clergy’s virtual abandonment of their vows, and proposing reform. Responding to the letters, the Council of Indies affirmed that reform had indeed become “indispensably necessary in order to sustain the obedience and subordination of these provinces.” Charles III, denouncing monastic decadence and insubordination, called for a provincial council in each viceroyalty and state-supervised inspections of each regular order.95 The Fourth Provincial Council (1771) was the first synod in New Spain since 1585, and even though its decrees were never ratified by the pope or king and therefore never implemented, it provided a forum for its participants to express views on a wide range of topics.96 Despite some reformers’ protests regarding problems of monastic discipline, male orders received surprisingly little attention at the council. The council’s decrees dealing with the regular clergy, “De los regulares y monjas,” overwhelmingly targeted nuns and their issues of la vida común (common life). The decrees that dealt with friars concentrated on establishing greater control over the parts of their life that extended beyond convent walls, such as allowing bishops to punish friars who were caught wandering the streets without permission or who were not properly completing their duties as doctrineros.97 The narrow scope of these decrees should not, however, be seen as an indication that bishops had lost interest in reforming mendicant orders but rather that their restricted jurisdiction over the ­orders limited what they could do. As much as the reformers might have wanted friars to improve monastic discipline or curtail lavish fiestas, the mendicants’ autonomy from most ecclesiastical authority meant that the reformers did not have the means to impose reform on their own. The reformers, in fact, found they could do very little regarding the mendicants without the muscle of the state.

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The state-sponsored inspections of the mendicants’ American provinces thus had greater potential to effect reform. The inspections began when the king appointed Spanish friars who had been nominated by each order to travel to the Americas and establish reform programs based on a 1769 set of royal instructions. These instructions included directions for ending factionalism in the convents, subordinating friars to bishops in pastoral activities, bringing monastic life into compliance with its ­ideals, and ensuring that friars were provided with food and other necessities (so they would not seek them outside the convent). Special attention was given to balancing convent revenues with numbers of friars in order to prevent convents from either having an excess of funds or from becoming financial burdens.98 In reality these inspections had a more limited impact than church reformers must have hoped. First, the reformist bishops were almost completely excluded from the inspections, which were carried out by friars and approved by the viceroy and king. Bishops’ input was generally limited to responding to questionnaires also sent to town officials. Furthermore, the interests of the viceroy and his fiscal did not necessarily match those of the church reformers. State officials, while interested in ensuring the orders were fulfilling their duties, focused most of their attention on financial and administrative matters. They asked the inspectors to make sure friars were performing their priestly responsibilities and keeping monastic discipline, but when push came to shove, they threw more energy into ascertaining each convent’s sources of income and setting new limits on the number of friars in each convent. Beyond these issues, the crown’s level of concern remains open to question, especially considering that New Spain’s largest order, the Franciscans, managed to avoid their inspection altogether, stalling for years until the issue finally went away.99 A new round of state decrees in the waning years of the century demonstrated the crown’s continuing interest in reducing the orders’ wealth and independence. The crown sought to isolate the orders from Rome, ordering the arrest of any friars traveling there without royal permission. Another cedula in 1795 prohibited friars from appealing any matters to Rome without permission from the Supreme Council in Spain. Friars’ exemption from state prosecution also came under attack, among other things, excluding friars who had taken only minor orders from ecclesiastical immunity, which had allowed them to be tried and punished within their orders. Finally, in a move to reduce the flow of wealth into the orders, a 1792 pragmatic sanction prohibited nuns and friars from accepting inheritances.100 As damaging as these policies could be, the crown was not seeking to destroy the orders. Instead, subordinating the orders to state justice, mediating between them and Rome, and limiting one of their sources of income were meant to further reduce the orders’ power and independence.

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Bourbon officials’ reformist projects thus took a range of forms. They began in the 1730s and intensified in the 1750s when the state threw its support behind the diocesan clergy in their conflicts with friars, including in the long-running battle over doctrinas. By the 1760s and 1770s alliances between state and diocesan clergy flagged. Bishops found that they required state muscle to reform mendicant orders and that their goals for reforming the orders did not necessarily coincide with state ­interests. Royal officials wanted well-behaved friars who would meet their priestly obligations and provide the spiritual guidance that made for good citizens, but even more critical was establishing checks on the orders’ finances, size, and power.

institutional challenges after 1730 State interventions during the remainder of the eighteenth century transformed the orders’ institutional status and made them into smaller and less powerful organizations. Mendicants did not lose urban houses as they did doctrinas, but new urban convents had to fit the state’s very specific criteria, and populations of friars fell, sometimes dramatically, albeit with one exception. Whereas most of the orders spent the second half of the eighteenth century in retrenchment mode, the Carmelites expanded their numbers of houses and friars. Under the right circumstances, the state could still be supportive of mendicant purposes, and an order could still flourish. Urban Foundations, 1730–1812 After the drought of foundations during the first three decades of the century, a cluster of twelve urban foundations took place between 1730 and 1765. An important stimulus for them was economic and population expansion during the first half of the century. New Spain’s population was estimated to have increased 50 to 150 percent between the 1740s and 1810, but much of that growth was regional, especially in west-central Mexico, where the increase has been estimated at 2 to 3 percent per year during the century.101 This region also benefited from increased silver production from some of its mines, especially Guanajuato’s, to fully emerge from its frontier status and become, in David Brading’s oft-used phrase, “the pacemaker of New Spain’s economy.”102 Not coincidentally, all but one of the new mendicant foundations took place in this region. This round of foundations was equal in number to the previous one between 1680 and 1705, and the types of foundations granted licenses continued

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to be shaped by the interests of the state. Changing state interests, however, narrowed the possibilities for new houses even further. With the exception of one Discalced Franciscan convent, the houses were either Mercedarian hospicios, Discalced Carmelite convents, or Franciscan missionary colleges. The Mercedarians’ foundations resulted from the utility of their alms collection to the royal government. During the seventeenth century, it took a portion of the alms that Mercedarians sent back to their prelates in Spain via the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) in Seville. For example, when Fr. Gínes de Melgárez took over the job of managing the finances of alms and redemptions, he discovered that the order had been paying derechos de averías (a convoy tax on goods traveling to and from the Americas) on the alms remitted from the Americas. Not only were alms supposed to be exempt from this tax, he protested, but his order was paying rates of 20 to 35 percent when the official rate was 14 percent.103 At some point in the mid-eighteenth century, the crown found an even more efficient method of accessing Mercedarian alms, and it mandated that the order turn over its funds to royal officials in Mexico City.104 With alms now flowing directly into royal coffers, the crown had even more reason to support projects that would increase these revenues. The Mercedarians made their request to found a house in Querétaro on this basis, noting the province had determined “to distribute friars for the alms for Christian captives in all this kingdom, and these alms have seen a considerable increase . . . [and] an even larger increase is hoped for.” It was therefore requesting an “hospicio with the expressed comforts for the friars who travel for the collection of said alms.”105 In fact, all five foundations from this time were hospicios (rather than full-fledged conventos) in centers of wealth and growing populations: Toluca (1731), ­Querétaro (1734), Celaya (1742), Guanajuato (1742), and Valle de Santiago (1762).106 The foundation at Guanajuato stands as a particularly good example of the order’s favored royal standing. Although Dominicans and Discalced Carmelites also attempted to establish houses there in the eighteenth century, only the Mercedarians succeeded. Viceroy Conde de Revillagigedo supported the Mercedarians’ foundation, explaining that the province always had friars in cities such as Guanajuato in order to collect alms. Because of the inconveniences of living in laypersons’ houses and because the owners of Guanajuato’s Mellado mine were donating an already-licensed chapel near their mine, he recommended the foundation be approved, provided it was an hospicio rather than a convento. Royal license soon followed.107 Although these five houses followed the familiar pattern of being located either outside or on the outskirts of cities, they do not seem to have provided grammar schools as did the province’s earlier

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foundations. In addition, with the exception of the Guanajuato house, approximately half of the friars who resided in these locations were lay brothers, indicating the relative importance of alms collection compared with priestly services. Indeed, with the exception of the Guanajuato house’s ministries to the workers of the Mellado mine, these hospicios— located outside city centers, without any special services like schools, and staffed by few priests—were peripheral components of their communities. They stuck closely to their alms-collecting purposes. The Discalced Carmelites gained four of the twelve new foundations made between 1730 and 1765, but unlike those for the Mercedarians, the main justification for these convents was the benefits they provided to local residents. The arguments made in support of their foundations at Orizaba (1736), Tehuacán (1746), San Luis Potosí (1746), and Guadalajara (1747) focused on the Carmelites’ exemplary conduct and work for the spiritual good of the town’s Indians and gente de razón (non-Indians; literally, people of reason).108 In Tehuacán, the alcalde mayor (district governor) explained he had found “in the entire community a very serious inclination toward the Carmelites, with demonstrations of great yearning for their continued residence and proclamations of the spiritual benefits that [the residents] receive from them.”109 In San Luis Potosí, the ranking parish priest, Nicolás Antonio Muñoz Castilblanque, declared that “the religion of the Carmelites, so observant and exact in the fulfillment of their Rule, will bring greater benefits to the Vecinos of this city and its surroundings than just increasing the number of evangelical ministers.”110 The basis of Carmelites’ new convents differed little from those founded in earlier times, either in their provision of services or their location in cities with significant Spanish populations.111 However, petitions for these later foundations emphasized the convents’ financial independence, especially from the crown. The case made by the Carmelites’ procurador general for the Tehuacán convent was based on claims that a donor’s substantial gift of fifty-two thousand pesos meant the convent’s maintenance would not be a burden to the royal treasury, a point also noted in the cedula allowing the foundation. 112 Similarly, in San Luis Potosí a donor had left one hundred thousand pesos for the new foundation, but before the king would grant his license, he ordered the viceroy to collect more information on the exact terms of the donation. Only when assured that the foundation would be self-supporting did the king grant his license.113 Besides fitting mid-eighteenth-century royal conceptions that orders should be financially self-sufficient, Carmelite foundations also benefited from the order’s reputation for exemplary friars. When Charles III’s special council met in Madrid to discuss the need for reforming New Spain’s

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regular orders, the Carmelites were singled out for the “meticulousness, edification, and utility with which they follow and keep their institute” amid the excesses and relaxation of vows of the other orders.114 Not unrelated to the Carmelites’ stellar reputation was Bourbon favoritism toward people born in Spain over those born in the Americas. New Spain’s Carmelites, consisting primarily of peninsulares and closely connected to peninsular populations, thus earned a favored status among the orders, including in their requests for additional convents. Another mendicant program that retained crown favor into midcentury was the work of the Franciscan missionary colleges. These colleges were perceived as offering the laity good role models and were highly valued for their ability to reform people’s bad customs. Like the Carmelites, Franciscans had to demonstrate that the proposed new colleges had solid financial footing in order to bring them to fruition. In 1731 Viceroy Marqués de Casafuerte wrote to the king about the utility that missions of Franciscans from the Querétaro college had brought to the city of Mexico and stated that many of the city’s residents now desired their own college. He noted that the fifty-four testimonies accompanying his letter concurred that such a foundation would indeed be beneficial, and he then addressed what could have been a sticking point: “The information speaks negatively of the subject of funds for buildings and the friars’ subsistence, but because they maintain themselves from alms and not being obliged by their vows to invest any principal in properties, this difficulty that could have been an encumbrance is solved.”115 Furthermore, he concluded, many important donors were contributing to the effort. In 1733 the king approved the foundation of this College of San Fernando, citing the combination of spiritual benefits and financial payback. The friars’ austerity offered “very singular edification for all the poor,” and the increased numbers of novices who could enter there would allow that “within a few years, a great part of the expenditures that my royal treasury has in the transport of missionaries from these kingdoms [Spain] will be avoided.”116 The foundation would save the crown money. The other missionary college established during this time was administered by the Discalced Franciscans at Pachuca. After a 1725 papal decree allowed this branch of the order to found missionary colleges in the Americas, the Mexico Province petitioned to found one. Despite their requests, the Discalced Franciscans were not allowed to open a college in a new location, so in 1732 they transformed their existing Pachuca convent into a college.117 Although existent documentation does not specify why the crown denied its license for a new convent, the Discalced Franciscans’ reliance on alms, once a selling point, now made them, in the eyes of the monarchy, a potential burden on a community. It was this financial modus

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operandi rather than any questions about their trademark austerity and piety that seems to have been the chief reason behind the Discalced Franciscans’ fall from royal favor. An order that had the most success in obtaining new convents during the seventeenth century became one that, except for the Pachuca house’s transformation, founded but a single new house in the eighteenth century. This convent was also something of an aberration, originating with bishop of Michoacán Martín de Elizacochea’s 1745 donation of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe just outside the city of Valladolid. The terms of the foundation (1765) specified that a casa de exercicios (house of spiritual exercises) be built on-site and that a Discalced Franciscan serve as its director. Once it was established, various diocesan priests and Elizacochea’s successor, Bishop Pedro Anselmo Sánchez de Tagle, completed spiritual exercises and retreats there.118 More generally, the Discalced Franciscans’ reclusion and asceticism that rendered them suitable to administer this center were, by the second half of the eighteenth century, insufficient grounds for new foundations. Consider, for example, the order’s efforts to found a convent at San Pedro de Guadalazarin in 1756. Two champions of the project, mine owners Captain Don Franco de la Mora and Don Ygnacio de Xara, cited the vigor of the Discalced Franciscans’ regular discipline and noted that the town sought these particular friars “whose perpetual attendance in honoring, blessing, and glorification of God consoles [people], and who take care of their spiritual needs with their Doctrine, with their example, with the frequency of the Holy Sacraments.” The Michoacán cathedral chapter approved the convent on the basis of the great need for more priests there and the province’s “strict institute,” and the viceroy supported this foundation in “one of the most populous towns in its jurisdiction, very rich from its minerals.” The king, perhaps uncomfortable with allowing the Discalced Franciscans ready access to such a potentially large source of alms, denied the foundation, stating in a 1760 cedula that if the area truly needed more priests, then the bishop should assign more.119 The contrast with New Spain’s other discalced order, the Carmelites, is unmistakable. Both orders were celebrated for their strictness and piety, but they operated on opposite ends of the financial spectrum. Without the financial security of a large endowment, Discalced Franciscan foundations were, in the crown’s view, too great a risk. The three types of mid-eighteenth-century foundations—Mercedarian hospicios, Discalced Carmelite convents, Franciscan missionary colleges—represent a significant transition in New Spain’s mendicant foundations. By this time, it took special royal favor to obtain a license for a new convent. The crown continued to view the missions run by the Franciscan colleges as valuable, but the Mercedarians and Carmelites had

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to adapt their strategies. Mercedarians gave renewed emphasis to their alms collection and highlighted their ability to work effectively out of small convents; Carmelites accentuated their exemplary observance and utility to local populations. All three orders stressed the financial viability of their foundations. This viability, along with valued active service, proved necessary to a successful foundation. As the experience of the Discalced Franciscans attests, a reputation for rigorous austerity could gain strong support within New Spain, but it was not enough to obtain royal license. By the 1760s, though, neither were the arguments that had been working so well for the Mercedarians and Carmelites, and neither order would gain any more convents in New Spain. This final clustering of foundations came to a close as orders turned their attention to staving off the loss of convents rather than gaining new ones. Aside from Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians having to relinquish doctrinas (or litigating to keep from relinquishing them), the state-sponsored inspections of the orders during the 1770s included an order to suppress houses that “for lack of sufficient numbers of friars do not form a community, or whose purpose has diminished, or had been doctrinas or missions that are now with diocesan clergy, or because there are sufficient motives for their extinction and assignment of their residents to established convents.”120 Of New Spain’s orders, the Mercedarians were most threatened by this decree because their Mexico Province had seven houses defined as small, which meant they had less than eight friars in residence.121 The order’s inspector, Fr. Estancio Falero, recommended closing only one, the Teocaltiche hospicio, which housed only two friars and which the local alcalde mayor described as very poor and in dismal physical condition. The viceroy’s fiscal agreed but also recommended including the other six small houses: Atlixco, Colima, Lagos, Celaya, Valle de Santiago, and Toluca. The Mercedarians successfully resisted by arguing the utility of their alms to the crown, specifically citing a royal cedula from 1774 that gave them special dispensation to have small convents because of the “singularity” of their alms collection. The king decided not to apply the decree to the Mercedarians, and the only house the Mercedarians or any other order lost to the decree was Teocaltiche.122 Given the effort that the Mercedarians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians put into trying to keep the houses they had as well as their more general struggles with reformist bishops, it should not be surprising that they do not seem to have been attempting new foundations at this time. By the mid-1770s, as Lorenzana and Fabián y Fuero returned to Spain and as tensions over doctrinas started to ease, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians began, for the first time in many decades, to attempt new urban foundations. These efforts demonstrated the orders’

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continuing viability and that they had little difficulty finding support for their foundations, at least until they needed approval from Spain. For example, in 1774 the Dominican provincial asked the bishop of Michoacán to found a house in Zapotlán el Grande (now Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco). He cited a request from members of the town’s Confraternity of the ­Rosary who had offered some properties to support a foundation, and he asked to assign two or three friars. The Dominicans also had maintained hospicios without resident friars in San Miguel el Grande and Salvatierra, and in 1788 at the request of the bishop of Michoacán, the Dominican provincial assigned a friar to each location. Despite approving residents, willing donors, and diocesan backing, efforts to establish more substantial houses in these places failed.123 In addition to these disappointments, the Augustinians were unsuccessful in their efforts at Salvatierra, San Miguel el Grande, Lagos, and Colima. Nor did the Mercedarians fare any better with their efforts to found houses at San Luis de la Paz and San Miguel el Grande. The momentum built up from local supporters, donors, and approving bishops and viceroys derailed when it reached Spain. The Observant Franciscans were the only order that managed to overcome this royal aversion to new convents. The order’s two new missionary colleges at Orizaba (1791) and Zapopan (1812) were part of the continuing expansion of such colleges throughout the Americas.124 More surprisingly, their Michoacán Province also experienced a small renaissance. Between 1775 and 1791 the province established three new urban convents, which were the order’s first in New Spain since the early seventeenth century. The narrow scope of these foundations suggests the specific criteria needed to obtain royal license during the final years of the colony. The first of these foundations was at Irapuato (ca. 1775), an agricultural town whose population had boomed along with the nearby mines at Guanajuato. Backers of the proposed convent guaranteed it financial support and argued it would provide residents with much-needed services. Among these services, the Franciscans were to administer a third order, teach grammar to local youth, and offer courses in philosophy. To fund these services, donors had provided the Franciscans with donations and alms that amounted to 1,750 pesos per year.125 The second foundation was at Guanajuato (1791), where Franciscan friars had had a regular, if not official, presence collecting alms throughout the eighteenth century.126 Residents of Guanajuato, one of New Spain’s largest and wealthiest cities, had been clamoring for a new convent since the expulsion of the Jesuits. The city had two male convents, but one was located at a mine outside the city (Mercedarians), and the other was limited in its active services (Discalced Franciscans). The Observants’ better-documented foundation

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at Zamora (1791) indicates more about why the Franciscans were allowed these foundations. Since 1717 the Franciscans had maintained a chapel in Zamora for local members of the Franciscan Third Order. According to a 1772 statement, the province sought to establish a formal convent with at least eight friars in permanent residence, an increase from the three Franciscans assigned there in 1769. In 1782 the Michoacán cathedral chapter wrote a strong letter advocating the foundation, asserting the convent was needed because there were none within twenty leagues; friars would assist the overworked parish priest; they would not impose a financial burden on local residents thanks to their commitment to poverty; and Franciscans would run, at the request of the city’s ayuntamiento (town council), a school for the youth of the town’s “distinguished families,” teaching Latin and philosophy. The cedula of December 27, 1789, approving the foundation specifically cited Zamora’s growing number of residents, the lack of any convent within many leagues, the spiritual consolation offered by the Franciscans, and the twenty-five thousand pesos of capital donated to support the order.127 One element shared by these three foundations was their location in growing cities in New Spain’s most populous region. In addition, each of these cities had only a minimal mendicant presence before the foundations. These two elements helped make a compelling case for why the cities needed additional priests, but they were not enough. After all, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Mercedarians failed in attempts in similar locations. Part of the Franciscans’ success was undoubtedly related to their preexisting presence, so the foundations were seen more as expansions and formalizations of the order’s work than the creation of something entirely new. Yet this explanation also falls short, since the Dominicans’ failed foundations during this time were also attempts to expand unofficial presence into licensed convent. Franciscans, unlike Dominicans, could make the case that Michoacán was one of their long-standing strongholds and that they had developed deep roots in the community. With the loss of so many doctrinas in the area, they would have had a cadre of men already familiar with the area and its people. The order’s trademark poverty, which made it less expensive to found and support a house, may also have given the order a leg up on its competition. Compare, for example, the donation of twenty-five thousand pesos for the convent at Zamora with the gifts of fifty thousand and one hundred thousand pesos for the midcentury Carmelite foundations. The Franciscan houses would also contribute a service, education, that took on new importance to civic leaders and royal government around the turn of the century. The order’s engagement in this work set them apart from the Discalced Carmelites and Discalced Franciscans, which preferred to exclude education from their ministries.

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By the end of the eighteenth century, persuading the royal government to agree to a new foundation required an austere order willing to extend its ministries to education and a location with a pressing need for more priests and a school. These requirements had changed from those of the midcentury, when crown favor still included Mercedarian hospicios and Carmelite convents, but in both periods the bottleneck of royal requirements halted what might otherwise have been a continuing expansion of the orders. Mendicants continued to attract support from civic leaders, donors, parish priests, bishops, and viceroys, indicating a clear gap between their perceived usefulness among people in New Spain and government officials in Spain. Population Declines, 1730–1800 The royal government’s more interventionist approach also affected the size of mendicant orders, and the 1730s marked an abrupt break with earlier growth patterns in the numbers of professants. Beginning around this time, the three Franciscan novitiates in the Mexico Province dropped from averages of 12.6 to 8.0 (Mexico City), 8.0 to 3.4 (Puebla), and 5.1 to 2.8 (San Cosme) friars per year; the Dominicans’ Mexico City novitiate, from 10.3 to 5.3; the Augustinians’ Valladolid novitiate, from 5.7 to 3.6; and the Carmelites’ Mexico City novitiate, from 11.4 to 7.1 (see Table 2). That such similar declines occurred across the orders, in different cities, and within a few years of each other indicates that something more than the vagaries of creole-peninsular rivalries or a couple of demanding masters of novices was the cause. The root of these declines was royal policy, beginning in 1734 when Philip V ordered mendicant orders in the Americas not to receive any novices for ten years.128 Although orders did not stop receiving new candidates, they did begin to limit admissions, as the decline in professions indicates. After a couple of decades, however, the number of professants was creeping back up in some convents; for example, in the Franciscans’ Mexico City convent, 38 friars professed between 1743 and 1748 (ranging from 4 to 9 per year), but in the following six years until 1754, some 60 professed (ranging from 8 to 14 per year). Between these increases and the hundreds of friars who lost their positions after the secularization of doctrinas, the crown was concerned about large numbers of friars without purpose or support. The king’s fiscal explained that it did not make sense to admit “any more novices than those that are enough for the cloisters and missions,” a line of thinking that prompted the crown to issue two new decrees.129 In 1754, just after ordering the secularization of doctrinas, Ferdinand VI repeated the earlier order not to give any new habits; three years later he

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modified it, specifying that the orders were not to give any more habits than absolutely necessary.130 When Viceroy Marqués de las Amarillas forwarded the king’s 1757 cedula to the orders, he offered a more detailed explanation for why the orders needed to reduce their size: His Majesty desires and charges the prelates that such an inflated number of subjects as before are no longer necessary since the Religions have been released from the care of Doctrinas, and it is not fair nor in conformity with the dispositions of the Holy Apostolic See that they receive a greater number of individuals than that which their convents can comfortably house with the incomes they possess in common or with the alms that they collect from the piety and generosity of the faithful. The overabundance of friars, the difficulty in feeding them, and the lack of appropriate occupations for them do not embellish the orders’ status and open the door to relaxation.131

This set of decrees had deeper effects than the 1734 decree. Orders curbed the numbers of professants at least back to post-1734 levels, and in some cases prelates went even further. The Augustinians’ Valladolid convent professed 10 friars in 1753 but not a single one for the next five years. The Franciscans of Michoacán, who had admitted 12 friars as recently as 1751 admitted only 14 during the decade following the decree. Whether or not these actions were sufficient was a point of concern to some officials in New Spain, including Archbishop of Mexico Manuel Rubio y Salinas, who complained to Viceroy Marqués de Cuevas and Charles III that the orders were not complying with the 1757 decree. The Marqués de Cuevas responded by repeating the order, at which point the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians sprang into action. They collected information from provincial libros de profesiones and libros de ­difuntos (books marking the deaths of friars) and sent it to the viceroy. The Dominican prelate stated that in the last four years, 38 friars had died in his province, whereas only 14 had professed. Not only did this demonstrate the required moderation, he argued, but he had even gone against his constitution, which required that at least 6 novices go through the novitiate together, meaning that he should have admitted at least 24 novices over that time. The Franciscans and Augustinians reported similar excesses of deaths over professions for their provinces. The Franciscans counted 130 friars lost since the 1757 decree, while only 51 had professed. The Augustinians reported that 101 professed and 184 died between 1740 and 1751, and since then (1751–1763) the gap had grown even wider: 53 professed and 228 died. In sum, the three provinces had shrunk by 24, 79, and 175 friars in a short period of time. The three prelates further defended their actions, claiming they were only admitting just enough friars to maintain monastic discipline and to have enough workers for missions.132 Viceroy Marqués de Cuevas’s successor,

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Marqués de Croix, agreed that the friars were following the decree, and in 1770 he sent memorials from the three orders back to Spain, explaining that the now-deceased archbishop had “erroneously informed” the king on the matter since the three orders had indeed moderated their admissions.133 During the 1770s the size issue garnered new attention in the statemandated inspections. Article Four of the 1769 instructions to inspectors ordered that the number of friars in each convent should be set at a fixed level in accordance with its income. It specified that the number of friars in each convent is set with the approval of the Viceroy and local bishop so that it is invariable, taking into consideration the present rents of the convent, and, according to the dispositions of the Holy Council of Trent, moderating the bestowal of habits with respect to the number to which it is to be reduced and that is established as fixed, and moving the excess friars to those [convents] where they are lacking.134

In other words, there would be a fixed number of friars in each house, and the provinces were to admit only enough novices to maintain those numbers. Royal officials and inspectors paid close attention to these numbers. As part of the inspection of the Dominicans’ Puebla Province, the inspector ordered its prelates to admit only those novices needed to maintain a total of 138 friars in the province and “not to contravene this order for any excuse or reason.”135 In the inspection of the Mercedarians’ province, the viceroy sent a letter to the inspector reminding him of the order not to receive any more novices until the province’s numbers had been moderated. The inspector responded in 1778 with lists of the 20 men who had taken habits in the province since 1774 and of 36 friars who died during the same period. The decrease must have been judged sufficient, because the viceroy’s fiscal approved the inspection shortly afterward, agreeing that the prelates had proceeded moderately in implementing the order.136 As the Mercedarian case suggests, further declines in admissions began around the 1770s. The average number of professants in the Franciscans’ Mexico City convent fell from 8.0 per year between 1732 and 1771 to 3.3 per year between 1772 and 1809, and the Augustinians’ Valladolid convent saw decreases from 3.6 per year between 1741 and 1777 to 1.4 between 1778 and 1803. This time, royal decrees limiting admissions were not the only factor, and some provinces began finding it difficult to fill their novitiates, even within approved limits. One reason was the convents’ financial troubles. In 1778 the inspector of the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province painted a bleak picture of a province that needed more friars yet was not admitting new ones. The principal novitiate was at Valladolid, he explained, “where the scarcity of income makes it neces-

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sary that, in order to make room for novices, friars useful to that growing community must be moved to other locations.” To remedy the solution, he proposed that the province redeem some of its investments and better fund the novitiate.137 Orders were also having more trouble finding appropriate candidates for the novitiate. The loss of viable careers in doctrinas and financial troubles made some orders a less attractive career path. Fr. Pedro Manuel Olla, the Mercedarian prelate at Atlixco, noted what seems to have been a growing problem for these orders: finding men inclined to religious life. In 1788 he wrote to the bishop of Oaxaca about “the lack of subjects in the convents of this province.” He explained the reason for this shortage of priests: “because in these past years many have died, or because there are few who are inclined to this estate.”138 An unnamed Franciscan prelate writing in 1795 poignantly described a similar situation. He was trying to keep his order functioning but having a hard time finding the right men to do it: “I confess in good faith the need for friars to fill the convents, but good friars for the service of both Majesties and honor of the Religion, and benefit to the Public. . . . The current situation is lamentable, its necessity clamors to heaven for Aspirants of good dispositions.” These dark circumstances left him with a dilemma. If a novice did not fulfill the majority of his vows, should he refuse the profession and deprive the order of an individual who might otherwise be useful? To this Franciscan author, the very fate of the province was at stake, and he asked, “Being certain that the need is serious, that the convents are empty should we receive Aspirants or close the Novitiates and finish off the Province?” He came down on the side of keeping the novitiates open, comparing the orders to Noah’s ark (repositories during a difficult time), and as long as some friars of good dispositions and faith were entering, the orders would continue to do good. Closing novitiates, he concluded, would only feed into the hands of “enemies of Religion.”139 The Carmelites provided an important exception to this pattern of declining admissions, taking advantage of their reputation for austerity and close connections to peninsular society to win special concessions from the crown. Carmelite admissions had dropped off as in the other orders during the 1730s and 1740s, but sometime around 1758, as other orders were required to limit admissions, the Mexico Province received royal permission to admit up to 16 friars per year. According to the libros de profesiones, the order had been admitting an average of 7.1 friars per year between 1743 and 1758. After the decree, the average number increased to 11.8 per year. With the exception of the Carmelites, the sharp declines in admissions are borne out in population estimates from the second half of the eigh-

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teenth century. After populations peaked in the 1730s, they fell, sometimes precipitously, during the rest of the colonial period (see Figure 4). The Franciscan order, the largest in New Spain and the one that administered the most doctrinas, was hard hit, especially its Mexico Province. From a peak of 840 friars in 1730, the number of friars plummeted to totals of 577 in 1776 and 397 in 1801—a loss of 443 friars, or 53 percent of the province’s total population. The Augustinians’ Michoacán Province experienced a similar drop. From a high point that was certainly much larger than the 223 priests listed in 1709, the population declined to 141 friars in 1778 and 109 friars in 1787—an even greater percentage loss than the Franciscans’. In fact, the drop was so dramatic that the statemandated inspection of the province actually recommended increasing the number of friars in the province to 170.140 Nor was the story much different for the Dominicans’ Mexico Province, which by 1773 had lost 161 friars from its peak of 400 in 1735, a decline of 40 percent. Finally, the Mercedarians’ 1776 population of 295 friars in the Mexico Province demonstrates a small decline from an early-century count of 303, but the cap of 241 friars established in the province’s 1779 inspection suggested that decline would continue.141 In contrast, the Carmelite province, with its unique permission to admit more novices, actually grew. Although the lack of data from the mid-eighteenth century makes it difficult to judge just how great these increases were, the difference between 178 priests or the estimated 281 friars in 1686 and the 445 in 1775 indicates they were substantial. Furthermore, the state-ordered inspection raised that figure even higher, allowing the province to increase to 500 friars. These data also indicate why some reformers and state officials remained concerned about regulating the size of mendicant populations into the 1770s. A comparison of provincial populations around 1675 and 1775 demonstrates that despite recent and significant declines, most provinces were approximately the same size as, if not larger than, they were a century earlier (Table 3). The number of Franciscan and Mercetable 3 Provincial populations, ca. 1675 and ca. 1775 ca. 1675

Franciscans (Mexico) Dominicans (Mexico) Augustinians (Michoacán) Carmelites (Mexico) Mercedarians (Mexico) Total Average

556 207 190 281 (est.) 303 1,537

ca. 1775

+/−

% change

577 239 158 445 295

21 32 −32 164 −8

4 16 −17 58 −3

1,714

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darian friars in their respective Mexico provinces changed only slightly; the Dominicans’ Mexico Province grew by16 percent; and the Carmelite population increased 58 percent. Only the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province lost a notable percentage of friars, 17 percent. Overall, there were 12 percent more friars in New Spain in 1775 than in 1675. In fact, it took decades of repeated orders, complaints, and inspections to achieve the goal of moderating the size of these orders. By the last years of the century, however, the cumulative effects of reforms had taken a toll on most orders, and a new phenomenon of individual secularization of friars was affecting all orders. Secularization was a process through which friars could petition the Roman Curia for release from their vows, provided they could show just cause and demonstrate that they would have means to live in the world. A turn-of-the-century document explaining this process noted a wide range of grounds for secularization, including entry at too young an age, illness, poor treatment within the order, or the need to support family members such as a widowed mother or orphaned siblings. Nancy Farriss found that between 1798 and 1800 more than 150 friars from New Spain, probably about 5 percent of the total number, submitted secularization petitions. This was only the beginning of a movement that gained momentum during the first years of the nineteenth century. When in 1804 a Carmelite prior complained of the friars he was losing to secularizations, he warned, albeit with hyperbole, that he feared for the very existence of his province.142 Although these men may have been abandoning their vows and their orders, many were not leaving the priesthood and, after their secularizations, were incorporated as diocesan priests. Indeed, in contrast to this exodus and to declining populations of friars, numbers of parish priests, at least in the Archbishopric of Mexico and Bishopric of Guadalajara, continued to increase into the nineteenth century. At the same time female convents maintained their populations throughout the eighteenth century.143 That other types of religious vocations continued to attract new members even as mendicant orders struggled to keep their friars suggests that the cause was something other than a population that had exchanged religious devotion for secularized Enlightenment ideas. Instead, years of attacks on the orders’ institutional status had, with the exception of the Discalced Carmelites, taken their toll. Curbed expansions, limited admissions, smaller populations, and heightened levels of state intervention in the orders’ administration created new problems, financial troubles, and, perhaps, a sense of foreboding within the orders. The orders could no longer offer all the benefits or careers they once could, and the situation for most was becoming, in the words of the aforementioned Franciscan prelate, lamentable.

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conclusion The orders’ experience in cities reveals a periodization more complicated than sixteenth-century progress and expansion followed by a slow decline that culminated in the orders’ virtual demise in the mid-eighteenth century. Instead of languishing in doctrinas where they watched their privileges erode, the mendicants transferred more of their attention to urban areas. Beginning with the growth of cities in the late sixteenth century, the original three mendicant orders, as well as the newly arrived Discalced Carmelites, Discalced Franciscans, and Mercedarians, turned their attention to urban concerns. No period was more important to the orders’ urbanization than 1570 to 1630, when, with the exceptions of the Observant Franciscans (who had a head start) and the Franciscan missionary colleges (which would not appear until the end of the seventeenth century), each religion founded the majority of its urban convents. Yet this period also marked an end to Franciscans’, Dominicans’, and Augustinians’ age of urban expansion, as these orders with hundreds of doctrinas spent the next hundred-plus years concentrating more of their resources on keeping the houses and privileges they had than attempting additional foundations. However, the orders without doctrinas in New Spain continued to establish new convents when local and regional economies, donor support, and bishops’ and the crown’s authorizations all came together. The characteristics of most of these foundations continued to follow the patterns established between 1570 and 1630. Discalced Carmelites built their houses in places populated with Spaniards where they could minister to residents without disrupting their monastic responsibilities. Mercedarians founded convents on the outskirts of prosperous towns and cities where friars could collect alms and run grammar schools. Discalced Franciscans moved into cities, as well as places like mining towns and pueblos de indios, where their austere lifestyle served as an example and made their convents financially viable. Concurrent with these geographic expansions came increases in the populations of friars, thanks to growing numbers of men who were professing in New Spain. Beginning in the 1570s with the growth of urban, creole populations, more friars were entering the orders in New Spain than were coming over as missionaries from Spain. The increases in the numbers of professions were substantial, as evidenced from the orders’ libros de profesiones. Population estimates for the five provinces with available data confirm this growth, as some doubled or tripled in size. Furthermore, more friars were living in urban convents; the numbers and sizes of doctrinas remained relatively stable, and most of the additional friars settled in cities.

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These patterns held until the watershed changes of the 1730s. The orders’ programs of geographic expansion changed dramatically when foundations resumed after 1730. Discalced Franciscans, so successful in establishing houses in the seventeenth century, were virtually shut out of new foundations. Mercedarians were now limited to smaller hospicios that gave up works like grammar schools to focus almost exclusively on alms collection. Carmelites, by stressing their financial self-sufficiency, exemplary service, and especially peninsular connections, were the only order allowed to found new conventos. During the 1760s the foundation patterns shifted once again. Now the only order to be successful in new establishments was Observant Franciscans, and that was under very limited circumstances. Two of their foundations were missionary colleges, which combined austerity and observance with an active service, itinerant missions, and which remained highly valued throughout the eighteenth century. The order’s other foundations were convents in prospering Bajío towns that could make compelling cases for why they would benefit from the Franciscans’ inexpensive services. That these post-1730 foundations were more limited in their scope was not due to a lack of interest or support in New Spain. Local residents, city leaders, and donors, along with many bishops and even some viceroys, continued to champion new foundations, but the crown’s disinclination to issue licenses for them meant that many attempted foundations came to naught. Similarly, populations of friars began to fall when royal decrees of the 1730s and 1750s required provinces to limit the admission of new novices. As the number of entrants fell by an average of several friars per year in most provinces, the number of friars dying surpassed the number of those entering, and populations plummeted. The exception to these declines occurred in the Carmelites’ province. As they did with new convent foundations, Carmelites took advantage of their good standing with the crown and won concessions to increase admissions. After a brief dip in the 1750s and 1760s, they were averaging by the end of the eighteenth century more professants per year than they had in the 1730s. The state’s policies regarding admissions of friars and approval of new convents were closely related. The number of friars living in convents should be determined by the convents’ income, a point made clearly by an official in the state-sponsored provincial inspection: “It is not necessary that each convent has a large number of individuals, if the rents are not sufficient to provide for all their necessities.”144 As a result of this policy, Observant Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians, who were allowed few new convents and had lost so many others along with their doctrinas, had their numbers severely restricted. The Mercedarians were only allowed to establish hospicios that supported few friars, so they,

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too, had to check admissions but not as drastically as other orders. Consequently, at least through the 1770s the decline in the province’s overall population was slight. The policy had happier results for the Carmelites, who, not coincidentally, were the only order during this time to found new conventos and to increase admissions of friars.145 The effects of these policies were hardly uniform, and at the opposite ends of the spectrum were the Observant Franciscans and the Discalced Carmelites. The Franciscans had held and then lost more doctrinas than any other order; with the exception of missionary colleges, they had founded but three new urban convents (all in one province) since the early seventeenth century; they were contemplating closing their novitiates because of the lack of good aspirants; and, by the end of the century, their numbers of friars had dipped to new lows. In contrast, the Carmelites found the circumstances of the late eighteenth century more to their liking. They had not lost any doctrinas, they had recently founded four convents, their novitiates were full, and their total population of friars was growing. The Franciscan provincial recognized the difference between the situations of the two orders, when, in a 1771 letter to Charles III, he bitterly complained of unfair differences in the crown’s treatment of them. “Is there no injustice in that the Carmelite friars establish new foundations and the Franciscans cannot maintain themselves, as Your Majesty orders, in the convents that they built at the cost of their sweat and labors?”146 As damaging as state policies could be to mendicant orders, not all the problems faced by these institutions were caused directly by those policies. By the end of the century, finding young men to enter these orders had become something of a challenge, and some prelates even considered closing the novitiates. Although many blamed the problems on young men ill suited to the rigors of religious life, these same complaints had been heard throughout the past two centuries since friars like Mendieta had lamented the passing of the sixteenth century’s “golden age.” In fact, records of definitory meetings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries demonstrate a regular stream of friars being punished for transgressions such as playing games of chance in the convent or sneaking out at night to attend parties.147 But at least through the mid-eighteenth century there were also sufficient numbers of friars who, human frailties aside, became priests, held offices, and worked in their communities. The root of the problem was that with the new challenges of the eighteenth century, most mendicant orders could not provide all the benefits they once did. The loss of jobs and income that accompanied the secularization of doctrinas made entering the Franciscan, Dominican, or Augustinian order a less attractive career path for many men. This situation was only

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exacerbated by royal orders curbing friars’ privileges, such as limits on ecclesiastic immunity or the Pragmatic Sanction of 1792, which prevented members of religious orders from receiving inheritances. With smaller pools of applicants, orders had less choice in the men who were entering. Another factor frequently mentioned in the increased troubles of male orders during this time was the growth of “enlightened” or more secular ideas within New Spanish society. These ideas first took root among urban and educated populations, and since these were the same people whose sons entered the orders, such ideas might be assumed to have had a significant impact on the orders’ declining numbers. Without completely discounting their effects, it is, however, difficult to see them as a primary cause. Not only was the timing of population drops closely tied to state regulations but also the Carmelites’ success in recruiting new friars indicates that an order that had the financial resources and royal support to provide careers for young men could still fill a novitiate. Moreover, the orders continued to play vital roles in the daily lives of urban residents, suggesting a crucial divide between the orders’ institutional challenges and their ongoing relevance to society. To understand the roles that orders took up in New Spain and why they continued to matter to its residents, the next chapter turns to what gave mendicants purpose and direction, their identities and institutes.

chapter two

Distinguishing Habits Mendicant Identities and Institutes These apostolic men of one or another religion, all so much of one religion and in everything such brothers, that only the diversity in the colors of their habits distinguished them. —Fr. Juan Bautista Méndez, Crónica, 1685

; After the male orders in the city of Oaxaca had attended ceremonies at the founding of a new Carmelite church in 1699, a city councilman, Rodrigo de la Chica, recalled “the pleasing spring formed by the diverse colors of the habits of the Sacred Religions.”1 That same year in Mexico City, Thomás de la Fuente Salazar, the prior of the Dominican Third Order, described the orders at the dedication of a new church as “a beautiful, pleasing variety of colors so different . . . each one with their sacred habits and illustrious emblems.”2 These two men were hardly alone in distinguishing the orders by how their members dressed. The habit clearly signaled that its wearer belonged to a particular corporate body that was as distinctive as its dress, so it meant something different to wear the white and black habit of the Dominicans rather than the brown and white of the Carmelites. Although both Rodrigo de la Chica and Thomás de la Fuente recognized these differences, they also recognized that the habit wearers had enough in common to treat them as a collective group participating in the ceremonies. Together, these orders formed “a pleasing variety of colors” and a “pleasing spring.” This chapter sets out the essential characteristics of New Spain’s mendicant orders, clarifying what made each one unique, what they shared, and how they adapted those characteristics to the circumstances they encountered in New Spain. New Spain’s mendicant orders possessed corporate identities that were rooted in their traditions, histories, and

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theologies.3 Mendicants self-consciously articulated these identities, in the case of their habits literally wearing them on their sleeves, but also showcasing them in sermons, art, architecture, histories, and devotional works. To some degree, an order’s identity was global, shared by members of the order the world over, but it was also malleable, and friars in New Spain adapted it to meet their particular situations. These identities helped establish an order’s direction, shaped what services it provided, and guided the devotions it promoted. Three topics illuminate how corporate identities were shared and unique, global and local: family metaphors, institutes, and comparisons to other male religious. The orders presented themselves as impeccably pedigreed families linked through patriarchs, Mary, and their global histories. Although these familial depictions are useful for delineating ­orders’ defining characteristics, they offer less information on what was particular to New Spain. This question is better addressed through the orders’ institutes, which have more to say about what roles orders sought out when they came to the New World and why they sought them. Mendicant institutes and genealogies hint at some of the similarities among the orders’ identities, but these come into starker relief when compared to other branches of the church. For example, when Rodrigo de la Chica and Thomás de la Fuente grouped habit wearers together, were they including Jesuits and members of hospital orders? Mendicant orders shared enough to speak of a common mendicant identity that existed alongside individual corporate identities.

mendicant families Friars thought of their orders as families with heavenly genealogies that connected friars to the eternal across time and space through divine or saintly ancestors. These sacred families were sometimes expressed in art as family trees, two of the most outstanding examples of which appear in the Franciscan church in Puebla and the Dominican church in Oaxaca.4 The Franciscan painting Genealogía franciscana (1731) depicts a tree teeming with illustrious members of the order on a canvas large enough to cover a good portion of a church wall (Figure 5). The tree’s trunk sprouts from Francis’s chest, and its many branches bear the fruits of saints, popes, and other particularly holy friars and nuns from throughout the world, including the leader of the Franciscans’ first mission to New Spain, Martín de Valencia. In the middle of the tree, directly above the trunk of Francis, the branches part to make room for Christ and Mary in the advocation of the Immaculate Conception.5 The arresting

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figure 5 Genealogía franciscana (1731) from the Franciscan church in Puebla.

relief of Saint Dominic’s family tree, located on the ceiling just inside the door of the Dominicans’ Oaxaca church, greets visitors, drawing their eyes upward amid the baroque richness of one of the order’s most ornate churches. Although the tree has since changed with restorations, Francisco Burgoa described how his Dominican kinfolk looked in the mid-seventeenth century: The hollow space of the lower choir (that is, in the concave part of the dome) corresponds to the secular and noble lineage of our father Saint Dominic; Don Félix de Guzmán [Dominic’s father] reclines over the door’s interior arch and from his chest is born the illustrious trunk that, among its flowering branches, has produced in bunches glorious Guzmáns, that have spread extensively . . . with stems of titles and scepters.6

Also present are Christ and Mary, who in the original version watched over their family from nearby locations.7 In each of these arboreal depictions of its mendicant dynasty, the tree stemmed from the order’s founder and spread its branches to encompass a membership distributed across centuries and continents. Generations of saints and friars were thus tightly linked through a sacred genealogy that began with the founders.

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These global families were also linked to the sacred through the presence of powerful saints, Mary, and Christ. Notably, these family trees were not hidden away in the recesses of the convent’s cloisters but were featured prominently in large and important churches. They served as reminders not only to the friars themselves but to all who entered just who these deep-rooted and honorable clans were. Although mendicant families were depicted as eternal, their structures were built on contemporary ideas about families. New Spain’s mendicant orders were patriarchies presided over by the powerful figures of their founders. In one sense these structures paralleled Spanish society, in which the king ruled over his subjects “as a father who brings up his children with love and punishes them with mercy,” but the royal model was itself based upon the heavenly example of Christ and God the Father, who reigned in heaven.8 Although the family’s leadership was dominated by men, women were not excluded. Female saints, nuns, and other holy women figured, sometimes prominently, in the family tree, as did Teresa of Avila, who frequently appeared as the head of the Discalced Carmelite family. Yet the leading female role went to Mary, who starred in stories of the orders’ foundings and who, in her various advocations, served as mother and special protector of the family. Friars also used contemporary ideas about blood relations to explain how father patriarchs and mother Mary established the nature of mendicant families. Beliefs that parents physically transmitted specific virtues and attributes to their children meant that these figures were more than leaders of the family and models of virtue; they also infused their exceptional qualities into generations of friars. For instance, Pedro Oroz explained how he could infer from the virtuous life of Martín de Valencia that his parents were good Christians: “According to what is written, the good tree is the one which bears good fruit. And in another place it says: The good and virtuous son listens to the teachings of his father. It very rarely happens that a virtuous son comes forth from vice-ridden parents, like the rose among thorns.”9 This powerful concept connected generations of friars back to their order’s key figures, and friars renowned for their virtue were especially likely to be referred to as sons of their patriarch or sons of Christ. Under this system, friars could have many fathers—older generations of venerable friars, saints of the order, their patriarch, and Christ—so that links in this genealogy were not confined to traditionally sequential generations but involved multiple connections that created a picture of a closely connected and saintly whole. In taking the habit, men were born into this new family, and they were supposed to spurn ties to their birth family in favor of their new spiritual one.10 When Discalced Franciscans and Carmelites professed, they even discarded their family names, taking a

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saint’s name in recognition of their new family. Thus, Rodrigo Yáñez, adventurer, became Rodrigo de Santa Catalina, Carmelite friar.11 As members of these new families, men would follow the teachings of their spiritual fathers and continue the virtuous works of their ancestors. Each of New Spain’s mendicant orders used the family imagery of patriarchs (fathers), Marian advocations (mothers), and emblems (family crests). These familial depictions pushed hard to establish an order’s essential characteristics and served as constant reminders to New Spain’s faithful of what it meant to be associated with such celebrated families. Patriarchs The most frequently employed symbol of an order was its founder patriarch. Statues of these figures in church facades welcomed people, paintings on interior walls animated their life stories, and sermons celebrated their characteristics. Picture a patriarch’s feast day being celebrated with all possible magnificence, a church illuminated with hundreds of candles, an altar covered in flowers, a cadre of priests dressed in their finest garments, professional musicians accompanying the choir. The crowds who attended these spectacles gazed upon images of the saint and listened to the preacher explain the saint’s special attributes and how his singular gifts made him a figure especially worthy of veneration. On these occasions, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians spotlighted figures whose portrayals maintained their essential characteristics throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but changing circumstances within the Mercedarian and Discalced Carmelite families transformed how they depicted their patriarchs. Francis was best known for his humility, poverty, and austerity, and he was often depicted with a shabby, patched habit and described as severe in his fastings and disciplines. Although he was not a priest or an academic, he preached by example, edifying the faithful with his virtue and devotion. In a 1716 sermon the Franciscan Fr. Iván de Torres explained what it was that definitively separated Francis from other saints: “Many resemble Christ. Some in patience, others in poverty, others in humility, but in the habit, only Francis.” What, he asked, was this habit of Christ? It was the stigmata.12 Because of Francis’s special devotion to Christ’s Passion, Christ had rewarded Francis with a bloody commemoration of his own sufferings, giving him the same five wounds (hands, feet, and torso) that Christ suffered on the cross. Franciscans claimed Francis’s bloody stigmata as a sign of the special relationship between Christ and the Franciscan family; they vigorously asserted its singularity as a gift from Christ and tried to prevent anyone else from depicting their

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saints with it. Discalced Franciscans occasionally claimed an additional patriarch alongside Francis, Pedro de Alcántara, a leading figure in the Franciscans’ sixteenth-century Spanish reform movement. Although he was depicted as a sort of founding figure for the Discalced branch and although Discalced Franciscans prominently celebrated his feast day, he never came close to matching the prominence of Francis. Dominic was most typically celebrated as a learned preacher and soldier against heresy, and allegories of him defending the walls of the church were particularly widespread. When Juan José de la Cruz y Moya described him as protecting the church with both hands, he placed an olive branch of mercy in one hand and the sword of justice in the other, representing his dual role as the foremost of preachers and as the first Inquisitor General.13 Although Dominic’s role as an Inquisitor was featured commonly enough, most people, including Fr. Alonso del Castillo, focused on the eminence and fame of the saint’s preaching: “Prodigious is this singularity—that one does not read about any other saint—of my Fathers Saint Dominic and Christ alone, that he sweat blood preaching to redeem the sinner.”14 Augustine was unique among the patriarchs in that he was a doctor of the church and the only mendicant patriarch to have been a bishop. As a result, he could be celebrated in ways that had little in common with those of other patriarchs. For example, although poverty was a distinguishing characteristic of Francis, other patriarchs were also considered poor—it just was not as central to their identities. However, no mendicant patriarch other than Augustine was depicted with a bishop’s miter or crosier. Augustine’s episcopal characteristics clearly set him apart, but Augustinians also sought to elevate his great learning above that of other patriarchs. Writings and sermons depicted him as the teacher of the order and praised his great wisdom, which could only have come as a special gift from Christ. One preacher reminded his audience that as learned as the other doctors of the church were, Augustine was chief among them: “Yes, listeners, yes: in the choir of the Doctors of the Church are those renowned men who, while they lived, were brilliant lights that with their brightness enlightened the world; my glorious Father is not among these; he is higher than them all.”15 During the Mercedarians’ first decades in New Spain, their founder, Pedro Nolasco, was not yet a saint nor had he been beatified. Mercedarians’ efforts to remedy this awkward situation resulted in an outpouring of biographies, engravings, and hagiographies meant to promote his case, and he was eventually canonized in 1628. In the process, Nolasco’s image was overhauled.16 His work freeing Christian captives remained central to these new depictions, but now he took on scholarly characteristics as well. Rather than being depicted as a simple layman exchanging money

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for captives, he was represented as a preacher seeking to redeem Christian captives as well as convert their heretic captors. In his new image, he was no longer limited to holding objects of redemption, such as keys or broken chains, but often a book as well (Figure 6). In the work of Agustín de Andrade he even appeared as a sort of saintly jack-of-all-trades. He was a “loving father of the poor, solicitous nurse of the suffering, liberator of Captives, Sacred Founder and Patriarch of a divine institute . . . impregnable Column of the faith, bitter defender of the catholic church, Zealot of the honor of God, most eminent Preacher of Christ Crucified.”17 Although the scope of Nolasco’s characteristics expanded, sermons at his feast days continued to emphasize the hallmark feature of his redemptive work. For example, the sermon on his feast day in San Luis Potosí in 1762 told how Nolasco had once found himself short of money to free all the captives he encountered on a ransoming expedition, so he offered

figure 6 An eighteenth-century statue of San Pedro Nolasco outside the Mercedarian church in Celaya.

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himself in their place. He suffered at the hands of his captors, but he made “money out of his blood in order to redeem the captives.” By redeeming others with his blood, the preacher marveled, Nolasco was so very much like Christ that it was difficult to distinguish one from the other.18 When identifying the key figure of their order, Discalced Carmelites had more than one option. When someone spoke of the order’s patriarch, they might mean Elias, Teresa of Avila, or John of the Cross. According to Carmelites, Elias’s main claim to fame was that he was the first to do certain virtuous things. As a prophet, he anticipated Christ and Mary, was the first to honor them, and was the first to dedicate himself to God by taking the vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. “Do you want to know who is Elias?” asked Fr. Manuel de Jesús María in a 1699 sermon. “Elias is the first Founder of the Religion, and the first that made the three essential vows that constitute it. . . . Elias is powerful on earth and in heaven.”19 A founder who preceded Christ was, however, a contentious choice, which was one reason Discalced Carmelites often preferred the leaders of the sixteenth-century reform movement that established their branch of the order: Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Teresa was an enormously popular figure, especially within the Hispanic world, and with increasing frequency after her canonization in 1622 she served as the order’s figurehead and was sometimes referred to as the order’s matriarch. As a nun, she was celebrated in terms different from those of other orders’ male patriarchs, such as for her prayer and reclusion rather than for learning, preaching, charitable acts, or other active ministries. She was, however, an inspirational figure, described in one sermon as a “sacred blaze who inflamed more hearts in the world than Februa lit with all its bright fires,” and her mysticism defined her in the minds of many contemporaries.20 Her counterpart, John of the Cross, garnered the title of patriarch less often than Teresa or even Elias. John, a fellow mystic known for his devotion to the cross, never rivaled Teresa in fame, and he appeared in tandem with Teresa more often than he did as a stand-alone figure. Even at the Carmelites’ lavish and carefully orchestrated celebrations of his canonization (in 1726, more than a century after Teresa’s), he had to share the spotlight with Teresa. The order’s Mexico City church exhibited their images side by side on a specially constructed altar while the main patio featured them in a model of the shrine of Guadalupe, marching together on pilgrimage. The use of a woman as the primary symbol of a male order created some challenges for the Carmelites since a female head of household did not fit neatly into a patriarchal family model. Carmelites managed this potential shortcoming by choosing Elias or John when Teresa was an awkward or inappropriate option, but outside the order, Teresa’s ambivalent status could sometimes lead to her exclusion. For example, in

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the Jesuits’ magnificent church at Tepotzotlán, a retablo just to the right of the main altar featured a group portrayal of patriarchs. The order’s patriarch, Ignatius of Loyola, stood at the center surrounded by the mendicant patriarchs: Francis, Dominic, Augustine, and Nolasco. Teresa, however, stood apart, representing the Carmelites on a different retablo.21 Despite such drawbacks, Teresa’s tremendous popularity and widely recognized virtue made her the most common choice as the order’s symbol. Poor and stigmatic Francis, preacher against heresy Dominic, learned doctor and bishop Augustine, redeemer Nolasco, prophet Elias, and ­mystic-matriarch Teresa—these were the heads of New Spain’s mendicant families. Their presence was most conspicuous in their home churches, of course, but New Spain’s residents encountered them elsewhere, too. As suggested by the Jesuit altar at Tepotzotlán, patriarchs’ images populated other churches, where sermons might also include these visiting dignitaries in their tales. Wherever they appeared, they maintained their essential characteristics. When the Dominican Fr. Diego de Gorospe stepped to the podium on Dominic’s feast day in 1685, he asked his audience to consider where one might search for the complete Law of the Church. He suggested that it would be found in the patriarchs, that is, in the wisdom of Augustine who with his incomparable erudition made his writing canon to the Church and knife to heresy; in the extraordinary austerity of a Teresa, who with the Nail of the Cross worked her repose into torments of the Passion; in the admirable patience of a Nolasco, who in the shackles of captivity bound the privileges of Redeemer; in the inflamed spirit of an Ignatius, who with his Company, enlightened with his light and conquered with his zeal worlds that needed him; in the religious asceticism of a John of God, whose charity the Lord magnified in worthiness, aggrandizing it, putting him at his side like a Son.22

Patriarchs’ guest appearances in other churches were not necessarily for the purpose of promoting that particular saint to the faithful. Fr. Diego’s sermon demonstrates a strategy preachers commonly used to fete their own patriarch and order. Although Fr. Diego’s sermon sang the praises of other patriarchs, his interpretation was also self-serving in the sense that he was linking his own patriarch to the “singular” virtues of the others. For instance, he explained to his audience how to paint Dominic’s perfection. His head would exhibit the wisdom of Augustine, his body the Carmelite “armor of penitence,” his evangelic feet the chains of Nolasco, and his hands the triumphant palms of Jesuit founder Ignatius Loyola. He would also display the poverty of Francis and the brave countenance of John of God, but he would be wearing the Dominican habit in which the Virgin dressed him.23 Fr. Diego’s Dominic was thus equal to each saint’s most illustrious virtue, a compilation of

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the best each had to offer. But perfection wore a particular garb: the Dominican habit that Dominic had given to his sons. The overall effect of such presentations was to depict one’s patriarch as a first among equals, someone who shared the highest attributes of important saints but with his own singularities mixed in. Such claims had to be made carefully, and an overly exuberant preacher who went too far in his claims could find himself under the Inquisition’s scrutiny. This is what happened to Fr. Domingo Morosa, a Franciscan whose sermons on the 1721 and 1722 feast days of Francis in San Luis Potosí earned him several months in an Inquisition cell and a sentence forbidding him to preach for four years or about Francis ever again.24 The long list of his suspect propositions included that only Francis heard God in heaven, that he was equal to Christ, that despite not being a priest he remitted sins and conferred glory, and that he had saved at least one-third of all men who had ever lived. Fr. Domingo’s first sermon centered on the idea that God had given Francis the perfections of all saints and angels: In Francis is found in excess the love of the Seraphs, the wisdom of the Cherubs and Doctors . . . , the Faith of the Patriarchs; double the light of the Prophets . . . , the excess of the Apostles and saints . . . , the completeness of the martyrs . . . , the penitence of all the hermits, greater power than the Apostles and Saints together. In sum, Francis is an entity so complete that all the mysteries of grace and of glory are found in him: like in a man-God.25

In the second sermon, Fr. Domingo suggested a method for measuring Francis’s greatness. Put him on one balance of a scale and put all the virtues of all members of the church, including angels and saints, on the other, “and you will all clearly see how his prerogatives weigh more than those of all others.” The reason was, he explained, that Francis contained all the virtues of the church, but no other saint had his singularities.26 Not surprisingly, perhaps, it was the prior of the Augustinian convent in San Luis Potosí who denounced Fr. Domingo to the Holy Office. Which patriarchs appeared in a sermon depended on local context, in particular, which orders had convents in that location. Including figureheads of local branches of the church was generally accepted practice and served as a politically expedient, if not genuine, expression of respect and brotherhood. An example of how the practice worked can be seen in the Carmelite Fr. Andrés de San Miguel’s 1698 sermon at the Celaya Franciscans’ celebration of their founder. Fr. Andrés referred to Francis as “a Saint Peter, Prince of the Church; an Augustine, Sun of all the World; an Elias, a zealous promoter of God’s honor; and a Teresa, Reformer of his primitive spirit; . . . a Saint John of God, father of the poor.”27 This combination of saints is interesting for what it contains—two

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Carmelites (an extra plug for the preacher’s order) and Saint Peter—as well as for what it does not—Dominicans, Mercedarians, and Jesuits. At the time of the sermon, Celaya’s male religious included Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites, and juaninos (members of the hospital order, Saint John of God), as well as secular priests, hence the inclusion of Saint Peter. There was no Dominican convent, and the Jesuits and Mercedarians had not yet founded their houses there. Local selectivity could also be found in altars. For instance, the high altar in the Augustinians’ Valladolid church included images of Francis, Saint John of God, Teresa, Nolasco, Loyola, and Augustine—the orders with houses there. Dominic, like his order, was absent.28 The redeploying of patriarchs in different settings, churches, and festivities made them some of the most visible members of society. Through a process similar to what David d’Auray has called the “drip-drip method of inculcating beliefs,” audiences became well versed in the subject of patriarchs.29 The frequent references to these men, the retellings of their stories, and the associations of them with particular virtues taught, through repetition, who these men were and why they were important. Marian Advocations No heavenly figure had a wider following in colonial society than Mary. She took on many roles, but devotion to her ran especially deep in her role as mother—the Mother of God certainly, but also the special protector and intercessor par excellence for her children on earth. Mendicants spoke of her as their order’s mother, and founding myths told how she gave life to an order by choosing its founders and instructing them, as mother to son, in what to do. Although no order devoted itself exclusively to one Marian advocation—she appeared in mendicant churches in multiple forms, including Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Light, Our Lady of Succor, and Our Lady of Solitude—most were affiliated with one advocation that was theirs. These special devotions recalled the particular ways that Mary interacted with the order and forged maternal bonds with her friar sons. Friars were quick to extol the powers of their advocation, which offered unique protections that were mediated through the order. During the sixteenth century, images that dressed Mary in the apparel of specific orders surged in popularity; chief among these were the advocations of Our Lady of Mercy and Our Lady of Carmen.30 Mercedarians heavily promoted Our Lady of Mercy as their holy founder, mother, and protector and asserted that their power originated with her. According to Mercedarian tradition, when Mary appeared to Nolasco and King Jaime, she stipulated that friars in the new order would dress in the same white habit that she wore in her apparition. “Only Mary gave us the habit, an-

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nounced to us her color, and gave her name to her Religion,” claimed Mercedarian preacher Fr. Ignacio Rodríguez de Sosa. Fr. Ignacio continued that Mary also counseled that men who wore her habit were to follow her example of faith, hope, and charity by attending to captives, “visiting them in living faith, in hope of health, and with true charity.”31 Mary in the advocation of our Lady of Mercy thus appeared as the guiding figure who gave the order its identity and purpose and who imbued it with her virtues. At the same time, Our Lady of Mercy had little presence apart from the Mercedarians. For example, although images of Our Lady of Mercy figured prominently in every Mercedarian church, she rarely appeared in churches outside the order.32 The advocation and the order were inexorably linked. Our Lady of Carmen similarly garnered most of her patronage from within her namesake order. Dressed in the brown habit of the Carmelites, she was often depicted holding her protective cloak over friars of her order. She also wore the Carmelite scapular, which according to ­seventeenth- and eighteenth-century accounts of her miracles, was a source of immense spiritual power.33 This scapular, a small piece of paper or cloth worn around the neck, represented Mary’s promise to all those who wore it (Figure 7). If its faithful wearers completed all the required

figure 7 Scapular of Our Lady of Carmen. The front (left) depicts the order’s emblem; the back (right), a flower as a Marian symbol. This particular scapular belonged to Don Juan Pablo de Echegoyen. When Inquisitors confiscated his belongings, they found “carefully wrapped in paper a scapular embroidered with colored silk and gold with the emblem of Our Lady of Carmen.” source : AGN INQ , vol. 1013, exp. 1.

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prayers, penance, and services, they would enjoy “the Singular Privilege called Sabatino by which their souls would be succored or freed as soon as possible, especially the Saturday after their death, from the pains of Purgatory and transferred to eternal Blessedness.”34 Mary herself had brought the scapular from heaven, giving it to thirteenth-century reformer Simon Stock to share with the world. According to a 1788 sermon, it would assist its wearers, “to single them out as her children, to defend them in dangers, to succor them in death, and to relieve them in Purgatory.”35 This promise was depicted in one of the most common types of images of her, in which either she or the Christ child in her arms held out scapulars to souls waiting in the flames of purgatory. In contrast to Our Lady of Mercy and Our Lady of Carmen, the Marian devotions most closely associated with Franciscans and Dominicans had, by the sixteenth century, gained acceptance far beyond the orders that originated them. Franciscans promoted Mary in her advocation of the Immaculate Conception, an advocation founded on the belief that Mary had been conceived without the stain of original sin. That Jesus’ conception was free from original sin was unquestioned Catholic doctrine, but whether or not Mary’s was had been a point of theological debate since the fourteenth century, when the Franciscan Duns Scotus laid out the arguments that came to underpin most immaculist positions. Despite significant opposition to this doctrine, especially from Dominicans, Franciscans became its leading promoters. The order made her its official patron, and images of her figured prominently in its churches. By the sixteenth century many Augustinians, Carmelites, and Mercedarians also defended the idea of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, and during the seventeenth century the Spanish kings took up the cause before the pope. What had begun as a primarily Franciscan devotion had developed a wide following throughout the Hispanic world, but even as Mary Immaculate’s popularity mushroomed, she retained her close association with Franciscans to the point that images of her commonly included Francis or Franciscans, even in non-Franciscan churches.36 The Marian advocation most closely connected to the Dominican order was Our Lady of the Rosary; chapels and confraternities dedicated to her could be found in all Dominican convents. Dominicans were the chief adherents of praying the rosary and had been behind its growth into a broadly accepted devotional practice during the fifteenth century. Dominican tradition, as developed around this same time, described the rosary as Mary’s gift to Dominic, and images depicted Our Lady of the Rosary offering her gift of grace and protection to the faithful. She, or sometimes the baby Jesus in her arms, extended a rosary to the audience or to souls in purgatory, who, hopeful, grasped at their salvation. Our

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Lady of the Rosary’s patronage spread throughout Catholic Christendom, far beyond the Hispanic world, where the core of Mary Immaculate’s popularity resided. In a 1690 sermon at the dedication of the “eighth wonder of the world,” the dazzlingly baroque chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary in Puebla, Fr. Juan de Gorospe described the many ways that Dominicans worked on her behalf, collecting alms and spreading her devotion among the faithful. In turn, she repaid them with healthier bodies and souls, prosperous haciendas, and glory for the order. Although she had a special relationship with Dominicans, her protection was available to anyone who maintained a devotion to her and her rosary, for she was “everyone’s advocate, everyone’s patron, everyone’s succor.”37 Unlike New Spain’s other mendicant orders, the Augustinians were not strongly associated with a particular Marian devotion. Individual convents may have had important images, but these were of a variety of advocations; furthermore, their most important images in New Spain were devoted to Christ.38 Augustinians clearly shared their contemporaries’ strong devotions to Mary, and, according to seventeenth-century chronicler José Sicardo, the Mexico Province gave special attention to the feast of its patron, the Nativity of Our Lady.39 But this was not an advocation with a close or unique connection to the order. Augustinians of New Spain did not seem to have had the same interest as their fellow mendicants in promoting one special Marian devotion that was primarily theirs. For example, according to traditions of the order, the girdle or belt worn as part of the exterior habit had come as a gift from Mary, much as the Mercedarians gained their habit, the Carmelites their scapular, and the Dominicans their rosary. Friars occasionally recounted miracles worked through the belt: Juan de Grijalva told of the belt’s association with the early history of Our Lady of Remedios outside Mexico City, concluding that she was behind many miracles worked through the belt. Still, the Augustinian belt did not figure prominently in art or sermons, nor was it ever widely associated with the order. Augustinian dedication to Mary instead took multiple forms with few claims to exclusivity. Whatever form Marian devotion took, from the shared devotions of the Augustinians to the order-specific, habit-wearing advocations of the Mercedarians and Carmelites, Mary was an important member of mendicant families. As mother to her friar sons, she passed along key elements of the order’s identity, such as habits and rosaries, and helped establish the order’s purposes. Friars promised great things would come from allying with their order’s advocation, sometimes in ways as controversial as their most extravagant statements about their patriarchs. For example, a novena for Our Lady of Mercy included an instance when she saved an unbaptized admirer from hell, a proposition that earned censure from the

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Inquisition.40 Similarly, the Carmelites’ grand claims about the sabatino privilege drew fire from churchmen outside the order. Such claims demonstrated friars’ respect for Mary’s powerful protection, protection that extended to all who joined her families, not just those who professed as friars but all who wore her scapular, used her rosary, followed her injunctions, defended her, and devoted themselves to her. Emblems Aspects of the orders’ family histories were featured in blazons, or emblems that the orders used to identify themselves. Similar to a secular family’s coat of arms, these blazons often adorned churches, convents, habits, and images as a way of identifying them as belonging to a particular order with its history and traditions. Franciscans used two different emblems, each of which emphasized Francis’s close connection to Christ through the stigmata. One featured the bare arm of Christ crossed with Francis’s arm in its habit, and each had its palm open, displaying its stigmata (Figure 8a). Completing the imagery, in between and supported by the two arms, was a cross. The other depicted the five wounds of Christ’s (and therefore Francis’s) Passion: the four punctures of the hands and feet and the slash of the torso (Figure 8b). Dominicans used a black-andwhite fleur-de-lis cross that derived its most distinctive symbolism from the colors involved (Figure 8c). The same colors as the Dominican habit, the black and white also referenced the colors of a dog that appeared in a dream Dominic’s mother had before his birth. The dog carried a flaming torch in its mouth, and by this she knew her son would be a great preacher, bringing the light of Christ to the world. Some versions of the blazon depicted the dog nearby or framed the fleur-de-lis cross with a rosary, thereby connecting the order to its special Marian devotion. Augustinians adorned their buildings with images of a pierced heart (Figure 8d). The image alluded to the pivotal moment in Augustine’s life, his conversion, which he described in Confessions: “You have pierced our hearts with the arrow of Your love, and our minds were pierced with the arrows of Your words.”41 The Carmelite blazon showed a mountain topped by a cross, representing the order’s origins on Mount Carmel. figure 8 (opposite) (a and b) Franciscan emblems from the facade of the Discalced Franciscans’ Oaxaca church. Photo: Natalia Garofalo-Iberico; (c) Dominican emblem from the Castillo de Chapultepec in Mexico City. Photo: Robert C. Schwaller; (d) Augustinian emblem from the facade of the order’s Querétaro church; (e) Carmelite emblem from the facade of the order’s Querétaro church; (f) Mercedarian emblem from the facade of the order’s Oaxaca church. Photo: Natalia Garofalo-Iberico.

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The flaming sword emerging from the crown on top was the symbol most closely associated with Elias and alluded to the biblical story in Kings in which he overthrew the false prophets of Baal (Figure 8e). The Mercedarian emblem referred to the order’s foundation in Barcelona, its close connection to King Jaime and royal authority, and its work with captives (Figure 8f). The cross is that of the Barcelona cathedral where the order was formally instituted, and the four bars are sometimes interpreted as a symbol of the Aragonese crown and sometimes as jail bars, referencing their work with captives. Each emblem thus depicted the defining moment in the creation of the order’s identity: Francis’s stigmata, the dream foretelling Dominic’s preaching against heresy, Augustine’s conversion, Elias’s triumph at Mount Carmel, and Nolasco’s founding of an order to redeem captives. Heavenly figures participated directly in each of these events, and blazons worked as a visible reminder of the orders’ divinely inspired callings. On this symbolic level, emblems offered shorthand versions of the complex histories the orders constructed for themselves. These histories may or may not have been widely understood by those who viewed the emblems, but those viewers would almost certainly have recognized and associated the emblems with their respective orders. Prominently placed on the outside of churches, emblems functioned like signs, much like heraldry placed on homes of New Spain’s finest citizens. They identified which church it was and whether a Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian, Carmelite, or Mercedarian family lived there. The overriding message of this family imagery—patriarchs, ­Marian advocations, and emblems—was the singularity of each order. Each claimed holy and virtuous patriarchs who instilled their orders with their incomparable holiness and unique virtues, close bonds with Mary who bestowed her extraordinary protections, and noble lineages with sacred origins. Despite such heavy promotion of each family’s singularities, there were moments of recognition when the orders shared some meaningful resemblances. “All, all the Sacred Families are the golden keys that Christ entrusted to the precious Crown of Saint Peter, in order to guard and defend his Church,” preached the Carmelite Fr. Nicolás de Jesús María at the festivities honoring Thomas Aquinas in the Dominicans’ Oaxaca church in 1733.42 These may have been individual families with their own histories and genealogies, but friars recognized that their orders were linked to each other through connections to the sacred, especially through Christ and Mary. Although Mary may have appeared in different advocations, all emphasized her mercy and protection (as opposed to, for instance, her suffering at her son’s crucifixion). Even the orders’ patriarchs, who as figures of emulation best described his order’s par-

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ticular attributes, shared more than some common traits. One person who recognized this was the secular priest Antonio Díaz de Godoi. In a sermon dedicated to Oratorian founder San Felipe Neri, he celebrated the patriarchs as shining lights of example: despite “being so different in their lights, only one spirit animates them.”43 These patriarchs, all animated by the spirit of the Eternal Father, would assuredly have passed this trait on to their friar sons. These depictions of New Spain’s mendicant families were rooted in the beliefs and traditions of the orders as global entities. The patriarchs were all Old World figures, the Marian advocations originated in Europe, and the stories depicted in emblems also took place on the other side of the Atlantic. Family identities were not particular to New Spain any more than they were confined to the orders’ European branches. They were universal and, like the family trees portrayed in the Franciscans’ Puebla church and the Dominicans’ Oaxaca church, extended wherever members of the ­orders went. American branches of the family thus shared foundations with their European counterparts, but they were not mirror images of each other. One reason was that orders adjusted these identities to meet their particular circumstances, adjustments that were reflected in their institutes.

institutes In 1773, as part of an inspection of his Mexico Province, the Carmelite Fr. Manuel de la Ascención sent a questionnaire to each house, inquiring “if institute, Rule and vows are followed perfectly.”44 Each of these three standards helped define an order and how its friars were to live and work, but only its Rule and vows were established in official documents. These formal statements, however, did not strongly differentiate one order from another since all took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and since Rules sometimes shared common origins. Instead, the less formally defined institute best characterized an order’s place and purposes in the world. Institutes encompassed the orders’ defining features as well as how they adapted those features to the circumstances of particular times and places. As such, they bridged the orders’ more general family identities to their local status. The term came from the Latin institutum, meaning “a purpose, intention, design; an arrangement, plan; mode of life, habits, practices, manners; a regulation, ordinance, institution; instruction; agreement, stipulation.”45 As an eighteenth-century dictionary defined it, institute was the “establishment, rule, particular form and method of life with firmness and immobility of estate, as is that of the Religions.”46 In other words, institutes were the particular ends to which the orders were devoted

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and, as John O’Malley applied it to the Jesuits, “the way they lived and worked.”47 Each order’s institute included a set of defining characteristics, but because institutes were malleable to local situations, different provinces within the same order might implement their shared institute differently. Observant, Discalced, and Missionary College Franciscans The two branches of the Franciscan family in New Spain, Observant and Discalced, were discrete yet closely connected institutions. They had their own constitutions, convents, and prelates but shared a patriarch, family crest, and Rule. They also shared a comisario general de la Nueva España, the official who oversaw all Franciscan friars and nuns in New Spain. In 1744 he sent a letter to the male convents in his jurisdiction explaining that different Franciscans would live their institute differently “because even though the observance of our Rule is one, the rigidness of convents and institutes tends to be different according to their functions.”48 The three categories established by this term were Observant Franciscans, Discalced Franciscans, and Franciscans from missionary colleges. These men were more likely to refer to themselves as belonging to different institutes rather than distinct orders. The Discalced Franciscan Baltasar de Medina, for instance, quoted the Observant Franciscan Juan de Torquemada, who had noted that the young men of Mexico City were taking the habit of the “Discalced institute.”49 The key differences among their institutes derived from their interpretations of poverty and their degrees of emphasis on active and contemplative responsibilities. A hallmark of any Franciscan institute was adherence to strict poverty. In a 1734 letter to the viceroy, Fr. Joseph de Messa reminded him of the Franciscans’ special status “as is their principal institute and profession the observance of true poverty.”50 In the case of the Observant Franciscans, a 1775 manual seeking to standardize the training of novices explained the importance of imbuing these young men with the values of the order, especially poverty. Novices must learn to live and desire it, the book explained, because “holy poverty is the principal foundation of our sacred religion.”51 Franciscans commonly used phrases such as “our poor institute” or “our institute of poverty,” and histories highlighted this virtue. In their chronicles of the Michoacán Province, both Isidro Félix de Espinosa (1746) and Pablo de la Concepción Beaumont (ca. 1780) used the same passage to describe the founding friars of their province: Following the orders that the Sovereign Master gave to his disciples when he sent them to preach among the people without bag, knapsack, shoes, a second tunic, nor other temporal succor . . . , they used all things in life with such moderation

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that each one portrayed himself in the effigy of an apostle. Evangelical poverty was always the most precious pearl with which they adorned themselves.52

Descriptions of Observant Franciscans also gave special place to their work with Indians. Friars heavily promoted their order as the original and most significant participant in the evangelization of New Spain and accentuated its special role as protectors of Indians. Chroniclers frequently noted times when native leaders specially requested that Franciscans found convents in their pueblos or when individuals went out of their way to seek their friars’ spiritual assistance. Fr. Juan Antonio Barros defended his Mexico Province to Bishop of Puebla Fabián y Fuero in 1767, claiming that in the Americas alone, “the sons of the human Seraphim [Saint Francis] had baptized more individuals than all the Apostles.”53 Even after the Franciscans lost most of their doctrinas in the mid-eighteenth century, they still considered evangelical work with Indians a core part of their institute. In 1770 Fr. Juan Antonio Barros, now guardian of the Puebla convent, wrote to his provincial about maintaining there a “sufficient number of friars to perform the ministries referred to by our institute in the confessional and pulpit and furthermore to missionize the pueblos.”54 The Observants’ work with Indians was born out of their strategy of “hurrying down” to the active life, a strategy that distinguished them from Discalced Franciscans, who emphasized conventual life instead. They were not to administer doctrinas, hold professorships, or accept ecclesiastical offices and were to limit their ministries to those who attended their churches. Their main responsibility was to live an exemplary life, praying, meditating on divine subjects, and occupying themselves in acts of penitence. In 1787, after the remains of some of his brothers had been moved to a new chapel in the Mexico convent, Fr. José Francisco Valdés offered a sermon that spoke of what these men had accomplished: They knew to confer with their reflection, with their withdrawal, and with their very heroic virtues, the very copious volume of estimation and honors that we are now enjoying. They were those who, animated by a truly Franciscan spirit, knew to maintain this very religious province, by rights which can truly and justly be called the most strict Regular Observance of Our Father Saint Francis. They were those who, hidden in the silent withdrawal of their cell and engaged in contemplation and various disciplinary exercises of humility and of penitence, offered themselves on the Altars of divine Charity for the love of mankind, as victims of expiation for the sins of man.55

Discalced Franciscans not only put more emphasis on the contemplative elements of their institute but also highlighted the extremes to which they took Franciscan poverty and asceticism. Their institute was, after all, born out of long-standing disputes within the Franciscan order about how

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strictly to observe poverty, and Medina saw the dieguinos (friars of New Spain’s San Diego Province) as descendants of thirteenth-century reformers of the order, whom he called “adherents of our Institute who live in all austerity and poverty in the mountains and solitary places.” Medina also noted proudly that all provinces of Discalced Franciscans, unlike Observant ones, followed the Franciscan Rule “without a single dispensation.” In other words, they were not excused from fasting, midnight prayers, or any form of observance because of their other duties as priests, prelates, or scholars.56 To illustrate how Discalced Franciscans went above and beyond the expectations of other orders in their rigorous asceticism, ­Medina offered the story of Fr. Christóval de los Mártyres. While traveling to another convent, he passed a night in a Dominican house. He spent the entire time in prayer and was still standing with his arms spread in the form of a cross at 2:00 a.m. when the Dominicans who had been watching him in awe got tired and went to bed.57 This sort of rigor seems to have earned the order a reputation among the general population, and in José Joaquin Fernández de Lizardi’s early nineteenth-century novel, The Mangy Parrot, the main character’s father called the Discalced Franciscans the strictest and most observant order. The main character surely came to agree with this statement after he entered the order and spent the next few months living under spartan conditions, arising in the middle of the night for prayers, eating plain food, and spending hours each day performing manual labor such as scrubbing floors.58 The dieguinos were not the only Franciscans in New Spain making claims to the most austere institute. In the comisario general’s aforementioned 1744 letter noting the different observances of Franciscan institutes, he wrote that he expected the most strict observance in the Colleges of the Propagation of the Faith. Both Observant and Discalced families maintained these missionary colleges, which had distinct purposes and separate organizational structures from those of other convents. The original 1737 constitutions of the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City specified how it was to differ from other Franciscan convents. It was not to have confraternities or offer special sermons except at four annual fiestas or the dedication of a new altar; nor were its friars permitted to confess nuns or attend banquets at other convents.59 Instead, the exercise of their apostolic institute, according to Don Luiz de Biolet Ugarte, the parish priest of Pachuca, was to bring salvation to the entire realm, “in some parts catechizing, in others converting to the faith, in others uprooting vices and planting virtues, and in all preaching the Most Holy Law of God and of His Church.”60 The colleges’ functions included running missions in northern New Spain as well as sending missionaries to New Spain’s towns and cities in efforts to teach and inspire laypersons

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to new levels of devotion. Friars of these colleges were also to serve as models to others, living especially austere and exemplary lives. In 1734, shortly after the founding of the Discalced Franciscans’ first college at Pachuca, Fr. Joseph de Messa explained how the institute of his college was bound to the virtues of its friars and their active work in missions: The apostolic institute of this . . . College effectively calls us to solicit with passionate desire the spiritual improvement of souls redeemed with the very precious blood of Our Redeemer during the holy exercise of Missions and furthermore taking care that [its friars] possess the natural gifts necessary to such a sacred example of virtue, religiosity, discretion, sufficiency, and zeal for the spiritual good of the faithful.61

Combining the active ministry of the Observant branch with the zeal of the Discalced branch, missionary colleges were the most thriving incarnations of the Franciscan institute during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As part of an early nineteenth-century push to found a college in Pátzcuaro, a local supporter opined that the foundation would be useful for both the city and the surrounding lands and described the college’s sacred institute as “the propagation of the faith, to instruct the ignorant in the obligations of the Religion, to convert sinners to penitence, and to keep them fervent in their spirit of devotion.”62 In a time when not just Franciscans but mendicant orders faced significant challenges to their positions in New Spain, these colleges remained a point of pride for the order. For example, Isidro Félix de Espinosa’s mid-eighteenth-­century chronicle of the Querétaro college revels in its ongoing accomplishments and triumphs without having to hark back to a sixteenth-century golden age.63 As much as these organizations might have been suited to demands of their time, they were still a part of the order’s age-old institute of saving souls, and Espinosa connected them to larger Franciscan tradition when he explained the goal of his chronicle was to bring to light that which is and has always been the apostolic Institute of the Seraphic Order, which was not born in our times but so many years ago that it has existed for more than five centuries. I am referring to that which in our days has been propagated by the Colleges of missionaries, their new constructions, inroads with their preaching, conversions of unbelievers, and the memorable lives of these apostolic workers.64

Dominicans Dominicans were no less proud of their missionary work than the most ardent Franciscan chroniclers. They noted that they brought Indians to the Catholic faith, defended them against the greed of wayward Spaniards (often heralding the work of Bartolomé de las Casas), and offered them

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spiritual and temporal succor. Thanks to this work, wrote Francisco de Burgoa in his Palestra historial (1670), when “the plant of Religion began to blossom” in New Spain, it did so “with firm roots of our Institute.”65 Yet projects to convert non-Christians had not been an important part of the Dominicans’ work in medieval Europe. Robin Vose’s study of Dominicans in medieval Aragon shows an organization geared “not so much to convert individuals or groups from one religion to another as to uphold the truth of Catholic doctrine and oppose errors which contradicted it.” They were, he asserts, conservative educators rather than innovative missionaries.66 Missionary work in New Spain thus required a significant transformation in the order’s ways of proceeding, and Dominicans’ reluctance to abandon large houses for missions suggests the change was not embraced without some unease. The addition of missions to the Dominican institute never displaced the central role of combating heresies, however. Defending and sharing “the truth” remained clear goals, and pastoral work among Christianized populations continued as cornerstones of American provinces, points captured in Alonso Franco y Ortega’s explanation that “the greatest service to Our Lord is to win souls, and also [the order’s] end was to expand the faith, confound heretics and extirpate heresies, defend Catholics, and with its preaching improve the consciences of the faithful.”67 Preaching was indeed central to the Dominican institute, and few actions were so highly exalted in friars’ writings. Through formal sermons as well as informal gatherings in churches, houses, streets, and plazas, Dominicans sought to share their messages. Preaching was a means of sharing the truth, and friars sometimes referred to their work as teaching the road to the truth. Burgoa underscored the importance of this concept when he described the works of three of the first Dominicans in New Spain, who brought “the truth that Christ Our Life promised, in the teaching of two or three [people] convened in his name—this is the motto of our Institute.”68 Still, it was not enough to share this message; it must also be defended. One of the primary means of defending the church was through the Inquisition, and Dominicans boasted not only that hundreds of their friars had served as Inquisitors but that they had founded the Inquisition. These two institutions were in fact closely associated. The Dominican church in Mexico City was located next to the Inquisition’s headquarters, and it hosted sermons and events sponsored by the Inquisition. The Dominican emblem even resembled so strongly the Inquisition’s that in 1797 the order was denounced to the Inquisition for this resemblance.69 Through these two methods of preaching and the Inquisition, Dominicans situated themselves as the champions of the church and its truths, often employing military metaphors that echoed portrayals of Dominic as a soldier against heresy. For instance, in a 1645 sermon Fr. Alonso del Castillo

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explained that “in the City of the Church was founded an Order that was an army of brave soldiers who defended the walls of the Church.”70 A qualified preacher and friar needed to be well educated, and Dominicans were noted for emphasizing scholastic pursuits. Virtue and letters, explained Franco y Ortega, were the two components of a perfect friar. “To give counsel in the confessional and in the pulpit is to minister both things,” he claimed.71 Although the concept of a virtuous friar included participating in communal prayers and obligations, this area was not highlighted in the same way that studies were, and the order offered numerous dispensations from these activities to friars who taught, preached, or held offices within or outside the order. Dominicans bragged of the numbers of doctors, professors, archbishops, and popes that they contributed to the church; one preacher alleged that the order’s various convents taught all seventy-two languages of the universe.72 Fr. Francisco de Guevara compared the Dominicans’ learnedness to that of other orders in a 1632 prologue to the life of a newly beatified Dominican. Dominicans confessed, preached, and taught in universities with the same greatness from the order’s beginning to the present, he wrote, and they did so without resorting to wearing tattered habits (a reference to Franciscans) or retiring to the wilderness (a reference to eremitic orders like Discalced Carmelites).73 Indeed, one way Dominican approaches to this work differed from those of Franciscans was in the strength of their intellectual underpinnings. As the renowned Franciscan scholar Bonaventure put it, “The Dominicans incline first towards speculation and subsequently towards devotion while the Franciscans tend first to devotion and then towards speculation.”74 Dominicans viewed the Americas as an especially fertile ground for their intellectually based institute. According to the statutes created at the 1598 founding of the Dominican College of San Luis in Puebla, the college would help ensure that this institute, implemented through preaching and letters, would continue to benefit these new lands: Our sacred order, instituted in order that we procure the health of the souls of our fellow man with preaching and letters, looking first to our own [souls] with the perfection of life to which our profession calls us. Along this road, various treasures were uncovered in past times, and now in our own [times] God has wanted to provide a new occasion so that from our institute a new experience is made in this kingdom of New Spain.75

Augustinians The Augustinians came to New Spain sharing the same basic elements of their institute as the Observant Franciscans and Dominicans: a combination of contemplative and active lives. Unlike these other two orders,

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however, the Augustinians’ origins were as an eremetic order, and they placed greater emphasis on the contemplative. Debates over sending friars to the Indies lasted for years, partly out of concerns that the travails of missionary work would not allow friars to follow the common life and pray the divine hours as a community. Other orders engaged in similar debates, but their severity among Augustinians and the length it took to resolve them suggest the issue might have been more closely tied to Augustinian identity than it was for orders born, rather than evolved, into a life of active ministries. This emphasis was reinforced at the Michoacán Province’s chapter meetings of 1715 where a decree insisted that all offices were to be punctually followed “because our principal institute is prayer and attending choir.”76 A 1778 general inspection of this same province offered more specifics: Before all things: as much as our principal occupation must be urgently frequenting the prayers when at determined times and hours we praise the Lord, we order that all friars of the Michoacán Province attend to recite and sing the divine office in the choir with distinction, attention and devotion and at the conventual mass and the canonical hours that are sung or recited with it.77

The contemplative elements of the Augustinians’ institute thus resembled those of the Discalced Franciscans, but the active elements more closely resembled those of Observant Franciscans. These responsibilities to laypersons were shaped by a powerful tradition of intellectual pursuits that, unlike those of the Dominicans, eased rather than hindered Augustinians’ transition into missionary work. The Augustinian institute sought to ensure that people were well instructed so that no one would be condemned by ignorance of the faith, and friars were to follow in the steps of their learned patriarch by immersing themselves in their studies and then teaching others.78 Augustinians applauded their exemplary contributions to education and depicted one of their brothers, Fr. Alonso de la Veracruz, as New Spain’s greatest scholar of the sixteenth century, noting that his appointment to the first professorship at Mexico City’s Royal University blazed the trail for the numerous Augustinians who followed. Teaching to overcome ignorance could also be done through preaching and offering confession and thus fit well with pastoral work among Indians, which was highly celebrated in Augustinian chronicles. Their convents were in some of the most inaccessible regions where the most difficult languages were spoken, they claimed, yet their well-trained friars who had learned doctrine as well as native languages were able to attend to these populations. As with the other orders, active and contemplative services were not separate objectives, even if they were distinct activities. Sicardo’s descrip-

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tion of the first Augustinians to arrive in New Spain served as a model of how to balance the two: They walked barefoot the entire way without omitting the feasts, which were continuous, nor their common prayers, praying the divine office in community and at choir at their proper hours . . . , while also exercising the piety of preaching, confessing and administering communion in the parts of the trip where they encountered Spaniards.79

In the end, these activities served the same purpose of aiding and preparing souls for a divine afterlife. This ultimate goal was expressed in a 1737 statement naming Our Lady of Succor as the patron of studies at the Valladolid convent. Naming her as such, the statement explained, would “better promote fervor and devotion to the Mother of God, Our Lady, with much correspondence to our sacred institute that is the greater benefit of our souls and the souls of those who might be saved.”80 Discalced Carmelites When the first Discalced Carmelites arrived in Mexico City in 1585, their order was newly formed with its goals and institute still a matter of debate. Friars throughout the order deliberated how much emphasis should be placed on their active life relative to their contemplative life and what active service should include. For New Spain, the hot issue was whether the order should accept missions and doctrinas. The main impetus for the Mexico City foundation had been to establish a base for missions to New Mexico where friars planned to convert infidels, a project supported by Philip II and Teresa of Avila, among others. The project never came to fruition—because of manpower shortages and disagreements within the order and opposition from the Jesuits and, principally, Franciscans—but efforts continued at least into the early seventeenth century. The province’s acceptance of the doctrina of San Sebastián in Mexico City also provoked controversy, and in 1588 the General Chapter in Spain forbade convents in New Spain from administering doctrinas. Still, San Sebastián remained under Carmelite direction until 1607, when Fr. Juan de Jesús María, the new provincial who was strongly inclined to the contemplative life, turned it over to the Augustinians. The provincial chapter’s act divesting the doctrina explained that its care caused “great inconveniences and relaxations and much other damage to our religion.”81 By the time that Agustín de la Madre de Dios was writing in the years around 1650, both missions and doctrinas were long abandoned, even if an active life was not. His account carefully explained why these early

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projects had been supported by luminaries of the order yet abandoned as incompatible with the Carmelite institute. He thus applauded the early spiritual fervor for the conversion of New Mexico’s Indians but noted: Our sacred religion, after having determined the character of the Carmelite institute and found that its principal employment is the greater part that Mary Magdalene chose for herself and was so much approved by Christ, left for the other sacred religions this apostolic employment [missions], although even in doing so not omitting the pious occupation of winning souls to Christ when and in the manner that it can be done without losing the [souls] of its sons.82

For Madre de Dios and most Mexican Carmelites of his time, the contemplative life was a Carmelite’s primary duty, and active life followed in accordance with it. To clarify the point, he cited John of the Cross’s explanation of the Carmelite institute: The primitive, mixed Carmelite institute is of contemplation and action, but in such a manner that the contemplation is the principal part, the action the minor part, although both are integral; for where he among us who wants to give himself to the good of souls will lack the principle of the Institute, and he that would give himself totally to contemplation without care for the good of his neighbor . . . will accomplish the principal part, but not perfectly with all that he must.83

In the case of New Spain, Madre de Dios explained, itinerant friars traveling long distances was clearly outside the order’s institute, but it was acceptable to convert souls in nearby towns and then return to the convent. Serving nearby populations meant preaching, confessing, celebrating Mass, and attending the dying, and virtually every life story of a Carmelite priest in the province’s hagiographical works at least mentioned this work with the faithful. As much as Carmelites lauded their active work, they saw their internal life as setting them apart from the other orders. The order’s emphasis on monastic discipline, poverty, recitation of daily prayers, and especially reclusion in cells went back to Elias and the order’s eremetic origins. An act from the Mexico Province’s first chapter meeting in 1596 highlighted the importance of seclusion: “The perfection and conservation of our order consists of and is . . . seclusion, as is taken from the much commended words of our Rule, and . . . each friar is in his cell meditating day and night in the law of the Lord, that which reason . . . says cannot be kept without enclosure and much seclusion.”84 This element continued to be stressed throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in histories, sermons, and especially in lives of friars. In one story, two friars left the Mexico City convent seeking alms. Upon seeing Carmelites arrive at his house, a nobleman gathered the neighbors “to see this wonder, that Carmelite friars have left their convent and have entered into the houses of

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seculars!”85 Beyond seclusion in their convents, Carmelites marked time spent alone in their cells as something particular to their order. Unlike the communal aspects of contemplative life in Discalced Franciscan or Augustinian houses where friars came together for prayers in the chapel, shared meals in the refectory, and slept in dormitories, the Carmelite model offered a more solitary experience. “The cell [was] the perpetual habitation of the Carmelite,” explained Madre de Dios, as it was for Fr. Miguel de la Resurrección, who lived as a “mirror of modesty,” spending most of his life in total reclusion and silence.86 The cell offered few temptations, and there Carmelites could safeguard their own spiritual well-being as well as edify others, using a well-lived life as an “effective sermon.” This was noted outside the order as well, as when Fr. Ramón Casaus y ­Torres, a Dominican, described Carmelite convents as places where “most severe monastic discipline lives without any alteration whatsoever, and that the Christian world has in front of it perfect models of the evangelical crucifixion.”87 Mercedarians The redemption of Christian captives was the central feature of a Mercedarian identity, and friars professed a unique fourth vow to do so. Others may redeem captives, explained Fr. Ignacio Rodríguez de Sosa in a 1757 sermon, but only the Mercedarians were bound by vow and profession to do so and to offer their own lives for freeing captives.88 This redemptive work was also commonly described as their primary institute, as in the Acts of the 1574 General Chapter Meeting in Guadalajara (Spain), which opened a section on the topic with a definitive statement: “The principal end of this religion and that for which it was ordained is the redemption of captives.”89 For the Mexico Province, this goal was to be accomplished not through direct participation in ransoming expeditions but through the collection of alms sent to Spain to pay ransoms. Speaking of his Mexican Province, Francisco de Pareja noted: It is certain that Mercedarian friars in these provinces of the Indies will not enjoy the glory of going to the lands of the infidels to redeem captives, this being the order’s principal institute . . . but they always have the will to go and offer their lives for the Christian captives . . . and although they do not go corporally . . . they work with all caution in alms collection for the redemptions.90

Mercedarians were the only order in the Americas with such a focus, and in 1726 a royal cedula confirmed this exclusive privilege, forbidding all others to ask alms for captives in the Indies.91 Mercedarians were also to assist captives through prayer, another activity particularly suited to

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friars not directly involved in redemptive expeditions. Pareja explained that because “charity, that is the principal institute of the Fathers of Our Lady of Mercy, was very relevant” to one Fr. Márcos de San Ramon, “he continually commended Christian captives to God, doing many exercises of prayer and mortification for them, so that with the cruelty of the tyrants, they would not lack our holy faith.”92 In an unpublished chronicle from the first decade of the eighteenth century, Agustín de Andrade lamented that many people judged Mercedarians as “some men dressed in white, and no more, who asked alms to redeem captives.”93 Mercedarians were best known as alms collectors, but they also highlighted other activities according to the circumstances. The Guatemalan Province, for example, administered doctrinas that employed many friars, and friars at the 1659 provincial chapter meeting took up the issue of how to balance this pastoral work with their redemptive work. “Our principal institute is the redemption of captives,” they declared, but “the principal occupation of the convents of this Province is the teaching of Indians.”94 Although the Mexico Province never had doctrinas, early on its friars actively sought them, so they sometimes stressed their knowledge of native languages or teaching abilities rather than alms collection. A 1604 questionnaire designed to demonstrate the order’s worth to New Spain asked various Mexico City residents if they knew that there were many Mercedarian “priests of much virtue and example and preachers, most of whom can speak and understand the mexicana language and others of this land, and they can teach and administer sacraments to Indians as well as Spaniards.” Another question specifically asked if the order was capable of administering doctrinas, but no questions (or responses) mentioned alms collection.95 Such a position made sense in 1604 when friars could still hold out vague hopes of acquiring doctrinas, but after such hopes faded away, the order found other elements to highlight. After the seventeenth-century reform effort that gave new emphasis to learning and placed books into the hands of Nolasco, chroniclers of the Mexico Province accentuated the academic works of friars, noting the many learned sermons they preached and the numerous posts they held at the Royal University and as censors for the Holy Office. Even if the Mercedarians’ message was clearly tailored to different situations, their redemptive work ultimately remained the key to how they defined themselves. When Agustín de Andrade asked why the religion had been so favored by popes, saints, and kings, he found plenty of reasons, but it was their unique position with captives that made all the difference: Might it be because it is a Religion that takes the same vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as all the Saintly Families? Because it teaches and preaches? Because it reduces infidels in Missions, as if it were by institute? Because it con-

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templates like the most cloistered monks? Because it cures the sick, as if it were a Hospital order? Because it aids the dying as if it were an order of Agonizantes? Because under the thin, clean white habit, all dressed and shod, it has its fasts, disciplines, and mortifications as if it were the most austere religion? Because it asks alms like the mendicant orders? Well it could, for it does all and serves all. But it is not [so favored] for all this, but for the fourth and very heroic vow that none of the other Saintly Families make, that is to redeem Christian captives from the harsh slavery of the cruel Muslim; these sons of Mary vow to remain imprisoned or as hostages, if the need of the captive asks it.96

Mendicant Institutes “How much more excellent are the doings of the least friar, who follows his institute in the fear of God and with the fame of virtue, than the great deeds of all the Romans and Carthaginians which antiquity has celebrated down to this time?” asked the Franciscan chronicler Pedro Oroz.97 Oroz’s grandiose claims about the benefits of following one’s institute may have been made as part of a sixteenth-century heroic vision of the friars’ mission, but it still serves to articulate the centrality of this concept to the identity of the orders. Franciscan institutes featured their poverty fused with varying levels of emphasis on active and contemplative ministries. Observants highlighted their unrivaled accomplishments with Indians; Discalced Franciscans showcased their reclusion and especially abstemious friars; missionary colleges claimed to combine the active ministries of Observants with the austerity of the Discalced branch. Dominicans portrayed themselves as defenders of the church, declaring preaching and the Inquisition as their primary methods and citing learning and scholarship as hallmarks. Augustinians emphasized communal life while foregrounding intellectual accomplishments and a special place in Indian evangelization. Discalced Carmelites eventually settled on an institute that excluded work in doctrinas and missions, zeroing in on a mixture of strict reclusion and services that could be performed near the convent. Mercedarian institutes centered on collecting alms for the redemption of captives but within a broadly defined identity that allowed them to accentuate certain aspects according to the situation. Some elements of these institutes certainly stood in contrast to one another, such as Carmelite reclusion versus Mercedarian time spent outside the convent collecting alms, or Dominican dispensations for academic work versus Discalced Franciscans’ prohibitions against such special allowances. These different approaches could lead to disagreements. For example, probably in the mid-eighteenth century, the leadership of the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province sent a statement to the Audiencia of

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Mexico complaining about the Carmelite house in Salvatierra and its refusal to sell them some land. Things there had become so bad, the Augustinians suggested, that “day converted into dark night,” and they blamed the troubles on the “distinct institutes” of the two orders.98 Yet in many ways these differences paled in comparison to the significant overlap among institutes. One reason was that the orders were born out of similar trends of the thirteenth century. All purported to enact the traditional mendicant combination of contemplative life balanced by active ministries, and differences among the orders’ institutes were often no more than a question of which elements were given star billing. For example, each order’s institute included a contemplative element, but this was particularly important to the Augustinians, Discalced Franciscans, and Carmelites. Similarly, academic pursuits were important to all orders, but especially valued by Dominicans and Augustinians. In addition, all orders came to New Spain with a goal of evangelizing Indians through the administration of doctrinas or missions. They did so through a range of approaches, however. Observant Franciscans and Augustinians engaged wholeheartedly in this work; Dominicans were active if more reluctant participants; Mercedarians sought it out with little success; Carmelites chose to fit it in where it did not disrupt their reclusion. Friars sometimes seemed reluctant to recognize similarities among orders’ institutes beyond the shared fundamental goal of winning souls for the church triumphant. “Although their institutes are distinct,” wrote the seventeenth-century Dominican chronicler Méndez, “each one’s end is very much one and the same.”99 These sentiments were echoed in an 1802 sermon by the Franciscan Fr. Joseph Francisco de Rocha, who praised the works of the orders who had produced for the church so many preachers, missionaries, writers, bishops, popes, and martyrs. All of this, he explained, had been accomplished through “the beautiful variety of their sacred Institutes, directed to the same end, but by very different routes.”100 One reason for drawing attention to distinctiveness and different routes was that mendicant institutes shared a great deal, more than men like Méndez and de Rocha may have wanted to admit. A comparison to other groups of male religious reveals just how much mendicant institutes did share.

mendicants and other male religious The chroniclers Agustín de Vetancurt and Baltasar de Medina each described Mexico City as illuminated by twelve religions. Through liberal definitions of what constituted an order and residence, there were indeed twelve male orders: Observant Franciscans, Discalced Franciscans,

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Dominicans, Augustinians, Discalced Carmelites, Mercedarians, Jesuits, Bethlehemites, Brothers of Charity, Discalced Augustinians, Benedictines, and the order of Saint John of God. “These are the families and patriarch saints that Mexico has for its spiritual nourishment,” wrote Vetancurt. In the two works they were compared to the twelve stars that crown the Virgin Mary, the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve bridges of Jerusalem Triumphant, and the twelve Apostles. 101 In a similar vein, Fr. Manuel de Jesús María celebrated Oaxaca’s own holy number of orders when he stated, “In heaven there are nine choruses of angels, the same as this very noble and loyal City of Oaxaca.”102 Fr. Manuel, however, included along with the city’s eight orders of male religious and their patriarchs the secular branch of the church represented by Saint Peter. If nonmendicant orders could also be patriarch-led families, if the secular church could constitute one of the choruses of angels, and if all these groups could be depicted together as a whole, then how did mendicant orders differ from the rest? Three other groups of male religious within the church— Oratorians, hospital orders, and Jesuits—lie outside the boundaries of this study, but a brief overview of some salient characteristics of their institutes demarcates some of the boundaries of what it meant to be a mendicant. Oratorians Oratorians were a series of independent communities of diocesan priests with constitutions based upon the original Congregation of the Oratory founded in Rome by Philip Neri. The Roman Oratorians began as a group that met each afternoon for informal spiritual exercises and grew into a more formal organization with its priests living as a community. The congregation received its first papal privileges in 1565. New communities expanded quickly throughout much of Europe but more slowly to the Americas, where the first congregation was established in 1651 in Puebla.103 The congregations’ independence led to significant variations among them so that the priests of the Mexico City congregation, for example, lived in their own houses rather than as a community.104 What the various congregations all shared was an institute of “living piously” through a regimen of group spiritual exercises and services. In his 1736 history of the Mexico City congregation, Julián Gutiérrez Dávila listed its principal exercises and works: its members were to provide services at the Oratorian church, especially sermons and the sacrament of penance during Lent; attend monthly talks about observing their Rule and ecclesiastical discipline; celebrate the fiesta of Our Lady of Nieves (to whom Neri was devoted); visit jails at Easter; attend the sick; and elect a prefect each year.105

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Neri admitted that he patterned the Oratorians after the male religious, and the two did seem to share a great deal. For instance, when Gutiérrez Dávila sought to refute claims that his congregation was no more than a confraternity with priests as its members, he cited as proof of its higher status something that it shared with the orders: a Rule.106 The Oaxaca congregation referred to “our habit and dress” and had a probationary period, akin to a novitiate, for entrants. It also had “an inviolable mutual correspondence” with mendicant orders to attend burials of each other’s members as well as the annual festivities for their patriarchs. Although Oratorians attended only a few special festivities in the cathedral as a community, when they did so, they sat on benches brought from their own church, “as the Religions do for their part.”107 A sermon preached in the Mexico City Oratorian church on Neri’s feast day in 1733 reveals more about how Oratorians saw themselves in relation to male orders. Don Juan Joseph de Eguiara y Eguren noted that there were two doors into heaven: that of the orders, which required vows, and that of the Neri and the Oratorians, which did not. Both groups followed the same models, he noted, and he lauded the virtues of the orders’ saintly patriarchs (to whom the sermon was also dedicated), singling out Francis’s labors in teaching, Loyola’s work against heresy and ignorance, Nolasco’s redemptions, and Augustine’s writings. The sermon’s linking of Neri and the four patriarchs hints at a particular bond with mendicant orders and Jesuits. As an organization of priests, Oratorians certainly had more in common with orders engaged in active priestly ministries than with cloistered monks or with hospital orders (which had fewer priests than lay brothers). Eguiara y Eguren cited the words of Neri and the early Oratorian fathers: “Although we are secular clergy, all our life is to conform to that of the male religious.”108 Oratorians, in his view, combined the religious spirit of all the orders and their patriarchs into a sort of superorder, but without the order. Vows, the hallmark of belonging to any religious order, were thus a key point of demarcation between the two groups. In singling out Oratorians for not being bound by vows, Eguiara y Eguren was not downplaying the significance of the virtues that vows encouraged. In fact, he exhorted his listeners to work as though they had made vows, always aspiring to the same perfection found in them, but they were to do these things by their own will, not their prelates’.109 Besides Eguiara y Eguren’s argument that poverty, chastity, and obedience were most profitably accomplished without vows, he may have had other reasons for his position. One was that Oratorians were established around the time of Trent, when untangling the church’s power structures in favor of a cleaner line of authority was an important goal to many reformers. Neri specifically wanted to avoid

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the additional hierarchies of an order, preventing (at least in principle) conflicts of authority or divided loyalties. He thus fought any efforts to grant congregations the privileges of an order and opposed taking vows. Struggles between the secular church and the orders in New Spain meant that this distinction of taking or not taking vows was particularly relevant. In this context, Eguiara y Eguren’s depiction of the Oratorians as taking the best of the orders but discarding their troublesome vows celebrates his organization as an improved version of the mendicant model. Hospital Orders The four major hospital orders in New Spain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were Saint John of God (juaninos), San Hippolytus (also known as the Order of Charity, or hipólitos), the Bethlehemites, and the Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony (antoninos). Whereas the antoninos and juaninos had European origins and came to New Spain in the early seventeenth century, the others were the only two orders founded in the Americas during the colonial era. San Hippolytus was established in Mexico City in the late sixteenth century and the Bethlehemites in Guatemala City in the second half of the seventeenth century. Each began as a semiofficial group that evolved into a lay brotherhood before becoming a full-fledged religious order. The Bethlehemites originally consisted of members of the Franciscan Third Order who ran a house that took in people who were sick and convalescing, and who taught reading, writing, and Christian doctrine to boys from poor families. When they became an official brotherhood, they gained their own habit and constitutions; when they became an order, they added a Rule as well. Their new status was confirmed by the pope in 1687 and the king in 1696. Around the same time, the hipólitos were mounting a campaign for their own accreditation. They had gained papal and royal approvals as an official brotherhood in the first years of the seventeenth century, but not until 1700 were they confirmed as an order. As part of the confirmation campaign, the Franciscan comisario general and the provincial of the Mexico Province sent a report to Archbishop of Mexico Francisco Aguiar y Seijas. They noted that the brotherhood already had eleven functioning hospitals in New Spain where the brothers had done much good for many years, “carrying out their holy institute of hospitality, maintaining themselves so many years with exemplary modesty, already esteemed as friars in their habits, constitutions, administration of sacraments, celebration of fiestas, orderliness of Churches and bells, without missing the public processions of this City and the burials that are offered, carrying on their shoulders the dead.”110

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The institute of hospitality was key to what these newly created ­orders shared with the juaninos and antoninos; in addition to vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they all took a fourth vow of hospitality. Although their work varied according to their specific institutes, they all shared a basic purpose of ministering to the infirm, operating hospitals that cared for people who were poor, sick, elderly, or mentally ill. The order of San Antonio Abad ran a small hospital for people suffering from Saint Anthony’s Fire (erysipelas) until the hospital’s secularization in 1791. The hipólitos ran hospitals for the mentally ill, the juaninos took in people with all types of illnesses, and the Bethlehemites cared for the sick and convalescents and provided a few days of hospitality to the poor.111 Hospital orders were sometimes spoken of as a group, as the juanino Fr. Christóval Ruiz Guerra y Morales did in a 1726 sermon that referred to them as one humble, adorned family.112 Within this family, the Bethlehemites and hipólitos seem to have shared a special bond based on their American ancestry. In a 1726 sermon dedicated to the general of the Order of San Hippolytus, the Bethlehemite Fr. Rafael de Santo Tomás declared that the hipólitos were “so one with our religion, that not only by their Institute are they seen as dedicated to the perfect love of God, of Charity and to the succor, assistance and shelter of our brothers the Poor, but furthermore that in their foundation and origin is the same splendor of our Ancestry.”113 These two orders also differed from the juaninos, antoninos, mendicants, and Jesuits in that their founders were not canonized members of the church, offering one reason why Saint John of God was sometimes included in sermons and images representing the male orders while these two religions were left without representation. Fulfilling their institutes required a great deal of manual labor, so most friars in these orders were lay brothers rather than priests. Bethlehemite hospitals were allowed to house only two or three priests each, and the antoninos had but one priest at a time.114 These were not learned orders, and few of their friars held positions as censors for the Inquisition or professors in the university. The Bethlehemites did run a large elementary school in Mexico City, but teachers at this level were usually lay brothers. In addition, there are comparatively few published sermons by priests from these orders, although their preachers were sometimes included at another order’s octave or novena (eight- or nine-day celebrations in honor of a saint or special occasion) when each order was allocated one day’s sermon. On one of these occasions, the hipólito Fr. Antonio de Morales preached during the celebration of John of the Cross’s canonization at the Carmelites’ Mexico City church. In this sermon, he acknowledged that his order had a different focus than those with more academic institutes,

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having beds for its professorships, the sick for its books, and illnesses for its study material.115 Although hospital orders may have been seen as a distinct family, they were not entirely disconnected in practice or identity from other male orders. In addition to participating in ceremonies and public celebrations with other male religious, these orders sometimes looked to mendicant orders to help them manage their small numbers of priests by celebrating masses and administering sacraments in their churches and hospitals. Franciscans and Mercedarians not infrequently served as chaplains in juanino and hipólito churches; if a 1776 viceregal decree was followed, then a Franciscan priest ministered to the patients in the hipólitos’ hospitals in Mexico, Puebla, Querétaro, Perote, Oaxtepec, Jalapa, and Córdoba.116 The Dominican Méndez’s statement that the orders’ different institutes were directed to the same end also applied to hospital orders. The general of the hipólitos offered a statement that clarified their place in this group effort. In 1730 he wrote to the Franciscan comisario general comparing his order to working hands and explaining that the church, like any body, could not function without hands. He concluded that “if in the mystical body of the Church all were Doctors, All Masters, they would undoubtedly lack . . . those who lower themselves to exercises so humble and low as are ours.”117 The Society of Jesus Unlike the medievally founded mendicants, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) was instituted in the sixteenth century, and its founders broke with many traditions held by monks and friars. It was formulated exclusively for work in the world—not a mendicant-like combination of monasticism with active ministry—and, to the consternation of some churchmen, its members did not participate in daily rounds of communal offices and prayers. One early Jesuit explained that they did not participate in these offices that might interfere with their worldly focus because “we are not monks . . . the world is our house.”118 In addition, even though Jesuits took the same three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as friars, they did so within a different context. Like friars, Jesuits took these vows after completing the novitiate, but because the novitiate did not prepare them for their work in the world, they still had years of training before they could take their final vows. It was only then that they professed the Jesuits’ unique fourth vow of “special obedience to the sovereign pontiff regarding missions.” According to John O’Malley, the essential meaning of the vow had less to do with the pope than it did with missions and a member’s willingness to go and work wherever he was needed.119

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The ­Jesuits’ departure from older orders was a conscious one, and they depicted themselves as something unequivocally unique. Whereas mendicant orders saw themselves as distinctive entities, they also saw themselves as part of a collective mendicant status and identity to which the Jesuits had no equivalent. For example, Jesuits developed a different terminology to describe themselves. Rather than an order, they were a society or company; they called their houses colleges instead of convents and their members fathers instead of friars. Their efforts bore fruit, including among one of the Jesuits’ harshest critics, Bishop of Puebla Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, who complained that the Jesuit character was so strange that it belonged neither to the secular nor regular clergy.120 In theory, one difference between Jesuits and mendicants was their approaches to poverty. Because the Society was not classified as a mendicant order, it was not bound to poverty, so it could and did accumulate significant wealth. This difference of status meant less in practice, however, since the Council of Trent had granted all mendicant orders except the Franciscans the right to hold property. Thus, the Jesuits in New Spain may have been well off financially, but so were the Discalced Carmelites, Augustinians, and Dominicans.121 In addition, there were few differences in how the holdings of these religions were treated. In 1672 Bartolomé de Cuéllar, the procurador general for the Jesuits’ province of New Spain, appealed to the Mexico City corregidor in a dispute over tithes on their properties. As precedent for his argument he cited royal cedulas granted to the Augustinian and Dominican orders as well as a late sixteenth-­ century dispute with the bishop of Tlaxcala decided in the orders’ favor.122 Jesuits, as an educated and priestly order, performed many of the same ministries as mendicants, including preaching, offering masses and celebrations, and administering the sacraments of Eucharist and Penance. The hallmark of their ministry, however, was education, and they were the leading educators in New Spain during their two centuries there. The Franciscan Fr. Manuel Alfonso Malloral described the Society as “where the institute is to know in order to teach,” and their institute was in such demand that within twenty years of their arrival in New Spain they had already established eighteen houses.123 The religion’s activities, including its well-known Spiritual Exercises, were supposed to be geared toward fostering an internal spirituality over a more external, communal piety focused, for example, on devotions to scapulars. The Jesuits’ different methods (and their underlying theologies) were not always appreciated by other orders, and Inquisition cases mark some points of conflict. In 1613 a Franciscan was denounced to the Office of the Inquisition for having disseminated a small book that, among other things, claimed that Jesuits were like alumbrados (literally, “enlightened ones”; a group asso-

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ciated with heretical ideas), their new ways of teaching were unprofitable, and Ignatius had been investigated by the Inquisition for questionable propositions.124 A century and a half later, shortly after the Society’s 1767 expulsion from New Spain, attendees at Fr. Antonio de León’s sermon at the Discalced Augustinian church in Mexico City claimed that they heard him say the Jesuits were “a company of Devils,” their theology was founded in haciendas and ambitions, and if the society were restored, it would fill the world with heresies. Interestingly, Fr. Antonio was cleared of the accusations because he never actually spoke of the Jesuits, although he had chosen his words carefully enough to imply that he was speaking of them. Considering the time and circumstances under which he preached, the censor claimed, the sermon acted as “a strong invective against the Jesuits, satirizing their institute approved by Trent.”125 In spite of their many differences and disagreements, Jesuits and mendicants probably had more in common with each other than either did with any other type of male order. Many of the confrontations between them were founded in rival efforts to do the same things, such as confessing, preaching, and evangelizing. Besides their shared ministries, these religions were connected through their mutual interest in learning and letters. Jesuits had a reputation as scholars, and in addition to their schools, they were active in the Inquisition, especially as censors, and were often sought out to write the opinions that preceded published sermons. An example of how Jesuit learning was celebrated came in the Dominican Fr. Antonio de Torres’s 1695 sermon at his Mexico convent’s annual celebration of Aquinas. He dedicated the sermon to the Jesuits, praising them as erudite doctors who with their pens and preaching had done so much in honor and defense of Aquinas. Although Dominicans and Jesuits were both partial toward Aquinas in ways that were not universally shared (by the Franciscans, for instance), the dedication’s point that Jesuits were influential scholars would not have been disputed by friars of any order. Friars and Jesuits depicted the close connections between their orders in histories, sermons, and art. Jesuits appeared in mendicant chronicles far more often than members of any other order, and sermons often grouped Ignatius with mendicant patriarchs. Fr. Cristóbal de Castro’s 1746 sermon to his patriarch Dominic made comparisons with Francis and Ignatius and their unlimited humility and charity. The greatness of these three individuals led the preacher to ponder the implications of aggregating their virtues: “Each one of the Saintly Patriarchs is immeasurable in his magnitude, so what will we say about the conjunction of the three?”126 As much as including Ignatius was a method of demonstrating Dominic’s charity, Fr. Cristóbal could easily have used any number of saints, including Nolasco, to illustrate this trait. Ignatius may have been

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chosen because he, Francis, and Dominic were often linked through their emphasis on evangelization. The Jesuits’ magnificent church at Tepotzotlán provides a final insight into the Jesuits’ closer connections to mendicants than other orders. The aforementioned retablo featuring Ignatius surrounded by Francis, Dominic, Augustine, and Nolasco offered a clear contrast to depictions of the patriarchs of the hospital orders, who were relegated to a less prominent altarpiece. A similar grouping can be found in the chapel for novices, the capilla doméstica, which depicts the emblems of but six orders, arranged according to the official order of their arrival and precedence in New Spain: Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Jesuits, Carmelites, and Mercedarians. Defining a Mendicant Identity In a 1726 sermon at the Oratorians’ Mexico City church, the secular priest Antonio Díaz de Godoi cited the many patriarchs whose spirit resided in that of Neri, and he grouped them according to their type of order. Although patriarchs of the monastic and hospital orders had their own groups, Díaz de Godoi did not place the saints of the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Carmelites, and Mercedarians into a single mendicant category. Augustine with his nearly divine knowledge was in his own category, and Elias and Teresa were the only members of another group based on prophecy and mystical spirit. Diáz de Godoi put Francis and Dominic in the same group as Ignatius, defining it as those who preached Christ’s faith without fear and who established the faith among unbelievers. Finally, Nolasco was categorized with saints who offered usefulness to humanity through acts such as the redemption of captives.127 This classification of patriarchs has something to say about the traits of individual patriarchs, but its failure to follow a mendicant-nonmendicant divide also suggests that traits were often more important to perceptions of patriarchs and their orders than the orders’ official status. How different religious groups were classified and when particular groups were put together depended on who was making the associations and under what circumstances. Augustine and Teresa could be linked in an Augustinian’s sermon at a Carmelite church; Vetancurt and Medina could refer to the twelve religions of Mexico City; and preachers like Díaz de Godoi could group together Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits. If groupings were so flexible and if the orders’ traits mattered more than their official status, then is it possible to talk about mendicant orders as a group? Comparisons to other types of male religious suggests that it is.

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The first criterion distinguishing mendicants is the one that Eguiara y Eguren noted separated Oratorians and secular clergy from orders: vows. Vows were a defining feature of religious orders, and the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience that all male religious took were fundamental to their identities. In the case of New Spain’s mendicant orders, members who followed their votive missions with exceptional devotion might be referred to as muy fraile (very friar), and vows appeared prominently in the stories of friars’ lives that filled provincial histories and chronicles. For instance, the Augustinian Fr. Joan Montalvo, according to Diego Basa­ lenque, was poor as a novice, died a virgin after never even having looked at a woman, and took up repugnant tasks before being asked to do so by his prelate.128 Such victories were not always achieved without struggles, and Madre de Dios told of a voice that woke a young Carmelite in his cell one night. “Do you want a woman?” it asked. He then saw the devil in the figure of a “dishonest woman inviting him to sin.” Although he felt a great temptation in his soul, he instead repeatedly made the sign of the cross over his heart until she disappeared, so he protected his chastity.129 Not only did such depictions of friars’ votive obligations figure prominently in the works of each order but those depictions varied little from order to order. These similarities resulted both from having taken the same three vows and from defining those vows in many of the same ways. Chastity, for instance, was not simply a matter of physical abstinence; it also required keeping one’s thoughts pure. Hernando Ojea described a friar who was so chaste “that in many years he never wanted to look at the face of a woman, either living or in a painting.”130 Similarly, poverty referred both to worldly possessions and to spirit; a friar who was poor of spirit was humble and renounced worldly honors and titles. Common definitions by no means meant that friars were expected to observe their vows in precisely the same way, but these differences were mostly a question of degree. For example, whereas Franciscans defined themselves by their poverty, Dominicans put more stock in intellectual pursuits; and Augustinians, in observing common life. Thus, a Discalced Franciscan and a Dominican might have been expected to observe poverty with different levels of austerity, where one wore an old, patched-together habit and the other a habit made of inexpensive but decent fabric, but both would agree that poverty was essential to their identity as a mendicant. As a result of these shared beliefs, the concept of a virtuous life in one convent could share a great deal with that in another. Describing how the Augustinians shared their food with the city during a period of famine, Juan de Grijalva noted that “[this is] something very common in the convents of my religion and in those of other Religions, that because the end is one, the manner of life is very similar in them all.”131

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The three monastic vows may have distinguished regular from the secular clergy, but they did less to differentiate mendicants from other male religious such as the hospital orders and the Jesuits. A better indicator of differences among male orders was encapsulated in the vows made beyond the standard three. Hospital orders with their fourth vow of hospitality existed as a distinct family, separated from mendicants by their work among the sick. This “humble” work required a different sort of personnel than mendicant activities did, and most members of hospital orders were lay brothers rather than priests. They obviously did not engage in the same ministries as mendicant orders, but neither did many of these men take on academic pursuits. These criteria, priestly ministries and letters, marked a clear boundary between mendicants and hospital orders and were crucial to defining what it meant to be mendicant in New Spain. When Andrade wrote that many Mercedarians gave up worldly pursuits in a quest for learning, he also recognized that such enthusiasm was not peculiar to his religion but was “common to all the Sacred Religions that profess letters.”132 Letters and learning separated mendicants from hospital orders, but they provided a common ground with the Jesuits. These were the orders whose members missionized, ministered to the laity, and held posts at the university. Mendicants shared more with Jesuits than any other orders, and the two were more likely to be grouped together than with any other order. For instance, when Madre de Dios depicted the orders as an earthly counterpart to the heavenly hierarchy of angels, he associated the men of his own Carmelite order with angels and then described the choirs more generally: In the church that is a beautiful heaven there are different hierarchies and in them the religions are sacred choirs where they show themselves to be angels by grace, men by nature; and such are those that in those parts preached the law of God. Seraphim are without doubt the sons of Saint Francis, those of Saint Dominic principalities, those of Saint Augustine thrones of Christ, those of Saint Ignatius dominions and Mercedarians are cherubim and all these all. Angels all, cherubim all, all are seraphim, thrones, dominions, principalities that illuminate this heaven.133

He spoke only of male orders, not Oratorians or secular priests, and only those engaged in active, priestly ministries in New Spain, therefore excluding hospital orders but not Jesuits. These exclusions are particularly remarkable given the contemporary interest in having one’s subject conform to its allegorical model (such as Vetancurt’s twelve orders of Mexico City standing for the twelve Apostles) and that there were nine orders of angels but only six religions included in Madre de Dios’s description.

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Mendicants’ most significant differences from Jesuits lay outside active ministries. One difference was that the vow of poverty received greater emphasis in the mendicant tradition. An indication of this difference can be seen in the Jesuits’ title of choice, “father” rather than “friar.” The former was an honorific designation, one that, in a patriarchal society, dripped with status and authority and one that contrasted with the modesty and humility encapsulated in the concept of “muy fraile.” The most significant difference hinged on the Jesuits’ fourth vow, to work where needed. Jesuits were organized to work in the world, and they did not participate in the monastic routines of the mendicants, setting them apart from the mendicants’ balancing of contemplative and active duties. Comparisons of mendicants to other male religious reveal some of the not-insignificant intersections in their work and purposes, especially with the Jesuits. What also emerges is a sense of what defined mendicants as a group. These were orders defined by the criteria of vows, letters, and priestly ministries balanced with contemplative duties.

conclusion That the five mendicant orders in New Spain saw themselves as mendicants with shared traditions, purposes, and goals did not diminish the intensity with which they promoted their own corporate identities. Indeed, they put great effort into positioning themselves as unique corporate entities that reigned at the top of the hierarchy of orders, elevating their patriarch above all others and proclaiming the powers of their saintly family. In doing so, friars were articulating their identity as members of a global organization, one whose characteristics applied to members of the order wherever they were. Like the family trees on display in the Franciscans’ and Dominicans’ churches, friars situated themselves as part of a worldwide and timeless family, bound together through common cause and the set of virtues that their patriarch transmitted to his many sons. At the same time, mendicant identities were rooted in experiences specific to New Spain. Institutes told an especially local tale, indicating how orders’ adapted their functions and self-perceptions to their circumstances. For example, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians adapted their institutes to include missionary work with Indians, and Mercedarians elevated alms collection over ransoming work. As important as corporate nature was to the orders’ conceptions of themselves, the lengths to which they had to go to distinguish themselves from one another suggests just how much they had in common. Their metaphorical families were based on similar hierarchies and relation-

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ships, were led by a patriarch, and (with the exception of the Augustinians) were protected by a particular advocation of Mary. Their institutes were geared toward the same end, salvation, and they went about achieving it in similar ways with a combination of contemplative and active, priestly ministries. They shared a particular set of vows, which distinguished them from Oratorians, hospital orders, and Jesuits. This interplay between singularity and semblance can be illustrated in the friars’ habits. The habit revealed something fundamentally important about its wearer’s identity, identified him as a member of a particular group, and associated him with specific characteristics and holy figures. The Franciscan preacher Fr. Iván de Torres defined the stigmata as a habit that Christ had shared only with Francis. Dominicans and Mercedarians considered their habits gifts that had come directly from Mary, and images of Our Lady of Carmen and Our Lady of Mercy wore the habit of their respective orders. On the other hand, habits were similarly styled, each was adorned with a holy accessory—be it a cord, rosary, belt, or scapular—and they were meant to identify their wearers as soldiers of the church who had taken the same three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The idea that the orders shared some sort of essential bond also appeared in Medina’s tale of Fr. Christóval de los Mártyres’s death. This Discalced Franciscan died while in a Dominican convent seven leagues outside Oaxaca, and because his own order did not have a house nearby, he was buried with the Dominicans. Moreover, so many people sought pieces of his habit as a relic that he needed another for a decent burial. Because no other Franciscan habits were at hand, he was buried in a Dominican habit.134 The importance of the habit in identifying these men even after death should not be underestimated. A late medieval didactic story told of a Cistercian monk who died while not wearing his habit. When he arrived at heaven’s gate, Saint Benedict did not recognize him for who he was and would not admit him, leaving the monk to watch from outside as his monastically garbed brethren enjoyed the glories of paradise.135 For Medina, that Fr. Christóval had been buried in a habit and consequently recognized as a friar was more important than any differences between Franciscans and Dominicans. He may very well have concurred with Fr. Juan Bautista Méndez’s assertion that began this chapter: it was only the colors of their habits that distinguished friars of one order from another.

chapter three

Serving Cities Orders and Their Urban Ministries It is clear that not only are friars admitted [into mendicant orders] so they can serve in doctrinas, but also for the rest of their sacred Institutes. —1763 letter from the provincials of the Franciscans’, Dominicans’, and Augustinians’ Mexico provinces

; When mendicant institutes were put into action in New Spain, they included a wide array of ministries, much wider than simply administering doctrinas, as the three provincials insisted. Urban convents, without doctrinas’ special privileges to function like parishes, provided a different set of services than doctrinas. A sense of what mendicants were doing in cities comes from Fr. Miguel Mora, the comendador (commander) of the Mercedarians’ Mexico City convent. As part of the 1775 inspection of his province, he described the many obligations of friars in an urban convent. Sparing no praise, he explained that priests were dedicated to the confessional, celebrated a great many masses, and promoted the devotion of the faithful. All this was done, he explained, “even though the work of this convento grande is so great and so greatly increased with many sung Masses, responses, burials, necessary attendances, and precious accomplishments, we sing terce and vespers everyday with the required attendance of friars to the choir, except those who are legitimately unable.”1 Leaving aside his congratulatory tone, Fr. Miguel hit upon the primary functions of urban friars. Preaching, confessing, celebrating masses, attending to the sick and dying, observing holy days, sponsoring lay organizations, praying the Divine Office, offering special prayers, providing the faithful with opportunities to earn indulgences, educating the laity, collecting alms, and assisting the needy through

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charitable works—these activities kept mendicant orders at the hub of urban life. Watching the orders at work reveals that the same combination of corporate distinctiveness and mendicant collectivity found in the orders’ institutes can also be found in how the orders implemented those institutes. The shared mendicant identity that emphasized priestly and contemplative ministries translated into a set of core activities that all the orders performed: preaching, offering confession, celebrating Mass, providing devotional opportunities for the faithful, and carrying out the prayers and pious exercises of convent life. Although there were differences in how the orders went about these activities, what stands out is just how much the orders had in common. More variation occurred in the activities connected to each order’s particular institute. Examination of three areas of significant focus—education, alms for captives, and urban missions—shows that the orders’ engagement in these projects varied over time and space, depending on where and when orders operated. The wide array of urban ministries also brought mendicants into frequent contact with regular clergy. Although there were points of friction in these interactions, the orders’ work in cities was not nearly as controversial or fraught with tension as their work in doctrinas. Mendicants’ urban ministries demonstrate the gulf between the orders’ institutional status and their roles in society. Even as the orders were contending with new state regulations, the loss of doctrinas, and declining numbers of vocations, their urban convents were expanding ministries such as missions and educational programs, often with the encouragement of the state. The dynamism of mendicants’ urban ministries thus stands in sharp relief to standard reform narratives and their emphasis on the orders’ decline. Nor is there evidence that the Enlightened Catholicism promoted by church reformers made much headway with the laity, who continued to be buried in mendicant habits, join lay organizations, flock to missions, and participate in communal devotional practices such as walking the stations of the cross.

core mendicant functions Between August and November 1728 as Fr. Thomás de Molina traveled through the cities, towns, and haciendas of the Bajío, he celebrated fortythree masses and confessed and offered communion to several dozen people. Ordinarily, these commonplace activities that made up the everyday lives of priests would not have attracted notice, but Fr. Thomás had not yet been ordained. A Mercedarian novice who fled his order’s convent in

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Guadalajara, Fr. Thomás did not set out to commit these sacrileges, but by traveling in the guise of a priest to avoid being caught, he found himself compelled to act the part.2 The role of a mendicant priest invariably centered on celebrating Mass and administering the sacraments of confession and communion as Fr. Thomás had done but also included preaching, participating in daily rounds of prayers, and working with the laity to encourage piety and devotion. The historical record concerning these core mendicant activities and how members of different orders chose to go about doing them over a long seventeenth and eighteenth century is spotty. Some activities were so ingrained in the mundane routines of daily life that few contemporaries bothered to document or describe them in any detail, and what happened within the confessional remained veiled by the seal of secrecy. Nor were there many public clashes among orders or with diocesan clergy that generated marvelously thick bundles of documents. The picture that emerges from what records do remain is one in which the orders’ core services put them front and center in the religious life of New Spain’s cities. Mendicants, as a group, developed a reputation as specialists in these services, and how different orders went about providing them shared considerable common ground, overshadowing, although by no means erasing, differences among orders. Preaching and Confession Since the mendicant orders’ thirteenth-century foundations, preaching and confessing had been the orders’ primary functions, and Europeans came to associate them with mendicants. So, too, did the orders retain their connections to preaching and confessing in the New World, where upon arriving, they immediately set to work in these activities. The Augustinian chronicler Juan de Grijalva proudly pointed out that the first Augustinians in New Spain preached and administered confession to the Spaniards they met on their journey from the port of Veracruz to Mexico City. Preaching and confessing, or more to the point, mendicants’ reputation as preachers and confessors, formed much of the basis for their presence in New Spain’s cities. Requests to found new mendicant houses commonly based their arguments on the city’s need for additional priests to provide these services. For example, Don José de Monterrey Zárate y Velazco specifically noted that he made his 1696 donation to found a Carmelite church in Oaxaca “in recognition of the very copious spiritual fruit that can be expected from the pulpit and in the confessional from the feverous and embraced zeal of the Discalced Carmelite friars, as they have abundantly produced in other Cities, so that the parish priests are relieved in their primary obligations of confessing and preaching.”3 As

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Don José’s comment about relieving parish priests indicates, mendicants were not the only male religious to engage in this sort of work; so, too, did the Jesuits. But mendicants had a special association with preaching and confessing, and people like Don José could state with confidence that friars would provide these resources for their communities. It is difficult to overstate how strongly the orders stressed these two occupations that were supposed to teach and inspire the faithful to live a good life, either via exhortations to public gatherings or through more individualized, introspective sessions in the confessional. Accounts of friars’ lives commonly lauded priests for preaching in various languages, inspiring crowds with moving sermons, working tirelessly in the confessional, and having multitudes of the faithful seek them out as confessors. Books and chronicles recorded marvelous cases in which friars saved souls in peril through preaching or confession: Indians gave up their idols, Christians reformed their sinful ways, and dead men revived long enough to confess to the friars praying over them. In one specific case, Fr. Juan del Santo Sacra­ mento, a Discalced Carmelite residing in Celaya, relayed that a man who had not confessed in many years had come to him for help. The man told of a terrifying voice that repeatedly threatened him with the eternal pains of hell if he confessed, and on occasions when he tried to obtain this sacrament, he lost his nerve. It was not until Fr. Juan prayed for and assisted the man that he was able confess, which allowed his soul to be saved.4 The activities of preaching and confessing were closely related. As the Dominican Bartolomé de Medina noted in a late sixteenth-century confessional manual, it was the preacher’s job to call people and the confessor’s job to receive them.5 According to the Dominican chronicler Franco y Ortega, one friar who made such a connection was Fr. Pedro de Urrutia. One day an Indian woman heard his sermon against the sin of dishonesty, and “such was the spirit and fervor of P. Fray Pedro that she was touched by the Holy Spirit and, like another Mary Magdalene, recognized her ugliness and sins.” As soon as he finished the sermon, she went to him for confession, which she made with sincere repentance for her sins. What made this particular episode so remarkable to Franco y Ortega was that three hours later the woman died suddenly, and it was the call of Fr. ­Pe­­dro’s effective sermon and the absolution he granted in the confessional that so narrowly averted the worst of eternal fates for her soul. 6 This didactic tale reveals just how much was at stake in the exercise of preaching and confession, an opinion shared across orders and throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Where differences did exist was in ideas about how friars were to provide these ministries, some of which varied from order to order and some of which evolved as part of broader trends within early modern Catholicism.

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Sermons could take the form of erudite expositions at special occasions, Sunday homilies recited nearly verbatim from a book, or spirited evangelical oratories. Whatever the format, sermons were colonial society’s version of mass media. To friars, sermons provided opportunities to bring souls closer to God, weigh in on issues, praise their orders, and promote their own careers by demonstrating their rhetorical skills. To listeners, sermons offered information and spiritual guidance as well as entertainment, and a sermon at a major celebration or by a well-known preacher could set a community abuzz with anticipation for weeks beforehand or with talk for weeks afterward. The degree to which the content of sermons could become common knowledge throughout a community is evident in the many cases when a preacher’s words ended up under the scrutiny of the Inquisition. For example, when in 1626 the Inquisition was investigating whether the Dominican Fr. Ignacio de Pina had preached against the adoration of images in his order’s church in Chiapas, each witness was able to speak of the sermon, some because they had attended but others only because they had heard other people speak about it. According to one witness, it was the subject of “great talk in the pueblo.”7 Few vehicles were so effective at reaching wide audiences. Although the messages of these sermons varied—the subject matter, theologians cited, and positions espoused reflected the orders’ particular positions and devotions—their formats and their styles developed along similar lines between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.8 By the start of this period, sermons had already been standardized into a common format, and variations among the medieval orders’ styles had evened out. The new dominant style was patterned on what had originally been a Franciscan style of preaching. In fact, Tridentine decrees on preaching were taken from the Franciscan Rule, citing that preaching should focus on vices, virtues, punishment, and reward. This moral focus differed, for instance, from Luther’s emphasis on explaining doctrine, and by the time of Trent it was shared by many outside the Franciscan order, including Dominicans, whose style had originally been more didactic.9 Sermons were to be conversational, straightforward, and direct. By the seventeenth century, new styles based on more complex structures and rhetorical flourishes came into vogue. Rejecting the “vulgar” plain language of the earlier style, the baroque sermon instead relied upon allegories, ­hyperboles, and especially “the play of opposites and . . . the miracle of the paradox.”10 During the second half of the eighteenth century, however, new trends favored less abstract and more practical and didactic sermons that could be understood by even the most uneducated listeners. A Mercedarian describing one of his prelates noted that he had been the first in the province to preach in the “modern style,” which, by the

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time the Mercedarian was writing, around 1790, had become “the style that flourishes among our preachers today.”11 These trends away from the baroque were strongly supported by church reformers. The Fourth Provincial Council (1771) resolved that preaching should follow the new style, and during the royal inspections of mendicant provinces, instructions to the inspectors directed them to ensure the good use of Christian oratory and preaching so that sermons are confined to Christian moral [theology] in order to reprehend vice, and to Dogma in order to teach doctrine and principles of our Sacred Religion and the imitation of saints, removing distasteful allegories and comparisons that are not founded in truth and all that . . . can be reduced to a game of words empty of meaning.12

Reformers’ interest in ensuring that mendicants gave up baroque ways of preaching might be taken as evidence of a particular association between mendicants and baroque preaching. After all, attacks on baroque oratory were also the subject of the Spanish Jesuit José de Isla’s highly popular satirical novel Fray Gerundio de Campazas (1758), which featured a mendicant (rather than a Jesuit or secular priest) protagonist infamous for his rhetorically elaborate but shallow or inappropriate sermons. Instead, the connection was not so much between mendicants and baroque as it was between mendicants and preaching more generally. For example, Isla explained his decision to make his protagonist a friar: I will not deny that the number of preachers honored with the very noble, holy distinction of fray is much greater than those that go by the title of padre [ Jesuits] or with the epithet of don [secular priests] . . . ; the number of secular clergy who exercise the ministry of preaching cannot compare with the number of regular clergy who exercise the same ministry.13

The difference, he concluded, was “in the numbers, and not in the substance.”14 Although Isla was referring to Spain, mendicant preachers enjoyed numerical superiority in New Spain as well. Not only were there more friars than Jesuits or secular clergy at this time but also mendicants were particularly visible practitioners of this activity, and they provided the majority of preachers at the most important events throughout the liturgical cycle. Sermons during Lent and Advent as well as those during an octave or novena rotated daily sermons among the secular clergy and orders, so six or seven preachers out of eight or nine might be mendicant friars. Furthermore, most sermons published in New Spain between the late sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries came from the pens of mendicants. According to Carlos Herrejón Peredo, friars, especially Dominicans and Franciscans, authored the majority of sermons published between 1584 and 1760.15 Of course, only a small percentage of preaching was done at occasions grand enough to produce a sermon worthy of

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publication, so it was the regular cycle of sermons on Sundays and feast days that produced the bulk of colonial sermons.16 Here, too, mendicant preachers enjoyed numerical superiority since most cities had more mendicant churches than secular parishes. During the period when baroque flourished, mendicants had a particularly prominent place in the pulpit. The pulpit was not the only platform for preachers. During the eighteenth century, friars began taking their messages into urban streets and plazas more frequently. Although all the orders at least occasionally sent out friars for this purpose, two groups were most closely connected to it. Franciscans from the colegios de Propaganda Fide eschewed the formal events that produced printed sermons and sought to reach the laity through more informal preaching in their churches as well as local streets. Their effects were not lost on Pachuca’s parish priest, who in 1774 reported that “the material presence and example of the friars in these streets is a very effective, attractive, and marvelous web, not only for the devotees, but also for the relaxed and libertine impious.”17 During the late eighteenth century, Discalced Carmelites also seem to have taken up this sort of work with particular enthusiasm. In 1775 the Carmelite inspector ordered pairs of friars in the cities of Mexico, Puebla, Oaxaca, and Guadalajara, “where being increased populations there may be those who seldom attend church,” to preach in streets and plazas “where there were large gatherings of people.” The impetus for this encouragement seems to have come from within the Carmelite order, as the royal instructions and the records of the other remaining inspections from the Mercedarians, Dominicans, and Augustinians of Michoacán contained no such directive.18 Some biographies of Carmelites from this time noted their dedication to this form of preaching, such as that of Fr. Manuel de San Lorenzo, who spent many years “explaining Christian doctrine in the portal de los mercaderes [a busy Mexico City market] every Sunday of the year.”19 Preaching’s partner, confession, was integral to achieving salvation, as it offered penitents absolution for their sins and potentially freed them from the grips of hell. Confession, in the words of Fr. Francisco Fernández Herrojo, the Mercedarian author of an eighteenth-century confession manual, consisted of “a true and legitimate accusation of one’s own current sins made to a priest, who is in place of God, in order to obtain pardon of them through Sacramental absolution.”20 There were three parts to the process: an examination of the conscience for sins, the actual telling of the sins to a confessor, and fulfilling the penitence he imposed. Only once confessed and cleansed of sin was the penitent worthy of receiving communion. As a sacrament, confession was defined doctrinally, but its form was by no means static. Friars offered the sacrament in dif-

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ferent places, asked different things of different penitents, and debated the best way to make a good confession. The church required confession and communion once a year during Lent, in theory in their parish church, but many people fulfilled their “annual precept” in mendicant churches. Because of the crush, extra confessionals were set up and all available friars called to duty. When Viceroy Bucareli wrote to the guardian of the missionary college of San Fernando asking him to send confessors to the new Poor House, the guardian replied that he had sent two priests one night but would not, unfortunately, be able to offer greater assistance because his available manpower was already stretched thin: The multitude of people, particularly the poor who come to this College for the obligation of the Church [annual precept], not only from Mexico but from twelve leagues and similar distances, is so innumerable and of such a manner that some days many remain without the day’s work that they need to maintain themselves and their families and without the spiritual consolation of confession. For this reason from the first week of Lent until the octave of Corpus [Christi] the church is open morning and afternoon and all the Father confessors from the Guardian until the last Father Confessor are confessors.21

Many parish priests, perhaps overwhelmed by the number of penitents, were glad of this sort of assistance. Juan Anselmo del Moral y Castillo de Altra recalled that the Carmelites’ exceptional dedication to confession in Tehuacán “gave me great consolation and satisfaction when I was the [city’s] parish priest.”22 By the sixteenth century, it was becoming more common for people to confess (and take communion) more than once a year. Jesuits were highly visible champions of the movement toward more frequent confession, but mendicants promoted the idea as well and provided confessors throughout the year. Just how many they provided varied by convent. In 1775 Fr. Clemente Xavier de Lemos, the comendador of the Mercedarians’ Valla­dolid convent, a smaller house located on the city’s periphery, informed the provincial inspector that his friars attended to the confessional on Sundays, holy days, and “all days with crowds of penitents.”23 The Mercedarians’ smaller convents, with only a few priests, may have been limited to providing confessors once a week and on special occasions, but their larger convents as well as those of other orders typically provided confessors on a daily basis. The Dominicans of Querétaro opened their confessionals daily with as many friars as were available, according to the letter that local resident Francisco José de Urrutia wrote to the Dominicans’ provincial inspector in 1778. The Discalced Carmelites seem to have been particularly dedicated to the confessional and may well have allocated more of their resources to it. For example, the prelates of the

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Carmelites’ convent at San Luis Potosí declared that at least eight of the fourteen priests in residence attended the confessional every morning, as did all “those necessary” every afternoon.24 The process of confession varied by where it took place. Ideally, confessions were to take place in a confessional, and many friars seem to have worked out of the same confessional, which allowed their regular penitents to locate them without difficulty. For example, Fr. Antonio Gamboa worked out of the second confessional to the left of the pulpit in his order’s Oaxaca church, which is how one of the women he was accused of soliciting knew where to find him every Monday and Saturday.25 Because these booths, as relatively new and not inexpensive pieces of technology, were limited in number, special events or days requiring large numbers of confessors could tax this system. 26 In 1771 the prelates of the Franciscan missionary college of San Fernando ordered friars who confessed only during busy times not to occupy the confessionals of those who regularly attended to this ministry. Any confessors who did find their usual spot occupied were not to take matters into their own hands and evict the occupant; instead, they were to inform the guardian, who would handle the situation.27 When confessionals were not available, friars positioned themselves throughout the church. A manual of ceremonies for the Franciscans’ Mexico Province (1700) described how these friars should proceed. Although the number of Inquisition cases where friars were accused of improper behavior in the confessional reveal that real-life practice did not always follow these prescriptions, the idea was that the priest and penitent would sit side by side, with the confessor in a chair and the penitent kneeling.28 Preferably this would be done in the church nave, but on days with especially large crowds, friars set out chairs in chapels or the portería, an area near the entrance to the convent. Confessors using these makeshift areas were to guard the privacy of confession by leaving sufficient space between each other and keeping away from pathways. They were also instructed not to confess women, who were to confess only in the church.29 Orders also offered this sacrament outside their churches. Attending to the sick was deemed especially important because of the danger that they might die without having cleansed their soul. The duty figured prominently in the casos raros (exceptional occurrences) that Espinosa reported from Franciscan missions, and records of chapter meetings from the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province directed friars to be punctual when called to confess the sick, leaving whatever occupation they were engaged in to do so. Passing references indicate that friars did this work in cities as well as in surrounding areas, such as when a Discalced Franciscan noted in his testimony before the Inquisition that his prelate had ordered him to

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travel outside the city of Oaxaca to attend to a sick gentleman.30 Attending the sick was not the only reason confessors worked outside their home churches. The rector of the Mercedarian colegio de Belem on the outskirts of Mexico City reported that his friars administered confession in the homes of the infirm as well as in convents of nuns and at a school for girls.31 Although friars might confess nuns from any number of convents, the Observant Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Discalced Carmelites had a special commitment to minister to nuns of their own order.32 In theory, Franciscans from the missionary colleges were prohibited from confessing nuns of any kind, but the rule seemed to be commonly broken to the point that prelates occasionally highlighted this work as one of the college’s many pressing duties.33 Friars might also travel outside their home cities to nearby pueblos de indios, especially during Lent to assist parish priests with people completing their annual precept. Orders that administered doctrinas were well known for this work, and Franciscan missionary colleges timed many of their missions to coincide with Lent, but Carmelites and Mercedarians engaged in it as well. The head of the Mercedarians’ Colima convent reported that his friars traveled to towns in the Tierra Adentro during Lent.34 Similarly, the Carmelite college of Santa Ana outside Mexico City allowed two ­friars each year to travel to confess “the poor slaves who are in the obrajes [textile factories].”35 Most of what went on in these confessionals, the ways in which friars of different orders or eras interacted with penitents, remains closed to historians by the confidentiality of confession. This is not to say, however, that the models upon which confessors were to base their work cannot offer insights. One such model, the lives of friars told in chronicles, usually speak of confessors’ virtues only in vague terms, but Isidro Félix de Espinosa gave a fairly detailed description of what it was that made Fr. Francisco Frutos, a member of the Franciscans’ Querétaro missionary college, an especially popular, exemplary confessor. After affirming that Fr. Francisco was heroically tireless in the confessional (a standard compliment), Espinosa noted that “rare was the sinner who arrived at his feet who did not return home so improved, that his family did not notice. His words were so sweet and at the same time so sharp and penetrating that even the most stonehearted could not resist him.”36 This carrot-and-stick balance between sweetness and sharpness was commonly noted for its effectiveness, and according to one Carmelite author, confessors should mix “mildness with gravity, sweetness with skepticism, fondness with respect.”37 A more detailed model of confession than hagiographical lives comes from confessional manuals that circulated in numerous versions and editions. Many were imported from Spain or Rome, and some of these were

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modified and translated into native languages to help priests confess Indians. Franciscans and Augustinians were responsible for many of the translated editions—a reflection of their special interest in native languages. Whatever their origin or language, manuals were variations on a standard format that Henry Charles Lea described in his history of confession: “The Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, the five senses, the twelve articles of faith, the seven sacraments, the seven works of temporal mercy and the seven spiritual, were ransacked to find objects of inquiry, and then all classes and callings of men were successively reviewed and lists of questions were drawn up fitted for their several temptations and habitual transgressions.”38 For instance, a Franciscan manual for confessing in the mexicana language began with sections regarding adherence to the Ten Commandments and other precepts and then listed questions to ask people of different occupations and stations, including caciques (Indian leaders), merchants, silversmiths, peanut salesmen, butchers, and fathers and mothers.39 This format, it was thought, would cultivate comprehensive confessions by taking into account the individual circumstances of each penitent. As Archbishop of Guatemala Pedro Cortés y Larraz explained in the manual he sponsored, the confessor must pay attention to each penitent’s “status [estado], condition and obligations, considering him as two persons, one Christian and one political.”40 In his capacity as a Christian, a penitent would thus be asked if he had skipped any obligatory masses, had not honored his mother or father, or had sinned with any women. In his capacity as a merchant or servant, he would be asked if he had shortchanged customers or served his master faithfully. These formal manuals, according to a Carmelite priest, did not offer enough practical advice, especially for priests new to confessing, prompting him to compose a remarkably frank guide. His unpublished manuscript, “Advertencias para los nuevos confesores” (Admonitions for New Confessors), offered beginning practitioners “practical advice on the prudent method of comporting themselves in the confessional with different types of penitents.”41 Whereas most manuals counseled priests with types of questions to ask, the Carmelite also informed them how to ask such questions. He noted that boys should be asked whether they play during Mass, fight with other boys, or say la mala palabra (the bad word), but then specifically noted what that bad word was (hijo de puta) and explained how to keep the boys’ attention by scratching the table, tapping a foot, and asking, “Are you paying attention, muchacho? Pay attention to what I am saying.”42 When confessing rústicos (coarse or uneducated people), the confessor must use simple words, ignore their use of numbers (to express how many times they sinned) since they do not understand them, and be ready to ask the same question in a different way. Many

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confessors think these people do not know their doctrine, wrote the Carmelite, but really they do not understand what the confessor is asking. The guide also indicated the mix of spiritual and worldly assistance confessors could offer and to what degree confessors served not just as God’s representatives empowered with absolving sin but also as counselors in people’s lives. In relation to confessing married people, he spent several pages on how to appease recently married men who complained that their new wives were not virgins. In practice, confession thus involved more than rooting out sins and extended into the realm of spiritual guidance. Although rich in description of issues concerning churchmen, the general nature of most manuals offers less insight into what it meant to confess with friars of different orders. Variations in orders’ methods also came from the friars’ training in moral theology, the branch of theology dealing with how people are supposed to behave under God’s laws and the one most directly connected to the work of confession.43 Although an Augustinian and a Franciscan each following his guide may have asked similar questions to ascertain a penitent’s sins, they may have been taught differently about what constituted contrition or what was required to earn absolution. All priests studied moral theology for one to two years as part of their seminary training, and by the eighteenth century all convents were required to hold weekly conferences on the topic. The eighteenthcentury inspector of the Dominicans’ provinces, citing the “gravity of the responsibility” of confessing, ordered priests in even the smallest houses to meet three times a week to discuss cases chosen by a reader in moral theology. The Mercedarians even charged priests who were not yet confessors to attend “in order that they are prepared more and more in the proper and just practice of the Confessional.”44 The approaches to confession taught in the seminary and weekly conferences were based on the teachings of the orders’ scholars and theologians.45 For example, medieval Franciscans and Dominicans, following the arguments of their respective theologians Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, disagreed over the role of contrition in confession. In general, both sides agreed that some combination of the penitent’s contrition and God’s willingness to absolve sins was necessary for a good confession, but Scotists believed that God was willing to extend absolution to cases in which Thomists argued that penitents needed greater levels of contrition in order to be absolved. In short, Thomists demanded more from penitents than Scotists did.46 How much of these distinctions remained by the time Franciscans and Dominicans came to the Americas is not entirely clear, but the Dominicans did retain a reputation for doctrinal rigor. Such differences could also account for the Dominican Archbishop of Mexico Montúfar’s mid-sixteenth-century statement that the Franciscans were far too lenient with confession.47

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That differences in orders’ confession methods did exist, and equally significant, that people recognized those differences, is suggested by two Inquisition cases. In 1775 the Inquisition confiscated from a private home in León a painting described as having various figures and scenes with identifying titles, in the middle of which was a Mercedarian confessor saying, “I absolve everything.”48 Given the vague description, it is difficult to interpret the message, but Mercedarians, who had a reputation for laxness, may have been perceived as especially lenient confessors. The second case involved a young woman, María Josefa de la Piña, whose questionable claims to saintliness brought her under the Inquisition’s scrutiny in 1783. María Josefa tried to convince a friend that she should not confess with the Franciscans, telling her that their regimen was completely different from the one of the Discalced Carmelites whom María Josefa favored.49 Whatever differences over confession existed among mendicant orders, deeper chasms existed between Jesuits and mendicant orders, especially Dominicans. The Jesuit order viewed confession as an opportunity to accomplish more than obtaining forgiveness for certain sins. It should be part of a deep reflection on one’s life and a process of internal change. The confessional was thus a place to receive advice, and the role of the priest was to assist penitents in constructing a narrative of “spiritual selfhood” rather than to interrogate them with questions about specific sins they might have committed, the system generally followed by mendicants.50 Furthermore, the Jesuit order, in opposition to most other churchmen, adopted during the late sixteenth century a system of moral theology called probabilism, which essentially meant that priests could more easily grant absolution to penitents. Although in the mid-seventeenth century the order officially switched to a new system, probabiliorism, which demanded more of penitents, vestiges of the old one remained, including in the order’s most popular training manuals for priests.51 The Jesuits’ association with probabilism subjected them to accusations of laxity, with one of their chief opponents being Dominicans.52 Although these theological debates may have been centered in Rome and Salamanca, home to important Dominican and Jesuit colleges, the issue was certainly alive in New Spain and involved many more participants than Jesuit and Dominican theologians.53 In 1613 Fr. Juan de Burgos, a Franciscan friar residing in Guadalajara, was denounced to the Inquisition for an inflammatory satire of Loyola and the Jesuits that doubted their institute’s utility. Fr. Juan’s handwritten notebook specifically claimed that “in the administration of the sacrament of penance, their doctrine and method of administering to women stunk of that which alumbrados had used” and that Loyola and the Jesuits confessed

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and gave communion in the same manner as a group condemned as heretics.54 This accusation was particularly harsh since it also tied the Jesuits’ doctrinally suspect practices to charges of sexual impropriety. The alumbrados, who first emerged in early sixteenth-century Spain, were practitioners of a piety based on a personal, mystical relationship with God. Many of them were women, and among the Inquisition’s charges was that they and their confessors had illicit relationships. The case from Guadalajara records several Franciscans as having seen the notebook but says nothing of its circulation outside the convent. Another case from 1767, however, indicates the extent to which laypersons could be aware of the debates over different ways of confessing. The case began when a royal scribe appeared before an agent of the Inquisition in Mexico City to denounce what he had heard at a gathering in a secular priest’s house. Those present had been discussing the very recent expulsion of the Jesuits when Doña María de los Ángeles, the wife of an Audiencia lawyer, relayed the dilemma of her friend, Doña Mariana Fernández de Córdoba. Doña Mariana had confessed with a Jesuit for many years but now found herself without her confessor. Seeking a replacement, she had gone to a Dominican, who told her she needed to revalidate all her confessions because the Jesuits were instructed in many heretical errors. When Doña María appeared before the Inquisitors, she told them that the Dominican had told her friend that the Jesuits “had lost the world because of their lax doctrines.” Doña María’s husband offered a more detailed version of the story, answering that the Dominican claimed the revalidation was necessary because of the Jesuits’ lax opinions and light penances and, as proof, told how some merchants of Mexico City who had been directed by Jesuits had just been publicly punished as usurers. When Doña Mariana finally testified, she told a different story. She did say that she had gone to confess with a Dominican, Padre Arri­ eta, a week after the Jesuits’ expulsion, but she claimed that she did not remember if the subject of revalidating her confessions arose from Padre Arrieta’s words or her own doubts. Either way, they discussed it, and when she asked him if the revalidation was necessary, she said that he responded with a kindly “we will see.” When the Inquisitors asked her specifically about the story circulating, she said that she had never heard such a thing. All she could say was that from what Padre ­Arrieta had said, she was given to understand that the Jesuits’ theology was “muy ancha,” a term that, in this case, meant “without fear of God.”55 It is worth noting that Doña Mariana’s testimony came early on in the investigation, yet the Inquisitors invested another month of work in the case, during which time they interviewed more than thirty people, nearly all of whom had heard the same basic story and had heard it third- or fourth-hand. Fur-

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thermore, nothing seems to have happened to the Dominican, indicating that the inquisitors were less interested in him than they were in ­tracking, and halting, the spread of a story. How far that story had spread indicates that people recognized differences not just among individual confessors but also among confessors of different orders. These differences, based in the orders’ theologies and traditions, were not located in what the orders were doing but in how they were doing it. Masses Miraculous stories about masses appeared in histories or records of notable events far less frequently than stories about confession. The ones that did appear typically focused on the Eucharist itself rather than the priest whose role was to find the number of hosts miraculously multiplied or to witness a host that remained elevated on its own.56 The reason for these omissions may have been that celebrating Mass lacked the potential heroics of activities with more direct contact with the laity, like preaching and confessing. The reason was not, however, failure to recognize the importance of Mass. The Mass’s absolute centrality to Catholic practice was unquestioned, and Trent and the Third Mexican Provincial Council made the point quite clearly. Celebrating Mass was especially central to the routines of urban convents, which had larger numbers of priests and did not have the heavier pastoral responsibilities of doctrinas. For example, statutes for the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries established more stringent requirements for celebrating Mass in urban convents. These houses were to celebrate their daily communal Mass as a sung or High Mass, which involved more friars, ceremony, and time than a recited or Low Mass. In contrast, houses in pueblos de indios were offered various dispensations from singing, if not from celebrating, Mass every day.57 On any given day, and especially during the morning hours when canon law specified masses were to be held, urban churches bustled with the activity of priests preparing for and celebrating masses. The number in one church on a single day could be impressive. For example, according to convent records, the Mercedarians’ main church in Mexico City performed an average of approximately fifteen masses per day between 1684 and 1687, and across town the Franciscans were averaging approximately forty per day in their convento grande in 1688.58 These masses were observed with varying amounts of ceremony, recited by a solitary priest in a small side chapel before the church doors opened in the morning or, at the other extreme, sung by an important prelate at the main altar with the entire community and large crowds present. Most

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resembled the former, which were celebrated not for the benefit of an audience but for souls in purgatory, as masses were considered an especially efficacious means of lessening a soul’s time there. Because these “private” or “low” masses were often carried out in a church’s side chapels rather than at the main altar, multiple masses could take place at the same time. The clout that masses carried in purgatory made them highly valued among the laity, and they were one of the mendicant orders’ main forms of spiritual currency, similar to, but even more valuable than, the prayers that Kathryn Burns has shown helped place female convents at the center of colonial spiritual economies.59 The way the system worked was that people would either give alms to have a fixed number of masses performed or establish a chaplaincy in which their donation was invested and the income used to fund masses in perpetuity. The head of the convent would then distribute the masses among his priests.60 For example, the Augustinians’ Querétaro convent recorded in a libro de misas (a book tracking masses owed and performed) a chaplaincy that obligated them to say a Mass every Monday for Don Julián de la Peña. For the year 1755 the margin by the entry for this chaplaincy included exactly fifty-two check marks along with the notation “said.”61 According to books from Mercedarian, Augustinian, Franciscan, and Discalced Carmelite convents, alms and wills funded the majority of masses celebrated in their houses. As an example, between September 1747 and January 1749 the Carmelites recorded having celebrated 11,815 masses in their Puebla convent, 52.5 percent of which came from alms and 22.3 percent from chaplaincies.62 Less common but still important sources of masses were those said for lay organizations. Many confraternities and third orders celebrated weekly, monthly, or yearly masses as a group. In addition, membership in a confraternity or third order frequently came with the benefit of having a set number of masses celebrated for a member’s soul at the time of death or every year as part of an annual Mass for all deceased members of the organization. These groups typically paid the convent for their masses. People seem to have been especially interested in having their masses celebrated in mendicant churches. The testators in Brian Larkin’s study of wills in eighteenth-century Mexico City had a “marked preference” for bequeathing masses in mendicant rather than parish churches.63 The appeal of the service was great enough to be used as an incentive in fundraising efforts for major building projects. Carmelites used chaplaincies to fund many of their new foundations, including those in San Ángel, Toluca, and San Luis Potosí, and the Augustinians of Celaya and the Mercedarians of Mexico City used masses to lure donors for the construction of new churches.64 In 1634 Mercedarians offered one hundred people

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the opportunity to become patrons in exchange for a thousand-peso gift payable over five years. The formal agreement setting out the terms of the exchange included burial rights in the Mercedarian church and prayers said for the donor in the friars’ daily office, but a key component was the masses celebrated for the patrons’ souls. Specifically, the convent offered to say for the donors collectively one mass per day and two more elaborate anniversary masses per year, one on the feast day of Our Lady of Mercy and the other during the octave of All Saints. In addition, patrons would be admitted as brothers of the order, thereby becoming part of the collective for whom each Mercedarian offered masses, a total of more than forty thousand per year according to Mercedarian claims. Within a couple of years, the Mercedarians had their one hundred patrons and a sizable sum for a new church.65 One reason mendicant churches might have been a popular destination for masses, especially when compared to parish churches, is that they had more priests in residence. Because canon law restricted priests to celebrating one Mass per day (except under special circumstances), a church with more priests enjoyed a greater capacity for masses.66 Even so, some convents had a difficult time keeping up with the number of masses they were obligated to celebrate. For example, in 1775 Bishop of Puebla Victoriano López Gonzalo wrote to the Mercedarian provincial inspector that his Puebla convent’s obligations were too great for the number of priests there. Although the bishop’s comments were made as part of a litany of complaints about the convent, they were borne out by the data provided by the Mercedarian comendador. That year the convent housed twenty priests and had 8,598 annual masses of obligation, so even if each priest said one mass each day of the year toward this total, those 7,300 masses would fall far short of the convent’s obligations.67 More than likely, not all of those priests said Mass daily, at least not in the Mercedarian convent. Such was the demand for priests to say masses that friars could earn extra income by celebrating outside their own convents. To balance these opportunities with convent obligations, an eighteenth-century regulation specified that Mercedarians were to celebrate Mass in their own convent four times per week, which, if followed in Puebla, would have further reduced the total number of masses to 4,160—less than half of what they were required to provide. The Mercedarians were not the only ones struggling to meet their obligations, and orders frequently sought to lighten their burdens by divesting themselves of some of their obligations. For instance, in 1771 the Franciscans’ Mexico Province obtained a bull from Pope Clement XIV allowing them to reduce the number of masses celebrated in the province, and in 1798 the Augustinian prior in San Luis Potosí sought the same

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result because of “the scarcity of friars that are regularly found in this convent . . . and a greatly increased number of masses.” In both cases, the masses eliminated were those from chaplaincies whose principal had been lost in bad investments.68 Although the timing of these requests along with the Mercedarians’ experience in Puebla could indicate a connection between the orders’ late eighteenth-century population drops and their ability to celebrate masses, limited data from the seventeenth century indicate that this was not a new problem. According to two surviving libros de misas from the seventeenth century, neither the Augustinians in Valla­ dolid nor the Mercedarians in Mexico City had been able to celebrate all their required masses.69 One factor in whether a convent fulfilled its obligations was the emphasis its order placed on these in relation to other responsibilities. Compare, for example, the Augustinian convents of Valladolid and Querétaro with the Carmelite convents in Valladolid and Puebla. Both Augustinian convents had trouble meeting their mass requirements, and in Valladolid during 1642, 1663, and 1718, the friars fell 611, 828, and a staggering 1,389 masses short of what they owed. Although the convent’s heavy work administering doctrinas may have diverted priests away from this work, the order’s convent in Querétaro, which had no doctrinas, had similar troubles, owing 289 masses in 1758 and 319 masses in 1789. Provincial decrees throughout this time period continued to insist that convents meet all their obligations and occasionally even tried to shift some convents’ masses to houses with fewer obligations, but the overall picture is that the Michoacán Augustinians did a poor job of meeting their mass obligations.70 In contrast, the Carmelites of Valladolid and Puebla almost always met, and sometimes exceeded, their requirements. At one point in the 1750s, the Puebla convent was almost 2,500 masses ahead of its target.71 The Carmelites managed this surplus even though the approximately twenty-five priests assigned to each of these two convents was similar to the number assigned to the Augustinians’ Valladolid convent.72 Furthermore, the Carmelites celebrated many more masses than the Augustinians. In 1745–1746, the Valladolid Carmelites averaged 751 masses per month, while across town in 1748 the Augustinians averaged 238 per month (Table 4). One reason that the Carmelites were so much more successful was that Augustinians divided their energies among a wide range of activities, but Carmelites specialized in those done within their own convents. In addition, their friars were forbidden to celebrate masses outside their own churches, meaning Carmelite houses had more manpower available for these duties than their counterparts.73 Financial motivations may also have played a role since many Carmelite houses relied heavily on masses for their income. In Toluca, for example, 75 percent of the

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table 4 Carmelite and Augustinian masses Carmelites of Valladolid Average masses/ Years month

Carmelites of Puebla Average masses/ Years month

1745–1746

751

1747–1749

724

1764–1766

970

1770–1772

643

1783–1785

758

1785–1787

639

1793–1796

898

1796–1797

534

1803–1805

680

1805–1806

418

Augustinians of Valladolid Average masses/ Year month

Augustinians of Querétaro Average masses/ Years month

1642

127

1755–1756

164

1663

186

1757–1758

231

1712

184

1767–1768

137

1748

238

1788–1789

106

sources : AHPCM, carp. 1418, “Libro deonde se asienta o se toma razon de las missas q. se dizen”; carp. 1419, “Libro 2 donde se toma razon de las missas que se dicen mensalmente por los Religiosos de este convento de Carmelitas descalzos de la ciudad de Puebla”; carp. 1453, “Libro de misas, 1745–68 [Valladolid]”; carp. 1454, “Libro de misas, 1768–1847 [Valladolid]”; and APPAM, caja Morelia, Siglo XIX, “Primer libro q hai de misas, 1640–1664”; Libro C-03-03-01, “Libro de misas [Valladolid]”; Libro C-03-03-05, “Libro de misas, 1746–1761 [Valladolid]”; Libro C-33-0301, “Libro de misas de este conv.to de N.a Señora de los Dolores de la ciudad de Querétaro que se comenso el dia 3 Nov.re 1754”; Libro C-33-03-02, “Libro de misas de este conv.to de Querétaro.”

convent’s income came from chaplaincies.74 The differences between the two orders’ dedication to celebrating masses were apparent, and people recognized that a Carmelite church was a good place to order a mass. Not only could people be confident that Carmelite convents would meet their obligations but the order’s reputation for reclusion and austerity contributed to a belief in the special efficacy of their works. No wonder they celebrated three times the number of masses as Augustinians. Devotional Opportunities The Discalced Carmelites of Mexico City celebrated John of the Cross’s canonization in December 1726 with eight days of festivities featuring an elaborately decorated church, fireworks, plays, sermons from the city’s most famous preachers, and magnificent processions, one featuring an enormous dragon that breathed real fire. Although the level of spectacle at this event was extraordinary, it was but one of many fiestas that took

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place in mendicant churches. Feast days filled most of the year, including the three major Catholic observances of Lent, Pentecost, and Advent; the annual days dedicated to saints with important connections to the order or convent; and special events such as the dedication of a new altar. These fiestas could range from a simple Mass to elaborate multiday affairs like the Carmelites’ celebration of John of the Cross. Especially valued were events that included opportunities to earn indulgences. Aside from special occasions, mendicant churches attracted people who wanted to participate in the popular pious exercises that orders promoted—notably including the way of the cross and the rosary—and to join the confraternities and third orders that mendicants sponsored. Between festivities, chances to earn indulgences, spiritual exercises, and lay organizations, mendicant churches offered people a range of ways to try to improve their spiritual health and their lot in the afterlife. At the same time, these events provided mendicants with important sources of income, adding pragmatic reasons to spiritual motivations for providing them. Beyond the rote schedule of daily low masses, the cycle of events that took place in any church was based on an official church calendar, the Roman Breviary, that defined feasts throughout the liturgical year. Because many days included more than one feast, how a day was actually celebrated depended on the particular church, its order, and location. Each order had its own version of the breviary that took into account the order’s special devotions and privileges that allowed it to celebrate its own saints or devotions with additional solemnity.75 The orders’ patriarchs, Marian advocations, and canonized or beatified members were chief among those recognized with special pageantry (Table 5). Orders might possess special permission to celebrate these figures’ feast days in place of another’s. For example, before Pedro Nolasco (1628) and John of the Cross (1726) were canonized and assigned a feast day in the Roman Breviary, the Mercedarians and Discalced Carmelites celebrated their respective founder’s feast instead of the one listed in the breviary. Such privileges were sometimes extended to other orders, such as in 1624 when the Michoacán Augustinians ordered houses in the province to celebrate the feast day of Joachim (Mary’s father), using privileges conceded to the Franciscan order.76 The most common reason an order shared its privileges was to promote a devotion important to it, especially if that order did not have a church in a particular location and so relied upon others to deliver its message. For this reason, in Toluca where there was no Dominican church, the Franciscan convent hosted a traditionally Dominican organization, the Confraternity of the Rosary, and celebrated its events using privileges granted to the Dominicans.77

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table 5 Orders’ most important devotions in New Spain Order

Holy figures/celebrations

Franciscan

Francis of Assisi Portiuncula Antonio Margil de Jesús Gregorio López Felipe de Jesús Sebastián de Aparicio Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Diego de Alcalá Anthony of Padua

Dominican

Dominic of Guzmán Our Lady of the Rosary Rose of Lima Thomas Aquinas Catherine of Siena

Augustinian

Augustine Nicolás de Tolentino Juan de Sahagún Thomas de Villanueva Rita of Cascia Saint Monica

Carmelite

Teresa of Avila Elias John of the Cross Our Lady of Carmen Maria Magdalena de Pazzi

Mercedarian

Pedro Nolasco Our Lady of Mercy Ramón Nonato Pedro Pasqual Mariana de Jesús Antonio Abad

The orders’ breviaries were further customized to each province, which published their own calendars. In 1674 the Michoacán Augustinian hierarchy ordered the creation of a calendar “to create uniformity throughout the province” and spent considerable sums on printing them throughout the following century.78 A series of calendars from the Dominicans’ Mexico Province during the 1770s indicates how liturgy was defined on different levels: the mandates of the Roman Church, the order’s breviary, and local particularities. The calendars thus included universal feasts like

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Corpus Christi and Advent, Dominican ones like those of Catherine of Siena and Rose of Lima, and Mexican celebrations like that of Our Lady of Guadalupe. These universal, order-wide, and local points of reference are also apparent in a section of the calendars that situated the province within a chronological framework. The year 1771 was thus 6,979 years from the creation of the world, 610 years from the birth of Dominic, 259 years from the conquest of Mexico, 249 from the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and 250 from the foundation of the province.79 These calendars served as templates for the schedules of events in the province’s houses, but each house’s actual patterns of celebration depended on local devotions, its lay organizations, and the interests of ­donors. Two directorios that instructed the sacristan and his assistants on how to handle events throughout the year demonstrate some of these patterns for the Franciscans’ Mexico City convent.80 Among the instructions in these books from 1723 and 1787 were how to observe special local devotions, such as what to do when Our Lady of Remedios came into the city, and how to celebrate the feast day of San Felipe de Jesús, a patron of Mexico City. Although the convent put great effort into celebrating these two decidedly local events, neither book mentioned Fr. Sebastián de Aparicio, a much-revered Franciscan from Puebla and a patron of the city, where the Franciscans did observe his day. Sometimes individual donors endowed particular feast days so that they were celebrated with considerably more fanfare and prominence than the order would have done otherwise. For example, according to the 1723 sacristy book, the Franciscans were to use a donation of two thousand pesos to celebrate the February 15 Translation of Saint Anthony with a sermon and a Mass with a sung response in the altar mayor of the main church, which would be specially decorated and illuminated with twenty-two candles. Because events like this one were dependent on endowed funds, if those funds were lost in a bad investment, the order could terminate the celebration. This was the likely outcome in this case because in the 1787 sacristy book, there is no mention of any celebration for Anthony’s Translation.81 The interests of the convent’s many lay organizations also shaped what went on in the Franciscans’ Mexico City convent churches. At the minimum each organization supported the feast of its patron, and wealthier ones contributed to the greater splendor of several feast days. The Franciscans would have celebrated many of these feasts at convent expense anyway, but the involvement of a confraternity could mean adding a procession, having a preacher of higher standing, or singing vespers the evening before. However, some celebrations were clearly initiated by the lay organizations. In the Franciscans’ Mexico City convento grande, the School of Christ celebrated the feast day of Oratorian founder San Felipe Neri; and

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members of the Confraternity of Aránzazu, an organization of Basque immigrants and their descendants, celebrated the feasts of two of their countrymen, the Jesuits Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier. Opportunities to earn indulgences also drew people into the orders’ churches at regular intervals throughout the year. Each order possessed special papal privileges that allowed the faithful to earn full or partial remission of punishment for sins by meeting certain obligations, usually including confessing, taking communion, and praying at specified altars or churches. These indulgences were almost always associated with the orders’ most important celebrations, and friars advertised these opportunities, especially in cities. For instance, Augustinians wanted to make sure that their prelates in all convents, but especially those in lugares de españoles, carefully ensure that on days of plenary indulgences conceded by the pope for all the faithful—such as the feast days of Saint Augustine, Santa Mónica, San Nicolás Tolentino, Santo Tomas de Villanueva, and other jubilees—these indulgences are publicized ahead of time at the High Mass on a day with a large gathering or that written notices are put on the doors of churches to give notice to all.82

Perhaps the busiest day of the year in a Franciscan church was August 2, when people came to earn the indulgence of Portiuncula. Named after the convent where Francis died, this exceptionally popular plenary indulgence (one offering a general remission of all sins) was available only in Franciscan churches. Because its requirements were minimal (there were no set prayers, just prayers with the intention to earn the indulgence) and because it contained a provision allowing it to be earned more than once in the same day, people often made multiple visits to Franciscan churches, further increasing the crowds. To prepare for this influx, Franciscans created more space in their Mexico City church by moving out all benches, setting up extra confessionals, and preparing additional communion ­wafers “for the many people who attend.” As the size of crowds increased over the eighteenth century, the Franciscans had to open up an additional chapel to accommodate all who came to receive communion.83 The orders’ jealous efforts to protect their privileges, even when the chances of victory must have seemed slim, indicates just how important indulgences were to them. The year 1700 was a jubilee year, a valued opportunity to earn special plenary indulgences that occurred every twentyfive years. Papal decrees set out the specific requirements to obtain each year’s jubilee indulgence, which generally required making confession, taking communion, and visiting specific churches. As part of these jubilees, all other indulgences were suspended, which had significant effects on the orders. For example, the diarist Robles told of the Franciscans

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celebrating Portiuncula that year with the usual Mass and sermon, but because no indulgences were available, not as many people attended. 84 That same year some Mercedarians decided to argue that the orders could keep their indulgences and, specifically, that the Mercedarians could celebrate their general absolutions. These occasions, like Portiuncula to the Franciscans, brought in extra crowds and with them, as a late seventeenth-century document noted, many alms for the redemption of captives.85 These Mercedarians were not opposing the jubilee, however; in fact, the official pronouncement of the papal bull establishing the conditions for earning that year’s jubilee indulgences was made in their church on a day of general absolution. Mercedarians instead argued that both types of indulgences were valid, and they published a paper supporting their position, which drew the immediate opposition of diocesan officials. Mercedarians did not press the issue and put off the absolutions until the following year.86 Mendicant orders also promoted devotional activities connected to their saints, such as the little books of prayers and exercises that explained how to observe a patriarch’s novena or a Marian advocation’s octave. A Mercedarian guide to Nolasco’s novena opened with step-bystep instructions that included making an act of contrition, reciting sets of prayers, and meditating on Nolasco’s virtues, such as his faith, fear of God, honesty, and charity. The prayers were best done in a Mercedarian church, the guide urged the faithful, but if done at home, they should be done before an image of Nolasco.87 Friars distributed these books to donors and people under their spiritual direction. The Franciscans of the Querétaro missionary college printed “innumerable” copies of a librito, Epitome de la prodigiosa vida y milagros de el santo, especialmente favorecido de Dios, mi adorado Padre San Francisco de Assis, which they “distributed to nuns, beatas, and to an innumerable multitude of benefactors.”88 These inexpensive books, most pocket sized and only a dozen or so pages long, circulated widely throughout New Spain. An instance of how valued these works could be even among a largely illiterate population can be seen in the events that transpired in a boarding house in ­Toluca one afternoon in 1773. After a juanino had brought some medicine to an injured man who was staying there, he and the woman who ran the house, thirty-five-year-old soltera María Tiburcia Pichardo, had words over whether Saint Anthony could work miracles. The saint in question was most likely Saint Anthony of Padua, a saint heavily promoted by Toluca’s leading order, the Franciscans. To prove her point, María brought out one of these books dedicated to him, and she and the juanino took it to a neighbor to read to them. The juanino remained unmoved, arguing that “in these books are written things in order to save souls but that the

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saint was a fake [embustero].”89 At his response María burst into tears and ran, crying all the way, to report him to the Franciscans. Most of these devotional exercises were closely associated with an order and its saints, but two special activities had grown far beyond the boundaries of the two orders that initially promoted them: the Franciscans’ way of the cross and the Dominicans’ rosary. A feature of the Franciscan institute was devotion to the cross and Christ’s Passion. Although this devotion was by no means exclusive to Franciscans, their strong connection to the Passion was part of their identity, celebrated in the life of their patriarch, in the stigmata of their blazons, and in the numerous inspirational stories of friars imitating Christ’s suffering by wearing a crown of thorns or carrying a heavy cross. The Passion was also promoted in the way of the cross, a devotional exercise consisting of stations representing different stages of Christ’s journey to Calvary. Originally established as a substitute for pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the way of the cross, or the via crucis as it was sometimes called, consisted of a number of stations (usually fourteen) that originated in the Franciscan church and ended in a Calvary chapel.90 The stations might consist of simple crosses or elaborate chapels, and when possible, the final station was on top of a local hill. Walking the route was to follow, as closely as possible, in the footsteps of Christ. Each station had its own set of prayers and meditations to assist people in empathizing with how Christ felt when he was whipped, fell carrying the weight of the cross, and was nailed to the cross. Although the via crucis centered on the Passion, its focus included Mary, and some versions asked participants to meditate on events from her perspective.91 Franciscans were the most avid promoters of the exercise, and all their convents had stations. In addition, people who could not or preferred not to walk the route could complete a way of the cross in their own homes while using one of the many guides that Franciscans wrote and distributed to instruct people in what to imagine and pray at each station. 92 Many of the order’s lay organizations also promoted the devotion. For example, the constitutions of the Franciscan Third Order in Mexico City specified that every Friday of Lent it sponsor a via crucis that concluded with a Mass and short sermon in the Calvary chapel.93 Despite the strong connections to the Franciscans, the reach of the via crucis extended far beyond places with a Franciscan church. Many parish churches included a way of the cross, and when Franciscan missionaries visited towns without one, they installed one as part of the mission. The order also seems to have been quite generous with its exclusive papal privilege that required anyone else seeking to install stations to obtain the order’s permission. As a result, by the end of the eighteenth century, stations of the cross were a common sight throughout New Spain.

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The devotional exercise most closely associated with the Dominicans was the rosary. Dominicans were certainly not the only promoters of the rosary, but, like the Franciscans and the way of the cross, they were always among its most zealous advocates. As Dr. Diego de Victorio Salazar, a seventeenth-century canon in Puebla, wrote, praying the rosary was “an action required by the institute of the sons of Dominic.”94 This action consisted of sets of short prayers interspersed with meditations on the lives of Mary and Christ. The meditations were divided into three groups of five mysteries each: the joyful mysteries, including the Annunciation and Christ’s birth; the sorrowful mysteries, encompassing Christ’s Passion; and the glorious mysteries, covering from the Resurrection to Mary’s coronation as Queen of Heaven. Praying the rosary could be done anywhere, although devotional books suggested that it was best done on one’s knees, preferably in front of an image of Christ or Mary, and even more preferably in a Dominican church. It could be done alone or communally in church, perhaps with members of confraternities dedicated to the rosary. It could be done anytime, but faithful Christians were urged to pray it for each Marian festivity, especially those associated with one of the mysteries.95 Even though devotion to the rosary had spread far beyond the Dominican order—parish priests, reforming bishops, and Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries advocated its powers—it never lost its special connection with Dominicans.96 Their churches housed images of Our Lady of the Rosary and Dominic holding the beads, and confraternities of the rosary, which were themselves closely tied to the order, held a lucrative monopoly on printing devotional works on the rosary. As the Dominicans’ Confraternity of the Rosary suggests, orders often used lay organizations to promote their institute’s devotions and ways of connecting with the divine. Some of these organizations were tied more closely to their associated mendicant order than others. In some cases, convents provided a convenient or prestigious location for a group, but it was not bound by strong ties, so if relations with friars soured or circumstances otherwise changed, the organization could easily relocate. After members of the Confraternity of Nuestro Señor de los Trabajos located in the Carmelite convent of Querétaro repeatedly found themselves at odds with the friars, they moved to the Real Colegio de Educandas de Santa Teresa, an organization of Carmelite beatas. Similarly, when urban doctrinas were secularized, many, and in some cases all, of the confraternities were either required or chose to move to the new secular parish.97 Other groups were more solidly wedded to their respective orders. Chief among these were the confraternities for which the orders had exclusive patronage, including the Augustinians’

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Confraternity of the Belt, the Franciscans’ Confraternity of the Cord, the Dominicans’ Confraternity of the Rosary, and the Carmelites’ Confraternity of the Scapular. These organizations, described as the “ancient or primordial Mother Archconfraternities of the Regulars, which existed since the beginning [of the orders] with their particular, ancient characteristics,” could be founded only with the permission of their order. 98 They were found outside the order’s own churches in places where the order did not have a church, and if the order founded a house in one of these places, the confraternity would move to the new church. After the Dominicans founded houses in Querétaro and San Juan del Río, each city’s rosary confraternity transferred out of its previous home in the Franciscan and parish church, respectively.99 The other type of organization with exclusive bonds to mendicant organizations was the third order. Similar in function to confraternities, third orders had a distinct institutional status and a structure that paralleled their first-order (friars) and second-order (nuns) counterparts. Laymen who joined took vows, albeit nonsolemn ones, undertook a year-long novitiate, and could wear the order’s habit. One Franciscan described his order’s tertiaries (members of the third order) this way: while “living in the world, they profess [the Franciscan] institute.”100 Third orders tended to be restricted to elites, such as the “powerful and prominent” membership of Veracruz’s Franciscan Third Order, which included Inquisition commissioner Don Miguel Francisco de Herrera.101 In contrast, confraternities with special ties to the orders often had more socially diverse clienteles. The Franciscan Archconfraternity of the Cord in Querétaro allowed people of all races, and Dominicans opened their exceptionally popular rosary confraternities to, as one author put it, men and women, rich and poor, young and old, nobles and people of humble lineage.102 Orders founded their “primordial” lay organizations to connect people to the order, obtain financial support, and spread the order’s devotions. For example, in 1788 the Mexico City Carmelites’ Confraternity of Our Lady of Carmen and the Scapular printed the sermon that Fr. Francisco de San Cirilo, the Mexico provincial and a renowned preacher, offered on the feast day of Our Lady of Carmen. The sermon directly addressed the cofrades (members of a confraternity), reminding them of the special bonds they established with Mary through their participation in the organization. Provided they remained devoted to her and fulfilled their obligations as members, she would protect them, and through the sabatine privilege, free them from purgatory the Saturday after their death. The sale of scapulars also provided the Carmelite order with what seems to have been a steady stream of income. Already in the early seventeenth century, one Carmelite noted that “in only the Mexico City convent, each

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month normally brings in 100 pesos of alms from scapulars with some months surpassing 150 or 200 pesos.”103 Lay organizations, even the ones with special connections to the orders, remained distinct entities, run by their members with varying amounts of oversight by friars. As such, they had their own institutional histories that may or may not have followed parallel trajectories to those of their orders. Although these institutional histories are too deep a subject to take on here, there is good evidence that lay organizations with close ties to mendicants remained vibrant institutions through the end of the eighteenth century. For example, books recording the initiation of members into the Carmelites’ Third Order at Toluca, founded in 1738, demonstrate that people joined at similar rates in the 1780s and 1790s as in the 1740s and 1750s. Decade 1740s 1750s 1760s 1770s 1780s 1790s

Number of professions 160 148 93 115 158 133

Further suggesting that Toluca’s market for third-order memberships was not completely saturated, Mercedarians founded their own third order there in 1807. Records also indicate that some organizations remained on solid financial footing. In 1798 the third order in the Discalced Franciscans’ Mexico City convent signed an agreement with the friars establishing the conditions for celebrating their annual feasts and monthly masses at the cost of 284 pesos per year. The group did not seem to have any trouble coming up with this sum because the Franciscans thanked it for its prompt payment of fees. The Confraternity of the Rosary for Spaniards in the Franciscans’ Valladolid church had more than 20,000 pesos in principal in 1791, and the Dominicans’ Confraternity of the Rosary in Mexico City was so well funded that it had collected almost 7,000 pesos more than the 6,100 pesos it spent during the 1807–1808 fiscal year.104 Beyond this anecdotal evidence, Brian Belanger found that during the second half of the eighteenth century there was a particular vitality to the confraternities in Querétaro’s regular churches, especially compared to those in secular churches. In particular, the Franciscan Confraternity of the Cord and Third Order were thriving thanks to a new emphasis on collective works of mercy, such as running a free school for boys. These sorts of charitable projects, which were not permitted in secular

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churches’ confraternities, responded to what many people perceived as pressing social needs and attracted members, including many of the city’s elite benefactors. This success, concluded Belanger, led Spanish officials to complain that friars were using confraternities to “weaken and diminish the jurisdiction of the bishops, leaving deserted parishes where the faithful should frequently gather.”105 Nor does Querétaro, long a Franciscan stronghold, seem to be an unusual case. The Enlightened reformers in Micho­acán and Veracruz that David Brading and Pamela Voekel described sought to weaken or eliminate confraternities but found them formidable opponents.106 Prayers and Reclusion A hallmark of mendicant orders was their balance of active and contemplative duties, and friars’ work in the world was not supposed to keep them from prayer. Convent routines centered around the Divine Office, which consisted of rounds of communal prayers celebrated throughout the night (matins) and day (laudes, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, and complin). Guided by the breviary and consisting of prayers, psalms, and responses, the office took place in the church choir. Strict observance, however, was time-consuming, and having the full community fulfill all the obligations of this liturgy meant less work could be done in other areas. Most orders thus sought to mitigate the burden of these offices. Smaller convents often held dispensations to simplify or exclude some offices or to divide up the responsibilities for attending, so, for example, a friar might attend matins only every other night. Some orders offered dispensations to friars who held academic positions, served as prelates, were designated official preachers, or otherwise had seniority or status in the order.107 These sorts of allowances, as well as the ongoing problem of friars who did not attend when required, were a point of concern to internal inspectors and external reformers throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the late eighteenth century, the issue seems to have garnered more concern as populations of friars decreased. Not only were there fewer friars but there were fewer novices and young students who, without the dispensations of their more senior brothers, had traditionally formed the bulk of participants, especially at matins. The Mercedarian general’s instructions for the state-sponsored reform in the 1770s therefore sought to reel in unauthorized dispensations, because even in those houses where “there are many friars, there are few for the choir.”108 The widespread concern for ensuring that friars complied with their obligations to the choir serves to highlight the importance of this activity

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to the orders, but there was more to contemplative life than the Divine Office. Throughout the day a model friar engaged in devotional prayers and spiritual exercises, sometimes done individually, sometimes communally. One such model was the Franciscan Fr. Miguel de Gorualez, whom Espinosa celebrated in his Crónica franciscana de Michoacán for having “lived so occupied in the works of his spirit” that he spent six hours a day in mental prayer. He accomplished this feat, bragged Espinosa, without neglecting any of his more worldly duties.109 The orders also gave friars the chance to remove themselves temporarily from their active ministries and devote themselves entirely to prayers and contemplation in special houses of reclusion found in each province. Not all orders gave equal attention to reclusion. On one end of the spectrum, the Mercedarian order required its friars to spend time each year in the province’s house of reclusion just outside Mexico City, but the regulation was rarely enforced. On the other end were the Discalced Carmelites. Each province had a Santo Desierto (Holy Desert) that sought to re-create the eremitical desert experience of the original Carmelites. These convents first appeared in late sixteenth-century Spain as places for friars to engage in continuous prayer, rigorous silence, especially intense fasting and penance, and separation from all lay­persons.110 The Mexico Province’s desert, located in the mountains outside Mexico City, was known for its isolated caves where friars lived for days or weeks completely removed from the dealings of the mundane world. As Santo Desierto suggests, reclusion was one of the Carmelites’ defining features. The order restricted its friars’ participation in public life outside the convent, and it had a reputation for keeping—or more realistically, trying to keep—the world out of its convents. In 1804 the archbishop of Mexico ordered a Bethlehemite friar to be held in the Carmelites’ Mexico City convent until some proceedings against him were resolved. After several months, the Carmelite prior petitioned the archbishop to remedy the inconveniences and disruptions to their cloistered observance caused by the Bethlehemite’s many visitors. The archbishop’s adviser agreed and ordered limitations on the friar’s visitors because “the austerity and retirement that the Carmelite friars profess is indubitable.”111 Different orders also emphasized particular aspects of contemplative life. For example, Franciscans saw fasting and penance as touchstones of their contemplative duties, whereas Augustinians were more likely to accentuate prayer. Clearly, neither order rejected the activity the other emphasized, but their different approaches sometimes led to tensions. In 1562 a Franciscan accused the Augustinian prior in Zacatecas of preaching against Franciscans and their fasts, saying that it was better “to be

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full on prayer than dying of hunger.”112 Friars from different orders also disagreed on how solitary or communal contemplative life should be. Carmelites distinguished themselves by approaching prayer as a solitary endeavor in accordance with their eremitical traditions. Having Elias, Teresa, and John of the Cross as spiritual models gave special place to mysticism, prophecy, and coming to know God through individual experience rather than theological study.113 Carmelite piety thus prescribed that friars spend time alone in their cells each day. Although other orders also valued individual prayer, none gave it the central position that the Discalced Carmelites did. Discalced Franciscans and Augustinians preferred a group approach with prayers performed together in church. Whereas Carmelites lauded the benefits of the cell, one Discalced Franciscan celebrated the choir as “the place where more than anywhere else friars discuss and communicate with God and where as a chorus they sing divine praises in company of Angels.”114 Preaching, confessing, celebrating masses, encouraging devotion, and carrying out contemplative duties were activities central to the institutes of all mendicant orders in New Spain. Indeed, these activities went to the very heart of what it meant to be a mendicant. No one gave or published more sermons or was more closely associated with preaching and confessing than mendicants, and people especially favored their churches with masses. The orders’ contemplative duties, which set them apart from Jesuits and parish priests, gave them special spiritual currency. Their devotional activities and opportunities to earn indulgences could fill their churches to capacity; at the end of the colonial period their lay organizations may well have been preferred to those of secular clergy. Their ministries remained essential parts of urban religious life through the colonial period. Even the “enlightened” state officials who have sometimes been credited with trying to finish off the orders valued the orders’ core ministries. For instance, the state-sponsored inspections, which sought to improve and mold religious life to reformers’ ideals, emphasized just how important these activities were by attempting to ensure that friars were listening attentively in the confessional, celebrating the necessary masses, and attending choir as required. These core ministries were part of any mendicant convent’s slate of activities, but they took a more prominent role in urban houses than in doctrinas. It was not just that friars in doctrinas offered sacraments such as baptism and marriage that friars in urban convents did not, but urban houses were set up to provide these core services. Because they did not have doctrinas, they had fewer dispensations from completing the full round of daily prayers; because they housed larger numbers of friars, they could celebrate more masses; because they were usually wealthy,

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they sponsored more, and more elaborate, fiestas. Even confession and communion, which might seem more closely connected to doctrinas because people were supposed to complete their annual precept in their parish, were central to urban routines, especially during Lent. Most of what differentiated the orders’ core services was how they went about providing them. They engaged in the same ministries but followed different regimens in the confessional, fulfilled their Mass obligations more or less diligently, emphasized praying alone or communally, featured their own cycles of feast days, promoted specific devotional exercises, and encouraged relationships with different saintly intercessors. In fact, the most significant distinction to emerge from a comparison of the orders’ core activities is the Discalced Carmelites’ conspicuous preeminence in providing these services. They, along with Discalced Franciscans and Franciscans from the missionary colleges, devoted a greater portion of their active lives to preaching and confessing, so it was no coincidence that when Don José de Monterrey Zárate y Velazco sought a new foundation to help parish priests with these duties, he requested Carmelites. Carmelites were also especially diligent about performing masses, and their churches in particular attracted requests for them. Finally, the order’s interest in reclusion went above and beyond all others, as reflected not only in their unique Santo Desierto but in contemporaries’ recognition of their “indubitable” austerity and retirement. Providing core mendicant services was the Carmelites’ specialty.

selected activities Besides the orders’ core functions, friars participated in a body of activities that varied by time, location, and their order’s institute. Urban mendicants supervised nuns, advised royal officials, administered doctrinas, provided bread and charity to the poor, and worked for the Inquisition. Three of the most important extra-core activities were providing education, collecting alms for captives, and running urban missions. The first of these areas, education, involved all the orders, although in ways connected to their particular institutes. The other two areas, alms for captives and urban missions, were more exclusive, as the first was limited to Mercedarians and the second to Franciscans from missionary colleges. These three distinct activities may not seem to share much on the surface, but examined together, they help locate the orders’ unique places in society. These were projects that met social needs, and schools and missions were in particularly high demand from urban residents. They also demonstrate some broader trends in the orders’ urban functions over the sev-

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enteenth and eighteenth centuries, including expansion in the seventeenth century and the flexibility shown in responses to eighteenth-century state directives. Education Of New Spain’s male orders, Jesuits were best known for educating the laity, but mendicant orders also played important roles in this activity. Friars held posts at Mexico City’s Royal University (established 1551), convents opened up their classes to young men, and orders administered grammar schools for local boys. Which university posts friars held and the roles they played in educating laypersons frequently depended on their order. Dominicans and Augustinians had especially strong connections to the Royal University, Mercedarians specialized in grammar schools, and Discalced Carmelites and Discalced Franciscans had only the most peripheral of roles in lay education. Despite the orders’ different approaches to education, by the end of the colonial period they all found themselves dedicating more of their energies to this increasingly valued aspect of society. Their evolving roles in educational projects demonstrate their adaptability as well as their continuing value to state officials, who viewed education as the cornerstone to a new society and who, during the last years of the colony, enlisted the orders in efforts to establish grammar schools. The orders’ significant role in state-sponsored educational projects runs counter to perceptions of a secularizing state that disdained the participation of the church, let alone its mendicant branch, in such important activities. Each of New Spain’s mendicant orders developed its own relationship to Mexico City’s Royal University. Augustinians and Dominicans were deeply involved; Franciscans and Mercedarians carved out particular niches; and the two discalced orders, Franciscans and Carmelites, had few connections. Mexico City’s university was unique in the Americas in that it operated autonomously from the regular orders. Despite its independence, the three orders that administered institutions of higher education in other parts of the Americas—Dominicans, Jesuits, and Augustinians—remained deeply, and more deeply than any other orders, involved in its functioning. Its two founders were a Dominican and an Augustinian, and from the beginning, these two orders sought to place their distinctive stamps on the institution. Their members vied for chairs of theology, seeking to capture these important positions and impart their orders’ interpretations of Christian doctrine: Dominican scholasticism or Augustinian positivism and the accompanying texts of Domingo de Soto or Johannes Laurentius Berti.115 These sorts of debates between the two

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orders continued into the nineteenth century. The arrival of the Jesuits brought new influences and debates to the university, especially wrangling with Dominicans about the best way to teach Thomas Aquinas, but the Jesuits’ influence remained largely indirect, as they put more of their energies into their own colleges and did not obtain a chair at the university until 1736.116 During the seventeenth century, Franciscans and Mercedarians also carved out niches for themselves at the university. Until then the Franciscans had had a distant relationship with the university, which was not unusual given the order’s less academically focused institute and its preference for work with Indians. The order’s involvement came as part of an effort to offer an alternative to the Thomistic theology that dominated in the university, and Franciscans petitioned for, and in 1662 received, a chair to teach the theology of Duns Scotus.117 Around this time, Mercedarians also became more involved at the university, to which they brought the order’s strong tradition of scientific study. They came to dominate the chair of mathematics and astrology and developed a reputation for unorthodoxy, at one point being accused as the order “most inclined to ‘fabricate patterns’ and ‘make judgments about future contingencies.’”118 Math and the sciences did not generate great interest in Mexico, however, and the Mercedarians’ influence at the university remained limited.119 For all the prestige associated with university chairs, the number of friars holding them at any given time was few, and orders gave much more attention to their own schools. Besides novitiates and schools for choristers where grammar and arts were taught, provinces usually had several houses designated for higher-level study. During the eighteenth century, the Carmelites taught philosophy at their Tacuba and Atlixco convents, moral theology at Valladolid and Toluca, and scholastic and mystical theology at their college of Santa Ana. The Carmelites, perhaps because of their emphasis on reclusion, did not open these schools to laypersons, as other orders did. In contrast, Dominican schools developed a reputation for excellence among the laity. The order took a similar approach to its schools as it did to its provinces: concentrate resources in the most important cities. New Spain’s Dominicans established only three schools—Porti Coeli in Mexico City, San Luis in Puebla, and the school in their convento grande of Oaxaca—but invested a great deal of energy into them, making them highly sought after educational options. Initially, these sorts of educational projects were not central to the Franciscan mission. In the 1550s the Franciscans refused a sizable donation to found a college in Puebla that would have served both their friars and the laity. At the time, Franciscans were heavily invested in evangelization projects with Indians and were already struggling to maintain a

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college for Indians at Tlateloco. The donation instead went to the Dominicans, who used it to found their college of San Luis.120 The Franciscans’ and Dominicans’ different approaches to education were not simply a case of one order ministering solely to Indians and the other solely to Spaniards, and Franciscans did open their grammar, arts, and theology courses to laypersons. Instead, academic programs did not have as prominent a place in the Franciscan order as they did in the Dominican order, and, according to one historian of educational life in the colony, the Franciscans did not have “a definite or permanent project” for education.121 During the seventeenth century, the order began putting more emphasis on education, establishing not only its chair at the university but new schools in its convents. The most significant result of these efforts was the 1726 foundation of a college at Celaya, described in 1776 as having “public studies, schools for boys, [courses of] grammar, philosophy, and canon and scholastic theology—all connected to the Royal University of Mexico.” The college represented a major commitment to higher studies in the order, as the college had six chairs, three of which were in the highest levels of theology, and housed approximately forty-five friars as chairs, students, and support staff. Most important was the agreement through which the Royal University would recognize courses taken at the college so secular students could study in Celaya and earn their degrees from the university.122 Residents of smaller, provincial cities often sought mendicant orders to run grammar schools so young boys would not have to leave their hometown for schooling. Franciscans and Augustinians sometimes ran such schools, especially in places where they had urban doctrinas, and the Bethlehemites ran large grammar schools out of their convents, but the mendicant order most closely connected to this type of school was the Order of Mercy.123 After the order began foregrounding intellectual accomplishments as part of its seventeenth-century reform movement, the New Spain Province expanded its roles in educational projects, including at the Royal University, in their convents’ schools of theology, and at a legal college in Mexico City.124 But the bulk of the Mercedarians’ work was in primary-level education. Most of the province’s convents (but not hospicios) housed grammar schools, and people recognized this as one of the Mercedarians’ defining characteristics. When they sought to found a house at Huamantla (Tlaxcala), a juanino supported their foundation because the town would have “teaching in the rudiments of our holy faith and in grammar like in all parts of New Spain in which said fathers have a convent.”125 Where orders opened schools and what subjects they taught varied according to the orders’ internal needs as well as those of the individual

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cities. One consideration was whether or not a city had a Jesuit college, and the opening or closing of these colleges could be a decisive factor in whether mendicants administered schools. For instance, in San Luis ­Potosí, the Augustinian convent had opened a school in 1614, but despite its early success, when the Jesuits arrived in 1626, the Augustinians allowed them to take over the school “according to their institute.” San Luis’s Franciscans also closed their grammar school for the same reasons, but after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, both convents reopened their schools.126 Franciscan and Augustinian convents in smaller cities like San Luis that were already taxed with the work of running doctrinas may have capitulated to the Jesuits, but this was not the case for Dominicans, whose three schools in their three most important convents could more easily compete with the Jesuits and their resources. In fact, the Dominicans of Oaxaca were so well connected and highly regarded that not only did they keep their school open after the establishment of a Jesuit college in the city but that college struggled against its Dominican competition.127 In the 1780s and 1790s, new movements to found free grammar schools for the urban poor pushed mendicant orders further into the business of education. These movements began among some of Mexico City’s elites who sought to modernize society through the individual. The idea was that educating young boys in reading, writing, counting, and Christian doctrine would transform society.128 After years of struggling with the practical obstacles of providing a free education to so many youth, the city’s procurador general, Francisco María de Herrera, offered a new proposal in 1786. Arguing that education was the goal that most interested the church, the state, and society, he petitioned the city council to found twenty-six new schools, twelve in mendicant convents and the rest in the city’s fourteen parishes. He explained that the orders would be well suited for the project because they had friars to staff the schools and convents to house classrooms and because the project fit “with their estate and also with their reason for coming to these kingdoms, which was the preaching, explanation, and extension of Christian doctrine.” Only mendicant orders were included—four of these schools were to be in Franciscan convents, three in Dominican ones, two each in Mercedarian and Augustinian houses, and one in the Carmelites’ main convent—while hospital orders were excluded for not having enough friars. The inclusion of the Carmelites may have come as a surprise because it was the only order whose specific inclusion Herrera bothered to justify. Despite their institute of contemplation and asceticism, he claimed, they should be required “to leave the choir to console the faithful and serve their neighbors outside the convent.”129 The city council threw its support behind the proposal (including sponsoring an additional school itself); so, too, did

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the viceroy, whose chief legal adviser noted that regular and secular clergy were compelled to participate because of their obligations to teach the faith. Within a few months, the existing schools in the Mercedarians’ two Mexico City convents had been joined by five more in the main convents of the Franciscans, Discalced Franciscans, Augustinians, and Dominicans, as well as in the Dominican college of Porta Coeli.130 The project became a model, and in the following years, other cities in New Spain, including Oaxaca and Puebla, attempted similar projects involving mendicants. Mendicant responses to these programs varied from reluctance on the part of the Carmelites; to the apparent acquiescence of the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians; to the enthusiasm of Mercedarians. The Discalced Carmelites, clearly less than keen on giving up some of their trademark reclusion, do not seem to have opened their grammar school in Mexico City until 1804, years later than their counterparts.131 On the other end of the spectrum, some Mercedarians showed initiative in proposing new public schools. In 1788 the Mercedarian comendador in Atlix­co wrote a lengthy letter to the bishop of Puebla describing the town’s situation: there was a “large drove of young boys who could be useful to the two estates had they not been lacking said education, but instead all is vagabondage in this place.” To remedy this problem, he proposed opening a public school in the Mercedarian convent.132 Efforts to involve mendicants in the work of running grammar schools were not all local, and a decree in 1815 got the royal government into the act. Similar to earlier efforts, this royal undertaking addressed the need for poor boys (aged ten to twelve) to learn good customs and basic skills “in order to evade the hateful and vagabond life that from the beginning afflicts boys and so that, on the contrary, they are incorporated into the class of working subjects useful to the state.” Although there were no royal funds available for the project, the king suggested that the convents step in, which he did not doubt they would do, given their institutes, their obligation to spread the faith, and their gratitude to the crown. Through this project, he concluded, religion and the state together would reclaim the impoverished subjects of his realm.133 Although the timing of the ­cedula suggests its effects may have been limited, it was not completely without result. The Augustinian provincial of Michoacán ordered the cedula implemented in his province, which included the cities of Valladolid, Querétaro, Guadalajara, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosí, and by 1822 the Valladolid convent housed a public school. Even the Carmelites seem to have complied; sometime in the early nineteenth century, the Valladolid convent opened a school in its patio and hired a precept to run it.134 Although more work remains to establish the finer contours of trends in educational projects, the overall picture is that public education was

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a more important part of mendicant programs in 1800 than in 1570. The first expansion of their roles came in the seventeenth century. Augustinians and Dominicans had brought their strong intellectual traditions with them to New Spain and dedicated considerable resources to educational projects from early on, and during this time Franciscans and Mercedarians joined them. Both Franciscans and Mercedarians built up their presence at the Royal University; Mercedarians added grammar schools to their convents; and Franciscans, who had once eschewed a large gift to establish a college in Puebla, founded an important regional institution in Celaya. The second phase of expansion came during the final decades of the colony, largely as a result of secular initiatives. These public school projects of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries demonstrate that residents, town councils, and royal officials still considered mendicants useful to the sorts of enlightenment projects often seen as antithetical to the church, let alone to “medieval” orders. Furthermore, the mendicants’ participation in these projects demonstrates their adaptability and, occasionally, initiative. Convents created new public schools, friars sometimes pushed for them, and even the Carmelites, albeit grudgingly, set aside their long-standing prohibition on lay education. Urban Missions When a mission came to town, few could escape the news. Friars arrived in procession, sometimes barefoot, sometimes accompanied by a local priest, and almost always carrying a large cross and an image of Christ crucified or Mary. They prayed the rosary and sang religious songs as they made their way to the church hosting the mission. Here they would explain to the already-gathering crowd that they were there as ambassadors of Christ, ready to help everyone make good confessions and earn indulgences. Runners would then be sent into the streets, ringing bells and shouting, “To the mission! To the mission!” The still-­ increasing crowd would then process, in silence and with men and women separated, to plazas or other busy sites, where the missionaries again explained why they had come. Finally, the procession returned to the church, where missionaries offered more specific instructions on how people would benefit from the mission and concluded the ceremony with prayers and a blessing. These organized, attention-grabbing, and usually well-attended events were the work of Franciscan missionary colleges. Colleges had the dual purpose of ministering to the faithful and the still unconverted, the former in cities and towns of New Spain and the latter primarily on the northern frontier. As Fr. Antonio Llinás’s petition to the Council of Indies put it,

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these were to be “centers of popular apostolic missions for Christianized populations and . . . bases of penetration to the territories still populated by infidels.”135 The colleges’ urban missions turned out to have broad appeal in New Spain, not only drawing large crowds but garnering support from Bourbon officials and secular clergy, including reformist bishops. Missions began after the creation of the first Colegio de Propaganda Fide (College of the Propagation of the Faith) in Querétaro in 1683. Although the efforts of its founder, Fr. Antonio Llinás, as well as circumstances in New Spain provided much of the impetus for the college, it was also part of a broader missionary movement taking place throughout the Catholic world. Many of the orders founded during the sixteenth century put missions at the center of their work, including the Capuchins and Jesuits, who became the most active missionaries in early modern Europe and who also ran urban missions in New Spain.136 In addition, in 1622 a new Roman congregation, de Propaganda Fide, began to coordinate missionary activities throughout the world. By the eighteenth century, European missions reached scales never before seen, and, according to William J. Callahan, the missionary movement was “the most vigorous spiritual effort of the eighteenth-century church.”137 The work of New Spain’s Franciscan missionary colleges, done over the course of a long eighteenth century that stretched from the 1680s until the early nineteenth century, thus coincided with the great age of European missions. Missionaries from New Spain’s six colleges traveled to cities and towns throughout the viceroyalty, from the Yucatán and Oaxaca to Veracruz and Valladolid. Because these territories were vast and manpower was limited, most places hosted missions only infrequently. Even in the colleges’ home cities, they were not an annual event. According to a 1792 letter from the parish priest in Pachuca, the town had hosted five missions in the previous twenty-four years, and the sacristans’ instruction book for the Franciscans’ main Mexico City convent noted that a mission came to the city once a trienio, that is, every three years.138 Outside these few cities, people saw missions far less frequently, and the 1733 cedula approving the establishment of the San Fernando college in Mexico City noted that fifteen or twenty years could pass between missions to a town. These gaps only added to the allure of missions. They were special events, eagerly anticipated, and something most people experienced only once or twice during their lifetimes. How long the mission lasted varied from a few days to more than two months, depending on the size of the city and the number of missionaries. For example, one friar’s mission to Colima in 1781 lasted eight days, another mission to Tlaxcala in 1789 included three friars and continued for

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fifty days, and in 1730 eight friars worked throughout Mexico City for thirteen weeks. Missions were often timed to coincide with Lent in order to encourage more people to make their annual precept. In larger cities with more than one church, missionaries began in the cathedral or most important parish church and then moved their centers of operations to other parish churches and convents. While on missions, friars employed programs that mixed time in the confessional, devotional exercises, and exhortations that would bring people to the mission and, in the words of a priest from Tula, “open the doors to Celestial Jerusalem.”139 Contemporaries’ descriptions of the missionaries’ work often resembled one that a number of Querétaro’s local officials sent to the crown. Missionaries, they said, were directed to the good of souls and the consolation of all the Catholic faithful with their good doctrine and teaching, attendance day and night to confessions of the Catholic faithful in this city and outside of it, explaining from pulpits in churches and outside of them Christian doctrine and the Holy Gospel, persuading the observance of Our Holy Catholic Faith, obedience of the Holy Commandments.140

Teaching, preaching, and confession—these were indeed the hallmarks of any mission, but the success of missions pivoted on confessions. ­Friars were to rise and celebrate Mass early each day so they could spend their full mornings in the confessional and return to this work again after lunch. Some reports from parish priests gave details of the missionaries’ confessional schedules, such as in Cuernavaca where they rose at 4:00 a.m., said Mass, breakfasted, and then worked in the confessional until noon and again from 3:00 p.m. until their evening exercises.141 That the bulk of their time was devoted to the more individualized work of the confessional indicates just how important a good confession was to the mission. In fact, most of the marvelous occurrences recounted in Espinosa’s history of the colleges led toward the happy ending of an exemplary confession. Some of these cases involved people who had lived wicked and dishonest lives until, inspired by the mission, they washed away their sins through scrupulous and heartfelt confessions. One woman had never made a good confession in her life until a missionary made her understand the great danger that imperiled her soul. She and the missionary spent the next eight days examining her conscience, at the end of which she was absolved and took the sacrament of the Eucharist. Other cases told of otherwise devout Christians whose unconfessed sins were staining their souls. For example, an elderly man very devoted to Saint Anthony of Padua had never confessed some “ugly and lascivious” sins from his youth. One night during a mission, Saint Anthony appeared to the man in a dream, pointing to the altar from which the missionaries were working. The man gave the

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dream little credence and did not attend the mission. The next night Saint Anthony reappeared, again without result. The third night, the saint not only admonished the old man but gave him three knocks on the head with the cord from his Franciscan habit. The man woke with a headache but finally attended the mission, where he found a missionary with whom “he confessed very slowly and with many tears of contrition.”142 In order to get people to the point where they could make good confessions and receive the Eucharist, missionaries employed a good bit of baroque theater. They intended to captivate people with drama and immerse them in an emotionally intense, life-altering experience. The precise form of that experience depended on individual missionaries. Some friars found physical demonstrations of penitence an effective way to reach an audience, such as Fr. Gabriel de la Madre de Dios, who “mistreated his bodily flesh with a heavy chain” while preaching.143 Others avoided flagellation but brought to the pulpit objects such as “chains, burning sticks, lit candles, and paintings of the condemned commonly used by missionary friars.” Then there was Fr. Antonio de Jesús y Ganancia, who eschewed such items in order to focus on the goodness and mercy of God.144 Even allowing for such variations, some common patterns and procedures can be sketched using the descriptions in Espinosa’s Crónica, statues from the college, a how-to guide for missionaries titled “Formulario de Missionar” (Formulary for Missionizing), and a series of ­certificaciones (certifications) from parish priests who hosted missions.145 Every evening missionaries and the local faithful processed through the streets, praying the rosary, singing, and stopping to give brief talks—all “so that people would come to the Mission.”146 Back at the church they taught and explained doctrine, offered silent prayers, and gave a clear and brief sermon that, according to the “Formulario,” lasted less than an hour so people would not leave. These daily teachings were geared to “accommodate the capacity of all classes of people,” said the parish priest of Pachuca, and they focused on well-chosen subjects, such as the “principal mysteries of Our Catholic Religions, the Ten Commandments, and the obligations of all Christians.”147 The sermons in particular were meant to stir people’s hearts and move them to become better Christians, as in one of the casos raros related by Espinosa. A vain, narcissistic woman attended one of the mission’s sermons but “more for the desire to be applauded than to leave freed from her errors.” Yet so efficacious were the preacher’s words, as he spoke of the many fruits of penance and the severity of divine justice, that she resolved to change her life and placed herself at the feet of a confessor.148 Preachers could pull out all the stops to make such results happen. They preached in churches, in plazas, on street corners, and in other

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places where they could reach “the impious libertines and dissolute.”149 They employed images, lights, flames, dramatic storytelling, and the power of their voices. For example, the “Formulario” suggested that, in order to make people viscerally understand the need for good confessions, the preacher take an image and hold it over a lit candle. “What spectacle could be so horrendous as this?” he should ask his audience. “Look at it on top of a dragon breathing fire over the entire body and senses—what anguish! And without consolation! How ugly!” The preacher then turned his attention to the victim of the flame. “Who are you? Tell me, burning disgrace of hell [tizón del infierno], are you that woman who confessed with a missionary?” Acknowledging that it was indeed she, the missionary asked, “So why are you condemned?” “I am condemned” she replied, “for having committed a dishonest sin, and even though I confessed the rest of my sins, this one I never confessed out of shame.” How long had she been in the flames of hell? More than a hundred thousand years. How much longer would she have to wait there? An eternity of eternities.150 Besides helping people avoid this worst possible of fates, missions were designed to reduce the time people spent in purgatory, and one of a mission’s most attractive lures was its special indulgences. Depending on what the pope or local bishop had made available at the time, people could earn indulgences for any number of devotional acts, including that special devotion of the Franciscans, the via crucis. Missions heavily promoted it as a regular, communal activity, such as in Minas de Zimapán (Hidalgo), where every morning missionaries and their followers took a prized image of Christ and walked the stations from the parish church to the Calvary chapel.151 The “Formulario” recommended that missionaries remind people that whenever they prayed the via crucis, they earned the same indulgences “as if they walked in Jerusalem those same steps that the Lord walked out of love for us.”152 Another opportunity to ease the pains of purgatory was the mission’s jubilee. Because jubilees promised full remission of all sins, they were highly sought after opportunities, and attendance at missions peaked during these special occasions, such as the Jubilee of Forty Hours, a continuous exposition of the Eucharist that offered its benefits to all who confessed, took communion, and visited the mission church during its forty-hour duration. Missions came to a close with a Mass for the souls in purgatory and a procession of penitence that, based on the comments of parish priests, provided some of the mission’s most inspirational moments. Even though missionaries may have remained in town for some days after the procession, it was the mission’s final public event, and it was intended, missionaries explained to their listeners, “as a sign of our true repentance.”153 The faithful processed in groups—men, women, and children—each ac-

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companied by an image or cross. They wound their way through the town’s main streets, the silence broken only by the priests’ singing as they pleaded for God’s mercy. Participants prayed the rosary, meditated on Christ’s sufferings, and sought to imitate his humility. They carried crosses, wore crowns of thorns, rubbed ashes on their faces, and walked barefoot. They came to a stop to hear a sermon of “spiritual prescriptions,” such as the dangers of sin, the pains of hell, and the mercy of God. They were reminded that all they accomplished during the mission would be of no avail if they did not maintain good habits. They would, hopefully, be as moved as one parish priest described in his certificación: “Seeing the procession and hearing the ardent and persuasive voices of the Reverend Padres moved people to break down in loving tears, everyone demonstrating the humility of their hearts. And the Reverend Fathers, having inspired through their evangelical preaching and spirited voices the many people who attended the procession with both public and secret Mortifications, closed the Mission.”154 Missionaries also sought to help people stay on track after the mission by leaving them with new devotional items and practices. They distributed printed images and small devotional books, especially ones promoting devotion to Mary and Christ’s Passion, that could provide daily reminders and inspirations. They established fixed meetings to pray the rosary and walk the stations of the cross, often charging the local Confraternity of the Holy Rosary with the former and the local Franciscan Third Order with the latter. On the Querétaro missionaries’ first trip to Mérida, they added a communal via crucis every Friday and rosary prayers in the church every Sunday and feast day “in order that their apostolic mission not be forgotten.”155 In places with no or an insufficient via crucis, they added the necessary infrastructure to make sure the devotion would continue, as they did in Atitalaquia (Hidalgo), where they placed a new cross at each station.156 If the town lacked other necessities to continue devotions, a resourceful missionary might find ways to fill the gap. In Colima, for example, the missionaries established some free schools for the “teaching and education of boys and girls.”157 Urban missions proved popular among multiple audiences. They typically drew large crowds, such as in Minas de Zimapán, where according to the parish priest, Don Joseph Antonio Domínguez, so many people attended the mission that they spilled out of the church and filled the cemetery, leaving people to climb onto its walls in order to hear the preachers.158 Similarly, such was the increase in attendance at the Franciscans’ main Mexico City church during missions that sacristans had to prepare many additional forms for all who came to take communion.159 Support also came from secular clergy, and many parish priests actively

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campaigned to bring missionaries to their churches.160 Furthermore, during the late eighteenth century, reformist bishops gave licenses for missions, and some, such as Archbishop Lorenzana, advocated for them. Such support might seem surprising given that scholars have described these prelates as having tried to curtail, not encourage, mendicant projects, let alone ones with spectacular and emotional elements that did not easily fit reformers’ goals of implementing more sedate pious practices.161 Any apparent paradoxes in reformers’ support of missions can be addressed by focusing on a widely shared belief in the need to improve people’s behaviors and create better Catholics. Espinosa suggested some of the reasons he and his fellow Franciscans had such high hopes for missions. He argued that they transformed people’s behavior, prompting people living in illicit unions to marry; reconciling hatreds; ending usury; stopping gossip; reforming women’s scandalous clothing; discontinuing bullfights, gaming, profane dances, and comedies performed in gardens; and putting an end to disgraceful public bathing done with music and picnics.162 Dr. Don Juan Carlos de Cassassola expressed his belief in the reforming power of missions when he wrote to the crown that he and his fellow parish priests in Aguascalientes were “grateful for the many benefits to their flocks in the reform of customs, conversion of sinners, and frequency of sacraments.” The missionaries were not only useful, he concluded, but necessary.163 Transforming society by fixing individuals and their bad habits was at the heart of what reformist churchmen wanted to accomplish. Disciplining an undisciplined population required, according to Archbishop Lorenzana, getting them to “attend Mass, frequent the Sacraments, and live as Christians”—the very behaviors missions were designed to encourage.164 For this reason, in 1784 Bishop of Oaxaca José Gregorio Alonso de Ortigosa requested a mission to address problems of “lewdness, scant observance of holy days, children’s poor upbringing, envy, gossip, scandal, usury and iniquitous contracts, and failure to pay tithes.”165 The clamor to found new missionary colleges throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century—and not just the successful foundations at Zacatecas, Mexico City, Orizaba, and Zapopan but also the unrealized efforts at Puebla, Pátzcuaro, Uruapan, and Villahermosa de Tabasco—along with the repeated requests for missions from parish priests and city officials demonstrates the wide currency of the belief that missions addressed urgent social needs. A letter written in 1811 or 1812 quoted the viceroy that one cannot doubt that the colegios de propaganda fide have done very important services for the Church and state in this realm, their exact discipline and the zeal with which their members fulfill the obligations of their institute having in all times won respect and esteem rarely seen in all classes of peoples; but in no epoch

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are propagators of good principles and healthy morals more necessary than in the present because of the unfortunate corruption of customs that have made such rapid inroads in all parts.166

The ideal of a city inhabited by good Christians was a goal shared by reformist churchmen, baroque missionaries, and Bourbon officials.

alms for captives In 1735, when the Bethlehemites of Mexico City dedicated their new church, Mercedarians helped them celebrate the occasion with an elaborate procession. According to an eighteenth-century diary, the “numerous gathering of all classes brought by curiosity” came to see a spectacle that included dancers, members of several confraternities, and numerous holy images. An image of Our Lady of Mercy, who held a large golden key symbolizing her role freeing captives, led the way, followed by the entire community of Mercedarian friars. Mixed in with the friars were boys wearing Mercedarian scapulars and dressed in Moorish clothing “like the recently rescued captives.” They also wore fancy chains around their necks, symbolizing those that captives wore in prison. Finally came the image of Pedro Nolasco, also carrying a large golden key.167 The reason behind all this fanfare was the Mercedarians’ primary institute to redeem Christian captives and, more specifically, the work of collecting the alms for those redemptions. The procession was a reminder to potential donors of the cause that they could, in partnership with the Mercedarians, support. Alms collection was a project that became more important both to the order and to the crown over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When Mercedarians established their first permanent convent in Mexico City, they still hoped to follow in Bartolomé de ­Olmedo’s footsteps and missionize Indians, and alms collection was not yet a major part of their program. During the mid-seventeenth century, as New Spain became an increasingly important source of silver, Mercedarians began to invest more of their energies into tapping this fount of wealth. Before then, Peru had provided more alms than New Spain, and as one Mercedarian official in Spain had noted about New Spain, “as is less abundant the silver . . . the alms are much fewer.”168 Beginning in the late seventeenth century, when New Spain had surpassed Peru as the most important source of silver, Mercedarians founded a string of convents that followed the trail of wealth to Guanajuato into the Bajío.169 Interestingly, the alms collected in New Spain seem to have been particularly valuable in the ransoming process. Fr. Melchor García Navarro’s account of the Mercedarians’ expedition to Tunis carefully explained that the redeemers

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“sought to bring as large a portion as they could of Mexican money, that is more esteemed and desired” for its greater weight and purity.170 So unlike other coins that were devalued and had to be supplemented, Mexican money went further. Although data on alms remitted specifically from New Spain are thin and scattered, the amounts were substantial. Royal documents indicate that the province remitted 18,700 pesos in 1720; 38,000 pesos in 1738; 70,000 pesos in 1754; and 100,000 pesos in 1783.171 As these figures suggest, remittances increased over the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The earliest available figures come from the Mercedarian Francisco de Pareja, whose 1688 history of the Mexican Province claimed that his brothers had collected 203,216 pesos since the second year of the province’s existence (probably meaning 1596), with most of those sums coming in the last twenty years. A breakdown of these figures reveals that Mercedarians collected an average of slightly more than 2,200 pesos per year, unless Pareja’s claim that most money was from the last twenty years is taken into account. Conservatively assuming that about half of the sum, 100,000 pesos, was collected then, the average for the earlier time span falls to about 1,450 pesos per year and that of the later span rises to 5,000 pesos per year.172 A comparison of these figures to those from 1787 to 1804, when state officials in Mexico City recorded alms deposited each year, demonstrates substantial increases in amounts gathered. Figures for this later period, recorded in Table 6, range from a low of 6,935 pesos in 1787 to a high of 18,000 in 1792, yielding an average of 14,625 pesos per year. Compared to the 5,000-peso estimate from Pareja, these data indicate a nearly threefold increase in the average annual remittances between the mid-seventeenth century and the late eighteenth century.173 table 6 Mercedarian alms remitted from New Spain, 1787–1804 Collection year

Total (pesos)

Collection year

Total (pesos)

1787 1788 1789 1790 1791 1792 1793 1794 1795

6,935 10,960 13,909 16,937 15,547 18,000 16,949 13,365 15,614

1796 1797 1798 1799 1800 1801 1802 1803 1804

15,145 17,694 16,899 12,349 17,176 15,036 11,470 15,060 14,197

sources : BNAH Sueltos-1, leg. 24, docs. 8, 29; AGI Indiferente, 3055; AGN, Templos y Conventos, vol. 163.

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Most of these alms came from three sources: special events like processions or feast days, the collections of syndics, and friars’ weekly ­demandas.174 The largest sums seem to have come from these demandas, when an appointed official, the procurador, who was typically a lay brother rather than a priest, circulated through the city seeking alms for captives. From occasional references to his work de la calle (in the street), he may well have done this work in busy plazas or on well-­ traveled street corners.175 The second most important source of alms came from special events. The largest collections typically came on Thursday of Holy Week, when people came to fulfill their annual precept of confession and communion, and the churches sponsored special sermons and processions commemorating Christ’s Passion.176 Increased attendance certainly drove up collection totals, but another factor was the day’s focus on a big Mercedarian theme: Christ’s sacrifices for the redemption of humankind. Some of what was collected on these days came from the church, where people might have personally handed their gift to a friar or thrown a coin or two into the heavy wooden safe that each church housed to collect such gifts. More would have come in via the procession, where spectators or passersby moved by the spectacle could contribute to the cause.177 The Mercedarians’ final significant source of ongoing support came from alms collectors outside the convent’s home city. In a few cases, Mercedarian friars did the traveling, such as in 1784 when Padre Fr. Huerta from the Valladolid convent collected twentytwo pesos in Silao or in 1794 when Padre Fr. Dionicio brought fifty-six pesos from the countryside. Parish priests in pueblos occasionally took up collections as well, such as in 1792 when the priest of Aguado sent one peso to Valladolid. Most commonly, the order relied upon syndics, appointed representatives who lived in places where the order did not have a permanent presence. The few syndics listed by name in the order’s account books had the title of Don, suggesting that these were men of some social standing. Little information is available on how they brought together their deposits. They might have been allowed to take up collections at local churches or appealed to wealthy acquaintances for donations, or they or someone they hired might also have asked on streets or from door to door, perhaps offering an inexpensive paper image or scapular of Our Lady of Mercy in exchange for a donation. The Guadalajara convent even relied upon a syndica, a nun from the nearby Dominican convent of Santa María de Gracia, who collected alms in the convent’s church during Holy Week and on the five Mercedarian days of absolution. Investments and bequests provided only a small part of alms totals, and even mandas forsozas, the bequests required under Spanish law that frequently went to captives in Spain, brought in limited sums.

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Collections, then, were an ongoing task that required people’s continuing willingness to donate. Mercedarians therefore devoted much energy to convincing people to donate to the cause.178 Mercedarian sermons, fiestas, devotional exercises, special publications, art, architecture, and processions served as some of the primary vehicles for making a case to New Spain’s residents. The plight of the captives themselves did not figure prominently in these appeals, a logical strategy given that, as Pareja noted, it was rare to see a former captive in the Indies.179 Instead, the Mercedarians focused on an issue more relevant to New Spain’s residents, the salvation of souls. Captives’ physical sufferings were but a secondary danger of captivity, overshadowed by the threats to their Christian faith. Moors were perceived as especially dangerous because of their hatred for Christianity and Christians, and what one Mercedarian called “the inhuman slavery of the soulless Turks” could lead Christian captives to renounce their religion.180 One of the clearest statements on the primacy of saving souls comes from a 1727 set of instructions on how to observe Nolasco’s feast day. According to the guide, people were to remember that Nolasco risked his life “not so much to redeem their bodies from captivity as to free the souls of faithful captives from the danger of sin or injury.” This saving of souls from the infidel, concluded the passage, was the redeemers’ ultimate goal.181 Appeals in New Spain thus underscored the protection Mercedarians provided against Muslim threats to individual captives and their chances for eternal salvation. Even more significant, Mercedarians were protecting the entire body of the Catholic Church from a dangerous enemy who threatened its very existence. Residents of New Spain could join these heroic Mercedarians in this decisive global battle through their financial contributions. Alms collections for Christian captives, missions, and educational programs offer examples of the sorts of work New Spain’s friars did outside their core functions as mendicants. In each of these cases, orders demonstrated their flexibility, adapting their institutes to their circumstances. In the seventeenth century, adaptability often meant expansion. Mercedarians responded to the growth of mining by extending their alms-collection efforts; Franciscans created their colleges of the Propagation of the Faith in response to renewed interest in missions; Observant Franciscans and Mercedarians joined Dominicans and Augustinians in dedicating more resources to educating the laity. In the eighteenth century, adapting often meant working with new state initiatives. At the same time the royal government was shutting down mendicant work in doctrinas, it was supporting Franciscan missions, encouraging Mercedarian alms collection, and seeking mendicants’ assistance in educational projects. The government

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found Mercedarian alms a useful source of revenue, and it was no coincidence that increases in Mercedarian alms collection over the eighteenth century went hand in hand with state support. Franciscan missionary colleges, which may have been the most thriving of mendicant institutes at the end of the colonial period, were thought to create the sort of wellbehaved populace that Bourbon officials sought. Local and royal officials also found mendicants indispensable to their goals of improving society through free grammar schools, even getting the Carmelites to participate. This was not a case of the state trying to destroy the orders but seeking to redirect their work into areas that officials judged appropriate. Finally, these functions help delineate how the orders differentiated themselves in practice. Dominicans and Augustinians had well-earned reputations for intellectual pursuits, Franciscans were closely associated with missions, and Mercedarians were known for their grammar schools and alms collections for Christian captives. The Carmelites, meanwhile, preferred to remain focused on their core functions.

mendicant ministries and episcopal authority At the end of his term Viceroy Rodrigo Pacheco y Osorio, Marqués de Cerralbo (1624–1636), informed the king about conditions in New Spain. “The most contentious issue in the ecclesiastical matters of this realm,” he warned, “is whether doctrinas are better administered by secular clergy or friars.”182 Doctrinas were indeed a divisive issue, and not just the disputes surrounding their secularization in the Archbishopric of Mexico at the end of the sixteenth century, in the Diocese of Puebla in the mid-seventeenth century, and across New Spain during the mid-eighteenth century. Parish priests and doctrineros competed for the loyalty of their charges, as in 1674 when Don Diego Fernández de Castro, a secular priest from Salvatierra, denounced the local Franciscan doctrinero, Fr. Diego de San Antonio, for having preached a sermon against secular priests’ capacity to administer confession and absolution. According to Don Diego, Fr. Diego chose Palm Friday in front of a packed church at the peak season for annual precept confessions to preach that confessions made to secular priests were “of no value nor effect, and that the absolution was invalid and null as if wooden statues had made it.” Fr. Diego supposedly also told his Indian listeners (the sermon was in Otomí) that secular priests were also impatient in hearing confessions and raised their voices so that others nearby could hear, resulting in many nightmares, as when an Indian woman was killed after her husband overheard what she had confessed. Only friars could legitimately confess and absolve them, he allegedly concluded.183

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The contentiousness of regular-secular relations over doctrinas was not, however, a good indicator of their relations more generally. Many of the orders’ urban ministries overlapped with those of their secular counterparts, but even with these levels of sustained interaction, the historical rec­ ord contains relatively few cases of open conflict between the two groups. Tensions did, of course, exist, but unlike the situation in doctrinas, battles were not fought over whether cities should be the exclusive ground of one group or the other. Secular clergy were not questioning whether mendicants belonged there or whether they should be doing things like preaching, confessing, or running grammar schools. In fact, many bishops and parish priests welcomed the orders’ contributions to cities and considered their work useful to the spiritual well-being of the faithful. For example, the aforementioned parish priest of Tehuacán, Br. Don Juan Anselmo del Moral y Castillo de Altra, heaped praise upon his Carmelite neighbors’ work in the confessional, and Br. Don Nicolás Santiago de Herrera, the parish priest of Uruapan, spearheaded the movement to found a house for Franciscan missionaries in his city.184 Instead, most quarrels centered on issues of autonomy, and mendicants and secular clergy jockeyed and jostled over the secular clergy’s rights to oversee mendicants’ activities. A case from San Luis Potosí at the end of the seventeenth century reveals some of the issues between regular and secular urban clergy. At the time, San Luis, a city at the far reaches of the diocese of Michoacán, was home to Franciscans, Augustinians, Mercedarians, juaninos, and Jesuits. Although the Franciscans and Augustinians each administered doctrinas in barrios de indios outside the town limits, diocesan clergy had charge of the city’s parish. In practice, this seemingly clear demarcation of responsibilities was blurred by persistent wrestling over who had rights to administer to whom. A 1680 agreement between Franciscans and parish clergy to end the ongoing and expensive litigation noted that the conflicts had existed since the founding of the Franciscan convent in 1603 and that a 1644 compromise had not improved the situation.185 This more recent agreement did not end the problems either, because almost two decades later these long-standing tensions took on new life when a newly appointed parish priest and juez eclesiástico (ecclesiastical judge), Br. Don Cristóbal de Azorgaza y de la Cueba, sought to extend his authority over the orders, especially the Franciscans.186 The troubles began in 1696 with a controversy over the sequence in which the town’s churches would preach the proclamation of a Bula de la Santa Cruzada (Bull of the Holy Crusade). According to Don Cristóbal, the Franciscans objected to their place in the rotation and refused to take part, even after he ordered them to do so. The dispute escalated after Don Cristóbal assigned the parish church’s Ash Wednesday ser-

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mon to the Franciscans. That day, when it was time for the sermon, the people who had packed into the church saw nothing but an empty pulpit, the Franciscan preacher nowhere to be found. When word was sent to the Franciscan convent, the guardian responded that he was not obligated to preach and would do so only if Don Cristóbal asked, instead of ordered, him. Don Cristóbal refused and had his sacristan give the sermon instead. The Franciscans’ refusals to participate were not indications that they found preaching unimportant nor that they were unsupportive of the Bula de la Santa Cruzada but were part of a standoff over whether or not Don Cristóbal had the authority to compel Franciscans to participate. Franciscans argued that they were not required to preach or attend anything in the parish; only the parish priest and his assistants were. Don Cristóbal disagreed, and the trail of letters and protests over the following two years indicates that he was seeking to extend his authority over much more than just the Franciscans’ preaching. Although the Franciscans were at the center of the controversy, San Luis’s other orders were not absent from it. Just after the bula incident, the Franciscan guardian sent letters to the other convents seeking their support against Don Cristóbal. He found his strongest support among the Augustinians and Jesuits, the two orders with the most to lose from a stronger secular clergy. When in January 1698 Don Cristóbal ordered the Jesuits to preach two sermons during Lent, the Jesuit rector asked if the Franciscans had also been invited to preach. They had not, so the rector refused on the basis that it did not make sense that only some orders preached. His Jesuits would preach only if the Franciscans did. When a similar notice was sent to the Augustinians, the prior responded that they had no obligation to preach in the parish church, and rotating sermons were only obligatory in cathedrals. In contrast, juanino and Mercedarian prelates signed several joint letters of protest to the bishop, but they did not seem to have refused Don Cristóbal’s requests to give sermons in the parish church. The Mercedarian prelates even tried to use the split between the Franciscans and Don Cristóbal to their advantage and had, back in 1696, offered to preach the bula on the condition that they be awarded precedence over the Franciscans. Furthermore, Don Cristóbal never mentioned the Mercedarians in his litany of complaints. Nor did he have much to say about the juaninos or Jesuits. His main issue with the Jesuits was a dispute over a lay organization’s chapel, and his only specific criticism of the juaninos was their use of gaming in the convent to raise funds for the hospital. His primary targets were instead Franciscans and Augustinians. They were whom he meant when he lamented to the bishop of Michoacán “that all the Regulars mentioned in this auto seem to have united to undermine Ordinary authority and jurisdiction.”187

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The picture Don Cristóbal presented in his letters was of a town overrun by greedy friars who refused to acknowledge his legitimate authority. Franciscans and Augustinians collected excessive alms, confessed only the wealthy, buried people with excessive ceremony, and made processions without required modesty. Franciscans refused to attend the celebration of Corpus Christi because of disputes over precedence and rang their bells without permission on Good Friday. To remedy these problems, Don Cristóbal asked the bishop of Michoacán to clarify his authority as cura and juez eclesiástico in twenty-seven situations involving the regular orders. He wanted to know if he could compel them to preach and attend processions in the parish church, if he could regulate how and when they buried people, collected alms, rang their bells, and processed. He even asked if he could establish the hours when they opened their church doors. Don Cristóbal’s efforts at control were exceptionally zealous and in many ways rooted in the particular situation of San Luis, which had a strong mendicant presence and was far removed from the support of the diocesan center in Valladolid. Nonetheless, the case highlights some more general points about relations between secular and regular clergy in turnof-the-century New Spain. First, the orders’ active ministries were the major concern. Don Cristóbal did not seem at all interested, for instance, in whether or not mendicants were celebrating daily offices, attending choir, or praying for the souls of the dead. He focused his complaints on their services to the community, specifically preaching, confessing, burying the dead, sponsoring confraternities, and celebrating masses and ­fiestas. Second, although Don Cristóbal targeted active ministries, he sought to regulate those ministries, not prohibit them. For example, in none of the twenty-seven situations he listed did Don Cristóbal suggest that the orders should not be engaged in these occupations. He just wanted to make sure they were doing them to his satisfaction. Third, Don Cristóbal did not take issue with the orders equally and reserved his harshest words for the Augustinians and especially the Franciscans. It is possible that the juaninos’ distinct work as a hospital order meant they were not as involved in the sorts of issues that were of concern to Don Cristóbal, but the Jesuits and Mercedarians each had a significant presence in the city and its spiritual life.188 A key factor in Don Cristóbal’s targeting of the Augustinians and Franciscans was undoubtedly their administration of doctrinas, and it is difficult to discount the role of the long-standing disputes between the city’s Franciscans and secular clergy in this round of troubles. Even so, Don Cristóbal was not complaining about the friars as doctrineros; it was their pastoral work within San Luis that he found so threatening. Friars’ roles as doctrineros could color disputes over the orders’ active, urban ministries—and specifically regular clergy’s rights to regulate

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those ministries—but these sorts of debates were by no means limited to New Spain. Over the centuries, overlapping ministries among regular and secular clergy throughout the Catholic world had prompted so many appeals to Rome that a corpus of sometimes conflicting papal bulls and briefs accumulated concerning how the two types of clergy were to co­exist. In 1629 a book printed in Madrid compiled those pronouncements favorable to regular orders, and the Franciscans of Mexico were among the owners of this undoubtedly useful weapon in disputes with secular clergy.189 The book included sections that laid out orders’ rights and privileges regarding burials, preaching, confession, processions, alms collection, and inspections. Not coincidentally, these were, outside of doctrinas, the most likely points of friction in New Spain as well. These points come into better focus via a prolonged dispute between the bishop of ­Michoacán and the Discalced Carmelites. The dispute was very much rooted in its time, place, and circumstances and is not meant as a comprehensive assessment of regular-secular relations. Instead, the conflict serves as a springboard to examine its points of dispute within the broader contexts of New Spain’s cities. Bishop Escalona y Calatayud and the Discalced Carmelites On the third Sunday of Advent in 1732, the Carmelite Fr. Joseph de Jesús María preached in the Valladolid cathedral a sermon that a furious bishop later denounced as containing “repeated satires against my person and Episcopal Office.”190 Although Fr. Joseph denied the charges, he surely believed that he had good reason to criticize the bishop. Tensions between his convent and Bishop Dr. Don Juan Joseph de Escalona y Calatayud (1729–1737) had been brewing for some time. The previous year, another Carmelite, Fr. Domingo de San Miguel, had also angered the bishop with a sermon in the cathedral, and the bishop reacted by revoking Fr. Domingo’s license to preach and confess in Michoacán. Soon thereafter and shortly before Fr. Joseph’s sermon, Bishop Escalona forbade the Carmelites from offering spiritual direction to the nuns in the convent of Santa Catarina, a move the friars deplored as motivated by “platonic ideals.”191 The second “scandalous” sermon launched the bishop on a new offensive, one that pushed the limits of episcopal authority and set off a wave of litigation that lasted several years and came to include Franciscans as well. The bishop’s disputes with the Franciscans centered on issues relating to the administration of doctrinas and will be treated here only as part of the bishop’s struggles to assert his authority over regular orders. In contrast, his quarrels with the Carmelites centered on their public presence and ministries and specifically targeted four

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areas: punishing friars, granting friars permission to preach and confess, ensuring friars participated in public processions, and inspecting lay organizations. Examining these points of conflict reveals a gradual expansion in bishops’ oversight of regular orders’ active ministries during the early and mid-eighteenth century. The impetus for all the trouble was Fr. Joseph’s sermon, and Bishop Escalona energetically pursued his punishment, pushing along the case against him at breakneck speed. Within a week of the sermon, the bishop had determined the preacher guilty and ordered the Carmelite prior, Fr. Miguel de la Santíssima Trinidad, to punish Fr. Joseph within nine days. This punishment, the bishop further insisted, needed to be done publicly and with his approval. Fr. Miguel responded that because Fr. Joseph had committed an “enormous offense,” he would indeed be punished, but his order’s constitutions required following specific procedures. He asked the bishop to suspend his order, but the bishop refused. At the end of the nine days, despite Fr. Miguel’s repeated pleas, the bishop declared himself Fr. Joseph’s new judge and ordered him removed from the convent, even sending the city’s alcalde mayor with an armed retinue to arrest the friar. The Carmelites were a step ahead, however; when the men arrived, Fr. Joseph was already gone, on the road to Oaxaca to begin his punishment, explained Fr. Miguel. The provincial had sentenced Fr. Joseph to ten years’ banishment from Michoacán, privation of office for three years, and ten days of exercises and disciplines, such as eating from the floor. Bishop Escalona, probably apoplectic after learning of Fr. Joseph’s exodus, not only ordered the return of Fr. Joseph but demanded that Fr. Miguel be removed from office for disobedience.192 By insisting on his rights to punish Fr. Joseph, Bishop Escalona was treading a fine line. Regular orders had the legal right to discipline their own members, and the privilege was difficult to overturn, even in the most serious of cases, as occurred in 1789 when an allegedly drunk Mercedarian stabbed and killed his prelate in Mexico City.193 Furthermore, similar cases of friars using the pulpit in quarrels with secular clergy make it clear that Bishop Escalona’s response to the two Carmelite sermons—to take matters into his own hands—was not the only way to impose punishment from outside the order. For example, when two Augustinians preached questionable sermons in Mexico City, the Inquisition quickly stepped in to deal with the friars. The first incident took place in 1614 in the Augustinians’ church when Fr. Gaspar Suares climbed to the pulpit with the explicit intention of defending his order after what he described as a derogatory sermon by the archbishop of Mexico. According to Fr. Gaspar, the archbishop had preached a sermon that “had not spoken well of the Orders” and suggested that they had contributed little to

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the evangelization of New Spain. Fr. Gaspar denied that he had spoken against the archbishop specifically, a claim supported by a witness who said Fr. Gaspar spoke only in generalities. But Fr. Gaspar also admitted he was responding to the bishop’s sermon and even bragged that he was “el hombre” and had taken it upon himself to defend his order’s honor. The Inquisition judged his sermon to be “imprudent” and ordered him not to preach for one year and to leave Mexico City for four months.194 The second case was more serious. In 1718 the Mexico City ecclesiastical council denounced Fr. Juan de San Román for an injurious and defamatory sermon preached in the cathedral on the fourth Sunday of Lent that year. The sermon took place just a couple of weeks after a dispute between Augustinians and a secular priest over a burial, and, according to the denunciation, the sermon attacked curas and their ministers for not explaining Christian doctrine, preaching the gospel, or confessing diligently. The written version of the sermon confirmed much of the denunciation, as did Fr. Juan’s bold testimony. He told the Inquisitors that the basis of the sermon came from his experience in the confessional, where he had found many penitents poorly confessed and had ascertained from them that the reason was that their secular confessors had been ignorant or sloppy. Similarly, he claimed his statements against preachers were directed to the clergy, who “preached more to make ostentation of their learning than to bring benefits to souls,” leaving many listeners unable to understand the sermon. The sermon was judged injurious to ecclesiastics, and Fr. Juan was banned from Mexico City for ten years and prohibited from preaching for four years.195 In each of these cases, the Inquisition’s punishments were imposed in addition to any sanctions given within the order. Bishop Escalona offered no explanation for why he did not choose to denounce Fr. Domingo or Fr. Joseph to the Inquisition—perhaps he thought the Inquisition too remote or slow. Given his interest in having Fr. Joseph’s punishment made public, he may also have found the official secrecy of the Inquisition’s proceedings undesirable. After all, this was the second time that a Carmelite had impugned his dignity, and he may well have seen public redress as essential to his honor. The actions he took in the wake of the trouble suggest another possibility as well: he saw the situation as an opportunity to extend episcopal authority over regular orders. The same day that he demanded Fr. Joseph’s return and Fr. Miguel’s ouster as prior, he announced that he was to begin his episcopal visitation of Valladolid and wrote to the Carmelites inquiring if all their friars’ licenses to preach and confess were current. All priests needed a license from the bishop in order to confess anywhere or to preach in any church outside the order. This licensing requirement began in medieval Europe

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amid conflict about the orders’ independence in these activities, but the situation was complicated in the Americas, where the pope had granted early missionaries special privileges to preach and confess without ordinary license. After Trent and the Third Mexican Provincial Council confirmed that friars did indeed need these licenses, bishops pushed to utilize their prerogative, demanding that friars submit to examinations in theology as well as in any languages besides Castilian that they were to use in preaching or confessing. Under this system, newly ordained friars who passed their examinations would receive licenses to preach and confess men for a short period of time, usually one or two years. Their next licenses might be extended for longer periods of time or allow them to confess laywomen, and eventually more senior or distinguished friars could obtain licenses without expiration dates or that allowed them to confess all women, including nuns. The need for licenses remained a potential point of conflict among urban clergy into the seventeenth century.196 Bishop of Puebla Juan de Palafox y Mendoza’s famous quarrel with the Jesuits exploded in 1647 when they refused his order to present their licenses on the grounds that they had papal authorization to work anywhere in the world. Six years later, the new archbishop of Mexico, Marcelo López de Azcona, revoked all licenses granted during the sede vacante (the period between archbishops when the office was empty and the cathedral chapter governed) and required priests to be examined for new licenses. The regular orders reacted quickly with a petition signed by the heads of the Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian, Carmelite, Mercedarian, Jesuit, and Discalced Franciscan Mexico provinces. In it, they cited a multitude of royal cedulas and papal bulls that supported why their valid licenses could not be revoked and then argued that the licenses were not required anyway. They explained that friars had been preaching, confessing, and administering sacraments in New Spain for more than one hundred years with only the approval of their own prelates thanks to privileges granted by the Holy See and confirmed by Spanish kings. They voluntarily submitted to ordinary licensing only out of their deep loyalty to the monarchy.197 The only reason this particular conflict never came to a head was that López de Azcona died soon afterward, and his successor did not pursue the issue. By the end of the seventeenth century, the question of whether or not friars really needed these licenses had become a moot point, as prelates of the orders accepted their necessity, sometimes even correcting their subordinates who had not obtained proper licenses. In the first years of the eighteenth century, the provincial of the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province reprimanded some of his friars for neglecting this obligation and ordered them to obtain licenses to avoid “serious consequences.”198 When

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Bishop Escalona demanded to examine the licenses of the ­Valladolid Carmelites, they never questioned whether or not the licenses were needed. Instead, the issue was whether a bishop had the power to make them renew licenses that had not expired. The Carmelites cited statutes and precedents that as long as a license was current, it did not require revalidation from a new prelate, nor could it be revoked without just cause. When they refused to submit to new examinations, Bishop Escalona revoked their licenses. A few months later, in June 1733 during his visitation of Salvatierra, he did the same thing to the Carmelites there. Notably, neither Escalona nor any of the other bishops in the aforementioned cases attacked friars’ service as preachers or confessors, and, given the need for these services, it is doubtful that the bishops actually wanted to permanently exclude friars from this work. Indeed, bishops frequently cited preaching and confession as reasons for backing foundations of urban convents, and many bishops offered their support for this work during the late eighteenth-century state-mandated inspections of the provinces. For instance, in 1776 the Mercedarian inspector polled Archbishop of Mexico Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta on the state of the province, specifically asking if the friars “promote and teach correct doctrine from the pulpit and in the confessional.” Although the archbishop offered criticisms of the order in other areas, he gave a favorable response to this question and cited a specific case in which he had been pleased with the judgment of a friar who consulted him on a serious case.199 Even Archbishop of Mexico Lorenzana, who persistently grumbled about the troubles plaguing the mendicant orders, did not appear at all hesitant to issue these licenses. On his 1768 visit to Querétaro, he renewed licenses for 109 priests in the city’s seven male convents, including at least 7 of approximately 10 Dominicans, 18 of approximately 25 Carmelites, 7 of approximately 13 Augustinians, and 2 of the 3 Mercedarian priests.200 Bishops’ revocations of licenses should instead be seen as a useful weapon in their battles with friars.201 In the case of Escalona, he was trying to put pressure on the order that had defied him with two critical sermons and refused him redress. Another area of conflict between Bishop Escalona and the Carmelites arose when the Carmelites did not participate in a special procession meant to alleviate the effects of an epidemic in Valladolid. The procession took place only a few days after the bishop had suspended the Carmelites’ licenses, and he complained that the Carmelites had agreed to attend but then never showed up. When asked to attend another procession several days later, the Carmelite prior refused. Bishop Escalona’s requests were not unusual since orders regularly participated in processions sponsored by secular clergy, such as cathedrals’ celebrations of Saints Peter and

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Paul, parish churches’ fiestas of their titular saints, supplications against disease or earthquakes, and especially Corpus Christi, a feast celebrating the Eucharist that featured an elaborate procession with virtually all of a city’s religious organizations. Because each corporation’s place in a procession reflected its place in the church hierarchy, disagreements over status erupted frequently. Although parish clergy took precedence over friars, plenty of gray areas remained, especially before the mid-eighteenth-century loss of doctrinas, because the orders running urban parishes and local secular clergy each claimed a favored position over the other. For instance, in Querétaro, where Franciscans frustrated efforts to establish competing secular parishes until 1712, friars believed that they and their parish cross should take precedence over the diocesan priests who lived in the city because “they do not have there more formality than that of the faithful of that [Franciscan] parish . . . [and] they do not constitute a college nor a formal mystical body.”202 Although Franciscans found themselves on the wrong end of this dispute, the same system that gave such strong backing to secular clergy could lend the orders equally strong support against the encroachments of lay organizations. So when the Archconfraternity of the True Cross in San Luis Potosí and its highly elite membership determined to take a preferred position to the orders in the city’s 1779 Corpus procession, the bishop ordered them back to their place with the rest of the confraternities.203 The Carmelites were unique among the orders in that they had obtained papal dispensations excusing them from participating in public processions. The dispensations were part of the order’s emphasis on reclusion, but the Mexico Province came under heavy pressure to participate in Corpus Christi processions in the mid-seventeenth century, a time when Corpus was taking on new prominence. Bishop of Puebla Juan de Palafox y Mendoza used his influence and close relationship to the order to convince the Carmelites to attend, which they seem to have done, if only briefly and intermittently. For example, in 1644 the order’s definitorio general in Spain ordered communities to attend, and Madre de Dios, writing in the 1680s, noted that “in recent years” this had been done in his province.204 However, observers in Mexico City in 1651 and Puebla in 1655 noted that the Carmelites did not participate in those years’ Corpus processions.205 Additionally, none of the eighteenth-century precedence disputes over Corpus processions included the Carmelites, indicating they had ended their participation and attempts to force their participation had been abandoned. The extent to which authorities accepted the Carmelites’ exemption can be seen in a case where the provisor (chief ecclesiastical judge) of the bishopric of Michoacán ordered the Valladolid

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convent’s Our Lady of Carmen confraternity to participate in the city’s 1798 Corpus procession. The Carmelites argued that never before had anyone forced the lay organization to participate by themselves “without the attendance of the [friars’] holy community.” Even though the confraternity’s participation was under scrutiny, the order’s exemption went unquestioned.206 Bishop Escalona’s demands that the Carmelites participate in his processions thus stands out as an anomaly and as yet another attempt to extend episcopal control over the order. A final point of conflict between Carmelites and the bishop began in Salvatierra at the height of Bishop Escalona’s offensive. He ordered the Carmelites to show him the account books of the convent’s Confraternity of the Scapular, arguing that bishops had the right to inspect lay organizations in regular churches. The Carmelites agreed that the bishop had the right to inspect some lay organizations, but not this one, which was “one and the same Body as the principal Order.”207 The Carmelites’ argument was that some lay organizations were so closely tied to the order and its traditions that they remained solely under the order’s jurisdiction. The special privileges of the Confraternity of the Scapular—just like those of the Rosary in Dominican houses, the Belt in Augustinian houses, or the Cord in Franciscan houses—had been confirmed in various papal bulls and again at Trent, and if the bishop was going to inspect it, he needed special permission from the pope. Bishop Escalona had homed in on a contentious issue. Mendicants had long enjoyed the privilege of hosting these organizations without episcopal oversight, but bishops were now challenging the right, with some success. In 1706 the Dominicans appealed to royal officials in Madrid, where the fiscal agreed that the Dominicans did indeed have sole jurisdiction over rosary confraternities, provided they were located in Dominican churches. Those in parish or other churches were subject to visitation. A flurry of disputes indicates that the issue did not go away. In 1715 the Dominicans again protested to the king that Archbishop of Mexico Joseph de Lanziego y Eguilaz was trying to visit the Confraternity of the Rosary in San Juan del Río, and in 1725 the council received a complaint of a similar dispute in Puebla. Bishop Escalona also found precedents for questioning this privilege closer to home. In 1725 when Valladolid’s Confraternity of the Scapular became embroiled in a financial dispute, Carmelite friars stepped in, claiming their right to sole oversight, which meant the bishop could not intervene in the lay organization’s financial affairs. The bishop disagreed, arguing that even the Franciscans’ confraternity, which had the most privileges, was subject to his authority.208 Bishop Escalona remained firm in his demands to inspect the confraternity’s books, and when his inspection tour moved on to Celaya, he

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required the same thing of the Carmelites there. The provincial responded by extinguishing these two branches of the confraternity, a measure that the bishop did not countenance. He informed the priors that only he had the right to extinguish these groups and stepped in to oversee their functioning. He ordered all dues and investment income be given to the local juez eclesiástico rather than the convent, under pain of excommunication. By this point, the debates and struggles with Bishop Escalona had seriously disrupted religious life, especially in Salvatierra. After the Carmelites refused to let Escalona inspect chapels on two of the order’s haciendas, which would have further expanded the bishop’s oversight over the order, the bishop ordered the chapels closed, leaving residents of the haciendas without their regular services. The Carmelites responded by closing their churches in Salvatierra and Celaya on feast days and placing notices on their doors that if their hacienda chapels were not good enough for the bishop, then neither were their churches. These events, which took place during the second half of 1733, coincided with the apex of Escalona’s struggles with the Franciscans. These battles, centered in Salvatierra, were fought over the boundaries between where the doctrina ended and the convent began. For example, Escalona demanded that Franciscans in Salvatierra allow him to inspect all the ornaments in their church and all their financial records, not just those belonging to the doctrina. After the Franciscans refused, he suspended their licenses to preach and confess. At this point, Salvatierra’s city officials appealed to the Audiencia for help. Their city, they lamented, relied upon its two convents for its spiritual well-being, and now it had but two licensed confessors and the Carmelite church was closed for Mass and sermons. Attempts to resolve these disputes reveal the extent of support for Escalona’s positions and the relative precariousness of those of the Carmelites and especially the Franciscans. All the parties involved had repeatedly appealed to the Audiencia, which threw its support behind the bishop. The Carmelites responded by appealing to Madrid, and in 1736 the king issued a cedula addressing each of the points of contention. The Carmelites optimistically declared the king’s determinations a victory, but they were correct only in the sense that Escalona did not achieve a clear-cut victory in his effort to extend his authority over the Carmelites. The decree did unambiguously reaffirm the Carmelites’ right to choose whether or not to participate in processions, but royal support on the other points was less steadfast. The king avoided a direct answer on the issue of licenses to preach and confess and inspections of confraternities, declaring only that the bishop and friars were to follow the determinations of Trent and a papal bull of Innocent X and that any further questions should be appealed to Rome. Finally, he also chose not to address the issue of a

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bishop’s right to punish friars and simply declared that Fr. Joseph, whose imprudent sermon had sparked the worst of the strife, had been sufficiently punished by his prelates. The king concluded with his hopes that there would be no new disturbances. Whatever tensions still remained between Escalona and friars, they came to a definitive end soon afterward when the bishop died of dysentery in 1737. But other bishops’ encroachments on regular privileges continued, and the king’s lack of support for what mendicants viewed as their long-standing privileges only encouraged these efforts. For instance, the crown did not deny that bishops had the right to review unexpired licenses to preach and confess, and judging from the number of licenses that the archbishops of Mexico renewed on episcopal visitations during the second half of the eighteenth century, these reviews seem to have become standard practice. Bishops also continued to press the issue of inspecting confraternities with success. The Carmelites did obtain a papal brief from Clement XII (1730–1740) affirming their confraternities’ freedom from the local ordinary’s inspections, but its effectiveness was limited. When Archbishop Lorenzana of Mexico traveled to Querétaro in 1768 as part of his visitation of his see, he inspected the Dominicans’ Confraternity of the Rosary and the Franciscans’ Confraternity of the Cord, but no Carmelite organizations. Six years later upon his return, he insisted upon examining the books belonging to the Confraternity of Our Lady of Carmen. Although the Carmelites protested, the bishop had his way. From this point, inspections were the norm in both the Archbishopric of Mexico and the Bishopric of Michoacán.209 The Carmelites may not have lost the battle with Escalona, but they definitely lost the war. One of the questions raised by the dispute in Michoacán is, why were the Carmelites the only order willing to take on Escalona in a tooth-andnail battle against expanding episcopal authority? After all, the issues at stake affected all the orders. Although Franciscans also found themselves at odds with Escalona, they were fighting to maintain their jurisdiction as doctrineros and did not publicly involve themselves in the Carmelites’ fight. Part of the reason they did not lend the Carmelites a hand may have been rivalry between the two orders, but even with the best of relationships it is doubtful that the Franciscans would have joined the fray because of their priority on keeping their doctrinas. For example, when the Franciscans of Querétaro found themselves at odds with Dominicans over a confraternity in the 1690s and over their third orders in the 1740s, the order sought to resolve the disputes as quietly as possible. The comisario general even advised the guardian of Querétaro never to speak of the confraternity dispute again for fear that the archbishop would use controversy to secularize their parish.210 With Escalona, the Franciscans

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were following a similar policy of avoiding conflict, and in October 1733 they signed a compromise with him, figuring that it was better to lose some autonomy than entire doctrinas. Less evidence is available to explain the absence of Michoacán’s other two mendicant orders, Mercedarians and Augustinians, from the conflicts with Escalona. Mercedarians were never mentioned in the documentation, perhaps because Escalona did not find them much of a threat since they had but two houses in the diocese, one located at the edge of Valladolid and the other in distant San Luis Potosí. At the same time, Mercedarians were also trying to found new houses in Celaya and Guanajuato and may have been judiciously avoiding jeopardizing them. Augustinians shared Franciscans’ concerns about losing doctrinas and may have acquiesced to Escalona’s demands, or perhaps Escalona chose not to provoke conflict with them. Another factor may have been the Augustinians’ strong identification with episcopal authority. Augustinians, according to Eric Saak, never forgot that Augustine was a bishop and that “the Augustine high way to heaven was fundamentally an episcopal road.”211 In any case, Bishop Escalona did maintain amiable relations with the order and was good friends with Matías de Escobar, the Augustinian chronicler, and when Escalona died, he donated his library to the Augustinians.212 At one point in the disputes with the Carmelites, Escalona even brought in an Augustinian to try to convince the Carmelites to allow him to review their licenses. The Carmelites had reasons of their own to avoid conflict with Escalona. The order had the financial backing and local support to establish a house in San Luis Potosí, but without the bishop’s support their attempts were futile. Only after Escalona’s death did they get their new convent. Yet they were the ones who took on the fight. They could do so because, unburdened with doctrinas, they did not fear the loss. Friars may also have been confident in their good relationship with a crown that had continued to support new foundations and allowed them to admit more novices, even as it restricted the number of houses and friars in other orders. It was no coincidence that the only point on which the crown’s resolution of the dispute offered unqualified support to the Carmelites was for their unique privilege regarding processions, and on the points affecting all regular orders, the crown was virtually silent. By the mid-eighteenth century, this silence had become the norm. Without crown backing, many of the orders’ privileges were eroding under episcoal pressure. Even so, the extent of these episcopal incursions remained confined, by and large, to issues of autonomy; whereas battles over doctrinas were primarily about exclusion, those over urban ministries were primarily about regulation. Nor did the secular clergy’s incursions continue unabated. Bishops relied upon state support to tip

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disputes with regulars in their favor, but that support eroded. Consider the two great reformist efforts of the late eighteenth century, the Fourth Provincial Council and the general inspections of the orders. The council, in what little attention it directed toward friars, sought to broaden bishops’ capacity to punish friars for offenses committed outside the convent, including, no doubt, defamatory sermons in cathedrals. Its decrees, however, were never implemented. The inspections did take place, but state-appointed friars ran them, not bishops. The state’s more ambiguous stance left relationships with mendicants at something of a stalemate. In fact, there are fewer recorded disputes between regular and secular clergy at the end of the eighteenth century than there were in its opening decades. It was no accident that disputes like those with Escalona and the parish priest of San Luis Potosí took place when they did.

conclusion The backbone of mendicants’ ministries in New Spain’s cities consisted of preaching, offering confession, celebrating masses, providing devotional opportunities, and praying—a mixture of active and contemplative works that defined the orders as mendicants. There was remarkably little change in the orders’ core ministries over time, and, in fact, what those ministries were never fluctuated. Certainly, the growth and evolution of cities meant the orders ministered to growing numbers of people. The scattered and limited data on masses suggest that their numbers increased across the seventeenth century and, after peaks in the mid-eighteenth century, declined slightly. Preaching became more didactic and less baroque, and more friars were taking their messages to the streets rather than waiting for people to come to them. Perhaps the most notable changes were in relationships with secular clergy. The secular clergy expanded its authority to supervise mendicants’ active ministries, and mendicants came to accept new rules, such as greater supervision of their confraternities, the need for licenses to preach and confess, and bishops’ rights to review those licenses at will. Most of what differentiated the orders’ core services was how they provided them, including different approaches to confession, specific devotional practices, and families of saints. More significant changes in the orders’ ministries came from outside these core areas, where each order developed its own niche. Carmelites avoided these activities in favor of specializing in core ministries; Mercedarians had the unique task of collecting alms for the redemption of captives and specialized in running grammar schools; Franciscans established missionary colleges; and Dominicans and Augustinians emphasized

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intellectual life. The establishment of Franciscan missionary colleges in the late seventeenth century marked a revival of missions, and education also took on more important roles, especially for Franciscans and Mercedarians. During the seventeenth century these two orders pushed their way into the Royal University, Mercedarians opened grammar schools in their convents, and Franciscans invested more resources into their own colleges, including at Celaya. Change intensified in the second half of the eighteenth century with the expulsion of the Jesuits and new types of state intervention. With the loss of Jesuits, orders opened new schools, and Franciscans turned more resources to missions, in both the northern provinces and central urban areas. Secular government’s interest in public schools created new responsibilities for the orders in education, and the crown encouraged missions by allowing new foundations of missionary colleges and increased the numbers of missionaries coming from Spain. New state regulations forced Mercedarians to turn over funds to royal officials in Mexico City, giving a revenue-hungry government new motivation for supporting the expansion of the order’s work. The busy pace of mendicants’ activities, the number of masses in their convents, the crowds that filled their churches to earn indulgences, and the popularity of their missions demonstrate that orders remained dynamic organizations through the first years of the nineteenth century. Their services were also vital enough to urban religious life to earn the support of secular clergy. This contrast to the declining numbers of vocations and financial troubles after the secularization of doctrinas reveals the limited effects and goals of state reforms. Bourbon officials, after all, were not antireligion or antichurch, nor were they trying to separate church and state. Instead, they were seeking to subordinate the church to state authority. Mendicant orders’ independence had thus come under attack, but their ministries—active and contemplative, core and selected— had not. Royal officials, in fact, wanted and needed mendicants’ services, from running schools to praying for success in war, and the council that wrote the instructions for the state-sponsored visitations offered a ringing endorsement of their institutes: “The observance of monastic discipline is so necessary to the church, that if the regulars fulfill the very strict and serious obligation of their three essential vows and maintain the common life as they are obligated, the friars will win the love and veneration of the faithful. And if they conduct themselves in this manner, their institutes are of much utility, luster, and honor to the church.”213

chapter four

Defining Religions Mendicant Connections and Disconnections in Urban Society “Those scoundrels did not have to take our emblem out with them.” —An unnamed Mercedarian friar who stole a Mercedarian scapular from a Dominican church, 1612

; On the August 4, 1612, feast day of Saint Dominic, a Mercedarian friar ascended the altar of Saint Raymond of Peñafort in the Dominicans’ Oaxaca church, removed a knife from his habit, and cut loose the Mercedarian scapular from the saint’s hand. When the Augustinian friar accompanying the Mercedarian scolded him for having no shame, he replied that he did not care and he was not going to allow “those Dominican scoundrels” to go out on a procession with his order’s scapular. Saying he was going to use the scapular for an image in his cell, he put it inside his habit and left. The Augustinian, Fr. Bernardo de Asuniega, later tried to distance himself from the act, testifying that he could only remember the Mercedarian’s nickname, “un lujo de bustos,”1 and that they had been visiting the church’s altars when the Mercedarian acted without warning. Perhaps because it was still early, sometime before eight o’clock in the morning, the only other people to witness this defiant act were an old, deaf woman and her two female companions, one of whom attributed the Mercedarian’s deed to his “zeal for his order.” The scapular did not remain missing for long, however, as later that day, two Mercedarians returned it to the Dominicans. This case of a misbehaving friar highlights some of the complexities involved in relations among different orders and their friars. The Mercedarian’s zealous actions were an overexuberant defense of his order, and

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the scapular he took was that of Our Lady of Mercy, which displayed the Mercedarian emblem and served as a token of the Virgin Mary’s special protection of his order. This item was clearly associated with the Mercedarian order, and the Mercedarian friar wanted to obscure that connection when the Dominicans took Saint Raymond on their procession later that day. His reasons for wanting to prevent his order’s association with “those scoundrels” were not spelled out in the case, but these might have included specific local complaints, such as the place the Mercedarians had been assigned in the procession or church. Or perhaps the Dominicans had been throwing their weight around as Oaxaca’s dominant order. The root of the trouble might also have been grounded in more global disputes between the two orders. Not only were they on opposite sides of intense debates about whether Mary had been conceived in original sin but the two orders also clashed over the place of the Dominican Raymond of Peñafort in the founding of the Mercedarian order. Saint Raymond had been King Jaime of Aragon’s confessor when the king sanctioned the order, and Mercedarians sometimes credited Raymond with a supporting role in their foundation, which explained why his image in the Oaxaca church was holding a Mercedarian scapular. Dominicans, however, often claimed that Raymond was the principal founder, displacing Pedro Nolasco and implying that the Mercedarian order owed its very existence to the Dominicans.2 Ironically, these sorts of tensions might not have existed, or carried such weight, if the various orders were not part of a community that shared close connections. The Dominicans portrayed in their church Saint Raymond’s role in the foundation of the Mercedarian order, and that image was about to participate in a public procession that would have been viewed by many of the city’s residents. In addition, the Mercedarians would have attended some, if not most, of the public events during the eight-day celebration of Saint Dominic as a formal community. One or two of their more distinguished friars likely celebrated Mass or preached a sermon as part of the festivities. Individual friars would also have participated in more informal ways, and the Mercedarian and Fr. Bernardo had likely come to the Dominican church for the special indulgences available to those who visited all the church’s altars on this special day. These were just some of the multitude of ways that orders interacted in the close quarters of colonial cities. This chapter examines such encounters as a way of delineating boundaries among orders and their institutes and of illuminating how different strands of religious belief functioned in urban New Spain. It therefore looks beyond official doctrine to help distinguish variant approaches to Catholicism as it was lived and practiced and as it changed over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Two issues involving all the orders, public perceptions of their

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status and the territorial competition for new urban convents, reveal rivalries over which orders would influence the faithful and shape a city’s religious culture. Orders brought their own messages with them to cities, and sometimes these messages stood in opposition to each other, leading to disputes, such as the Dominicans objecting to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the Carmelites attempting to set themselves apart from other mendicants, and the Franciscans aggressively defending one of their defining characteristics, the stigmata. Most of these battles took place during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, not coincidentally during the apex of the orders’ urban presence. Not all interactions among the orders involved conflict, however. The events and activities of daily life also show evidence of cooperation, especially when the orders faced common threats. Notably, many of these interactions took place in public view and actively involved a laity plugged in to what was happening. They serve as evidence of how friars interpreted global issues and conveyed them to New Spain’s residents, thereby shaping the look and feel of urban religion.

establishing rank Referring to the profusion of histories of the Iberian Americas written by ecclesiastics, Lewis Hanke noted that “the various religious orders whose enthusiasm and devotion were so vital in both Spanish and Portuguese America emphasized, most naturally, their own orders and thus generated what might be called Ordenspatriotismus.”3 Between the late sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, members of the orders composed dozens of these celebratory histories, reflecting friars’ intense concern with making sure people viewed their order as exceptional and essential.4 The authors, official chroniclers of a province writing about that province, sought to demonstrate their province’s excellence and worthiness of acclamation throughout the Catholic world. One of their favorite strategies involved placing their order or province at the top of a hierarchy, similar to how preachers presented their patriarch as the most extraordinary of the extraordinary. An important measure of rank and status was antiquity, and one way to demonstrate a preferred status over other orders was to demonstrate an older or longer history. The sequence of the orders’ arrivals in New Spain thus became a point of keen interest in these histories as a way of convincing people of their order’s antiquity and, therefore, preeminence. The general perception, both then as now, was that the Franciscans had arrived first, and Franciscans certainly did their part in flaunting

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this status whenever they could. Martín de Valencia and the story of the first official mission to New Spain merited multiple chapters in Franciscan chronicles, as did biographies of its missionaries, who were collectively marketed as the First Twelve—a new group of Apostles. Franciscan chronicles further established the hierarchy of orders by noting that they housed the Dominicans once they arrived. The implications of this assertion go beyond claims of getting there first or even that the Dominicans were the guests of the Franciscans, with all the mutual obligations entailed in a sixteenth-century host-guest relationship. It also expressed the idea that one thing originated from the other; for the same reasons Dominicans noted that they hosted the first Augustinians when they arrived. Not everyone was willing to accept Franciscan claims. Discalced Franciscan chroniclers did not challenge the order of arrival, but they did question the Observant Franciscans’ primacy. Baltasar de Medina (1682) staked claim to this status for his own branch of the order when he noted that the first Discalced Franciscan in New Spain was none other than Martín de Valencia, the leader of that first Franciscan mission, who had come from a reformed, rather than Observant, house in Spain.5 Similarly, some Dominicans put themselves on equal footing with the Franciscans by using departures from Spain rather than arrivals in New Spain to gauge antiquity. They noted that the twelve Franciscans did not depart Spain alone—an equal number of Dominicans sailed on the same ship as part of the same mission. Only because the Dominicans “were not in such a hurry to arrive” and waited in Santo Domingo, claimed Juan Bautista Méndez, did the Franciscans make it to New Spain before them.6 In contrast, Mercedarian historians disputed Franciscan claims altogether, instead pointing out that the first friar to set foot in New Spain was their brother Fr. Bartolomé Olmedo, who was part of the Cortés expedition. Olmedo, as Francisco de Pareja (1687) carefully explained over several chapters and as Cristóbal de Aldana (1770) did throughout an entire book, was the first to celebrate Mass, preach, and baptize Indians in New Spain. He taught the famous Malinche her doctrine and baptized her, and through his efforts, the first church built in New Spain was dedicated to Our Lady of Mercy. Completing the Mercedarian claim to precedence, Pareja observed that once the Franciscans finally arrived, it was Olmedo who offered them a place to stay. The Mercedarians’ declarations of primacy generated far more controversy than the Franciscans’ and were occasionally disputed by members of other orders. The Augustinian Juan de Grijalva (1592) was the chronicler who most aggressively limited Olmedo’s and the Mercedarians’ place in the early history of New Spain. Chief among his charges was that Olmedo

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had only catechized Malinche and a secular priest had baptized her.7 To Grijalva and his contemporaries who had only recently seen the Mercedarians’ Mexico City convent receive royal license as the order’s first house in New Spain, the Mercedarians were still very much new­comers to New Spain, so their assertions of preference must have been galling. Augustinians also had a specific reason for opposing Mercedarian rather than Dominican or Discalced Franciscan claims. Unlike the Dominicans, who were ahead of the Augustinians in the sequence of arrivals, and unlike the inner-family squabbles of the Franciscans, successful Mercedarian claims to primacy would have affected the Augustinians’ place in the arrival sequence, dropping them from third to fourth. Pareja responded aggressively to the Augustinian’s critique. He not only explained why Grijalva was wrong but also exacted some revenge by downplaying the Augustinians’ role in the “spiritual conquest.” He noted that Bernal Díaz, the well-known chronicler who recorded the entry of all the orders in New Spain, never even mentioned the Augustinians’ arrival.8 Pareja’s use of Díaz legitimized the Mercedarians’ role in the conquest in another way as well, as the frontispiece to the first edition of Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España featured Cortés and Olmedo (along with the Mercedarian shield) as the two columns of the conquest, representing conquest by the sword and the cross (Figure 9). Here in the most famous account of the Spanish victory, the spiritual conquest was equated with the Mercedarian order. Grijalva’s position, however, was less representative of chronicles more generally since admitting a prominent place to a secular priest became particularly unpalatable in light of mendicant struggles to maintain their status and rights against the encroachments of secular clergy. Most chroniclers who sought to avoid giving such a prominent role to ­Olmedo and therefore the Mercedarians found alternative ways of portraying the Cortés expedition. The Franciscan Agustín de Vetancurt mentioned ­Olmedo only once, almost in passing, despite a lengthy account of the expedition. Instead, he portrayed the expedition as a strictly military conquest that laid the groundwork for the spiritual conquest that was to follow, noting that Cortés had asked the king to send Franciscans for this purpose. Fellow Franciscan Geronimo de Mendieta, even though he never discussed Olmedo or the conquest, implied that Olmedo’s role was unsanctioned when he celebrated the twelve Franciscans as “the first friars sent to evangelize the Catholic faith with all the authority of the Supreme Pontiff.”9 By the late seventeenth century when the Augustinian Fr. José Sicardo penned a history that covered the same ground as Grijalva and modified or corrected him on numerous occasions, he, too, followed this pattern of giving Olmedo’s role only the scantest of acknowledgments.

figure 9 Frontispiece to the original version of Bernal Díaz’s Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. Olmedo, on the right, holds an image of him ministering to kneeling Indians. On the column is the emblem of the Mercedarian order. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

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In the same sentence where he credited Olmedo with being the first to preach the faith in New Spain, he explained that because more ministers were needed, Charles V sent missions of Franciscans and Dominicans. Sicardo’s presentation thus had the dual benefit of establishing the regular clergy’s primacy in New Spain without crediting the Mercedarians with the spiritual conquest. The one order absent from these debates was the Discalced Carmelites. They were not absent because of any lack of interest in the topic but because they had no basis for making claims to an early arrival in New Spain. Instead, their strategy was not unlike that they used when they chose Elias as their founder: present themselves as heirs to long-­established traditions. For instance, they noted that some of their churches had functioned as hermitas long before the order’s arrival, such as the one in Mexico City that had been acquired from the Franciscans and was the third one built in Mexico.10 Provincial chroniclers also made a different type of claim to the order’s venerable status by focusing on the order’s, rather than this province’s, antiquity and successes. Fr. Diego del Espíritu Santo (1690) wrote that the Carmelites had come to New Spain to establish the faith there, “just as the Carmelites had been those who planted the Christian religion in Spain in the beginning of the Church.”11 Agustín de la Madre de Dios opened Tesoro escondido en el Monte Carmelo Mexicano (1670) with the statement that his religion was the “most ancient in the church,” founded by the prophet Elias centuries before the birth of Christ. The order, moreover, had been further perfected through its sixteenth-century reform, a movement led by Saint Teresa herself. Only once the order attained this ideal state did it come to New Spain. These presentations of an order as the most ancient, perfect, or relevant made powerful statements about the order’s place at the top of a hierarchy. Although chroniclers sought to rank their order above others, they rarely disparaged their rivals and were more likely to damn them with faint praise or omissions. In fact, when other orders turned up in a history, it was typically part of a story of cooperation, mutual interests, and shared beliefs. For instance, friars engaged in common projects to defend their orders’ privileges, sending group petitions or missions of delegate friars to Spain; they participated in each other’s ceremonies; and they gave shelter and aid to traveling friars. These guest appearances by outside friars were included only selectively and were often tainted with the slant of ­Ordenspatriotismus. The order’s friars were the ones who led the delegations or drafted the learned petitions; their saints were honored by the presence of outside friars; and they offered brotherly charity to the travelers. When people read one of these histories, they would have no doubts about the order’s premier ranking.

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establishing territories When in 1609 the Carmelites sought the bishop of Puebla’s license to move their house of seclusion, Santo Desierto, to a new location, they met with resistance. Although the Santo Desierto convent’s foundation book that relays this story did not name the source of the opposition, the author’s means of countering it suggests that other mendicant orders had a part. The author told how a diocesan priest journeyed more than eighty leagues to Puebla so he could tell the bishop about a vision he had received. In it, the priest saw some mountains that looked like the place where the Carmelites wanted to put the new Santo Desierto, and here he saw a small church from which emerged a procession of Discalced Carmelite friars. Never before had he seen these friars, since there were no Carmelites in his native Guatemala, but there they were, dressed as ancient priests in resplendent garb adorned with precious stones. They carried on their shoulders an image of the Virgin Mary, who looked lovingly upon them as they sang hymns. Then appeared Saint Dominic, Saint Francis, and Saint Augustine, who humbly supplicated before Mary and told her that the foundation pleased them and would be of much benefit to their orders. The patriarchs then joined the procession, mixing in among the Carmelite friars and singing with them until the procession reentered the church and the vision ended.12 This vision offered the Carmelites a bounty of divine support for their foundation. The friars themselves were dressed as “ancient priests,” which, combined with the reference to the mountains, linked these men with the order’s holy origins on Mount Carmel. Mary’s smiling approval applied in a general sense to the friars’ work bringing her devotion into the world, but it was also an endorsement of the specific act in which she was so joyfully participating. This act, a formal procession, mirrored foundation ceremonies for new churches in which friars would file out of the church and process around the churchyard, often accompanied by images of Mary, Christ, or important saints. Nor was she the only one espousing the Carmelites’ foundation plan, and the role of Francis, Dominic, and Augustine is even more telling. They humbly submitted to the will of Mary and agreed to the foundation. When they joined the procession, they changed from mere observers to enthusiastic participants in the Carmelite project. The need to demonstrate divine support rested in the workings of the mundane world, where mendicant orders commonly opposed foundations of their brother orders. Indeed, there was nothing subtle about a statement in the foundation book that Francis, Dominic, and Augustine were sending a message to the men of their orders. Opposition to new

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convents had taken place in Europe and continued in New Spain, where, during the first decades of mendicant activity, the orders primarily competed over pueblos de indios. Because a royal decree prohibited more than one order from establishing convents in these pueblos (to prevent undue burdens on their communities), the main competition was over who would found a convent first. With the growth of cities and the burst of urban foundations between 1570 and 1630 came a new type of territorial competition among the orders. Now there was the prospect of having multiple convents in the same city, something that had hitherto been confined to only three places: Mexico City, Puebla, and Valladolid.13 Orders fought to keep other groups out and prevent competition for prestige, financial support, and spiritual influence. During the first decades after 1570, most of these struggles involved the Franciscans trying to keep other orders from founding convents near theirs. Franciscans found themselves in this position because they had established more urban convents at an earlier stage than the other orders, so they had more territories to protect. In contrast to Franciscan urban monopolies in Atlixco, Colima, Querétaro, Pátzcuaro, Veracruz, Celaya, Toluca, Guadalajara, and Zacatecas, the Dominicans had but one, in Oaxaca City; the Augustinians had none. The Franciscans attempted to stop incursions of other orders through a program of legal arguments as well as claims that any additional foundations were unnecessary, burdensome, and unwelcome. For example, when in 1599 Franciscans learned that the Discalced Carmelite order was attempting to found a convent in Querétaro, they argued that such a foundation would go against the royal cedula limiting pueblos de indios to one convent. Although Querétaro had growing Spanish and casta populations, which is probably what attracted the Carmelites in the first place, the Franciscans’ argument was technically correct since Querétaro officially remained a pueblo until the 1650s (when it became a villa, a status it held until 1656, when it became a ciudad). The Franciscans then noted that because they were providing sufficient ministers for Indians in the jurisdiction, there was no need for another convent. Nor could Querétaro’s residents support another convent, the Franciscans concluded. As it was, their convent suffered dire poverty and had only the barest necessities for the divine cult. The Franciscans also enlisted the help of local residents in their battle, including Don Pedro de Quesada, who argued that the foundation would cause many trials for the pueblo’s Indian residents and that the efforts to bring in Carmelites were the work of but two or three vecinos of “menos calidad” (lesser status) who were not the “voice of the republic.”14 Variations on these arguments continued to be used throughout the colonial period. As more urban locations upgraded their official status to vil-

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las and ciudades, Franciscans were less able to exercise claims based on the legal status of pueblos de indios, but they did use such arguments to contradict mid-seventeenth-century Carmelite foundation attempts in Tacuba and Cholula. Franciscans also continued to employ arguments that highlighted the detrimental financial impact of new foundations, trotting them out, for example, to thwart the Augustinians’ multiple attempts to establish a house in Querétaro in 1615, 1638, 1681, and 1695. One of these protests included condemnations of Augustinian practices, specifically objecting to the financial burdens caused by “the buying and acquisition of many haciendas of livestock, as other Augustinian convents in the ­Michoacán province have done.”15 Franciscans’ interest in preventing competing foundations included more than protecting their account books. Another church and its priests might attract the laity away from existing centers of devotion, threatening the order’s stature and influence in the community as well as its ability to impart its versions of Catholicism. If people started attending another church, they might not be instructed in the best devotional exercises, might be confessed improperly, or could develop attachments to saints or Marian advocations other than those the Franciscans encouraged. Conflicts over new convents were not limited to competing legal arguments of paper-pushing administrators but had a very physical place in cities, affecting and involving their residents, as a case in San Luis ­Potosí illustrates. In 1599 Fr. Pedro de Heredia, the guardian of the Franciscans’ convent there, dispatched a series of urgent letters, including to the alcalde mayor Don Luis Valderrama Saavedra, complaining that the Augustinians were trying to establish a convent without the necessary royal approval.16 Valderrama ordered the Augustinians to demonstrate their licenses or halt construction, but less than a week later, another letter from Fr. Pedro implored even stronger action because the Augustinians had ignored the order and were continuing to build. This time Valde­ rrama tried a new approach. Rather than threaten the Augustinians, he instituted fines or whippings for any laborers who continued to work on the project. It must have been an effective tactic because the Augustinian in charge of the project, Fr. Pedro de Castroverde, finally responded, claiming that the work under construction was not a church but an hospicio for traveling friars, and because it had no bells, altars, or anything else relating to a church, it did not require royal license. He also noted that the Franciscan guardian and his companion had come to the Augustinians’ site earlier that week, ordering him to stop work because the building was against the wishes of the town’s vecinos. The Franciscans used “ugly words” during the confrontation, Fr. Pedro complained, and even worse, the guardian’s companion slapped Fr. Pedro twice across the face. The circumstances that provoked this heated exchange seem

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to have been, despite Augustinian denials, the installation of bells in the Augustinians’ church. Bells not only gave a church a voice in its community, calling residents to services, lamenting a death, or informing of an emergency, but also helped define that community. Spaniards used the phrase sujetarse a campana (to submit to the authority of the bell) in describing their efforts to bring Indians into communities, because to be part of a community meant to live within earshot of church bells. Installing bells gave the Augustinians a public role in San Luis and gave the Franciscans an additional reason to believe this was not an hospicio. The intensity of this conflict was registered in the Franciscan guardian’s zealous letter-writing campaign and his physical confrontation with the Augustinian, but the effects were not limited to the friars since they jeopardized the livelihoods of the workers hired to construct the church and divided the town’s residents. When the alcalde mayor ordered testimonies from residents, one witness noted that “there have been great scandals among the vecinos of this pueblo because some friars had had great problems with the others.”17 These testimonies also revealed that residents regarded the building as a church. All witnesses testified that the Augustinians said Mass there, and only one noted that they only said it privately without allowing residents to enter. The Franciscan guardian used the testimonies to up the ante, appealing to the viceroy that the building be demolished because the celebration of Mass proved it was a church. He earned a limited and temporary victory when the viceroy ordered the door sealed and the bells removed, but soon after a visiting member of the Audiencia ordered the alcalde mayor to reopen the doors, prompting a new round of confrontations with the Franciscans. This time, however, Augustinians used some astute maneuvering to get around the need for the king’s license. Only the viceroy’s approval was needed for foundations in pueblos de indios, so when he granted the order a doctrina on the city’s outskirts in San Sebastián, the Augustinians found themselves with the legal basis for their church.18 Once an order’s exclusive territory had been breached, the issue of founding new convents continued to be of great concern both to the original order and the newcomers. Indeed, the same orders that worked so hard to break these monopolies would often, once established, try to keep others out. In 1629 the Franciscans and Augustinians of San Luis combined forces to protest that the Mercedarians were building a convent there without the king’s or bishop’s licenses. This convent, argued the protestors, was going to “take away the faithful and alms from them without the consent of the republics.”19 Although there were circumstances under which orders might endorse another’s foundation effort, they usually did so only if the new house

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would not affect any of theirs. When in 1720 the Mercedarians sought royal permission to establish a house in Huamantla (near Tlaxcala), they submitted their petition with letters from the heads of the Jesuit, Dominican, and juanino houses in Puebla. Each prelate enthusiastically supported the new convent, arguing that the Mercedarians would be of much use to the town and its surrounding areas because the region had so few priests to serve its growing population. The bishop of Puebla also weighed in in favor of the project, but one order whose support was conspicuously absent was the Franciscans. Huamantla was in the middle of the Franciscans’ regional stronghold of Tlaxcala where, despite the attempts of various orders, the Franciscans still maintained their monopoly. Jesuits, Dominicans, and juaninos were willing to support the Mercedarian establishment because, without their own convents in the vicinity, they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. If they could break the Franciscans’ monopoly on Tlaxcala, new territory might open up for themselves.20 Although orders almost always opposed new foundations in places where they were already established, they did not necessarily do so with the same intensity or aggressiveness. Consider the case of the Carmelites’ attempt to found a convent in San Luis Potosí during the 1730s. A donor had willed the Carmelites an especially large sum to cover construction costs and the ongoing expenses of maintaining a community. The Carmelites therefore argued that the foundation would not have any financial implications for the other orders. To make their point, the Carmelites asked each order present in San Luis to respond to a series of questions: Would the Carmelites work for the good of the city by preaching and offering confession? Would they keep their churches clean and help the poor with alms? Would their presence hurt the other orders’ alms collection? The Jesuits, Augustinians, and juaninos each took a seemingly neutral stance, asserting opposition primarily by not offering wholehearted support. Their responses barely surpassed affirmative restatements of the Carmelites’ questions, and the only freely offered pieces of information were the Augustinians’ claim that San Luis’s existing orders were treating the Carmelites with great charity, the Jesuits’ praise of the bonds between Loyola and Teresa, and the juaninos’ acknowledgment that the foundation would satisfy San Luis’s residents who were devoted to Our Lady of Carmen. The Mercedarian response was even more reserved in its support, probably out of concerns for the order’s primary institute. While still offering positive answers to all the questions, Mercedarian prelates suggested that the foundation would affect alms collection because, even if the Carmelites did not seek these alms, their friars’ “good example” would undoubtedly inspire the city’s generous residents to offer

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them. These reserved responses contrasted sharply with the Franciscans’ protestation that they could find “no reason whatsoever, neither spiritual or temporal usefulness, for the foundation.” The city already had enough ministers, and, because San Luis’s poverty limited the alms residents could give, the other religions would surely suffer.21 In San Luis and in New Spain more generally, the Observant Franciscans were the most assertive defenders of what they viewed as their territories. They not only had more areas to protect but their order’s prohibition against owning property meant they relied more heavily on the laity for support. They could least afford to lose the alms or payments for services that composed their financial base. Although Franciscans were willing to defend themselves against any order, the order with which they had the most territorial competition was the Carmelites.22 This was partly a function of their overlapping jurisdictions (fourteen of the Carmelites’ sixteen convents were located in places where there were Franciscan convents), partly a function of their competing services, and partly a result of the threats posed by the wealthy and popular Carmelites. The Carmelites’ foundation in Tacuba reveals some of the specific issues between the two orders. According to the convent’s foundation book, after the Carmelites opened their house in 1689, many people began attending Mass there. So many came to hear their Sunday talks during Lent, bragged the author, that they could not fit in the church, and the priests had to preach from the door instead of the pulpit. During Holy Week the Carmelites brought in additional friars to help all who came to confess and receive the Eucharist. The Franciscans, who administered the Indian parish in Tacuba, did not appreciate having their faithful receive spiritual benefits elsewhere, and they complained to the Audiencia that the Carmelites did not have proper licenses for the foundation and tried to have it suppressed. The two orders resolved the dispute when the Carmelites agreed to the Franciscans’ petition “that our convent be obligated in writing not to take away the obenciones [revenues] that belonged to them, nor the chaplaincies of masses that they had in some nearby mills and haciendas, nor interfere with the Indians who went to hear Masses and Confess in their Parish as they had customarily done on days of precept.”23 In other words, they were not to interfere with the Franciscans’ income or audience. Although most encroachments were made in places where Franciscans had convents, and although the Carmelites were most likely to be making these encroachments, no order was absent from these conflicts. Even the Dominicans, who had the fewest urban houses among the orders, fought to establish a missionary college in Querétaro, and they opposed a Carmelite foundation in San Ángel near their doctrina in Coyoacán. In

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this latter instance, the Dominicans dropped their opposition after signing an agreement with the Carmelites. Like the agreement between Franciscans and Carmelites of Tacuba, this one limited the Carmelites’ devotional and financial impact, in this case by prohibiting them from opening their church to the public, installing bells, or asking alms, and allowing the Dominicans to set the maximum number of Carmelite friars who could live there.24 The nature of these territorial disputes indicates that more was at stake than simply setting geographic boundaries. Franciscans wanted to prevent Augustinians from adding bells to their church, Mercedarians wanted to curb Carmelite alms collection, and Franciscans wanted to keep the Carmelites from luring away their parishioners. These disputes were fundamentally about protecting the orders’ places in their communities, which not only meant defending sources of revenue but defining who was allowed to do what and minister to whom. The victors would have the chance to shape the practice of local religion. Rarely were victories clear-cut, however; because so many struggles to keep others out were unsuccessful, most towns and cities had multiple convents by the seventeenth century. As a result, friars were pulled into more regular contact with members of other orders as well as secular clergy. This newfound proximity set the stage for orders’ efforts to define their places in those communities and to shape how members of those communities experienced Catholicism.

palafox and carmelite singularity One round of interactions among the urban orders included some surprising twists. Juan de Palafox y Mendoza was hardly unique among bishops in his belief that New Spain’s male orders needed to be brought under tighter episcopal authority, but it would be difficult to find another bishop in New Spain who had more antagonistic relations with the orders. He clashed with them over the administration of doctrinas and payment of tithes, and his fierce battles with the Jesuits forced him to flee his diocese. There was, however, an important exception to this set of unhappy relationships: the mutually admiring relationship he maintained with the Carmelites. The Carmelite religion was more in line with Palafox’s beliefs about what orders should be, and the Carmelites remained supportive of Palafox, sometimes alienating them from their fellow regular orders. As a result, Carmelites remained absent from the disputes between Palafox and the other orders. This connection to Palafox was indicative of the Carmelites’ peculiar place among the mendicant orders and calls into

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question any easy assumptions about group solidarity in rivalries between regular and secular clergy as well as between creoles and peninsulares. The Discalced Carmelites and Palafox enjoyed good relations throughout Palafox’s tenure in New Spain. He completed spiritual retreats in their convents, wrote favorably of them to the king, and, later in life, edited an edition of Teresa of Avila’s letters. The chronicler Madre de Dios even bragged that Palafox, who implemented sweeping reforms to improve the education and quality of the secular clergy of his diocese, used the Carmelites as a model, citing the statutes Palafox wrote for the College of San Juan he founded in Puebla. These statutes recommended following various Carmelite educational practices “for being the doctrine of these holy friars so solid, substantial and perfect.”25 Carmelites, in turn, were some of Palafox’s staunchest defenders, and one Carmelite friar was even arrested for smuggling letters Palafox wrote to the king during Palafox’s power struggles with Viceroy Conde de Salvatierra. After Palafox’s death he bequeathed his personal library to the order, and the order sponsored one of the first editions of his collected works, which included a hagiographical celebration of his life and virtues. Carmelites hung his portrait in each of their convents and filled their libraries with both printed and manuscript copies of his works. Some of their convents included objects associated with Palafox to which they attributed special powers. A cross that Palafox had used for his spiritual exercises adorned a room off the Valladolid convent’s choir, and Carmelites claimed that since the day it had been installed, lightning, a perennial problem, had not struck once.26 The mutual esteem between Palafox and the Carmelites occurred amid the drama occasioned by Palafox’s outright attacks on other mendicant orders. Within a year of taking charge of his bishopric, Palafox had secularized thirty-six doctrinas that had been under the care of Dominicans, Augustinians, and mostly Franciscans. To Palafox, these doctrinas were problematic on a number of levels. They placed too heavy a burden on towns, especially if two separate churches were required for Indians and Spaniards; the small number of friars assigned to a doctrina prevented them from fulfilling all their communal obligations; and doctrinas did not fit into his plans for reforming the church through a better-disciplined and better-educated secular clergy.27 In December 1640 he ordered thirtyseven doctrineros to appear before his staff for examinations in morals and languages or face removal from their doctrinas. Thirty-six did not show, and Palafox immediately began confiscating those doctrinas.28 Any doubts about his determination were quelled with his first dispossession, when, in an early-morning offensive, an armed retainer of laymen and secular clergy seized the Franciscans’ great stronghold of Tlaxcala.29 Most

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friars left their doctrinas with little direct resistance, but Franciscans in particular found other ways to fight back, attempting to rally Indians to their side, blasting Palafox in sermons, and, according to the Franciscan chronicler Vetancurt, sending more than six thousand pages of protests and petitions to the Council of Indies. Even more was at stake than the loss of these particular doctrinas. The three mendicant orders feared that precedent was being set and the rest of their doctrinas might fall like dominoes, since about the same time, the Dominicans were engaged in struggles with Bishop Bartolomé de Benavente y Benavides (1639–1652) of Oaxaca over their holdings there. The Carmelites remained unaffected by the secularizations, a situation that they and others recognized set them apart. To be sure, neither the Mercedarians nor Discalced Franciscans had any doctrinas to lose in New Spain, but these orders typically remained supportive of their fellow mendicants, in part because they administered doctrinas in other regions.30 Various Mercedarian friars, for instance, were singled out for having written and distributed tracts against Palafox’s appropriation of the doctrinas.31 In comparison, the Carmelites had long ago relinquished the only doctrina (San Sebastián in Mexico City) that they ever administered anywhere in the Americas, and many Carmelites considered doctrinas incompatible with the mendicant institute. Fr. Isidro de la Asunción, a Spanish Discalced Carmelite inspecting the Mexico Province in the 1670s, described the problems inherent in administering doctrinas: The risk is very great within the Franciscan order because few live in poverty; I have heard and I have seen this many times. They have so many doctrinas that they become accustomed to living without attending choir and with the abundance of money that they have from paid services and offices. It is not easy to relinquish [those doctrinas]. This same ailment afflicts the rest of the orders that have doctrinas, which is all the orders here in the Indies except the Discalced Carmelites.32

By zeroing in on the Franciscans’ lack of poverty and monastic discipline, Fr. Isidro’s disapproving assessment went right to the heart of the mendicant institute. Members of other orders also noted the Carmelites’ unique status, although they were not always as inclined to put such a positive spin on it. Vetancurt, in his treatment of the conflict, made a point of highlighting the Carmelites’ isolated position by quoting the Carmelite chronicler, Fr. Francisco de Santa María. The Carmelite author had trumpeted his order’s foresight and prudence: “In that turmoil [of the Puebla secularizations], our friars found themselves in high regard, free of those inconveniences, enjoying the fruit of Fr. Juan de Jesús’s discretion in

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relinquishing [the doctrina of San Sebastián], and praised as prudent for having recognized so early that which they had to do to end those threats.”33 By including this passage, Vetancurt undoubtedly meant to highlight the Franciscans’ great sufferings, but he was also setting his order’s path apart from that of the Carmelites. Whereas the Carmelites chose to protect themselves by surrendering, Franciscans continued to fight for their doctrinas and the best interests of their Indian charges. Palafox also took issue with the wealth that the Dominicans, Augustinians, Mercedarians, and especially the Jesuits had acquired. Wealthy orders did not fit his conception of a rigorous church. Furthermore, because the orders refused to pay tithes on their landholdings, he claimed his diocese was losing large sums of revenue. This issue of tithes was hardly new, and these four orders had been cooperating in their efforts to protect their exemption from paying tithes since the late sixteenth century. Besides official actions like group petitions in legal battles, these efforts could be more informal, such as in 1672 when the Augustinians helped the Jesuits with some litigation by lending them documents from the Augustinians’ and Dominicans’ sixteenth-century defenses of property ownership.34 When Palafox took on the issue, the Franciscan and Carmelite orders remained off his radar, albeit for different reasons. The Franciscans were off the hook because their institute of poverty did not allow them to own properties, but the Carmelites did. The province had acquired a number of haciendas and ranchos, and some convents owned significant amounts of income-producing land. In addition, officials from other dioceses had tried to force the order to pay tithes. For instance, in 1664 the Mexico City ecclesiastical council tried to extend a ruling ordering the Jesuits, Augustinians, Dominicans, and Mercedarians to pay tithes on their properties to the Carmelites’ college at Santa Ana, which possessed a large orchard that one Carmelite estimated to have thirty thousand trees whose fruit provided more than six thousand pesos of income per year. The Carmelites objected, claiming the ruling applied only to the four orders in the original litigation.35 Once again, Carmelites set themselves apart from other orders. Within the boundaries of the ­Diocese of Puebla, however, the Carmelites owned few properties. Only the Atlix­co house possessed haciendas, and the Puebla convent did not own any properties.36 The Carmelites’ status as minor landholders certainly set them apart from the Dominicans and Jesuits, but it did not distinguish them from the Mercedarians, who were named in Palafox’s complaints despite similarly limited possessions. The difference in the two orders’ situations involved their very different relationships with Palafox, who simply may not have found it prudent to jeopardize his alliance with the Carmelites for such a small return.

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The dispute over tithes—when combined with power struggles between Palafox and Viceroy Salvatierra, creoles and peninsulares, and mendicants and bishops—escalated into open war between Palafox and the Jesuits.37 All the orders except the Carmelites openly sided with the Jesuits and offered strong support. Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians printed a statement against the injustices that Palafox had committed against the Jesuits, lamenting that the abuses were so severe that they feared people would begin “to doubt the habit and dress that the brothers wear.”38 After Palafox forbade the Jesuits to preach or confess in his diocese, an anti-Palafox coalition established a tribunal to assess Palafox’s actions, naming two pro-Jesuit Dominicans as the judges. To help enforce the judges’ position, Inquisition agents arrived from Mexico City, setting up their headquarters and a jail in the friendly confines of the Augustinians’ convent. The Carmelites not only failed to support their fellow regulars by refusing to participate in these activities but actively opposed their brothers as well. Around this time, the Jesuits published a resolution that included statements of support from the Mexico City council, the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Mercedarians, and Jesuits.39 A copy of this resolution from the Carmelites’ provincial archive included copious marginal notations rejecting the Jesuits’ points and ending with a hand­written rebuttal signed “La Rasón” (Reason). This rebuttal observed that the signatures of all the doctors and educated persons who disagreed with the Jesuits would fill many books, and it then took a jab at each corporation that offered its support to the petition: “In the first [the Mexico City council] is found emulation, in the second [Dominicans] conservatoria, in the third [Franciscans] doctrinas, in the fourth [Augustinians] tithes, in the fifth [Mercedarians] comforts, and in the sixth and ultimate [Jesuits] three things: licenses, colleges, and tithes.”40 Most of La Rasón’s complaints referred to specific points of conflict the orders had with Palafox, including the Jesuits’ licenses to preach and confess, the Franciscans’ doctrinas, the Augustinians’ tithes, and the Dominicans’ conservatoria—a reference to their partisan roles as jueces conservadores (judges) in the proceedings against Palafox.41 Interestingly, the Mercedarians were included only for a more general (and common) complaint about their friars’ comfortable lifestyle, something that contrasted with the Carmelites’ avowed austerity. This manner of inclusion highlights the Mercedarians’ limited role in the battles with Palafox; without doctrinas or large landholdings, they participated primarily by supporting their fellow mendicants. The Carmelites’ isolated position among the orders became especially visible after the political scheming of Palafox’s enemies forced him to flee his diocese. As the different orders hosted each other in

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victory celebrations, the Carmelites were not in attendance, nor did they participate in the lavish ceremony where, with the viceroy, archbishop of Mexico, and other male orders looking on, the Jesuits’ licenses to preach and confess were restored. The Carmelites’ amity with Palafox continued after he left New Spain and even after his death, when Carmelites became some of the leading promoters of his beatification, a position that intensified tensions between them and the Jesuits. The Jesuits’ and Carmelites’ face-off over Palafox’s legacy involved so many charges and countercharges that it grew to include issues far beyond the original complaints. In a 1759 letter to the pope, the Discalced Carmelites were able to describe, in meticulous detail, one hundred grievances they had with the Jesuits. According to this document, the Jesuits disputed the Carmelites’ origins with Elias, published injurious statements about their institute and doctors, tried to block publication and circulation of works by their theologians and chroniclers, and, of course, disparaged Palafox.42 Among the Jesuits’ many complaints was that the Carmelites’ Puebla convent displayed a portrait of Palafox with the inscription “Flagellum iesuitarum” (Scourge of the Jesuits).43 During the final years of the eighteenth century, the Carmelites became the chief alms collectors for Palafox’s beatification cause in New Spain. The Congregation of Rites in Rome had agreed to open a case for Palafox, but strong Jesuit opposition helped keep the congregation from considering it until after the order’s suppression in the 1760s.44 Then, in early 1768 news arrived in New Spain that the case would finally be considered, prompting an elaborate three-day celebration in Puebla. Along with this news came a royal cedula allowing the collection of alms to help pay for the expensive review process. Although bishops were put in charge of the project, at least two delegated responsibility for the actual collection to the Carmelites. The archbishop of Mexico entrusted them with this duty over his own clergy, specifying that parish priests would collect alms only in places where the Carmelites were not (Figure 10). The bishop of Michoacán assigned as collectors one Carmelite from each of the order’s convents in his see. These friars seem to have taken their charge seriously and raised significant sums, at least during the two years of the project for which data are available. Fr. Antonio del Espíritu Santo, who described Palafox’s cause as important to the king, the bishops, his order, and the entire kingdom of New Spain, personally traveled to ­Guanajuato, where he obtained a promise of fourteen hundred pesos from a mine-owning family. The prior of Salvatierra, Fr. Lucas de Santa Teresa, appointed not one but three of his friars to travel to thirty-six surrounding parishes, where they collected almost five hundred pesos.45

figure 10 Printed image of Juan de Palafox y Mendoza. The caption, after listing Palafox’s many titles, reads, “whose beatification is being considered by the Roman Curia, and for its promotion His Majesty ordered by a cedula dated December 21, 1787: to all bishops in these kingdoms to appeal to the piety of their subjects to help such a Holy Cause. . . . By order of the archbishop [of Mexico] only the Reverend Father Carmelites may collect [alms] for this venerable gentleman and where there are no Carmelites, the curas and no one else.” source : AGN INQ, vol. 526, exp. 24, f. 571.

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The Carmelites’ relationship with Palafox highlights much of what set them apart from other mendicants and the Jesuits. Some of these differences were structural, such as the Carmelites’ lack of doctrinas, but the most important differences grew out of their unique approaches to religious life. For instance, the Carmelites did not have doctrinas because they defined their institute differently than other orders, rejecting doctrinas in favor of communal life and focus on their core mendicant functions. This approach is the reason that Vetancurt had singled out Carmelites but not any of the other orders without doctrinas in New Spain. It also helps explain the Carmelites’ bond with Palafox. To them, Palafox represented the sort of rigorous prelate that the church needed; to Palafox, the Carmelites represented the place that regular orders should have in the church. In some important ways, the Carmelite institute had more in common with Palafox than with those of their mendicant counterparts. The Carmelites’ relationship with Palafox suggests some limits of mendicant solidarity against diocesan clergy as well as some circumstances under which that solidarity dissolved. Mendicants banded together when faced with common threats, a frequent occurrence given how much the orders shared. But the orders’ unique institutes and ways of implementing those institutes meant there was no unwavering mendicant block allied against diocesan clergy. The Carmelite-Palafox alliance also complicates ideas about creole-peninsular rivalries in New Spain. Even though the majority of Carmelites had been born in Spain, the order sided not with peninsular but with creole factions during Palafox’s episcopate, as they did again later on as part of creole-sponsored efforts for Palafox’s canonization. These unconventional groupings—a peninsular institution allied with creoles and a mendicant order allied with a bishop—reveal that divisions between regular and secular clergy and between creoles and peninsulares were not always the most important ones.

the immaculate conception Another set of alliances and antagonisms among the orders developed during the seventeenth century when debates over the nature of Mary’s conception exploded into public controversy. Whether or not Mary had been conceived immaculately (without the stain of original sin) had been a point of intense theological debate since the fourteenth century, and popular devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Conception had been strong in Spain at least since the late fifteenth century and in New Spain since the sixteenth century. She was, according to William Taylor, the most widely

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venerated representation of Mary in New Spain.46 Each of New Spain’s mendicant orders actively promoted the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception except the Dominicans, who waged a doomed campaign against efforts to add new importance to her feast. During the seventeenth century, the Spanish monarchy, often in conjunction with Franciscans, worked to convince the pope to declare Mary’s Immaculate Conception official doctrine. Papal decrees strengthening the immaculist position led to three clusters of new celebrations and outlets for popular devotion to Mary Immaculate. The first two of these clusters (1616–1622 and 1653– 1654) featured pitched battles between Dominicans and the immaculist orders, especially the Franciscans, which took place in public celebrations, in the wide circulation of disparaging sonnets, and in the homes of laypersons. Besides surges in public animosity, the Dominicans faced royal pressure to acquiesce, and by the final cluster (1661–1664) they grudgingly went along with the rituals and ceremonies associated with the mystery. Privately, however, the order did not completely abandon its old stance, and some Dominicans continued their opposition throughout the eighteenth century. That Jesus’ conception was free from original sin was unquestioned Catholic doctrine, but not until the nineteenth century did the church officially declare as dogma that Mary had been conceived immaculately. By that time, however, most of the fervor that had previously characterized debates on the topic had already died. These debates took much of their form in the fourteenth century with the work of two theologians: the Dominican Thomas Aquinas, who argued that Mary was initially subject to original sin but then sanctified in her mother’s womb, and the Franciscan Duns Scotus, who argued for her Immaculate Conception.47 Not surprisingly, Franciscan and Dominican schools and convents took up and promoted the teachings of their own theologians, and their friars often led the campaigns to affirm or deny the proposition. By the fifteenth century, the immaculist position was gaining strength, especially after Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484), a Franciscan, issued a bull allowing all churches to celebrate the feast of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Even so, the church generally avoided the controversy that came with definitive statements on the subject. The Council of Trent avoided the question entirely, and Pope Pius V (1566–1572), a Dominican, prohibited public discussions of the issue.48 In New Spain, both sides, but especially the Dominicans, used Pius’s decree throughout the following centuries in their attempts to silence opponents. For example, one of the first times it was employed occurred in 1580 when a Franciscan from Mexico City was denounced to the Inquisition for his sermon at the Chiapas convent’s celebration of Mary’s conception, in which he declared that this conception occurred without original sin.49

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During the early seventeenth century, the Franciscans gained an important ally in their cause, as the Spanish monarchy threw its weight behind efforts to declare Mary’s Immaculate Conception dogma. King Philip III convened royal assemblies in 1616 and 1618 for the purpose of marshaling evidence to persuade the pope, but Pope Paul V was unwilling to step too deeply into an issue that divided not only Franciscans and Dominicans but also the Spanish and French monarchies. He would not declare it doctrine, but he did reiterate the bulls of Sixtus IV and Pius V and prohibited the defense of sanctification, the Dominicans’ argument that Mary was cleansed of original sin while in Anne’s womb. At this time, a public cult for Mary’s Immaculate Conception surged in Spanish kingdoms.50 In New Spain, the first big celebrations in her honor occurred in 1618, when news arrived of the papal bulls and the celebrations in Spain.51 The Royal University began requiring its faculty to swear to defend the opinion of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, the Mexico City council organized a similar oath for the city, and the cathedral initiated what became the annual celebration of her octave.52 This octave was indeed a grand affair. The silversmiths’ guild created a four-foot image of Mary made, symbolically, out of pure silver and sponsored an unveiling on the eve of the octave that included forty men dressed in blue cloaks with “MARY CONCEIVED without original sin” lettered in silver. The next morning the archbishop, his clergy, the male orders, the viceroy, and the city council processed down altar-filled streets and through triumphal arches (one said to be more than eighty feet tall) to collect the image and bring it to the cathedral. There, over the next eight days, many of the city’s residents attended special masses as well as sermons given by the archbishop, a visiting bishop, and a friar from each of the male orders. This flurry of public veneration instigated debates throughout the city, as some, principally Dominicans, objected to the reverence given to the mystery, and the Dominican preacher at the octave refused to admit to the immaculate nature of Mary’s conception, causing many to take offense at the Dominicans’ lack of proper respect. Shortly after the octave, a batch of sonnets authored by Dominicans began circulating throughout the city. The content of these sonnets included some general invectives against immaculist Franciscans, including accusations against their specious theology. When the sonnets mocked, “You will believe that Our Lady was redeemed by Scotus,” they were referring to one of Dominican theologians’ main problems with Scotism. If Jesus came to redeem humankind for being born in original sin, and if Mary was free from original sin, then how could he have redeemed Mary? The majority of verses addressed specific local events, especially the city’s oath and the octave. One sonnet took the city to task for initiating the

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oath out of ambition and commercial interests, concluding that never had there been seen a city “mas juradora,” a phrase referring to both the city’s unmindful willingness to take vows and to being cursed. Most of the sonnets’ ire was directed toward the octave’s sermons, especially the one by the Franciscan preacher, Fr. Juan de Salas. Although Fr. Juan’s sermon has not survived, he seems to have brought a relic of Saint Joachim’s ribs to the pulpit and made some claims about Joachim’s role as Mary’s father that Dominicans found objectionable. One sonnet opened by contrasting this sermon to the one offered by the Dominican at the octave: Anduvo el dominico recatado siguiendo sin estremo su camino; de lomos un discurso peregrino el franciscano truxo a lo engrasado.

The Dominican went along modestly following his path without extremism; from ribs a peculiar discourse the Franciscan made crass.

So while the Dominican correctly avoided radical positions, the Franciscan ruined his sermon with unfounded claims. Although Fr. Juan de Salas and the Franciscans bore the brunt of Dominican indignation in the sonnets, preachers from the other orders also took their lumps. These attacks, while directed toward specific preachers and their sermons, also offer some glimpses into more general perceptions of the orders. The opening sonnet devoted a verse to the Augustinian, Carmelite, Mercedarian, and Jesuit preachers: Muy umanista anduvo el Agustino, Very humanist went the Augustinian, el Carmelita es pan de buen amasa; the Carmelite is bread of good dough; pudiera el Mercenario estarse en the Mercedarian could have stayed at casa   home pues no supo dezir más que el because he did not know how to say Teatino.   more than the Theatine.

Calling the Augustinian a humanist referenced long-standing disputes between humanists and scholastics, in which the former were often accused of being pagans, not knowing their theology, and disregarding tradition and authority. Augustinians were noted for using humanist methods in their evangelization efforts, for instance, painting their porterías with ancient philosophers like Plato or Aristotle alongside Christian saints. The point was made all the sharper since it came from a Dominican, whose order was known for its strict interpretations of theology and its associations with scholasticism.53 The line about the Carmelite offered a play on words that could be read two ways. To say the preacher was bread of “buena masa” (good dough) was to say that his sermon offered sound sustenance, but to split the words differently and say he was bread of “buen amasa” denoted amassing and referenced, in a chiding way, the Carmelites’ growing wealth in New Spain. Besides the allegation that the Mercedarian and Jesuit (re-

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ferred to as a Theatine) preachers said little of value, the sonnet also struck at the Mercedarians for spending little time at home in the convent. These sonnets provoked Franciscans and others to compose dozens of responses that were copied, altered, recopied, and disseminated by friars, priests, students, and all sorts of educated laypersons. For instance, a few weeks after the sermon, some Mercedarians, two scribes, and a lay student from the Jesuits’ college were discussing this spate of verses in the Mercedarian provincial’s cell when Fr. Gerónimo Cataño Bohorques bragged that he could do better. One of the scribes took him up on the offer, so right then and there (and for the price of one real) Fr. Gerónimo composed three new sonnets. Volleys of sonnets such as these circulated in the city, finding their way into convents (a Carmelite prelate complained of trying to stop their influx into his convent), schools (the Jesuits’ college was a hotbed for their transmission), and the hands of merchants, surgeons, and artisans. Secular priests were frequent couriers, but most circulation still seems to have gone through Franciscans and Dominicans, and one Franciscan even gave out a copy to a penitent after his confession. The sonnets also made their way outside Mexico City to Puebla and Oaxaca, which, not coincidentally, were the two places besides Mexico City with the most significant Dominican presence. One of the most widely circulated sets of sonnets came from a Franciscan author in direct response to the original Dominican ones. Using parallel structure and the same language of travel and following the right course as the Dominican original, the sonnet made a different set of comparisons between the Dominican preacher, Fr. Bartolomé Gómez, and the Franciscan preacher, Fr. Juan de Salas: Anduvo Gómez muy descaminado Gómez went along waywardly pues no quiso seguir el buen camino; because he did not want to follow the   good path; de Salas fue el discurso peregrino from Salas the discourse was   extraordinary con el gran Damaceno autoriçado. as if authorized by the great Damascene.54

These sonnets also defended Franciscan theology, praised Duns Scotus, celebrated the place of Joachim’s relics in the sermon, and accused the Dominicans, especially Gómez, of blindness, dishonoring Mary, and rebelling against the pope’s wishes. One, composed in honor of some Franciscan fireworks in which an angel burned original sin, cited the importance of this advocation of Mary and her protection during this “age of little security.” Not only Franciscans but lay groups associated with them were staunchly behind promotions of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Mem-

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bers of the Franciscan Third Order were key participants in festivities devoted to this Marian advocation, and, sometime after 1621 when the Franciscan order officially proclaimed her as their patron, the tertiaries began taking an oath to support her. These actions gave cause to the Dominicans to ridicule the tertiaries in sonnets, one of which called them “rabble” and a “sect” and referred to Mary’s conception as approved by the Apostolic See of the Franciscan tertiaries. Another key player in these events, the silversmiths’ guild, was also closely connected to the Franciscans, as indicated by the geography of the guild’s celebrations. The silversmiths were located on the street of San Francisco, and it was in the middle of this street that they erected the altar that kept the silver image of Mary until it went to the cathedral. The same street was decorated with altars, and the silversmiths’ procession that traveled down it stopped in only two places, the Franciscans’ main church, where there were fireworks, and the Franciscan nuns’ convent, where the nuns met them with music.55 After the Franciscans, the Mercedarians were the most active defenders of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Although parish priests and laypersons were accused of authoring sonnets, the only other friars besides Franciscans and Dominicans indicted were Mercedarians. No Carmelites, Augustinians, or Jesuits were ever accused. The sonnets by Mercedarians attacked Dominicans and Gómez and celebrated Mary’s Immaculate Conception in many of the same ways as those of the Franciscans, but, not surprisingly, gave more credit to their own preacher at the octave. For instance, one called him “the dove with the branch of victory” for his defense and evidence in support of the conception as well as for his style and art. Despite the Mercedarians’ claims and their willingness to enter the fray, they were never as central to the debates as the Franciscans. The sonnets were but one part of contemporary debates on the topic of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Conversations took place throughout the city, covering topics that centered less on theologians and preachers and more on the city’s vows, celebrations of the mystery, and the events of Mary’s conception. A merchant told of a conversation in his store between a Dominican and at least two other laypersons in which the Dominican ridiculed the mystery as vulgar and claimed the silversmiths’ money would have been better spent on charitable works. Another man testified that a Dominican told a gathering at Doña Francisca de Montalo’s house that the archbishop and Royal University were wrong to establish the vows. When someone countered that the city of Seville and the University of Paris also took these vows and that the pope supported the mystery, the Dominican denied that these statements were true, arguing that the pope had decreed what he had only to appease

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Philip III. In another instance, two Dominicans were at a gathering of women when one of the women called Dominicans heretics for refusing to say that Mary was conceived without original sin. One of the Dominicans retorted that Aquinas and at least four other doctors of the church supported the Dominicans’ views, and he then explained how Mary was conceived: Joachim and Anne had married in order to “enjoy each other,” and one day Joachim took Anne’s left arm and with his hand made a signal from which Mary was born. The women were apparently a tough audience because one called the Dominican’s explanations foolishness, and another scolded him for discussing the subject, saying she had heard in the cathedral that a papal bull prohibited such talk. A new round of battles in 1653–1654 indicates just how isolated the Dominicans were on this issue and the sort of public animosity they faced as a result of their opposition to the Immaculate Conception.56 The opening salvo came when the Royal University in Mexico City determined to celebrate “like all the universities of Castile” the feast of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Separate from the cathedral’s December celebrations, the university’s festivities took place in January, and as part of the ceremonies its members took a vow to defend the Immaculate Conception. In the days leading up to the event, the Dominicans tried to head off those elements that would portray them in a poor light. They sent petitions to the ecclesiastic council and Inquisition asking them to prevent the Franciscans from carrying an image of Duns Scotus on procession outside their convent. The petition to the Inquisition asked for additional edicts to stop what the author called the many injuries to the Dominican habit and the friars who wore it. Specifically, he sought to halt the circulation of verses unfavorable to Aquinas’s teachings, and he asked that people not be allowed to discuss the matter of Mary’s conception, as ordered in the bull of Pius V, because such discussions among “vulgar people of little understanding” would result in “great hatred against our religion.” Although the Inquisition’s response was not noted, the archbishop sought to avoid controversy and ordered his subordinate to deal with the matter in order to ensure “the greatest peace and quiet from the orders.”57 Later that same year, royal officials and members of military orders in accordance with a royal cedula took vows to defend Mary’s conception without original sin. Celebrated in the Franciscan convent, the groups took their oaths beginning on the feast day of Saint Francis. Franciscans, Discalced Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Jesuits were each assigned a day to celebrate Mass and preach, but the Dominicans did not participate. Nor did their patriarch. On the altar next to Mary Immaculate were images of Pedro Nolasco, Augustine, Ignatius Loyola, and Francis, each sent by his own order, but the Dominicans had not sent Dominic.58

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Until now the Dominicans had managed to avoid celebrating Mary’s Immaculate Conception, but royal and popular pressure and new papal decrees stifled most of their public resistance. In 1662 news arrived that the pope had forbidden anyone from saying that Mary had been conceived with the stain of original sin and had ordered the Inquisition to proceed against anyone who did so. The results were immediate. After a celebration of the Immaculate Conception in the Mexico City cathedral, the fiesta circulated to the city’s other churches. First up were the Dominicans, who offered a solemn procession with its friars carrying an image of Mary Immaculate on their shoulders followed by a Mass and sermon. There, the preacher ascended to the pulpit and began, “Blessed be the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar and the clean and pure Conception of Our Lady, conceived without the stain of original sin,” and, according to a secular priest in attendance, his words prompted the audience to erupt with joy.59 Dominicans may have participated in ceremonies as required, and public controversy died down, but scattered incidents indicate that the issue continued to smolder throughout the eighteenth century. In 1703, when the Puebla cathedral celebrated the feast day of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, the Franciscan provincial Fr. Manuel de Argüello offered a sermon that, according to one source, attacked the way Dominicans viewed the mystery and referred to them as drunken dogs.60 In 1757 a Dominican, Fr. Joseph Manuel de Sierra, denounced a Mercedarian student, Fr. Juan de Pazos, for discussing Mary’s conception in his thesis defense at his college’s Mexico City seminary. Fr. Joseph claimed these statements contradicted the 1622 papal decree forbidding discussions on the subject, but the Inquisition’s examiner, a Jesuit, ruled that the decree was inapplicable because Fr. Juan had not argued for her conception but simply stated it as a fact. The decision apparently did not sit well with Fr. Joseph, and he again denounced Fr. Juan, this time for problems in his theological arguments.61 Finally, a short-tempered Dominican, Fr. Luis Gradin, made clear to many in Querétaro his feelings on the issue during the 1770 fiesta of Mary’s conception. On the last day of the octave, while a Mercedarian was preaching in the parish church, Fr. Luis began stomping his foot and then walked out on the sermon. Outside he began a loud diatribe, criticizing the preacher as imprudent and saying he did not understand Aquinas. Fr. Luis then announced that because the pope had not declared the mystery dogma, he did not have to believe it, and that during the octave he had not wanted to attend communal prayers “because the office of the conception was full of errors against those who believed the contrary position.” As clear as Fr. Luis made his own views on the conception, he also suggested that many members of his order concurred, declaring

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that Dominicans were not going to be made to say that they accepted the mystery. If this were not enough, at the next feast day of Aquinas, Fr. Luis took the opportunity to preach against the conception and the Franciscans and Mercedarians who defended it.62 The case against Gradin highlights the Dominicans’ situation, caught between the teachings of the order’s most important theologian and an approved devotion with strong royal support and deep popular devotion. Their predicament was captured in a sermon at the Royal University’s 1685 celebration of the Immaculate Conception when the Dominican Fr. Iván de San Miguel attempted to reconcile Aquinas’s teachings with the doctrine and, perhaps, explain away the order’s long-standing opposition. He spoke of the multitude of devotees to the Immaculate Conception who sacrificed their will to Mary and then explained that the Dominicans not only sacrificed their will but also their knowledge, which was far more difficult. As an example, he offered a story from the life of a Franciscan, Saint Anthony of Padua. While reading the life of Saint Jerome, Anthony became sad that Saint Jerome had doubted Mary’s assumption. Later that night, Mary and Jerome appeared to him and explained that Jerome’s doubts were the will of God. Was it not the same with Aquinas? Fr. Iván asked.63 Gradin’s attitude toward communal prayers during the octave—he may not have wanted to attend the required function, but he did—may well have been shared by his brothers. His hostility, however, was not representative of his order’s public stance. The Mexico City Inquisitor who reviewed Gradin’s case recognized this and chastised Gradin for bringing disgrace upon his habit “with the vulgar concept that the Dominicans are opposed to the mystery of the Conception in grace.”64 Instead, after the late seventeenth century few Dominicans offered public opposition to the doctrine, whether out of true belief, obedience, or political expediency. Even so, the muting of the Dominicans’ public opposition did not put them in the same camp as the other mendicant orders, which actively sought to promote the devotion and their connection to it. The orders’ involvement in this issue involved more than personal piety or even partisan efforts to associate themselves with a powerful ­Marian devotion. It was also about the good of the kingdom and the world. The Inquisitor in the Gradin case specifically connected her to the betterment of the people of the Spanish realms in his explanation for why the ­friar’s attitude toward the mystery was untenable: “although not Catholic dogma, all the Church is in its favor, especially the piety with which the people of our nation listen to and embrace what leads to greater service and devotion to Our Lady, the Virgin Mary.”65 She made the Spanish realms a better place. Her powers could also remedy the problems of a more extensive Catholic world, as a final case indicates. In 1793 a Car-

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melite priest, Fr. Francisco de Jesús, María, y Joseph, wrote to the queen regarding continuing efforts to convince the pope to declare the mystery dogma. Fr. Francisco argued that it was a politically opportune time since no Dominican (nor any other truly Catholic person) could oppose the mystery; if it were approved, the Dominicans would not protest. His reasons for sending the letter had to do with more than a strong personal devotion to the advocation, as he sought the “reestablishment and repair of the Church, ruined in France.” Declaring the Immaculate Conception of Mary as dogma would soothe “all the kingdoms upset by the happenings in France” and unify the church through joy.66 His choice of this Marian advocation was no coincidence. The French monarchy had put up strong opposition to making Mary’s Immaculate Conception part of official church teachings, but since the monarchy’s fall in the Revolution, her path to dogma, in his view, seemed clear. Furthermore, Mary’s healing powers could now extend to France and stop the frightening assault on the church. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception was a divisive force no longer, for she held the power to reconcile a dissolving world.

the stigmata and identity theft Just as the debates over Mary’s Immaculate Conception in New Spain were closely connected to the orders’ identities, so, too, were those over the stigmata. Orders relied heavily upon particular symbols and images to convey who they were and jealously guarded against any infringements on their trademarks, which is what happened when Carmelites and Dominicans made claims on one of the defining features of the Franciscan order. The stigmata were central to nearly all accounts and images of Francis’s life and provided the order with its two most widely used emblems (see Figures 8a and 8b). During the fifteenth century the order had gained papal privileges allowing them exclusive rights to depict these five wounds to Francis’s hands, feet, and chest as visible and bloody manifestations of Francis’s connection to Christ. Because many other saints were recognized as having received the stigmata, Franciscans kept careful watch that depictions of these saints did not infringe on the order’s special privileges. In New Spain during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, this watchfulness led Franciscans into litigation against the Dominicans and Discalced Carmelites for their respective public portrayals of Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Maria Magdalena de Pazzi. Much was at stake, and the Dominicans’ and Carmelites’ successes altered not only the public identities of the orders but also the devotional landscape of New Spain.

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In 1681 the Dominican Fr. Juan Pimentel preached the sermon at the Mexico City Dominican nuns’ fiesta to their convent’s namesake, Saint Catherine of Siena.67 In the audience that day were two Franciscan friars who reported back that Fr. Juan had preached against the singularity of Francis’s stigmata. Their prelates appointed an agent to pursue the issue and defend the “special privilege of Francis—and not any other saint—having imprinted on him visible wounds.”68 This agent denounced Fr. Juan to the Inquisition for having denied the singularity of Francis’s “palpable, bleeding, penetrating, and visible” wounds. This was indeed the crux of the matter. Catherine of Siena was officially recognized as having received the stigmata, but hers were not bloody commemorations able to be seen by human eyes, and Fr. Juan’s sermon toed this line. He described Catherine’s real and painful wounds as both invisible and luminous. He then explained to his listeners that Francis’s stigmata were but one gift that Christ had given to the world, and they along with Catherine’s luminous ones formed two equal strands of an indissoluble cord. Fr. Juan’s attempts to define Catherine’s invisible wounds as luminous was one point of concern to the Franciscans, but so, too, was his statement that the two stigmata were equal commemorations of the wounds through which humanity’s sins were redeemed. To them, Francis was the Alter Christus, the true other Christ, and his bloody wounds offered corporeal confirmation. Catherine’s invisible wounds were but a pale imitation of Christ’s, and therefore Francis’s. Fr. Juan’s use of the cord imagery encroached even further into Franciscan territory, inserting Catherine and her stigmata into a symbol traditionally used to represent Franciscans. Although Fr. Juan was not punished for the sermon, he was not allowed to print it and was admonished to avoid preaching on any issues “that could result in dissension and discord between the sacred religions of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis and their friars.”69 The battles between Dominicans and Franciscans over this issue were not limited to New Spain, and, to help defend their privileges, Franciscans had printed several editions of a book by Fr. Martín del Castillo provocatively titled Human Seraphim and Only Stigmatic, Apologetic Treatise. Sometime in the 1690s, Fr. Manuel de Jesús María, an official from the Discalced Carmelites’ Mexico Province, sent two copies of this book to the Mexico City Inquisition along with a transcription of a 1687 decree from Seville’s Holy Office prohibiting the book “for containing propositions seditious and injurious to the religion of Saint Dominic.” 70 Although Fr. Manuel recognized that the book was part of the “very serious dissensions, litigations, and controversies” between Franciscans and Dominicans, he was probably less concerned about these conflicts than a similar one between his own order and the Franciscans.

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This dispute centered on Saint Maria Magdalena de Pazzi, a Florentine Carmelite nun recently canonized in 1669, and the depiction of her stigmata. The issue arose in New Spain after the Carmelites painted their Valladolid convent’s gatehouse with images of the order’s saints, including Maria Magdalena. In 1705, shortly after the murals were completed, Fr. Francisco Herrera, the guardian of the Franciscans’ Valladolid convent, denounced the Carmelites to the Inquisition for depicting her with bloody, palpable, visible wounds in the manner of Francis’s. He cited many of the same privileges used by the Franciscans in their earlier conflict with the Dominicans, even noting that a bull of Sixtus IV (1471– 1484) “prohibited the painting of whatever saint in the said form, even if it is Saint Catherine of Siena.” Nor was Fr. Francisco shy in admitting his order’s very public efforts to defend these privileges. “[This] defense,” he argued, “has cost my Religion many and serious litigations that are well-known to the world and to this holy tribunal.”71 The Carmelites offered a strong defense of their position, first arguing that the bull of Sixtus IV did not apply to Maria Magdalena because it was issued in 1475—long before her birth or canonization—and because it only prohibited depicting stigmata in the same manner as ­Francis’s, not stigmata in general. The Carmelites then argued that the murals portrayed Maria Magdalena in the usual manner, and as proof enclosed various engravings from Europe and listed other convents with similar paintings. Further connecting the Carmelites and Dominicans in their struggles against the Franciscans, the only non-Carmelite convent listed as having one of these paintings was a Dominican house, the hospicio of San Jacinto just outside Mexico City. Inquisition officials examined the Carmelites’ Valladolid murals and described them as showing Maria Magdalena kneeling before the crucified Christ, from whose wounds five fiery, reddish rays led to Maria Magdalena’s hands, feet, and chest. She also appears this way in a similar painting from the Carmelites’ Puebla convent (Figure 11). Maria Magdalena’s and Christ’s eyes lock as five dark red rays connect their respective hands, feet, and hearts. The Carmelites argued that they were not trying to portray Maria Magdalena’s stigmata as physical injuries and that her wounds were only reddish, not bleeding, and her skin was not broken. The Carmelites did, however, admit that they had added a visible element to Maria Magdalena’s wounds that, like Catherine of Siena’s, had been invisible to human eyes. Making the invisible visible was necessary, they argued, for people to understand what was happening: “Simple folk do not have any other way to understand what is Divine and spiritual except for corporeal forms, and for this reason the virgin saint is painted with reddish or fiery rays, but not with rays of blood.”72

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figure 11 Saint Maria Magdalena de Pazzi receiving the stigmata from Christ. The painting is located to the left of the main altar in the Carmelites’ Puebla church.

The Carmelites also contended that Franciscans in Europe had accepted such portrayals of Maria Magdalena’s stigmata, quoting from various Franciscan sermons given in Madrid and citing a Carmelite history for which a Franciscan had written one of the required approvals. This history spoke of the five rays of fire that had come from Christ, imprinting Maria Magdalena with her stigmata. It is, however, difficult to imagine Franciscans approving depictions so similar to Francis’s stigmatization. For instance, an eighteenth-century image from the Franciscans’ main altarpiece in Puebla shows rays of light coming from the crucified

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Christ’s wounds to Francis’s (Figure 12).73 Like Maria Magdalena, Francis’s wounds are luminous and his skin is not broken. Despite the close similarities, and over the Franciscans’ protests, the Inquisition allowed the Carmelites to leave the convent’s murals unchanged. The Jesuit censors who reviewed the case offered two reasons for this decision: the color of the rays was more chocolate than red, and although there were five

figure 12 Saint Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata from Christ. The painting is located above the main altar in the Franciscans’ Puebla church.

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rays, Maria Magdalena’s habit and scapular hid her feet, chest, and left hand so that only a small mark showed on her right hand. These were not, the censors concluded, five bleeding wounds. The Franciscans may have maintained their exclusive privilege, but that legal exclusivity meant less in practice and did not distinguish for viewers of these images the subtle differences between reddish and bloody rays. How much the devotional landscape had shifted is demonstrated by another case from 1729 involving the Dominicans and Catherine. The same Dominican nuns whose earlier celebration of Catherine of Siena caused the Franciscans so much consternation hosted a new festivity dedicated to Catherine, specifically to her stigmata. Fr. Juan de Alvarado, a Dominican, began the day’s sermon by giving thanks to another member of his order, Pope Benedict XIII (1724–1730), for approving a separate celebration of Catherine’s stigmata and “returning these Wounds to their ancient standing.”74 Fr. Juan told his listeners that just as Francis had a day celebrating his wounds, now Catherine did, too. Fr. Juan continued to liken the two saints throughout the sermon, noting that they enjoyed equally the privilege of the stigmata and attributing comparable importance to them. Although he was careful to note the differences in how their wounds were manifested and that Catherine’s wounds were not visible, he also described his saint’s stigmata as visible lights and explained that they were as real and painful as Francis’s. The sermon’s depiction of Catherine’s stigmata as real, invisible and yet visible, and equal to Francis’s in importance differed little from the one offered by Fr. Juan Pimentel in 1681. If, according to the Franciscans, listeners to the 1681 sermon were being misled about Francis’s uniqueness, it is hard to see how the impression would be much different to those who heard the 1729 sermon. There was, however, a crucial difference: this time the Franciscans did not enjoy the backing of the Inquisition, and the Dominican preacher was not ordered to refrain from making similar statements. In fact, the 1729 sermon, unlike its predecessor, was published. Over this roughly fifty-year period, Franciscans had lost support to defend an element so central to their religion’s identity that Franciscan preachers equated the stigmata with the Franciscan habit.75 The visible, bloody stigmata may still have been officially recognized as unique to Franciscans, but in reality the lines between portrayals of Francis and other saints were increasingly blurry. The Carmelites got to keep their mural of Maria Magdalena de Pazzi, and the Dominicans’ descriptions of Catherine of Siena’s stigmata now went unchecked. Neither were the Carmelites’ illustrations hidden deep in the convent nor were the Dominicans’ explanations offered in private conference. Catherine of Siena’s feast days were some of the most important celebrations at the wealthy ­Dominican

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nuns’ convent and drew large crowds, including many of Mexico City’s elite. The preacher’s words, once put into print, circulated even further. The Carmelites’ gatehouse, where the murals were located, was the main entrance to the convent, where visitors waited and where alms were distributed to the poor. The eroding distinctiveness of Franciscan identity was happening in a very public way.

living and working together The routines of urban life brought friars into frequent contact with members of other orders. These associations occurred in both formal and informal ways, through communal agreements and decisions of individual friars, and across spiritual and mundane aspects of mendicant life. The workings of this mendicant world continued to put friars’ associations with their own corporations first, but they also demonstrate that these associations were not exclusive. Calendars of ceremonies, responsibilities to the souls of the dead, convent politics, and the practicalities of colonial life reveal a world of exchanges and reciprocity, even if these transactions sometimes remained tinged with competitiveness and rivalry. Mendicants voluntarily entered into some of these relationships through formal agreements. On occasion individual friars joined confraternities of other orders, such as the Carmelite Fr. Jaime de Santa Teresa, who entered the Dominicans’ Confraternity of Our Lady of the Rosary in Oaxaca.76 On a more communal level, orders sometimes established official brotherhoods in which individual convents or entire provinces agreed to exchange services, usually masses or prayers. In 1796 the Franciscan missionary college at Zacatecas and the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province formalized a relationship that provided for the “mutual communication of spiritual assets.” Another agreement in 1774 between the Observant Franciscans’ Mexico City missionary college and the Discalced Franciscans’ college at Pachuca was more specific, as each agreed to apply one hundred masses for the soul of any friar who died.77 The timing of these agreements in the late eighteenth century suggests that they might have been a way to share the burden of providing masses and prayers for the souls of departed friars at a time when populations of friars were falling. As much as this may have been a factor in these particular brotherhoods, such agreements were not new to this time. In the late sixteenth century, as the Discalced Carmelites were preparing to send their first friars to New Spain, the Discalced Franciscans were beginning missionary work in the Philippines. According to Madre de Dios, because Teresa of Avila had a vision of the two orders going to preach the gospel together,

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prelates of the two orders signed an agreement binding them in perpetual brotherhood. Although it is difficult to ascertain the effects of this agreement in New Spain, the two orders never developed an aggressive rivalry like that of the Carmelites and Observant Franciscans, and a passing remark by Madre de Dios further hints at some cooperation between the two. In relating the life of one of the province’s venerable friars, he tells of friars who had to move the body of Fr. Pedro del Espíritu Santo back to the Carmelites’ Atlixco convent after his death in the Discalced Franciscan convent where he had been living.78 One of the more intriguing brotherhoods was the one linking the Observant Franciscans and Dominicans of Querétaro. Originally founded in the 1690s shortly after the foundation of the Dominican house, it obligated the two communities to attend certain services, including friars’ funerals, in each other’s convent. In 1709 the Franciscan community met and decided to end this relationship. The reason the guardian offered for its demise was that it was simply too taxing for the Dominicans: while they maintained a relatively small community in Querétaro, the Franciscan house was the largest in the province and housed an infirmary where many friars lived out their final days. The Franciscans, the guardian insisted, did not want to impose upon the Dominicans the burden of attending so many funerals. The guardian may have been correct about the relative burdens on the two communities, but this was almost certainly a pretext for ending the agreement, a conclusion further supported when the guardian prohibited entering into any new agreements with other communities. In 1735 the Franciscans met again, this time lamenting the end of the earlier agreement and seeking “the restitution of the public brotherhood and union the said convents and communities had before.”79 The motivations behind this restoration could have been as simple as better relationships between the personalities in charge of the two convents, but wider issues of politics and religion in New Spain and Querétaro were undoubtedly factors. During the 1730s new state decrees were attempting to rein in mendicant orders, and friars recognized the very real threat of having their doctrinas secularized. At the same time, the Querétaro Franciscans, and perhaps the other orders there as well, were facing increased competition from secular clergy and were losing the faithful to diocesan churches.80 The rekindling of the Franciscan-Dominican alliance may have been a way to band together against these threats. It did not take signed agreements for friars to attend the more public ceremonies of other orders since mendicant orders traditionally attended in community or sent representatives to significant festivities in other churches. Celebrations of orders’ patriarchs, Marian advocations, and most important saints usually drew the full spectrum of orders who had

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convents nearby. One order’s level of participation in another’s events depended on the orders’ institutes as well as their particular relationship. Orders with more reclusive institutes attended fewer events, and the Carmelites bragged that they so valued their reclusion that they attended but a few select events as a community. This reticence to participate as fully in such events could have a backlash. When in 1703 the Carmelites dedicated their new San Joachim church in Mexico City, the viceroy, Audiencia, and archbishop of Mexico were there, but only some orders attended.81 A late eighteenth-century list of the events that the Franciscan missionary college at Querétaro would attend indicated its strongest associations. The college’s strongest commitment was to other Franciscans, and it agreed to participate as a community in celebrations of Francis as well as burials of any friar from the Observant and Discalced Franciscans’ convents. Next in line were the secular clergy and the four other mendicant orders, for whom the entire Franciscan community would attend the celebrations of their founders. Finally, the college would send only two friars to the Oratorians’ and juaninos’ celebrations of their patriarchs.82 The hierarchy was clear: fellow Franciscans, other mendicants and secular clergy, then other organizations of religious men. Friars did not just attend but often participated in these events, most notably as preachers. Observant Franciscans and Dominicans even had a formal agreement to give sermons at the annual festivities of their patriarchs, an agreement that seems to have been frequently, if not always, honored.83 Published sermons indicating the exchange exist for 1657, 1660, and 1760 in Mexico City, and 1720 and 1802 in Querétaro; but, as noted earlier, Fr. Diego Gorospe preached at Dominic’s celebration in Puebla in 1685, and Fr. Domingo Morosa preached at Francis’s in 1721 and 1722. In places where there were not convents of both orders, it does not seem that they brought in outside preachers. For example, in Oaxaca, where there was no Observant Franciscan convent, a Discalced Franciscan preached at the 1716 event, and Francis’s 1689 fiesta in Celaya was marked with a sermon by a local Carmelite rather than a Dominican from nearby Querétaro. A similar agreement may also have existed between the Mercedarians and Discalced Franciscans, at least for one year in Puebla. In 1721 friars from these two orders offered reciprocating sermons for their patriarchs, and in an “Opinion” of the Franciscan sermon, the Franciscan Fr. Francisco Moreno wrote that these sermons had been given in “reciprocal, mutual, and religious correspondence.”84 The congregation of multiple corporations at these public events created situations where careful attention to protocol was required to avoid insulting members of different orders. Friars’ places in processions and seat assignments at church functions indicated their place in a hierarchy

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and were thus of keen interest. A prelate who thought himself or his community slighted might storm out, taking his community with him. The issue of precedence in public events went back centuries, but foundations of new orders or new rulings could add new wrinkles to old problems. The first major debates in New Spain occurred in the late sixteenth century after two competing rulings from Pope Pius V (1566–1572) and Pope Gregory XIII (1572–1585). According to Pius’s decree, precedence would be determined by the antiquity of papal confirmations of each order’s institute; according to Gregory’s, it would be based on the sequence in which the orders’ convents in that particular place had been established. Under the system of common right established by Pius V (who, not coincidentally, was a Dominican), the Dominicans won precedence over all the other orders because their institute was the first to be confirmed. With Gregory XIII’s decree, Franciscans in New Spain could make a competing claim to precedence because they were the first to establish a permanent presence, but the Gregorian system lost out to Pius’s in New Spain, and the order of precedence remained Dominicans, followed successively by Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Jesuits. This sequencing applied only in places where all orders had convents; in places where an order did not have a formal convent, issues of precedence could resurface. For example, in San Luis Potosí, a late eighteenth-century dispute over the order of the Corpus Christi procession of 1779 included a ruling that the Franciscans would precede the Dominicans because the latter did not have a house there.85 Implementing the system of common right did not resolve all disputes, however. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Carmelites and Mercedarians became embroiled in an unspecified dispute over precedence, probably having to do with the contested dates of the Mercedarians’ arrival in Mexico City. In a separate case, juaninos claimed that their order’s general, unlike the heads of other orders in Europe, lived in New Spain and thus deserved a more prominent place at functions. In Querétaro Discalced Franciscans and Franciscans from the Colegio de Propaganda Fide debated whether the missionary friars’ status should be based on their own institute or as a branch of the Observant order. But the most pitched struggle over precedence was the one between Discalced Franciscans and Augustinians.86 These battles began near the end of the sixteenth century, shortly after the Discalced Franciscans’ foundation in New Spain. The Augustinians complained that the Discalced Franciscans had not been confirmed as an order until the 1500s, centuries after the Augustinians’ confirmation, yet they were marching near the front of processions with the Observant Franciscans. They were doing so not as one Franciscan order but as separate entities with two crosses, two prelates, and two communities, claimed the

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Augustinians, who wanted to put a stop to this “monstrosity of one body with two heads.”87 The Discalced Franciscans responded that as equal sons of Francis they had a right to this favored place and cited the multitude of papal decrees offered in support of their position. Battles between the two sides took place on and off throughout the seventeenth century, but in 1697 a new controversy arose when, at the Mexico City cathedral’s celebration of Saint Peter, the Augustinian provincial sat in the chair that the Discalced Franciscan provincial considered his by right. The Augustinians then kept this favored place for the procession and the remainder of the fiesta. A recent ruling from the Congregation of Cardinals favoring the Augustinians over the Discalced Franciscans in Cartagena may have been the basis for the Augustinians’ bold move, but they probably would not have made it without knowing they had support from diocesan officials. The Mexico City Augustinians now enlisted the help of other orders that would benefit if the Discalced Franciscans fell back in the rankings. Carmelites, Mercedarians, and Jesuits joined the Augustinians and took their case to the Audiencia of Mexico, which was unable to come to a decision, and then to Rome. In theory, the battle ended when a 1700 papal bull declared that the Discalced Franciscans enjoyed precedence, but resistance continued even after this strong statement. When the archbishop of Mexico ordered Discalced Franciscans’ new status to be instated at a ceremony in early 1702, the Carmelites refused to attend, citing their special exemption from required attendance at public events. Later that year at the celebration of the Franciscan martyr Felipe de Jesús, only the Franciscans and Discalced Franciscans attended because of the precedence issue. Finally, in 1703 a new papal brief accompanied by a royal cedula insisted upon compliance with the earlier decree; the cedula specifically noted the king’s indignation at the Augustinians’ resistance and threatened to make an example of them if they did not comply. This seems to have put an end to the jostling for position, and according to the secular priest and diarist Antonio de Robles, the new system was followed from that time on.88 Most contact among mendicants took place in less formal settings than processions and feast-day celebrations in cathedrals. After all, friars moved in similar circles and would have encountered each other in the course of their regular activities. Some of these encounters were chance meetings, and records are replete with instances of friars’ casual conversations and impromptu gatherings in sacristies, cells, and private homes, such as the Augustinian and the Mercedarian who visited the Dominican church in the story that opened this chapter. Other interactions were more coordinated. In 1777, when the viceroy commanded the orders to provide him with breakdowns of each convent’s sources of income, the Augustin-

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ian officials of the Michoacán Province dutifully registered the decree in their official records. Undoubtedly looking for the best way to handle this distasteful order, they turned to their fellow mendicants, and in the margin of this document appears the notation, “See what the other orders are doing regarding this matter.”89 In the orders’ battles with San Luis Potosí’s juez eclesiástico described in Chapter 3, the orders clearly coordinated their efforts. The Franciscan guardian plotted with the Mercedarian comendador, the heads of the city’s five convents met in the Mercedarian convent to plan their resistance, and they authored group letters.90 In these two instances, the orders looked to each other out of obvious self-interest, but so, too, might they collaborate even if the benefits to an order were slight or less direct. For example, when the Franciscans were mounting a last-ditch effort to save their doctrina in Querétaro, they requested statements of support from their fellow orders. In October 1751 the city’s prelates met twice in the Dominicans’ convent, where they authored a strong letter of support. The most striking element of the collaboration was not the participation of fellow doctrinero Dominicans and Augustinians, their Discalced Franciscan brethren, nor even the hipólitos, but the Discalced Carmelites, whose lack of enthusiasm for doctrinas was well established.91 Something as simple as a friar leaving his convent could activate bonds of reciprocity among the orders. Augustinians more than once ordered traveling friars who were in places without an Augustinian convent to stay in another order’s convent rather than a private home. Although the repeated insistence upon this point underscores that friars often preferred to stay elsewhere, it remained quite common for friars to stop and rest in other orders’ convents.92 For example, Mercedarians helped justify their Guanajuato convent by explaining that their alms collectors were inconveniencing the Discalced Franciscans with their long stays, and the Carmelite Fr. Isidro de la Asunción stayed with Franciscans and Mercedarians on his journey from Veracruz to Mexico City. These particular combinations of hosts and guests indicate that whatever differences or bad feelings existed between orders did not preclude these stopovers. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine two more disparate orders than the austere Discalced Franciscans and the gallivanting Mercedarians, and there was no love lost between Fr. Isidro and the Franciscans. He even threw in a sly dig at some of his Franciscan hosts, noting that one morning he had to leave without having celebrated Mass because the Franciscan guardian was still sleeping. The same sorts of bonds could also come into play when friars fled their convents to escape punishment or factionalism. These flights were not uncommon, and in 1728 a papal brief attempted to curtail them along with the “accompanying discord” among the fugitives’ prelates. The brief declared that friars who fled to convents of other orders were

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not to enjoy sanctuary or asylum there and their superiors had the right to remove them.93 In practice, the brief seems to have made little impact, and fugitive friars continued to seek asylum, and other orders continued to provide it. For example, late one night in 1786 the juanino Fr. Pedro Páez, having invoked the protection of Our Lady of Light, jumped out a second-story window and then scaled several walls to escape incarceration in his Mexico City convent’s jail. When he arrived at the Franciscan missionary college of San Fernando, battered from his ordeal and wearing nothing but a bedspread, the guardian took him in, providing him with medical attention and a Franciscan habit. The next day when two juanino fathers came to collect Fr. Pedro, the guardian refused to turn him over, citing the need to examine the justice of Fr. Pedro’s case more closely.94 An even higher level of hospitality occurred when a Franciscan missionary died at the Dominican convent of San Juan del Río. In September 1739 Pedro Trexomell y Figueroa wrote to the Franciscan Fr. Alexandro Casquiero about their fellow countryman, the unnamed dead missionary. He had presumably died while en route to or from Franciscan missions in the Sierra Gorda, as San Juan del Río was strategically located near one of the Franciscans’ favored entry points to their mission territories. In fact, the Franciscans had originally attempted to establish their Querétaro college there and vehemently opposed the Dominican foundation. Whether or not those tensions had subsided, Franciscans took advantage of the convenience of staying at the Dominican house, and the Dominicans allowed them to do so. Trexomell y Figueroa had traveled to San Juan del Rió with the express purpose of opening up his countryman’s grave to ascertain if his body was intact and uncorrupted, a sign of sanctity that Trexomell y Figueroa was intent on demonstrating. He had to convince the reluctant Dominicans to disinter the body, but some payments and, perhaps, pressure from the local officials who were in attendance, changed the friars’ minds. To Trexomell y Figueroa’s great joy—and, according to him, the Dominicans’ admiration—they found the missionary “like the day he was born,” and they were able to move his arms as if he were still living. After­ ward, the Dominicans carefully dressed the body in a new shroud and placed it in a new coffin secured tightly with nails. Trexomell y Figueroa and the Dominicans then waited four days until the feast day celebrating Francis’s stigmata, when, with much solemnity and in the presence of the town’s leading residents, including its juez eclesiástico and secular clergy, the missionary was reinterred. Although numerous Franciscans passed through the Dominican college, Trexomell y Figueroa’s compatriot enjoyed permanent repose there. In fact, he was buried there not once, but twice. The nature of his second burial indicates how flexible and accommodating the orders could be.

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The shroud in which the Franciscan was buried was almost certainly a Dominican one, and the Dominicans were willing to hold the public ceremony on an important Franciscan feast day. Still, there were limits; although the Franciscan was buried in a place of honor, he was not buried in the same crypt as Dominican friars. This was in many ways indicative of how orders treated one another under the best of circumstances: honored and worthy of special treatment, but not the same.

conclusion Taken together, the chapter’s cases help delineate boundaries and common ground in the orders’ implementation of their institutes. They demonstrate some of the ways mendicants sought to establish their distinct roles in society and distinguish their religions from each other. Notably, these interactions had close connections to the faithful. People responded to Dominican sermons with jeers or cheers, composed sonnets, viewed the murals of Maria Magdalena de Pazzi, backed or opposed foundations of new convents, and attended or chose not to attend the celebrations at the ouster of Palafox. The debates that engulfed the orders thus guided what people heard and saw, presented different perspectives on issues, and shaped perceptions of the orders. In doing so, they offer a glimpse of what alternative strands of Catholicism looked like in practice. The Mercedarians and Augustinians were least likely to become embroiled in quarrels with other orders. Certainly they were involved in disputes over territories and precedence, demonstrating the fundamental importance of these issues, but outside these areas, the two orders rarely figured as protagonists in interorder affairs. The Mercedarians, with their unique alms-for-captives institute, houses located on the outskirts of communities, and lack of doctrinas, were removed from many of the issues that stirred up controversy. On the other hand, the doctrinaadministering Augustinians had more opportunities to become involved in these disputes but did not, and their disinclination to enter the fray was one of their distinguishing characteristics. The Carmelites may well have been the least popular order among their peers, and the order’s repeated failures to rally behind fellow orders created friction. The Carmelites’ connections to Palafox and his cause for sainthood soured their relationship with the Society of Jesus, and their disdain of doctrinas aggravated Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians. The Carmelite order also boldly ignored boundaries that other orders, especially the Franciscans, attempted to set, as it did in its portrayals of Maria Magdalena de Pazzi and its attempts to woo away the faithful from the Franciscans’ Tacuba

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church. Indeed, no two orders in New Spain had a fiercer rivalry than Discalced Carmelites and Observant Franciscans.95 One of the Franciscans’ defining features, their aggressive protection of their prerogatives and symbols, also indicates some of the ways Catholicism was changing. From the order’s perspective, much of what made it distinctive was being stolen. Its most important Marian advocation, Mary Immaculate, had become so widely revered that not only were kings, bishops, universities, and other orders among its advocates but Dominicans dropped their open opposition to it. Francis’s wounds were also losing their unique place in the church because representations of saints such as Catherine of Siena and Maria Magdalena de Pazzi included stigmata that blurred lines between visible and invisible or red- and reddishcolored wounds. Francis’s stigmata and the Immaculate Conception of Mary had become the two great symbols of the Franciscan order, a point emphasized in a Franciscan’s sermon at the 1716 dedication of the order’s new Mexico City church, which adorned its two main entryways with images of them: And why, you will ask, is the admirable impression of the Wounds on one door and on the other the triumph of the Conception? I will tell you. In the impression at La Verna, Christ revealed to [Francis] the purpose of his religion and even of his Wounds because the purpose was none other than to institute his religion. . . . Christ loved his Mother and for this he defended her from sin. He also . . . loved Francis and gave him His Wounds and His blood for the honor of His family and the defense of His mother. Since then, this great father [Francis] and his sons have stood their ground against the North of sin, diametric opponents, constituted defenders, and allies with Christ and His Passion to ensure the security of this Mystery. Because if Christ with His blood defended Mary from sin, Francis and his sons do so with their writings and opinions.96

Franciscans had worked hard to promote these parts of their identity, but as they gained wide acceptance as elements of mainstream Christianity, the Franciscans became a victim of their own success. These examples offer some general patterns in how the orders defined themselves within the workings of colonial urban society. At the same time, these interactions were complex and shaped within the specific contexts of that society. The relationship between Observant Franciscans and Dominicans demonstrates some of these complexities. A popular iconographic theme depicted their patriarchs as brothers and partners in efforts to build up the Catholic Church. One representation of this theme showed the two saints buttressing a collapsing church. Another, more controversial depiction appeared in a printed novena’s ymagen monstruoso (unnatural image) of Dominic and Francis combined into a single person (Figure 13). The left side is that of Dominic, whereas the

figure 13 Printed image from an eighteenth-century novena for Saint Dominic’s feast day. The image’s right side is Saint Francis, and the left is Saint Dominic. source : AGN INQ, vol. 699, exp. 7, f. 330v.

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right side is that of Francis; his cape is part of the black-and-white attire of the Dominicans, but his habit is the corded garb of the Franciscans; one hand holds out a rosary, and the other shows off its stigmata.97 The message was clear: the two men were so closely bound in brotherly affection that they were like one. These ideas of brotherhood translated into real-life agreements to preach at each others’ feast days and formal brotherhoods. The Dominicans even buried one Franciscan in a place of honor in their San Juan del Río church and another, Fr. Christóval de los Mártyres, in a Dominican habit. At the same time, the two orders did not always follow those reciprocal preaching agreements, dissolved brotherhoods, and disagreed over issues, including the best way to confess people and the nature of Mary’s conception. These apparently harmonious and acrimonious relationships could occur concurrently. For instance, in 1618, as Franciscans and Dominicans were publicly disparaging each other in sonnets over the nature of Mary’s conception, the Mexico City Franciscans allowed Fr. Antonio de Hinojosa, a Dominican about to leave for Spain, to represent their convent and province before the king and pope “in any and all matters” related to disputes with the archbishop of Mexico over the Franciscans’ rights to have processions outside their convent. The agreement was notable not just because of the degree of power they granted to Fr. Antonio but because processions related to Mary’s Immaculate Conception were a point of contention between the two orders.98 The vicissitudes of these relationships indicate the importance of the circumstances under which they took place, and shifting conditions in New Spain meant orders could be close allies in one situation and opponents in another. Even traditional adversaries like the Dominicans and Jesuits could ally against a common threat. Despite the orders’ theological differences and deep divisions over the nature of confession, Dominicans were some of the Jesuits’ biggest supporters in their quarrels with Palafox, and even he recognized the irony of having these two traditional enemies collaborate against him.99 Although it was less common, orders might choose to ally with secular clergy rather than each other. The Carmelite order was most likely to do so—the furor surrounding Palafox serves as the most prominent example—but Augustinians with their tradition of supporting episcopal authority also were disposed to such alliances, as they formed with Bishop of Michoacán Escalona y Calatayud when he took on the Franciscans and Carmelites. The orders’ shifting alliances and oppositions reveal that some divisions in colonial society were not as definitive as has frequently been assumed.100 Without detracting from the importance of competition among orders, rifts between secular and regular clergy, and splits between creoles and peninsulares, these divisions

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did not automatically override other factors and can only be understood within the contexts in which they took place. Timing was thus a crucial factor in how disputes played out, and the height of many of the conflicts among orders occurred during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. As orders made the transformation from missionary work in Indian towns to the wider scope of their urban responsibilities, they brought their different ideas and approaches with them. Certainly, conflict among the orders was not new—the sixteenth century was filled with battles over how to baptize, catechize, and administer sacraments to Indians—but the sorts of conflicts were. With the orders in closer proximity and with the circumstances of a post-Tridentine church that was making great efforts to define hierarchies and practice, many of these differences came to a head. And, during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the orders had the manpower and resources to invest in the activities, and the defenses of those activities, that could lead them into head-on collisions. Most histories were published during this time, the Dominicans’ public opposition to Mary’s Immaculate Conception continued through the 1660s, Palafox returned to Spain in 1649, the Augustinians gave way to the Discalced Franciscans’ precedence in 1703, and the Franciscans had lost much of their ability to protect the uniqueness of Francis’s stigmata by the early eighteenth century. By the 1730s, as the orders were facing new threats and challenges from the state and reforming bishops, much of the energy that went into these conflicts was channeled elsewhere. The Franciscans in particular turned most of their attention to defending or trying to regain their doctrinas, letting other battles slide. They agreed to compromise with Bishop Escalona y Calatayud rather than risk their doctrinas, and the comisario general ordered the Querétaro Franciscans to back off from conflict with the Dominicans and their Confraternity of the Rosary to avoid giving secular clergy an opening to intervene. In fact, it was also around this same time that these two orders mended some fences and restored their pact of brotherhood. Understanding why orders behaved as they did thus requires situating their institutes in particular times and circumstances. Such understandings also help explain how and why Catholic practices developed as they did, and the next chapter examines how these factors came together to shape religious life in one of these times and places: eighteenth-century Toluca.

chapter five

Loving Complaints Orders and the Making of Urban Culture And very soon came the Reverend Fathers of Saint Francis with loving complaints of the modesty and silence with which the holy sacrament was put in place and the first Mass was said. According to what they said, all their community would have attended if news had arrived at their convent, and it seems without doubt that they would have favored us then according to the brotherhood and caring correspondence with which we now live. —“Libro de la fundacion,” from the Carmelites’ Toluca convent, 1700

; After several years of requests and petitions, the Discalced Carmelites finally received word in 1698 that they had royal permission to establish a convent in Toluca. Very early in the morning on December 6, sometime around 4:00 a.m., Fr. Francisco de la Concepción, the Mexico provincial, took possession of their new church, consecrating two altars in the presence of the Marqués del Valle, the corregidor of Toluca, seven Carmelite friars, and various local residents. According to Gerónimo Carrillo, the scribe who witnessed the event, the ceremonies concluded by 5:30 a.m. “without any person, ecclesiastic or secular, making impediment, encumbrance, or contradiction.”1 One reason for the lack of protest was that their new neighbors, the Franciscans, had been left off the guest list, and by the time news of the installation arrived at their convent, they had missed their chance to object. Although the Carmelite author of the “Libro de la fundacion” cited in the chapter epigraph spoke of the brother­hood and correspondence between these two toluqueño communities, his baroque phrase “loving complaints” is equally important in characterizing their relationship. These were the two most important religious

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communities in Toluca during the eighteenth century. Although they may have cooperated in the spirit of brotherhood to meet the spiritual needs of the city, attempts at innovation or extraordinary incidents could push the limits of this cooperation beyond their breaking point. This chapter follows a series of encounters in Toluca in order to investigate what mendicant institutes looked like in a local context and how orders shaped urban culture. How orders implemented their institutes depended on which orders were present and in which combinations, the position of diocesan clergy, community traditions, and personalities of local figures. Because this combination of factors was unique to any location, Toluca cannot serve as an archetype for cities throughout New Spain, even though parts of its story are representative of trends during the eighteenth century. It does, however, serve as an example of the processes through which beliefs and practices were molded and local religion took shape. Toluca offers a particularly good vantage point for observing the orders’ influences on society because the rivalry between Franciscans and Carmelites was both protracted and prominent enough to have left a long paper trail. The two orders were concerned about precedence and their relative status, but the stakes were even higher than that. These were not spats between friars, unrelated to the daily lives of Toluca’s faithful, and the reason they were so contentious was that they involved the faithful, as each order tried to convince people to practice religion its way. In short, the two orders were fighting for toluqueños’ devotional loyalty and for spiritual supremacy in Toluca. Making sense of this rivalry requires understanding local conditions, the nature of the orders’ institutes, and the trajectories of their institutional histories over the course of the eighteenth century. The Franciscans had enjoyed a near monopoly on spiritual life until the eighteenth century, and they administered the city’s only parish, which they did not relinquish until 1859. Toluca’s lack of a secular parish was unusual since even in cities where Franciscans held urban doctrinas, secular parishes were erected alongside them. The Franciscans faced their first real competition with the addition of a Carmelite church in 1698, and in 1731 the Mercedarians founded a small hospicio on the edge of town. These three mendicant foundations along with a juanino hospital (1695) formed a community of regular orders that was not atypical for a small to medium-sized city in New Spain: dominant Franciscans, absent Dominicans, prominent Carmelites, and marginalized Mercedarians.2 The rivalry that engulfed Carmelites and Franciscans was not typical, however, and was probably the most intense mendicant rivalry in all of New Spain. The two orders battled over status at public events, membership in their lay organizations, the promotion of a young woman as a potential saint, the

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value of devotional practices, and which order would be more closely associated with a popular advocation of Mary. Contributing to these conflicts were the two convents’ close proximity, overlapping services, and importance to their respective provinces. In addition, the orders’ institutes shaped the particular points of conflict. Finally, the orders’ shifting institutional status as a result of state reforms helped embolden the Carmelites and put the Franciscans on the defensive.

local situations The orders’ history in Toluca is an overwhelmingly eighteenth-century one, which in many ways parallels the city’s own transformations. Toluca was the major city in a fertile and well-populated valley that had been an important agricultural center long before the arrival of Spaniards, but the colonial city really came into prominence near the end of the seventeenth century. Sometime around 1675 it was elevated from a villa to a ciudad, a status earned in part from its growing population, large number of Spanish vecinos, and a strong economy based primarily on providing agricultural products to Mexico City.3 Scattered data suggest an overall trend of population growth for both the city and its surroundings beginning in the late seventeenth century and continuing through the eighteenth century. For instance, the population of the corregimiento of Toluca (an administrative district that included Toluca and surrounding towns) was recorded as 5,964 tributaries in 1636; 10,044 in 1706; and 16,030 in 1800.4 ­Toluca was also home to many owners of the valley’s ranchos and haciendas and had a reputation as a Spanish city. Both Franciscan and Carmelite friars highlighted this element in their descriptions of the city. Agustín de ­Vetancurt (1697) wrote that of the 1,300 non-Indians who lived there, most were Spaniards, and the author of the similarly timed Carmelite “Libro de fundacion” described the city as surpassing others in its population of Spaniards, “with sufficient nobility, adornment of rooms and good buildings.”5 The city’s Spanish base was still there a century later when a 1791 count indicated that out of the city’s 5,155 non-Indian residents, 2,853 (or more than 55 percent) were hidalgos, nobles, and Spaniards.6 The basis of the city’s growth was its role as an important commercial center that, thanks to its location only a day’s journey from Mexico City, supplied the capital with many of its foodstuffs, especially wheat, corn, and its most famous product, bacon.7 Its significance was not lost on Viceroy Revillagigedo II, who wrote to his successor that the improvement of the road from Mexico to Toluca was “a work of the utmost importance, as that valley can be called the granary of Mexico, espe-

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cially for corn.”8 Nor was it lost on the author of the Carmelite foundation book, who described the city and its surrounding lands as having “many haciendas of Spaniards in which are grown a great quantity of corn, beans, alberjon, and barley from whose abundant harvests many ­fanegas and cargas leave for Mexico and other parts . . . and this is in such abundance that it brings very great wealth to the residents and affordable sustenance to the majority of this New Spain.”9 By the end of the seventeenth century, this prosperity was drawing regular orders to Toluca. In 1690 the Franciscans, who had established the first convent in Toluca shortly after their arrival in New Spain, sought to expand their presence and requested the creation of two new convents, one of claristas (Franciscan nuns) and one of Discalced Franciscans. The friars based their case on “the growth that [Toluca] and its commerce have had and that for this reason and its spiritual growth, some residents offered properties and donations in order to found in it two convents.”10 The fiscal in Mexico City deemed these foundations unnecessary, however, and the king denied licenses for them. The explanation for the petition’s rejection was undoubtedly connected to the crown’s reluctance to expand the Franciscans’ presence in New Spain, let alone further solidify their monopoly in Toluca. Further evidence that royal objections were to convents of Franciscans rather than to new convents were the two new convents founded on the heels of the Franciscans’ rejection. A juanino house established in 1691 broke the Franciscan monopoly, even if its distinct function as a hospital did not address residents’ desire for another church that specialized in pastoral work. This demand was fulfilled in 1694 when one hundred of what were described as Toluca’s leading citizens requested a Carmelite church. The petitioners made their case on grounds similar to those of the Franciscans, noting that because “the residents of this city having increased in large numbers and each day greater increases continue, and not having more than the one convent that serves as parish,” another church was desperately needed. They also pledged to support the new foundation with donations, as Captain Don José Aguado Chacón had already done with a thousand-peso gift.11 Although the king denied this request, a subsequent effort that included letters of support from Viceroy Conde de Galve and Archbishop of Mexico Aguiar y Seijas resulted in the 1697 cedula allowing the foundation. Interestingly, the cedula specified that the foundation would be advantageous because the city had only the Franciscan church, ignoring the presence of the recently established juaninos and further suggesting just how separate their role was. The only other regular church in Toluca was the Mercedarians’ ­hospicio, one of the five centers for alms collection the order founded during the

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mid-eighteenth century. In a petition to the king, the Mercedarians explained that they were requesting a house in Toluca for the “completion of our fourth vow and special institute.” This new house would give traveling alms collectors a more appropriate place to stay than people’s private homes and provide a safe place to deposit alms being transported to Mexico City, lessening the danger from bandits. Toluca would be an appropriate place, they concluded, because of its healthy commerce and many benefactors and because someone had donated a house next to a chapel on the edge of town. The fiscal found the Mercedarians’ arguments persuasive and in 1731 recommended the foundation, with the caveat that this was not to be a church with bells but a private chapel where the ­friars said Mass.12 At some point during the eighteenth century the chapel was opened up to the public, but the house remained an hospicio and the church never attracted the same numbers of people as did the churches of Franciscans or Carmelites. The places of these orders in toluqueño life can be illustrated by their physical locations in the cityscape. The Franciscan complex was positioned on the central plaza, along with the jail, the corregidor’s house, and the casas reales (royal houses), and so, too, were the Franciscans at the center of Toluca’s religious life. Their church was the city’s largest and most decorated. According to a 1770 description, its interior had six chapels, twelve altars, and various niches, and its exterior included a large patio and a tower with a clock.13 As doctrineros without a competing parish in the city, the Franciscans served the city’s entire population as well as much of the surrounding region. As friars explained to the viceroy in a 1690 report, they served Spaniards, mestizos, and Indians of Toluca as well as the city’s nineteen subject pueblos and fifty-six haciendas and estancias.14 Toluca’s Franciscans provided a combination of core mendicant ministries and the sort of work done exclusively in doctrinas. Sets of testimonies taken in 1669, 1723, and 1753 offer more specifics.15 As doctrineros, Franciscans offered sacraments, including baptism and marriage, taught good doctrine to Indians, and followed the arancel (a standardized fee schedule set by the bishop). In their pastoral work, they offered Mass, manned confessionals, and preached sermons that Captain Don Nicolás Sánches Bisrentacos, a businessman and agent of the royal alcalde, praised, observing that “all the vecinos gather with great pleasure to hear the sermons that they preach.” They offered charity to those in need, and Francisco Marin Guadarrama, the convent’s syndic (the layperson who managed much of the convent’s business dealings), explained that during epidemics he was dispatched to the pharmacist to purchase “all [medicines] that were necessary for the poor.”16 Friars also promoted typical Franciscan devotions, including the via crucis. They

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had constructed stations running from their church to a nearby hill, and Doctor Anselmo Joaquín de Villagomes noted that Franciscans inspired many to participate in individual and communal journeys there.17 Finally, the church was home to a sizable number of lay organizations, including a third order founded sometime in the seventeenth century as well as approximately fifteen confraternities.18 This range of services combined with the region’s population required a sizable number of friars, and this number was augmented by the presence of a school of theology that could easily add a dozen friars to the convent’s population. Fluctuations in these populations mirrored overall patterns for the province. Between 1580 and 1690 the number of friars grew from the eight priests cited by Franciscan chronicler Pedro Oroz to the eighteen to twenty friars (including priests and lay brothers) listed in a report to the viceroy. The population peaked sometime around 1753 when it housed twenty-five priests, after which it declined to nineteen in 1775 and thirteen in 1795.19 The drops were not, however, as dramatic as in other Franciscan convents, likely because Toluca was one of the order’s most important doctrinas and one of the few it kept after the midcentury secularizations. The Carmelite order came closest to challenging Franciscan prominence in Toluca. Its convent, located just a few blocks from the Franciscans’, was close to the city’s center but also separated from it by the Verdiguel River. The Carmelite church does not seem to have been as large as that of the Franciscans, but it may have come close to matching the splendor of its furnishings. Projects throughout the eighteenth century added new chapels, altars, gilding, and images, including a new main altar in 1794 at a cost of more than sixty-five hundred pesos. According to a 1770 Franciscan description of the city, the Carmelite convent had about twenty friars in residence—the same number given for the Franciscan convent—most of whom were confessors and who worked to provide spiritual benefits to the faithful.20 Although no good, general description of the Carmelites’ project in Toluca seems to have survived, friars undoubtedly followed their institute’s strong emphasis on core mendicant ministries. The order did not sponsor nearly as many lay organizations as at the Franciscans’ parish church, hosting only, it seems, two confraternities (both founded by 1732) and a third order (founded in 1738). Finally, like the Franciscan convent, the Carmelite convent was home to a college. Established in 1720, it taught moral theology to Carmelite friars. On the outskirts of the city were the Mercedarians. By far the smallest of Toluca’s mendicant foundations, the hospicio’s role in the city’s spiritual life was strictly peripheral. A 1775 report as part of the state-­ sponsored visit named eight friars who were in residence there: four

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priests, three lay brothers, and one donado (a man who took simple vows and entered the order as a servant). This was probably the apex of the Mercedarian population in Toluca, as the plan formulated as part of that visitation called for reducing the convent’s population to three friars. The house seems to have sponsored only one confraternity, and the third order was established late, in 1807. Even more striking, the convent’s libro de misas recorded that the Mercedarians offered a fraction of the number of masses that the local Carmelites did (Table 7). In fact, the total of all Mercedarian masses recorded between 1758 and 1780 (4,272) was less than half of any single year’s Carmelite total during that time.21 On the other hand, Mercedarians did seem to be addressing the house’s primary purpose of alms collection. The convent’s libro de cautivos (book of captives) recorded that they collected 2,113 pesos between 1791 and 1801, which was not an insubstantial sum for a small house with few connections to its community.22 The juaninos, despite a location closer to the center than the Franciscans would have preferred, never challenged the primacy of Toluca’s other orders. The hospital was founded before the Carmelites’ and Mercedarians’ houses but was still assigned last place in sermons and other public events. It housed only a few friars and fewer priests, with late eighteenth-century sources indicating about seven friars and two priests.23 Nor did it attract people as the mendicants’ churches did, since, serving the sick and poor, it was a place to be avoided. A 1773 state-sponsored visit indicated the juaninos’ target audiences in its questions, asking, “If all the poor who come to be cured are received, treating them with much love and caring, washing their feet the day that they are admitted, having them confess and take communion. If they are attended with all piety, giving them the medicines that the doctor and surgeon ordered.”24 The table 7 Mercedarian and Carmelite masses, 1758–1780 Triennium

1758–1761 1761–1764 1764–1767 1767–1770 1770–1774 1774–1777 1777–1780 Total

Mercedarian masses

Single year

Carmelite masses

373 378 318 550 1,002 843 808

1759–1760

11,160

1769–1770

8,859

1779–1780

9,342

4,272

29,361

sources : BNAH MP, doc. 1, “Libro de misas del convento de la Ssma Cruz del Milagro de la ciudad de Toluca”; AHPCD, carp. 1566, “Libro de misas de Toluca.”

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hospital’s distinct purpose and lower status did not, however, mean it was not a valued part of the community, and during a 1737 epidemic, Toluca’s vecinos took up special collections to help the hospital with “the cure of all the naturales of this city and its jurisdiction who are suffering from the epidemic.”25 Because Toluca lacked a diocesan parish, it also lacked a diocesan church, suggesting the ambiguous place of diocesan clergy there. The report from the archbishop’s visit in 1795 listed six priests in residence but said nothing of where they worked. Heading this group was the ­vicario in capite, the city’s head secular priest who also held the title of juez eclesiástico. Diocesan clergy almost always filled this office, so in places like Toluca with only doctrineros, a diocesan priest was brought in to avoid endowing friars with additional powers. As an ecclesiastical judge, this official had the authority to regulate local religious life, such as issuing licenses for processions or enforcing attendance at Mass. In this capacity, he held more sway over some orders than others, especially the juaninos, who like all hospital orders were subject to the local bishop’s oversight, and the Franciscans, who were subject to it in their role as doctrineros. For example, in 1728 Br. Don Juan Varón de Lara ordered the Franciscan doctrinero to implement a sentence given to a group of Indians accused of superstition, a task the Franciscan fulfilled. Similarly, when Balthazar Francisco, an Indian working in an obraje as punishment for not attending Mass, fell ill in 1737, Br. Don Nicolás de Villegas had him moved to the juaninos’ hospital, ordering the prior to oversee his care.26 In addition to his duties as juez eclesiástico, the vicario in capite usually served as Toluca’s comisario, or local agent of the Inquisition. Because the comisario’s opinions frequently shaped the rulings of officials in Mexico City, this office offered wider opportunities to influence the actions of regular orders. Neatly categorizing the men who bore these three titles into an opposing power structure to Toluca’s orders would be an oversimplification, however. These men were often members of important local families who were embedded in the webs of connections that crossed secular-regular divisions. For instance, Don Juan Varón de Lara was a member of the Franciscan Third Order and donated generously to the Carmelites, and Don Manuel José Gil was one of the founders of the Franciscan Confraternity of the Cord of Saint Francis. Members of each of these groups—Franciscans, Carmelites, Mercedarians, juaninos, and secular clergy—interacted on a regular basis, but little documentation survives to demonstrate instances of harmony and cooperation among them. They attended each other’s significant festivities, sermons, and burials as they did elsewhere, and some examples remain of Franciscans and Carmelites exchanging praise in sermons and in verse.

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Two Franciscan sermons, one in 1716 and one in 1718, included references to the juaninos and Carmelites. The one from Francis’s feast day in 1716 waxed eloquent on the virtues of Elias and John of God, comparing the former to the Old Testament and the latter to the New. Together with Francis, they formed the greatest enemies to the enemies of Christ.27 In 1722 the Carmelite Fr. Juan de la Anunciación composed an elaborate loa (eulogium) for the dedication of a new Franciscan ­chapel commemorating Francis’s wounds. Set to music and formatted as a conversation between Hope and Love, the verses spoke of the virtues and friendship of Francis and Dominic. That same year Fr. Juan wrote another loa in honor of a local Franciscan’s ordination as a priest. In it, Fr. Juan considered what it meant to be a priest and a Franciscan, praising Francis and his sons: El gran padre san Francisco, saben todos, que su anhelo de instituir Religión fue con espíritu y celo comunicado de Dios para librar del infierno a las almas que ignorantes del soberano evangelio se miraban de los falsos dogmas en el cautiverio y para este fin dispuso que por todo el universo se repartieran sus hijos hechos vivos pregoneros.28

The great father Saint Francis, everyone knows, that his yearning to institute a Religion was with spirit and zeal communicated from God to free from hell the souls ignorant of the sovereign gospel and turn from the false dogmas of their captivity and for this end he arranged that, to the entire universe, his sons were dispatched, made living messengers.

Whether praising patriarchs, orders, or individual friars, each one of these examples came from the first two decades of Franciscan-Carmelite coexistence in Toluca, and the intense nature of the rivalry between these two orders in Toluca suggests that the lack of similar documentation thereafter was no coincidence.

foundations, burials, and establishing rank Franciscans in Toluca, as elsewhere, jealously guarded their position as the first to arrive, and some evidence remains of their objections to the establishment of juanino and Carmelite convents in Toluca. In an undated document, Franciscans complained that the juanino foundation was improper and gave a detailed summary of the papal bulls and briefs that supported their position. According to the Recopilación de Leyes (the

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prevailing legal code), hospitals were to be founded “in places high and distant from the center and middle of settlements.” The juaninos’ site did not meet these criteria, nor was it far enough away from the Franciscans’ convent. The guardian also protested that the juaninos had not sought or received the Franciscans’ approval as required from an order already established there. While the document does not specify what happened, the close proximity of the two convents suggests that the Franciscans were unsuccessful in moving the juanino foundation. The Carmelites responded to Franciscan territoriality with the clandestine early-morning founding ceremony that, in turn, prompted the Franciscans’ “loving complaints.” The Franciscans’ objections that the Holy Sacrament had been installed and the first Mass said too modestly were ostensibly praise of the Eucharist’s dignity, but Franciscans were also defending their status since they had been excluded from a prominent place in the ceremonies. The issue of allowing one order’s community to attend an important function in the other’s church was still burning a few years later when Captain Don Joseph Aguado Chacón died. One of Toluca’s leading vecinos, Don Joseph was the donor whose thousand-peso gift for the Carmelite foundation was cited in the residents’ 1694 petition.29 Although his burial was held in the Franciscans’ parish church, the Carmelites sought to participate in these services in a manner that the Franciscan prelate could not countenance. The details of the dispute are vague, limited to the information in the Carmelite provincial’s 1704 response to a letter from the Franciscan guardian at Toluca. It seems that the guardian had written to complain that the Carmelite prior, Fr. Blas de San Ambrosio, had brought his entire community to Don Joseph’s burial, despite a previous meeting at which the guardian told him he could not. The guardian viewed this impertinence not only as an affront to his position as prelado superior (superior prelate) but also as an implication that his order was not fulfilling its parochial obligations, and he asked that Fr. Blas be removed from office. The Carmelite provincial, Fr. Bartolomé del Espíritu Santo, responded that Fr. Blas had acted appropriately given Don Joseph’s status in the community and support for the Carmelites, explaining that it was through this benefactor, his influence, and good works that their convent was founded. The entire province was, of course, deeply indebted to him. Nor was their community’s attendance meant to discredit the Franciscans’ satisfaction of their parochial duties, but two communities were warranted on this occasion because “everybody is few, and nobody can complain of that which is given in deference to Christ, even that which seems extravagance.” Fr. Bartolomé concluded that the Carmelites were not trying to usurp the Franciscans’ place in the services, noting, “And

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we, Reverend Father, do not reach for the ripe grain. We only collect the small stalks that fall from the hands of the harvesters.”30 This wrangling over attendance and duties also reveals underlying issues of privileges and precedence. Franciscans wanted the juaninos to request Franciscan approval and the Carmelites to inaugurate their church with more pomp, which would have meant giving the Franciscans an important role, perhaps giving the sermon, celebrating the Mass, or at least bringing the Eucharist from their church. In both cases, they demanded recognition of their higher status as the first order to arrive and continued to push their superior status at the burial of Don Joseph when the Franciscan guardian emphasized his role as superior prelate. Meanwhile, the Carmelites were not willing to concede the point and instead highlighted the orders’ equality. Fr. Bartolomé stated that one purpose of his letter was to advance the “relations of sacred religions—that are all equal in their esteem.” He further stressed his order’s equality when he suggested that the guardian’s claims as prelado superior had little meaning. Whether someone was represented as a superior or inferior prelate, he wrote, all were canonically elected and all represented equally so that there “only remains the difference between one person and another, or between one dignity and another.”31 He concluded that what mattered most was that all obligations be met. Fr. Bartolomé’s refusal to yield offers a clear signal of what would continue to be Carmelite strategy over the following decades. As the Carmelites expanded their presence in town, they provoked new rounds of conflict that cut even deeper than these early skirmishes over the orders’ relative status. A battle over membership in the orders’ lay organizations provided the first major contest where orders competed directly for residents’ devotional loyalty.

third-order memberships On June 8, 1737, the officers and Franciscan director of Toluca’s Franciscan Third Order met to discuss a serious problem: some of the organization’s members had joined the Carmelite Third Order. The next day the officers decreed that anyone who entered another third order would be dismissed, have his habit taken away and his name erased from all books, and forfeit all rights to the group’s special indulgences. A week later on June 15, the officers expelled twelve tertiaries. So erupted a conflict that engulfed the third orders and their respective convents in Toluca, eventually ended up in Rome before the pope, and, despite a 1739 papal decree allowing dual membership, continued to burn two decades later. Carmelites and Franciscans had sponsored third orders

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for more than two centuries, and the issue of dual membership was not a new one, but the particular circumstances of Toluca, including Franciscans’ claims to superior status and Carmelites’ refusal to acquiesce, ignited this dispute. The foundation of a Carmelite Third Order in Toluca initiated the troubles. Although all Carmelite convents in New Spain would eventually sponsor such organizations, Toluca’s was the second one created, following only Puebla. The combination of local interest and a prior, Fr. Manuel de Santa Teresa, who was noted for his esteem of the third order, was the catalyst that brought this association to Toluca before other older, wealthier, or more prestigious convents. According to the organization’s foundation book, in 1735 Carmelite leadership in Spain approved a third order in Toluca “under our protection and that of the prelates who succeed us in the future and likewise under the direction of a friar of our sacred order who will be named by us.”32 Then, on August 16, 1736, sixteen vecinos of Toluca sent a petition to the provincial stating that even though they were already brothers and officeholders in Toluca’s Confraternity of Our Lady of Carmen, they sought “more and more the affection with which so great a Mother and Lady and her very sacred Religion attends us.” They therefore asked to found a third order “in which so much spiritual good comes to the faithful who profess in it.”33 The provincial, Fr. Melchor de Jesús, gave final approval to the organization in September 1736, setting out some of its guidelines. It would follow the precedents of Puebla’s Third Order, and its members would enjoy all the privileges and immunities that the popes had conceded to Carmelite as well as all to other third orders. Members would thus have the opportunity to participate in “all the sacrifices, prayers, vigilances, fasts, disciplines, hair shirts and various penitential, meritorious works that are done in our religion.” The third order’s friar director would have “the care of directing their souls, giving religious addresses, and admitting them to the habit and profession but without interfering in their meetings nor presiding at them.” Finally, the third order would be united with the Confraternity of Our Lady of Carmen. Once all the official approvals were in hand, the next step was to admit the first members. Although the exact date of the first entries is unknown, the organization counted twenty-five members in April 1737 when ­Toluca’s new prior, Fr. Domingo de los Ángeles, appointed the first slate of officers. At least nine of the new tertiaries already belonged to the Franciscan Third Order, yet neither the act of taking the Carmelite habit nor the appointment of officers drew an immediate response from the Franciscans. Their failure to react quickly was more likely due to ignorance than apathy, because when eventually made aware of what

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was happening, they sprang into action. Within a week they issued three decrees on the matter, the last of which was the June 15 expulsion. That the Franciscans judged the Carmelite organization a serious threat can be gauged by the fact that the Franciscan provincial, rather than a local prelate, oversaw the response. In July, Fr. Antonio Joseph Peres ordered testimonies from some Franciscan tertiaries. He wanted to know if there were troubles within the third order and if they were caused by the newly founded Carmelite Third Order; if members knew of the various prohibitions on joining the new organization; which tertiaries enrolled with the Carmelites and which ones urged others to enroll; and how the witnesses knew this information and if it was public knowledge. Six male vecinos testified in front of Fr. Antonio and agreed that there were indeed troubles within the Franciscan Third Order. They blamed the discord on the competing third order and said they obtained their information, which was public and well known, from attending third-order events.34 The witnesses did, however, offer conflicting information about who had joined the new order. Indeed, there was some confusion on this subject, and the list of those named in these testimonies did not match the June 15 list of expulsions. Ten people made both lists, but two, Doña Anna Ximenes and Doña Antonia Yta, had been left off the earlier list, a curiosity given that both seem to have been closely involved in the Carmelite founding from the very beginning.35 In addition, the names of two people on the June 15 list, Br. Don Juan Varón de Lara and Doña Francisca de Guzmán, never appeared again in the Franciscans’ proceedings, nor were they listed as having professed as Carmelite tertiaries. ­Although nothing more is known about Doña Francisca, Br. Juan, a secular priest and the juez eclesiástico for Toluca, was one of the largest donors to the Carmelite convent, establishing over the course of his lifetime and through his will sixteen chaplaincies with a total principal of more than 120,000 pesos.36 He may have been kicked out because Franciscans assumed that he had joined the new Carmelite association. After obtaining the testimonies, Fr. Antonio declared that he wanted to hear directly from the twelve people accused of entering the new order. Their responses followed one of three general strategies. Some defended their actions, including the Carmelite Third Order’s first prior, the secular priest Br. Don Philipe Ruiz de Pastrana, who seems to have been the leader of those who wanted to keep both habits. He claimed he was wrongly dispossessed of his Franciscan habit since the only impediment to belonging to both was a statute established by the Franciscans’ Mexico City Third Order (upon which Toluca’s had based its constitution) rather than a weightier prohibition, such as a papal decree. Moreover, some of the “most principal” members of the Carmelite’s Third Order in Puebla were

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also Franciscan tertiaries, and a nun there had joined with the bishop’s approval. Finally, he noted that the Franciscans had not followed proper procedure since they had not given tertiaries the three required notifications before expelling them. He heard of the promulgation against joining only “by the voices of the pueblo according to the passions of each one.” In another form of defiance, other expelled members declined to testify. Don Pedro de Trigo Baamonde and his married daughter, Doña Anna María de Trigo Baamonde, refused to speak with the Franciscans, and others claimed to be out of town, absences that Fr. Antonio, probably correctly, saw as pretexts.37 Another of the expelled, Don Juan de Sotomayor, a forty-six-year-old laborer, responded only that he had authorized a Carmelite friar, Fr. Manuel de San Pablo, to act on his behalf. If bringing in a Carmelite to the proceedings did not fan the flames, Fr. Manuel’s response certainly did. He refused to recognize Franciscan authority to take testimonies or to answer any questions, claiming only a qualified judge, in this case the vicario provisor general, a representative of the archbishop, could do so. A few of the former Franciscan tertiaries used their testimonies to distance themselves from what they claimed was a mistake. Still, only one followed her statements of remorse with action: Doña Hermenegilda Bermúdes, who had taken the Carmelite habit but not yet professed. Now she renounced that habit, claiming she had taken it only on the condition that she could remain a Franciscan tertiary. She swore that a Carmelite friar had assured her she could belong to both, but she now understood that her obligations to the two groups were “not compatible.” Pleading her devotion to Saint Francis and her standing as a longtime member, she asked for mercy. As a result, Fr. Antonio sent a scribe to the Carmelite convent to inform the friars of her sworn renunciation, and within a month the Franciscan provincial sent a patent authorizing her readmittance.38 Two other women, Doña Anna Ximenes and Doña Gerónima de Cuevas, also tried to regain their Franciscan status with similar claims. Doña Anna, a twenty-two-year-old doncella (unmarried woman of virtue), told her Franciscan interviewer that she confessed with a Carmelite and had heard that the Carmelite prior had ordered his friars not to confess members of the Franciscan Third Order. For this reason and for not having heard the promulgation against joining both, she professed with the Carmelites. She claimed she would “without doubt” give up the Carmelite habit to remain a Franciscan, but when asked why she had not yet done so, she said she could not offer any reason right now. A few days later the Franciscan and his scribe went to the house of Doña Gerónima, where her husband, Don Bernabe Serrano, spoke on her behalf, saying that the only reason she took the Carmelite habit was for additional

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spiritual benefits. Now realizing the incompatibility of the two, she was choosing to remain a Franciscan, as she had been for thirteen years, and suspending her Carmelite membership. Their pleas notwithstanding, the women were never noted as having renounced their Carmelite habits and, unlike Doña Hermenegilda, were not restored to the Franciscan habit. Not only did the Franciscans have little success winning back the undivided loyalty of their members but the losses were mounting. In addition to the twenty-five inaugural members, another thirteen people professed at the end of the Carmelite organization’s first year, making a total of thirty-eight full-fledged members.39 During the public controversies over the expulsions, another Franciscan tertiary, Doña Juana García, took the Carmelite habit, which meant that she did so while fully aware of the consequences. Worse, the issue went to the archbishop of Mexico and his provisor general, who ruled in favor of dual membership. Then, on November 13, 1739, Pope Clement XII issued a bull confirming the archbishop’s decision. Despite these rulings, the issue did not end here, as a 1758 case made clear. Doña Josefa Calahorra, a widow who belonged to the Franciscan Third Order in Mexico City, had moved to Toluca in 1755 and entered the Carmelite Third Order. At some point before May 1756, she transferred her incorporation in the Franciscan Third Order from Mexico City to Toluca and was elected hermana mayor (the top female officer). Her new status prompted a visit from a Franciscan, Fr. Juan Manuel Hernández, who told her to renounce her office as definidora (a member of the female definitory) in the Carmelite Third Order or be expelled from the Franciscan order. According to the Franciscan Third Order’s “Libro de acuerdos” (book of resolutions), she told Fr. Juan that she preferred to remain a Carmelite tertiary and would renounce her Franciscan membership. By 1758, however, she was complaining that the Franciscans were ignoring Clement XII’s 1739 bull, and she wanted to belong to both groups. Fr. Juan and the Franciscan officers responded that they assuredly followed the decree and would never interfere with her right to enjoy the indulgences and graces conceded to both organizations. They were, however, concerned about maintaining the peace of the order’s governance, the observance of their laws, and the punctual attendance of all their particular obligations—all of which were threatened “from the incorporation in another Third Order, as experience has made known to us.” At this point, Doña Josefa officially involved the Carmelite Third Order in her case, appealing to its officers, who pursued the issue aggressively. In response to their complaints, the Franciscan board claimed that the issue was not her dual membership but that she had been elected to the “public office” of definidora in the Carmelite organization, to which the Carmelite board responded that the issue was

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really Franciscan “pride and capriciousness.” The Carmelites further accused ­Franciscan friars of saying that Clement XII’s bull was not genuine, having been written by a cardinal, and that “one cannot belong to two Religions and serve two Masters and other stubborn speciousness.”40 Why did the tertiaries’ professions into another third order cause such consternation for the Franciscan hierarchy? Certainly, there was no issue with Franciscan tertiaries attending ceremonies at the Carmelite church, as a 1721 decree made clear. It seems that on the afternoon of the fifth Tuesday of Lent, the Carmelites held a ceremony commemorating the three hours of Mary’s sorrows (the time Christ suffered on the cross), a ceremony that conflicted with a similar service the Franciscan Third Order sponsored each Tuesday during Lent. The Franciscan officers noted that this conflict had reduced attendance at their church, so rather than force people to choose between the two, they moved their event to the morning.41 Even more significantly, some Franciscan tertiaries had been members of the most important Carmelite confraternity, Our Lady of Carmen, without raising any eyebrows. Franciscans claimed the problem with joining an additional third order was the constitutional prohibition found in the Mexico City and Puebla constitutions on which the Toluca organization had been based. When the Carmelite procurador general accused the Franciscans of denying their tertiaries additional indulgences and graces, the Franciscans disagreed, claiming that this was not what “gave motive to the litigation, but only the fulfillment of the oath of the Acts and Constitution of this Venerable Third Order of Mexico.”42 It was one thing to claim a constitutional prohibition, but this does not answer why such a prohibition existed when there were no restrictions on attending a competing service in another order’s church or joining other orders’ confraternities. The Franciscan statement that one cannot belong to two religions and serve two masters offers a strong clue. Franciscans expected the complete loyalty of their tertiaries, just as they did with friars. In this sense, third-order membership was more akin to the status of a firstorder friar or second-order nun with their vows of obedience than it was to a confraternity where multiple memberships were an everyday occurrence. It was for this reason that Br. Philipe had defended his dual membership by citing the nun in Puebla who had joined the Carmelite Third Order. To Franciscans, joining multiple third orders took away from this special status and blurred the lines between a third order and a mere confraternity. The Franciscan Third Order seems to have been the only one to forbid its members from joining others. Clearly, dual membership was not a problem for the Carmelites, and the Dominicans had come to this conclusion as well. The Dominican Third Order in Mexico City had had its own run-in with Franciscan claims to exclusivity several decades before and

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sent the question to the rector of the Dominican college. His reply, which the order had printed in 1691, was that dual membership was indeed licit and did not require expulsion, as “had been done in some orders with not a little publicity and scandal.” The Dominican response suggests that the Augustinian Third Order also allowed dual memberships. These two groups had established a formal agreement to attend each other’s most important events and seemed to have an amicable relationship even while Dominican and Franciscan third orders were quarreling over dual membership. Finally, the rector noted that many other tertiaries, including those from San Agustín, came to Dominican archives to purchase the 1691 publication and reassure themselves of the legitimacy of their position.43 The Franciscans’ unique position indicates the importance of the third order to the Franciscan project. Franciscan third orders were exceedingly popular and were located in dozens of their convents in New Spain. The third orders’ masses and ceremonies provided significant income, definitively connected people to the order, and served as a sign of the Franciscans’ sizable following. Franciscans, who were always quick to defend their privileges anyway, thus had much to lose if the exclusivity of their third orders was challenged. Yet conflict erupted in Toluca as nowhere else, and the particular combination of circumstances there lay at its root. There is no evidence that Carmelite and Franciscans sparred over third-order membership in Puebla, the only other location with both organizations at the time of the Toluca dispute.44 Puebla, however, was a large and wealthy city, and the two orders’ convents were situated on its opposite sides and did not compete for membership and resources in the same way as in sparser-­populated Toluca, where the convents were a mere stone’s throw apart. Furthermore, members in the Franciscan Third Order were some of Toluca’s leading citizens, and their defection threatened the Franciscans’ reputation as the city’s most prominent religion. They might also be drawn deeper into Carmelite practices and come to prefer them over Franciscan ones. So when a new Carmelite organization professed thirty-eight new members in its first year and challenged the loyalty of Franciscan tertiaries, the Franciscan hierarchy, from the comisario general to the provincial, jumped to defend against these and any future Carmelite encroachments.

maría josefa and her confessors While María Josefa de la Peña’s corpse lay still warm on the deathbed, a Carmelite friar kissed it with reverence, telling all those present that he did so because the woman had possessed qualities of a saint. It was Janu-

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ary 1784, and when Inquisitors heard of his actions, they opened a case against him and a fellow Carmelite who, together, had been promoting María Josefa as a holy person. Why they came to the Inquisition’s attention involved more than their questionable sponsorship of a woman who, at the time of her death, was under investigation as a false mystic. Local circumstances and rivalries also prompted their denunciation, which came from Franciscans who viewed María Josefa’s legacy as a threat to their position as Toluca’s most important order. The three-year-long investigation that ensued brought to light a wealth of information about the relationship between María Josefa and her Carmelite confessors, the effects of the friars’ actions on her fame within Toluca, and the local politics of religion. And what began as a complaint about the actions of two friars one afternoon in a private home became a full-blown campaign to prevent toluqueños from venerating María Josefa as a local saint.45 María Josefa was only twenty-four at the time of her death on January 16, 1784. She likely died from the “fever” that was circulating in Toluca and that only two months later killed her parents, who were described as having died “in the present epidemic.” Although she was born in Toluca and had resided there for at least the previous four years, she had at some point lived in Mexico City. She was unmarried, lived with her parents, knew how to read and write, and wanted to become a Carmelite nun, even signing some of her papers as María Josefa de la Santíssima Trinidad. She maintained close connections with the Carmelite church, confessing, communing, and attending Mass there. She and her family were described as Spanish and were of high enough social standing to join the third order, but they do not seem to have been particularly wealthy, and the Franciscan parish book of burials recorded that neither of her parents had left a will because they were poor. Similarly, two stories offered by witnesses included instances when María Josefa had worked, once making tortillas at a tortilla shop and another time at a booth her father set up during bullfights. The Holy Office’s investigation of María Josefa as an ilusa (deluded one) is not included in the case against the Carmelite friars, but according to conjectures of some witnesses, the proceedings may have begun after a woman, who was not from Toluca, denounced María Josefa after a confrontation and exchange of insults in the street. When the woman subsequently became sick, she accused María Josefa of witchcraft and abuse of the Holy Sacrament. It was also possible that members of María Josefa’s own family denounced her. María Luisa Gonzáles Zepulveda, María Josefa’s good friend, testified that a relative had gone to the Holy Office after the incident in the street, and one of the Carmelite confessors thought that María Josefa’s father and a cousin also had accused her.

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According to one confessor’s statement, the Inquisitors wanted to know if María Josefa had a pact with the devil, if she abused religious images for her spells, if she wore an image of the demon around her neck, if she took communion daily, and if she had two confessors and why. He said that she had denied the first three accusations and affirmed the latter two, explaining she had two confessors to walk more securely to God. Her two confessors, Fr. Sebastián de San Francisco and Fr. Lorenzo de la Concepción, had taken a keen interest in her, providing guidance and protection. Both were long-term residents of the Carmelites’ Toluca convent. Fr. Sebastián, a Spaniard and former prior of the convent (1768– 1770) as well as its occasional acting ministro de terceros, had been living there for sixteen years and had been María Josefa’s confessor for nearly four years.46 Fr. Lorenzo, approximately forty-eight years of age and also a Spaniard, had never held an office, but he had been assigned to Toluca as a preacher and confessor for at least several years. He had been María Josefa’s confessor for less than one year, claiming he took on this role at Fr. Sebastián’s request. Both confessors considered her to be of uncommon virtue and went out of their way to explain what made her exceptional. In a letter written shortly before her death, Fr. Sebastián described her as humble, penitent, honest in words and actions, and with proper fear and respect of God. What truly set her apart, though, was that divine power had favored her with a “special providence,” and he pointed to “the treasure of graces and marvels that the mercy of Our God deposited in her person.”47 Similarly, Fr. Lorenzo was convinced that her soul was a “living temple of the Holy Spirit, and one of the most holy, pure and moderate that God has in his Church.”48 Four years before María Josefa’s death, she underwent a spiritual transformation, and the nature of the transformation points to the two friars, Fr. Sebastián in particular, as a driving force behind it. According to María Luisa, María Josefa credited Fr. Sebastián with dramatically changing her life. Previously, she had led “an immoderate life, which she spent in parties, amusements and diversions, passing entire months without receiving sacraments.”49 Yet other evidence contradicts this portrayal of María Josefa as an immoderate party girl. When María Josefa was sixteen, she testified before a local agent of the Inquisition that a Carmelite had solicited her in the confessional. This agent, a Franciscan who claimed to know her well, appended to her testimony his affirmation that she had been brought up well and that “since a young age, she has been inclined toward things of virtue.”50 One explanation for this discrepancy is that María Luisa was recounting María Josefa’s life in accordance with later efforts at self-fashioning or with stories promoted by the Carmelites. In hagiography, lives of venerable men and women commonly included

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similarly dramatic turning points when divine visions or miraculous healings prompted the lucky recipients of such divine gifts to change their ways and devote themselves to God. María Josefa’s transformation may or may not have been quite so drastic, but one certainly did occur: a new immersion in Carmelite devotional practices. The Franciscan in the solicitation case had explained that after being propositioned, María ­Josefa switched to the spiritual guidance of a Franciscan. But within the next couple of years, María Josefa swapped confessors again, this time to Fr. Sebastián. Her entry into the Carmelite Third Order around the same time suggests that she had embarked on a new spiritual path. Her guides on this path, Fr. Sebastián and Fr. Lorenzo, were more than voices on the other side of the confessional. They advised and encouraged her during the Holy Office’s investigations, and once when she was sick, Fr. Sebastián sent her an image of Veronica, the saint who had given Christ a cloth to wipe his face during his walk to Calvary. This cloth had preserved an imprint of his face and thereafter could miraculously cure the sick; the image sent to María Josefa was undoubtedly meant to replicate the healing powers of the original. The two friars also worked to defend her from her parents. According to María Luisa, María Josefa had been esteemed by her parents until her spiritual transformation but afterward had a muy mala vida (very bad or abusive life) with them, including incidents when her father hit her with a rock and threatened her with a knife.51 Fr. Lorenzo testified that her parents thought that she was deceiving her confessors and that her mother tried to stop her from doing spiritual exercises, keeping her in sight at night “in order that she would not have the opportunity to do her spells.” Another apparent point of conflict was María Josefa’s desire to become a nun when her parents seem to have wanted her to marry, perhaps to the former alguacil mayor (constable) of Toluca, Don José Riviera, who various witnesses said actively sought her hand.52 Her confessors had tried to remove her from her parents’ house, and the month before she died, each wrote to the Inquisition asking to have her moved someplace safe.53 Under Fr. Sebastián’s direction and seemingly against her parents’ wishes, María Josefa had begun practicing an affective piety, fasting, and using instruments of mortification, including crowns of thorns, a girdle, and a disciplina de garfios (discipline of hooks). She dedicated a room to her prayers and exercises, and her mother was said to have complained about the amount of time she spent there. Much of this pious practice was steeped in Carmelite traditions, and she focused on Saint Teresa as a model, wearing a vellum image of the saint, referring to Teresa as her “holy mother,” and reading and copying Teresa’s writings. María Josefa also claimed that one day Teresa accompanied by Our Lady of Carmen

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and Saint Joseph appeared to her and helped her pray, but the most telling sign of María Josefa’s emulation of Teresa was her claim to have received “the dart,” meaning the transverberation, that uniquely defining moment in Teresa’s life when she was pierced with the arrow of Divine Love. Her two confessors had urged her down this Carmelite path, lending her prayer books, pushing her to emulate the saint, and instructing her on Teresa’s writings. For example, among her papers was a copy of Teresa’s Moradas written in her own hand, done at Fr. Sebastián’s behest, and celebrated by Fr. Lorenzo as “an exact copy of those of Teresa in sentences and words, without more distinction than the material of hand, pen, ink and paper.”54 The two Carmelites also taught her how to make daily rounds of prayers, promoted strict reclusion, and encouraged the contemplative activities so closely tied to the order’s institute. María Josefa’s practices were controversial but not unusual. Mystic practice and its reliance upon direct experience over intellectual or book knowledge flourished in Catholic Europe and came to the Iberian Americas in the sixteenth century.55 The leading role model was Saint Teresa, who influenced numerous pious women in the Americas, including Saint Rose of Lima (1586–1617), Catarina de San Juan (known as la china poblana, 1582–1637), Sor Ursula de Jesús (1604–1666), and Sor María de San José (1656–1719).56 According to contemporary Catholic beliefs, boundaries between the mundane and divine could be bridged with the right approaches and heavenly assistance. Someone who fasted heavily, disciplined her flesh, fervently prayed to Jesus, or meditated upon the image of Mary might be rewarded with the gift of an ecstasy or vision. Aside from its spiritual possibilities, mysticism could also allow women to take on privileged but otherwise unlikely roles, giving them access to public forums or positions of power. For instance, ecstasies allowed Sister Benedetta, the sixteenth-century Italian nun studied by Judith Brown, to preach publicly; and the piety and visions of Sor Ursula de Jesús, an Afro-Peruvian servant in Lima’s Santa Clara convent, set her apart and gave her more prestige than her fellow servants.57 However, claims to direct mystical connections with God that bypassed priestly ­intermediaries could be threatening to the church hierarchy. As Michel de Certeau noted, mysticism existed at the intersection of the spiritual and political church, and it became increasingly troublesome to churchmen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many of whom worked to institutionalize the invisible, bringing it into the visible, and therefore controllable, realm.58 Mystics therefore risked investigations and punishments if judged not to be the real thing. Teresa herself faced the scrutiny of the Inquisition, and her transverberation in particular came to be portrayed less as something to be imitated than as evidence of her gifts from

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God.59 By the late eighteenth century, however, the church hierarchy had become even less tolerant of mystics. Whereas the primary concern was once separating the false mystics from the genuine ones, mysticism now lost favor to a different set of attributes as reformist churchmen sought to remove baroque excesses from people’s worship. Mystics, in their view, were a dangerous distraction from true devotion. Although the Inquisitors judging the case may well have shared these ideas, they had little to do with why the Carmelites ended up under investigation in the first place. Instead, the case was set into motion by Franciscans who had their own set of objections. They were objecting less to the Carmelites’ promotion of baroque piety than to the Carmelites’ promotion of this particular woman. After all, Franciscans also championed practices such as fasting, mortifications, and meditations on the sufferings of Christ, and the devotional ritual most closely associated with them was the way of the cross. Nor were Franciscans attacking the two confessors personally. When Inquisitors in Mexico City initially requested information on the two confessors, the Franciscan comisario responded with a letter that described them in glowing terms. Fr. Lorenzo followed a model life both in and outside the convent; Fr. Sebastián lived with great virtue and attended all his ministries “with great promptness and example.” The Franciscans’ actions were motivated by fear of María Josefa’s growing celebrity. They wanted to prevent their rivals from establishing what many residents might have viewed as a local Carmelite saint, so they began a coordinated effort to stop the movement dead in its tracks. Fr. Francisco Castellaños, who originally denounced Fr. Lorenzo and Fr. Sebastián, did so as part of the Franciscan hierarchy. He did not send his letter directly to the Inquisition, but he gave it to the convent’s guardian, who then sent it to Mexico City with a letter of his own detailing additional complaints about the actions of the Carmelites. When both of these letters reached Mexico City, they went first to their main convent’s guardian, who, in turn, added his own letter before sending the whole package along to the Holy Office. The original denunciation thus traveled through two layers of the Franciscan hierarchy, each of which added a supporting letter, before arriving at its intended audience. These letters also presented the Carmelites in an especially unfavorable light, offering accounts not corroborated by other witnesses. Fr. Francisco’s denunciation of Fr. Sebastián and Fr. Lorenzo claimed “various people” had complained of their behavior in front of María Josefa’s corpse. His version of events was that the Carmelites had knelt before the body; kissed its hands, feet, and heart; and then ordered everyone present, including her parents, to do the same. The friars then crawled on their knees to the place where María Josefa had done her spiritual exercises and “with

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great effusion of tears” prostrated themselves many times. Finally, they collected her things and distributed them as if they were relics. All this was done, concluded the complaint, in the presence of laypersons, who, with their “vulgar mode of thinking,” might be persuaded to think of María Josefa as a holy person. Beyond the dubious behavior of the two Carmelites, the Franciscans had additional complaints. One was that the viaticum (the Eucharist given to someone in danger of death) had come from the Franciscans’ parish church, as was customary, only once during María Josefa’s final illness. According to the guardian, the Carmelites had told her parents not to worry about this because she had received the sacrament from their convent with more ceremony and splendor than if it had come from the parish. The Franciscans were displeased that the parochial right of attending to the deceased had been usurped by the Carmelites, but the Carmelites’ supposed claims to have honored the sacrament with greater magnificence were intolerable. María Josefa’s alleged stigmata occasioned a second, equally impassioned protest when the Franciscans claimed that Fr. Lorenzo kissed María Josefa’s hands, feet, and chest as he did because he was venerating the wounds of Christ. Another Franciscan, Fr. Mariano José Cassasola, reported that Fr. Lorenzo had told him “outside of oath” that Christ had imprinted her with the wounds, and after she had bled for some time, the wounds became luminous. A letter from Fr. Mariano claimed that the Carmelites had taken a pair of María Josefa’s shoes, which reportedly had blood inside them, and treated them “like something sacred.” Fr. Mariano’s sensitivity to this issue and his defense of his patriarch’s special characteristic were impressive. The only witness to mention this particular divine favor was Fr. Lorenzo, suggesting that this element did not appear to be a defining characteristic in how anyone viewed María Josefa, but the Franciscans were taking no chances with “their” stigmata. The Inquisitors were concerned and, after collecting preliminary statements, ordered the two Carmelites removed from Toluca and commissioned their local agents, Franciscan friars, “to get back the insinuated relics, restrain the unjust and unfounded fame of extraordinary virtue and sanctity, and determine the spirit of the expressed friars’ direction with the said dead woman.”60 They specifically instructed the commissioner to focus on the events at María Josefa’s deathbed and “singularly on the actions that they executed with the body, if they treated it with adoration or worship.”61 The Inquisitors’ fears were not without foundation. Nearly all of the witnesses agreed that shortly after María Josefa died, Fr. Lorenzo told those holding vigil over the body not to be amazed at what he was about to do because María Josefa possessed some “heroic virtues, characteristic of a saint,” and then kissed her feet, hands, and heart

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(over her clothes). Witnesses disagreed, however, on whether any of the onlookers followed Fr. Lorenzo’s example by kissing the corpse. Inquisitors pursued this point because they worried that the Carmelites’ undue reverence would influence others. When María Luisa testified about the consequences of Fr. Lorenzo’s words and actions, she responded that many people took [María Josefa] as a servant of God, and that all the people who gathered in her house (who were many) from the hour that she died until the morning of the next day when they took her body to the church, kissed the body with reverence. Because many had news that Fr. Lorenzo had given her adoration and kissed her feet, hands, and heart.62

The Inquisitors feared the Carmelites’ distribution of some of María Josefa’s things as relics for the same reason, and the focus of the case quickly became their retrieval. A few hours after María Josefa’s death and still in the Piña home, Fr. Sebastián parceled out some of what he found in her small chest, including crucifixes, crosses, images, items or pieces of clothing, a prayer book, crowns of thorns, and disciplines and other instruments of mortification. The crucial feature of the items distributed was that they somehow participated in María Josefa’s alleged holiness: a cross that she held when she died, a piece of silk used to mark her place in her breviary, or the crucifix said to have bowed its head when she died. The friars were not the only ones who recognized this essential quality, and one man explained that even though many people asked him for a thorn from one of the crowns of thorns, he did not give any because Fr. Sebastián told him María Josefa had never used it. The items circulated widely within Toluca. In addition to María Josefa’s immediate circle of family and friends and at least four Carmelites, more than thirty people acquired a thorn from a crown of thorns that she had used. Fr. Sebastián maintained that he did not intend the items to be treated as relics, but at least one witness disagreed. María Luisa claimed that the friars did distribute things as relics and that she had seen Fr. ­Sebastián “adore the ones he has and carries with him, kissing them and bringing them to his chest with reverence.”63 Whatever the confessors may have intended, Fr. Lorenzo’s reverence of María Josefa’s corpse and Fr. Sebastián’s distribution of her things did indeed have repercussions among the residents of Toluca. When another Carmelite was asked about the effects, he responded that he thought “it would have caused admiration in those gathered there and to the many who would have found out about it.”64 The friars’ actions even seem to have changed the opinions of María Josefa’s once-doubting parents, who also participated in the distribution of her possessions. For example, one of her uncles testified that they gave him a piece of her tunic and a medal

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she wore, telling him, “Brother, keep this; it is a relic.” Her mother also told various people that she saw a light coming from María Josefa’s room a few days after she died, and when her mother went in, she smelled a sweet fragrance, which she took as a sign of her daughter’s sanctity. Two specific examples offer some deeper insights into how the Carmelites’ actions were received. The agents of the Inquisitors went to the house of María Josefa’s aunt and uncle, José Piña and his wife, María de Nava y Mota, to collect a pair of María Josefa’s shoes that were supposedly bloody on the inside from where she received the stigmata. The agents found the shoes in a chest with other “womanly things” and without any signs of veneration, but when they asked José and María about why they kept not only the shoes but other items of María Josefa’s, the issue was not so clear-cut. María responded that she looked at these items “with respect in view of that which the referenced friars said and did,” and José said that he heard María Josefa had died “in the opinion of a saint” and he wanted to keep her things “until seeing the end that such opinion has.” Still concerned, the agents asked why none of these items were being used. Both José and María offered nearly the same answer: how could they “when the Carmelite Fathers have taken them in their hands, kissed them and ordered that they be protected”?65 In the second example, Francisco Piña y Urbana testified that since María ­Josefa’s death, her fame had spread, and after he heard how Lorenzo had kissed her feet, he commissioned a portrait of her. 66 Although Francisco denied giving it reverence as if it were an image of a saint, he said that he sometimes prayed to María Josefa as he did to the saints. He also admitted that sometimes when he lost something, he invoked María Josefa’s soul, once reciting an Ave María to her when he lost a horse.67 Not surprisingly, the Inquisitors had the painting burned along with the rest of María Josefa’s “relics.” Although José and María’s strategy of keeping but not using María Josefa’s things may have been a more cautious strategy than Francisco’s use of the portrait and invocations, in each case the witnesses cited the friars’ conduct as favorably influencing their opinions of María Josefa’s sanctity. Once called in, the Inquisition’s actions had powerful effects. The items associated with María Josefa were confiscated and destroyed, and witnesses were admonished against giving her undue reverence. Even her confessors, in an apt metaphor for devotion to her more generally, changed their opinions. By the time of Fr. Sebastián’s first statement, he had already come to believe that María Josefa had manipulated him. He testified that he began to distrust her because she had told him that the Lord had revealed to her that she would die at age forty, and when she died sixteen years before then, he became suspicious. Fr. Lorenzo,

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however, continued to keep up a vigorous defense. After María Josefa died, he took the initiative to write about her life and sent it to the Holy Office, explaining that he did so because he wanted to ensure her story would endure so that it might someday be published. He pushed to have a sermon and “honors” for her in the Carmelite church and even wrote to the Inquisition asking if the sermon could speak of her many gifts, favors, and extraordinary successes. But he, too, eventually dropped his efforts and came to accept that she was an ilusa. After examining both friars, the Inquisitor in charge of the case, Dr. Antonio Bergosa y Jordán, opined that Fr. Sebastián might once have been firmly persuaded of María Josefa’s virtues, but he had come to realize that he had been fooled, and Bergosa y Jordán attributed Fr. Lorenzo’s errors to his simple spirit and credulity. Both friars, he concluded, were of a disposition to give whatever satisfaction was ordered. Although there is no record of a sentence against them, neither ever resided in Toluca again. Finally, an interesting subplot to the main case reveals something about how people viewed the orders. In the course of her testimony, María Luisa revealed that María Josefa had been acting as her spiritual director, a highly unusual position for a woman. María Luisa testified that her confessor had been a Carmelite friar, but when she told María Josefa of her dissatisfaction with him, María Josefa offered to become her spiritual director. During the year and a half of this arrangement, María Luisa said that María Josefa had instructed her to perform mortifications and fast daily and to take communion three times per week as well as all feast days and every day during the three Pasquas (Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas). María Luisa eventually informed her confessor, who chastised her for her overly frequent communions and excessive mortifications but allowed her to continue under María Josefa’s direction. María Luisa then decided to consult a Franciscan, but María Josefa tried to stop her with the striking argument that “the regimen of the Franciscans was very different from that of the Carmelites.”68 Unfortunately, the transcript does not specify what those differences in regimen might have been, but the statement does confirm that contemporaries recognized differences among the orders’ practices. These differences were apparent to María Josefa, but so, too, could she assume that María Luisa would understand her. These differences, however, did not make the orders’ programs incompatible. In fact, María Luisa sought out Franciscan confessors on multiple occasions while under María Josefa’s direction and then switched back to Carmelites soon afterward. These sorts of fickle loyalties to a single order undoubtedly contributed to the rivalries between the Franciscans and Carmelites. With the case of María Josefa, the Franciscans were quick to defend their privileges (the

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viaticum) and identity (stigmata), but the greatest danger lay in how the faithful viewed María Josefa. The actions of the Carmelites in front of her corpse and with her relics influenced people positively toward her, and in this relatively small city most people seem to have known of her, whatever their opinion. Even Fr. Lorenzo realized that María Josefa and her two Carmelite confessors were at the center of attention, and he testified to “the ignorance or malice of various persons who gossiped about all three.”69 If enough people viewed María Josefa as a Carmelite saint whose miraculous crucifix grew real hair rather than as an ilusa whose crucifix was a wooden figure with glued-on locks, then Toluca’s most important saint would have been a Carmelite saint. The Carmelites would have been the ones most closely associated with her and her intercessory powers. Their church would have held her relics, gained international prestige, and attracted people from near and far. The city’s civic identity would have had a distinctly Carmelite character. These high stakes explain the Franciscans’ tenacious efforts to ensure that her fame did not increase and that her story remained in Inquisition files rather than in published lives of saints.

dueling sermons At the Franciscans’ annual celebration of their patriarch on October 4, 1792, one of their own, Fr. Manuel González, gave a sermon that included more than the usual glorification of Francis and his friar sons. In front of a multitude of residents, including the Carmelite community, he expounded on the place of the Carmelite scapular in achieving salvation (see Figure 7).70 He instructed his listeners, Do not think that this habit, nor any other is certain signal of predestination: not even the sacred sacraments of Our Holy Church enjoy such a privilege; inasmuch as many of those who receive these [sacraments] are condemned forever because they have died in mortal sin, not even the most privileged Holy Apostles obtained so singular a prerogative, when you do not ignore the condemnation of the damned Judas. And so to say this or that habit, that scapular . . . are sure signals of predestination is an error with a note of insolence worthy of the greatest reprehension.71

He later explained he covered this topic because the Carmelites preached each year at the fiesta of Our Lady of Carmen that the scapular is a sign of predestination and because many people believed them “without anyone being able to eliminate the ignorance that they who live wearing the Holy Scapular of Our Lady of Carmen would certainly be saved.”72

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According to Carmelites, the sermon contained even worse than what Fr. Manuel admitted. The prior, Fr. Joseph de la Navidad, wrote to the Holy Office complaining that Fr. Manuel had also questioned the origins of the scapular and its privileges with statements such as, “When did the virgin bring this rag from heaven? Their preachings about the scapular are illusions that they use as a whip. An edict ordered the removal and rescission of the Saturday privilege.”73 Although these statements were not included in the text of the sermon given to the censors, so may or may not have been spoken, the sermon was perceived as denigrating the power of the scapular and the Carmelite friars who promoted it. Toluca’s juez eclesiástico and comisario for the Inquisition, Br. Manuel José Gil, attended the sermon and afterward reported to his superiors in Mexico City that he found the Carmelites’ outrage understandable because Fr. Manuel had expressed himself in “a manner so irregular and extravagant.”74 Never, Br. Manuel noted, had he heard anything about predestination in the many Carmelite sermons he attended, and, in fact, the Carmelites were very careful to explain that the scapular was not a sign of predestination but was intended to help one live and die in conformity with God. Rather than accuse the entire Franciscan community, however, Br. Ma­ nuel deliberately placed the blame solely on the shoulders of Fr. Manuel, noting that other Franciscans thought he had behaved badly and that he had had problems with the Carmelites since an unspecified “certain business.” Nor did Br. Manuel think that the sermon was directed at the Carmelite order in general but was “with the intention to embarrass the prior and other Carmelite friars who were present.” The Carmelite prior, Fr.  ­Joseph, seems to have made a similar assessment, since his denunciation targeted Fr. Manuel personally. In addition to the claims about the sermon, for example, Fr. Joseph accused the Franciscan of celebrating Mass with such movements of his body and flapping of arms that it seemed more like inappropriate dance than respectful worship. Some people, Fr. Joseph continued, even called it the “Mass of the dance.” The prior also noted that Fr. Manuel’s ranting and satires were not limited to the pulpit—he included them in daily conversation. Finally, he charged Fr. Manuel with having an inappropriate relation with a woman he confessed. The Holy Office seems to have taken only minimal interest in the case until the following July when one Fr. Alonso sought some retribution with a sermon at his order’s fiesta of Our Lady of Carmen. Br. Manuel explained in a letter to the Holy Office that although Fr. Alonso used no direct expressions, he had indirectly criticized the Franciscans, especially Fr. Manuel. The second part of the sermon was what seems to have caused the uproar, focusing on the authorities and doctors of the church

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who sanctioned the scapular and calling those who opposed it “enemies of the truth, of the glories of Carmen.” Fr. Manuel, who was present at the sermon along with the rest of the Franciscan community, reacted with what the juez eclesiástico called “inappropriate demonstrations” that caused irreverence to the Holy Sacrament and scandal to the many people in attendance. If this dispute had once been limited to complaints about one less-than-circumspect friar, it no longer was. Br. Manuel’s letter concluded with a statement about the rising tensions between the two communities. Although he was taking every measure in his power to restore peace, these were not enough “to put out the ardor of a fire that if not suffocated in time, could increase so much that it would be the ruin of this Christian pueblo.”75 A month or so after Fr. Alonso’s sermon, Br. Manuel collected statements from some men in attendance, revealing how it was received. Another diocesan priest, Br. Don Pedro Aguado, said he recognized it as a satire against Fr. Manuel and that it called the Franciscans “most ignorant” and “animated by a spirit of passion.” He also was persuaded that the purpose of the sermon was “to vindicate the honor of the Carmelite Religion.” On the other hand, Br. Rafael López de Salazar, who was not from Toluca, said that although he now realized the Carmelite sermon was a satire, he did not at the time, a statement that suggests something of the degree of local context needed to understand what was being said between the lines. The heads of both the Carmelite and Franciscan convents admitted the seriousness of the troubles and tried to defend themselves and their communities. Fr. Joseph wrote that despite the “great discords that exist in this city between the two sacred communities,” the Carmelites had always sought a good and harmonious correspondence with Franciscans. He had a good relationship with the Franciscan guardian and had never encouraged or approved that his friars preach anything like what was now in front of the Holy Office. It was nothing more than the actions of one or two individuals. The Franciscan guardian, Fr. Antonio Murillo, refuted claims that any of his friars had used satires or invectives against Carmelite friars, and as proof, he offered the testimonies of two men, each of whom denied having heard the Franciscans satirize the Carmelites. The men’s credibility as witnesses was, however, undermined when one admitted he had not attended the sermon and the other certified that he had heard nothing since November (the Franciscan sermon was in October). Undaunted, Fr. Antonio blamed the disturbances on the “little affection of the Reverend Padre Carmelites for my community.” The statements of these two friars also made clear that this problem was something endemic to Toluca. Both described the disputes as between

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these two particular communities, and Fr. Joseph specifically referred to the problems in “this city.” The Holy Office must have concurred because it responded by ordering the two preachers, Fr. Manuel and Fr. Alonso, removed from Toluca. It also ordered that they be sent to communities where there was no convent of the other order, in effect removing them from the issues that provoked the troubles. This sentence provided a dilemma for the Carmelites. The provincial, Fr. Francisco de San Cirilo, replied to the Inquisitors that nearly everywhere the Carmelites had a convent, so, too, did the Franciscans. The only exceptions, he protested, were Orizaba and Oaxaca, whose hot climates would be too much for Fr. Alonso. He had thus ordered Alonso to the Mexico City convent because the purpose of the mandate was “to separate him from Franciscans, not as Franciscans, but as Franciscans of Toluca, who always have been in opposition to the Carmelites.”76 Fr. Francisco de San Cirilo’s statement identifying the conflict as with the Franciscans of Toluca begs the question of why the scapular became a point of contention when and where it did. Franciscan and Carmelite scholars from around the globe actively participated in long-standing theological debates over the scapular but, for the most part, in more circumspect venues. Part of the explanation for why the debates went public in Toluca lies in the presence of colleges at each order’s convent. Scholars teaching young, perhaps idealistic priests their order’s version of theology may have created a heightened sense of Ordenspatriotismus and ignited issues that might only have smoldered elsewhere. Combined with Toluca’s highly charged atmosphere in which the two adjacent convents were competing for resources and primacy, a highly valued tool in the quest for salvation like the scapular and its sabatine privilege became a battleground in the fight for people’s allegiance.

a planned procession Late in 1801 two separate letters were sent to the offices of the archbishop and the Inquisition in Mexico City complaining that the Carmelites of Toluca were planning a public procession that was going to cause great scandal throughout the city. The procession, claimed the author, was to include some strange innovations that should not be mixed with acts of religion. Specifically, the Carmelites were going to install a new image of Mary of the Immaculate Conception in their church and, as part of the ceremony, intended to send it on a procession. Rather than wear her traditional blue and white, this image of Mary was to be dressed like Our Lady of Carmen, the same outfit that would be worn by the fourteen

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or fifteen young girls who accompanied her. Also processing would be people dressed as angels, each one on horseback and carrying the Carmelite standard. This “risky” and “seditious” act, the letter explained, was motivated in part by the Carmelites’ “indiscreet zealousness” and in part by a desire to inconvenience Franciscans. Although the Holy Office did not usually act upon anonymous denunciations like this one, it apparently considered the matter dangerous enough to investigate.77 Both it and the archbishop’s office sent instructions to Br. Manuel José Gil, who was still the city’s juez eclesiástico and comisario. In his capacity as comisario, he interviewed the Carmelite prior, Fr. Francisco de Jesús María y Joseph, the same friar who only a few years before had written the queen about Mary Immaculate’s ability to solve the problems in France and unify the Catholic world. In response to Br. Manuel’s questions, Fr. Francisco readily admitted that he and his friars intended to install a new image of Mary of the Immaculate Conception on December 15, the last day of her octave. They were also planning a procession, but Fr. Francisco was quick to point out that they intended nothing irregular or disorderly, and he categorically denied that Mary would wear Carmelite dress or that angels would carry the Carmelite standard, protesting that he and his friars had never even thought of such things. He also denied that angels would ride on horseback but did confess that one of his friars had suggested it. Furthermore, he admitted that the most curious of these accusations was true: young girls were going to be dressed as Mary. Fr. Francisco tried to explain that these girls were not going to be there as Mary but only in signification of her, comparing this to dialogues or plays in which people represented saints, such as Mary or Joseph in a nativity. He insisted that he did not want “the public to understand that they were the Immaculate Conception, only that there would be a relation of the same Mystery that is celebrated and is the principal object of the festivity.”78 After hearing out Fr. Francisco, Br. Manuel reported back to the Holy Office that he had seen the Carmelites’ new image of Mary and that there was nothing about it that was irregular. On the other hand, the idea of girls dressed as Mary did not seem particularly appropriate, and, in his capacity as juez eclesiástico, he was not going to grant a license for the procession to take place as planned. The Carmelites’ planned procession, even as described by Fr. Francisco, put a distinctively Carmelite spin on how they wanted the public to understand the mystery of the Immaculate Conception. All those images of Mary—the one to be installed in the church plus the living girls—would be in a procession with Carmelite friars and tertiaries wearing the Carmelite habit. Even if there would be no angels carrying Carmelite standards, those standards would still be there. The procession as planned

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may also have incorporated more elements of the anonymous letter than Fr. Francisco admitted, since its author unquestionably knew about two key and controversial elements of the Carmelites’ plans: the young girls in costume and the angels on horseback. If the additional elements of placing Mary in Carmelite dress and having heavenly beings carrying the Carmelite standard next to her had been incorporated, the Carmelite connection to Mary would have been even more dramatic. Whatever the form, this was a case of the Carmelites trying to assert themselves as the order most closely associated with the powers of Mary and her Immaculate Conception. In all correspondence regarding the procession, there is only one reference to the Franciscans, yet within the context of Franciscan-Carmelite relations, especially in Toluca, this was clearly a case of Carmelites trying to steal the Franciscans’ thunder. The Franciscans had a special connection to the Immaculate Conception. It had originally been “their” image of Mary, and they still considered themselves her primary defenders. Furthermore, with their important shrine at nearby Tecaxic, Franciscans had long-standing claims to a special local Marian connection. If the anonymous letter to the Holy Office was not from a Franciscan or someone closely connected to the order, it would be surprising. The statement that the procession was meant to inconvenience the Franciscans offers additional evidence. Franciscans, and not just in Toluca, celebrated the fiesta of Mary’s Immaculate Conception with great pomp, and one of the few sermons from Toluca published in the eighteenth century was from the Franciscans’ 1784 fiesta to her. To Franciscans, a lavish Carmelite procession during one of the Franciscans’ most important celebrations would have been an affront, not just an inconvenience.

conclusion Given Toluca’s religious landscape, it should not be surprising that the Franciscans and Carmelites were the main contestants in interorder rivalries. Mercedarians and juaninos were too far removed from most people’s daily routines, leaving the other two orders to compete over the faithful. The Franciscans considered themselves the locus of toluqueño spiritual life, but the Carmelites did not buy into this vision. Fr. Bartolomé may have best encapsulated the Carmelite outlook in his 1704 letter when he refused to acknowledge the Franciscan guardian as superior prelate and emphasized the equality of the orders. These dissenting views lay at the heart of the friction in Toluca. Indeed, in each of the preceding cases, Franciscans were the ones whose complaints instigated the proceedings,

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but they did so each time because of an innovation on the part of the Carmelites. When the Carmelites founded their convent, Franciscans disliked being denied a prominent role in the ceremony. When the Carmelites disregarded the Franciscan guardian’s mandate not to bring their entire community to Don Joseph Aguado Chacón’s burial, the guardian tried to have the Carmelite prior removed from office. When the Carmelites established a third order, Franciscans strove to prevent their members from joining. When some Carmelites promoted María Josefa’s saintliness, Franciscans pointed out their risky actions to the Inquisition. In response to the Carmelites’ promotion of the scapular, a Franciscan preacher took the offensive on one of his order’s most important fiestas. Finally, when the Carmelites planned a procession in honor of Mary of the Immaculate Conception, the Franciscans opposed this novel event that associated their Marian advocation with a rival order. The Franciscans’ hard-line defense of their privileges was one of the order’s defining characteristics, but conflict between them and the Carmelites took a more virulent form here than in the other dozen cities in New Spain where both orders had convents. The strife, as the Carmelite provincial pointed out, was not with Franciscans but with the Franciscans of Toluca. Cities like Mexico City, Puebla, and Guadalajara were large enough to reduce contact between the two orders, and more omnipresent diocesan authority may also have put a check on the sorts of actions that invited conflict. Then there were places like Salvatierra or Atlixco that were not important enough in the eighteenth century to warrant the energy and resources that the orders put into their Toluca convents. The Carmelite house was one of the most populated in the province. The Franciscan convent was one of the two doctrinas in the Archbishopric of Mexico that the Franciscans kept after the midcentury secularizations. Smaller convents with fewer priests, lay organizations, and opportunities for ostentatious displays simply had less fuel for major conflagrations. Although local conditions can go a long way to explain the rivalry, they do not explain the clustering of the cases in the last decades of the century, which was related to the changing status of mendicant orders in New Spain. Midcentury Bourbon reforms were not kind to the Franciscans, especially in their Mexico Province, reducing their numbers and taking away most doctrinas and, with them, a major source of income. On the other hand, Carmelites managed to keep many of their haciendas and sources of wealth and were favored with royal support that allowed them to increase the number of friars entering the order. This shifting balance of power, in which one order was struggling to retain its remaining privileges and the other was enjoying the benefits of its unique status, affected their relations. By the end of the eighteenth century, the climate of

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the 1710s and 1720s that had produced verses and published sermons so admiring of the other order had been replaced by one of increased wariness, tension, and, perhaps, complaints even less loving. The battle for spiritual control of Toluca illustrates the orders’ influences on religious practice and civic identity. Their symbols and devotions appeared throughout the city, in the habits worn by third-order members, in the stations of the cross that ran between the Franciscans’ church and the Cerro de Calvario, and in a procession with Carmelite standards. Men and women wore Carmelite scapulars to the aggravation of Fr. Manuel González; Hermenegilda Bermúdes renounced her membership in the Carmelite Third Order out of devotion to Saint Francis; José Piña and María de Nava y Mota carefully guarded a pair of shoes because Carmelite friars had treated them with reverence. People filed into the Franciscans’ church on their patriarch’s feast day and then did the same at the Carmelites’ celebration of Our Lady of Carmen. Although friars may have fought to have their order’s traditions eclipse their rivals’, Toluca’s residents were decidedly more flexible about their ways of approaching the sacred.79 Members of the Franciscan Third Order attended Holy Week events in the Carmelites’ church; Doña Anna Ximenes had a Carmelite confessor but joined the Franciscan Third Order; and María Luisa and María Josefa rotated between confessors from two orders. Nor did anyone remark on the fluidity of toluqueños’ religious practices as unusual. As people moved back and forth between orders’ churches and devotions, they carved out a particular religious identity for the city, one steeped in those orders’ institutes. The combination of orders and their saints, pious practices, and ritual calendars helped define local religion and distinguished one city’s urban culture from another’s.

Conclusion One might think a priori that each of the Orders had its own methods and policies, quite distinct from the others . . . [but] when one judges things with a little perspective and tries to take a broad view of [the orders’ tendencies and concepts], . . . then they are seen to be nothing more than the unity lying beneath the surface of a common task. —Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico

; Ricard’s insight that sixteenth-century mendicants were bonded in the pursuit of a common task could easily be extended to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Friars, it turns out, did not meekly retire to their convents after the end of their golden age of missions but took on new endeavors. For all the press that orders have received for their role in the initial phase of spiritual and cultural encounters, once commonly known as the spiritual conquest of Mexico, they had a much less well-known but equally crucial role in the ensuing phase that might well be called, if we were to resurrect the spirit of Ricard’s terminology, the spiritual consolidation of Mexico. The growth of cities provided new theaters for the orders’ work, and the orders provided cities with prestige and services. The orders were thus born of, and major contributors to, New Spain’s urbanization. This urbanization program began in earnest with the shift in the Franciscans’, Dominicans’, and Augustinians’ expansion strategies from doctrinas to cities and with the arrival of Mercedarians, Discalced Carmelites, and Discalced Franciscans. These changes ushered in an era of growth and prosperity that lasted throughout a long seventeenth century, from the 1570s until the 1730s. Not only did mendicants expand (albeit in fits and starts) to all of New Spain’s cities, and not only did populations of friars increase, but the orders’ presence reached more deeply into urban life. As convents accumulated endowments and chaplaincies, they celebrated more masses and sermons. They added new lay organi-

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zations and hosted additional feast days with the possibility of earning indulgences. More friars manned confessional booths, Franciscans started going out on revivalist missions, Mercedarians collected more alms for captives, and all the orders devoted more resources to educational projects. The strength of the orders’ positions in cities, combined with their proximity to one another, also meant that interorder disputes took center stage during this time. The orders publicly debated their relative status in published histories, seating arrangements, and procession sequences, and they fought to keep others from encroaching on their territories. ­Dominicans and especially Franciscans squared off over the nature of Mary’s conception, Carmelites took an unpopular position in their diehard support of Bishop Palafox, and Franciscans attempted to defend the singularity of their patriarch’s defining characteristic. Such disputes did not disappear in the eighteenth century, but the orders grew more selective in how aggressively they pursued them. Orders set aside many of their quarrels with each other to concentrate their resources on more pressing threats when, in the 1730s, new levels of state intervention sought to transform mendicants’ place in society. The secularization of doctrinas in the 1750s may be the best known of these reforms, but they began two decades earlier when the crown limited the number of new novices who could enter the orders and, consequently, populations of friars decreased. Despite the complaints of some friars, the goal behind these reforms was not the orders’ destruction; the reforms instead sought to reduce the orders’ size, wealth, and independence, subjecting them to greater state and ordinary authority and making sure they were not a financial burden to society. In fact, the state continued to support the orders in select ways. It allowed new convents for projects it viewed as useful: Mercedarian alms collection, Franciscan missions and grammar schools, and Carmelite core ministries. It even allowed the financially selfsufficient Carmelites to increase the number of friars in their province. Mendicants, in these views, could and should be useful to society by doing what they were supposed to be doing and doing it well, which was what the state-sponsored inspections sought to ensure. Mendicants’ urban occupations also occasioned a different set of relations with diocesan clergy than did their work in doctrinas. Bishops and parish priests requested that mendicants help with the Lenten rush of confession and communion, bring their missions to town, offer sermons in parish churches, and participate in public processions. Points of debate between these two branches of the church centered not on whether mendicants should engage in pastoral work but on diocesan clergy’s rights to oversee that work. Attempts to increase diocesan oversight proliferated during the mid-eighteenth century when reformist bishops took the offensive, but they found they could do

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little without state backing. But royal support waned, and without it, conflict abated during the final years of the colonial period. Despite royal officials’ and reformist bishops’ efforts to curtail mendicant independence, orders remained lively institutions that did not lose their popularity with the laity. People continued to enter their lay organizations, seek out their indulgences, and visit their churches. Through the end of the eighteenth century, the Carmelites’ ability to fill their novitiates also demonstrates that orders with enough financial resources to support their friars still offered an attractive career path. David Brading has argued that the church retained its vitality through the 1770s, but, at least in the case of the mendicant orders, this seems to be cutting things off too early.1 In fact, it was not until the early nineteenth century, with the regional effects of the insurgency and the political instability and economic difficulties after independence, that the orders’ struggles intensified. Provincial censuses from the 1820s and 1830s demonstrate that populations had fallen to fractions of their late eighteenth-century numbers. Friars lamented the deplorable state of their convents, and inventories of sacristies included notations that silver items had been sold to pay for food.2 By the time of the orders’ nineteenth-century suppression at the hands of Benito Juárez, there was not much structure left to dismantle.3

mendicants and urban culture The mendicants’ move to urban occupations represented a return to their roots in the cities of Europe, but friars did not simply transplant a ­European project onto American soil. They adapted their institutes to New Spain, adjusting traditional functions to new contexts and demands, including work with native populations. Especially during the first years of their tenure in New Spain, orders debated exactly how they should go about balancing these competing demands. By the early seventeenth century, each order had established the basic contours of an institute that, with only some adjustments, remained in place for the remainder of the colonial period. These institutes reveal some of the variations in Catholicism that developed as official doctrine was put into practice. Since its origins, the Franciscan order had considered working among the laity more important than intellectual pursuits, but New Spain’s Observant branch was particularly inclined toward active ministries, having arrived with the directive to “hurry down” to the active life. Indians figured prominently in its institute, and it ran more urban doctrinas than the other orders. Because of their institute’s emphasis on poverty, Franciscans were not allowed to own properties so relied more heavily upon

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alms and payments for services than other orders. The eighteenth-century secularization of doctrinas thus meant major losses of income and important career paths. The Discalced branch of the order followed a different path, passing up doctrinas in favor of the reclusion, prayers, and commitment to contemplative duties that were supposed to make its prayers so effective and its friars such good role models. These two branches of Franciscans, along with the order’s missionary colleges, were special promoters of devotions to Francis, Mary of the Immaculate Conception, and the Passion of Christ, and no order did more to encourage people to follow the via crucis. Franciscans, especially the powerful Observants, were particularly aggressive in defending what they saw as their special rights and privileges. They resisted new rules favoring secular clergy, shielded their territories from incursions of other orders, protected the uniqueness of Francis’s stigmata, and fought to keep members of their third order from joining other third orders. Like Observant Franciscans, Dominicans accentuated active over contemplative duties, but these active duties were more likely to include intellectual pursuits. Founded as a priestly order and dedicated to preaching, Dominicans were known for their important schools (especially in Oaxaca and Puebla) and were the most influential order at the Royal University. The order was also closely connected to the Inquisition. ­Friars frequently served as censors, and the Mexico City convent, located across the street from the Holy Office, was the site of Inquisition fiestas and autos-da-fé. These were the sorts of activities done in political and administrative centers, and the order’s preference to concentrate resources in these places, especially in Mexico City, Puebla, and Oaxaca City, translated into the smallest number of urban convents among New Spain’s mendicant orders. Not surprisingly, many of the order’s conflicts with other branches of the church proved to be intensely theological, such as those over Mary’s Immaculate Conception or the role of probabilism in confession. This is not to say that the order slighted more humble pursuits. The Dominicans’ institute of combating heresy translated into an emphasis on preaching to the laity, and friars took on missions in the Sierra Gorda during the late seventeenth century and in the northern territories after the expulsion of the Jesuits. In this sort of work, friars promoted devotions to Dominic, Thomas Aquinas, and Our Lady of the Rosary, and their espousal of the benefits of praying the rosary paralleled the Franciscans’ relationship with the way of the cross. Augustinians took a less proprietary approach to their devotional program than Franciscans or Dominicans did. The order’s patriarch, Augustine, was a doctor of the church and had far wider associations than just his namesake organization. In addition, Augustinian Marian devo-

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tion in New Spain favored local images, such as Our Lady of Succor in ­Valladolid, rather than one specific advocation of Mary. The order, thanks to its eremitical origins, also put a heavier emphasis on contemplative duties than Observant Franciscans or Dominicans did. Augustinians considered themselves a learned order, following in the footsteps of their brother Alonso de la Veracruz, renowned scholar and founder of Mexico City’s Royal University. An intellectual program steeped in humanism helped distinguish the order, especially from Dominicans, in its academic pursuits and evangelization methods. Finally, although Augustinians were quite willing to defend their privileges and most notably took on the Discalced Franciscans’ place in processions, they were the order least likely to become involved in conflicts. The Discalced Carmelites did the most to set themselves apart from other orders. They were the only order that did not administer doctrinas somewhere in Spanish territories, and they could make no claims to having a role in the spiritual conquest of Mexico. They also put the most emphasis on the contemplative elements of their institute and, as a result, possessed special exemptions from participating in public functions like Corpus. In line with this strategy, their ministries outside the convent focused on preaching, confessing, and celebrating masses, and friars steered clear of activities such as collecting alms for captives or taking positions at the university. These traits, along with their reputation for obedience to the crown and their generally good relationships with diocesan clergy, sometimes isolated them from their brethren, and their relations with other orders, especially Franciscans, were frequently contentious. Carmelites were often absent from mendicants’ collective petitions or projects, collected alms for Bishop Palafox’s canonization, and, in Toluca, aggressively challenged the Franciscans for the loyalty of the faithful. Even their devotions tended to be controversial. Outsiders, the Jesuits in particular, denied that Elias was their founder; many churchmen considered Teresa’s mysticism a dangerous model; and Carmelite teachings on the Saturday privilege of their scapular drew heavy criticism. The order that most significantly transformed its institute to the circumstances of New Spain was the Mercedarians. Mercedarians were best known for a special fourth vow to redeem Christian captives, but because New Spain’s friars could not participate directly in ransoming expeditions to North Africa, the Mexico Province instead focused on collecting alms for those expeditions. Because the province was the only Mercedarian province in the Americas that did not administer doctrinas, in place of an identity closely tied to evangelization it advanced a sort of jack-ofall-trades identity with a special emphasis on education. In addition to its theological colleges, the province established in many of its convents

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grammar schools for local youth, an activity that, like collecting alms, was usually done by lay brothers. The combination of having few priests in residence and many of their houses on the outskirts of town sometimes left Mercedarians with peripheral roles in their communities. Mercedarians promoted devotions to Our Lady of Mercy and her scapular, but they never came close to matching the popularity of Our Lady of Carmen and her scapular. The order’s relationships with other orders were never particularly contentious, perhaps because their unique and sometimes marginal status made for fewer points of conflict. Equally important to what made the orders unique is what they shared: Ricard’s unity beneath the surface. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they continued to maintain a collective identity as mendicants, primarily based on their shared vows, emphasis on learning, and combination of contemplative and active, priestly ministries. They differed from secular priests and Oratorians in their vows, from hospital orders in their ministries, and from Jesuits in their balancing of active and contemplative services. All mendicant orders provided the same core services—preaching, offering confession, celebrating Mass, praying, and promoting piety—that were geared toward helping people earn the ultimate reward of heaven. As the Dominican chronicler Mén­ dez had informed his listeners and as the Franciscan preacher Joseph Francisco de Rocha had reminded his, even if the orders walked along different paths, they all sought to end up in the same place. As orders implemented these institutes, they molded people’s beliefs and practices. The images in mendicant churches, the sermons given from their pulpits, the experiences in their confessionals, the printed devotional images distributed at fiestas, and the communal pious exercises organized by their friars shaped how people experienced Catholicism. Which orders were located in a city affected what school local boys attended, what they learned there, and how much, if anything, those boys’ parents contributed in alms for Christian captives. A city’s protectors and advocates in heaven—those who could be called upon in case of earthquake, drought, or other crisis—were often members of local mendicant families. Whether people believed that wearing the Carmelite scapular could free them from purgatory the Saturday after their death, that Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin, or that Bishop Palafox or María Josefa de la Peña was a saint hinged in large part on what versions of Catholicism they learned. Which orders were present—and most influential—in a city thus mattered deeply to the formation of its religious culture. Indeed, institutions and their institutional culture helped define a city’s particular character. Cities, after all, were not just physical places or networks of individuals and their economic interests. New Spain’s mendicant ­orders

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certainly contributed to these aspects of urban life with their church complexes, procession routes, and investments, but their most important contributions were to a city’s civitas. The orders’ cultural contributions helped build an empire of Catholic towns.

mendicants and global catholicism The early modern Catholic Church was one of the world’s first global organizations, but few of its institutions were explicitly so. Most of its parishes, sees, cathedral chapters, and monasteries were rooted in localities and had few, if any, direct connections to other parts of the globe. The formation of mendicant orders in the thirteenth century had created a new organizational model where workers were mobile and where work across wide territories was linked. In the ensuing centuries, as Europeans extended the boundaries of their world, mendicants and their rivals, the Jesuits, were often among the first to arrive in the new lands. Historians have been turning their attention to these global projects of late, and rightly so, as scholars such as John O’Malley and Robert Bireley have made convincing cases for including Catholicism’s extension around the globe as one of the defining features of the early modern era. Missions were an important step in this expansionary process, but they were just the first one, and the case of New Spain’s mendicants offers an important example of how a missionary program evolved into an established church presence.4 Better recognition that Catholicism outside Europe was not synonymous with missionary projects offers new opportunities for integrating these areas into explanations of the nature of early modern Catholicism. Treatments of places such as the Americas as inherently different, where issues and church structures were not easily reconciled with those in Europe, highlights their exceptionalism at the expense of how much they shared. For example, one recent overview of early modern Catholicism was organized thematically around topics such as education, the new orders, and popular piety in Europe, whereas Catholicism outside Europe was parceled off in a separate chapter on evangelization.5 Such approaches miss out on opportunities for comparison—for instance, populations of mendicant orders in both Spain and New Spain peaked in the first half of the eighteenth century—and ignore the very connections needed to understand the globalism that scholars are trying to explain.6 Mendicant orders, as organizations that bridged multiple continents, can be particularly useful in making connections. In the case of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New Spain, few of these links were direct because once orders established independent provinces, institutional ties

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to Europe weakened. Even in Europe, provinces enjoyed a great deal of autonomy, and the distance and difficulty of travel to the Americas only reinforced that independence. European heads of the orders recognized their lack of control over creole provinces, but their attempted solutions, inspectors and officials such as the Franciscan comisario general, typically found themselves with less real authority than their positions promised. Furthermore, most friars spent their careers assigned to houses within the province where they were trained, so once American provinces opened their own novitiates, the strength of direct, personal ties to Europe also waned.7 Stronger than these institutional and personal links were the connections maintained through corporate identities, especially through the ­orders’ institutes. Institutes linked friars across time and space, and even though the orders adapted their institutes to the circumstances of particular locations, those institutes retained their defining characteristics, so that a Franciscan was a Franciscan anywhere in the world. Mercedarians in New Spain, for example, may not have been able to go on ransoming missions, but the redemption of captives remained central to their institute through the collection of alms. Similarly, whatever other local devotions Dominicans celebrated in their various churches, feast days of Dominic and Our Lady of the Rosary were always among the most important. In other words, some of the strongest connections across distance were made and maintained through shared identity and purpose. These institutes provide an important context for understanding events as something more than local case studies. As an illustration, turn once again to that procession planned by the Discalced Carmelites in 1801 Toluca. It was grounded in a highly charged rivalry between Carmelites and Franciscans that was unique to Toluca but also in those orders’ divergent trajectories in late eighteenth-century New Spain. One of the advocations of Mary that prompted this controversy, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, was the patroness of the Spanish monarchy and therefore had a particular place in the Hispanic world. She and Our Lady of Carmen were also identified with Franciscans and Carmelites and their respective institutes throughout the world. All these links came together to define this procession that—like mendicants, the church in New Spain and New Spain more generally—is best understood as part of a connected early modern world.

Reference Matter

Abbreviations

names of archives AGI AGN Bienes CRS INQ IV RCD RCO RO AHAM AHCM AHPCD AHPFM AHPSEM APPAM Banc MM Benson AMJC GGC BFB

Archivo General de las Indias, Seville Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City Bienes Nacionales Clero Regular y Secular Inquisición Indiferente Virreinal Reales Cédulas Duplicados Reales Cédulas Originales Reales Órdenes Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado de México, Mexico City Archivo Histórico de la Casa de Morelos, Morelia Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de San Alberto de los Carmelitas Descalzos, Mexico City Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Michoacán, Celaya, Guanajuato Archivo Histórico de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México, Mexico City Archivo Provincial, Provincia Agustiniana de San Nicolás de Tolentino de Michoacán, Mexico City Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley Mexican Manuscripts Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at Austin Antonio Margil de Jesús Collection Genaro García Collection Biblioteca Francisco Burgoa, Oaxaca

Abbreviations

278 BN AF FR BNAH FF GO Guzmán Lira MP Sueltos-1 Sueltos-2 BNM Carso JCB Medina Coll. Ochoa

Pérez

Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico City Archivo Franciscano Fondo Reservado Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City Fondo Franciscano Colección Federico Gómez de Orozco Colección de Eulalia Guzmán Fondo Vicente Lira Colección Manuel Porrúa Papeles Sueltos—1a Serie Papeles Sueltos—2a Serie Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Carso, Mexico City John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island Medina Microfilm Collection, Rockefeller Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island Miguel V. Ochoa, “Documentos Mercedarios siglos XVI, XVII, XVIII, y XIX,” Biblioteca del convento de México, Mexico City Pedro Nolasco Pérez, “Historia de la Orden de la Merced de México” (transcripts of documents from Archivo General de las Indias), Biblioteca del convento de México, Mexico City

archival terms caja cap. (capítulo) carp. (carpeta; plural, carps.) doc. (documento) exp. (expediente; plural, exps.) f. (foja; plural, ff.) fondo leg. (legajo) libro mfilm n.p. s.f. (sin fecha) siglo t. (tomo) v (verso)

box chapter folder or file document dossier or record folio collection dossier book microfilm no publisher no date century volume back

Notes

introduction 1.  Díaz, Conquest of New Spain, p. 47. 2.  Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World. The phrase “Catholic empire of towns” is obviously indebted to Kagan’s phrase “empire of towns.” 3.  Hernán Pérez de Oliva quoted in Elliott, Old World and the New, p. 15. 4.  The classic work on New Spain’s mendicants, Robert Ricard’s Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, followed the footsteps of colonial mendicant authors by firmly establishing the idea of a sixteenth-century golden age and its end around 1570. For an example of how the idea of mendicant decline has found its way into modern histories, see Meier, “The Religious Orders in Latin America,” who notes that “in the course of the seventeenth century the orders lost something of their earlier significance” (p. 379). 5.  When John Patrick Donnelly surveyed the scholarship on early modern male religious orders, he devoted almost his entire essay to the Jesuits because “their impact on the age was greater. . . . This was their golden age, comparable to that of the mendicants in the thirteenth century.” Donnelly does not argue that mendicants were irrelevant so much as that they were not as important as the Jesuits: “Contrary to a widespread assumption, the older forms of religious life, particularly the mendicants, remained the most popular throughout the Counter Reformation.” Donnelly, “Religious Orders of Men,” pp. 147–162. 6.  Examples of general overviews include Southern, Making of the Middle Ages; and Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism. 7.  Bireley, Refashioning Catholicism; and Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal. 8.  Morse, “The Heritage of Latin Americans.” Woodrow Borah took a somewhat different position in a 1979 article in which he emphasized the importance of demographic cycles over institutional periodization, but he, too, found the Bourbon reforms, Independence, and especially the Conquest to be significant points of discontinuity. Borah, “Discontinuity and Continuity,” pp. 1–25. For a recent overview of chronologies and periodizations, see Taylor, “Mesoamerican Chronology.” 9.  Ricard, Spiritual Conquest, pp. 2–3. 10.  Alberro, El águila y la cruz, pp. 80, 82.

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11.  Larkin, The Very Nature of God, pp. 4–7. 12.  Brading, Church and State, p. 18; Taylor, “Mesoamerican Chronology”; von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers; Jaffary, False Mystics. 13.  Oscar Mazín Gómez’s study of Michoacán under Bishop Pedro Anselmo Sánchez de Tagle presented the secularization of doctrinas as part of a broader conflict between church and state, and Francisco Canterla and Martín de Tovar gauged Dominicans’ declining standing in eighteenth-century Oaxaca in terms of their conflicts with bishops and diocesan clergy. Mazín Gómez, Entre dos majestades; Canterla and de Tovar, La iglesia de Oaxaca. 14.  Nancy Farriss, Crown and Clergy; Zahino Peñafort, Iglesia y sociedad en México. 15.  Brading, The First America, pp. 492–513; Voekel, Alone before God; Chowning, “Convent Reform,” especially pp. 14–19, 27–31; Larkin, “Baroque and Reformed Catholicism.” 16.  Some of the authors’ clearest statements on the continuing strength of baroque Catholicism can be found in Larkin, The Very Nature of God, pp. 11–12; Voekel, Alone before God, pp. 1, 14; and O’Hara, A Flock Divided, p. 142. 17.  Rosenwein and Little, “Social Meaning,” pp. 4–32; Lawrence, The Friars, chap. 13, “The Friars.” 18.  Short, Poverty and Joy. 19.  The Discalced Franciscans existed as a group within the Franciscan order for some time before gaining their institutional independence. See Moorman, History of the Franciscan Order. 20.  “Dominicans,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia. 21.  The early history of the order can be found in Hinnebusch, History of the Dominican Order; and Woods, Mysticism and Prophecy. 22.  Saak, High Way to Heaven; and Andrews, The Other Friars. 23.  Jotischky, The Carmelites and Antiquity. 24.  Taylor, Structures of Reform. 25.  Rea, Crónica, p. 375. 26.  Information in this paragraph is taken from Morales, Ethnic and Social Background; Rubial García, La plaza, el palacio y el convento; and Medina, El Carmelo Novohispano. Ramos Medina makes the point that Carmelite novices may have entered when they were older. 27.  The four minor orders are hostiario (ostiarius), lector (lector), exorcista (exorcist), and acólito (acolyte). The subdeacon’s responsibilities included standing to the left of the priest at Mass and presenting the bread and wine to be consecrated. Similarly, the deacon stood to the right of the priest, assisted with the consecration of the host, and, with special dispensation, could even administer the Eucharist. See Las ordenes sagradas. 28.  According to Alcalde’s superior, he “has not been ordained a priest in fourteen years and has had no inclination toward serving God. Other than his crass ignorance, why has he not earned [the title of] Maestro? Why does he not want to open a book? His conduct has strayed far from the correct path because of his repeated flights and continuous drunkenness.” Banc, MM 293, doc. 15, ff. 22–35.

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29.  Fr. Juan de la Anunciación, Avisos religiosos que a los descalzos de ­Nuestra Señora del Carmen (Madrid, 1689), p. 166. Cited in San Miguel, Obras, pp. 79–80. 30.  Such disputes were often public knowledge. For example, Thomas Gage tells of factional disputes that spilled out of the convent and into the streets during the Mercedarians’ chapter meetings: “knives were drawn, many wounded, the scandal and danger of murder so great that the Viceroy was fain to interpose his authority.” Gage, New Survey of the West-Indies, p. 129. 31.  Morales, Ethnic and Social Background, chap. 4. 32.  Luna Moreno, “Alternativa en el siglo XVIII,” pp. 343–371. 33.  As the name implies, hospital orders like the Bethlehemites and order of Saint John of God ran hospitals. 34.  Banc, MSS 96/95, “Entretenimiento de España,” 1778. 35.  Because this study is limited geographically to central New Spain, I have excluded urban convents outside this area even if they were part of provinces based in New Spain, such as the Augustinian convents in Havana and Guatemala. 36.  Pérez, t. III, “Ynstancia del Procurador General Fr. Fran.co de Orca, 1603,” pp. 159–160. 37.  APPAM, Libro B-0-05, f. 245.

chapter one 1.  van Oss, “Mendicant Expansion,” pp. 34–35. 2.  Borges Morán, El envío de misiones a América. 3.  Ángeles, “Orders Given to ‘the Twelve,’” p. 49. 4.  The Franciscan chronicler Pedro Oroz explained that after these four houses, “the rest were built afterwards as the number of religious kept on growing.” The Oroz Codex, p. 260. 5.  Ulloa, Los predicadores divididos, pp. 106–111. 6.  The sixteenth-century expansion of mendicant orders is covered in Ricard, Spiritual Conquest, p. 73; van Oss, “Mendicant Expansion”; Vázquez Vázquez, Distribución geográfica; Gerhard, Guide. 7.  Morales, “Felipe II y órdenes religiosas.” 8.  Among the provisions of this cedula were that orders submit lists of all friars and their offices to bishops, friars obtain royal permission before traveling to Spain, and royal officials be informed before prelates took office or before a doctrinero was removed from his position. See Poole, Pedro Moya de Contreras, pp. 79–80. 9.  Llaguno, La personalidad jurídica del indio. 10.  “Carta del provincial Agustino Fray Agustín de Coruña al rey Don Felipe II . . . 10 julio 1561,” in Jaramillo Escutia, Monumenta histórica mexicana. 11.  The Council of Trent established that the local bishop’s license was necessary for a new regular foundation, a requirement confirmed at the Third Mexican Provincial Council. 12.  Just what constituted a convento was a particularly significant issue because its elected heads had the important privilege of voting at provincial chapter meetings. AGN RCD, vol. 42, exp. 311, ff. 259–264; AGN Jesuitas, III-9, exp. 2.

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13.  For example, the Observant Franciscans did not found a formal convento in Zamora until 1791, but the town’s third order provided alms that allowed two friars to live in an hospicio and minister to its members. AHPFM Provincia, General, Alfabética, caja 37, exp. 7. 14.  Couturier, The Silver King, pp. 28, 149. 15.  Altman, Transatlantic Ties, chap. 4; Espíritu Santo, Recuerdos históricos, chap. 4. 16.  BNAH Lira, vol. 13, “Segundo Tomo de los Capitulos Provinciales y Diffinitorios celebrados en esta provincia de P.e S. Alberto de los descalzos de N.S.a del Carmen desde el año de 1636.” 17.  AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Mercedarios, caja 283, exps. 58, 59. 18.  Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, p. 247. 19.  The patterns discussed here were complicated by the complexities of establishing the dates of foundations. Because so many steps were involved in these foundations, the process could be quite lengthy. For example, the Carmelites’ General Definitory in Spain approved a license for a foundation in Orizaba in 1722, and in 1728 a local resident donated property for the new house. In 1732 the town’s parish priest wrote to the bishop of Puebla asking for his license, which seems to have been granted the following year. In 1735 the convent was finally granted royal license, but the order did not take possession of and install the Holy Sacrament in the church until 1736. In many cases, the order took possession of a house upon receiving permission from the bishop but before, sometimes years before, receiving royal license. There are thus many potential points at which a house could be considered founded, but in the cases where more than one date was available, I chose the date of the sacrament’s installation or, if this was not available, the date of the royal license. 20.  The Jesuits were also part of this movement. In 1570, when members of the Mexico City city council wrote to Spain requesting a foundation of Jesuits, they noted that this order “will be of much utility in the recently founded cities, in particular this great city of Mexico.” Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Historia, pp. 148–149. 21.  Altman, Transatlantic Ties; and Bakewell, Silver Mining. 22.  Chevalier, Land and Society, pp. 265–270; Gibson, Aztecs under Spanish Rule; Brading, Haciendas and Ranchos, pp. 17–18. Chevalier argues that the crown’s search for new sources of revenue led to new policies around the turn of the seventeenth century that allowed subjects to increase their landholdings. 23.  Quoted in Hinnebusch, History of the Dominican Order, p. 260. Hinnebusch states that when the Dominicans established new provinces in medieval Europe, they preferred to expand slowly and first consolidated their positions in large cities by establishing fully organized communities. Similarly, Robert Brentano noted that Dominican methods of establishing houses were “more formal and regulated” than those of Franciscans or Augustinians. A New World in a Small Place, p. 228. 24.  Grijalva, Crónica, p. 438. 25.  Sicardo, Suplemento crónico, p. 182. 26.  Pérez, t. I, pp. 305–309.

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27.  Madre de Dios (Tesoro escondido, pp. 199–201) includes a transcript of the royal cedula that approved the foundation. The order’s early interest is also evident in a 1601 decree from the provincial that two or three friars be sent to missionize in Río Verde. BNAH Lira, vol. 9, f. 94. 28.  The province must have recognized the potential objections to another foundation. Its petition argued that because of Celaya’s growing population, fertile lands, and proximity to the mines, “it can and must be presumed to have the capacity to sustain this new convent, since in other lugares de españoles of this land where there are fewer and poorer vecinos than [Celaya], two or three monasteries are sustained.” AHPCD, carp. 1474. 29.  On the external opposition (much of it by Franciscans), see Victoria Moreno, Los carmelitas descalzos. 30.  AGI México, 23, quoted in Victoria Moreno, Los carmelitas descalzos, p. 242. 31.  The province’s only other foundations during this time were houses without public roles: Santo Desierto, a casa de recolección in the mountains outside the Valley of Mexico (1606), and a colegio at Coyoacán (1613) that the province founded on the condition that its friars did not open its church to the public, although this stipulation was later annulled. Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, pp. 230–238; San Miguel, Obras, pp. 35–36. 32.  For examples of disputes involving orders over land and especially water rights, see Murphy, Irrigation. 33.  In Valladolid the Carmelites took possession of the capilla (chapel) de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad belonging to the confraternity of the same name, but after some years of dispute, the confraternity moved to the Augustinian church. Carmelite confraternities were almost always dedicated to Our Lady of Carmen or saints of the order, and the one dedicated to Nuestra Señora de la Soledad was dismissed as incompatible with the order’s purposes. Carso, Fondo DCXXVIII, “Libro de las cosas perteneciente a este Convento de Nra. Señora del Carmen de esta Ciudad de Valladolid,” ff. 2–3v. A briefly held foundation in Guadalajara (1593) was also made in a donated hermita (small chapel)—this one dedicated to Our Lady of the Conception—thanks to the backing of Bishop Don Francisco Santos García, who had only recently arrived from Spain. The order failed to obtain royal license for the foundation, however, and abandoned it. The Dominican chronicler Alonso Franco y Ortega noted that the 1610 foundation of his order’s convent in that city had been made in the Carmelites’ old church. Franco y Ortega, Historia de la provincia, p. 171. Madre de Dios quotes part of Bishop Santos García’s license for the foundation in Tesoro escondido, pp. 179–180. 34.  Espíritu Santo, Recuerdos históricos, chap. 10. 35.  Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, p. 148. 36.  Pareja, Crónica, vol. 1, pp. 167–168, 173, 177–179; Aldana, Crónica, pp. 61–62. Three years later the king granted one thousand pesos for the construction of a church there. 37.  Pareja, Crónica, vol. 1, p. 241. 38.  Pérez, t. II, pp. 40–50. Quoted in 1689 letter from the bishop of Oaxaca to the king in support of royal funds for constructing a new Mercedarian convent.

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39.  The province also included foundations of a casa de recolección outside Mexico City in Tacuba (1607) and a colegio on the city’s outskirts (1626). 40.  Pérez, t. III, pp. 117–152. 41.  Pérez, t. I, pp. 316–329, 329–331. The letter of sale listed a price of 1,750 pesos, although the 1616 information from the fiscal listed 1,850 pesos. Pareja also notes that the mines of Tasco and Zacualpan were located in the Mexico City convent’s territory and that their wealth helped build its church during the 1620s. If the Mercedarians still maintained a house in Zacualpan, it is unlikely that the Mexico house would have had such strong claims to that wealth. Pareja, Crónica, vol. 1, p. 217; vol. 2, p. 153. The last piece of information on the Mercedarians’ acquisition is a March 24, 1616, royal cedula asking for more information on the benefits of the foundation. Pérez, t. IV, pp. 246–247. Basic information on the brief Augustinian tenure there can be found in Ruiz Zavala, Historia, book 2, p. 391. 42.  Pérez, t. II, pp. 369–378; ibid., pp. 124–128. 43.  Ibid., pp. 40–50. 44.  The order faced a similar situation with their doctrinas in Guatemala. There they administered forty-two towns by the end of the sixteenth century, but most of them were unfavorably located in the highlands in some of the country’s poorest areas. Some Mercedarian towns had even been abandoned by the Dominicans, who had chosen to allocate their resources in more opportune areas. van Oss, Catholic Colonialism, pp. 35, 43. 45.  Pérez, Origen de las misiones franciscanas. 46.  Gómez Canedo, “Los Dieguinos,” in Evangelización, cultura y promoción social, pp. 401–403. For Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras’s support for the order’s founding in New Spain, see Poole, Pedro Moya de Contreras, pp. 77–78. 47.  Pérez, Origen de las misiones franciscanas, pp. 225–226. 48.  One of the main issues at provincial meetings throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was demarcating the territory in which each convent could collect alms. See Correra Poiré, “Estudio histórico,” chaps. 3, 6. 49.  Medina, Crónica, p. 253. 50.  Pérez, Origen de las misiones franciscanas, p. 226. 51.  BN AF, caja 89, exp. 1376, f. 30v. 52.  Banc, MSS 87/191m, Libros Latinos Miscellany, carton 1. 53.  Bakewell, Silver Mining, pp. 59, 61. 54.  Pérez, t. III, pp. 250–302. 55.  See Hoberman, “Bureaucracy and Disaster,” pp. 211–230. Many of the orders’ chronicles include discussions of their province’s charitable works during the flood. 56.  Gerhard, Guide, p. 93. Medina described Cuautla as having more than twenty haciendas and sugar mills around this time. Crónica, f. 256v. 57.  Pérez, t. II, “Escritura de donacion, 23 abril 1658,” pp. 1–16. 58.  The provincial also explained that he preferred to found houses in Veracruz and Guadalajara. BNAH Lira, vol. 13, 1649–1650. 59.  He claimed that one produced sixteen thousand pounds of wheat each year. Asunción, Itinerario a Indias, pp. 79–80. 60.  Michael Murphy argues that after their 1644 arrival, the Carmelites

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emerged as the region’s most important landowners. Murphy, Irrigation, p. 58. Some Carmelite friars worked in various water management projects, including on the Río Grande (Lerma), one of New Spain’s most important rivers, which flowed through Salvatierra and supplied most of the region’s water for farming. In addition, Fr. Andrés de San Miguel, well known for his work on Mexico City’s desagüe (drainage project), designed a large bridge over the Río Grande in Salva­ tierra that seems to have been a feat of engineering for the time. The province used it as an example of the benefits its friars offered the republic, noting travelers now had a direct route to Jalisco, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, and points beyond. San Miguel, Obras, pp. 100–106; and Banc, MSS 87/191m, Libros Latinos Miscellany, carton 1. 61.  Pérez, t. II, pp. 241–245, 245–249, 200–236; AGN Jesuitas, III-9, exp. 2. 62.  Although the Zacatecas convent did not run a grammar school, it opened its courses in philosophy to lay students. 63.  Fr. Francisco de Ajofrín described Córdoba in the late 1760s as having 260 Spanish families, 126 mestizo families, 60 mulatto and Afro-Mexican families, and 263 Indian families; its surrounding thirty-three sugar plantations and mills had “many españoles” and more than 2,000 slaves. Ajofrín, Diario, p. 150. 64.  The crown, hacienda owners, mine owners, and various local elites had a vested interest in not only reducing the threats of Indian revolts or attacks but also in establishing a larger pool of labor. Norris, After “The Year Eighty”; Picazo Muntaner, “El ideario de Fray Antoni Llinás,” pp. 437–446. 65.  Gómez Canedo, “Renovación cristiana en la Nueva España del siglo XVII,” in Evangelización, cultura y promoción social, pp. 416–441. 66.  According to the Franciscan chronicler of the Propaganda Fide colleges, Fr. Isidro Félix de Espinosa, Querétaro’s founder, Fr. Antonio Linaz, left for Spain in 1679, but he was there for more than a year before making his proposal for a missionary college. Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, pp. 155–156. 67.  BN AF, caja 53, exp. 1118, ff. 10–12. 68.  Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, pp. 157–159; Gómez Canedo, La Sierra Gorda. 69.  AHPFM Provincia, General, Alfabética, caja 56, exp. 2; Pérez Alcalá, “Las misiones dominicas,” pp. 489–496. In a February 22, 1690, decree Viceroy Conde de Galve noted that Dominicans had a royal cedula to establish a colegio in Querétaro “where are instructed the friars who will go to work in said missions [of the Sierra Gorda]” and that would have a public church with bells. The Franciscans opposed the establishment of a public colegio, however, and Galve ordered that for the time being the Dominican foundation would remain an enfermería “with private oratory and without a door to the street.” 70.  The Augustinians’ Michoacán Province had attempted foundations before the order took on the missions. A 1638 request claimed the convent was needed because friars frequently traveled to collect rents at Querétaro’s wool fairs or rested there while on their way to convents in San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas. AHPFM Provincia, General, Alfabética, caja 62, exp. 43. The Michoacán Province won the house, probably because of growing questions about the order’s

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ability to manage the missions, and it eventually had to turn over its missions to the Franciscans in the 1740s. The 1726 petition to found the house offered few specific reasons for the foundation, citing its benefit to the city and all its communities. APPAM, Libro B-01-02, f. 3, and Libro B-01-04, ff. 245v–246. 71.  BN AF, caja 132, exp. 1673. 72.  AGN Bienes, caja 989, exp. 1. 73.  AHPFM Provincia, General, Alfabética, caja 68, exp. 83. Fr. Andrés continued the effort to obtain convento status for the hospicio at the real de minas (royal mines) of Tlalpujagua, but it is unclear whether or not it became a convento. Although a 1776 document listed it as a convento, it never housed more than two or three friars. AHPFM Provincia, General, Alfabética, caja 37, exp. 7. 74.  Cedulas dated March 19, 1704, and May 15, 1717, BN AF, caja 53, exp. 1125; Rubial García, Una monarquía criolla, p. 112. Three cedulas with similar prohibitions preceded these two. The first two, dated March 19, 1593, and April 3, 1605, do not appear to have had any significant effects and probably only emphasized the need for royal licenses, which was a point of contention at this time in the Augustinians’ attempt to establish a convent at San Luis Potosí. See Jaramillo Escutia, Monumenta histórica mexicana, pp. 262–274. The third cedula, dated March 4, 1661, was issued during a time when conditions in New Spain had already curtailed new foundations and probably had little impact. 75.  This was in addition to the two million escudos that Phillip V requested from the church in 1707 to help defend the kingdoms from the “enemies of religion and crown.” See BN AF, caja 86, exp. 1350. 76.  Ochoa, t. III, ff. 111–205; Pérez, t. II, pp. 150–309. 77.  Morales, “Criollización,” pp. 661–684. 78.  Rubial García, El convento agustino, chap. 1, passim, but especially sections 1.2 and 1.3. 79.  Grijalva, Crónica, p. 353. 80.  Morales, Ethnic and Social Background, pp. 35–36, 59, 64–65. 81.  Ramos Medina, El Carmelo Novohispano, pp. 27–28. 82.  For example, the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province closed its novitiate to creoles between 1629 and 1641. Jaramillo Escutia, “Los agustinos crillos,” p. 136. 83.  APPAM, Libros B-01-02, C-01-01-08. 84.  The data in Figure 4 come from a variety of sources, including provincial chapter records, reports sent back to Spain, and inspections. Although I have avoided using the notoriously unreliable estimates of outsiders, the data I have used should be considered approximate. Overestimations were common, and determining which friars to include in the province could affect the totals. For instance, in 1763 the Dominicans reported 250 friars in the Mexico Province, but 21 were living in Spain. BN AF, caja 140, exp. 1725. 85.  This figure also fits with contemporaries’ estimates of how many friars lived in each convent at this time. Adding the lowest estimates given for each convent gives a total of 256 friars in the province; adding the highest ones gives a total of 305 friars. BNAH Guzmán, leg. 73, no. 7. 86.  BNAH Lira, vol. 20, f. 11v. The order also had so many students of moral theology in 1738 that the Valladolid convent could only accommodate half of

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them, and the province had to open a second course of study at another convent. Carso, Fondo DCXXVIII, “Libro de las cosas pertenecientes a este Convento de Nra. Señora del Carmen de esta Ciudad de Valladolid,” f. 31v. 87.  Rubial García, El convento agustino, p. 37. He notes that the Mexico Province’s last new doctrina was established in 1611, and the majority of the urban convents the order founded after 1570 were part of the Michoacán Province. Besides a college in Mexico City, the Mexico Province established small houses in Atlixco, Veracruz, and Oaxaca. 88.  BN AF, caja 52, exp. 1105, and caja 89, exp. 1376; BNAH GO, 115; BNAH Antigua, 320. 89.  The Bourbon reforms and their effects on the church have been well documented; see Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, especially pp. 13–17; Brading, Church and State; Farriss, Crown and Clergy; Zahino Peñafort, Iglesia y sociedad; Mazín Gómez, Entre dos majestades. 90.  Morales, Clero y política; Chowning, “Convent Reform”; Voekel, Alone before God, chap. 2; Larkin, “Liturgy, Devotion, and Religious Reform,” pp. 493–518. 91.  For attempts to limit voting rights, which was a major issue during the 1680s and the following two decades, see AGN Jesuitas, III-9, exp. 2, “Autos sobre que las religiones de esta Nueva España guarden y cumplan la real cédula de su magestad y breve de la santidad de Pablo V en las elecciones de sus provinciales, 1686–1708.” 92.  By the end of the sixteenth century the mendicant orders had already lost their favored position with the Spanish crown, and many scholars have read the number of disputes resolved in favor of diocesan over regular clergy during the seventeenth century as a sign of definite royal preference for diocesan clergy. That the orders retained many of the privileges that they did, most notably their doctrinas, even after the development of strong diocesan structures, suggests the preference may not have been so unequivocal. 93.  BN AF, caja 128, exp. 1650, doc. 5. 94.  AGN RCO, vol. 77, exp. 77–78; BN AF, caja 52, exp. 1111, f. 12. For an example of the Augustinians’ successful battle to regain their convent at Yuriria, see Mazín Gómez, Entre dos majestades. 95.  Zahino Peñafort, Iglesia y sociedad, pp. 118–119. 96.  Zahino Peñafort, El Cardenal Lorenzana; Taylor, Magistrates of the ­Sacred, p. 545n23. 97.  Concilio Provincial Mexicano IV. 98.  Ochoa, t. I, “Capitulos que considera el consejo deben insertar . . . ,” ff. 1–9; Zahino Peñafort, Iglesia y sociedad, p. 119. 99.  Rodríguez Casado, “La orden de San Francisco,” pp. 209–233. 100.  The cedula explained the reason for the prohibition as “for being opposed to their absolute personal incapacity and repugnant to their solemn profession in which they renounced the world and all their temporal rights.” BN AF, caja 87, exp. 1369, October 27, 1795. 101.  Garner, Economic Growth, pp. 14–17; Cook and Borah, “Population of West-Central Mexico.”

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102.  Brading, Haciendas and Ranchos, pp. 18, 79, and Miners and Merchants, p. 223. 103.  Cited in García Navarro, Redenciones, appendix 18, pp. 514–515, 518. 104.  BNAH, Sueltos-1, leg. 24, doc. 8. 105.  Ochoa, t. III, ff. 242–245. 106.  Interestingly, a list of the province’s houses from sometime between 1762 and 1776 included one in Chihuahua that was described as having three to four friars who collected alms for captives and offered spiritual services to mine workers. The house’s tenure was undoubtedly brief, and it probably lacked required licenses, because it is not mentioned in any other documents from the time. “Visita y Reforma de la Provincia de la Visitación de Rl Orden de la Merced de Nueva España,” in Ochoa, t. I, ff. 395–399. 107.  Ibid., f. 69. See AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Mercedarios, caja 283, exp. 23, for some of Guanajuato’s residents’ and regular clergy’s intense opposition to another convent. 108.  AHPCD, carp. 223. The Carmelites had attempted foundations in Guadalajara twice before, once during the late sixteenth century and again during the 1650s. 109.  Ibid., carp. 346, March 2, 1744. 110.  Muñoz then listed these benefits as preaching, offering confession, and conducting religious instruction of “indios ynfieles” (unconverted Indians). AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Carmelitas, caja 212, exp. 13. 111.  Guadalajara and San Luis Potosí were major cities, and Orizaba and ­Tehuacán grew considerably during the eighteenth century. Ajofrín described Orizaba as “one of the best towns in the bishopric of Puebla for its opulence, amenity, abundance of food supplies, and disposition of its houses.” Ajofrín, ­Diario, p. 151. He described Tehuacán as a “city of much commerce as it is on the royal road of all the provinces that are on the route from Oaxaca and Guatemala with the southern coasts” (pp. 154–155). 112.  BNAH Guzmán, 106B, exp. 3; AHPCD, carp. 335. Also see AGI México, 1057, for favorable testimonies from approximately twenty of Tehuacán’s leading residents that were taken in response to the fiscal in Mexico City, who had stopped the process until its promoters could prove they had sufficient funds and could show the benefits the Carmelites would offer the town. 113.  AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Carmelitas, caja 212, exps. 13, 16. 114.  Pérez, t. IV, pp. 52–58. 115.  Quoted in Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, p. 826. 116.  San Ildefonso, October 15, 1733. Quoted in ibid., p. 831. 117.  The Pachuca college remained part of the San Diego Province until 1771, when it became an independent house, like the Observant Franciscan colleges. Gómez Canedo, “Misiones del Colegio de Pachuca en el Obispado del Nuevo Reino de León,” in Evangelización, cultura y promoción social, pp. 662–663. 118.  AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Dieguinos, caja 257, exps. 2, 5, 8, 21, 22. 119.  Ibid., Correspondencia, Religiosos, caja 41, exp. 35; AGN RCO, vol. 80, exp. 1, Buen Retiro, January 29, 1760; AGN CRS, vol. 109, exp. 1.

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120.  Ochoa, t. I, “Capitulos que considera el consejo deben insertar,” ff. 1–9. 121.  The two discalced orders had always maintained large houses, and by this time, the few houses the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians had with fewer than eight friars were doctrinas that would eventually be relinquished following the royal cedulas of 1747 and 1753. 122.  Ochoa, t. I, “Visita y reforma de la Provincia de la Visitación de Rl Orden de N.S. de la Merced de Nueva España, Quaderno 2 y ultimo,” f. 7. For the responses of the archbishop of Mexico and the bishops of Guadalajara, Oaxaca, and Michoacán, see Pérez, t. II, pp. 106–123. 123.  AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Correspondencia, Religiosos, caja 42, exps. 75, 106, and caja 43, exp. 100. 124.  Other foundations during this time included Píritu (1762), Buenos Aires (1780), Catamara (1780), San Lorenzo (1784), Panamá (1785), Moquegua (1795), and Tarata (1796). 125.  AHPFM Provincia, General, Alfabética, caja 37, exp. 7. 126.  AGN RCO, vol. 148, exp. 205; AHPFM Provincia, Conventos, Guanajuato, caja 2; Brading, Church and State, p. 77. 127.  Although the Observant Franciscan order technically did not own property, each convent appointed a layperson as a syndic to administer income-­ producing investments for it. AHPFM Provincia, Conventos, Zamora, caja 2, exps. 1, 3, 10, 13; ibid., General, Alfabética, caja 7, exp. 54; BN AF, caja 51, exp. 1095, “Informe del dean y cabildo de sede vacante . . .”; AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Correspondencia, Religiosos, caja 42, exp. 86. 128.  Rubial García, Una monarquía criolla, p. 112. 129.  Pérez, t. II, pp. 321–378. 130.  BN AF, caja 127, exp. 1647, ff. 36v–37v. 131.  Ibid., ff. 1–2. 132.  BN AF, caja 140, exp. 1725. 133.  Ibid., exp. 172. 134.  Ochoa, t. I, “Capitulos que considera el consejo deben insertar los Superiores Generales de las Religiones establecidas en los Reynos de las Yndias . . . ,” ff. 1–9. 135.  Banc mfilm, Italy, Santa Sabina Rome, reel 9, doc. 3,“Testamonio del expediente relativo a el de la Visita practicada por el R.P. Fray Juan Ubach,” f. 19. 136.  Ochoa, t. I, “Visita y Reforma de la Provincia de la Visitación de Rl Orden de N.S. de la Merced de Nueva España, Quaderno 2 y ultimo,” ff. 53, 60; Ochoa, t. II, f. 101. 137.  The libros de profesiones indicate that no novices professed in 1778, 1779, or 1780. AGN RCO, vol. 122, exp. 132, ff. 231–252. 138.  Pérez, t. II, pp. 128–139. 139.  BNAH FF, vol. 62, exp. 1328, ff. 135, 137v–138. 140.  APPAM, Libro 03-01-08, “Libro de actas que pertenece a este convento de Sta Maria de Gracia de Valladolid.” 141.  Ochoa, t. I, f. 212. Fr. Estancio Falero’s earlier 1772 report offered a current population of 427 friars that had fallen from a midcentury peak of 512. I have not included these figures because of their incongruity with other popula-

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tion counts, including a 1775 count of 290 names on rosters from eighteen of the province’s twenty houses (missing were two small convents, Colima and Valle de Santiago, that in 1776 were listed as having one and two resident friars, respectively). The inflated counts were probably an attempt by Falero, who surmised cuts were coming, to limit the impact by overestimating the starting point from which the cuts would be made. “Visita reforma de la Prov.a de Mexico, Quaderno Primero,” in Ochoa, t. I, ff. 37–200. 142.  BNAH Guzmán, leg. 110; Farriss, Crown and Clergy, p. 122; Brading, Church and State, p. 79. 143.  In the case of parish priests, William Taylor has found growth rates of 29 and 28 percent, respectively, for the Archdiocese of Mexico and the Diocese of Guadalajara between 1767 and the early nineteenth century. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, pp. 77–83; Chowning, Rebellious Nuns, p. 87. 144.  Ochoa, t. I, ff. 223–236. 145.  I do not discuss Franciscan missionary colleges here because I did not have data on their populations of friars, but the pattern still holds. Whether or not these colleges experienced declining local professions, they continued to be supported by missions of friars from Spain, which correlates with their additional foundations. 146.  BN AF, caja 128, exp. 1650, “Informe del Provincial de la Provincia de Sto Evangelio á Su Magestad . . . ,” doc. 4. 147.  Less frequent but still included were more serious offenses like theft or even murder. Many of these punishments are covered in the Augustinians’ and Carmelites’ chapter and definitory acts; see APPAM, Libros B-01-02, B-01-03, B-01-04, B-01-05, B-01-06; BNAH Lira, vol. 13. See also Ramos Medina, “Correc­ciones monásticas,” pp. 25–32.

chapter two 1.  Jesús María, Sermon. 2.  BNAH Fondo Antigua, 378; Fuente Salazar, Relacion universal. 3.  The concept of corporate identity is discussed in Armstrong, The Politics of Piety; Saak, High Way to Heaven; Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque. 4.  By the time these two works were crafted, the tree had a long history in Christian art of portraying holy ancestry. The Tree of Jesse was a popular subject in medieval art and originated from Isaiah 11:1, “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.” According to Gertrud Schiller, the image was meant “to express the idea of the Messiah who was to come from the royal house of David.” Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, p. 15. 5.  The Franciscan family tree in the church at Zinacantepec (outside Toluca) is considered in terms of its European antecedents (including the Tree of Jesse) and local Indian beliefs in Cosentino, Las joyas de Zinacantepec. 6.  Cited in Alvarez, Santo Domingo de Oaxaca, p. 26. 7.  The current version includes Mary in the tree itself, although this seems the

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result of a modern restoration. See Pérez Morera, “El árbol genealógico,” pp. 119–126. 8.  The quote is from the Siete Partidas as quoted in Premo, Children of the Father King, p. 10. She explains family as the working metaphor through which members of colonial society “understood and articulated intergenerational relations of power and ties of affection” (p. 127). 9.  Oroz, The Oroz Codex, p. 167. 10.  In practice, many friars remained very involved with their families, often with the consent of their orders’ hierarchy. In just one of many examples, a Discalced Franciscan successfully petitioned to return to Spain to visit his parents. AGI México, 815. 11.  Friars from other orders had changed names as well but seem to have abandoned the practice sometime in the late sixteenth century. 12.  Torres, Sermon panegyrico. 13.  Cruz y Moya, Historia, p. 97. 14.  Castillo, Dos [sermones] predicados, pp. 4–4v. 15.  APPAM, caja Celaya, Siglo XIX, “Sermon que el dia 28 de Agosto dia de NP S.n Aug.n predico Fr Pedro Paramo en el conv.to de NSa de los Dolores de la Ciudad de Queretaro.” 16.  Taylor, Structures of Reform, pp. 405–411. 17.  BNAH GO, leg. 94, Agustín de Andrade, “Panal mistico compendio de las grandezas del celeste, real, y militar Orden de Nuestra Senora de la Merced Redempcion de Cautivos Cristianos,” p. 7. 18.  BNAH MP, “Sermon de N. S.to Patriarcha Predicado en S.n Luis Potosi año de 1767.” 19.  Jesús María, Sermon. 20.  Februa was an ancient feast of purification noted for its celebratory fires. Jesús María, El pretendido empeño. 21.  If the Jesuits did not want to include a woman in the group of patriarchs, neither John nor Elias would have worked in her stead. John was not yet canonized, and Jesuits were vocal opponents of the Carmelites’ use of Elias as their founder. 22.  John of God was the founder of the hospital order, Saint John of God, typically known as the juaninos in New Spain. Gorospe, Sermon que en la solemnisima festivdad. . . . 23.  Fr. Diego lists patriarchs for all the orders except the Carmelites. Teresa was more closely associated with penitence than Elias, but perhaps Fr. Domingo was unwilling to give Dominic the attributes of a woman. 24.  AGN INQ, vol. 807, exp. 50, f. 340. 25.  Ibid., f. 377v. 26.  Ibid., f. 383. 27.  San Miguel, El abismo de la gracia. 28.  See APPAM, Libro C-03-03-06. 29.  Quoted in Hanska, “The Mental Calendar of Medieval Preaching,” p. 296. 30.  Schenone, “Algunos aspectos de la iconografía de la Virgen de la Merced,” p. 279. 31.  Rodríguez de Sosa, Oracion panegyrica.

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32.  She did occasionally, such as in an altar constructed in 1797 in Mexico City’s Sagrario church or in an early eighteenth-century niche in the Franciscans’ Toluca church. The Sagrario altar is described in Carso, Fondo CCXVI. The image from Toluca is described in AHAM, caja 1754. 33.  The Carmelites put much effort into recording these miracles throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They have a substantial role in their chronicles and in libros de cosas notables or cosas memorables (books of notable or memorable occurrences) kept at each convent. 34.  AHPCD, carp. 1838. The quote comes from a bull of Clement X dated May 8, 1672, as printed in a 1776 compilation of indulgences. 35.  San Cirilo, Obligacion de los carmelitas. 36.  Stratton, Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art. 37.  Gorospe, Sermon que en el segundo dia. . . . 38.  Thank you to Roberto Jaramillo E. for the observation that even though the most important Augustinian shrines in New Spain were dedicated to Christ, the order’s most important ones in Peru were devoted to Mary. Perhaps the most important of their Marian advocations in New Spain was that of Our Lady of Succor in Valladolid. The most popular images of Christ were the miraculous Christo de Chalma and Christo Aparecido de Totolapan. The story of the latter is told in Hughes, Biography of a Mexican Crucifix. 39.  Sicardo, Suplemento crónico, p. 301. 40.  AGN IV, caja 5271, exp. 39. 41.  Augustine, Confessions, p. 164. 42.  Jesús María, Las llaves. 43.  Díaz de Godoi, El espiritu de los patriarchas, pp. 2–4. 44.  AHPCD, carp. 694. 45.  A Latin Dictionary. 46.  Diccionario de autoridades. 47.  Although early Jesuits used the term, O’Malley says they preferred the term “our way of proceeding” (noster modus procedendi). O’Malley, The First Jesuits, p. 8. 48.  BN AF, caja 86, exp. 1354, doc. 6, October 1744. 49.  Torquemada, Monarquia indiana, book 19, chap. 19. Cited in Medina, Crónica, f. 19v. 50.  AGI México, 815. 51.  Discalced Franciscans, Cartilla y doctrina espiritual, chap. 4. 52.  Espinosa, Crónica de la provincia franciscana, p. 96; Beaumont, Crónica, pp. 278–279. 53.  BN AF, caja 89, exp. 1378, Carta, November 4, 1767. 54.  Ibid., Carta, April 3, 1770. 55.  Valdés, Sermon, p. 9. 56.  Medina, Crónica, pp. 6, 18v. 57.  Ibid., book 2, p. 89. 58.  Fernández de Lizardi, The Mangy Parrot. 59.  AHPSEM, caja 202, “Decretos del Colegio de San Fernando de Mexico.” 60.  AGI México, 2742, ff. 18–19.

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61.  AHPSEM, caja 208. 62.  Carso, Fondo LXXXVIII, Carta de Manuel Antonio Barragan, August 4, 1806. 63.  Brading, Church and State, pp. 37–38. 64.  Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, p. 27. 65.  Burgoa, Palestra historial, p. 49. 66.  Vose, Dominicans, Muslims, and Jews, pp. i, 54. 67.  Franco y Ortega, Historia de la Provincia de Santiago, p. 426. 68.  Burgoa, Palestra historial, p. 65. 69.  AGN INQ, vol. 1346, exp. 17. The case was quickly dismissed. 70.  Castillo, Dos [sermones] predicados, pp. 4–4v. 71.  Franco y Ortega, Historia de la Provincia de Santiago, pp. 43, 396. 72.  Castro, El grande sin medida, p. 18. 73.  Lot de Ribera, Libro. 74.  Quoted in Pereira and Fastiggi, Mystical Theology of the Catholic Reformation, p. 105. 75.  Carso, Fondo XLVIII, May 16, 1598. 76.  APPAM, Libro B-01-04, and Libro B-01-05, f. 124. 77.  APPAM, Libros de Provincia, Libro C-03-01-08, f. 96v. 78.  Saak quotes Augustinian theologian Giles of Rome, who opened De ecclesiastica potestate with a statement of the order’s purpose: “to teach people from the Gospels what is to be known concerning faith and morals, lest anyone be condemned by their ignorance at the last judgment.” Saak, High Way to Heaven, pp. 30–31. 79.  Sicardo, Suplemento crónico, p. 9. 80.  APPAM, Libro C-03-01-07. 81.  BNAH Lira, vol. 9, f. 102. See Victoria Moreno, Los carmelitas descalzos, part 2, passim. 82.  Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, p. 32. 83.  Ibid., pp. 66–67. 84.  BNAH Lira, vol. 9. 85.  Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, p. 48. 86.  Ibid., p. 111. 87.  Casaus y Torres, Sermon, p. 39. 88.  Rodríguez de Sosa, Oracion panegyrica, p. 11. 89.  Quoted in García Oro and Portela Silva, “Felipe II,” p. 110. 90.  Pareja, Crónica, vol. 2, pp. 633–634. 91.  Pérez, t. III, pp. 315–320. The Trinitarians, a French order that had expanded into Spain, shared this institute, but their attempts to establish themselves in the Americas failed. See Pérez, t. IV, pp. 447–449. 92.  Pareja, Crónica, vol. 2, p. 336. 93.  BNAH GO, leg. 94, Andrade, “Panal mistico,” p. 4. 94.  Zúñiga Corres, “La orden de la Merced en Centroamérica,” p. 25. 95.  Pérez, t. III, pp. 117–152. 96.  Camillians, also known as Fathers of a Good Death, were dedicated to helping the dying. Andrade, “Panal mistico,” p. 291.

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97.  Oroz, The Oroz Codex, p. 50. 98.  APPAM, caja Salvatierra, Siglo XVIII, “Respuesta que sale contra la ninguna razona con que fundan los MRRPP Carmelitas Descalzos,” s.f. 99.  Méndez, Crónica, p. 145. 100.  Rocha, El singular patroncinio de María, pp. 6–7. 101.  The concept of twelve orders was a bit of a stretch. At the time Vetancurt wrote, the Bethlehemites and Brothers of Charity were still brotherhoods that had not yet acquired official status as an order. He also counted the Discalced Augustinians, who had a very minor presence with only a small hospicio in Mexico City for its friars traveling between Spain and the Philippines. Vetancurt, Teatro mexicano, “Tradado de la Ciudad de México,” pp. 12, 40. 102.  Jesús María, Sermon. 103.  Mexico City’s congregation was founded in 1659 and Oaxaca’s in 1691. Other foundations during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included Guadalajara, Guanajuato, San Miguel el Grande, and Querétaro. For a history of the Oratorians, see Donnelly, “The Congregation of the Oratory.” 104.  Gutiérrez Dávila, Memorias historicas, pp. 5–10. This arrangement seems to have caused the Mexico congregation some delays in having their constitution approved. In 1663, two years after they first remitted it to Rome, they were informed that to be approved, they had to have a chapel and house for at least twelve priests. 105.  Ibid., p. 10. 106.  Ibid., pp. 2–3. The Rule was used “in order to distinguish this body [gremio] from other brotherhoods [confraternidades] that imprudently take the name congregation [congregación] in this realm.” 107.  BFB, Fondo Documental, caja 1, exp. 67. 108.  Eguiara y Eguren, El ladron mas diestro. 109.  Mendicants might have responded that vows were between an individual and God, and the prelate’s only role was to assist the individual in remaining faithful to the vows. 110.  BN AF, caja 141, exp. 1735, doc. 1. 111.  Benson GGC, 12-22, 12-23, 12-24, 12-25. A mid-eighteenth-century source described the Bethlehemites of New Spain: “Not only does their institute compel them to cure the sick and attend the convalescent but also to receive all poor persons and lodge them for three days; and so they do, lodging them not only three days but eight or ten according to the individual and his needs.” 112.  Guerra y Morales, “El fuego del gloriosissimo San Juan de la Cruz,” p. 439. 113.  Gallardo, Sermon funebre. 114.  Benson GGC, 12-24, 12-25. 115.  Antonio de Morales, “Sermon Panegyrico . . . ,” in El segundo quinze, p. 467. 116.  BN AF, caja 141, exp. 1735, doc. 3, f. 72. 117.  Ibid., ff. 15–16. 118.  Cited in O’Malley, The First Jesuits, p. 68. 119.  Ibid., p. 298. 120.  Israel, Race, Class and Politics, p. 243.

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121.  In New Spain, Franciscans were the only mendicant orders that did not own property; although Mercedarians were property owners, their holdings did not match those of the other orders. 122.  APPAM, caja México, Siglo XVII. 123.  BNAH GO, leg. 98, Manuel Alfonso Malloral, “Vida ejemplar del religiosos y apostolico varon Fr. Antonio de Jesus y Ganancia,” 1768. For more on the Jesuits’ educational mission in New Spain, see Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Historia de la educación en la época colonial. 124.  AGN INQ, vol. 478, exp. 85, f. 522. 125.  Ibid., vol. 1085, exp. 29, ff. 340–407. 126.  Castro, El grande sin medida, p. 4. 127.  Díaz de Godoi, El espiritu de los patriarchas, pp. 3–4. 128.  Basalenque, Historia, p. 285. 129.  Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, p. 56. 130.  Ojea, Libro tercero, p. 53. 131.  Grijalva, Crónica, p. 290. 132.  BNAH GO, leg. 94, p. 258. 133.  Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, p. 63. Madre de Dios’s associations of orders with types of angels was based on the orders’ characteristics. For example, Franciscans were called seraphim because Francis was known as the Human Seraph, and Augustinians were thrones because a throne was the name of a bishop’s chair. 134.  Medina, Crónica, book 2, p. 91. 135.  Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory, p. 109.

chapter three 1.  Ochoa, t. I, “Visita reforma de la Prov.a de Mexico, Quaderno Primero,” f. 37. 2.  The Inquisition case against Fr. Thomas can be found in Banc mfilm, 2749, vol. 9. According to Fr. Thomas’s own testimony, he was initially loath to perform any priestly duties. He even begged off celebrating a Mass when some old schoolmates he encountered on the road tried to pressure him into it, but when they encountered a dying woman in need of sacraments, he was forced to choose: acquiesce to the part of a priest or admit his charade. So began his slippery slope. 3.  AHPCD, carp. 1308, transcript of original in Archivo General de Notarías de Oaxaca. 4.  Ibid., carp. 1474, ff. 61–62. 5.  Bartolomé de Medina’s Breve instrultione de’ confessori (Salamanca, 1579) is cited in Maryks, Saint Cicero and the Jesuits, pp. 24–25. 6.  Franco y Ortega, Historia de la Provincia de Santiago, p. 395. 7.  AGN INQ, vol. 360, exp. 105, ff. 280–297. 8.  For the structure of formal sermons and the evolution of the genre in New Spain between 1584 and 1821, see Herréjon Peredo, “La Oratoria,” pp. 57–80, and Del sermón.

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9.  O’Malley, “Form, Content, and Influence,” especially pp. 45–49. 10.  Herréjon Peredo, “La Oratoria,” p. 68. 11.  Ochoa, t. III, f. 13v. 12.  Ochoa, t. I, “Capitulos que considera el consejo deben inserter los Superiores Generales de las Religiones establecidas en los Reynos de las Yndias . . . ,” ff. 1–9. 13.  According to Nancy Vogeley, Fray Gerundio was the most popular Spanish book in Mexico. Vogeley, Lizardi, p. 48. The quotation is from José de Isla, Fray Gerundio de Campazas, quoted in Dansey Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age, p. 22. 14.  Isla, Fray Gerundio de Campazas, p. 137. Although it is worth noting that mendicants complained bitterly about the book and that rivalries between Jesuits and mendicants likely played a role in Isla’s choice of a protagonist, his explanation was plausible enough to get the book published. 15.  Herrejón Peredo, “La Oratoria,” pp. 64–65. 16.  For a sermon to find its way into print required the confluence of multiple factors, including finding a benefactor to fund the printing costs. Herrejón Peredo, Del sermón. 17.  For example, the statutes approved at the 1736 founding of the San Fernando college in Mexico City prohibited friars from preaching any panegyric sermons outside their own church, and the only ones allowed there were during Corpus Christi and the feast days of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, Nuestra ­Señora de la Assumpción, and San Fernando. AHPSEM, caja 208. 18.  AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Carmelitas, caja 213, exp. 32. 19.  AHPCD, carp. 1738. 20.  Fernández Herrojo, Instrucciones; Medina Coll., FHA 23:4. 21.  AGN, Colección de Documentos para la Historia de México, Segunda Serie, v. 5. The letter dates from 1778. 22.  Moral y Castillo de Altra, Platicas doctrinales, p. 27. 23.  Ochoa, t. I, “Visita reforma de la Prov.a de Mexico, Quaderno Primero,” f. 134. 24.  AGI México, 2747, f. 174v; AHPCD, carp. 630. 25.  Banc mfilm, 2749, vol. 17. 26.  As part of an increased emphasis on privacy during confession during the sixteenth century, Cardinal Charles Borromeo introduced the confessional as a way to keep prying eyes and ears at bay. Bossy, Christianity in the West; and Myers, “Poor Sinning Folk.” 27.  AHPSEM, caja 202, “Actas determinada por el RP Visitador de Capítulo, 1774.” 28.  Confessors were subject to the Inquisition, which had special powers to ensure that they did not abuse their power to solicit sexual favors in the confessional. The Inquisition had sole jurisdiction over solicitation cases and sole power to remit the sins of any friars guilty of solicitation. Recent scholarship has given much attention to solicitation in both New Spain and Spain. See González Marmolego, Sexo y confesión; Sarrión Mora, Sexualidad y confesión; Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional.

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29.  For the most part, these instructions were in line with the Inquisition’s instructions on the subject. A 1624 edict that continued to be repeated throughout the eighteenth century ordered that when not enough confessionals were available, friars could confess men, but not women, in the portería, infirmary, or corridors of the convent. See González Marmolego, Sexo y confesión, pp. 59–60. 30.  Banc mfilm, 2749, vol. 17 (MSS 96/95m), s.f. 31.  Ochoa, t. I, “Visita reforma de la Prov.a de Mexico, Quaderno Primero,” f. 48; APPAM, Libro C-03-01-01. 32.  Having confessors from one’s own order was an issue with Carmelite nuns in Mexico City. During the late seventeenth century, a debate brewed between those willing to confess with secular priests and those called Hijas de la Orden (Daughters of the Order), who favored confession only with Carmelite friars. According to Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela, there was “an extraordinarily strong emotional bond between the male and female branches of the order.” Sampson Vera Tudela, Colonial Angels, p. 55. 33.  For example, see the letter previously quoted from the guardian of San Fernando to the viceroy in which he listed the “many convents of nuns” where his friars worked: La Encarnación, San Lorenzo, Balvanera, San Bernardo, Jesús María, San José de Gracia, Regina, Santa Inés, Santa Clara, Santa Isabel, and San Juan de la Penitencia. AGN, Colección de Documentos para la Historia de México, Segunda Serie, v. 5. 34.  A set of testimonies from residents of Colima in 1609 described the work the order had done the previous Lent, confessing “residents and servants, blacks and slaves, and Indians of the surrounding pueblos and the sick both in and outside the town.” Pérez, t. II, pp. 251–280. 35.  Abundis Canales, La huella carmelita, vol. 1, p. 468. 36.  Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, pp. 504–505. 37.  AHPCD, carp. 1669, “Advertencias para los nuevos confesores por un P.e Religioso Carmelita Descalzo.” 38.  Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, vol. 1, Confession and Absolution, p. 371. 39.  Baptista, Confessionario en lengua mexicana y castellana. This format was also followed in manuals by friars of other orders, for instance, the Dominican Fr. Martin León’s manual, Camino del cielo en la lengua mexicana (Mexico City, 1611). 40.  Cortés y Larra, Instruccion pastoral, p. 103. 41.  AHPCD, carp. 1669, “Advertencias para los nuevos confesores,” f. 1. 42.  Ibid., ff. 14–15. 43.  The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it as encompassing “doctrines which discuss the relations of man and his free actions to God and his supernatural end, and propose the means instituted by God for the attainment of that end.” 44.  Banc mfilm, Italy, Santa Sabina Rome, reel 9, doc. 3, “Testimonio de la ­Visita de Santo Domingo fecha por el M.R.P. vicitador Gral. Fr. Juan Ubach,” f. 18; BNAH MP, rollo 3, “Libro de votos de los Mercedarios, siglo XVIII,” ff. 16v–18. 45.  Between 1714 and 1717 the Carmelites in Valladolid, where moral theology was taught, bought twenty new “manuals of our order”; although no title

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was given, the convent was also using a practice manual by Coreia at this time. In 1778 the Augustinians of Michoacán were teaching from Concina (Daniele Concina), but a provincial decree in 1794 ordered convents to switch to the newly illustrated version of Cliquet (José Faustino Cliquet). APPAM, Libro B-01-02. Franciscan works on confession included Scotus moralis pro confessariis (Mexico City, 1727) and Fr. Hermenegildo Vilaplana’s Centuela dogmatico-moral con oportunos avisos al confesor y penitente. 46.  Myers, “Poor Sinning Folk,” pp. 16–26. 47.  Accusations of laxness were a common form of criticism and cannot always be taken at face value, but Montúfar’s comment may have had some teeth to it. He made it during debates over the best way to administer sacraments to Indians, and he viewed Franciscans’ willingness to baptize or confess these neophytes without sufficient preparation as reprehensible. Ricard, Spiritual Conquest, chap. 6, especially pp. 116–122. 48.  AGN INQ, vol. 1100, exp. 22; and AGN IV, caja 1613, exp. 18. 49.  AGN INQ, vol. 1139. 50.  Molina, “Visions of God,” especially chap. 3. 51.  The Catholic Encyclopedia defines probabilism as “the moral system which holds that, when there is question solely of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of an action, it is permissible to follow a solidly probable opinion in favor of liberty even though the opposing view is more probable.” Probabiliorism, in comparison, required following not just a probable view but the more probable view. Medieval and sixteenth-century mendicant orders followed a tutioristic system of moral theology, but by the eighteenth century they had moved or were moving toward probabiliorism. Maryks, Saint Cicero and the Jesuits, pp. 2–9; Pereira and Fastiggi, Mystical Theology, pp. 30–31. 52.  O’Malley, The First Jesuits; Lea, History of Auricular Confession, vol. 1, pp. 364–378; vol. 2, pp. 309–318. The Jesuits initially opposed probabilism, which was first proposed by a Dominican, but the two orders switched sides in the debates. 53.  Bishop of Puebla Francisco Fabián y Fuero wrote in a pastoral letter that one of the chief causes of the Jesuits’ ruin “has been their readiness to label as Jansenist heretics those who do not share their thinking or who speak against Probabilism.” Quoted in Palafox y Mendoza, “Advertencia del traductor,” in Carta del venerable siervo. 54.  An ecclesiastical council had investigated Loyola for alumbradismo, and although it cleared him, evidently not everyone was convinced. In fact, the timing of this case was undoubtedly related to Loyola’s recent beatification and its celebration in New Spain. The previous year a Discalced Franciscan in Mexico City was denounced to the Inquisition for claims that Loyola was in hell and had only been beatified because of his popularity in Spain. AGN INQ, vol. 478, exp. 85, f. 520. The Discalced Franciscans’ case can be found in ibid., vol. 288, exp. 8. 55.  According to the Diccionario de autoridades, to speak of a conciencia ancha meant “to live without restraint and without fear of God” (vive libremente y sin temor de Dios). 56.  William Taylor found that guides for eighteenth-century parish priests

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treated the topic of masses in a similarly routine fashion: “The colonial American guides accepted the central importance of the mass, but with little comment.” Magistrates of the Sacred, p. 157. 57.  For instance, see APPAM, Libro B-01-02, 1712. 58.  For Franciscan masses, see BN FR, MS 5 [1040], “Libro de memorias de misas de obligacion. Autos de vista, 1683–1706.” For Mercedarian ones, see BN FR, MS 31 [1047], “Libro diario de misas. Autos de visita, 1669–1687.” 59.  Burns, Colonial Habits. 60.  These chaplaincies differed from those left to diocesan priests in that the income from the latter went directly to the priest, whereas the income in the former went to the convent, even if priors did sometimes direct those funds to the individual celebrants. Wobeser, Vida eterna. 61.  APPAM, Libro C-33-03-01, “Libro de misas de este conv.to de N.a Señora de los Dolores de la ciudad de Querétaro que se comenso el dia 3 noviembre 1754.” 62.  AHPCD, carp. 1418, “Libro deonde se asienta o se toma razon de las Missas q se dizen y limosna de las que se reziben y alican por las obligaciones de este conv.to de carmelitas descalzos de la Puebla. Año de 1749.” Libros de misas from other orders did not organize their information the same way the Carmelites did, so determining percentages is not as easy. The majority of entries where the source of the mass is apparent come from donations and chaplaincies. 63.  Larkin, “Baroque and Reformed Catholicism,” p. 186. 64.  Wobeser, Vida eterna, pp. 127–128. 65.  The terms of the Mercedarians’ offer and a contract between the Mercedarians and Don Juan de Vera, a Mexico City regidor, agreeing to those terms, are located in BNAH Sueltos-2, caja 13, leg. 66-2, doc. 1. 66.  Friars caught celebrating more than one Mass in a day were subject to the bishop’s jurisdiction, and punishments could be severe. An Augustinian discovered celebrating back-to-back masses at the Hospital of San Andrés and the Espíritu Santo church in Mexico City in 1798 was sentenced to a year in jail and reclusion in his order’s Chalma convent followed by a one-year suspension of his licenses to preach, confess, and celebrate Mass. Similarly, a Franciscan caught celebrating at the churches of Enseñanza and Encarnación on the same morning found himself subject to two months in jail and one year’s reclusion in the San Cosme convent, during which time he was “to take last place among the priests in all communal acts” and complete other special penances. His licenses were suspended indefinitely. AGN Bienes, caja 535, exp. 26; ibid., caja 210, exp. 36. 67.  Ochoa, t. I, ff. 108–109, 1775; ibid., “Visita reforma de la Prov.a de Mexico, Quaderno Primero,” f. 98, 1775. 68.  BN AF, caja 89, exp. 1379; ibid., caja 90, exp. 1382; AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Augustinos, caja 206, exp. 158. 69.  APPAM, Caja Morelia, Siglo XIX, “Primer Libro q hai de Misas”; BN FR, MS 31 [1047], CD 271.6 115, “Libro diario de misas, 1669–1687.” 70.  APPAM, Libro C-33-03-01. Unfortunately, no data are available to compare what happened after the Valladolid convent lost its doctrinas. In an example of one of the provincial decrees, in 1656 the provincial ordered that all friars

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without exception “say with all punctuality the masses of chaplaincies, dead friars and patrons, and the rest of obligation of alms.” APPAM, Libro C-01-01. 71.  AHPCD, carps. 1418, 1419, 1453, 1454. 72.  BNAH Guzmán, leg. 73, doc. 7; AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Carmelitas, caja 213, exp. 32; and Augustinos, caja 11, exp. 1; caja 196, exp. 8; caja 197, exp. 14; APPAM, caja Siglo XIX. 73.  The Augustinians do not seem to have had the same restriction, or, if they did, it was frequently broken, as in the case of the Augustinian caught celebrating two masses on the same day. AGN Bienes, caja 535, exp. 26. 74.  Wobeser, Vida eterna, p. 128. 75.  Feasts were classified in ascending importance as simple, semidouble, double, greater double, double of the second class, and double of the first class. An order might, for instance, have a special privilege to celebrate a feast day as double of the second class when the same fiesta was classified as semidouble for the rest of the church. See Catholic Encyclopedia, “Liturgy of the Mass.” 76.  APPAM, Libro C-03-01-01. 77.  Torres, Sermon panegyrico de el gloriosso humanado seraphin, N.P.S. Francisco de Assis. 78.  APPAM, Libro B-01-02. For examples of printing costs during the eighteenth century, see ibid., Libro C-01-08, which notes the province approved two hundred pesos in 1750 and fifty pesos in 1774. The sharp drop in cost likely reflected the loss of so many houses after the secularization of doctrinas. 79.  Dominicans, Kalendario, and Norma dominicana. Interestingly, the list included that it had been 453 years since the founding of the Mexican court, establishing a date almost two hundred years before the arrival of the first Spaniards. 80.  These manuscript directorios included information on routine weekly masses, movable feasts, and a month-by-month calendar of fixed feast days. The instructions were often quite detailed, including when to open and close church doors, how to set up altars for different events, and what routes processions should take within the convent. AHPSEM, caja 12, “Directorio para el gobierno de la sachristia del convento de N.S.P.S. Franciscan de Mexico, renovado y ­reducido al metodo con que al presente se celebran las funciones que dependen prevenirse por esta oficina” and “Directorio y govierno de esta sacristia de N.S.P.S. Francis.co de este convento grande de Mexico, observado y experimentado desde el año de 1723 gasta el presente de 1727.” 81.  In contrast, the sacristy books note that Saint Anthony of Padua’s feast day in June continued to be celebrated over thirteen days, thanks to the sponsorship of his namesake confraternity. 82.  APPAM, Libro B-01-02, 1712. For an example of some of the indulgences available to all the faithful on Augustine’s feast day, see Summario de las muchas y grandes indulgencias. 83.  Portiuncula was named for the church outside Assisi where Mary was said to have conferred this indulgence upon Francis. It was originally limited to that church but was later extended to all Franciscan churches and chapels. Romero Sánchez, Explicacion clara de la famosa. AHPSEM, caja 12, “Directorio y govierno” and “Directorio para el gobierno.”

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84.  Robles, Diario de sucesos notables, vol. 3, p. 104. 85.  The other days of absolution in Mercedarian churches were those of San Pedro Nolasco, Ash Wednesday, Holy Thursday, San Lorenzo Martyr, the Apparition of Our Lady of Mercy, and Santa Catarina Martyr. Mesa y Colmenares, Manual breve. The statement on the alms during these days can be found in Ochoa, t. IV, f. 4. 86.  Robles, vol. 3, pp. 90–93; Pareja, Crónica, appendix 3, pp. 27–29. 87.  Dermes, Novena sagrada. 88.  AGN IV, caja 5271, exp. 64. 89.  AGN INQ, vol. 1017, exp. 18. An embustero was someone who was a liar or, more specifically, who feigned sanctity. 90.  The construction of stations became more common during the seventeenth century, but the number varied. In 1731 a papal bull fixed the number at fourteen. The Catholic Encyclopedia. 91.  For an example of a guide offering meditations for the fourteen stations from two different perspectives, Christ’s and Mary’s, see Osuna, Peregrinacion christiana. 92.  For example, Methodo para meditar; Modo de andar la Via Sacra. 93.  BN AF, caja 73, exp. 1242. 94.  Victorio Salazar, Sermon, p. 61. 95.  Moxica, Quindena; Taix, Instruccion, modo de rezar. 96.  For example, Viceroy and Archbishop Fr. Payo de Rivera, an Augustinian, included fifteen stone monuments dedicated to the mysteries of the rosary in the construction of a new road to the shrine of Guadalupe. Janvier, The Mexican Guide, p. 281. 97.  Belanger, “Secularization and the Laity,” pp. 174–175. 98.  AHCPM, carp. 1838. 99.  The Querétaro confraternity moved shortly after the Dominican founding, but in San Juan del Río the transfer did not take place until 1707. Belanger, “Secularization and the Laity,” pp. 21–25; AGI México, 816. 100.  Montoro, Sermon. 101.  Voekel, Alone before God, p. 120. 102.  Taix, Instruccion, modo de rezar. The confraternity was one of the most popular in Mexico City. Nicole von Germeten found that approximately 25 percent of all testators who made bequests to confraternities left something to the Dominicans’ Confraternity of the Rosary. Von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, p. 31. Not every rosary confraternity was open to all members, as in Valladolid where the Franciscan church housed two, one for Spaniards and one for castas. 103.  Quoted in Victoria Moreno, Los Carmelitas Descalzos, p. 196. 104.  AHPCD, carps. 1761, 1762; AHAM, Secretaría Arzobispal/Conventos, caja 141, exp. 49; Brading, Church and State, p. 138; AGN Bienes, caja 749, exp. 3. 105.  Belanger, “Secularization and the Laity,” pp. 211–215; quote is from p. 215. 106.  Brading, Church and State, p. 133; Voekel, Alone before God, pp. 115– 120.

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107.  For example, at the request of the Dominican order, a 1698 royal cedula confirmed two papal bulls establishing new dispensations from choir. Officials in the eighteenth-century inspection of the Dominicans’ American provinces also noted that friars were to be exempt from attending choir on the evenings prior to and on the days of their sermons. BN AF, caja 132, exp. 1673, doc. 58; Banc mfilm, Italy, Santa Sabina Rome, reel 9, doc. 2, ff. 1–58. 108.  Ochoa, t. I, ff. 17–28. Even the discalced orders offered some exemptions; see BNAH Guzmán, leg. 140. For other examples, see APPAM, Libros B-01-0106, C-03-01-01, C-03-01-06. 109.  Espinosa, Crónica de la provincia franciscana, p. 252. 110.  Johnson, “Gardening for God,” p. 197. 111.  AGN Bienes, caja 642, exp. 4. 112.  AGN INQ, vol. 29, exp. 20, ff. 83–84. 113.  This model advocated “a knowledge of God which is experiential rather than intellectual, the height of which is the mystical encounter with God through love, an intimate relationship with Christ developed in the solitude of the cell through a life of prayer.” Edden, “‘The Prophetycal Lyf of an Heremyte,’” p. 161. 114.  Discalced Franciscans, Cartilla y doctrina espiritual. 115.  Domingo de Soto was a prominent theologian in the Dominicans’ Salamanca school. Berti’s commentary on Augustine was widely used within the order, but not without opposition from Dominicans, who considered his commentary contrary to that of Aquinas. APPAM, Libro C-03-01-08. 116.  After the order’s suppression, the Augustinians petitioned to establish a chair in Augustine’s teachings in place of the Jesuits’ chair. AGN RCO, vol. 118, exp. 113, f. 219. 117.  BN AF, caja 64, exp. 1211, ff. 3–6; Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Historia de la educación en la época colonial, pp. 57, 103, 106. 118.  Trabulse, El círculo roto, p. 37. Trabulse’s quotes come from an unspecified Inquisition case. Elsewhere, Trabulse notes that the Mercedarians’ interest in these areas was part of a larger tradition within the order: “the scientific tradition among the Mercedarians was rich in authors and masters of mathematics, astrology, astronomy, and alchemy.” Trabulse, La ciencia perdida, p. 26. 119.  Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Historia de la educación en la época colonial, pp. 201–202. 120.  Ibid., pp. 297–298; Carso, Colección Adquisiciones Diversas, Fondo ­XLVIII. 121.  Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Historia de la educación en la época colonial, p. 106. 122.  AHPFM Provincia, General, Alfabética, caja 37, exp. 7. Another description from 1767 noted, “This college of friars by pontifical foundation of Urban XIII and in this century was aggregated to the Royal University of Mexico, where secular students can apply their courses and obtain degrees. With this privilege, there are already many in said college, in which the Province maintains six scholarships for secular boys and . . . up to forty-five friars as chairs, students and other necessary positions for its regularity and functioning.” In addition, its primary school was said never to have fewer than 150 students. BN AF, caja 51, exp. 1093.

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123.  One of the arguments Franciscans made for keeping their doctrinas was that the Indians would lose their schools where lay brothers taught prayers, doctrine, reading, and writing. BN AF, caja 128, exp. 1650, doc. 4, ff. 9–15. 124.  Pérez, t. III, pp. 369–378. Around 1700 the province taught grammar, arts, and theology in Mexico City and Puebla, and arts in Oaxaca, Valladolid, and San Luis Potosí. Ochoa, t. III, ff. 107–110. The jurist college, San Ramon Nonato, had been established by a former Mercedarian bishop of Michoacán and Havana for secular students from those two locations. It had a Mercedarian rector who was elected at provincial chapter meetings. 125.  Pérez, t. II, pp. 81–82. 126.  Basalenque, Historia, pp. 189–190; Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Historia de la educación en la época colonial, p. 213. 127.  Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Historia de la educación en la época colonial, p. 179. 128.  Tanck de Estrada, “Tensión,” p. 63. Although mendicants and parish clergy had been providing free grammar schools since the sixteenth century, this new movement differed in the role of secular participation and in its goals of modernization. 129.  BN AF, caja 142, exp. 1740, ff. 1–18. 130.  Tanck de Estrada, “Tensión,” pp. 64–65. 131.  Abundis Canales, La huella carmelita, vol. 1, p. 524. Abundis Canales also questions how long the school remained open since it was not mentioned in the records of the 1807 chapter meeting. 132.  Pérez, t. II, pp. 128–139. 133.  APPAM, Libro C-03-01-08, f. 191. 134.  AHPCD, carp. 1451; Tanck de Estrada, “Tensión,” pp. 68–69; AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XIX, Religiosos, Augustinos, caja 353, exp. 18. 135.  “Memorial de Antonio Llinás al Real y Supremo Consejo de Indias,” AGI México, leg. 310, f. 2, cited in Picazo Muntaner, “El ideario de Fray Antoni Llinás,” p. 437. The balance of work between these two populations varied by college and over time. During the first several years of the Querétaro college’s existence, its friars worked exclusively among the faithful, and the first mission to New Spain’s northern frontiers did not take place until 1688. Missions in northern New Spain, both itinerant and more permanent settlements, grew in importance at Querétaro and other colleges during the eighteenth century, and most pleas to the crown for new privileges or for additional missionaries from Spain cited the needs of the northern missions. Even so, at no point did missions among the faithful ever lose their importance. “Libro de patentes, eleciones y visitas, no. 2,” ff. 160–171, cited in Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, p. 18. 136.  Jesuit fathers began making these missions not long after the order’s arrival in 1572, but the process did not become institutionalized until the mid- to late seventeenth century. 137.  Châtellier, Religion of the Poor, p. 87; Callahan, “The Spanish Church,” p. 43, quoted in Noel, “Missionary Preachers in Spain,” p. 868. 138.  The royal cedula dated October 15, 1733, is quoted in Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, p. 831. AHPSEM, caja 210; ibid., caja 12,

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“Libro para el gobierno de la Sachristia del Convento de N.S.P.S. San Francisco de Mexico” (1787), f. 15v. 139.  Fr. Francisco Xavier del Rosal was the Franciscan cura of Tula. His letter is dated August 11, 1749. AHPSEM, caja 212. 140.  AGI México, 722. 141.  Certificación of Don Martin José Verdugo de la Rocha, dated March 25, 1799. AHPSEM, caja 210. 142.  Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, pp. 198, 203. 143.  AHPSEM, caja 210, as described in the certificación of Colima’s cura, dated 1781. 144.  BNAH GO, leg. 98, “Vida Ejemplar del Religiosos y Apostolico Varon Fr Antonio de Jesus y Ganancia.” 145.  Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide; several dozen certificaciones de misiones can be found in AHPSEM, cajas 208 and 210; “Formulario de Missionar, que hizo y dictó N.V.P. Fr. Antonio de Margil de Jesús,” Benson, AMJC, G168. 146.  “Formulario de Missionar,” Benson, AMJC, G168, f. 10v. 147.  AHPSEM, caja 210. The quotes come from two separate certificaciones dated April 26, 1788, and April 20, 1792. 148.  Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, p. 200. 149.  AHPSEM, caja 208. 150.  “Formulario de Missionar,” Benson, AMJC, G168, f. 12. A tizón is a burning stick but metaphorically can also mean something stained, as with sin. 151.  AHPSEM, caja 210, Certificación of the cura of Real y Minas de Zimapán, Don Joseph Antonio Dominguez. 152.  “Formulario de Missionar,” Benson, AMJC, G168, f. 24v. 153.  Ibid., f. 14v. 154.  AHPSEM, caja 210, Certificación from Real y Minas de Zimapán, August 11, 1749. 155.  Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, pp. 188–189. 156.  AHPSEM, caja 210, Certificación of Don Nicolá de Castilla, cura of Atitalaquia, July 24, 1749. 157.  Ibid., Certificación of the cura of Colima, November 3, 1781. 158.  Ibid. His certificación is dated July 24, 1749. 159.  Ibid., caja 12, “Directorio para el gobierno de la Sachristia del Convento de N.S.P.S. Francisco de Mexico,” f. 15v. 160.  Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, p. 160. 161.  Brading, Church and State, pp. 18–19; Voekel, Alone before God, chap. 2. 162.  Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, pp. 175–190. 163.  BNM, MS 12046. 164.  Arrom, Containing the Poor, p. 20. 165.  Cited in Rex Galindo, “Propaganda Fide,” p. 240. 166.  The letter, which was part of an effort to found a new college at Pátzcuaro, is missing the last page with the date and author’s signature. AGI México, 2742. 167.  Cited in Pareja, Crónica, vol. 2, appendix, pp. 53–54. 168.  Fr. Ginés de Melgárez made this statement in 1674, shortly before the

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major upswing in alms from New Spain. BNM, MS 3572, “Informe de lo que se ha de tener en cuenta en la redencion de cautivos.” 169.  Garner, “Long-Term Silver Mining Trends,” pp. 898–935. 170.  García Navarro, Redenciones de cautivos en Africa, pp. 245–246. 171.  AGI Indiferente, 3055; BNAH Sueltos-1, leg. 24, doc. 29. 172.  Pareja, Crónica, vol. 2, p. 635. Although the order’s official historians, like Pareja, were inclined to exaggerate figures, there is some reason to think that Pareja might have been citing his convent’s record books. Certainly he did this on other occasions, and the precise figure he used here combined with his specification that these alms had been gathered since the second year of the province (rather than since its inception) suggests he may have done the same here. Also, the weighting of the collection in the last twenty years of the span fits the timing of the upsurge in New Spain’s silver production as well as the Mercedarian province’s own growth. 173.  These figures can be found in BNAH Sueltos-1, leg. 24, docs. 8, 29; AGI Indiferente, 3055; AGN, Templos y Conventos, vol. 163. 174.  The following analysis is based upon three books recording alms collection for captives during the late eighteenth century. The books are from the Guadalajara, Valladolid, and Toluca houses. BNAH MP, “Libro segundo donde se asientan las limosnas de la Santa Redencion de Cautivos pertenciente del convento de la Santa Cruz del milagro del Sagrado, Real y Militar Orden de Nuestra Señora de la Merced de la Ciudad de Señor San Jose de Toluca”; AGN, Templos y Conventos, vol. 94, exp. 1, “Libro de cautivos perteneciente al convento de la Merced de Valladolid”; ibid., vol. 222, exp. 5, “Libro en que se asientan las limosnas de los Hermanos Cautivos, que se colectan en este convento de Guadalajara.” 175.  For example, the Guadalajara book recorded that the convent took in no alms two weeks in a row on October 9 and 16, 1794, noting that “alms were not collected in the streets.” 176.  The other days with special collections were days of absolution when people could earn special indulgences by confessing and taking communion in a Mercedarian church. These were the feast days of Our Lady of Mercy, Pedro ­Nolasco, Saint Anthony the Abbot, Mariana de Jesús, and Catherine of Alexandria. 177.  Some years the Valladolid convent broke down how much it received in the church and how much from the processions in the streets, such as in 1794 when seventeen pesos came in through the former and thirteen pesos from the latter. 178.  Melvin, “Charity without Borders,” pp. 75–97. 179.  The order often required the captives to swear they would assist the order in its work for a specified period of time (e.g., six months). Broadman, Ransoming Captives, pp. 98–99; Pareja, Crónica, vol. 2, p. 642. 180.  BNAH GO, leg. 94, “Panal mistico compendio de las grandezas del Celeste, Real, y Militar Orden de Nuestra Señora de la Merced Redempcion de Cautivos Christianos. Por el P. Frai Agustin de Andrade.” 181.  Dermes, Novena sagrada (1727). This edition was a reprint, so the novena may well have enjoyed some popularity at the time. 182.  “Relación del estado en que dejó el gobierno del Marqués de Cerralbo (1636),” in Hanke, Los virreyes españoles, vol. 3, p. 285.

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183.  AGN INQ, vol. 517, exp. 10. 184.  AGN Tierras, vol. 2760, exp 4. 185.  AHCM Diocesano, Justicia, Procesos Contenciosos, Cofradías, caja 68, exp. 13. 186.  The juez eclesiástico was the bishop’s local representative and a judge in local spiritual matters, such as cases of Indian superstition or premarital investigations. For a more detailed description of the position, see Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, pp. 158–160. 187.  AHCM Diocesano, Justicia, Procesos Contenciosos, Cofradías, caja 68, exp. 13. 188.  Mercedarians, for example, had ten friars in residence in 1695, comparable to the size of the Augustinians’ convent, which housed twelve priests in 1705. 189.  BN AF, caja 144, exp. 1749, “Privilegios, excepciones e indultos concedidos por la Sede Apostólica a todas las Religiones Monacales, Mendicantes y a las demás, Ahora de nuevo confirmada por Nuestro Beatíssimo Padre Urban Papa VIII.” 190.  AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Carmelitas, caja 212, exp. 12. 191.  Carso, Fondo DCCXXVIII, “Libro de cosas notables,” f. 24. 192.  Information on the case comes from the following sources: AGI México, 1058, “Memorial Adjustado de el Expediente, que en el Real, Y Supremo Consejo de las Indias, sala de Gobierno, se sigue entre partes, el Reverendo Obispo de Mechoacan Y Los Religiosos Carmelitas descalzos de aquel obispado”; AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Carmelitas, caja 212, exp. 12; BNAH Lira, vol. 20, “Libro donde sea puntan los diffinitorios”; Carso, Fondo DCCXXVIII, “Libro de las Cosas Notables. . . .” 193.  The case against Fr. Jacinto Miranda took place at the end of the eighteenth century when the orders’ legal fuero (privilege) was under serious attack, but even then the legal battle over where he was to be tried or punished dragged on for years. Banc, MM, 85:2, “Escrito presentado por la Sagrada Provincia de Nuestra Señora de la Merced.” 194.  AGN INQ, vol. 301, exp. 53A, ff. 342–353. 195.  Ibid., vol. 770, exp. 4, ff. 440–504. Significantly, the Inquisition punished Fr. Juan not so much for what he said as for where he said it. The sentence stated “that sermons for clerics are preached in the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri and in the Holy Trinity church where this Doctrine can bring good without causing scandal and that the sermons that are preached in public forums like the Cathedral are more usefully directed to all types of estates and persons.” 196.  The place of friars in the confessional was of concern to secular clergy in seventeenth-century Europe as well. According to Robin Briggs, “The dispute between regulars and seculars still smouldered on, and nowhere were the bishops more jealous of their authority than control of the confessional. The whole [seven­ teenth] century resounded with the complaints of the curés against the interference of the various orders, always ready to tempt penitents away with the promise of easy absolution.” Briggs, “The Sins of the People: Auricular Confession and the Imposition of Social Norms,” in Communities of Belief, pp. 351–352.

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197.  BN AF, caja 106, exp. 1461, and caja 138, exp. 1710. 198.  APPAM, Libro C-03-01-06. The resolution was made between 1700 and 1703. 199.  Ochoa, t. I, f. 204. Similarly, in 1788 the bishop of Oaxaca argued the Mercedarians’ convent in Oaxaca should not be suppressed despite its small size because of its good service to the public, especially in the confessional and from the pulpit. Pérez, t. II, pp. 110–114. 200.  AHAM, L10A-10. 201.  Bishops also used this power in disputes with other corporations, such as when Bishop Rocha of Michoacán revoked the licenses of the Oratorians of San Miguel in a dispute during the 1780s. See Brading, Church and State, pp. 53–57. 202.  The document is undated, but internal evidence indicates that the disagreement took place between 1680 and 1712. AHPFM Provincia, General, ­Alfabética, caja 71, exp. 195. 203.  AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Procesos Legales, Cofradías, caja 925, exp. 29. For other examples of precedence disputes over corpus, see AGN RCO, vol. 5, nos. 123, 125; AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Franciscanos, caja 271, exp. 67. 204.  Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, pp. 53–54. Madre de Dios seems to have favored the Carmelites’ attendance, and he argued that the friars’ exceptional modesty and observance (they kept their eyes down the entire time so that none of them could say what was in the city other than the stones in the street) brought great edification to the people. 205.  AGN RCO, vol. 5, nos. 123, 125; Guijo, Diario de sucesos notables, vol. 1, p. 159. Guijo wrote that the viceroy accepted the Carmelites’ decision not to participate in the 1651 procession because they demonstrated their papal privileges, which had been accepted by the royal council. 206.  Robles, Diario de sucesos notables, vol. 2, p. 277; Carso, Fondo ­CDXXVIII; AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Procesos Legales, Cofradías, caja 925, exp. 29. 207.  AGI México, 1058, f. 29. 208.  Ibid., 716; AHCM Diocesano, Justicia, Procesos Contenciosos, Cofradías, caja 580, exp. 5. 209.  Inspections are recorded in episcopal records and the confraternities’ rec­ ords. See AHPCD, carps. 1812, 1821, 1841; AHAM, Libros de visita L10A/10, L10A/11, caja 30CL, Libro 3. 210.  Belanger, “Secularization and the Laity,” pp. 23–24, 57. 211.  Saak, High Way to Heaven, p. 142. Saak argues that fourteenth-century Augustinian theologians, in need of papal support to save their order from suppression, advanced an argument useful to popes in their battles with Franciscans. They argued that the base of any order came not from its founder, as Franciscans were arguing, but from Christ. Since the pope was Christ’s vicar on earth, he (and his hierarchy) was justified in overseeing the orders. 212.  Brading, Church and State, pp. 28–31. 213.  Pérez, t. 4, Madrid, November 13, 1768, pp. 26–51.

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chapter four Epigraph source is AGN INQ, vol. 455, exp. 106, ff. 907–914. 1.  This nickname likely derived from the friar’s family history. Bustos could mean a “headless corpse,” and one of the witnesses in this case explained that the Mercedarian’s father had been murdered in Mexico City. A lujo was someone who was excessively showy or, in this case, a bustos twice over. 2.  For example, the Dominicans’ convent library in Oaxaca had a copy of a sermon by the Dominican Antonio de Lorea that claimed that Raymond had given the order its spiritual form, as well as its first laws and prayers, and he had given the habit to Nolasco, who was really no more than the first Mercedarian friar and general. Lorea, S Raymundo de Peñafort. 3.  Hanke, “The Portuguese in Spanish America,” p. 45. Written histories are not the only source for these ideas; the role of images in the creation and promotion of orders’ conceptions of themselves is covered in Rubial and Suárez Molina, “La construcción de una iglesia indiana,” pp. 143–179. 4.  For an overview of the genre of provincial chronicles, see Camelo, “La crónica provincial.” For discussion of methodologies and historiography, see Lavrin, “Misión,” pp. 11–54. 5.  Medina, Crónica. Vetancurt responded to this point in Teatro mexicano by noting that Valencia was an Observant Franciscan. 6.  Méndez, Crónica, pp. 4, 8. 7.  Grijalva, Crónica. 8.  Pareja, Crónica, chap.1. 9.  Mendieta, Vidas franciscanas, p. 19; italics mine. 10.  According to Diccionario de autoridades, an hermita is a small building in the style of a chapel with an altar and a room for the caretaker who lives there. 11.  Espíritu Santo, Recuerdos históricos, chap. 1. 12.  BNAH GO, 50, “Fundacion de este santo desierto de N. Señora del Carmen de Nueva España, su traslacion del primer sitio al que oy tiene . . . hasta este año de 1734,” Libro I, cap. 3. 13.  Perhaps because of the early dates of the foundations in these cities, little evidence remains of opposition to new convents from other orders. Some local officials did, however, protest additional convents in Mexico City, and members of the Audiencia opposed the Augustinians’ foundation there. See Jaramillo Escutia, Monumenta histórica mexicana, p. 3. 14.  AHPFM Provincia, General, Alfabética, caja 72, exp. 12. 15.  Ibid., caja 67, exp. 4, and caja 62, exp. 43. 16.  Fr. Pedro’s letters employed the same arguments already discussed, including a specific charge against the cost and consequences of the Augustinians’ “sumptuous buildings.” For more on the Augustinians’ elaborate building programs, see Kubler, Mexican Architecture. 17.  Jaramillo Escutia, Monumenta histórica mexicana, p. 271. 18.  Ibid., pp. 266–274; Basalenque, Historia, pp. 224–226. 19.  The plural refers to the Indian and Spanish republics (dos repúblicas). AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Franciscanos, caja 17, exp. 4.

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20.  Pérez, t. II, pp. 71–76. The bishop of Puebla wrote that he supported the Mercedarian foundation because the Spaniards in Guamantla were receiving little or no spiritual benefits from the Franciscans, who had but two or three friars in residence. The bishop’s support of the Mercedarian foundation must have been especially galling to the Franciscans, who had lost so many convents in the region under Palafox. 21.  AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Carmelitas, caja 212, exp. 13; AHPCD, carp. 730; AGN IV, caja 2118, exp. 6. 22.  In addition to the previously mentioned opposition at Querétaro, Tehuacán, and San Luis Potosí, Franciscans objected to Carmelite foundation attempts in Tlaxcala and Toluca. For more on the Tehuacán foundation, see AHPCD, carp. 335. 23.  BNAH Lira, vol. 10, ff. 3–3v. 24.  Clement VIII’s brief would later annul the agreement. San Miguel, Obras; Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, book 3, chap. 19, pp. 408, 413. 25.  The statement is dated August 1648. Quoted in Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, p. 144. 26.  This story is included in the convent’s “Libro de cosas pertenecientes a este convento.” The entry is not dated, but the book covered 1696 to 1765. Carso, Fondo DCXXVIII, Colección Adquisiciones Diversas. 27.  “Informe del Ill. Sr. Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Obispo de la Puebla, al Excelentissimo Sr. Conde de Salvatierra, virrey de esta Nueva España, 1642,” in García, Documentos, p. 63. Also see Piho, La secularización de las parroquias. 28.  The Franciscan doctrinero at Atlixco was the one friar to present himself for examination, and he was allowed to continue in his position. Many Franciscans thought this friar’s decision set a dangerous precedent, however. See ­Vetancurt, Teatro mexicano, “Tratado primero de la fundación de la provincia del Santo Evangelio en la Nueva-España,” pp. 14–16. 29.  Israel, Race, Class and Politics, pp. 206–209; Alvarez de Toledo, Politics and Reform, pp. 69–70. Alvarez’s carefully documented account of the taking of the doctrinas offers a useful version of events, but it is based almost solely on sources hostile to mendicants, such as Palafox’s letters and the collection of documents from the pro-Palafox Genaro García. As a result, Alvarez sometimes accepts as fact points that were contested at the time. 30.  The Mercedarians administered doctrinas in Central and South America, and the Discalced Franciscans did so in the Philippines. The most important chronicles of each order did, however, handle discussions of the Palafox secularizations differently. The Mercedarian, Pareja, avoided the issue altogether, whereas the Discalced Franciscan, Medina, was willing to link his order to Palafox and his growing reputation within narrow boundaries. Medina praised Palafox for his rigor and austerity when he performed spiritual exercises in the Discalced Franciscans’ Puebla convent but said nothing of him as a bishop. ­Medina may have been seeking a way to connect his order to an important figure in New Spain without having to comment on his actions as a prelate. Medina, Crónica, pp. 159v–160. 31.  Martínez, Jaque mate al obispo virrey, pp. 64–65. 32.  Asunción, Itinerario, p. 97.

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33.  The Santa María chronicle, Historia general profetica de la Orden de Nuestra Señora del Carmen, was first published in Madrid in 1641 and dealt with the history of the order from Elias through 1580. Vetancurt, Teatro mexicano, “Tratado primero de la Fundacion de la provincia del Santo Evangelio en la Nueva-España,” p. 16. 34.  APPAM, caja México, Siglo XVII. 35.  AHPCD, carp. 301; Asunción, Itinerario a Indias, p. 77. Fr. Isidro also estimated that one needed more than an hour to walk around the orchard’s perimeter. His estimates may have been exaggerated, but the orchard’s large size and that the Carmelites sold its products were unquestioned. 36.  BNAH Guzmán, leg. 73, no. 7. 37.  Israel covers these political alliances in detail, but in general he argues that Viceroy Salvatierra, many Spanish officials, mendicants (except Carmelites), Jesuits, and Indian corregidores were usually allied on one side against Palafox, secular clergy, Carmelites, and many creoles. See Israel, Race, Class and Politics, especially chap. 8. Less convincingly, Gregorio Martínez puts the Carmelites, seminarians, and “la gente más sencilla: indios, negros y mulatos” (the most simple people: Indians, blacks, and mulattos) on one side, and, on the other, the rest of the orders and the middle and upper classes. Jaque mate al obispo virrey, p. 75. 38.  Carso, colección Puebla, rollo 21. Israel notes that Salvatierra asked the orders to write to Madrid with their complaints about Palafox, and all complied, except the Carmelites. Race, Class and Politics, p. 225. 39.  According to Israel, the Mexico City council joined the petition because Viceroy Salvatierra pressured and bribed them into doing so. A year or so later when Salvatierra left Mexico, the council reversed its position and threw its support behind Palafox. Race, Class and Politics, pp. 225–226. 40.  AHPCD, carp. 189. The document is dated 1647. 41.  Conservatórias were the letters issued by jueces conservadores. 42.  “Copia del Memorial que el autor dirige al Papa Clemente XVIII, quejándose de la Persecucion de los Jesuitas a los Carmelitas,” AHPCD, carp. 40. A slightly different copy can be found in BNAH Guzmán, leg. 70. That Elias’s origins were an issue was undoubtedly related to claims from a group of Jesuits known as the Society of Bollandists. A censure from the Inquisition during the seventeenth century prohibited debate on the matter, but questions about Elias’s role continued. 43.  Martínez, Jacque mate al obispo virrey, pp. 253–525. 44.  For some examples of the Jesuits’ opposition, see Robles, Diario de sucesos notables, vol. 2, pp. 105, 169; and García, Documentos inéditos, doc. I. 45.  AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Correspondencia, Religiosos, Siglo XVIII, caja 43, exps. 103, 105, 106. Fr. Manuel de Jesús collected 623 pesos around San Luis Potosí in 1790–1791 despite what he described as the current calamities and hunger in those pueblos. AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Siglo XVIII, Religiosos, Carmelitas, caja 213, exp. 41. 46.  During the last part of the fifteenth century, communities across Castile instituted vows to observe her feast day, and by the sixteenth century the feast day was obligatory in all dioceses. Christian, Local Religion, pp. 36–37. Devotion to her began developing in New Spain during the sixteenth century, especially in

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territories administered by Franciscans and Augustinians. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, pp. 278, 281. 47.  The crux of the issue was not the formation of Mary’s physical body (which was the product of a mother and father and was not implanted by the Holy Spirit, as was Jesus in Mary), but of her soul. For Aquinas and his Dominican successors, every living creature’s soul had been subjected to original sin, including Mary’s, and the key to Mary’s unique purity among humans was that God sanctified her while in Anne’s womb. For Scotus and Franciscan theologians, God had singled out Mary and her soul and created it free from original sin. As the Franciscan Fr. Alonso de Zepeda explained in his sermon at the 1620 octave of the Immaculate Conception in Tlaxcala, before God created Adam (and so before original sin), he revealed to his angels that he had created Mary’s soul. Zepeda, Sermon de la Immaculada Concepcion. For a pithy treatment of the theological issues surrounding the subject during the medieval period, see Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology, pp. 281–298. 48.  Trent did, however, offer tacit support for the doctrine because Mary’s Immaculate Conception was not explicitly stated in scripture and Trent affirmed that tradition as well as scripture could serve as a basis for church doctrine. 49.  AGN INQ, vol. 130, exp. 2, f. 9. Who made the denunciation is unclear, but given the Dominicans’ particularly strong presence there, it would be surprising if they did not have a hand in it. According to the denunciation, the friar claimed that news of the papal decree had not yet arrived in Mexico City, so he was going to preach his opinion. No decision was made in the case because the Franciscan died shortly thereafter. 50.  See Stratton, The Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art, especially chap. 3. She notes an increase in the number of processions, sermons, and works of art devoted to the Immaculate Conception during this time. Also, in 1616 the municipal council in Seville organized a public vow to defend the mystery of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. 51.  The connection between the arrival of news and the celebrations was made explicitly in a 1619 printed account of the silversmith guild’s role in the 1618 octave. It begins, “The favorable decrees that our very Holy Father Paul V conceded to the purity of the Queen of the Angels, in the first instant of her conception, caused in the kingdoms of New Spain such general happiness . . . and the Mexican Court sought to bring about greater rejoicing.” AGN INQ, vol. 485, exp. 1, f. 14. 52.  Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Historia de la educación en la época colonial, p. 111. Oath takers at the university promised that they hold and believe well and truly that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of sinners, was conceived in her virginal cloister through the eternal majesty of God, without suffering from any defect whatsoever, nor any diminution of her virginal purity, resulting in her intact, inviolable, and total integrity from which she gave birth to the son of God, true God and man. Also she was conceived holy, pure, and clean, without for a single instant being tarnished by the stain of original sin. (AGN INQ, vol. 485, exp. 1, f. 160)

53.  Mateo Gómez, “Aspectos religiosos, sociales y culturales”; Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate, pp. 2–12. Rummel notes that humanists were often

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stereotyped “as poets and grammarians meddling in theology” (p. 8). She sees these debates as centered in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so the 1619 date of the Dominican sonnet seems rather late. 54.  Sonnets are from AGN INQ, vol. 485, exp. 1. Saint John Damascene (675– 749), an influential theologian, argued that Catholic doctrine was based on tradition as well as scripture, an argument upon which much of Marian veneration was based. The sermon’s specific reference was likely to John’s sermons about Mary’s Assumption, which referred to her “double virginity undefiled, her virginal soul no less spotless than her body.” Brading, Mexican Phoenix, pp. 15–17, 24–26. 55.  The only other order even mentioned in the description of the ceremonies was the Jesuits, who put up an altar in front of their college. 56.  Another example of how festivities in honor of the Immaculate Conception were becoming more important and elaborate around this time comes from the Augustinians’ Michoacán Province, which in 1650 decreed that all convents would now celebrate her octave in conformity with how the octave was celebrated in Mexico City. APPAM, Libro C-03-03-01. 57.  The fiestas themselves included many familiar elements, with the Franciscans taking the leading role along with their Third Order and the silversmiths. The other orders also attended in less prominent roles, although the Augustinians and Mercedarians were singled out for their contributions to the spectacle. Guijo, ­Diario de sucesos notables, vol. 1, pp. 206–208. For the petition to the Inquisition, see AGN INQ, vol. 484, exp. 1, ff. 233–236. The petition to the ecclesiastical council is found in Actas de Cabildo Ecclesiastico, II, rollo 1200, años 1650–1653, vol. 1, exp. 9, red. 11, f. 243. The record is dated January 17, 1653, the day before the celebration began. 58.  Guijo, Diario de sucesos notables, vol. 1, pp. 223–236. He does not mention whether or not the Carmelites had a representative on the altar. Similar festivities took place for the first time in Lima in 1654. Josephe de Mugaburu described them as like nothing that had ever been seen in Lima. Chronicle of Colonial Lima, p. 34. 59.  Dominicans in Lima were more reluctant to give in. As recounted by Mugaburu, at the December 1654 fiesta to Mary Immaculate, the Dominican preacher stopped after the first part of the phrase praising the Eucharist, so the audience finished for him the second part about Mary’s pure conception. Later that night, a crowd gathered and began processing through the streets, chanting “without original sin.” The first night, the Dominicans refused to ring their bells (as the other churches had done) when the crowd stopped in front of their church. The next night, when the processions continued, the Dominicans did ring them for the crowd, leading Mugaburu to comment: “If they had not . . . it would have weighed heavily on the Dominican Fathers.” Dominicans had not given up all resistance, however, and a couple of weeks later when the Dominican preacher refused to say the second part of the phrase, the crowd forced him from the pulpit. It was not until July 1654 that the Dominican prelate and some of his friars finally capitulated by repeating the phrase together in front of a packed church, resulting in “great rejoicing.” Chronicle of Colonial Lima, pp. 73–87. 60.  Robles, Diario de sucesos notables.

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61.  AGN INQ, vol. 1048, exp. 8, ff. 155–161. Nothing seems to have come of the second denunciation. 62.  Ibid., vol. 890, ff. 67–129; quote is from f. 80. Witnesses also noted that Gradin appeared drunk and smelled of alcohol when he preached at Aquinas’s fiesta. 63.  San Miguel, Abraham evangelico. 64.  AGN INQ, vol. 890, f. 105. 65.  Ibid. 66.  AHPCD, carp. 31. 67.  Catherine of Siena was Dominic’s female counterpart: the founder of the Dominican nuns and the most widely celebrated female saint within the Dominican order. 68.  AGN INQ, vol. 645, exp. 6, ff. 336–378. 69.  Ibid. 70.  Ibid., vol. 485, exp. 1, f. 226. 71.  Ibid., vol. 518, exp. 38, f. 461. 72.  Ibid., ff. 467–470. 73.  The painting has been questionably attributed to Miguel Cabrera. 74.  Alvarado, Sermon. 75.  Torres, Sermon panegyrico de el gloriosso humanado seraphin. 76.  Fr. Jaime’s carta de esclavitud (letter of servitude) signed by the Dominican provincial can be found in AHPCD, carp. 1346. 77.  AHPSEM, caja 202, “Decretos del Colegio de San Fernando de Mexico,” t. 9; APPAM, Libro B-01-01-06, f. 103v. 78.  Madre de Dios, Tesoro escondido, pp. 30, 163. 79.  BN AF, caja 53, exp. 1122, f. 9; AHPFM Provincia, Sección General, caja 72, exp. 14. 80.  See Belanger, “Secularization and the Laity,” especially chap. 2. 81.  Robles, Diario de sucesos notables, vol. 3, p. 304. 82.  AHPSEM, caja 204, “Carta de Fr. Francisco Pangua.” Although the document is undated, the absence of the Jesuits from the lists of orders suggests that is from sometime after 1767. 83.  Torres, Oracion panegyrica. 84.  Herrera, San Pedro Nolasco. A Mercedarian also gave the sermon at the dedication of the new Discalced Franciscan church in Guanajuato in 1785. 85.  AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Procesos Legales, Cofradías, caja 295, exp. 29. 86.  Pareja mentions the dispute between his order and the Carmelites, as does a notation in records of the 1603 Carmelites’ provincial chapters, but neither offers any details. The juaninos’ ultimately unsuccessful argument can be found in BN AF, caja 141, exp. 1735, doc. 3, ff. 15–16. The question of Franciscan precedence in Querétaro was decided in favor of the Discalced Franciscans. BN AF, caja 53, exp. 1129, ff. 1–32. 87.  Aguirre, Sentencia apostolica definitiva. . . . 88.  BNAH Antigua, 479, “Causa mexicana de precedencia . . .”; Aguirre, Sentencia apostolica definitiva; Constituciones de la Provincia de San Diego de

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Mexico, pp. 183–261; Robles, Diario de sucesos notables, vol. 3, pp. 179, 196, 203, 282, 285, 304. 89.  APPAM, Libro B-01-06, “Libro VII de esta prov.a de S. Nicolas Tolentino de Mechoac.n donde se asientan los capitulos, plenos, diffinitorias, actas capitulares, diffinitorios privados y patentes de NNRmos PP Generales. 1778–1829.” 90.  AHCM Diocesano, Justicia, Procesos Contenciosos, Cofradías, caja 68, exp. 13. 91.  AHPFM Provincia, General, Alfabética, caja 71, exp. 208. 92.  For some of these decrees, see APPAM, Libro C-03-01-01. 93.  BN AF, caja 142, exp. 1739, ff. 54–55. 94.  AGN Historia, vol. 2, exp. 5, f. 87. 95.  The Carmelites also opposed the Franciscans in supporting Aquinas over Scotus as the basis of their order’s theological teachings. Fr. Diego de Espíritu Santo, the Carmelite chronicler, told the story of a venerable friar who resolved a dispute over the worthiness of the teachings of Scotus and Aquinas. The friar took equal-sized writings from each theologian and placed them on a scale, and—what a cause of admiration!—that of Aquinas sunk like it was made of metal and that of Scotus rose as if it were a feather. He thus demonstrated that Aquinas was the weightier of the two. Espíritu Santo, Recuerdos historicos, chap. 11. 96.  Río, Aclamaciones panegiricas. 97.  AGN INQ, vol. 699, exp 7. 98.  BN AF, caja 95, exp. 1410, ff. 45–48. 99.  Israel, Race, Class and Politics, p. 232. 100.  For an example of how these assumptions have found their way into historiography, see Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, p. 201.

chapter five A portion of this chapter was originally published in “A Potential Saint Thwarted: Religion and the Politics of Sanctity in Late Eighteenth-Century New Spain,” in Jeffrey Ravel and Linda Zionkowski, eds., Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 36 (2007), pp. 169–185. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. © American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. The chapter epigraph is from “Este Libro es donde se escribe la fundacion de este convento de la Purisima Concepcion de Maria Santisima Nuestra Señora, de Carmelitas Descalzos de la ciudad de Toluca,” in Victoria Moreno, El convento, vol. 1, p. 22. 1.  Victoria Moreno, El convento, vol. 1, p. 31. 2.  The Augustinians’ absence was neither typical nor atypical. The order’s convents in thirteen cities of New Spain equaled the Jesuits’ total, but there were also many significant cities without an Augustinian convent, such as Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, and Orizaba. 3.  There is some debate over the year Toluca became a ciudad, with some evidence pointing to 1662 instead of 1675. See León García, La distinción alimentaria de Toluca, p. 79.

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4.  García Martínez, El Marquesado del Valle, pp. 166–167. Gerhard cites a response to a 1742 questionnaire by Viceroy Fuenclara that gave a population of 14,330. Mexico in 1742, p. 21. 5.  Vetancurt, Teatro mexicano, “Tratado segundo de las provincias, y conventos de la provincia del Santo Evangelio Mexicana,” p. 61; Victoria Moreno, El convento, vol. 1, p. 21. 6.  Cited in León García, La distinción alimentaria de Toluca, p. 80. The padrón listed 7 hidalgos, 108 nobles, 2,738 Spaniards, 555 castizos (people who were half Spanish and half mestizo), and 1,747 mestizos. 7.  Thomas Gage described Toluca as “rich also for trading, but above all much mentioned for Bacon, which is the best of all those parts, and is transported far and near.” Gage, New Survey of the West-Indies, p. 154. 8.  Instrucción reservada, p. 39. 9.  Fanegas and cargas were units of measure. Victoria Moreno, El convento, vol. 1, p. 21. 10.  AGN RCO, vol. 24, exp. 56, f. 174. 11.  Victoria Moreno, El convento, vol. 1, pp. 91–92. 12.  AGN RO, vol. 1, exp. 26, ff. 44–45v. 13.  León, El convento franciscano, pp. 38–39. 14.  BN AF, caja 89, exp. 1377, f. 167. 15.  These testimonies are useful as an overview of what the Franciscans were doing. Because most answers were rote confirmations of leading questions in support of Franciscan objectives, they are less useful for gauging how well the Franciscans were providing these services. Similarly, they have less to say about how those services might have changed over time than about how the Franciscan hierarchy’s concerns evolved. For instance, the 1723 statements were probably collected in response to threats to the continued inclusion of Spaniards in their doctrina. Not only did the questions focus on the friars’ ability to minister to both Indians and Spaniards (did they minister and teach doctrine to Spaniards as well as Indians, mestizos, and mulattos?) but also all the witnesses were described as Spaniards, if not Dons. 16.  BN AF, caja 111, exp. 1518, ff. 5–36. 17.  Both testimonies come from 1753. Ibid., exp. 1520, doc. 19. 18.  Vetancurt, Teatro mexicano, “Tratado segundo de las provincias, y conventos de la provincia del Santo Evangelio Mexicana,” pp. 61–62. 19.  BN AF, caja 111, exp. 1519, doc. 19; León, El convento franciscano, p. 39. 20.  León, El convento franciscano, p. 40. 21.  BNAH MP, doc. 1, “Libro de misas del convento de la Ssma Cruz del Milagro de la ciudad de Toluca”; AHPCD, carp. 1566, “Libro de misas de Toluca.” 22.  BNAH MP, doc. 16, “Libro segundo donde se asientan las limosnas de la santa redencion de cautivos pertenciente del convento de la Santa Cruz del milagro del sagrado, real y militar Orden de Nuestra Santissima Madre y Señora de la Merced de la ciudad de Señor San Jose de Toluca.” 23.  Léon, El convento franciscano, p. 40. 24.  Romero Quiroz, El convento hospital. 25.  AGN, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 354, exp. 1.

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26.  AHAM, Provisorato, caja 1737, exp. 4, and caja 1728 (2), exp. 1. 27.  Torres, Sermon panegyrico; Mancilla, Sagrada medilla. 28.  Victoria Moreno, El convento, vol. 2, pp. 255–267. 29.  According to the “Memoria de los bienhechores insignes que ha tenido este colegio desde su fundacion,” he “was the first that gave for this foundation,” and it credited him with a gift of eleven hundred pesos. Victoria Moreno, El convento, vol. 1, p. 83. 30.  BNAH Guzmán, leg. 108B, doc. 1. 31.  Ibid. 32.  “Libro de la fundacion de la tercera orden de Nuestra Señora del Carmen en este convento del Carmen Descalzo de San Jose de Toluca,” in Victoria Moreno, El convento, vol. 2, p. 91. 33.  Ibid. 34.  BN AF, caja 73, exp. 1241. 35.  Doña Antonia, elected the head female officer in 1738, was married to Don Juan Antonio Sotomayor, who was consistently named in the testimonies as one of the association’s principal organizers. 36.  “Libro de Capellanias y obligaciones que este convento de Carmelitas Descalzos tiene . . . ,” in Victoria Moreno, El convento, vol. 1, pp. 139–171. 37.  BN AF, caja 73, exp. 1241, ff. 9v–40. 38.  AHPSEM, caja 53, “Libro de Acuerdos y decretos . . . ,” August 29, 1738. 39.  AHPCD, carp. 1761, “Libro primero en que se asientan las profesiones de los hermanos de la Ve. Orden Tercera de Ntra Ssma Madre y Sra. del Carmen,” f. 2. 40.  Ibid., carp. 90. 41.  AHPSEM, caja 53, “Libro de acuerdos y decretos . . . ,” February 9, 1721. 42.  BN AF, caja 73, exp. 1240, ff. 8–9. 43.  BNAH Fondo Antigua, 378; Fuente Salazar, Relacion universal. 44.  In 1771 the Carmelites extinguished the Puebla Third Order for being “not well adapted to the peace and quiet of that community.” In this case, however, the problems seem to have been internal, particularly involving quarrels among the members. AHPCD, carp. 666; BNAH Guzmán, leg. 104, no. 44. 45.  Unless otherwise noted, this case is taken from AGN INQ, vol. 1239, exp. 3. María Josefa also appears in Nora Jaffary’s False Mystics. 46.  See also “Lista de Priores,” in Victoria Moreno, El convento, vol. 1, p. 39. 47.  AGN INQ, vol. 1239, exp. 3, ff. 145–145v. 48.  AGN INQ, vol. 1239, exp. 3, “Carta de Fr. Lorenzo, 4 enero 1784.” 49.  AGN INQ, vol. 1239, exp. 3. 50.  Ibid., vol. 1127, exp. 4, f. 42. 51.  Parents’ frustrations with their spiritually inclined daughters were not uncommon. Myers (1993) found that María de San José’s family did not like the disruptions to the family routine caused by her penance and visions, and she notes that Bell and Weinstein reported similar findings in their study of medieval saints. Bell and Weinstein, Saints and Society. 52.  María Louisa testified, in a story intended to demonstrate one of María Josefa’s favors from God, that María Josefa’s mother told her that Don José once

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dared to remove María Josefa’s petticoats, but he felt such a strong chill that he instantly changed his mind. 53.  It was common for confessors during this time to establish close relationships with spiritually exceptional women, and, aside from any spiritual benefits, such relationships could offer opportunities for promoting the reputations of both parties. Bilinkoff, “Confessors, Penitents,” pp. 83–102. 54.  Modeling or even verbatim copying of others’ works was common in the religious writings of both men and women at the time. For example, María de San José, the colonial Mexican nun studied by Kathleen Myers and Amanda Powell, copied entire passages from the founder of her order. AGN INQ, vol. 1239, exp. 3. Myers, Word from New Spain, p. 27; Myers and Powell, A Wild Country, p. 309; Keitt, Inventing the Sacred, pp. 130–131. 55.  The origins of female mystical piety can be found, according to Carolyn Walker Bynum, in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, when women gained more opportunities to participate in new, specialized religious roles through affective practices, including extreme forms of penitential asceticism. Such forms of piety also contributed to a religious revival in the early seventeenth century, according to Barbara Diefendorf and Elizabeth Rapley. Rapley, for example, argues that the focal point of this revival in France was a growing female interest in Teresa of Avila and the Carmelites. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, and Fragmentation and Redemption; Rapley, The Dévotes; Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity. 56.  This scholarship includes Rubial García, La santidad controvertida; Morgan, Spanish American Saints; Van Deusen, The Souls of Purgatory; Myers, “The New Spanish Inquisition,” and Neither Saints nor Sinners. In “The New Spanish Inquisition” Myers specifically notes Teresa’s strong influence during the century and a half following her canonization (p. 89). 57.  Brown, Immodest Acts; Van Deusen, The Souls of Purgatory. 58.  Certeau, The Mystic Fable, especially chap. 3, “New Science.” 59.  Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila. As an example, Bernini in his famous sculpture in Venice’s Cornaro chapel (1651) portrayed Teresa as a passive receptacle of a divine action. Her closed eyes and limp body, along with her placement in a recessed frame above eye level, remove her from this world, and the viewer becomes little more than an “inadvertent witness” to an event that Teresa does not actively seek and only inertly accepts. For Bernini’s portrayal of Teresa, see Lavin, Bernini; and Petersson, The Art of Ecstasy. 60.  AGN INQ, vol. 1239, exp. 3, f. 323. 61.  Ibid., f. 321. 62.  Ibid. 63.  Ibid. 64.  Ibid., ff. 330–330v. 65.  Ibid. 66.  For other examples of how portraits were used to create spiritual legacies of aspiring holy persons, see Keitt, Inventing the Sacred, p. 108. 67.  Questioned further, he admitted that he had indeed found the horse after that but did not attribute it to María Josefa, since “these animals always recognize the nest.”

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Notes to Chapter Five and Conclusion

68.  AGN INQ, vol. 1239, exp. 3. 69.  Ibid. 70.  According to Carmelite teachings, Mary would bring those who had worn the scapular in life from purgatory to heaven on the Saturday after they died. 71.  AGN INQ, vol. 1376, exp. 15, ff. 107–192. 72.  AGN INQ, vol. 1376, exp. 15. 73.  Ibid. 74.  Ibid. 75.  AGN INQ, vol. 1376, exp. 15. 76.  Ibid. 77.  Unless otherwise specified, the information on this case is taken from AGN Bienes, caja 953, exp. 21, and AGN INQ, vol. 1405, exp. 20. 78.  AGN INQ, vol. 1405, exp. 20. 79.  The term is borrowed from Clendinnen, “Ways to the Sacred.”

conclusion 1.  Brading, “La devoción católica.” 2.  For some examples, see APPAM, caja Celaya, siglo XIX, and caja Morelia, siglo XIX; AHCM Diocesano, Gobierno, Religiosos, Mercedarios, 1801–1887, caja 394, exp. 14. 3.  Francisco Morales makes a similar argument about their suppression, but he locates the origins of the troubles in the secularization of doctrinas. This was undoubtedly more true for the Franciscans (especially the Mexico Province) than any other order, but even they continued to demonstrate vigor and the ability to adapt, most notably through their missionary colleges and the Michoacán Province’s new convents founded at the end of the eighteenth century. Morales, “Mexican Society.” 4.  I am not trying to establish a hard-and-fast division between the two, and the dual purpose of missionary colleges—ministering to neophytes in northern missions and making short revivalist trips to local cities—nicely illustrates that contemporaries viewed the two purposes as closely related. Nonetheless, there was a distinction between making people Catholics and making people better Catholics, or as a decree of the Fourth Provincial Council put it, between converting souls and restoring other souls to grace. Zahino Peñafort, El Cardenal Lorenzana, p. 289. 5.  Bireley, Refashioning Catholicism. 6.  Figures on Spain’s mendicant population come from Callahan, Church, Politics and Society, chap. 1. 7.  The implementation of the alternativa, the use of inspectors, and the creation of supervisory positions such as the Franciscan comisario general demonstrate Europeans’ recognition of the weakness of their position.

Glossary

active ministries. Services provided to the laity, such as celebrating Mass, preaching, offering confession, distributing alms, tending to the sick, and directing lay organizations. Counterpart to contemplative ministries. alternativa. Required rotation of important provincial offices between creoles and peninsulares. The Franciscans’ Mexico Province followed a modified version of alternativa called ternativa, which included a third group, hijos de provincia (sons of the province), consisting of friars born in Europe but who professed in the Americas. canonical hours. See Divine Office. cedula. Royal decree. chapter meetings. Regular (usually every three years) meetings with elections for important offices in the province. chorister. A friar who has professed but who is still studying to become a priest. ciudad. City, but also the highest legal designation in the hierarchy of population centers: ciudad, villa (distinguished town), pueblo (town), and lugar (place). comendador. Commander; the elected head of a Mercedarian convent. comisario general. Highest-ranking Franciscan official in New Spain who held authority over all the region’s Observant and Discalced provinces and missionary colleges. confraternity. A sodality, or lay group, dedicated to a particular devotion. constitution. A formal document established by each order setting out its laws and structures. contemplative ministries. Services that could be provided while cloistered in the convent, such as prayers for the dead. Counterpart to active ministries. convento. The highest administrative status in the hierarchy of mendicant houses. These houses were required to have at least eight friars in permanent residence, and their elected heads could vote at provincial chapter meetings. See also hospicio. creole. A person of European descent born in the Americas. definidor. A member of a definitory.

320

Glossary

definitory. An elected council of friars that established policy for a province. diocesan clergy. Priests who were not members of regular orders (regular clergy) and who were directly subject to the authority of the bishop. Also called secular clergy. discalced. Literally, “barefoot.” The discalced branches of the mendicant orders were supposed to follow a more strict interpretation of their Rule. Each mendicant order except the Dominicans had a discalced branch. Divine Office. The cycle of communal prayers sung or recited at set hours throughout the day and night. doctrina (doctrina de indios). A temporary parish run by regular clergy that would be turned over to secular clergy once its Indian residents were judged sufficiently Christianized. doctrinero. Administrator of a doctrina. donado. A man who took simple vows and entered an order as a servant. Eucharist. The wafer given at Communion that in Catholic doctrine contains the actual body of Christ. fiscal. The chief legal adviser to the king or viceroy. friar. From the Latin frater, meaning “brother”; a member of one of the mendicant orders. guardian. The elected head of a Franciscan convent. hospicio. A house without full convent status that might house a few friars or sometimes only visiting friars. Immaculate Conception of Mary. The belief that Mary, like Jesus, had been conceived without the stain of original sin. institute. The particular way of life, status, and purpose of an established group. juanino. Member of the hospital order, Saint John of God. juez eclesiástico. A priest appointed by the local ordinary (usually the bishop or archbishop) to serve as the judge for certain ecclesiastical matters in a jurisdiction, often a parish or a town and its surrounding area. lay brother. A professed friar who is not a priest or studying to become a priest. mendicant. A type of order that emerged in the thirteenth century that, unlike monastic orders, renounced common property ownership. Its members pursued active and especially apostolic ministries in addition to contemplative duties. Originally encompassing four orders—Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites—the status came to include other orders, including the Mercedarians. monastic order. Cloistered male order. monk. A member of a monastic order. novena. Nine-day celebration in honor of a saint or special occasion. novice. A new entrant into an order who is undergoing a probationary period and has not yet professed. octave. Eight-day celebration in honor of a saint or special occasion.

Glossary

321

ordinary. The ecclesiastical head of a particular jurisdiction, usually a bishop or archbishop. peninsular. Someone of European descent born in Spain. prelate. A general term for a friar holding office or rank within an order. prior. The elected head of a Dominican, Augustinian, or Discalced Carmelite convent. profession. After a probationary period, the formal entrance into a religious order through the acceptance of solemn vows. province. An administrative unit within each order consisting of convents and friars within a specified region. provincial. The elected head of a province. pueblo (pueblo de indios). A town, but also a specific legal category frequently applied to Indian towns. See ciudad. regular clergy. Members of regular orders, including mendicants, Jesuits, and hospital orders. religions. A contemporary synonym for regular orders. Rule. A canonically approved set of guiding principles adopted by each order. Augustinians, Dominicans, and Mercedarians followed the Rule of Saint Augustine; Franciscans, the Rule of Saint Francis; and Carmelites, the Rule of Saint Albert. sacraments. Within the Catholic Church, there were seven: confession, communion, baptism, marriage, extreme unction (last rites), confirmation, and ordination. scapular. A piece of cloth or paper bearing a religious image or symbol and worn around the neck. secular clergy. See diocesan clergy. ternativa. See alternativa. tertiary. A member of a third order. third order. An organization similar to a confraternity established as a lay counterpart to male first orders (friars) and female second orders (nuns). Found only in mendicant orders. triennium. A three-year term of office demarcated by provincial chapter meetings. vecino. Resident, often one of European descent or some social standing. via crucis. Stations representing Christ’s journey to Calvary. Also known as the way of the cross. villa. Notable town. See ciudad. vows. Promises made before God. Vows could be solemn or simple; the former incurred mortal sin if broken, but the latter did not. Friars took simple vows when entering as novices and solemn vows at their profession. Donados and members of some lay organizations took simple vows. The three standard monastic vows are poverty, chastity, and obedience.

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Index

Acapulco, 33, 39 Aguado, Pedro, 260 Aguado Chacón, José, 235, 241 Aguascalientes, 41–42, 162, 314n2 Aguiar y Seijas, Francisco, 109, 235 Alberro, Solange, 6 Aldana, Fr. Cristóbal, 188 alms for captives. See Mercedarians alumbrados, 112, 131–32 Alvarado, Fr. Juan de, 219 Amarillas, Marqués de las, 67 Andrade, Fr. Agustín de, 82, 104–5, 116 Angeles, Fr. Domingo de los, 243 antoninos, 109–10 Anunciación, Fr. Juan de la, 15, 240 Aquinas, Thomas, 92, 113, 130, 139, 152, 206, 211–13, 270, 311n47, 314n95 Argüello, Fr. Manuel de, 212 Ascención, Fr. Manuel de la, 93 Asunción, Fr. Isidro de la, 42, 200, 225 Asuniega, Fr. Bernardo de, 185–86 Atlixco, 27, 63, 69, 152, 155, 193, 201, 264, 309n28; foundation of convents, 36–37, 287n87 Augustinians: arrival in New Spain, 13, 188–91; foundation of convents, 26–27, 34–35, 40, 44, 64, 72–73; institute, 99–101, 270–71; loss of doctrinas, 55–56; origins,

10–11; populations of friars, 48–54, 66–71. See also doctrinas; habits; lay organizations; Saint Augustine Azorgaza y de la Cueba, Cristóbal de, 168–70 Baroque Catholicism, 7–8, 123–25, 159, 161, 253 Barros, Fr. Juan Antonio, 95 Belanger, Brian, 146–47 Bergosa y Jordan, Antonio, 257 Bermúdes, Hermenegilda, 245 Betanzos, Fr. Domingo, 25 Bethlehemites, 107, 109–10, 148, 153, 163 Bireley, Robert, 5, 273 books, devotional, 142–43, 161 Brading, David, 7, 32, 58, 147, 269 Brown, Judith, 252 Burgoa, Fr. Francisco, 78, 98 Burgos, Fr. Juan de, 131–32 Burns, Kathryn, 134 Calahorra, Josefa, 246–47 Callahan, William J., 157 Carmelites: arrival in New Spain, 13, 191; foundation of convents, 35–37, 40, 42, 44, 60–63, 72–73; institute, 101–3, 154, 200, 203, 205, 271; origins, 10–11; peninsular connections, 36–37, 47; populations of friars, 48–54, 66–71, 73;

358

Index

Carmelites (continued ): scapular, 87–88, 89–90, 145–6, 219, 258–61, 264–65, 271–72, 218n70. See also doctrinas; Elias; habits; lay organizations; Saint John of the Cross; Our Lady of Carmen; Saint Teresa of Avila Carrillo, Gerónimo, 232 Casafuerte, Marqués de, 61 Casaus y Torres, Fr. Ramón, 103 Casquiero, Fr. Alexandro, 226 Cassasola, Fr. Mariano José, 254 Cassassola, Don Juan Carlos de, 162 Castellaños, Fr. Francisco, 253–54 Castillo, Fr. Alonso del, 81, 98–99 Castillo, Fr. Martín del, 215 Castro, Fr. Cristóbal de, 113–14 Castroverde, Fr. Pedro de, 194–95 Cataño Bohorques, Fr. Gerónimo, 209 Celaya, 63, 82, 134, 193; Bishop Escalona and Carmelites, 177–78; foundation of convents, 33–35, 45–46, 59, 180, 283n28; ministries, 122, 153; sermons, 85–86, 222 Cerralbo, Marqués de, 167 Certeau, Michel de, 252 chaplaincies, 36–37, 45, 52, 134, 136–37, 197, 244, 26 Colima, 37, 63–64, 128, 157, 161, 193, 290n141, 297n34 Concepción, Fr. Francisco de la, 232 Concepción, Fr. Lorenzo de la, 250–58 Concepción Beaumont, Fr. Pablo de la, 94 confession, 125–33, 257; connection to preaching, 121–22; licenses to preach and confess, 173–75, 178–79; role in missions, 158–59 confraternities. See lay organizations contemplative duties, 147–49. See also Divine Office convents: process of founding, 27, 30–31; sixteenth-century foundations, 25–27; types of, 30; urban foundations, 28–29, 32–46, 58–66, 72–74; urban houses defined, 18

creole-peninsular rivalries, 14, 16–17, 47–48, 66, 199, 202, 205, 230 creoles, 6, 13, 16, 54–55, 72, 274; professions, 46–47. See also creolepeninsular rivalries Croix, Marqués de, 68 Cruz y Moya, Fr. Juan José de la, 81 Cuautla, 41 Cuevas, Gerónima de, 245–46 Cuevas, Marqués de, 67 d’Auray, David, 86 Díaz de Godoi, Antonio, 93, 114 Díaz, Bernal, 189–90 diocesan clergy. See secular clergy Divine Office, 100–101, 119, 147–148 Doctrinas (de indios), 2–3, 16–17, 26–27, 34–36, 39–40, 54, 63, 106, 119–120; Augustinians and, 27, 34– 35, 54, 106, 136, 153, 195, 287n92; Carmelites and, 35–36, 40, 101–2, 105–6, 201–2, 205, 225, 227, 271; comparisons to urban convents, 3, 8, 18–19, 149–50, 168, 180, 268; Discalced Franciscans and, 10, 35, 39, 95, 271; disputes with secular clergy over, 167, 170–71, 176, 178–80, 198–200, 272–73; Dominicans and, 27, 34–35, 54, 106; eighteenth-century secularization, 7, 23, 55–56, 65–66, 69–70, 74, 144, 268, 280n13, 289n121, 300n78, 318n3; Mercedarians and, 18, 35, 104, 106, 284n44, 287n87; Observant Franciscans and, 27, 33–35, 54, 74, 106, 153, 225, 231, 233, 236–37, 264, 269, 303n123, 318n3 Dominicans: arrival in New Spain, 13, 188; foundation of convents, 25–27, 33–35, 40, 44, 64, 72–73; institute, 97–99, 144, 270; origins, 9–10; populations of friars, 48–54 66–71. See also doctrinas; habits; lay organizations; Our Lady of the Rosary; rosary; Saint Dominic of Guzmán

Index education, 42, 65–66, 151–56, 161. See also Royal University Eguiara y Eguren, Juan Joseph, 108–9, 115 Elias, 11–12, 83–85, 92, 102, 114, 139, 149, 191, 203, 240, 271, 291n21, n23, 310n42 emblems, 90–92 Enlightened Catholicism. See Reformed Catholicism Escalona y Calatayud, Juan Joseph de, 171–81, 230–31 Espinosa, Fr. Isidro Félix de, 94, 97, 127–28, 148, 158–59, 162 Espíritu Santo, Fr. Antonio del, 203 Espíritu Santo, Fr. Bartolomé del, 241–42 Espíritu Santo, Fr. Diego del, 36, 191, 314n95 Espíritu Santo, Fr. Pedro del, 221 Fabián y Fuero, Francisco, 54, 56, 63, 95, 298n53 Family, 107, 117; emblems, 90–92; imagery and metaphors, 77–80, 92–93; Marian advocations, 86–90; patriarchs, 80–86 Farriss, Nancy, 7, 71 feast days, 138–42 Fernández de Córdoba, Mariana, 132 Fernández de Lizardi, José Joaquin, 96 Fernández Herrojo, Fr. Francisco, 125 Fourth Provincial Council, 56, 124, 181, 318n4 Franciscans, Discalced: arrival in New Spain, 13, 188; foundation of convents, 35, 39–42, 44, 61–63, 72–73; institute, 94–97, 143, 270; origins, 10. See also doctrinas; habits; lay organizations; Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception; Saint Francis of Assisi; way of the cross Franciscans, Missionary Colleges: foundation of colleges, 43–44, 61–62, 64, 72–73; institute, 94–97, 143, 162, 270; urban missions, 128,

359

143, 156–63. See also habits; Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception; Saint Francis of Assisi; way of the cross Franciscans, Observant: arrival in New Spain, 13, 187–91; foundation of convents, 25, 27, 33, 35, 40, 43–44, 64–65, 72–73; institute, 94–97, 143, 145, 152, 201, 269–70; origins, 9–10; populations of friars, 48–54 66–71. See also doctrinas; habits; lay organizations; Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception; Saint Francis of Assisi; way of the cross Franco y Ortega, Fr. Alonso, 98–99, 122 Fray Gerundio de Campazas, 124 friars: becoming a friar, 13–14; populations of, 46–54, 66–74; types of, 14–16 Frutos, Fr. Francisco, 128 Galve, Conde de, 235, 285n69 García, Juana, 246 García Navarro, Fr. Melchor, 163–64 Genealogía franciscana, 77–78 Gil, Manuel José, 239, 259–60, 262 Gómez, Fr. Bartolomé, 209–10 González, Fr. Manuel, 258–61 Gonzáles Zepulveda, María Luisa, 249–51, 255, 257 Gorospe, Fr. Diego de, 84, 222 Gorospe, Fr. Juan de, 89 Gradin, Fr. Luis, 212–13 Grijalva, Fr. Juan de, 34, 47, 89, 115, 121, 188–89 Guadalajara, 121, 125, 131–32, 155, 165, 193, 288n111, 305n175; foundation of convents, 27, 30–31, 34, 38, 60, 283n33, 284n58, 288n108, 294n103 Guanajuato, 58–60, 163, 203, 225, 313n84, 314n2; foundation of convents, 41–42, 59, 64, 180, 294n103 Guevara, Fr. Francisco de, 99

360

Index

Gutiérrez Dávila, Julián, 107–8 Guzmán, Francisca de, 244 habits, 258, 262, 265; Carmelite, 87; Dominican, 84–5, 90; Franciscan, 80, 90, 99, 159, 219, 226; mendicant, 76–7, 89–90, 118, 229–30; Mercedarian, 86–7 Hanke, Lewis, 187 Heredia, Fr. Pedro de, 194–95 Hernández, Fr. Juan Manuel, 246 Herrejón, Peredo, 124–25 Herrera, Fr. Francisco, 216 Herrera, Francisco María de, 154 Herrera, Juan de, 41 Hinojosa, Fr. Antonio de, 230 hipólitos, 109–11, 225 Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony, 109–10 Hospital Orders, 17, 77, 105, 107–8, 114, 116, 118, 154, 272; institute, 109–11. See also antoninos; Bethlehemites; hipólitos; juaninos Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia, 5 Immaculate Conception of Mary (doctrine), 20, 88, 187, 205–14, 228, 230–31, 270. See also Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception institutes, 4, 19–20, 61–62, 77, 82, 93–94, 117–18, 186, 205, 274; implementing of, 119–20; 150, 155, 166, 223, 227, 231, 233–34, 265, 269; mendicant institute, 105–6, 149, 182, 200, 272. See also Augustinians; Carmelites; Dominicans; Franciscans, Observant; Franciscans, Discalced; Franciscans, Missionary Colleges; Mercedarians Irapuato, 64 Isla, José de, 124 Jalapa, 111 Jaramillo, Roberto, 292n38 Jesuits, 13, 20, 84, 86, 107–8, 110, 141, 144, 196, 218, 230, 273,

282n20, 314n2; disputes over precedence, 223–24; disputes with Carmelites, 101, 202–3, 271; disputes with secular clergy, 168–171, 174, 198, 201–3, 230; education and missions, 151–52, 154, 157; expulsion, 31, 56, 64, 132, 182, 270; in historiography, 5–7; and Immaculate Conception, 208–12; institute compared to mendicants, 17, 94, 111–14, 116–17, 149, 272; preaching and confession, 122, 124, 131–33 Jesús, Fr. Melchor de, 243 Jesús, María, y Joseph, Fr. Francisco de, 214, 262–63 Jesús, Ursula de, 252 Jesús María, Fr. Joseph de, 171–73, 179 Jesús María, Fr. Juan de, 36, 101 Jesús María, Fr. Manuel de, 83, 107, 215 Jesús María, Fr. Nicolás de, 92 juaninos, 86, 109–11, 153, 168–70, 196, 222–23, 226; in Toluca 142, 233, 235, 238–42, 263 Kagan, Richard, 279n2 Lagos, 42, 63–64 Larkin, Brian, 8, 134 lay organizations, 96, 134, 144–47, 179; Carmelite Third Order, 146, 242–48, 251, 316n44; Confraternity of Our Lady of Carmen, 177, 179, 243, 247, 283n33; Confraternity of the Cord, 145–47, 179; Confraternity of the Rosary, 64, 88, 138, 144–46, 161, 177, 179, 220, 301n102; Franciscan Third Order, 109, 143, 145–47, 161, 210, 242–48 León, Fr. Antonio de, 113 Llinás, Fr. Antonio, 156–57 López de Azcona, Marcelo, 174 López de Salazar, Rafael, 260

Index Lorenzana, Francisco de, 54, 56, 63, 162, 175, 179 Madre de Dios, Fr. Agustín de la, 36, 101–3, 115–16, 176, 191, 199, 220–21 Malloral, Fr. Manuel Alfonso, 112 Mangy Parrot, The, 96 Marian advocations, 62, 86, 89, 107, 140, 226. See also Our Lady of Carmen; Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception; Our Lady of Mercy; Our Lady of the Rosary; Our Lady of Succor Marin Guadarrama, Francisco, 236 Mártyres, Fr. Cristóval de los, 96, 118, 230 Masses, 133–37 Medina, Fr. Baltasar de, 39, 94, 96, 106, 118, 188 Medina, Fr. Bartolomé, 122 Méndez, Fr. Juan Bautista, 76, 106, 111, 118, 188, 272 mendicant orders: administrative structures, 13, 16–17; thirteenthcentury origins, 8–9, 12–13. See also convents; friars; institutes; vows Mendieta, Fr. Jerónimo de, 47, 74, 189 Mercedarians: alms for captives, 12, 59, 103–5, 142, 163–66, 238; arrival in New Spain, 13, 188–191; foundation of convents, 35, 37–40, 42–46, 59–60, 62–64, 72–74; institute, 103–5, 163, 196, 236, 271–72; origins, 12; populations of friars, 52–53, 68–71; scapular, 163, 165, 185–86, 272; struggles to keep convents, 45–46, 63. See also doctrinas; habits; lay organizations; Our Lady of Mercy; Saint Pedro Nolasco Messa, Fr. Joseph de, 94, 97 Mexico City, 2, 132, 148, 172, 193, 201, 224, 226, 261; agreements between convents, 220, 222, 230; celebrations of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, 207–13; city council

361

rulings, 202, 207; connections to Toluca, 234–36; descriptions of, 41, 106; descriptions of churches, 83, 98, 107, 228; festivities, 137–38, 140–41, 163, 176, 222; foundation of convents, 25–27, 33–39, 61, 101, 109; lay organizations, 143, 145–46, 244, 246–48; Masses, 133–34, 136; ministries, 102, 107, 111, 119, 125–26, 128; missions to, 157–58, 161; schools, 110, 151, 153–55; sermons, 95, 108, 110–11, 113–14, 145, 172–73, 215 Molina, Fr. Thomas de, 120–21 monastic orders, 8–9, 33, 118 Montalo Francisca de, 210 Monterrey Zárate y Velazco, José de, 121–22, 150 Mora, Fr. Miguel, 119 Moral y Castillo de Altra, Juan Anselmo del, 126, 168 Morales, Francisco, 14, 46, 318n3 Moreno, Fr. Francisco, 222 Morosa, Fr. Domingo, 85, 222 Morse, Richard, 1 Muños, Fr. Augustín de, 23–24 Muñoz Castilblanque, Nicolás Antonio, 60 Murillo, Fr. Antonio, 260 Nava y Mota, María de, 256 Navidad, Fr. Joseph de la, 259–60 Núñez de Haro y Peralta, Alonso, 54, 175 O’Hara, Matthew, 8 O’Malley, John, 94, 111, 273 Oaxaca (city), 18, 34, 54, 108, 261; descriptions of churches, 77–78, 90–91; disputes among clergy, 185–86, 209; foundation of convents, 25, 27, 33, 36–39, 43, 76, 121, 287n87; 294n103; ministries, 121, 125, 127–28, 220, 307n199; schools, 152, 154–55, 303n124; sermons, 92, 107, 222, 308n2

362

Index

Ojea, Fr. Hernando, 115 Olla, Fr. Pedro Manuel, 69 Olmedo, Fr. Bartolomé de, 13, 37, 163, 188–91 Oratorians, 93, 107–9, 114–116, 118, 140, 222, 272, 306n195, 307n201 Ordenspatriotismus, 171, 192, 261 Order of Saint John of God. See juaninos Order of San Hippolytus, 109–11, 225 Orizaba, 31, 60, 64, 261, 282n19, 288n11, 314n2 Oroz, Fr. Pedro, 79, 105, 237 Ortigosa, José Gregorio Alonso de, 162 Our Lady of Carmen, 36, 86–88, 118, 139, 145, 196, 251, 258–59, 261, 265, 272, 274 Our Lady of Mercy, 86–87, 89, 104, 118, 135, 139, 163, 165, 186, 188, 272, 301n85, 305n176 Our Lady of Succor, 86, 101, 271, 292n38 Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, 77–78, 88, 139, 205–14, 261–64, 270, 274 Our Lady of the Rosary, 88–89, 139, 144, 220, 270, 274 Pachuca, 30, 39, 61–62, 96, 125, 157, 159, 220, 288n117, Páez, Fr. Pedro, 226 Palafox y Mendoza, Juan de, 20, 55, 112, 174, 176, 198–205, 227, 230–31, 268, 271–72 Pareja, Fr. Francisco de, 37, 103–4, 164, 166, 188–89 Pastrana, Philipe Ruiz de, 244–45, 247 Pátzcuaro, 34, 38, 97, 162, 193 Pazos, Fr. Juan de, 212 peninsulares, 14, 38, 47; connections to Carmelites, 36, 40, 61, 69, 73. See also creole-peninsular rivalries Peres, Fr. Antonio Joseph, 244–45 Pimentel, Fr. Juan, 215 Piña, José, 256

Piña, María Josefa de la, 131, 248–58, 264–65, 272 Piña y Urbana, Francisco, 256 popular missions. See Franciscan Missionary Colleges preaching, 122–25, 159–60, 169–70; 172–73; connection to confession, 121–22; licenses to preach and confess, 173–75, 178–79 precedence disputes: orders’ arrivals in New Spain 187–91; at public functions 222–24 Puebla (city), 13, 18, 25, 32, 140, 193, 309n30; descriptions of churches, 52, 77–78, 93, 203, 216–18; disputes among clergy, 202–3, 209, 212; foundation of convents, 25, 27, 30, 33, 36–37, 39–40, 107, 162; lay organizations, 177, 243–44, 247–48, 316n44; ministries, 95, 111, 125, 134–37, 176; schools, 99, 152–53, 155, 199, 303n124; sermons, 89, 222 Querétaro, 54, 90–91, 175, 193, 225; foundation of convents, 36, 39, 43–46, 59, 157, 193–94, 197, 285n66, nn69–70; 294n103; Franciscan-Dominican brotherhood, 221–222; lay organizations, 144–47, 179, 231; ministries, 111, 126, 128, 134, 136–37, 142, 155, 158, 303n135; precedence disputes, 176, 223, 313n86; sermons, 212–13, 222 Quesada, Pedro de, 193 Reformed Catholicism, 8, 54, 56–58, 120, 123–25, 147, 157, 162–63, 253 Ricard, Robert, 6, 26, 267, 272, 279n4 Robles, Antonio de, 141, 224 Rocha, Fr. Joseph Francisco de, 106, 272 rosary, 88–90, 118, 138, 143–44, 156, 159, 161, 230, 270, 301n96. See

Index also lay organizations, Our Lady of the Rosary Royal University, 34, 37, 100, 104, 110, 151–53, 156, 182, 270–71; oath to Mary’s Immaculate Conception, 207, 210–11, 213 Rubial García, Antonio, 47, 52 Rules, monastic, 9–11, 60, 93–94, 96, 102, 107–9, 123 Saint Anthony of Padua, 139, 142–43, 158–59, 213 Saint Augustine, 5, 11, 81, 84–86, 90, 92, 108, 114, 116, 139, 141, 180, 192, 211, 270 Saint Catherine of Siena, 139–140, 214–16, 219, 228 Saint Dominic of Guzmán, 9–12, 78, 81, 84–86, 88, 90, 92, 98, 113–14, 139–40, 144, 185–186, 192, 211, 222, 226, 228–31, 240, 270, 274 Saint Francis of Assisi, 9–12, 77–78, 80–81, 84–86, 88, 90, 108, 113–14, 118, 139, 141, 192, 211, 214–219, 222, 228–30, 240, 245, 270 Saint Ignatius of Loyola, 84, 86, 108, 113–114, 131, 141, 196, 211 Saint John of God, 84–86, 107, 109–10, 240 Saint John of the Cross, 11–12, 83, 102, 110, 127, 137–39, 149, 291n21 Saint Maria Magdalena de Pazzi, 139, 214, 216–219, 227–28 Saint Pedro de Alcántara, 81 Saint Pedro Nolasco, 12, 81–84, 86, 92, 104, 108, 113–14, 138–39, 142, 163, 166, 186, 211, 301n85, 305n176 Saint Philip Neri, 107–8, 114, 140 Saint Raymond of Peñafort, 185–86 Saint Rose of Lima, 139–40, 252 Saint Teresa of Avila, 11–12, 79, 83– 86, 101, 114, 139, 149, 191, 196, 199, 220, 251–52, 271, 291n23 Salas, Juan de, 208–9

363

Salvatierra, 106, 167, 175, 177–178, 203, 264, 285n60; foundation of convents, 31, 33, 42, 64 San Ambrosio, Fr. Blas de, 241 San Antonio, Fr. Diego de, 167 San Cirilo, Fr. Francisco de, 145, 261 San Francisco, Fr. Sebastián de, 250–57 San José, María de, 252 San Juan, Catarina de (la china poblana), 252 San Juan del Río, 43–44, 145, 177, 226–27, 301n99 San Luis Potosí, 18, 41, 127, 134–36, 310n45; disputes among clergy, 168–71, 176, 194–95, 223, 225; foundation of convents, 33, 34, 38, 60, 180, 194–95, 196, 286n74; schools, 154–55; sermons, 82, 85–86 San Miguel, Fr. Andrés, 85, 285n60 San Miguel, Fr. Domingo, 171, 173 San Miguel, Fr. Iván, 213 San Miguel el Grande, 31, 45, 64, 294n103, 307n201 San Pablo, Fr. Manuel de, 245 San Roman, Fr. Juan de, 173 Sánches Bisrentacos, Nicolás, 236 Santa María, Fr. Francisco de, 200–201 Santa Teresa, Fr. Jaime de, 220 Santa Teresa, Fr. Manuel de, 243 Santíssima Trinidad, Fr. Miguel de la, 172–73 Santo Desierto (Holy Desert), 148, 192, 283n31 Santo Sacramento, Fr. Juan del, 122 Scotus, Duns, 88, 130, 152, 206–7, 209, 211, 311n47, 314n95 secular clergy, 2, 26, 71, 239; disputes with Jesuits, 168–171, 174, 198, 201–3, 230; relations with urban mendicants, 26, 126, 128, 161–62, 167–81. See also doctrinas, Oratorians Serrano, Bernabe, 245–46 Sicardo, José, 89, 100, 189, 191

364

Index

Sierra, Fr. Joseph Manuel de, 212 Society of Jesus. See Jesuits Sosa, Fr. Ignacio Rodríguez de, 87, 103 Sotomayor, Juan de, 245 Spanish government: alms for wine and oil, 44–45; Bourbon reforms, 7, 54–58, 182, 264; inspections of mendicant orders, 56–57, 63, 68; limits on new friars, 66–68; regulations on convents, 30–31, 45–56, 63 stigmata, 20, 143, 187, 214–20, 228– 31, 258, 270; of María Josefa de la Piña, 254, 256; of Saint Catherine of Siena, 214–16, 219, 228; of Saint Francis of Assisi, 80, 90, 92, 118, 226, 228–31; of Saint Maria Magdalena de Pazzi, 214, 216–219, 228 Suares, Fr. Gaspar, 172–73 Sultepec, 39 Tacuba, 43, 152, 197, 184n39 Taxco, 39 Taylor, William B., 7, 205, 290n143, 298n56 Tehuacán, 60, 126, 168 Teocaltiche, 42, 63 Territorial competition, 192–98 theology, 151–53, 206; moral theology, 124, 130–31 third orders. See lay organizations Tlaxcala (city), 25, 157, 199, 309n22, 311n47 Toluca, 63, 152, 193, 271, 274, 292n32, 305n174; burial dispute, 241–42; Carmelite chaplaincies, 134, 136–37; foundation of convents, 27, 43, 59–60, 235–36, 240–41; Immaculate Conception procession, 261–63; lay organizations, 138, 146, 242–48; population and economy, 234–35; promotion of local holy figure, 248–58; reading devotional works, 142–43; roles of orders and secular clergy, 18, 236–39; scapular dispute, 258–61 Torres, Fr. Iván de, 80, 118

Trexomell y Figueroa, Pedro, 226 Trigo Baamonde, Anna María de, 245 Trigo Baamonde, Pedro de, 245 urban missions. See Franciscan Missionary Colleges Urrutia, Fr. Pedro de, 122 Valderrama Saavedra, Luis, 194–95 Valdés, Fr. José Francisco, 95 Valencia, Fr. Martín de, 77, 79, 188 Valladolid, 68, 101, 180, 193, 271, 292n38; Bishop Escalona and Carmelites, 171–72, 173, 175; descriptions of churches, 86, 199, 216; foundation of convents, 27, 36–37, 62, 283n33; lay organizations, 146, 177, 301n102; ministries, 126, 136–37, 165, 305n177; schools, 152, 155, 286n86, 303n124 Valle de Santiago, 59, 63, 290n141 van Oss, Adriaan C., 1 Varón de Lara, Juan, 239, 244 Veracruz, 1, 145, 193; foundation of convents, 34, 36, 38, 284n58, 287n87 Veracruz, Fr. Alonso de la, 100, 271 Vetancurt, Fr. Agustín de, 106–7, 116, 189, 200–201, 205, 234 via crucis. See way of the cross Villagomes, Anselmo Joaquín de, 237 Villegas, Nicolás de, 239 Voekel, Pamela, 8, 147 Von Germeten, Nicole, 7, 319n102 Vose, Robin, 98 vows, 3, 9, 12, 14, 19, 56, 61, 69, 71, 83, 93, 104, 182, 238; distinguished from Oratorians, hospital orders, and Jesuits, 108–11, 115–18, 272 way of the cross, 120, 138, 143–44, 160–61, 236, 253, 265, 270 Xara, Fr. Francisco Antonio, 42 Ximenes, Anna, 244–45 Yta, Antonia, 244

Index Zacatecas, 32, 41, 148, 155, 193, 220, 285n62; foundation of convents, 34, 36, 43–44

Zacualpan, Minas de 34, 38 Zahino Peñafort, Luisa, 7 Zamora, 65

365