To Sin No More: Franciscans and Conversion in the Hispanic World, 1683-1830 9781503604087

Citation preview

To Sin No More

This page intentionally left blank

To Sin No More Franciscans and Conversion in the Hispanic World, 1683–1830 David Rex Galindo

Stanford University Press Stanford, California and The Academy of American Franciscan History Oceanside, California 2017

Copyright © 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All rights reserved No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval systems, except by explicit prior written permission of the Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rex Galindo, David, author. Title: To sin no more : Franciscans and conversion in the Hispanic world, 1683-1830 / David Rex Galindo. Description: Mission San Luis Rey, California : The Academy of American Franciscan History, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2017025136 (print) | LCCN 2017031680 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503604087 (E-book) | ISBN 9781503603264 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Franciscans—Missions—Atlantic Ocean Region—History—Congresses. | Franciscans—Missions—America—History—Congresses. | Franciscans—Missions—Spain—History—Congresses. | Hispanic Americans—Missions—History—Congresses. | Atlantic Ocean Region--Church history—Congresses. | America—Church history—Congresses. | Spain—Church history—Congresses. Classification: LCC BX2757 (ebook) | LCC BX2757 .R49 2017 (print) | DDC 271/.307—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025136

To my parents, Marisa Galindo and Domingo Rex To my sister, Sira Rex Galindo To David J. Weber

This page intentionally left blank

Contents Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ix

Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xv

List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

1. An Atlantic Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Plan to Convert the Spanish Atlantic World . . . . . . . . . . . . . Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Governing the Colleges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regulating the Apostolic Brotherhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Rift of Discord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25 28 37 46 53 60 67

2. Recruiting Missionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Recruiting Novices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Recruiting Friars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Missionary Motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 3. Training Missionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vida Común . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Novitiate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Franciscan General Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Missionary Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reforming the Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

117 119 134 137 144 155 163 167

4. Converting Catholics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Imagining a Sinful World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Atlantic Missionary Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trekking the Dioceses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Triple Alliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Missionary Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

169 175 178 182 192 206 215 228

vii

5. Missionary Preaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ars Praedicandi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moral Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Political Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

233 241 250 255 269 277 283

Epilogue: Frontiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

viii

Acknowledgments Researching and writing this book has been the most enjoyable enterprise of my life. Not only was I able to fulfill a dream, but in the process, I have met wonderful people and lived in and visited amazing places on three continents. These acknowledgments are a humble attempt to thank all of those who have helped me throughout the years. Without you, this book would have never been possible. An earlier draft of this book was defended in 2010 as a doctoral dissertation in the William P. Clements Department of History, Southern Methodist University (SMU), where I was fortunate to work under Peter J. Bakewell and the late David J. Weber. Both have been a continuous source of inspiration and an example of artisanship, dedication, and enthusiasm inside and outside the academic world. Not only did they guide my work beyond the call of duty but they have untiringly supported my career since my arrival in Dallas. The other members of my dissertation committee, Edward F. Countryman and Martin A. Nesvig, offered invaluable advice to improve not only the earlier dissertation version but subsequent revisions. They have also supported me in my career throughout the years. Much of my intellectual development as a historian occurred during my graduate student experience in the William P. Clements Department of History. In addition to my committee members, I wish to thank the following faculty and staff for their generosity, time, support, advice, wisdom, and training: the late Jeremy Duquesnay Adams, Sabri Ates, John R. Chávez, the late Dennis D. Cordell, Crista J. DeLuzio, Melissa Barden Dowling, David D. Doyle, Rick Halperin, Kenneth M. Hamilton, James K. Hopkins, Benjamin H. Johnson, Thomas J. Knock, the late Glenn M. Linden, Alexis M. McCrossen, John A. Mears, Donald L. Niewyk, Daniel T. Orlovski, Robert W. Righter, Ling A. Shiao, Sherry L. Smith, Kathleen A. Wellman, and Hal R. Williams. I also want to thank Sharron Pierson and Mildred Pinkston–the two souls of the department–for their help, comprehension, patience, and dedication during my years as a graduate student. SMU hosts the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies. Ruth Ann Elmore and Andrea Boardman have been its heart and visible body. In spite of their busy schedules, they were always available to all graduate students. Their faith in my project and encouragement gave me not only the energy to continue but also to do so with a smile. I want to express my gratitude to the Center’s directors, past and present, David Weber, Sherry Smith, Andrew Graybill, and ix

Neil Foley, for their support. The intellectual environment of the Center is enriched by the yearly arrival of new post-doctoral fellows who add cutting-edge research and scholarship to the department and the doctoral program. The genesis of this book owes much to the assistance by a group of Spanish scholars while I was making the difficult transition from engineering into history. I am particularly in debt to Marina Alfonso Mola, Hipólito Barriguín, Pedro Borges, Carmen Flys, Carlos Martínez Shaw, María Ángeles Ordaz Romay, and Juan Antonio Sánchez Belén for unconditionally believing in me since the beginning. Marina and Carlos accepted me as their graduate student at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in the early stages of my research on Franciscans and have since been a model of scholarship, friendship, and integrity. When I moved to Texas, they put me in touch with Thomas Chávez y Celia López-Chávez from New Mexico, who always welcomed me with great affection during my trips to Albuquerque and on many other occasions. I also want to thank the faculty and staff of the Instituto Franklin of the Universidad de Alcalá, where I learned to appreciate interdisciplinary work on North America. My focus on the colegios de propaganda fide took final shape after a meeting with the californios Steven W. Hackel, Robert Senkewicz, and James A. Sandos at the 2006 Western Historical Association meeting in Saint Louis. Since then Rose Marie Beebe and Robert Senkewicz have cheerfully championed my work. Steven W. Hackel has been an inspiring mentor who generously invited me to present my work at the Huntington Library twice: in 2012 for the Borderlands workshop he coordinates, and again in 2013 for the Fray Junípero Serra conference. In Dallas, I was fortunate to have a fantastic, enriching community to balance intellectual work with leisure-time pursuits. Anne Allbright, Rubén Arellano, Matthew Babcock, Anna Banhegyi, Tim Bowman, Scott Cassingham, Alicia Dewey, George Díaz, Marta Espinós, Ali Farnoud, Olivia Navarro Farr, Richard Ferry, Francis Galán, Luis García, John Grahm, Stephanie Hubbard, Derek Kutzer, Bonnie Martin, Christienne McPherson, J. Gabriel Martínez Serna, Carla Mendiola, Todd Meyers, Eduardo Morález, April Morris, Houston Mount, Paul Nelson, Angie Nozaleda, Jessica Pence, Amaranath Premasiri, Kamalini Ranasinghe, Aaron Sánchez, Clive Siegel, Jennifer Seman, Dale Topham, and Jennifer Valadez helped me navigate Dallas and graduate studies. Francis Galán and his family took me into their home in San Antonio while I was doing research in the Catholic Mission Archives at Our Lady of the Lake University. Angie Nozaleda and her son Alex have hosted me in Dallas every time I have returned to the city. George Díaz and family have always been an example of work and fraternity besides showing me the way to celebrate Thanksgiving in the borderlands. At Stephen F. Austin State University, I want to thank my colleagues and friends Robert Allen, Mark Barringer, Karl Baughman, Perky Beisel, Lisa x

Bentley, the late Dennis Bradford, Court Carney, Philip Catton, Suparna Chakraborty, Aryendra Chakravartty, Dana Cooper, Randi Cox, Carlos Cuadra, Troy Davis, Cynthia Devlin, Michelle Dorsett, Gloria Hetrick, Joyce Johnston, Andrew Lannen, Deanne Malpass, Gabriela Miranda-Recinos, José Neftalí Recinos, Brooke Poston, Jeff Roth, Sudeshna Roy, Lauren and Zac Selden, M. Scott Sosebee, Louise Stoehr, Steve Taaffe, Jeana Paul-Ureña, Juan Carlos Ureña, and Carolyn White. Having my office near that of our administrative assistant Michelle Dorsett was a blessing. She was always cheerful and supportive of what I was doing across the aisle. Much help came from my chair Mark Barringer, who enthusiastically embraced my research and the writing of this book. I am also grateful for the hospitality of Jeana and Juan Carlos as well as Gabriela and José Neftalí. In Nacogdoches, I wrote additional revisions at the Java Jacks coffeehouse—my thank-you goes to the owners for making this coffeehouse a warm place to work and relax. Throughout my career as a historian I have been privileged to encounter a cadre of scholars who stand out for their camaraderie and friendship. Some of them have been particularly important to my own growth as a scholar and a human being: David Adams, Norwood Andrews, Rose Marie Beebe, Robert Chase, Thomas Cohen, Linda Curcio, Susan Deeds, Brian DeLay, Raphael Folsom, Brian Frehner, Steve Hackel, Jay Harrison, Sami Lakomaki, Kris Lane, Asunción Lavrin, Stephanie Lewthwaite, Eric Meeks, Dana Velasco Murillo, Martin Nesvig, Cynthia Radding, Andrés Reséndez, Joaquín RivayaMartínez, José María Rodríguez, Porfirio Sanz, Fritz Schwaller, Robert Senkewicz, Michele Stephens, José Refugio de la Torre Curiel, Jon Truitt, and John Weber. Various scholars and friends have read parts of this book at various stages, including Ignacio Chuecas, Constanza López, Dana Velasco Murillo, and attendees at the Huntington Library’s Borderlands Worshop as well as Dennis Cordell’s graduate seminar at SMU. I am very grateful to those who read the entire manuscript: Peter Bakewell, Jeffrey Burns, Ed Countryman, Steve Hackel, Jay Harrison, Asunción Lavrin, Martin Nesvig, Andrés Reséndez, Sira Rex, Robert Senkewicz, Bill Taylor, David Weber, and two anonymous reviewers. Their comments and suggestions, many of which saved me from errors, have definitely contributed to a stronger manuscript. Iván López Nieto did a great job mapping the Franciscan colegios and their popular missions in New Spain and Peru.Two copyeditors helped me immensely in preparing this manuscript. Initially, Dolores Díaz, of Chicago Editing, copyedited an earlier draft and worked with the index. Final copyediting was superbly done by Barbara Kohl, who carefully and acutely read and corrected, resulting in a more polished version of the book. My research was financially supported by a series of institutions without which this book would have been an impossible quest. At SMU, I benefited immensely from the William P. Clements Department of History’s five-year xi

dissertation fellowship and the Office of the Dean of Research and Graduate Studies’ travel and research grants. Further research was possible through the generosity of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies’ Advisory Panel research fellowships, including The Jim Watson/Roy Coffee Fellowship, The Philip R. Jonsson Foundation/Jim Watson Fellowship, and The Rafael Anchia/Stardust Foundation/Philip R. Jonsson Foundation Fellowship. At Stephen F. Austin State University, I was fortunate to be awarded various Faculty Enhancement Minigrants and a Faculty Research Grant. A generous dissertation fellowship by the Academy of American Franciscan History financed over a year of research in Mexican archives. I want to thank Jeffrey Burns, director of the Academy, for his enthusiasm in supporting my project over the years. His dedication and diligence to the Academy’s fellows is impressive. He has been involved in the entire process of researching, writing, and publishing this book from the beginning until the present moment. Thank you, Jeff, for all your help! Further research was possible thanks to the Conference on Latin American History’s Lewis Hanke PostDoctoral Award, a Short-Term Research Grant in Atlantic History from Harvard University, and the Texas State Historical Association’s John H. Jenkins Research Fellowship in Texas History. I finished the last revisions of this book at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, Germany. I am thankful to the director of the Institute, Thomas Duve, for his confidence in my work and to the members of the Latino Group. I want to express my particular gratitude to Benedetta Albani, Alfonso Alibrandi, Angela Ballone, Manuela Bragagnolo, Pamela Cacciavillani, Donal Coffey, Otto Danwerth, Max Deardorff, José Luis Egío, Javier Infante, Constanza López Lamerain, Marina Martin, José María Martín Humanes, José Luis Paz Nomey, Alejandra Ramírez, Christoph Rosenmüller, Pedro Ribeiro, Philipp Siegert, James Thomson, and Andrea Vergara. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the SFB 1095: Discourses of Weaknesses and Resource Regimes at Goethe University in Frankfurt and its members for financial aid and encouragement. Of course, archives and libraries are the bread and butter of historical research—without them there would be no book. I first want to thank the staff of Fondren, DeGolyer, and Bridwell libraries at SMU, where I started researching and writing this study. What was not available on the shelves came through interlibrary loan. I want to thank Sister María D. Flores for letting me use the microfilms from the Spanish Mission Archives, Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio. Further thanks are in order to the staff of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin; to director Manuel Ramos Medina and staff of the Centro de Estudios de Historia de México CARSO in Mexico City; to Yolia Tortolero Cervantes and the staff at the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City; to Fray Francisco Morales and the archivists for their generosity while I was visiting the Archivo xii

Histórico de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México, Cholula, Puebla. In Spain, I had the fortune to meet Fray Hipólito Barriguín at the Archivo Ibero-Americano, who not only allowed me to access the resources of the great library but also put me in touch with the late Pedro Borges Morán. Conversations with Borges Morán in 2002 developed my interest in studying Franciscan missionaries. I also encountered Franciscan hospitality in other Franciscan repositories. At the Archivo Histórico de los Franciscanos de Cataluña in Barcelona, I thank Fray Agustí Boadas and Fray Joseph Massana for their cordiality and access to the archive where I found important material on the Colegio de Escornalbóu. In Santiago de Compostela, I consulted the Archivo de la Provincia de Santiago, where I was enthusiastically welcomed by the scholar Fray José García Oro, who allowed me to consult the Archivo’s extensive holdings on the Colegio de Herbón. In Rome, director P. Fr. Priamo Etzi, OFM, and Anna Grazia Petaccia patiently helped me locate documents at the Archivo Storico dell’Ordine dei Frati Minori. In Bolivia, I was fortunate to find much valuable archival material in the Archivo Franciscano de Tarija thanks to the assistance of Yormado Rueda and Diego Oliva. Its director Fray Manuel Gómez, OFM, whom I met after my visit to Tarija, has always kindly answered my emails regarding the colegio. In Zapopan, I was welcomed by Fray Carlos Badillo, who allowed me to consult documents on the Colegio de Zacatecas in the Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Jalisco. Much research was conducted at the Archivo Histórico Franciscano de la Provincia de Michoacán in Celaya. My debt to Ana María Ruiz Marín is infinite. As the professional archivist, she introduced me to this rich repository, an archival jewel that she knows so well. Ana María and her family have always warmly welcomed me every time I have returned to Celaya. The community of friars were also true examples of Franciscan hospitality and big-heartedness. Special thanks go to Fray Juan de Dios Ramírez, for his friendship and generosity, and the Provincial Minister Fray Eulalio Gómez, for making me feel at home in the house he led during my research. Friends outside the academic world and family have enriched my life over the years. I can say with certainty that life would have been much less interesting without them. Special thanks to Alicia, Adolfo, Anders, Arturo, Cristina, Didi, Eduardo, Fernando, Helena, Ingeborg, Jorge, Miguel, and Rubén. My extended family has always shown a particular interest in my comings and goings. My gratitude goes to all my uncles, aunts, and cousins Nieves and Luri, the late Tomás and José Carlos, Antonio, Benjamín, María, Marta, Pucho and Queca, as well as Charo, Irene, Loli, Maricarmen, and Mari, Chiqui, José, Mariano, and Ramón, Alberto, Antonio, Fabián, Gema, Javier, the two José Ramón, Lilí, Luís Mariano, María, Rosa Mari, and Sandra. Thanks also go to those who are no longer among us: grandparents Benjamín, Luisa, Domingo, and Rosa as well as Franciscan great-uncle Isidoro. xiii

Constanza López Lamerain came into my life at the right time. She has given me the energy and balance needed to finish the book in a healthy and sane way while at the same time opening a new world for me to explore in Chile. Her love, care, humility, and tenderness constantly remind me of the humanity that should surround each of our acts. She and her family have given me kindness and attention every time I have visited Chile. My brother-in-law David Iñigo has always listened with attention to my research and particularly travel stories, which hopefully will one day match his own. My parents Marisa and Domingo and my sister Sira have lived (and sometimes suffered) my follies with history more closely than anyone else, especially the day I quit my stable job as an engineer at Airbus for a doctorate in history in the United States. Not only have they given me an education, they have always supported me in everything I have done and I know that they are also the ones who are most happy at this moment. I think I’ve finally convinced you that it was worth it. This book is released at the same time as my niece is born—her addition to the family is a blessing. I dedicate this book to my parents, my sister, and to David Weber, who did so much to make this possible. Santiago, Chile Frankfurt am Main, Germany November 2017

xiv

Illustrations Figures I.1. I.2. I.3. 1.1. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 3.1. 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. 4.5. 4.6. 4.7. 4.8. 4.9. E.1.

Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide in Spain Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide in New Spain Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide in South America Arbol Cronológico que manifiesta los comisarios generales de Indias del Orden de San Francisco y Plan de todas las provincias con sus conventos Franciscan friars who left Spain for America, 1500–1822 Numbers of friars at Colegio de San Fernando, Mexico City, 1730s–1820s, by place of origin, departures/transfers, and novices who took vows Friars at Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro (1683–1850) Spanish Franciscan friars arriving in the Americas, 1650–1822 Lecture at a Franciscan convent, “Controve in universam artis logicam ad mentem Ducentis et Docentis. . . ,” 1727 The sermon Map of Queretaran popular missions in New Spain (1683–1686) Map of Tarija popular missions in South America (1756–1809) Map of Tarija popular missions in South America Map of dioceses served by the colegios of Herbón and Escornalbóu popular missions in Spain Map of Colima area in Michoacán diocese Map of the village of Tecalitán and its hinterland, Michoacán diocese Welcoming the missionaries Penitents (a)–(c) Fray Junípero Serra preaching to Catholics and American indigenous peoples

Tables I.1. List of Franciscan Colegios Apostólicos de Propaganda Fide 2.1. Novices at Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, comparison of 1683– 1749, 1750–1799, and 1800–1829 2.2. Professed members at Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, comparison of 1683–1749, 1750–1799, and 1800–1829 2.3. Questionnaire from 1756 Información 3.1. Daily schedule in Querétaro, Escornalbóu, Herbón, and Tarija 4.1. Model letters by Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús and Jesuit Father Fulvio Fontana, early 1700s 4.2. List of popular missions in Michoacán diocese and archdiocese of Mexico, 1770s

xv

List of Abbreviations AFT AGI AGN AHPFC AHPFM

AHPSEM APS Dir1748

ForMargil FSCQC

LDQ1 LDQ2 LEC LNQ LPZEAV

Archivo Franciscano de Tarija, Tarija, Bolivia Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Cataluña, Barcelona, Spain Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Michoacán, Convento de San Francisco, Celaya, Guanajuato, México Archivo Histórico de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México, Cholula, Puebla, México Archivo de la Provincia de Santiago, Convento de San Francisco, Santiago de Compostela, Spain Directorio de misiones para la Nueva España o Apuntes para el modo de hacer misiones entre fieles en la Nueva España con mucho fruto de las almas, sacados no sólo de los autores que escribieron instrucciones a Misioneros, sino también de la experiencia de muchos varones apostólicos enseñados de la misma práctica, February 14, 1748, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 8, no. 2 Formulario de misionar, que hizo, y dictó N.V.P. Fr. Antonio Margil de Jesús, AHPFM-FCSCQ, I, file 4, no. 46 Fondo del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Michoacán, Convento de San Francisco, Celaya, Guanajuato, México Libro de Decretos, 1734–1776, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 4, no. 4 Libro de Decretos, 1777–1853, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 4, no. 5 Libro de Elecciones Capitulares, Colegio de Querétaro, 1751–1904, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 4, no. 5 Libro de Novicios, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 16 Libro de Patentes Zedulas, Elecciones y Autos de Visita, Colegio de Querétaro, 1691–1751, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 4, no. 1

xvi

MTarija

MZacatecas

Manual de misioneros para el uso uniforme de los Padres del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de la Villa de San Bernardo de Tarija, Tarija, 1803, AFT-MF-12 Fragment of manual for training missionaries. El Predicador Mariano, El Missionero Guadalupano, El Apostol Virgineo, Ynstruido en el ministerio de la Salvacion de las Almas según la Practica del Colegio de Ntra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas, Puesta, y Observada por su Ynclito Fundador el M. R. y V.e P.e Fr. Antonio Margil de Jesús. Por un Misionero del mismo Colegio, Spanish Mission Archives, Our Lady of the Lake University, Microfilm Reel 13, Frames 0978–1017

xvii

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction n September 23, 2015, Pope Francis canonized the Franciscan missionary Fray Junípero Serra (1713–1784) in Washington, D.C. In the first canonization ceremony held on U.S. soil, the pope praised Serra’s missionary zeal to “[g]o out to people of every nation.”1 To Francis and many others, Serra embodied the true Christian who selflessly left his homeland, his relatives, and a life of comfort for the missionary hardships in America. The pope’s words confirmed that Serra reached the altars of sainthood in large part for his contributions to the expansion and consolidation of Christianity in America; however, he did not act alone. Instead, Serra was part of a comprehensive strategy of religious conversion in the Hispanic world and its frontiers. In 1769, Serra led a group of Franciscan missionaries from the order’s Colegio Apostólico de San Fernando de México to Alta California, a territory on the periphery of the Spanish North American empire. As members of one of the Franciscan colegios apostólicos de propaganda fide, Serra and his successors established a chain of missions aimed at converting California native people into Catholics. These colleges were created in the late seventeenth century by fellow Franciscan, Fray Antonio Llinás, to galvanize the Franciscan apostolic mandate through missionary preparation, a strict spiritual life, and a reinvigorated evangelical ministry in the Americas and Spain. While Serra’s missionary endeavors in California reached legendary proportions, little is known about the Franciscan colleges from which he and hundreds of other Franciscan missionaries developed a systematic evangelical program of conversion.2 This volume analyzes the Franciscan Colleges for the Propagation of the Faith, their friars, and their conversion agenda in eighteenth- and early nine-

O

1. Pope Francis’s homily to canonize Serra in Washington, D.C., available at https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2015/documents/papafrancesco_20150923_usa-omelia-washington-dc.html (accessed January 21, 2016). Recent biographies of Fray Junípero Serra are Steven W. Hackel, Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013); and Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary, Before Gold: California under Spain and Mexico Series (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, published in cooperation with the Academy of American Franciscan History, 2015). See also the work of Maynard J. Geiger, O.F.M., especially The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra, O.F.M., or The Man Who Never Turned Back, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1959). 2. To the present the only comprehensive study of the colegios in Latin America is Félix Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide en Hispanoamérica, 2nd ed. (Lima: CETA,

1

2

To Sin No More

teenth-century Spain and its empire. Through these colleges, Franciscan authorities developed an extensive, methodical missionary program to convert Catholics and non-Christians alike. Friars from the colleges preached sermons to reform peasant lives in rural Galicia, heard confessions in southern Bolivia, and administered the sacraments in frontier evangelical fields such as the Gran Chaco region in what is today Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, or the Chilean Araucanía. In the words of Pope Innocent XI, almost 330 years before Serra’s canonization, the goal of these Franciscans was to propagate “the Christian Religion, and the Catholic Faith, proper instruction of the Christian faithful, reformation of customs, and to secure the salvation of souls throughout the world.”3 In other words, Franciscan missionaries taught Catholicism to convert and save humankind. These newly established apostolic seminaries refurbished the Seraphic Order’s commitment to the Catholic Church’s global mission and accelerated the process of America’s Catholic conversion begun in the sixteenth century. Thus, To Sin No More puts the Franciscan colleges at the center of the evolving Church program to expand and consolidate Christianity in Spanish America and Spain. It shows that through the apostolic colleges of propaganda fide, Franciscans displayed a revitalized missionary strength that fueled Spanish imperial expansion to remote areas on the fringes of the empire while at the same time reinforcing a trans-Atlantic world of Spanish culture and institutions. Franciscan colleges and their influence multiplied in the age of Enlightenment. Stemming from the first college in Querétaro, Mexico, founded in 1683 by the Majorcan missionary Fray Antonio Llinás (b. 1635–d. 1693), many more were established in the Americas and Iberian Peninsula, and missionaries spread widely on both sides of the Atlantic. Before his death in 1693, Llinás alone had launched five apostolic seminaries in Spain. By the 1820s, this Franciscan institution to propagate the Christian faith had founded seven seminaries in New Spain, ten in South America, and twelve in Spain (Table I.1 and Figures I.1–I.3). Their evangelical reach was impressive. From the

1992). For New Spain, see Jorge René González Marmolejo, Misioneros del desierto: Estructura, organización y vida cotidiana de los Colegios Apostólicos de Propaganda Fide de la Nueva España, siglo XVIII (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2009). No general study of the colegios in Spain has been written since Domingo Parrondo, Historia de los Colegios-Seminarios de Misiones de la Regular Observancia de N. S. P. S. Francisco, exîstentes en esta Península de España (Madrid: Oficina de Don Francisco Martinez Dávila, impresor de cámara de S. M., 1818). 3. Innocent XI, Bull Ecclesiae Catholicae, October 16, 1686, printed in Joaquín Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, y Estatutos Generales para la erección y gobierno de las custodias de misioneros observantes de Propaganda Fide en las Provincias Internas de Nueva España (Madrid: D. Joachín Ibarra, Impresor de Cámara de S. M., 1781), 38: “[L]a Religion Christiana, y de la Fé Católica, recta instruccion de los Fieles Christianos, reformacion de las costumbres, y para procurar la salvacion de las almas en todas partes.”

INTRODUCTION

3

TABLE I.1. List of Franciscan Colegios Apostólicos de Propaganda Fide Name

Place

Year

Colegio de la Santa Cruz Colegio de San Miguel Colegio de Nuestra Señora de la Oliva Colegio de San Antonio

Querétaro (New Spain) Escornalbóu, Cataluña (Spain) Recas, Toledo (Spain)

1683 1688 1689

Arcos de la Frontera, Andalucía (Spain) Calamocha, Aragón (Spain) Cehegín, Murcia (Spain) Valencia (Spain)

1698 (1687) a 1690 1690 1690

Villaviciosa, Asturias (Spain) Guatemala (New Spain) Herbón, Galicia (Spain) Zacatecas (New Spain) Grimaldo, Extremadura (Spain)

1692 1700 1702 1704 (1707) b 1727

Mexico City (New Spain) Pachuca (New Spain) Olite, Navarra (Spain) Zarauz, Basque Country (Spain) Popayán, Colombia (New Granada)

1733 1732 (1771) c 1745 1746 1753

Colegio de San Roque Colegio de San Esteban Colegio de Santo Espíritu del Monte Colegio de San Juan Colegio de Cristo Crucificado Colegio de San Antonio Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de la Moheda Colegio de San Fernando Colegio de San Francisco Colegio de Olite Colegio de San Juan Bautista Colegio de Nuestra Señora de las Gracias Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles Colegio de San Joaquín Colegio de San Ildefonso Colegio de Santa Rosa Colegio de San Buenaventura Colegio de San Carlos Colegio de San Francisco Colegio de la Purísima Concepción Colegio de Nuestra Señora del Mayor Dolor Colegio de San José Colegio de San José de la Gracia Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Zapopan Notes to Table I.1 on next page.

Tarija, Bolivia (Peru)

1755

Cali, Colombia (New Granada) Chillán, Chile (Peru) Ocopa (Peru) Baeza, Jaén (Spain) San Lorenzo, Argentina (Río de la Plata) Panamá (New Granada) Nueva Barcelona, Venezuela (New Granada) Moquegua (Peru)

1756 1756 1757 (1758) d ? 1784

Tarata, Bolivia (Peru) Orizaba (New Spain) Zapopan (New Spain)

1796 (1737) e 1799 1812

1785 1787 1795

To Sin No More

4

Notes from Table I.1 a

First established in 1687 by the Provincia de Andalucía, but finally reorganized in Arcos de la Frontera in 1698. b Royal cédula of January 27, 1704, but not erected until 1707. c First established by the Discalced Provincia de San Diego in 1732, but officially recognized by Pope Clement XIV as an apostolic propaganda fide college on July 9, 1771. d The convent had been established by propaganda fide missionaries in 1726, but the royal cédula was granted in 1757 and final papal approval in 1758. e The royal cédula was granted in 1737, but establishment of apostolic college delayed until 1796. Source: Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 32–33, 63–72.

colleges, friars ministered to parishioners throughout Spain, parts of Portugal, and southern France, in addition to all New Spain and South American dioceses. College missionaries also served in remote missions from Texas, California, and Arizona, through Central America and the Amazonian frontiers, to the South American cone. As discussed in Chapter 2, most of the friars who ministered on these frontiers came from Spain. A look at the transAtlantic flow of missionaries in the eighteenth century shows that American Franciscan colleges of propaganda fide became the largest recruiters of Spanish friars in that century. Because of this steady and constant immigration, the colleges became the sole religious institution in Spanish America dominated by peninsular friars—an important terrain to secure the Bourbon reformers’ endorsement. With such a far-reaching network of apostolic seminaries and missionary endeavors, Franciscan authorities created a trans-Atlantic evangelical program that promoted Catholicism in the Hispanic world. Growth of the Franciscan institution of propaganda fide and its influence is especially notable because the colleges coincided with opposition to further expansion of religious orders. The Franciscan order, which outnumbered other religious orders in the Hispanic world, was particularly concerning to the authorities. Demographic studies and contemporary sources reveal a large number of Franciscan friars in Spain and Spanish America by 1700. Pedro Borges estimates over 5,000 brothers of Saint Francis living in around 600 convents in Spanish America. Franciscans also comprised a larger share of all religious orders in Spain, where at least 15,000 Franciscans lived in 1700.4

4. Demographic data from Pedro Borges, “Las órdenes religiosas,” in Historia de la Iglesia, Borges, ed., vol. 1, 215; and Martínez Ruiz, El peso de la Iglesia, 203–223, who also deals with the perception of excessive regular religious men and women in early modern Spain. Karen Melvin, Building Colonial Cities of God: Mendicant Orders and Urban Culture in New Spain (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012), 25, 52. Maximiliano Barrio Gozalo, El Clero en la España Moderna (Córdoba: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Caja Sur Obra Social, 2010), 47–55; José García Oro, Los Franciscanos

INTRODUCTION

5

Fig. I.1. Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide in Spain. (Map created by Iván López Nieto.)

When Llinás established the first apostolic college in Querétaro in 1683, Franciscan numbers were widely perceived as excessive. Meanwhile, royal cédulas had banned the foundation of new mendicant convents in eighteenth-century Spain and America. As discussed in Chapter 1, the propaganda fide colleges were established in existing convents that Franciscan provinces had to relinquish to bypass royal bans on establishing new ones. Scholars who have addressed the impact of political reforms on religious orders learned that in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the regulars (clerics who swear their commitment to follow a rule, i.e., Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Jesuits) were at the center of a debate aimed at redirecting Spanish imperial policies. These studies have shown that reformers in the mother country and Spanish America linked Spanish economic and imperial decadence to clergy excesses, indolence, and economic inefficiency.5 Thus, establishment of Fran-

en España: Historia de un Itinerario Religioso (Santiago de Compostela: Editorial El Eco Franciscano, 2006), 245–248. 5. See Ángela Atienza, Tiempos de conventos: Una historia social de las fundaciones en la España moderna (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, Universidad de la Rioja, 2008), 53, 63–69; Ángela Atienza López, “Fundaciones frustradas y efímeras en la España moderna:

6

To Sin No More

Fig. I.2. Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide in New Spain. (Map created by Iván López Nieto.)

ciscan colleges might seem to be an unlikely venture in the midst of anti-mendicant attitudes that targeted the Order of Saint Francis in particular. Multiple factors paved the way to establishing Franciscan colegios for missionaries. The demographic peak also coincided with the notion that Francis-

Memoria de los conventos franciscanos que no pudieron ser,” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 39 (2014): 189–209; Pedro Borges, “Las órdenes religiosas,” in Historia de la Iglesia en América y Filipinas, Pedro Borges, ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos; Estudio Teológico de San Ildefonso de Toledo; Quinto Centenario (España), 1992), vol. 1: 209–244; Patricia Escandón, “La alianza de altar y trono: El imperio español y los colegios franciscanos de América,” in De la Iglesia Indiana: Homenaje a Elsa Cecilia Frost, Patricia Escandón, ed. (Mexico City: UNAM, 2006): 131–161; Patricia Escandón, “La geopolítica, el imperio español y los colegios franciscanos apostólicos de América” in Calafia 2, no. 3 (2007), http://iih.tij.uabc.mx/iihDigital.html (accessed September 11, 2016); Enrique Martínez Ruiz, ed., El peso de la Iglesia: Cuatro siglos de órdenes religiosas en España (Madrid: Actas, 2004), esp. chaps. 4 and 5; Melvin, Building Colonial Cities of God, 41; Antonine Tibesar, Franciscan Beginnings in Colonial Peru (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1953); Antonine Tibesar, “The Franciscan Doctrinero versus the Franciscan Misionero in Seventeenth-century Peru,” The Americas (1957): 115– 124; and Ramón María Serrera, “La saturación de eclesiásticos en la Lima barroca,” Caravelle 76–77 (2001): 255–263.

INTRODUCTION

7

Fig. I.3. Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide in South America. (Map created by Iván López Nieto.) can lax adherence to the rule needed to be addressed. Franciscans perceived that their order had lost momentum in the evangelical ministry vis-à-vis the secular clergy and other regular clerics, particularly the Jesuits. Some Franciscans viewed the conversion of Indian hunter-gatherers as a new challenge that had previously defied missionary advances. In particular, the magnitude of revolts in New Spain’s northern frontiers reminded religious authorities that changes were necessary. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico, which not only expelled the Spanish but left twenty-one Franciscans dead, was a catalyst for reform. The ubiquitous ethnic factionalism within the mendicant orders in America and the consequent endless litigation between a majority of American-born friars and a minority of Spanish-born religious further convinced Franciscan authorities of the need to modify their missionary program. Ideas of staffing Franciscan friaries with Spanish-born men also received atten-

8

To Sin No More

tion. Equally important was a more welcoming sentiment in the Spanish court and in Rome—both always eager to further their control over the regular orders—spurred conformity and internal reorganization within the largest religious order in the Catholic world.6 This story of Franciscan missionary endeavors and conversion begins with the preliminaries that led to the foundation of the first Franciscan college of propaganda fide in the Mexican town of Querétaro and ends beyond the wars for American independence but before their successive abolition and incorporation into the Franciscan provinces between 1901 and 1919. By 1830, the wars for independence had already placed a burden on the Franciscan colleges. Some American countries passed legislation to force Spaniards to leave, causing a personnel crisis in the colleges because they were staffed by Spanish-born friars. Such was the case of Mexico in 1827. Spanish friars left the Colegio del Cristo Crucificado de Guatemala in 1829. In Peru and Bolivia, the Franciscan colleges were closed during the violent years that led to independence and most Spanish friars left. Political independence also brought the elimination of friaries and expulsion of Spanish-born religious men from Gran Colombia. The 1830s thus denote the beginning of a new era that brought the colleges under the exclusive authority of American Franciscans and the young republics and marks a logical end to this study.7 Because a major goal of this book is to illustrate active Franciscan involvement in the

6. Some scholars have already pointed toward these hypotheses as grounds for the establishment of new missionary institutions, including, for instance, Patricia Escandón, “La alianza de altar y trono” and “La geopolítica, el imperio español y los colegios franciscanos apostólicos de América”; and Michael B. McCloskey, O.F.M., The Formative Years of the Missionary College of Santa Cruz of Querétaro, 1683–1733 (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955). The internal conflict between Spanish and Creole friars in the Franciscan Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México reverberated across all levels of ecclesiastical and secular governments. The conflict lingered until the end of the colonial period. See the documents that extend from 1615 until 1799 in the Biblioteca Nacional de México, Archivo Franciscano, Fondo Reservado, Box 136. A similar conflict perpetuated in the Franciscan Province of Peru throughout the colonial period has been studied by Antonine Tibesar, “The ‘Alternativa’: A Study in Spanish–Creole Relations in Seventeenth-century Peru,” The Americas (1955): 229–283. For a thorough analysis of the ethnic conflict within the Augustinian Order, see Antonio Rubial García, Una monarquía criolla: la provincia agustina de México en el siglo XVII (Mexico City: CONACULTA, 1990). I must remark that religious men from the Catholic orders continued their evangelical work among Catholics and maintained a missionary profile among non-Christians throughout the Hispanic world. However, the Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide, the focus of this book, brought a level of missionary specialization and reach unmatched by any other friaries or seminaries. 7. For the suppression of the Franciscan order in Peru, see Antonine Tibesar, “The Suppression of the Religious Order in Peru, 1826–1830 or the King versus the Peruvian Friars: The King Won,” The Americas (1982): 205–239. For the situation of the Franciscan colleges during and in the immediate aftermath of the wars for independence, see Saiz Díez, Los colegios de propaganda fide, 72–80.

INTRODUCTION

9

spiritual guidance of nominal Catholics (including converted Indians) in Spain and Spanish America throughout the early modern period, I concentrated on a representative sample of colleges—the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro (North America), Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles in Tarija (South America), and the Colegio de San Antonio in Herbón and the Colegio de San Miguel in Escornalbóu (Spain)—with some consideration of other colegios, particularly Guadalupe in Zacatecas and San Fernando in Mexico City. In my examination of archival sources from under-studied Franciscan repositories, I focused on the agents of conversion instead of the missionized. My goal has been to show how Franciscan propaganda fide colleges invigorated the Franciscan evangelical ministry through missionary instruction and a renovated commitment to their pastoral work among both Catholic and nonChristian flocks in Spain and in its American territories and peripheries. Scholars have devoted most of their attention to this last facet. An abundance of scholarly works examine the majority of frontier missions of most American colleges from New Spain’s northern borderlands to Chile and Argentina. This literature recognizes the role played by college missionaries in the expansion of the Spanish empire in the eighteenth century. They touch upon a wide variety of topics that range from the economy, sexuality, daily life, and spirituality in missions to large questions of colonialism, acculturation, and science. Their approaches span the extremes of anti-missionary and hagiographic writings.8 The fascination with frontier missions, missionaries, and the conversion of indigenous peoples transcends the academic realm. Today many

8. The literature on frontier missions in the Americas is vast. A starting point for the new trends is The New Latin American Mission History, Erick Langer and Robert H. Jackson, eds. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995). An illustrative pool of recent works in English follows: Barbara Ganson, The Guaraní under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003); Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian–Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769–1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press and Omohundro Institute, 2005); Kristin Mann, The Power of Song: Music and Dance in Mission Communities of Northern New Spain (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Berkeley, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2010); Cynthia Radding, Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative History in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005); James Schofield Saeger, The Chaco Mission Frontier: The Guaycuruan Experience (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000); James A. Sandos, Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004); José Refugio de la Torre Curiel, Twilight of the Mission Frontier: Shifting Interethnic Alliances and Social Organization in Sonora, 1768–1855 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2012); Maria F. Wade, Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans: Long-Term Processes and Daily Practices (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008); and David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 2005).

10

To Sin No More

missions are under UNESCO’s World Heritage protection and are visited by millions every year. In the United States, missions in California, Arizona, and Texas are major tourist attractions and, as mentioned above, friars like Serra in California and Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús are legends. A major aim of this book is to show how Franciscans from the propaganda fide colleges advanced Catholic practices and popular religious beliefs to the centers as much as to the peripheries of the Spanish empire. Beyond the material culture left for posterity, such as mission compounds and the religious art inside them, missionaries who studied at the Franciscan propaganda fide colleges also left less tangible elements interwoven within local religious fabrics. As seen in Chapter 4, they brought religious devotions such as the via crucis (way of the cross), a procession that mimics the passion of Jesus Christ, and sacred songs such as the alabados (songs to praise the Virgin Mary) that Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús popularized in New Spain’s northern frontier missions. Still, these rituals are intricate rudiments of the local religiosity of many communities throughout the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, and many other parts of Latin America and southwestern Europe.9 Fascination with the frontier missions has eclipsed interest in the colleges and their crucial evangelical influence in the Spanish Atlantic world. In my own historiographical research, I found that an early trail of studies on the colleges begun by Franciscan historians did not leave a strong scholarly imprint on secular writers.10 A starting point is the multivolume project titled

9. Thus, I am indebted to scholars who examined the development of popular religious beliefs in early modern society and local interpretations of Catholicism to which the missionaries contributed. For popular religion in the Hispanic world, see William A. Christian’s seminal work, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989). For colonial Mexico, see the essays in Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, Martin Nesvig, ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006). 10. Among them, I emphasize Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide; Fidel de Jesús Chauvet, La iglesia de San Fernando y su extinto colegio apostólico (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Bernardino de Sahagún, 1980); McCloskey, The Formative Years; Alberto María Carreno, “The Missionary Influence of the College of Zacatecas,” The Americas 7 (1951); Maynard Geiger, “The Internal Organization and Activities of San Fernando College, Mexico (1734–1858),” The Americas 6, no. 1 (1949); Kieran McCarty, “Apostolic Colleges of the Propagation of the Faith—Old and New World Background,” The Americas 19 (1962): 51–52; Ferdy Langenbacher Jiménez, OFM, Origen, desarrollo e influjo de los colegios de propaganda fide en la Iglesia y sociedad de la recién fundada república boliviana (1834–1877), vol. 15, Analecta Franciscana, V. 15, Nova Series: Documenta et Studia 3 (Grottaferrata: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 2005); selected articles published in Pedro Borges, ed., Historia de la Iglesia en América y Filipinas, 2 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos; Estudio Teológico de San Ildefonso de Toledo; Quinto Centenario (España), 1992); and selected essays in Gómez Canedo, Evangelización, cultura y promoción social. Though not a Franciscan, for the Colegio de Querétaro, see Charles R. Porter, “Querétaro in Focus: The Franciscan Missionary Colleges and the Texas Missions,” Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture 19 (2008). For the case of Spain, see Parrondo,

INTRODUCTION

11

“Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo,” published by the Spanish journal Archivo Ibero-Americano between 1987 and 1996.11 In this sense, I have found the scholarly work produced under the auspices of the Academy of American Franciscan History paramount to understanding the Franciscan institution of propaganda fide in Spain and America. In recent years, the Academy sponsored a series of conferences and the publication of the papers that address the Franciscan missiology in America and its connections to Europe. Some of the articles and book projects (including To Sin No More) focus on the apostolic colleges for propagation of the faith and their missionary agendas.12 Other recent works on religious orders are uncovering negotiations, tensions, and conflict within male and female orders. By emphasizing the complexities of religious life, these studies illustrate instances of dissent and individualism that contradict a more traditional image of monastic harmony. Indeed, community and individualism coalesced when it came to the personal interpretation of what it meant to be a Franciscan and a missionary. These studies show that clerical voices were not monotonic but polyphonic. The personal Catholicism (and culture) of each member of the Church, seasoned with official doctrine, produced a diverse and less cohesive version of Catholi-

Historia de los Colegios-Seminarios; and José Martí Mayor, “Escornalbou: Colegio-seminario de misiones de propaganda fide (1686–1835),” Archivo Ibero-Americano 42, nos. 165– 168 (1982). 11. The papers were published in Madrid by Editorial Deimos and the Spanish Franciscan journal Archivo Ibero-Americano. See Actas del I Congreso sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo (Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1987); Actas del II Congreso sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo: Siglo XVI (Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1988); Actas del III Congreso sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo: Siglo XVII (Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1991); Actas del IV Congreso sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo: Siglo XVIII (Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1993); Actas del V Congreso sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo: Siglos XIX–XX (Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1997). 12. See, for instance, contributions in John F. Schwaller, ed., Francis in the Americas: Essays on the Franciscan Family in North and South America (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2005), and Timothy J. Johnson and Gert Melville, eds., From La Florida to La California: Franciscan Evangelization in the Spanish Borderlands (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013). The Academy also supports dissertation research and the publication of the resulting doctoral theses, as was the case for the current book. Recent works by Mann, The Power of Song; De la Torre Curiel, Twilight of the Mission Frontier; and dissertations by Jay Harrison, “Franciscan Missionary Theory and Practice in Eighteenth-Century New Spain: The Propaganda Fide Friars in the Texas Missions, 1690– 1821” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 2012), Cameron Jones, “In Service of God and King: Conflicts between Bourbon Reformers and the Missionaries of Santa Rosa de Ocopa in Peru, 1709–1824” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 2013), to be published as In Service of Two Masters: The Missionaries of Ocopa, Indigenous Resistance, and Spanish Governance in Bourbon Peru (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Oceanside, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, Forthcoming), shed new light on the Franciscan colleges’ evangelical agendas in New Spain and Peru.

12

To Sin No More

cism ecclesiastics preached to parishioners and frontier mission neophytes.13 Hence, instead of encapsulating Franciscans as a homogeneous group, this book is sensitive to diversity within the Order of Saint Francis. Mimicking the location of frontier missions within the empire, the Franciscan colleges of propaganda fide are still marginal to the Latin American and Spanish historiographies. In a survey of the history of religion in Latin America, historian John Lynch points out that in the eighteenth century, “the Spanish empire underwent a new phase of expansion, mainly political in inspiration, but with religious implications.” Charles III, Lynch acknowledges, made the conversion of non-Christian Indians a priority and relied on Franciscan missionaries in this endeavor. To describe missionary expansion in the age of Enlightenment, Lynch dedicates four pages to Fray Juan de Santa Gertrudis, a Majorcan friar who moved from the Franciscan Colegio de San Buenaventura in Baeza, Spain to minister to the missions of the Franciscan Colegio de Popayán in current Colombia. The author praises Fray Juan as “one of the great, yet forgotten, chroniclers of the colonial period,” overlooking his belonging to the colleges of propaganda fide—one of the great, yet forgotten, missionary institutions of the colonial period, using Lynch’s own words.14

13. Scholarship on male and female religious orders is growing. Recent studies that focus on Franciscans and mendicant orders are William B. Taylor, “Between Nativitas and Mexico City: An Eighteenth-Century Pastor’s Local Religion,” in Nesvig, ed., Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, 90–117; Asunción Lavrin’s recent essays on the mendicants, “Frailes mendicantes en México: Aproximación al estudio de la masculinidad en Nueva España. Discurso de Ingreso de Asunción Lavrin,” Memorias de la Academia Mexicana de la Historia, 55 (2014): 131–164, and “Lay Brothers: The Other Men in the Mendicant Orders of New Spain,” The Americas 72, no. 3 (July 2015): 411–438; Rubial García, Monarquía criolla; Antonio Rubial García, “Votos pactados: Las prácticas políticas entre los mendicantes novohispanos,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 26 (2002); Mark Z. Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013); and Steven E. Turley, Franciscan Spirituality and Mission in New Spain, 1524–1599: Conflict beneath the Sycamore Tree (Luke 19:1–10) (Farnham, UK and Burlington, Vt: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2014). Recent works on nuns delve into the complexities of daily life in nunneries: Margaret Chowning, Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 1752–1863 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Asunción Lavrin, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008). For a brief analysis of conflict within missionary communities in Alta California in the 1790s and internal tensions in the Colegio de San Fernando, Mexico City, during the last decades of the eighteenth century, see Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, “Uncertainty on the Mission Frontier: Missionary Recruitment and Institutional Stability in Alta California in the 1790s,” in Francis in the Americas: Essays on the Franciscan Family in North and South America, John F. Schwaller, ed. (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2005). Lino Gómez Canedo deals with the importance of individualism in the Franciscan order throughout his classic work, Evangelización y conquista. 14. John Lynch, New Worlds: A Religious History of Latin America (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 2012), 94–98, quote on p. 95. In other study

INTRODUCTION

13

John Frederick Schwaller, on the other hand, underpins the relevance of propaganda fide in his study of Catholicism in Latin America. He relies on Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús—a missionary who served in the colleges of Querétaro, Guatemala, and Zacatecas—to describe the shift from sixteenth-century evangelization independent of military power to an eighteenth-century colonizing project that rested on missionary and military might.15 Treatment of Spanish propaganda fide seminaries is also lacking in the general religious historiography in Spain. José García Oro’s synthesis of Franciscan history in Spain surprisingly neglects the Spanish seminaries, although he mentions their American counterparts.16 This pattern of scholarly indifference is owed in part to epistemological shifts in the study of colonial encounters and colonialism. In recent decades, studies on missions and frontiers underwent a long-needed intellectual revolution that centered on indigenous populations. By focusing so closely on native peoples, this new scholarship on frontier studies has enriched our understanding of the complexities of native cultures and revealed the nuances surrounding the encounters between Spaniards and Indians on the fringes of empire. They have shown not only that Indians had agency in their relations with the invaders, but in many cases they controlled the terms of such relations. For instance, recent works contend that in the Texas borderlands Spanish conquerors became the conquered and Indians the dominant groups. While these works underscore the leading role Franciscan agents played in these frontier encounters and Spanish expansion, the sophistication in the analysis has not matured evenly for the missionaries as for the missionized.17

Lynch mentions Fray Juan de Santa Gertrudis’s membership in the Franciscan apostolic colleges of propaganda fide, San Buenaventura in Baeza, and San Antonio, Arcos de la Frontera, both in Spain, and the propaganda fide college in Popayán in current-day Colombia, which he erroneously ascribes to the Franciscan Provincia de Quito. Franciscan propaganda fide colleges, as discussed in this book, were independent from the Franciscan provincias. See John Lynch, Fray Juan de Santa Gertrudis and the Marvels of New Granada (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 1999), 1–2. 15. John F. Schwaller, The History of the Catholic Church in Latin America (New York and London: New York University Press, 2011), 73–76. Some of the essays in the twovolume history of the Catholic Church in Spanish America and the Philippines, Historia de la Iglesia en América y Filipinas, edited by Borges, mention the Franciscan apostolic colleges. 16. None of the following studies on religious orders mention the Spanish Franciscan propaganda fide colleges: Atienza, Tiempos de conventos; Barrio Gozalo, El Clero en la España Moderna; and Martínez Ruiz, ed., El peso de la Iglesia. For José García Oro, see his Los Franciscanos en España, 269–270. 17. Scholars have produced intellectually complex and well-written works in the last two decades. See, for instance, Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press in association with William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, 2007); Susan M. Deeds, Defiance and Deference in Mexico’s Colonial North:

14

To Sin No More

In other words, we need to study missionaries with the same sensibilities as we now devote to Indians. There have also been methodological limitations in approaching the conversion of the Hispanic world. Scholars who study colonial encounters in the Americas or how Catholic missionaries advanced their religion in frontier missions identify religious conversion with the cultural shift from indigenous systems of belief to Catholicism and Hispanic culture. Religious conversion in these studies refers more broadly to the transformation from one religious practice into a different one. That was the goal of the Catholic missionaries who attempted to inculcate their Christian rituals and ideas as well as their European ways of life in American peoples throughout the colonial period. Most of these studies describe religious conversion as a more or less prolonged process that includes rituals such as baptism as well as certain amounts of indoctrination and acculturation. Within this framework, conversion for some scholars means a series of drastic events that provoke Indians to abandon, even if unevenly, their old beliefs for new ones. More problematic is the association of baptism with conversion to argue that American indigenous groups retain pre-Catholic practices after their “conversion,” meaning their baptism. While people may be seduced into interpreting conversions as individual, sudden acts of change—in many Christian Churches neophytes speak of instantaneous epiphanies that brought their conversion to a purer relationship with Jesus Christ and their God—most conversions are temporally prolonged. In any case, there is a consensus that conversion to Catholicism requires the rejection of old views, especially those that missionaries considered idolatrous and superstitious, in favor of the Spaniards’ religion. They also agree that native peoples incorporated certain elements of Christianity into their own religious practices and cosmovisions while rejecting others.18

Indians under Spanish Rule in Nueva Vizcaya (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003); Ganson, The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata; Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis; Radding, Landscapes of Power and Identity; Saeger, The Chaco Mission Frontier; and Weber, Bárbaros. For the idea of Indian empires, see Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire, The Lamar Series in Western History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, in association with William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, 2008). Two recent exceptions that delve deep into the missionaries’ theological and religious backgrounds are Wade, Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans; and Harrison, “Franciscan Missionary Theory and Practice in Eighteenth-Century New Spain.” 18. For conversion as the transformation from one religious belief to another, see for instance, the essays in Ira Katznelson and Miri Rubin, eds., Religious Conversion: History, Experience and Meaning (Farnham, UK, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2014), who in the introduction define religious conversion as “a shift in membership from one community of faith to another” (p. 1). In Converting California, James Sandos clarifies that conversion is a process of transformation, not an event such as baptism, and it is certainly not “a straightforward process,” as native peoples resisted (p. 149). David J. Weber and José

INTRODUCTION

15

My approach to religious conversion is broader. I examine conversion from the same angle that a Franciscan friar (and for that matter, a Catholic cleric) would have understood it. For the missionaries and their contemporaries, conversion had two meanings. It implied turning non-Christians into Catholics as much as revitalizing the faith of Catholics. Thus, religious conversion also entails an internal metamorphosis within one’s own religion. The genesis of the Franciscan colleges of propaganda fide, as described by one of their chroniclers, illustrates this point. Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa, in his monumental history of the colleges, points out that Fray Antonio Llinás’s idea of erecting Franciscan apostolic seminaries was the result of one of these conversion processes. Sometime in 1675, Llinás, a Franciscan professor at the order’s university in Celaya, Mexico, underwent a mystical conversion. Born in Mallorca, Fray Antonio left his homeland in 1664 for a teaching post in the Provincia Franciscana de San Pedro y San Pablo de Michoacán in New Spain. In the following eleven years, he resided in Querétaro, Valladolid (now Morelia), and Celaya, where he taught at the Franciscan university. According to Espinosa, in those years Llinás indulged himself in worldly pleasures rather than Franciscan asceticism. Llinás engaged in material excesses, indulged in servile flattery, and less than rigorously followed the spiritual exercises of his convent. He is described as a friar more interested in spending his time on “musical delights” with other religious men and women as well as laypeople than in prayers, meditation, or evangelical ministry. As a prelude to Llinás’s catharsis and to justify it, Espinosa juxtaposed the friar’s preferences for the mundane to a life of seclusion and search for the divine.19 What follows in Espinosa’s narrative fits the script of a horror tale. One night while falling asleep, Fray Antonio noticed footsteps that frightened him. Still drowsy, Llinás heard someone violently open the curtains of his cell. He opened his eyes to see, behind a thin light coming from a candle held by the

Refugio de la Torre Curiel follow James Sandos’s approach to conversion as an acculturation process, in Bárbaros, 93–95, and Twilight of the Mission Frontier, 82–83, respectively. Christian Duverger equates baptisms with conversions in La conversión de los indios de Nueva España con el texto de los Coloquios de los Doce de Bernardino de Sahagún (1564) (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993), 107. He later contends that Indians’ conversion into Catholicism was never total since “el cristianismo de los indios de México se asemeja más a una religión sincrética que a una estricta observancia de los dogmas romanos” (p. 198), compared to European peasants who had such strict observance of Roman dogma. 19. This story appears in Fray Isidro Felix de Espinosa, O.F.M., Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide de la Nueva España, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan Historians, 1964), bk. 2, chap. 8, 261–263. Fray Joan Papió, from the College of Escornalbou in Spain copied almost verbatim Espinosa’s account; see Joan Papió, Facsímil del llibre de “La història d´Escornalbou” del pare Joan Papió: Any 1765, 2nd ed. (Valls: Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya, 1987), 124–126. See also McCloskey, The Formative Years, 15–17.

16

To Sin No More

apparition, a skeleton whose “face was a scrawny skull, his shroud . . . a robe with the ash-gray cloth used by the Franciscan friars from the Province of Mallorca.” The skeletal shape remained quiet for a few seconds, then closed the curtains and disappeared. The friar could not sleep for the rest of the night. The next morning Llinás began to regret his libertine way of life. He asked his guardian to empty his cell. He dressed in “a robe of sayal [crude cloth], and some underwear and sandals,” so he could “henceforth live poor, naked, humble, and a true son of Saint Francis.” After a tearful confession, Llinás practiced harsh penitence by “tightening his flesh with rough cilices, injuring his face with slaps, and pouring plentiful blood . . . with his merciless lashes.” In the following weeks, Llinás repeatedly sought physical punishment delivered by a servant in his Franciscan community in Celaya. He cautiously filled his time with spiritual meditation, serving his fellow friars, and active preaching.20 In Espinosa’s story, Llinás’s transformation is initiated by a traumatic event inspired not from a natural process or misfortune but through divine intervention. The mystical mutation is never described as an easy one. As Llinás lucidly confessed in a draft written in Madrid in 1681 later presented to King Charles II (and Espinosa’s source for the story), he actively engaged in a pursuit to find meaning. Following Saint Francis and Saint Augustine, Llinás read the gospels. He found inspiration in John 1:23: “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert; make straight the way of the Lord.” Matthew 10:16 clarified his path: “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves.” When he asked a friar and a nun for interpretation, they unsurprisingly predicted his evangelical career and his “preaching to a multitude of Peoples.” To accentuate the symbolic value of Llinás’s conversion, Espinosa sweetened the episode with references to other well-known conversion experiences. Particularly relevant is Llinás’s comparison to Paul of Tarsus, the quintessential missionary in the New Testament. In Espinosa’s hagiography, Llinás turned into a new Saint Paul who ultimately shone to spread God’s “rays throughout America and much of Europe.” Paul of Tarsus’s biblical conversion from a Christian persecutor to a Christian proselytizer after his own encounter with a resurrected Jesus Christ certainly underpins not only Llinás’s spiritual conversion but also his transformation to lead a rejuvenated Francis-

20. Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide, bk. 2, chap. 9, 265–269: “[E]n la mano de una triste figura de la muerte,” “rostro era de una desnuda calavera, el hábito que traía por mortaja de la misma tela cenicienta de que se visten los religiosos de la santa Provincia de Mallorca,” “una túnica de sayal y unos paños menores y sandalias como para el religioso más humilde,” “toda su determinación, que era de vivir de allí en adelante pobre, desnudo y como verdadero hijo de San Francisco,” “[c]eñía sus carnes con agudos cilicios, hería el rostro con bofetadas, el pecho le lastimaba con golpes y con despiadados azotes vertía copiosa sangre de su cuerpo.”

INTRODUCTION

17

can missionary enterprise. Llinás’s shift is not atypical of others who have also described their own epiphanies and spiritual regenerations in similar terms.21 His grotesque epiphany, which certainly fits with the Baroque atmosphere of the time, his remorse, the corporal chastisements, and his later quest also unveil certain elements of the conversion typology. It bounds a transformation that originated in a mystical, sudden conversion that leads to an intensification or revitalized commitment to the meaning of being not only a Catholic, but a Franciscan. It explicitly reveals the desires to convert and save humankind while at the same time calls for a reformation within the Catholic Church to redress its evangelical purpose through a renaissance of the Franciscan ministry in Spain and America. In essence, the plan substantiates Llinás’s duality of conversion: to convert the world, the Order had to revitalize itself through a new evangelical project. And thus, Llinás’s own conversion embodies the Franciscans’ internal renewal pact. From the fields of anthropology, psychology, and religious studies, scholars offer a more polyhedric approach to religious conversion that embraces elements of Llinás’s metamorphosis. They understand religious conversion as a protracted process from one stage into another within and without the same system of beliefs. Hence, it implies a transformational period in which subjects alter their life and behavioral conduct into new patterns that follow certain norms imposed by those who claim the spiritual and/or religious knowledge of orthodoxy. I have found professor of pastoral psychology, Lewis R. Rambo’s work particularly inspiring in understanding the Franciscan notions of religious conversion. Rambo insists on avoiding prescribed definitions of conversion, as it is “malleable.” Rambo nonetheless elucidates conversion as sequences that result in “turning from and to new religious groups, ways of life, systems of belief, and modes of relating to a deity or the nature of reality.” Conversion implies changes over time, not necessarily linear or progressive but spiral (or cyclical), as relapse is present in conversion experiences: self-doubts, resistance, rejections, crises, desires, or reaffirmations occur throughout the processes of change.22

21. Fr. Antonio Llinás, “Memorial que escribió el P. Fr. Antonio Llinás al Ministro General de la Orden de la Orden y a su majestad solicitando la fundación de los Colegios,” Madrid 1681, AHPFM-FCSCQ, D, file 2, no. 1, fol. 1r–v. “Yo soy la voz del que clama en el desierto, enderezad vuestros passos por el camino del Señor. . . . Advertid que Yo soy el que os envío como ovejas en medio de los lobos . . . predicando â multitud de Gentes.” Espinosa included it in his hagiography; see Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide, bk. 2, chap. 11, and quote on p. 275, “predicando a multitud de gentes.” 22. The literature on conversion is vast. Sociologists, psychologists, historians, theologians, and anthropologists have studied the process of conversion from different angles and in different geographical areas and times. See for instance the essays in Andrew Buckser and Stephen D. Glazier, eds., The Anthropology of Religious Conversion (Lanham, Md. and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003). Lewis R. Rambo describes conversion as a “process of change over time” with sometimes an spiraling effect—a going back

18

To Sin No More

Lewis Rambo’s helicoidal model fits with the Catholic understanding of conversion. Consistent with earlier works by Christian scholars such as Paul of Tarsus, Tertullian, and Augustine of Hippo, Catholic theologians underscore that humans are prone to sin. In other words, they tend to deviate from an orthodox path, commonly sponsored by the ecclesiastical establishment, to attain salvation. The breadth of the deviation signals the level of rupture with orthodox mandates, as diffuse as this might be. Relapse is pivotal to the Catholic theology of sin and to this model of conversion. The aim at launching the Franciscan missionary program of propaganda fide in the eighteenth-century Hispanic world was to address the problem of recidivism in a new and systematic, larger way. Chapters 4 and 5 of this book are replete with examples from missionary writings that pinpoint the recurring essence of sin. Missionary advice towards redemption in the midst of repeated failure was in tune with the canonical laws approved in the Council of Trent (1545–1563) that regulated the sacrament of penance. According to the Council, the sacrament of penance, consisting of the acts of contrition, confession, and satisfaction (making amends), established the journey’s beginning toward salvation. Through truthful confession and sincere repentance, the Catholic would abhor sin, theologians asserted. It was in the intimate moment of remorse when, according to the Council, parishioners expressed their “detestation for sin committed, with the purpose of not sinning for the future.” In tune with Catholic dogma, missionaries (like other clerics) hence insisted on the importance of confession and contrition as well as public penitence to overcome sin and its repetitious essence and to set a secure path towards conversion and salvation.23 A key moment is the act of contrition. While reciting this prayer during penance, Catholics commit themselves “to sin no more.” This motto is ubiquitous, and its implicit acknowledgement of relapse reveals the difficulties Catholic believers faced then and now to overcome sin. This was the raison d’être of the Franciscan missionary colleges, and therefore the title of this book. As a Franciscan preacher from the colegio de propaganda fide de Herbón

and forth between stages,” Lewis R. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 16–17. For his quote see p. 3. For a survey of the concept religious conversion in colonial America see Katharine Gerbner, “Theorizing Conversion: Christianity, Colonization, and Consciousness in the Early Modern Atlantic World,” History Compass 13/3 (2015): 134–147; and Gabriela Ramos, “Conversion of Indigenous People in the Peruvian Andes: Politics and Historical Understanding,” History Compass 14/8 (2016): 359–369. Both Gerbner and Ramos point out that in the American context, studies underscore conversion as a change of religion rather than revitalization within one’s own faith. 23. On confession, penance, and contrition, see Council of Trent, Session XIV, first decree, chaps. 1–5, November 25, 1551, and Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), 250–273. (I thank Jay Harrison for this reference.)

INTRODUCTION

19

in Spain pointed out at the turn of the nineteenth century, parishioners should submit themselves to a “firm resolution to sin no more.”24 The relevance of contrition filled the contemporary religious literature. For example, one prisoner’s Act of Contrition composed in a ten-line stanza to honor the crowning of Ferdinand VI in 1746 appealed to the power of confession, regret, and redemption to secure his salvation. His proposal to mend his ways (alter his behavior) and his commitment “to sin no more” was firm and apparently sincere, as would have been expected. In his prayer, he maintained his pledge to confess his iniquities and to restrain his passions with “Holy Contrition”: I firmly propose to mend my ways, to sin no more I offer to confess my iniquity, so it is known: I will put a brake on, I will put reins on at all times, and I will bind up my passions with Holy Contrition, moderating with reason the evil of my wrongdoings.25

This remorseful proposition acknowledges the sinful nature of man and reveals the struggle to convert to an institutional Catholicism preached and taught by the clerics. Iniquity and relapse form the core of soteriological theology and substantiate the priests’ leitmotif. In the words of the friars, if society tends to sin, the missionary offers the cure; as disease warrants the physician, sin validates the spiritual healer.

24. “Libro de doctrinas para mission,” APS, Carpeta 183, n.d., unfoliated: “Porque á muchos os parece, que en confesar todos los pecados, en dares quatro golpes de pechos, y decir con la boca: ya no pecare mas, os parece, digo, que con esto solo os confesais bien. Pero estais muy engañados. Porque para que una Confesion sea buena es necesario tener verdadero dolor de vra culpas, y propósito firme de no volver á pecar mas.” 25. Anonymous, Acto de Contricion de un pecador, que se hallaba preso en la Villa, y Corte de Madrid al tiempo de la proclamacion al throno de nuestro amado, y querido rei D. Fernando el Sexto (Sevilla: Imprenta bajo de Nuestra Señora del Populo, en Calle Genova, n.d.), 8: “Firme propongo la enmienda de nunca jamàs pecar, ofrezco de confessar mi maldad, porque se entienda: Pondrè freno, pondrè rienda à todas las ocasiones, y ligarè mis passiones con la Santa Contricion, templando con la razon el mal de mis sin razones.”

20

To Sin No More

Thus, even in places with a long Catholic tradition such as the Iberian Peninsula, complete conversion is never entirely guaranteed. This book exposes the volatility of Christianity in not only a colonial setting, but also in places deemed “old” Christian, like Spain. As historian Scott Hendrix points out, “Christianity has to be rooted and rerooted in every society it enters.”26 Within this context, he claims that the sixteenth-century Catholic reformation revitalized the Church’s evangelical objective as never before. Religious male orders undertook a widespread mission that encompassed local ministry as much as foreign missions. The aim of these missionaries was, using their own parlance, “to plant and replant Christianity wherever they served.” As the argument goes, Christianity is historical and needs to be nurtured, guided, and preserved.27 Consequently, conversion encompasses interchangeably the religious transformation of a non-Catholic Native American as well as the spiritual regeneration of a Catholic sinner. Propaganda fide missionaries sought to eradicate bad customs and heterodox beliefs among Catholics as much as giving a new impetus to the missionary enterprise on the fringes of the Spanish empire. Thus, because conversion is always incomplete at best, overall one could argue that the evangelization of America was and still is a complex phenomenon with no linear, teleological evolution. Religious conversion took many shapes. Internal conversion within a religious order exemplified by Fray Antonio Llinás is one instance. In this book, missionary work among Catholics is another. Propaganda fide missionaries actively proselytized with the goal of purging Catholicism of deviant acts and preparing the flock for the redeeming moment of penance, and ultimately salvation. They did so through a systematic itinerant evangelical program, also known in the literature as misiones populares or popular missions, that targeted Catholics. Historians of European religious history have taken the lead in studying these missions to reveal their impact on early modern European Catholicism. Historians such as Louis Châtellier have shown that in the eighteenth century, massive campaigns of indoctrination “took the form of systematic covering of entire regions, where the towns and villages, without exception, were visited one after another” and turned Europe into a “great missionary land.”28 These studies have provided further insights on the contribution of popular missions to the development of popular religion in European rural and urban settings. Studies of European popular missions describe the interactions and fusion

26. Scott H. Hendrix, “Rerooting the Faith: The Reformation as Re-Christianization,” Church History 69 (2000), 575. 27. Scott H. Hendrix, Recultivating the Vineyard: The Reformation Agendas of Christianization (Louisville, Ky. and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 129. 28. Louis Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and the Formation of Modern Catholicism, c. 1500–c.1800, trans. Brian Pearce (1993; Cambridge University Press, 1997), 60.

INTRODUCTION

21

between the missionaries’ Catholicism and the parishioners’ religion and reveal as much about missionary religiosity as they do of local religious devotions.29 Chapters 4 and 5 of this book focus on this type of evangelical ministry through the lenses of propaganda fide popular missions—omnipresent in eighteenthcentury Spain and Spanish America. It shows that Franciscan missionary colleges were systematic promoters of this type of ministry. Hence, this book complements recent scholarship that uncovers Franciscan pastoral work in urban and rural spaces in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, debunking long-held assumptions in Mexican historiography that after the arrival of the Jesuits and the consolidation of a diocesan clergy in the 1570s, mendicant orders had given up their evangelical ministry to cloister in their convents or move to frontier missions. Instead of languishing, mendicant orders continued their ministry throughout Mexico and other parts of the Hispanic world.30

29. Jesuit and Capuchin popular missions in Europe have received more attention. See, for instance, Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor; Charles C. Noel, “Missionary Preachers in Spain: Teaching Social Virtue in the Eighteenth Century,” The American Historical Review 90, no. 4 (1985): 866–892; Francisco Luis Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España entre el Barroco y la Ilustración, Humanismo e Ilustración (Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, Diputación de Valencia, 2006); Martí Gelabertó, La palabra del predicador: Contrarreforma y superstición en Cataluña (siglos XVII–XVIII) (Lleida: Editorial Milenio, 2005); and Jennifer D. Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuits’ Civilizing Mission in Early Modern Naples (Hants, England; Burlington, Vt.; Rome: Ashgate Publishing and Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2004). Selwyn studies Jesuits’ popular missions in Naples as part of a broader global civilizing mission, a similar thesis adopted in this study for the Franciscan missionary program. I also agree with her when she further points out that Jesuit missions in Naples served “as a training ground for [Jesuit] members, as an internal frontier that shaped the Jesuits’ missionary praxis, and as a place from which to recruit leading members of the Society of Jesus, including those destined for far-off mission fields beyond Europe” (p. 3). For the Jesuit itinerant ministry in New Spain, see J. Michelle Molina, To Overcome Oneself: The Jesuit Ethic and Spirit of Global Expansion, 1520–1767 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). Karen Melvin has also studied the colleges’ role in missionizing Christians in the urban areas of New Spain in Building Colonial Cities of God, 156–163, and in her essay, “The Globalization of Reform,” in Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation, Mary Laven, Alexandra Bamji, and Geert Janssen, eds. (Ashgate, 2013): 435–450. 30. Robert Ricard, La conquista espiritual de México: Ensayo sobre el apostolado y los métodos misioneros de las órdenes mendicantes en la Nueva España de 1523–1524 a 1572, trans. Ángel María Garibay K. (1933; Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1986), 34–35. Ricard’s book has deeply influenced scholars of the frontier. See, for instance, Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in Colonial New Mexico: 1500–1846 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991), 46; and David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 95. In A Flock Divided: Race, Religion, and Politics in Mexico, 1749–1857 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010), 57, Matthew D. O’Hara also claims that “Beginning in 1749 royal and ecclesiastical decrees called for the orders to leave the doctrinas and return to their convents or to traditional missionary work among the ‘heathen Indians’ on New Spain’s northern frontier.” Although Franciscan scholars

22

To Sin No More

To Sin No More also enters the debate over the aesthetics of Catholic practice in the eighteenth century. Through itinerant ministry, the missionary religion blended a communal, theatrical piety that scholars have related to Baroque Catholicism with a theology of individual salvation commonly associated with late-eighteenth–century reforms. The goal of Franciscan missionaries was to extend and consolidate the sacramentalization of Spain and the Americas begun in the sixteenth century. At the core was the administration of penance and redemption through contrition.31 The collegiate missionary program therefore continued the process launched by the Council of Trent to sacramentalize the daily life of Catholics in addition to the more known sacramental broadening to frontier regions. Salvation, as Trent theology underscored, could only be achieved through a good confession, the administration of penance, and the final symbiosis of the remorseful penitents with the body and blood of their God in the general Holy Communion. That is, the believers’ conversion occurred after a sincere confession and a hasty penitence fueled by the rejection of sin and contrition.32 Studying conversion to Catholicism, however, posits ontological and epistemological problems to delineate the process and more so to measure its ends, which in Catholic theology is post-mortem salvation. Since members of the Church dictate the norms to convert—intimately linked to time and space— conversion can be historicized. In other words, the set of norms that encompasses the path towards salvation has constantly changed. Yet, as internal processes, conversions of lay Catholic individuals are difficult to track in the Franciscan documentation. The soteriological conundrum to gauge the end of the process also makes it futile to seek success or failure—who is and is not saved—due to the impossibility to survey hell and heaven or interview the decision maker. I am prevented from seeking results and interpretations beyond the examination of the abundant archival and printed contemporary sources. The book is organized into five thematical chapters and an epilogue. First, it explores the institutional history, recruitment process, and daily life in the colleges. Chapter 1 establishes the historical context under which the colleges have long claimed that Ricard’s thesis had to be revisited and contested, only recently has archival research demonstrated the evangelical activities of the mendicant orders in urban settings after 1572. See Melvin, Building Colonial Cities of God. 31. Brian Larkin, The Very Nature of God: Baroque Catholicism and Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010); Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España; Molina, To Overcome Oneself. For the sacramentalization of Mexico in the sixteenth century, see Osvaldo F. Pardo, The Origins of Mexican Catholicism: Nahua Rituals and Christian Sacraments in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004). 32. A good summary of the Council of Trent appears in R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 10–25.

INTRODUCTION

23

developed and evolved, drawing special attention to their internal organization and how they fit within the broader hierarchical structure of the Franciscan Order. The following chapter explores the recruitment of novices and friars. In part, it describes the selection process, paying special attention to motivations of the young men as well as the requirements set by the colleges. It further explores the level of education of novices and friars before admission to a college. Chapter 3 assesses the missionary training program in the colleges for the propagation of the faith. It underscores the collegial curriculum, especially instruction in moral theology and languages. This chapter further opens a window through which we look into quotidian life in the college—both the spiritual environment as well as the material elements—which became an intrinsic part of the missionary program and a physical and intellectual challenge to the convent residents. In a Franciscan convent, laymen sought a life detached from sin, spiritual renewal, and a refreshed commitment to their Christian God. In this line of thought, Franciscan apostolic colleges, considered centers of holiness, offered conversion within a religious order.33 The rest of the book focuses on conversion and salvation outside the walls of the Franciscan colleges. Chapter 4 examines the misiones populares, which were temporary missions to communities aimed at extirpating what the missionaries viewed as deviant practices and to reform the customs of Catholics. The chapter describes the techniques and methods of these missions and the religious culture that stemmed from Franciscan missionary activities within the frame of global salvation. Chapter 5 explores the contents of sermons and pláticas preached in the popular missions. It offers a glimpse of how missionaries viewed colonial society while also providing an idea of the intellectual background of sermon authors. The epilogue briefly covers how the missionaries put their knowledge into effect in the missions to convert frontier native peoples. It draws on the previous chapters as well as manuscript guides for missionaries left by veterans for their successors. These chapters thus approach conversion from a broad perspective. For the Franciscan missionaries, conversion implied not only recruiting non-Catholics for their eternal salvation under the umbrella of the Church but also, from a soteriological perspective, the salvation of the sinners who were otherwise condemned to hell. In this respect, conversion encompasses indistinctly the spiritual regeneration of a fallen “soul” and the salvation of a non-Christian. Focusing on the friars of propaganda fide, To Sin No More ultimately reveals their pivotal role in expanding and consolidating Catholicism in the eighteenth-century Hispanic world.

33. For examples of becoming a nun or a monk as a stage in the conversion process, see Frederick H. Russell, “Augustine: Conversion by the Book,” and Leonard P. Hindsley, O.P., “Monastic Conversion: The Case of Margaret Ebner,” in Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, James Muldoon, ed. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 13–46.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 1

An Atlantic Institution pon entering the research room in the Franciscan archive at Celaya,1 researchers note a prominently displayed organizational chart of the Franciscan Order in Spanish America dated 1789 and printed in Lima. Fray Pedro González de Agüeros, a missionary from the Colegio Apostólico de Ocopa in Peru, painted a perfectly symmetrical genealogical tree consisting of the Franciscan commissaries general of the Indies. Commissaries are arranged chronologically on branches from the trunk to the peak, where the name Fray Manuel María Truxillo appears, González de Agüeros’s contemporary. This allegorical symbol is a Franciscan adaptation of Jesse’s tree, a type of representation that depicted the royal lineage of Jesus of Nazareth that was very popular in the Middle Ages. In the sixteenth century, religious orders adopted the genealogical tree to describe themselves, typically with their founders as the root that sustained the tree. In the picture on Celaya’s wall, the print is topped by the royal coat of arms and the crest of the commissary general of the Indies on opposite sides. Moreover, the author dedicated the printed leaflet to King Charles IV. González de Agüeros sent an undeniable message of the union of the monarchy and the Franciscan Order in Spanish America. His loyalty to the king is indisputable—all of his opus magna of books and maps centered on Ocopa’s missionary endeavors were dedicated to the monarch.2 González de Agüeros’s print is a eulogy to the Franciscan missionary endeavors in America. The tree divides the composition into two lists of all the Franciscan provinces (provincias), convents, custodies (custodias), propaganda fide colleges, and missions in North and South America, respectively. Each list begins with the first (or “mother”) province established on each continent on

U

1. Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Michoacán, Convento de San Francisco, Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico (henceforth AHPFM). 2. Fray Pedro González de Agüeros, “Arbol Cronologico que manifiesta los Comisarios Generales de Indias del Orden de San Francisco y Plan de todas las provincias con sus conventos: Y de los colegios con sus misiones, que existen en las dos Américas, é Islas Filipinas” (Madrid: Imprenta de Benito Cano, 1789). He dedicated his work to Carlos IV; see, for instance, his Descripción de la provincia y Archipielago de Chilóe en el Reyno de Chile y Obispado de la Concepción dedicado à nuestro católico monarca Don Cárlos IV (que Dios guarde) (Madrid: Imprenta de Don Benito Cano, 1791).

25

26

To Sin No More

top and continues chronologically through provinces established thereafter, and finally the colleges of propaganda fide alongside their missions at the bottom. This printed leaflet is an exaltation of the Franciscan commitment to the evangelization of America, which comprised 17 provinces, 231 convents, 164 vicar houses and hospices, 14 apostolic colleges, 1 custody (in Sonora), and a total of over 300,000 neophytes ministered to by 4,500 to 5,000 provincial friars and 700 to 870 apostolic propaganda fide missionaries. As art historian Jesús Pérez Morera points out, genealogical trees have both an historical and a mystical meaning. This type of allegorical composition coalesces the history of the Franciscan Order in America through the commissaries general of the Indies, its commitment to the expansion of Catholicism in America, and the relevance of the Spanish monarchy. By placing the colleges on both sides of the trunk and the provinces at the level of the branches, González de Agüeros accentuates the colleges evangelical role in converting America to Catholicism. Genealogical trees include the founder of the order at the base of the tree, as the root of the group, while the trunk constitutes the grounding for the order’s expansion.3 This chapter examines the institutional genesis and consolidation of these colleges and their atypical raison d’être in a time when secular forces had halted mendicant expansion in Spain and its empire. According to González de Agüeros, the Franciscan evangelical program owed its existence to both the colegios and provincias. However, in the eighteenth century the colleges became a new missionary vanguard, the trunk of Franciscan evangelism in Spain and Spanish America. Due to their strong commitment to conversion (internal and external) and soteriological responsibility, as well as certain innovations brought to the Franciscans, the Franciscan propaganda fide institution grew rapidly. In a sense, an institutional survey of the colleges serves as the background for the following chapters. This chapter describes the organizational structure of the colleges to better understand their missionizing agenda. College leaders directed the evangelical program, dealt with government and ecclesiastical bureaucracies, and comprised the first stage of appeals when problems arose. To improved effectiveness and response, American and Spanish colleges remained uniquely independent from the Franciscan provincias and under the authority of Franciscan general commissaries in Mexico City, Lima, and Madrid. Yet the colleges’ uniqueness was in some ways as traditional as innovative. Changes were introduced that revitalized the Franciscan evangelical ministry and thus spoke to the spirit of reform and evangelization present in the order since its beginnings. The colegios de propaganda fide did not, however, remain pristine, monochromatic, inert

3. Jesús Pérez Morera, “El árbol genealógico de las órdenes franciscana y dominica en el arte virreinal,” Anales del Museo de América 4 (1996): 119–126.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

27

Fig. 1.1. Arbol Cronológico que manifiesta los comisarios generales de Indias del Orden de San Francisco y Plan de todas las provincias con sus conventos: Y de los colegios con sus misiones, que existen en las dos Américas, é Islas Filipinas (Madrid: Imprenta de Benito Cano, 1789). Courtesy of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.

28

To Sin No More

institutions. This chapter also exposes conflict with provincias and rivalries both internal and external to the propaganda fide communities. Such fissures demonstrate that the Franciscan propaganda fide colleges were far from homogeneous institutions free from tribulation. Even with their shortcomings, college administrators responded to difficulties and challenges in various ways. To illustrate this point, I focus on how reforms coming from Madrid in the last decades of the eighteenth century and before the American revolutions affected the colleges’ business of conversion and salvation. At the core were centripetal forces around Madrid’s bureaucracy to control and transform the empire into a reliable long-term resource of expanding wealth and political loyalties. The colleges accommodated, while simultaneously challenging, the new laws that emanated from Madrid. The chapter begins with a description of the context in which the colleges operated as a new vanguard of missionary work, a polished and lubricated mechanism (albeit imperfect) for the “conversion of souls.” In the end, the Franciscan apostolic colleges evolved towards an imperial, centralizing institution that dominated the Spanish missionary scene in the twilight years of the empire. Why and how it happened deserve some reflection.

The Plan to Convert the Spanish Atlantic World As Fray Pedro González de Agüeros stressed in his genealogical imprint, Franciscan convents multiplied throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to become the largest religious order in terms of manpower and geographical reach by the time the first colegio was established in Querétaro in 1683. In the Americas, the Franciscan evangelical program quickly spread among native communities in the aftermath of conquest through the creation of parishes to evangelize Indians in rural and urban areas, called doctrinas. Succinctly put, networks of Franciscan convents and Indian doctrinas were organized around custodies (custodias) and provinces. The missionary front continued its expansion in North and South America, bringing new lands and peoples under Spanish control. In an iterative process, doctrinas became Indian parishes, for the mendicant orders custodias became provincias, and diocesan parishes were established in Spanish towns. In North America, the arrival of twelve Franciscans after the fall of MéxicoTenochtitlán in 1524 set in motion an evangelical program of conversion and acculturation that both made possible as well as sustained Spanish domination. New Spain’s provincial map included the early Provincia del Santo Evangelio (Province of the Holy Gospel), established in 1534, and subsequent provincias of Yucatán (1559), Michoacán (1565), Guatemala (1565), Nicaragua (1675), Discalced San Diego de México (1599), Zacatecas (1603), Xalisco (1606), Florida (1612), and Río Verde (1645). A similar pattern is found in the viceroy-

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

29

alty of Peru, where the Franciscan Provincia de los XII Apóstoles del Perú (1553) split into the provinces of Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, and Chile in 1565, Venezuela in 1585, and Río de la Plata in 1612. Demographic studies and contemporary sources reveal the predominance of the Franciscan Order on the ecclesiastical map of the Spanish Atlantic by 1700.4 A priori, the late seventeenth century did not seem an auspicious time for establishing a new Franciscan missionary venture. Criticism of mendicants in general and especially the Seraphic Order paralleled its expansion. Franciscans confronted several antagonistic groups from within and without. A succinct summary then stresses the significance of establishing the colleges in the late 1600s. By the end of the seventeenth century, the mendicant orders had resisted more than a century of conflict with bishops over control of Indian parishes. Since their early arrival in Mexico, mendicants had enjoyed special papal and royal prerogatives over the administration of Indian doctrinas that included spiritual as well as economic benefits commonly reserved for diocesan clerics. In Europe, bishops supervised the administration of sacraments and collection of tithes, and inspected and exercised control over the parishes. In America, popes and kings had turned these privileges over to the mendicants in reward for their undertaking the evangelization and conversion of native peoples. Consequently, bishops continuously challenged the Franciscan monopoly over these Indian parishes. The secularization of Franciscan doctrinas—the process of turning parishes administered by Franciscan priests over to the diocesan clergy—happened slowly. Overall, Franciscans in particular and mendicants in general withstood the secularizing impetus until the mid-1700s. The continuous assaults had failed due to the mendicants’ ability to defend their privileges as well as the real difficulties faced by diocesan authorities to fill the vacuum once friars left their doctrinas. Finally, in the mid-eighteenth century, a series of royal edicts passed between 1749 and 1753 gave the final blow to the doctrinas when mendicants hesitantly turned over most parishes to the dioceses (bishoprics) in Spanish America.5

4. See, for instance, the classic Ricard, La conquista espiritual; and Christian Duverger, La Conversión de los Indios de Nueva España, 24, 30–31. Capuchins and Discalced Franciscans were also present in America, but they were far outnumbered by clergy of the observant Franciscan branch. For foundation dates of the North American and South American provinces, see Marion A. Habig, “The Franciscan Provinces of Spanish North America,” The Americas vol. 1, no. 3 (January 1945): 330–344; Marion A. Habig, “The Franciscan Provinces of South America,” The Americas vol. 2, no. 2 (October 1945): 189–210; Melvin, Building Colonial Cities of God, 25, 52; Barrio Gozalo, El Clero en la España Moderna, 47– 55; and García Oro, Los Franciscanos en España, 245–248. 5. There are multiple works that address secularization of the doctrinas de indios under mendicant control. For instance, see Virve Piho, “La organización eclesiástica de la Nueva España durante los siglos XVI y XVII,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 10 (1991), 24– 27; Kenneth Andrien, “The Coming of Enlightened Reform in Bourbon Peru: Seculariza-

30

To Sin No More

Government officials also raised their voices against expansion of the mendicant orders, which some considered the core of problems faced by Spain throughout the seventeenth century. Among the most persuasive foes of religious expansion were economic counselors called arbitristas, who linked Spanish economic and imperial decadence to religious excesses and inability to produce economic (material) progress. Their opposition to additional religious convents had resulted in royal prohibitions of new establishments and the mendicants’ consequent gridlock in eighteenth-century Spain and in Spanish America, excepting at the ever-expanding frontier. Throughout the eighteenth century, enlightened reformers received the baton from the arbitristas to put the mendicants on the defense. Reformers viewed mendicant orders as economic burdens that hoarded resources which otherwise could be used to promote Spain’s incipient industrialization.6 In contrast, the Franciscan Order’s internal critics aimed at reform and enhancement rather than imposing personnel and geographic limitations. Similar to critiques in previous centuries, Franciscans censured decadence in various forms and missionizing shortfalls in America as well as Spain. It should be noted that the demographic peak for Franciscan friars and houses in the Hispanic world coincided with perceptions of spiritual laxity and a loss of momentum in the evangelical ministry vis-à-vis the secular clergy and other regular clerics, particularly the Jesuits.7 Such was the case of Fray Gregorio de Bolívar, a friar stationed in Peru in the early seventeenth century, who has been described by scholars as a precursor to Fray Antonio Llinás’s plan to establish colleges to train Franciscan missionaries in Spain and the Americas. While the link is tenuous at best, Bolívar submitted his reform project to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide), an institution founded in 1622 by Pope Gregorius XV with the support of the Franciscan Order to monitor and advance missionary programs in foreign lands. The Congregation welcomed ideas that fostered the expansion of Catholicism as much as offered a platform for critics to meddle in American ecclesiastical affairs. Lured by the opportunity, dissenting voices like Bolívar’s used the Congregation to raise their objections on the state of the Church in tion of the Doctrinas de Indios, 1746–1773,” in Gabriel Paquette, ed., Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and Its Atlantic Colonies, c. 1750–1830, 183–202 (Farnham, UK, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009): 183–202; Allan J. Kuethe and Kenneth J. Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century: War and the Bourbon Reforms, 1713– 1796 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 167–193. 6. See Atienza, Tiempos de conventos, 53, 63–69; Atienza López, “Fundaciones frustradas y efímeras,” 189–209; and Martínez Ruiz, ed., El peso de la Iglesia, esp. chaps. 4 and 5. 7. Lino Gómez Canedo challenges the idea of decadence of the Franciscan missionary program in the seventeenth century in his “Renovación cristiana en la Nueva España del siglo XVII,” in Evangelización, cultura y promoción social, edited by José Luis Soto Pérez, 416–419.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

31

the Americas. Disenchanted Franciscan missionaries actively used this new venue to appeal to Rome to repair missionary agendas and Rome welcomed the same as a means to intervene in otherwise out-of-reach Spanish American matters. Bolívar’s report deserves some attention because his concerns and proposals would reverberate with the genesis of the colleges sixty years later.8 In the mid-1620s, Fray Gregorio sent a report to the pope that questioned the Church’s missionary commitment and sought reforms. The friar predictably painted a picture of Church decadence in Peru. According to the report, secular and regular clerics had lost their evangelical zeal and relaxed their customs by allowing and actively participating with natives in gambling, smuggling, and in illicit (for mendicants) buying and selling activities with laypeople (including Indians). He further denounced the clerics for selling alcoholic beverages to the natives, which, he argued, perpetuated idolatry and immoral behavior. Overall, Indian doctrinas under secular and regular clerics had become, he asserted, “seedbeds of incredible evil, because here greed, forbidden and exorbitant gambling, fraud and abuses, and all manner of decadence flourish.” He particularly decried the prevalence of lewdness and immodesty, resulting from these practices.9 Indubitably, according to Bolívar, reform of the clergy’s ruinous state in Peru was much needed. As a solution, he advocated establishment of colleges in each bishopric, “where a certain number of students be trained and educated according to the opportunity and convenience of each bishopric.”10 Under this plan, each religious order should have at least one facility dedicated to the study of languages of nearby native peoples, where a third of the students would be trained and sent to frontier missions. Even though his project was not approved, the friar’s ideas mirror the future Franciscan colleges for the propagation of the faith. Indeed, Fray Bolívar had many peers with similar objectives. Debates to create colleges to improve potential missionaries’ language and oratory skills had positive results throughout the century and culminated with the creation and expansion of revitalized conversion schemes. Founded under the auspices

8. The Sagrada Congregación was established by the constitution Inescrutabili divinae on June 22, 1622. See Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 29, n. 9. 9. The entire document is in Purificación Gato, “El informe del P. Gregorio de Bolívar a la Congregación de Propaganda Fide de 1623,” in Actas del III Congreso Internacional sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo (Siglo XVII) (Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1991); quote on p. 528: “En fín estos curatos antiguos y ricos son seminarios de increibles males, porque aquí se ceba la codicia, los juegos prohibidos y exhorbitantes, los fraudes y malos tratos, y todo género de relajaciones, y si tuviese de tratar del impeditivo de todo bien, digo el vicio de la lujuria y desonestidades sería no acabar, pero dejase ésto para que se saque de lo demás dicho por consecuencia por no ofender los castos oidos. . .” (emphasis in original). 10. Ibid., 513: “[D]onde se enseñen y eduquen cierto número de colegiales conforme a la posibilidad y comodidad de cada obispado” (emphasis in original).

32

To Sin No More

of the Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide in Rome, also in 1622, the Colegio de San Pietro Montorio sent missionaries to the Far East and Middle East. Students at Montorio attended language classes—Arabic, Chaldean, Ethiopian, Albanian, Greek, and Chinese—while also studying under newly appointed chairs for the study of theological controversies (primarily concerning Protestantism), doctrinal and moral theologies, sacred scriptures, medicine, mathematics, and geography. In 1628, the Spanish priest Juan Bautista Vives established the Colegio Urbano de Roma to prepare both secular and regular clerics who wanted to work in the missions also under the patronage of the Congregación. The new colleges under the authority of the Congregation functioned independently of the provincias where they were established; unlike other Franciscan friaries, new seminaries would report directly to the Franciscan minister general of the order rather than the provincial minister. Following a papal proposal in 1610 to develop curricula for training missionaries, the Franciscan General Chapter of Toledo of 1633 recommended establishing four colleges in Spain, Italy, France, and Germany-Belgium, where missionaries would be trained in languages and apologetics that prove more useful and necessary for the propagation of the faith and conversion of heretics and other nonbelievers in America, Europe, and Asia.11 In the Americas, Franciscans built the Colegio de San Bonaventura y San Juan Capistrano at Tlatelolco in 1662. Fray Juan de la Torre, commissary general of New Spain, predicted that the college would serve as a center for missionary training. As events unfolded, by 1689 the college had become a school for the training of theology and philosophy lecturers for the Franciscan provinces.12 Overt criticism of Franciscan relaxation in the observance of the order’s rules and the general perception that evangelical zeal was declining redoubled efforts to bring about rejuvenation. Where others had failed, Fray Antonio Llinás thrived. Success of his plan resulted from the convergence of multiple forces and actors. Ongoing expansion of the colleges into a network of twentynine missionary seminaries and the creation of a refurbished missionary agenda that rivaled those of the Jesuits and other religious orders required strong impetus and support. Llinás and his supporters first, and then the colleges themselves, managed to enlist the patronage of the order’s highest authorities,

11. The original Latin text, from the General Chapter of the Franciscan Order at Toledo, in 1633 is “in quibus Collegiis doceri debeant, inter alia illae linguae et fidei controversiae, quae ad ipsius fidei propagationem, haerecticorum aliorumque infidelium conversionem, magis utiles et necessariae fuerint.” The text, quoted both in English and Latin, appears in McCarty, “Apostolic Colleges,” 54, n. 12. 12. As late as the last decade of the nineteenth century, missionaries were sent to Congregación missions in Asia, mainly to the Holy Land, after graduating from the College of San Pietro Montorio. McCarty, “Apostolic Colleges,” 51–54; and Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 27–29.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

33

the king, and the pope. Through prestige and visibility, the colleges were further expanded and branched out to the four corners of the Hispanic world. The process of establishing the first Franciscan college in the Mexican city of Querétaro offers insights into the contingent path leading to the implementation of the Franciscan propaganda fide. On the Iberian Peninsula, Llinás’s plan to reform the Franciscan missionary program merged with internal movements to refresh the evangelical program by high-level Franciscan officials. In Portugal, close collaboration between Fray Antonio das Chagas, an energetic and reputable preacher to Portuguese Catholics, and Fray José Jiménez de Samaniego, minister general of the order, fostered the foundation of an apostolic seminary. The resulting Franciscan missionary Colegio de San Antonio in the Portuguese town of Varotojo was approved by Pope Innocent XI in November 1679. The colegio in Varotojo trained young Franciscans “intellectually and spiritually” and housed returning missionaries who sought rest and recovery following itinerant campaigns to convert Catholics. The college was thus intended to restore missionary manpower “to continue spreading the word of God.” Two years later, Pope Innocent XI also authorized the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de la Hoz in Spain, with goals similar to the seminary in Portugal. When Fray Antonio Llinás traveled to Spain in 1680 after his internal conversion process described in the introduction of this book, the outline for creating the Franciscan propaganda fide missionary institution had already been identified. Whether Llinás was aware of the new seminaries, Minister General Samaniego’s approval of both projects paved the way to new efforts in missionary endeavors.13 In Madrid, Llinás met several times with the influential minister general. Samaniego was a visionary who had been considering the option of a renovating push of the languishing Franciscan missionary endeavors abroad. Scholars continue the debate over identifying the mastermind behind the creation of the Franciscan apostolic colleges. What is clear is that both Llinás and Samaniego supported missionary reform. Samaniego offered his influence and Llinás his willingness to act. In a meeting in September 1681, Llinás suggested to Samaniego the need to send eleven missionaries under his command to 13. It is not clear if these events are connected. Saíz Díez points out that the colleges under the Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide had no relationship with Fray Antonio Llinás’s established colegios in the Americas and Spain. On the other hand, McCarty implies a certain connection. At least he never belies the influence on Llinás. Both Saíz Díez and McCarty assert that Franciscan authorities had worried about training missionaries since Saint Francis’s time. And both also agree on the Varotojo seminary’s influence on Llinás’s project. Instead of focusing on whether Llinás was aware of previous colegios founded under the auspices of the Sagrada Congregación or the Portuguese apostolic seminary, I want to underscore that all responded to a common problem: the need to prepare missionaries to convert the peoples of the world. Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 27–30; and McCarty, “Apostolic Colleges.”

34

To Sin No More

enhance the missionary efforts in Cerro Gordo, near Querétaro in Mexico. Samaniego, who had firsthand knowledge of the Varotojo and Hoz apostolic seminaries on the Iberian Peninsula, proposed that Llinás establish new American apostolic colleges for the selection and preparation of Franciscan missionaries on both sides of the Atlantic. At the minister general’s request in late 1681, Llinás drafted two versions of a memorial (memorandum) for the king. Working together, the two Franciscans fostered the renaissance of the Franciscan missionary program in the Hispanic world.14 A close look at the longer memorial draft offers insights into Llinás’s initial plan to convert all humankind into Catholicism. This surviving draft boldly endorsed the salvation of all souls in Europe, Asia, and Africa through the spread of the Christian gospel to Muslims, Jews, heretics, and non-Christians as well as Catholics. With this purpose, Llinás suggested the selection of “Godfearing” religious men who would be specially trained in moral theology and Indian languages (Nahuatl, Tarascan, Otomí, and un-named others) and would acquire specific missionary experience preaching in itinerant missions in Spain. The plan established a model for Christian expansion that assumed military conquest as a necessary evil, to echo the sixteenth-century Franciscan so-called “golden age.” Like the early friars who converted central Mexico, missionaries would establish new Franciscan colegios in the newly conquered territories that should eventually evolve into provinces with one provincial, four definidores or counselors, and other officials; indeed, such a pattern resembled the Franciscan structure. The minister general, who was more familiar with the intricacies of the royal court and with King Charles II (1665–1700), tamed Llinás’s initial, ambitious plan, suggesting an abridged version of the longer draft. In its shorter version, which was the one submitted to Charles II and his Consejo de Indias (Council of the Indies), the plan was limited to recruiting a group of capable Franciscan friars whose previous experience evangelizing to Catholics in Spain could prove their endurance to the hardships of frontier conversions. They would set aside a house in Mexico from which these men would minister to Catholics and independent Indian communities on the

14. Following the minister general’s advice, the Majorcan drafted a second memorial to be presented to the Council of the Indies, which he did in an abridged form after further suggestions by the minister general. The two versions of the memorial and the Council of the Indies “pase” appear in Fr. Antonio Llinás, “Memorial que escribió el P. Fr. Antonio Llinás al Ministro General de la Orden de la Orden y a su majestad solicitando la fundación de los Colegios,” Madrid, 1681, AHPFM, Fondo del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro (henceforth AHPFM-FCSCQ), D, file 2, no. 1; and Archivo General de Indias (henceforth AGI), México, file 310. A summary of the memorial is in McCloskey, The Formative Years, 20–22, and in Antoni Picazo Muntaner, “El ideario de Fray Antoni Llinás, OFM, para la creación del primer colegio de Propaganda Fide de América,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 60 (2000); Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa reproduces most of the memorial in Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide, 295–300.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

35

frontier. To lead the group, Fray José Jiménez de Samaniego appointed Fray Antonio Llinás as commissary delegate of a mission of twenty-four friars that Llinás himself collected from villages, towns, and cities where he preached to and confessed Spanish people. Once in Mexico, the group would establish a college for missionaries.15 To Samaniego, this program redressed the Franciscan evangelism that many felt was in desperate need. Missionaries were to focus on “the believers for reform of their customs, and [. . .] the non-believers by giving them the news and light of the faith.” Indians were thus “to be baptized and added to the flock of the Holy Roman Church, under obedience to it, without which nobody is saved.”16 Resembling the ideals of the seminaries of Varotojo in Portugal and Hoz in Spain, in these new apostolic colleges, Samaniego claimed, young friars received instruction and veteran Franciscans recuperated their strength after itinerant missions. “Then,” Samaniego continued, “with new fervor . . . they could leave to go to different places to the same task of sowing the holy gospel in souls.”17 Samaniego’s influence at the royal court and in Rome soon paid off. King Charles II and his Consejo de Indias endorsed the project early on. A modest proposal to send two dozen missionaries and setting aside a convent to house them seemed plausible to the Council, eager to redefine the Franciscan missionary agenda. Because the Franciscans comprised the largest clerical force in Spain and Spanish America, the Crown and its officials still trusted Franciscans in the role of evangelizers and welcomed reforms to maintain that status. However, a series of Indian revolts in New Spain’s northern frontier— particularly New Mexico’s successful Pueblo Revolt in 1680 that killed hundreds of settlers including twenty-one Franciscan missionaries, and drove the

15. This recruiting pattern in Spain was the norm for the Franciscan provinces. Fray José Díez, “Apostólicos empleos de los hijos del Seraphín llagado obreros Evangélicos, del Collegio de la Santíssima Cruz de la Ciudad de Querétaro,” 1700, Biblioteca della Pontificia Università Antonianum, Rome, ms. 153, fols. 12v–13v. I consulted the photostat copy at the AHPFM. See also Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 50–51. 16. Patente by Fray José Jiménez Samaniego to Fray Antonio Llinás, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, March 12, 1682, as copied in Díez, “Apostólicos empleos,” copy at AHPFM, fol. 15v: “[À] los fieles para reformacion de costumbres, y á los infieles dandoles noticia, y luz de la fee, baptiçandolos, y agregandolos al rebaño de la Santa Iglesia Romana, y alistandolos á su obediençia, sin la qual ninguno se salva.” This patent became the first constitution of the college at Querétaro. 17. Patent by Fray José Jiménez Samaniego to Fray Antonio Llinás, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, March 12, 1682, as copied in ibid., fols. 15v–16r: “[L]os Religiosos mozos sean instruidos en el espiritu, y con la doctrina necessaria, y los ya experimentados se fortalezcan mas cada dia, y a donde despues de los trabaxos de la Mission, buelvan á repararse, y á cobrar nuevos alientos en el cuerpo, y en el alma, en tiempos convenientes, y oportunos; y de donde vuelban á salir luego nuebamente, recobradas las fuerzas del cuerpo; y del alma, y con nuebo fervor, con el merito de la Santa obediencia, á diversas partes, con la misma tarea de sembrar en las almas la palabra divina.”

36

To Sin No More

province away from Spanish control—underpinned the need for change. Officials probably welcomed sending Spanish-born missionaries to a new college overseas. The plan bypassed royal suspicions of interference by Rome’s Holy See with the new colegio, which ironically bore the name of propaganda fide, akin to the Roman Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide. This is an important aspect since Pope Innocent XI sought influence in various ways over the American Church. Despite fears of the papacy’s meddling in American affairs, the Council of the Indies and the king approved the new foundation insofar as it would still remain under its supervision through royal patronage (patronato regio).18 In fact, Innocent XI sought the opportunity to advance Rome’s control over the American Church and introduce stricter interpretations on theological debates as a counterpoint to the influential Jesuits’ more relaxed reading of Christian doctrine. By embracing the colegios, he yearned for a revitalized Franciscan missionary program that would teach their audiences rigorous approaches to the scriptures.19 He further hoped for more interference with American affairs through the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Innocent XI’s yearning for power over America has a long history since the conquest of America. The Congregation was indeed a latter addition to claim some influence over the American missions. In spite of its success in placing Franciscan missionaries in the Far East and the Holy Land, the Congregation however failed to exercise direct control or influence over the missions in America, which the Hispanic monarchs zealously controlled through the royal patronage (patronato regio) and royal vicariate. The Congregation certainly did not remain foreign to the American missionary program, meddling in local affairs through inspectors (visitadores) and collecting reports on the progress and decline of converting indigenous peoples. To some degree, the establishment of Franciscan propaganda fide colleges opened a thin crack for Rome’s interference in mission matters in America. The Congregación retained certain influence over the apostolic colleges of propaganda fide,

18. For a good summary of the political intricacies that led to establishment of the colleges, see Patricia Escandón,“La alianza de altar y trono,” 131–161. 19. For details over this process see Díez, “Apostólicos empleos,” copy at AHPFM, fols. 19r–25r; McCloskey, The Formative Years, 23–27; and Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 51–52. The first legislation regulating the Colegio de Querétaro was Pope Innocent XI’s bull Sacrosancti Apostolatus, Rome, May 8, 1682, which incorporated recommendations from Samaniego’s Patent of March 12, 1682. This piece of legislation was incorporated in the two papal bulls of 1686, which superseded previous bulls and became the general constitutions of the colleges for one hundred years. Sacrosancti Apostolatus is quoted in Latin in Díez, “Apostólicos empleos,” copy at AHPFM, fols. 21v–25v. A more accessible Spanish version is found in Sebastián García, “América en la legislación franciscana del S. XVII,” in Actas del III Congreso Internacional sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo (Siglo XVII) (Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1991), 323–380.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

37

which required the Congregación’s ratification in certain spiritual and temporal matters such as modifications to the general constitutions of the seminaries and the office of commissary-prefect of missions. However, the Franciscan apostolic colleges and their missionary enterprise were never part of the Congregación’s college system and remained outside its jurisdiction.20

Expansion In September 1683, Llinás and his group of Franciscan missionaries took possession of the Convento de la Recolección de San Buenaventura de la Santa Cruz de los Milagros in Querétaro, the site for the new college. Following orders from Madrid and Rome, the Franciscan Provincia de Michoacán had to relinquish this convent to the propaganda fide friars. In fact, Querétaro was not a random choice. Llinás’s initial proposal of the town of San Juan del Río, which lacked mendicant presence, was amended by the king to prevent the foundation of a new friary in a time of economic difficulties in New Spain. On the other hand, Querétaro had two Franciscan convents, one of which was the Recollect house on the outskirts of the city whose living standards of strict observance of poverty echoed those sought for the new college. Moreover, Querétaro was strategically positioned in the camino real or main road to the northern mining and mission territories, and by the late seventeenth century had become a major textile center in New Spain and the main supplier of textiles to the capital and the mining areas of the north. Thus, economic success partially explains the choice of a city that could support a new community of religious mendicants. Not only did the provincia de Michoacán lose a provincial house with a good reputation, but also its income.21

20. The colleges increased the intervention of Roman authorities in the affairs of the Indies, which the Pope had granted to the King of Spain through the patronato regio. In any case, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith had its own missionary colleges that did not include the Franciscan colleges in this study. Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 86, 98. For a list of the Congregation’s colleges and a preliminary sense of its missionary reach, see N. Kowalsky and J. Metzler, Inventory of the Historical Archives of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples or “De Propaganda Fide”, 3rd ed. enl. (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Urbaniana, 1988). Isaac Vázquez Janeiro suggests that the “ingeriencias debieron ser mínimas, al menos en los primeros tiempos.” Isaac Vázquez Janeiro, “Origen y significado de los colegios de misiones franciscanos,” in Actas del III Congreso Internacional sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo (Siglo XVII), 739–740. 21. McCloskey, The Formative Years, 24–25; and Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 51. For the prosperity of Querétaro in the late seventeenth century, see Peter Bakewell, in collaboration with Jacqueline Holler, A History of Latin America to 1825: The Blackwell History of the World, 3rd ed. (Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2010), 303, 356. For the link between economic conditions and the reduced numbers of new friaries in New Spain after 1630, see Melvin, Building Colonial Cities of God, 41–46.

38

To Sin No More

Problems between Fray Antonio Llinás and his Franciscan associates and the Franciscan Provincia de Michoacán, in addition to internal disputes, emerged in virulent fashion after the foundation of the Queretaran college. As discussed herein, the removal of a friary from the province often became a point of friction between newcomers and Franciscan provincial authorities. The latter generally complained of the loss of good convents and their alms collection at a time of economic difficulties and the ban on new religious establishments by the Spanish court. Moreover, less than a year after their arrival, four discontented missionaries left the colegio to illegally join the Michoacán and Jalisco provinces. McCloskey suggests that hardships in the small convent (overstaffed with thirty friars), questioning of authority, and the conflict with the provinces were likely the major determinants of the quarrels with Fray Antonio Llinás and the defections. The college was still requesting the group leader Fray Sebastián Vizquerra’s return from the Province of Jalisco in 1691, seven years after his departure.22 As other tensions regarding the power of Fray Antonio Llinás in the colegio unfolded, he returned to Spain in 1685 to secure new prerogatives that confirmed royal and papal support for the project. After receiving the necessary permits in Madrid from his immediate superiors and the king in spring 1686, he presented recommendations from the Franciscan officials in Madrid and the king to the order’s minister general. The minister general again enthusiastically endorsed the project and even, according to one chronicler, encouraged the foundation of apostolic colleges in Spain where well-trained friars would be sent to the American colleges “for the conversion of the Indians.”23 Pope Innocent XI approved the statutes of the new institution in May 7, 1686, which were published as a first bull on October 16, 1686. A second bull was issued on June 28, 1686. Both pieces of canonical legislation governed the organization of all apostolic seminaries in America and Europe throughout the eighteenth century.24 In a short period of time, the project to expand the Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide was approved by the king, the Council of the Indies, and the pope. It seems ironic that initial reproaches to the first colegio de propaganda fide fostered its expansion.

22. McCloskey, The Formative Years, 38–40; and “Certificación del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro sobre el obedecimiento que se dio a la Cédula Real de agosto 9, 1690, sobre que no se reciban en los Colegios los religiosos que vienen a Provincias hasta pasados los diez años, y aseveramiento de que nunca hicieron lo contrario,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, April 6, 1691, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 1, no. 2A. 23. Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide, bk. 2, ch. 22, 162: “[E]n donde se criassen Missioneros, para que despues de bien instruidos en el ministerio Apostolico, ellos, y no otros, fuesen embiados quando se pidiessen Religiosos para la Conversion de los Indios.” 24. Both bulls had the title “Ecclesiae Catholicae.”

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

39

Llinás’s diligent exertions soon paid off. From Querétaro, the propaganda fide institution quickly evolved into a unique trans-Atlantic missionary program that consolidated and expanded Spanish cultural hegemony in the Atlantic world. Each new college, acting as a hub of missionary expansion, extended its missionary program into urban areas and the countryside, forming a network that spanned Spanish frontiers in the Americas. Upon his return to Spain in early 1685, Llinás and his associates founded seven colegios on the Iberian Peninsula before his death in 1693. After building the apostolic seminary of San Miguel de Escornalbóu in Tarragona in 1688, the colegios of Oliva, Arcos de la Frontera, Calamocha, Cehegín, Valencia, and Villaviciosa followed suit. After Llinás’s death, five more apostolic colleges were established in Herbón (Galicia), Moheda (Extremadura), Olite (Navarra), Zarauz (Basque Country), and Baeza (Granada) during the eighteenth century. Behind such foundations, religious and civil officials as well as pious vecinos emphasized the evangelical needs of the population to justify new seminaries.25 The pattern of the establishment of a new college reflected other new foundations of mendicant convents. Most of them were the result of the enthusiasm that colegio missionaries developed in the towns and cities where they evangelized. In return, local authorities began the long legal process to make the presence of these missionaries permanent in their towns. Missionaries from Querétaro working in Guatemala, including the renowned Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús, established the Colegio de Cristo Crucificado in Guatemala City in 1700. Margil was elected its first guardian or head of the colegio in 1702. Seven years later, he headed construction of the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Zacatecas, for which he was again elected its first guardian. Likewise, the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City was established in 1733 thanks to the evangelical work of Queretaran friars. This trend continued in South America. Fray Francisco de San José arrived in Peru in 1708 from Querétaro, where he worked in frontier missions and founded a hospice in the village of Ocopa for missionaries to recuperate in 1726. This hospice eventually turned into a colegio in 1757. From Ocopa friars moved on to Chillán in Chile and Tarija in Bolivia, and from the latter to Moquegua and Tarata in Peru and Bolivia, respectively. In New Granada, two colleges were established in Popayán and Cali (present-day Colombia), one in Panama City, and another in Nueva Barcelona (present-day Venezuela). Missionaries from Ocopa and the Spanish colegio in Olite founded a colegio in San Lorenzo in the viceroyalty of La Plata (present-day Argentina).26 This expansion was costly and difficult. Looking at these processes nonetheless gives us some hints of the relational dynamics within the Francis-

25. Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 32–33. 26. Ibid., 63–72.

40

To Sin No More

can Order as well as with the Crown, royal officials, and Rome in a period that spans the late seventeenth century to the mid-1700s. As royal orders banned the establishment of new convents in the Hispanic world, Franciscan propaganda fide grew at the expense of the provincias, which were forced to cede up to two convents, preferably of the Franciscan Recollect branch, to become autonomous apostolic seminaries. The Recollect branch followed a stricter interpretation of Saint Francis’s rule and its friars remained cloistered most of the time. The Recollects were effectively the outcome of earlier reforms aimed at adhering to a stricter Franciscan communal way of life than the more common Observant Franciscans. The colegios of Querétaro, Escornalbóu, and Tarija belonged to this Recollect branch of the Seraphic Order when they were ceded as new colleges. The concession of Recollect convents as propaganda fide colleges was not voluntary and peaceful. At the center of the disputes was the colleges’ independence from the Franciscan provinces. Tensions between provincial ministers and colegio prelates were particularly bitter in the first decades after establishing a college. Independent colleges within the provinces were an anomaly in the Franciscan network—provincial authorities perhaps feared that the new institution could set a precedent that would tear the provinces apart and reduce their power. Reasonable fears of personnel losses and economic shortfalls materialized as provinces were stripped of alms and chantries, endowments for masses, and pious works. Not only did provincial authorities hesitate to lose friaries, they also had to compete with the new institution when recruiting novices and friars to join the clergy during a period of reduced vocation numbers. It was also difficult for the provincial ministers to accept their powerlessness in friaries that had been part of the province for centuries. As a result, notwithstanding the colleges’ aim at converting frontier-independent Indians and at reinforcing the Franciscan itinerant evangelical program, provinces commonly contested such cessions of convents into independent propaganda fide seminaries. In the case of the colegios in Querétaro in Mexico and Escornalbóu in Spain, the provincial ministers strategically accused newcomers of failing to adhere to Recollect norms, the previous status of both convents within the respective Michoacán and Cataluña provincias. In spite of fierce litigation in the royal court—Fray Francisco de Ayeta, procurator of the Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México presented the case of the Franciscan provinces of New Spain before the Council of the Indies in the 1680s—the colleges were ultimately recognized as autonomous entities. A drawback to such status was that colleges lacked representation in the general chapters of the Franciscan Order. In South America, the concessions of the Chillán and Cali colleges were also contested by the Franciscan provinces of Chile and Nueva Granada. The Provincia de los Doce Apóstoles del Perú grumpily ceded the impover-

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

41

ished Tarija and Ocopa convents to retain control over the richer friary of Urubamba, initially considered as a potential college.27 Rome’s early interventions to temper seminary–province tensions had unsatisfactory effects on both sides. The language of the colleges’ 1686 general constitutions issued by Pope Innocent XI is vague in this matter. The constitutions ordered the return of colleges to provincial authority if “fervor and zeal weakened,” but the extent of the weakening was unclear. This set of laws further stated that only commissaries general could delegate certain imprecise powers to provincial ministers, but never “absolute” or “general” ones. The 1686 papal orders underscored that seminaries ought to have “fraternal communication” with the provinces. Besides mutual celebrations of masses to honor deceased members of the provinces and the colleges, visiting provincial ministers had to be welcome and served “with all care and reverence” for three days. Like in other friaries under their jurisdiction, provincial ministers had the right of precedence in the collegiate communities. They could further preach sermons in the refectory (dining area), preside over it, and excuse religious men from certain penances, although the brief did not specify which ones. Likewise, the constitutions equalized the rank of college guardians with that of provincial guardians when visiting other provincial convents. To smooth things over, as early as 1688 the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith stated that colegios de propaganda fide would carry the name of the province where they were established and confirmed that under unspecified normal circumstances commissaries general could delegate their authority over the colleges to provincial ministers only. Instead of ceding two colleges per province as the Innocentian bulls indicated, the Congregation reduced the number to one convent that each province was obligated to cede for future seminaries (i.e., after the one in Querétaro and two to be established in Peru).28

27. Additional study of provinces contesting these decisions is needed. The case of the Colegio de San Miguel de Escornalbóu in Spain, where the Provincia de Cataluña litigated with the apostolic friars for years, seems to have been more painful than the Querétaro case. See José Martí Mayor, “Escornalbóu: Colegio-seminario de misiones de Propaganda Fide (1686–1835),” Archivo Ibero-Americano 42, 165–168 (1982): 293–342. Certain documents pertaining to the disputes in Escornalbóu are found in folder 5, “Various unclassified documents, Escornalbóu,” Colegio de San Miguel de Escornalbóu, Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Cataluña (henceforth AHPFC), caja 3C6. For documents on Fray Francisco de Ayeta’s appeals in the royal court of Madrid, see AHPFM, Fondo Provincia, Sección Gobierno. For the colegios of Ocopa, Tarija, Urubamba, Chillán, and Cali, see Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 109–110, and Lorenzo Calzavarini Ghinello, ed., Presencia Franciscana y formación intercultural en el sudeste de Bolivia según documentación del Archivo Franciscano de Tarija, 1606–1936 (Tarija, Bolivia: Centro Eclesial de Documentación, 2004), vol. 1, 52. 28. The Spanish version of the Innocentian General Constitutions of the Colleges— the two papal bulls titled Ecclesiae Catholicae of 1686—are found in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 49–52, quotes on pp. 49–51. See Decreto de la Sagrada Congregación General de Propaganda Fide, Rome, November 16, 1688, in ibid., 101–105.

42

To Sin No More

Because the Congregation’s rulings also vaguely defined the limits of provincial power over the colleges, provincials thus interpreted them loosely as prerogatives to intervene in the daily functioning of the colleges. Provincial ministers sought to inspect seminaries at will, and what became even more troublesome to college officials, ministers urged friars to appeal to them before presenting their concerns to higher authorities. In Michoacán, for instance, the 1680s and 1690s were conflict-ridden. Annoyed prelates of the Colegio de Querétaro rightly feared that discontented religious might address provincial ministers in their complaints against college’s authorities. Some of those grievances must indeed have reached the provincial minister of Michoacán.29 A 1702 age dispensation issued by the provincial minister illustrates his desire to maintain control of the Querétaro college. Not only did he exempt an aspirant to the Queretaran novitiate from the required minimum age alleging the powers granted to him by the commissary general of the Indies and the Sacred Congregation of the Faith in Rome but he underscored “subjection of the seminaries to the provincial ministers.”30 This issue seems to have plagued the colleges for years; when responding to general requests from the colleges in 1712, the commissary general of New Spain had to explicitly prohibit provincial ministers in Michoacán, Zacatecas, and Guatemala from their excessive meddling with college friars in their respective provinces.31 The relationship between Fray José de Picazo, the provincial minister of Michoacán, and Fray José Díez, guardian or head of the Queretaran colegio, was particularly antagonistic. Elected in 1716, Díez furiously accused the provincial minister of perpetuating the agitation of some members of the Queretaran community against him right after his election. Sources do not reveal what caused the conflict. Finally in 1717, the vice-commissary general of New Spain obtained approval from Madrid to order the Michoacán minis-

29. For instance, see the Patent Letter from Fray Pablo Sarmiento, provincial minister of Michoacán, to Fray Francisco Estévez, guardian of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz of Querétaro, Convento de San Francisco of Querétaro, November 19, 1695, Libro de Patentes Zedulas, Elecciones y Autos de Visita, Colegio de Querétaro, 1691–1751, AHPFMFCSCQ, E, file 4, no. 1 (henceforth LPZEAV), fol. 11r. Francis Guest clarifies that a patente or patent letter, “in the ecclesiastical sense of the term, was an official letter expedited by a prelate and addressed to his religious subjects.” Guest, “The Patente of José Gasol, October 1, 1806,” The Americas 49, no. 2 (October 1992): 207–231. 30. “Información de Miguel Martín,” 1702, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 1, no. 14, fol. 5r: “. . . sugeccion de los seminarios a los RR PPes Provinciales.” 31. “Patente del M. R. P. Fr. Juan de la Cruz, Comisario General de Nueva España, a los guardianes, presidentes y discretos de los Colegios de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas, del Cristo Crucificado de Guatemala, y del Hospicio de Granada, por la que prohíbe que los ministros provinciales den licencias a los moradores de los Colegios Apostólicos, la cual corresponde solamente a los guardianes y discretorios de los mismos,” Convento de San Francisco de México, March 21, 1712, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 4, no. 7.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

43

ter, “under holy obedience,” not to interfere with the college and its government and to ignore any prerogatives that the Congregación de Propaganda Fide had granted him in the 1688 decree. Following Díez’s accusations, the vice-commissary blamed the provincial for the unrest and insubordination of certain friars in the Queretaran colegio. The vice-commissary thought that keeping the provincial away from college affairs would ensure “the quietude of our College, of its residents, and the observance of the sacred institution.” The provincial grudgingly obeyed the orders, but justified his actions by saying that he had only consoled friars because of the treatment they received from Díez. Therefore, he unwillingly ordered the college friars not to ask for his help, “but only for God, to console them and assist them with his Grace.”32 Cases of dissenting or dissatisfied friars appealing directly to higher authorities instead of their immediate superiors—probably fearful of reprisals—nonetheless continued in New Spain.33 Rivalries emerged in other ways as well. Sources show that college authorities in New Spain commonly protested that not only provincial ministers took roles that were intended solely for themselves, but also admitted into their provinces friars who traveled from Spain before the end of their minimum mandatory time of ten years of evangelical service in a particular college, thereby contravening royal orders. These protests from the colleges piled up in Mexico City, Lima, Madrid, and Rome. James Cameron points out that in Peru, the establishment of the Colegio de Ocopa and its staffing by Spaniards in contrast to the provincial majority of Creole Franciscan population also pro32. In a letter to the guardian of the seminary in Querétaro, the commissary general of New Spain wrote: “Ya escrivo al R. P.e Proal para que no se intrometa con el Colegio, y con esso cesará el recivimiento, que quiere, y lo demas que por su capricho, y dictamen ha establecido en el,” in “Carta del Rvdmo. P. Fr. José Sanz, Comisario General de Indias, al P. Fr. José Díez, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, sobre el recibimiento que se ha de hacer a los ministros provinciales cuando vienen al Colegio,” Madrid, June 29, 1716, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 8. See also Patent Letter from Fr. José Pedraza, vice-commissary general of New Spain, to Fray José de Picazo, Provincial Minister of Michoacán, Convento de San Francisco de México, March 29, 1717, in LPZEAV, fol. 88v: “[S]ino solo a Dios, qe los consuele y assista con su gracia.” For the original patent letter, see “Patente del M. R. P. Fr. José Pedraza, Vice-Comisario General de Nueva España, al P. Fr. José de Picazo, Ministro Provincial de Michoacán, en que revoca la sujección a que estaba sometido este Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro respecto de la Provincia de San Pedro y San Pablo de Michoacán y su obedecimiento,” Convento de San Francisco de México, March 29–April 6, 1717, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 4, no. 6. 33. The commissary of New Spain complained that friars appealed to the commissary general of the Indies “more driven by vengeance than with holy zeal for the most rigid observance of their vows,” instead of letting him resolve the abuses (“mas con título de venganza que con Sto zelo de la mas rigida observ.a de los votos”). In Patent Letter by Fray Agustín de Mesones, commissary general of New Spain, to all religious men and women in New Spain, Convento de San Francisco de México, November 12, 1717, LPZEAV, fol. 92v.

44

To Sin No More

voked hostile relations with provincial authorities. The factionalism of college Peninsular versus provincial Creole might also have been at the heart of conflict in other colleges in other places.34 The situation in Spain was no better, where acrimonious relations between provincial authorities and the colleges also forced Rome’s intervention, but with a different outcome. Both guardians of the relinquished Recollect convents and the provincial ministers protested their losses—the first had to abandon their convent and the latter were forced to tolerate seminaries outside their authority. In Escornalbóu, Tarragona, what appeared to be a peaceful transition from a Recollect convent into an apostolic seminary soon became a contentious brawl between the province establishment and the missionaries. Not only did the previous Recollect guardian appeal the cession of his convent to Fray Antonio Llinás’s missionaries, but the minister of the Franciscan province of Cataluña claimed jurisdiction over the college. Llinás’s first foundations in Spain soon fell under siege from other provinces. A petition presented to the Sacred Congregation for Propagation of the Faith by affected provincial ministers was resolved in their favor on April 26, 1728. In contrast to the Americas, Spanish seminaries remained henceforth under provincial jurisdiction for nearly two decades. However, this provincial victory was subject to a long and contentious appeals process. The action initiated by the Colegio de Santo Espíritu del Monte of Valencia, and explicitly supported by Escornalbóu, bore fruit with Benedict XIV (pope 1740–1758), who first revoked provincial authority of the Franciscan province of Catalonia over Escornalbóu and finally, in 1746, all Spanish colleges recovered their independence from the provinces.35 With the suppression of the commissaries general in America in 1769, new fears that provincials would take the reins of the hitherto independent colleges soon appeared. Just a few months after the suspensions, the colleges of Querétaro, Mexico City, and Zacatecas combined efforts to assert their independence from the provinces as well as their rights within the provinces and the order. In July of that year, they assigned Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, Fray Rafael Verger, and Fray Francisco Antonio Sarriá, “to do business

34. For New Spain, see, for instance, “Patente del M. R. P. Fr. Juan de la Cruz, Comisario General de Nueva España, a los guardianes, presidentes y discretos de los Colegios de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas, del Cristo Crucificado de Guatemala, y del Hospicio de Granada, por la que prohíbe que los ministros provinciales den licencias a los moradores de los Colegios Apostólicos, la cual corresponde solamente a los guardianes y discretorios de los mismos,” Convento de San Francisco de México, March 21, 1712, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 4, no. 7. For the Colegio de Ocopa, see Cameron Jones, In Service of Two Masters. 35. Papió, Facsímil del llibre de “La història d´Escornalbóu,” 40–42; Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 34–35.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

45

before the Holy See, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, and later pass by the Council of the Indies.” Probably fearing that the elimination of the general prelate in New Spain would put them under the authority of the provincial ministers, the colleges firmly restated their independence from the provinces. Moreover, the petitioners requested the nomination of a judge of appeals to whom, lacking a superior in Mexico City, they could plead in cases of unruly friars who did not obey and observe the laws, constitutions, and rules of the colleges or for the expulsion of members. The guardian for Mexico City’s Colegio de San Fernando also presented a statement of college independence to the Cuarto Concilio Mexicano of 1771. Happily for the colleges, the commissary general of the Indies Fray Manuel de la Vega guaranteed their rights and independence from the provinces.36 Furthermore, to avoid harm due to the lack of officials with the faculties of general prelates in the Indies, Fray Manuel conceded certain powers to the guardian and discretos: they could recruit more novices than the number permitted in the apostolic bulls, ordain choristers, and present the religious men to the diocesan authorities for preaching and confessing licenses.37 All of these favorable results highlighted college autonomy and underpinned the separate identity of the colegio Franciscans vis-a-vis the provincial friars. It further accentuated the corporativism of the colleges on both sides of the Atlantic. The internal organization of the apostolic colleges and their idiosyncratic inclusion within the organizational chart of the Franciscan Order reinforced the colleges’ distinctiveness as well as their objectives.

36. On October 25, 1769, the commissary general of the Indies, Fray Manuel de la Vega, communicated the suspension of the commissaries general of New Spain and Peru. The documentation appears in “Diligencias practicadas en México por los guardianes de los Colegios de Querétaro, Zacatecas, y San Fernando por la extinción de la Comisatura General de la Nueva España; y el convenio del Colegio de Guatemala,” 1769, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 2. The quote “para hacer diligencias ante la Santa Sede, la congregación propaganda fide y posterior pase por Consejo de Indias” is found in “Poder de los guardianes de los tres Colegios de Querétaro, Zacatecas y México a los PP. Fr. Juan Domingo Arricivita, Fr. Rafael Verger, Fr. Francisco Antonio Sarriá y Fr. Miguel del Rosal, para que haciendo sus veces los representen ante cualquier superior y tribunal a fin de lograr los intentos de mantener la estabilidad de los Colegios ante la situación creada por la supresión del Comisario General de Nueva España,” Colegio de San Fernando de México, July 24, 1769, in Ibid. The petition by Fray Rafael de Verger, guardian of the Colegio de San Fernando de México, to the Cuarto Concilio Mexicano of 1771 appears in “Copia del escrito presentado al Concilio Cuarto Mexicano por el P. Fr. Rafael Verger, guardián del Colegio de San Fernando de México, y su discretorio, respecto del número de los religiosos que se pueden mantener de las limosnas ordinarias en su Colegio,” Colegio de San Fernando de México, August 22, 1771, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 26. 37. “Carta-Orden del Rvdmo. P. Fr. Manuel de la Vega, Comisario General de Indias, concediendo algunas facultades al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Cuarto de Indias del Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, October 25, 1769, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 24.

46

To Sin No More

Governing the Colleges Leadership was paramount to the evangelical agenda. Once a college was established its officials were responsible for the missionary program. Each college worked as a unique evangelical hub from which friars labored in itinerant preaching campaigns or were stationed on frontier missionary outposts. Within a hierarchical structure, friars who were fulfilling evangelical assignments could seek counsel and instructions from their superiors in the colleges who were the immediate responsible authorities for the missionary enterprise in Spain and Spanish America. The first line of decision making pertaining to the colleges’ missionary program rested on the authority of the guardian (highest executive authority) and the discretos, members of the discretorio or council of government, which served as a consultative body. In contrast to the Franciscan provinces, whose government relied on the provincial minister and definitorio—members of the province who represented specific convents (where they lived and worked) and convened regularly in a chosen, sometimes distant friary—the authorities of a college were housed in the same building, facilitating coordination and rapid response time. These members of the community propelled the missionary agenda of each Spanish and American college. Franciscan missionaries wrote to them for advice, to intercede with the civilian government, to request licenses to preach and confess, and to intervene in internal disputes. The extensive correspondence between missionaries on site and the colleges’ leaders preserved in the archives show how important they were to the missionizing effort in the Hispanic world.38 Guardians held the power to send instructions to missionaries pertaining to evangelical matters. Under the vow of obedience, missionaries were bound by the guardians’ mandates. To give legitimacy to their orders, prelates consulted with and usually received approval by the discretorio. Prelates and discretorio members voted in both public and secret matters, such as admission of novices or incorporation and expulsion of friars, leaving it to the guardian to break in case of ties. Since colleges enjoyed independence from the provincial hierarchy and held more autonomy than provincial convents, guardians and the discretorio passed over province leaders to directly communicate with the commissaries general of New Spain and Peru, who held the authority to intervene in internal affairs, including the removal of negligent prelates.

38. This paragraph and the following ones on college government draw extensively from Innocent XI, Ecclessiae Catholicae, Rome, October 16, 1686, in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 63–68; Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 159–166; and Jorge René González Marmolejo, Misioneros del desierto. For the Franciscan Provincia de Jalisco, see José Refugio de la Torre Curiel, Vicarios en entredicho: Crisis y desestructuración de la provincia franciscana de Santiago de Xalisco, 1749–1860 (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán and Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 2001).

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

47

The discretorio was composed of four elected friars as well as the guardian, former guardians who had completed satisfactory terms, and other reputable officials of the community. Discretos elected friars to fill certain college posts, including the important commissary-prefect of the missions (comisario y prefecto de misiones), who, as seen below, oversaw the recruiting and staffing of the colleges with religious men from Spain. Because of the evangelical nature of the colleges, discretorios also included current and past commissary-prefects of the missions, experts in the mission business. The discretos elected a maestro de novicios and a vicar or president. Masters of novices were in charge of preparing novices to take their vows as Franciscan friars. The vicar presided over acts of the community in the guardian’s absence and would automatically become president in capite if a guardian resigned, was forced out, or died in office, a rare situation in any case.39 The most experienced discreto also led the community in case of the guardian’s absence. Likewise, the most experienced fathers in the college substituted for absentee discretos. Commissary-prefects of the missions played a pivotal role in constructing the missionary groundwork and served as a unique liaison among the different seminaries in New Spain and Peru. A commissary-prefect combined the rights and duties attached to each of the two positions as commissary and as prefect according to canon law. The roles of Franciscan commissary-prefects are little known and confusing to the extent that they contributed substantial scholarly work among contemporary college scholars as well as legislation from Rome. In the early years after the foundation of Querétaro, noted friars like Fray José Díez and Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús wrote treatises on the privileges and duties assigned to these commissary-prefects. Almost a century later, the prolific Fray Antonio Comajuncosa from the Colegio de Tarija wrote a handbook of over a thousand pages that offered detailed insight into the tasks of the commissary-prefect of the missions, a position that he (as well as Díez and Margil before him) held for years. Succinctly, as commissary, a commissary-prefect could organize itinerant preaching campaigns, select his preaching mates, and travel to Spain to preach and recruit “God-fearing, erudite, exemplary” friars wholeheartedly committed to the missionary program. To prevent inter-college quarrels, he could intervene in disputes over frontier missions and itinerant preaching campaigns. A commissary-prefect could begin the process to found new colleges and to outline a college’s missionary program. In this sense, the commissary-prefect held important prerogatives to dispatch missionaries to the 39. For instance, on only three occasions did the vicar become president in capite in San Fernando: 1752, after the guardian’s resignation, 1796 after sudden death of the guardian, and in 1833 after the guardian’s resignation. For a study of the internal organization of Colegio de San Fernando that relies on its “Libro de Decretos,” see Maynard Geiger, “The Internal Organization and Activities of San Fernando College, Mexico (1734– 1858),” The Americas 6, no. 1 (1949).

48

To Sin No More

frontier mission fields, to organize the program, and ultimately to delegate his privileges to mission presidents. These prerogatives paralleled the work of guardians and discretos, and friars like Fray José Díez, a commissary-prefect himself, argued it was a superfluous office that could be abolished. A commissary-prefect was elected every seven years for New Spain and also for Peru, although by the late eighteenth century the vast missionary field allowed each college to elect their own commissary-prefects every six years.40 As prefects of missions, commissary-prefects enjoyed a series of powers relevant to the evangelical ministry whenever the case was beyond the reach of bishops and the Inquisition. Moreover, they could further delegate these entitlements to other missionaries. These privileges, usually under the jurisdiction of diocesan authorities, involved a series of pastoral tasks such as dispensations for the sacrament of matrimony; absolution of heresy and idolatry in frontier missions; consecration of churches and liturgical objects used in the mass, as well as re-consecration of churches previously profaned; reading of forbidden books; and administration of all sacraments except for confirmation and the ordination of priests. In distant missions, presidents customarily received the commissary-prefect’s authorization to enjoy these rights in their spiritual labors among neophytes. Fray Junípero Serra held that authority in California. Perhaps on his behalf, the commissary-prefect of New Spain Fray José García petitioned the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith in 1774 for missionaries’ extraordinary confirmation powers. That same year, the Congregation, with papal approval, granted such powers to the missionaries to confirm in distant missions beyond diocesan jurisdiction (e.g., California and Texas missions). When Fray Serra argued with California Governor Felipe de Neve over his right to confirm neophytes in 1778, he claimed that he had the prefect’s approval as well as special privileges from Rome.41

40. The complex roles of these commissary-prefects require further study. Both Fray José Díez and Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús prepared explanations regarding misgivings on the dual roles of these positions in the early eighteenth century. See Fray José Díez in AHPFM-FCSCQ, N, no. 7: “[Q]ue de corazon desean abraçar el instituto, y son Religiosos, timoratos, doctos, ejemplares, etc”; and Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús in AHPFM-FCSCQ, N, no. 8. In the early nineteenth century in Tarija, Fray Antonio Comajuncosa wrote a lengthy treatise, “El Comisario-Prefecto de misiones instruido en sus Facultades, Cargos, y Obligaciones, y en varios puntos concernientes al régimen temporal, y espiritual, politico, y economico de los Padres Conversores, è Yndios de su cargo,” 2 vols., Tarija, 1804–1811, Archivo Franciscano de Tarija, Tarija, Bolivia (henceforth AFT), vol. 1:title 1, 21ff, “De las facultades, cargos y obligaciones del Comisario-Prefecto de misiones.” See also Pedro Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros a América durante la época española (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1977), 103; and Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 192–198. 41. Fray Antonio Comajuncosa lists the twenty-seven prerogatives in his “El Comisario-Prefecto de misiones,” AFT, 56–64. Regarding quarrels over the right to confirm in the California missions, see Beebe and Senkewicz, Junípero Serra, 351, 371–374; and Geiger, Life and Times, vol. 2, 154–156.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

49

The electoral process in a college differed from provincial friaries where the definitorio appointed guardians and discretos for each convent in the province. College members directly elected their guardians and discretos. Colleges held these elections during the triennial guardian chapter (capítulo guardianal), led by an appointed president. For a few days prior to the election, the president or religious commissioned to preside over and supervise the guardian chapter also acted as inspector of the community’s material and spiritual state. It was after his inspection that the community cast secret ballots for the new officials. The guardian chapters reflected the “democratic” principles of the mendicant orders. In this sense, the colleges represented a political microcosm of the largest Franciscan corporative political structure. By looking at the internal electoral processes, we can see how political leverage played key roles in the composition of college government bodies as it did in other governing institutions within the Franciscan Order. It was thus during the guardian chapters when tensions and enmities and alliances and rivalries surfaced in a more public way, sometimes with unpredictable consequences.42 Commissaries general of New Spain and Peru, until 1769, and the commissary general of the Indies, after that date, were entitled to act as inspectors and presidents of a guardian chapter. Due to the remote location of colleges vis-à-vis viceroyal capitals and Madrid, commissaries frequently delegated their privileges to other friars. Common practices nonetheless differed. For the colleges in Querétaro and Escornalbóu, provincial ministers of Michoacán and Cataluña or prelates from other provincial friaries inspected these colleges and presided over their guardian chapters.43 San Fernando’s location in Mexico

42. For a complete discussion on the democratic character of guardian chapters in mendicant orders, see Antonio Rubial García, “Votos pactados: Las prácticas políticas entre los mendicantes novohispanos,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 26 (January–June 2002): 51–83; and Asunción Lavrin, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008), 116–117. 43. The commissaries general of both New Spain and Peru could delegate the visit to an appointee as was always the case of the commissary general of the Indies, whose seat was in distant Madrid. In elections between 1690 and 1769, only four commissaries general of New Spain presided over the Colegio de Querétaro’s guardian chapters: in 1690, Fray Juan Capistrano; in 1739, Fray Pedro Navarrete; in 1745, Fray Juan Fogueras; and in 1757 and 1760, Fray José Antonio de Oliva. The commissary general of New Spain usually delegated his visitation powers to the provincial minister of Michoacán. Exceptions were in 1716, Fray José de Mina, guardian of the Convento de San Francisco in Querétaro; in 1742, Fray Matías Sáenz de San Antonio, ex-guardian of the Colegio de Zacatecas; in 1748, Fray Juan Montañés, chronicler for the province of Michoacán; in 1751, Fray Cristóbal Xavier de Urrutia, president in capite for the Convento de San Francisco of Querétaro; and especially after 1778, when most visitors and presidents of the guardian chapter were mainly former guardians and provincial ministers. See Appendix A in David Rex Galindo, “Propaganda Fide: Training Franciscan Missionaries in New Spain” (PhD diss., Southern Methodist University, 2010).

50

To Sin No More

City favored inspection by the commissary general of New Spain and the provincial minister from the Provincia del Santo Evangelio as presidents of the guardian chapters.44 However, at the Tarija college in Upper Peru, local friars commonly inspected the community and directed the elections. Due to its remote location, college authorities feared that the provincial minister of the Franciscan Provincia de San Antonio de los Charcas, housed in distant Cuzco, would delegate his inspection powers to other provincial friars. Apostolic missionaries argued that provincial friars misread their way of life and ministry. The great expense necessary to bring and house long-distance visitors further discouraged “external” audits. The college developed a sense of insularity and independence that they feared could be threatened by “strangers” who could “manifest in their provinces our miseries, affections and passions.”45 A look at the procedures and minutes from these inspections and elections show their formulaic pattern. Inspectors first visited the church, where they closely examined the good order and standing of the altar, the Holy Sacrament, altar ornaments, and the current book of masses, before inspecting the chapels and sacristy, including all clothing and vestments. They then surveyed the infirmary and dressing room, and once in the library, carefully scrutinized books of masses, library inventories, and college finances via ledgers of expenditures and income (libros de gasto y recibo). Inspectors customarily reconnoitered the convent and other buildings before holding individual and private meetings with the guardian and each of the college’s religious. These exchanges and the opportunities they entailed to hear and be heard might have been valuable exercises for inspectors from other friaries who wanted to become acquainted with the communities they inspected, as was the case of Querétaro, San Fernando, and Escornalbóu, as much as for the host college members to seek counsel or raise grievances to third parties. On the other hand, having an inside inspector from the same community, as in Tarija, while it enhanced knowledge of the college, it may have come at the price of less openness in voicing criticisms. In any case, during these meetings, inspectors heard opinions on community operations, assessed the community’s situation, and then wrote a report on the state of the college and, if necessary, ordered that regulations must be observed by community members. These reports dealt with the spiritual observance of Franciscan rules and mandates to be followed in the community, material aspects such as the status of the infirmary, food storage, and the kitchen; missionary training or norms that explicitly dealt with the college’s evangelical

44. Geiger, “The Internal Organization.” 45. See “Formula acerca de las diligencias y Dispossiciones forzosas para antes de la zelebracion del Capitulo Guardianal de este Colegio de Propaganda fide de N.a Señora de los Angeles de Tarija,” and various letters in “Libro primero de los Capitulos Guardianales de este colegio,” AFT, Régimen interno del Colegio (henceforth RR)–156, 1–12.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

51

program such as the prohibition of horse riding and overnight stays in the homes of laypersons. These minutes are crucial to understanding the inner operations and daily lives of these communities as well as the missionary education and program, as is apparent in subsequent chapters.46 On election day, under the vigilance of the inspector visitor and president of the election, community members who could vote (voz activa) or could be elected to hold office (voz pasiva) gathered in a room “at the sound of the tolled bell” (a son de campana tañida) to canonically elect their new officials. That meant that college officials were elected through secret ballot by at least half the possible votes of the electoral body. The general constitutions of 1686 clearly assert that only professed priests who had resided in a college for at least a year could vote canonically in the guardian election. Novices, lay brothers (legos), oblates (donados), friars on the path to priesthood, and professed friars from other provinces or colleges during their year of “aprobación” or successful probation were hence excluded from voting (voz activa). The general laws also established the voting pattern. Friars first cast secret ballots to elect the four discretos. The chapter president chose the guardian from the three discretos receiving the most votes. Ironically, many times the discreto who received the most votes did not become the guardian. In a new round of balloting, friars elected a fourth discreto.47 The Colegios de Querétaro and San Fernando elaborated a slightly different protocol. Following the election of the four discretos, friars cast separate ballots for a guardian. The three candidates with the most votes were presented to the president, who then appointed the new college guardian, regardless of the number of votes. If the chosen prelate had previously been elected as a discreto, another balloting was cast to elect his replacement.48 This election mechanism remained almost unchanged until the turn of the nineteenth century. Regulations prohibited guardians from being re-elected in consecutive elections, although friars could serve as guardians more than once in non-consecutive terms. Fray Angel Alonso de Prado for the College of Querétaro, Fray José Gasol for the Colegio de San Fernando, and Fray Esteban Primo y Ayala

46. For Querétaro, see LPZEAV, passim; and in “Libro de Elecciones Capitulares,” College of Querétaro, 1751–1904, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 4, no. 5 (henceforth LEC), passim. For Escornalbóu, see “Libro de las Determinaciones de las visitas,” AHPC, 4A5, passim. For Tarija, see “Libro de Actas Discretoriales que se van teniendo en este Apostólico Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de ésta Villa de Tarija,” September 19, 1794– October 15, 1807, AFT, RR–174, passim. 47. Innocent XI, Ecclessiae Catholicae, Rome, October 16, 1686, in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 63–65: “[Q]ue hayan de ser elegidos canónicamente por votos secretos de todos los Sacerdotes profesos de la comunidad.” 48. For Querétaro, see LPZEAV, passim; and LEC, passim. For Tarija, see “Libro primero de los Capítulos Guardianales de este colegio,” AFT, RR–156, passim. For the College of San Fernando see Geiger, “The Internal Organization,” 13.

52

To Sin No More

for the Colegio de Tarija stand out with three guardianships, each in the early nineteenth century. Fray Diego de Alcántara had guardian positions in two colleges—after two guardianships at the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, he became president in capite of the San Fernando community when it became a college in 1733, and then served as its elected guardian.49 Interestingly enough, college constitutions’ silence about the consecutive re-election of discretos benefited the political careers of a small group of friars in their own communities. In the early decades of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro and Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, consecutive reelection of discretos seemed customary. A change in this practice appears in the records after 1754 for both colleges. During the Queretaran guardian chapter of 1754, Fray Francisco Antonio de Rivera, provincial of Michoacán, ruled that discretos would not be re-elected until the matter was taken into consideration by the Sacred Congregation for Propagation of the Faith. Three years later Fray José Antonio de Oliva, commissary general of New Spain and president of the Queretaran guardian chapter of 1757, ratified Rivera’s decision. According to Fray Oliva, the re-election of discretos was no longer convenient because in contrast to the early years of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, now there was a large pool of friar candidates. Moreover, the fact that guardians became discretos in perpetuity guaranteed that the discretorios could combine inexperienced discretos with experienced friars. After 1757, consecutive re-election of discretos no longer occurred at the colleges in Querétaro and Mexico City. In contrast, the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles in Tarija reelected discretos throughout the colonial period. For example, Fray Jerónimo Guillén was consecutively elected discreto in 1775, 1778, and 1781, and then as guardian in 1784. Other friars were elected as discretos for two consecutive elections and as guardians in a third consecutive chapter meeting. In effect, college politics in Tarija, San Fernando, and Querétaro were frequently controlled by a small group of friars.50 However, local college politics and distant centers of Franciscan power and decision making might have had divergent scopes when it came to ruling the colleges. In electing the best leaders of an institution devoted to train mis-

49. Data from LPZEAV, passim; LEC, passim; “Libro primero de los Capítulos Guardianales de este colegio,” AFT, RR–156, passim; and Geiger, “The Internal Organization,” 13. 50. Auto de visita by Fray Francisco Antonio de Rivera, provincial minister of Michoacán, February 25, 1754, in LEC, fol. 12r. See also auto de visita by Fray José Antonio de Oliva, commissary general of New Spain, January 21, 1757, in ibid., fol. 18v; and Rex Galindo, “Propaganda Fide,” Appendix A. A similar pattern can be observed for the Colegio de San Fernando of Mexico City; see Geiger, “The Internal Organization,” 17– 27. For Tarija, see “Libro primero de los Capítulos Guardianales de este colegio,” AFT, RR–156, passim.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

53

sionaries for evangelical careers, Franciscan authorities in Mexico City, Lima, and Madrid favored those who had missionary experience to assume the highest government posts in the colleges. To justify such choices commissaries general of the Indies remarked on the importance of missionary work among those destined to higher offices within a seminary. For example, in Querétaro in 1705 the commissary general of the Indies narrowed eligibility for office to only those friars with missionary experience in the conversiones vivas or frontier missions. This decision did not go unchallenged, as many religious in Querétaro had not yet experienced their baptism by fire in remote mission stations. In protest, Fray Blas Navarro and Fray Francisco Moreno—well-versed missionaries in the New Mexico and Río Grande missions, respectively—and Fray Luis Teruel refused to vote. Other friars promptly demanded that the inspector and president of the guardian chapter read their written protest before the community. Because Franciscan canon law required a minimum number of votes for lawful elections, these friars ultimately consented to cast their ballot in obedience to their prelates in order to avoid nullification of the 1706 election results. The election proceeded without further obstructions: Fray Antonio Olivares was elected guardian and Frays Francisco Hidalgo, José Díez, Gerónimo Prieto, and Diego Salazar became the new discretos. Six decades later, in Tarija in 1770 another commissary general of the Indies ruled that friars who sought “material gain” over missionary achievements were ineligible for office because the aim of the colleges was the “salvation of souls.” He required that all guardians had at least three years of missionary experience. Elections directly molded the missionary program as much as the colleges’ evangelical commitment influenced the electoral process and its results.51

Regulating the Apostolic Brotherhood All facets of the Franciscan fellowship in any friary were directed by written laws and framed within a hierarchical structure. College friars were subject to the same general laws that emanated from the highest authorities in

51. Copy of patent, Fray Lucas Álvarez de Toledo, commissary general of the Indies, to the religious of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, March 11, 1705, in LPZEAV, fols. 56v–57v. Protest, Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, October 16, 1706, in ibid., fol. 179v. For Frays Blas Navarro and Francisco Moreno’s missionary experience, see “Informe que se trabajó el año de 1720 para dar cuenta al Capítulo General del estado y progreso de los Colegios. No se remitió, por no haber alcanzado la embarcación en que había de ir,” 1720, AHPFM-FCSCQ, N, file 1, no. 18, and Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide, 227, 756, 59. Letter from Fray Manuel de la Vega, commissary general of the Indies, to the guardian and discretos of the College of Tarija, Cuarto de Indias, Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, September 7, 1770, in “Libro primero de patentes, decretos, y cartas de los superiores de nuestra orden,” AFT, RR–155, fols. 21v–22v.

54

To Sin No More

Madrid and Rome in addition to a plethora of internal laws that highlighted their specific evangelical purpose. Friars followed and routinely read the Catholic Bible and Saint Francis’s testament and rules. As part of the Ultramontane branch of the Franciscan Observance, the colleges subscribed to the general constitutions of the Franciscan Order. From 1583 until 1827, friars in the Americas were also governed by the Estatutos generales para los frayles de Indias (General statutes for friars in the Indies), a collection of norms that incorporated all additional provisions specific to the Americas developed by the Capítulo General de Toledo in 1583. Colleges, like other Franciscan convents and provinces, further developed their own body of laws and canons. Incumbent on all colleges since 1686 were the Innocentian papal bulls Ecclesiae Catholicae, also called the statutes or constitutions of the propaganda fide colleges, which remained unchanged until 1797, when Pius VI reframed the constitutions in the brief Decet Romanum Pontificem, by incorporating new norms to govern the colegios. Each college purportedly had its own constitutions (constituciones municipales), a ceremonial handbook that regulated religious ceremonies inside the community, a missionary handbook, and a friary-specific directory of uses and practices (directorio de usos y prácticas).52 For everyday life matters not covered by Innocent XI’s briefs, friars were expected to observe the general constitutions of the Franciscan Order and Saint Francis’s rule.53 Each college wrote its own constituciones municipales, a distinct set of rules that guided the daily lives of the friars, novices, and students in each apostolic seminary. Commonly a friar drafted the constituciones municipales to be reviewed and approved first by the discretorio and ultimately by the Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide and Franciscan authorities in

52. The “Estatutos generales para los frayles de Indias” are included in the Estatutos Generales de Barcelona, para la familia cismontana de la Regular Observancia de N.P. San Francisco, ultimamente reconocidos, y con mejor metodo dispuestos en la Congregacion general, celebrada en la ciudad de Segovia el año del Señor de 1621 (Madrid: Imprenta Real por Tomas Iunti, impressor del Rey, 1622), 109–121. General constitutions for the Franciscan Order were promulgated after the Capítulo General de Barcelona in 1451 and enforced until 1827 when, coinciding with the expulsion of “gachupines” or Spaniards from Mexico, Fray Juan de Capistrano, minister general of the order, introduced new general constitutions. See Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 87–93. For a list containing brief descriptions of all seventeenth-century laws related to the American Franciscan provinces and colleges, including transcriptions of selected legislative documents, see García, “América en la legislación.” 53. The commissary general of the Indies reminded the guardian and discretos that they and all other members of the community had to observe the general constitutions when briefs were not applicable. See response by Fray Pablo de Moya, commissary general of the Indias, Cuarto de Indias, Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, February 22, 1797, in LDQ2, fol. 56r.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

55

Madrid and Rome. The Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Zacatecas (founded in 1707) and the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City (founded in 1733) issued their local statutes in 1713 and 1735, respectively. However, there is no evidence that the Queretaran colegio drafted its own constitutions in the first sixty years; authorities in Querétaro became involved in writing internal statutes only in the 1750s. When Fray Antonio Fernández inspected the college in 1775, he ordered writing of the constituciones municipales and the observance of all minutes and patent letters issued since the college was founded. The Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles in Tarija also delayed writing constituciones municipales, as these were issued in 1804, almost fifty years after its founding. In cases where local constitutions were lacking, the general statutes of the order and the colegios framed the internal deliberations that ruled the colleges.54 By the end of the eighteenth century, colleges encouraged drafting their constituciones municipales following the printed 1791 constitutions of the Discalced Colegio de San Francisco in Pachuca. Having been approved by Franciscan authorities in Madrid and the Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide in Rome, the Pachuca constitutions eased the writing of new norms for other colleges by preventing lack of consensus in the drafting process and potential official rejections while also reflecting the state of the art in college management and missionary endeavors. The constitutions for the Tarija colegio in 1804 and the Ocopa colegio in 1807 were copied almost verbatim from the 1791 Pachuca constitutions. In Querétaro, the appointed writer of the local constituciones municipales, veteran missionary and college chronicler Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, was asked to pay attention to the Pachuca colegio’s new constitutions as well as the old rules and customs, “selecting the out-of-date ones that were not adaptable to the current circumstances, and adding the points that your prudence considered convenient.” All of these later constitu-

54. Auto de visita of Fray Antonio Fernández, former provincial minister of Michoacán and current member of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, February 7, 1775, in LEC, fol. 119r. The constituciones municipales of Zacatecas and San Fernando are in “Constituciones del Colegio de Nra. Sra. de Guadalupe de Zacatecas,” November 13, 1713, Archivo Histórico de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México, Cholula, Puebla, Mexico (henceforth AHPSEM), caja 201, and “Constituciones Municipales de este Colegio de S.n Fernando de la Ciudad de Mexico, dispuestas, y ordenadas por los PP Precidente, y Discretos de dicho Colegio, y mandadas observar por N.M.R. P.e Vice-Comm. Gral como consta de la patente, que es como se sigue,” 1735, AHPSEM, caja 203. A copy of the constituciones, including the 1777 constitutions to govern the missions of the college in Querétaro, is located in “Volumen en el que se recogen diversos escritos y documentos existentes en el archivo del Colegio, con razón de los cajones en donde se encontraban (siglo XVIII),” AHPSEM, caja 201. The constituciones municipales for the colleges of Tarija and Ocopa, based on the ones by Pachuca, are in AFT, RR–166, and have been published in Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, Appendix 4.

56

To Sin No More

ciones municipales that mimicked the Pachuca versions passed all review processes. In Querétaro the new constitutions were approved by the discretorio, read once or twice to the entire community, and secretly voted on by the friars before being sent to the commissary general of the Indies and the Sacred Congregation for Propagation of the Faith for final approval.55 The sempiternal elaboration of the constituciones municipales reveals conflicting adherence to homogeneity and routine and internal discrepancies in the colegios. Clerics traditionally stand out for the routinization of their daily lives, manifested in the recurrent obsession with the normative orders that regulate quotidian existence and prevent disorder. Indubitably, friars were expected to uniformly observe college ceremonies; to the extent that no one, including the prelate and other authorities in the community, were allowed to make modifications by adding or removing a ceremony without majority consent and authorization by higher levels of Franciscan authority. Minutes from discretorio meetings and documents from the inspections reveal the gap between the written norms that ruled the communities and members’ actual lives. Not only guardians and discretorios, which were customarily prevented from introducing alterations in ceremonies and schedules already established, but also other friars within their communities, as the following section shows, fostered changes. For example, in summer 1721, Fray José Sanz, commissary general of the Indies, admonished guardians from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro to restrain from changing ceremonies, proceedings, and customs that had governed the daily life of the friary since its foundation. Guardians were not authorized, the commissary asserted, to arbitrarily change, add, or remove any laws

55. Estatutos y Ordenaciones segun las bulas que nuestro santisimo Padre Inocencio XI expidió para los colegios de misioneros, acomodadas á la mas estrecha observancia que se practica en la Seráfica Descalcez, Para el Colegio de Propaganda Fide de nuestro Seráfico Padre San Francisco de Pachuca en la Nueva España (Madrid: Imprenta de Don Benito Cano, 1791). Auto de visita of Fray José de Sori, provincial minister of Michoacán, Convento de San Francisco de Querétaro, September 6, 1793, in LEC, fol. 167r–167v: “Que estando mandado por las Bulas Apcas. y repetidos Decretos de Visita el que formen Constituciones Municipales para el acertado gobierno de este S.to Colegio y no habiendose logrado hasta ahora, se manda por Santa Obediencia el que se proceda sin demora á su formac.on y aprobac.on la qual se encarga al R. P.e Comis.o Frai Juan Domingo Arricivita, quien con vista de las nuevas Constituciones del Coleg.o Apco de Pachuca, y de las Actas antiguas, Decretos de Visita, loables, y antiguas costumbres de este Colegio, entresacando de ellas las que estubieren antiguadas, y no fueren adaptables á sus actuales circunstancias, y añadiendo los puntos, que á su prudencia parecieren convenientes, formará las sobredichas Constituciones Municipales, las que revistas, y previam.te aprobadas por el Ven.e Discretorio, se leeran á la Santa Comunidad por una, ó dos vezes, y obtenida su aprobacion y anuencia á pluralidad de votos secretos, se pasarán al examen, y juicio, y superior aprobacion de N. Rmo. Pe. Comis.o Gral de Indias, para con su beneplacito solicitar la confirmacion de al Sagrada Congregacion de Propaganda Fide, y siendo necesario (para evitar qualquiera innovacion) con censuras, y Brebe Pontificio.” For the Tarija and Ocopa colegios, see the previous note.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

57

and ceremonies because such actions could ultimately lead to confusion and conflict. The commissary general urged the current guardian to “extinguish the fire, and extirpate the roots of friction and discord, that the common enemy of peace and our good [i.e., the Devil] is introducing.”56 Hence, concerns often emerged over hierarchy, obedience, observance, and peace. It seems obvious that in a world negotiated through power relations, disenchantments, differences, and rivalries would emerge among members of the community. In fact, it was through processes of contestation, debate, and argumentation that the wheels of change moved slowly in shaping the path of the Franciscan Order and, particularly, the apostolic colleges. More so if taking into account that individual faces were behind these otherwise amorphous institutions. Therefore, instead of portraying a static and homogenous religious group as is typical of religious institutional history, change and heterogeneity and obedience and hierarchy coexisted, permutated, and confronted each other in the colegios as well as in the order at large. The most profound adjustment, however, came from Madrid. In 1769, only two years after the Jesuits were expelled, the Franciscan Order suppressed the commissaries general in New Spain and Peru as part of the Bourbon reforms. This unexpected reform of Franciscan structures in the Americas disrupted the operations of colleges and other friaries, since guardians and discretos and provincial ministers and definidores could no longer appeal to their Franciscan superiors in Mexico City and Lima, being forced instead to communicate with viceregal authorities and the commissary general of the Indies in Madrid.57

56. Auto de visita of Fray Antonio de Trejo, Provincial Minister of Michoacán, September 6, 1709, in LPZEAV, fol. 233v. “Patente del Rvdmo. P. Fr. José Sanz, Comisario General de Indias, para que no se invierta el orden de la disciplina regular y las ceremonias establecidas por los fundadores,” Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, August 10, 1721, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 10: “Por qdo havemos entendido p algunos P.es Guar.nes assi en el ingresso de sus offizios, como en el tpo de su govierno, tienen grande fazilidad en invertir el orden de la Sequela Regular, Zeremonias, y demas cosas, q establezieron los Fundadores de ese nro Collegio, y los Venerables y App.cos Varones, qe les han succedido, para su mejor, y mas arreglado regimen, y azertado govierno, quitando, mudando, ô añadiendo nuebas leyes, y Zeremonias de su proprio capricho, qe solo sirven de confussion, y de fomentar discoridas, contra la fraternal Char.d paz, y union q deve haver entre si: sobre otros graves daños, ê inconvenientes, q de este prinzipio resultan como propria consequenzia de toda novedad fastidiosa. Por tanto, buscanos Nos apagar el fuego, y extirpar de raiz la zizaña, y discordia, qe el comun enemigo dela paz, y de nro bien, va introduziendo por este medio, y libertad, en vir.d de las presentes [ordena que] ninguno se atreba a innovar, añadir, mudar, ni quitar cosa alguna de las q para el mejor regimen, y govierno de ese nro Coll.o determinaron, y restablecieron sus fundadores. . . .” 57. The decree of June 21, 1769 abolished the commissary general of New Spain, with Fray Manuel de Nájera as the last commissary general in North America. See Torre Curiel, Vicarios en entredicho, 67. In the same year, the commissary general of Perú was also abolished.

58

To Sin No More

College officials were aware that the ensuing hierarchical structure would directly affect the entire system. Almost instantaneously, an endless list of doubts and petitions concerning the new juridical scenario inundated Franciscan authorities in Madrid. College officials’ queries for guidance were later compiled into what became known as the veintiocho dubios (twenty-eight doubts or concerns) and presented to Fray Pablo de Moya, commissary general of the Indies. Whether interpreted as a means to radically transform the apostolic institution or an answer to problems of governability and daily life, the dubios became the grounds for amending the general statutes that had ruled the American colleges since the late seventeenth century. In 1797, authorities in Madrid, under the close observance of the commissary general of the Indies, drafted a set of norms intended to ease governance and everyday life in the colleges. Father Moya, like many predecessors, admitted that human institutions were subject to change; apparently the apostolic seminaries’ time had arrived. Appalled by what they considered a dangerous threat to daily operations and internal organization, the colleges of New Spain joined forces to influence and oppose as necessary the new orders drafted in far-away Madrid. Curiously, it seems that the college in Tarija might have remained silent in this dispute, while further research is required for the other South American colleges. In addition, I have not found sources showing that Herbón and Escornalbóu responded to the new norms, although clearly Spanish colegios would have found appealing to Madrid customary and easier than their American peers.58 Fray Jerónimo Cortázar read with frustration the new rules that the commissary general of the Indies was preparing for approval in Rome. In late September 1795, the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro had commissioned Father Cortázar to travel to Spain to recruit Spanish friars for Querétaro. A year later, after his arrival in Spain, authorities of the Franciscan apostolic seminaries in New Spain appointed Frays Cortázar and Juan Buenaventura Bestard from the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City (and later commissary general of the Indies) to negotiate with their superiors in Madrid the drafting of new rules that would reform seminary constitutions.

58. The convoluted process that followed the elimination of the commissary generals of New Spain and Peru and that is summarized in the following paragraphs can be traced in “Informe del Comisario General de Indias al Consejo de Indias, respondiendo a la representación que hizo el P. Fr. Gerónimo Cortazar, procurador del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, sobre la supresión del Breve relativo a los dubios,” Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, July 24, 1798, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 15; “Patente del Comisario General de Indias Rvdmo. P. Fr. Pablo de Moya, relativa a los veintiocho dubios confirmados por Pio VI en su Breve del 12 de diciembre de 1798, con Cédula de Su Magestad del 22 de enero de 1804, auxiliatoria para su observancia,” Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, February 8, 1804, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 17; and “Respuesta dada por el Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro al Comisario General a la anterior patente,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, September 22, 1804, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 17.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

59

Despite college opposition, Fray Pablo de Moya prevailed. On December 12, 1797, Pope Pius VI issued the new rules in a bull titled Decet Romarum Pontifice. Appealing to King Carlos IV (1788–1808), the guardian of Querétaro tried to stop the Council of the Indies from passing the bull and failed to do so. The bull was finally dispatched and enforced in the Americas in 1804. The major point of contestation was the election process. Friars had to be members of the college for at least one year to vote and four years to be elected to office. This time counting from the day of embarkation in Spain, not arrival at their assigned site as the colegios might have preferred. This was particularly problematic as friars often waited for a long time at the Cádiz port before departure. Election procedures changed as well. Particularly troublesome were changes in guardian elections. Rather than the chapter president choosing the guardian from three canonically elected candidates, the new 1797 bull ordered that the friar with a majority of votes should be appointed as new guardian, and the two others became discretos automatically. A second secret election elected the two remaining discretos from the friars receiving the most votes. What now may seem as democratization of the elections since electorates could directly choose the governing officials without intervention by the president of the guardian chapter, became a point of friction among college authorities in Querétaro, Zacatecas, and Mexico City and their superiors in Madrid. College members rejected these amendments, arguing that the new electoral system perpetuated the dictatorship of the majority over the minority, and hence of younger friars over veterans, because it undermined the power of the commissary visitor, considered a wise and independent figure in the election, to canonically appoint the guardian. The minutes from the elections show that in Querétaro, election procedures adapted to the new rules since the 1806 election. Ironically, the college in Tarija had used this new electoral method that appointed the most voted candidates since its foundation, which likely reduced its criticism of the new rules. As was mentioned previously, Tarija colegio officials also preferred their own members to preside over the guardian chapter and inspections, an oddity when compared to New Spain’s colleges.59 Competition between younger and older friars as well as newcomers and veterans erupted into open disputes more than once in the colegios. Expeditions from Spain were particularly worrisome to commissaries general in Madrid, Mexico City, and Lima, who raised concerns about introducing novel customs in the seminaries. The arrival of twenty or thirty new friars from Spain might easily upset the balance of power in any religious community; choosing

59. Consultation before the election over Pope Pius VI’s brief, Decet Romarum Pontifice, Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, August 25, 1806, in LEC, fol. 191r. Further research on other American colleges is desirable.

60

To Sin No More

guardians and discretos by majority rather than appointment, as the new 1797 bull Decet Romarum Pontifice enforced, could change the political panorama in the colegios. Recent affiliates, who may have felt strong within their cohorts, certainly thought of imposing their own viewpoints on the rest. Respect for elders was in some cases not enough to restrain recruits’ zeal and eagerness for change, and in the late eighteenth century, from actively accessing power positions. Whether yearning for their Iberian homeland or considering daily life in the American seminaries as harsh or archaic, recent arrivals more often than not conspired to introduce changes and to challenge local power relations. Indeed, college authorities were aware that power was intrinsically related to experience as well as numbers.

The Rift of Discord A close look at the political maneuverings during the colegios’ guardian chapters reveals differences, rivalries, and disenchantment within these missionary communities that scholars have shown for other congregations of the Catholic Church in the Hispanic world. 60 Since guardianship and the discretorio were the two most influential positions in a college, it is not surprising that eligibility for casting a vote or to be elected were matters of conflict and pressure throughout the colonial period. Such was the case after the arrival of an expedition from Spain at a colegio staffed with no more than sixty novices and friars at any given time, as part of their membership were stationed in frontier missions or taking part in itinerant evangelical campaigns. This situation a priori gave new arrivals from Spain numerical advantages if their voices resonated altogether in opposition of smaller groups of veteran friars or other factions. A case study from the college in Querétaro illustrates these power struggles following the arrival of Peninsular friar recruits in 1715.61 The disruption brought by the 1715 expedition was still in the minds of Queretaran authorities late in the century. Recalling situations such as enforcement of the 1797 bull, they reflected over the difficulties of subjecting recent arrivals to the “uniformity” of the community and the power of the “elders.” 60. An essay about controversial elections in mendicant monasteries in New Spain is Rubial García, “Votos pactados.” For a brief analysis of conflict within missionary communities in Alta California in the 1790s and internal tensions in the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City during the final decades of the eighteenth century, see Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, “Uncertainty on the Mission Frontier: Missionary Recruitment and Institutional Stability in Alta California in the 1790s,” in Francis in the Americas: Essays on the Franciscan Family in North and South America, ed. John F. Schwaller (Berkeley, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2005), 295–322. 61. For an overview of the 1715 cohort, see Pedro Borges Morán, “Expediciones misioneras al Colegio de Querétaro (Méjico), 1683–1822,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 42, no. 165–168 (1982): 809–858.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

61

Queretaran authorities pointed out that newcomers’ political power against the “elder[s],” had resulted in “many novelties in the College and disturbances among its members.” If the new bull was to be applied, they feared that the rapid growth of influence wielded by the Spanish newcomers would challenge the stringent daily activities and schedules shared by the community, known as the vida común, especially because the colegio still lacked a uniform set of norms (constituciones municipales) ruling the community. These retrospective reflections addressed the unprecedented nature of what had happened after the arrival of a group of nineteen Spanish friars in late 1715, a few months before the guardian chapter convened.62 Only a few weeks after the arrival of Spanish friars in 1715, Fray José de Mena, guardian of the neighboring Convento de San Francisco in Querétaro and president of the guardian chapter, bestowed voting rights in the 1716 election, and thus political power to the Spanish cohort. Even though Mena intended to prevent a voided election, their eligibility to vote in the election was plagued with irregularities that did not pass unnoticed by community veterans. To bypass the law that required a minimum of one year in the college, Mena counted the newcomers’ eighteen-month delay at the port of Seville after receiving approval for travel to serve as missionaries in the Americas as part of their time as college members. Hence, the president of the guardian chapter gave, perhaps unintentionally, power over the college to the new Peninsular missionaries. In the election process, the two friars receiving the most votes—and as such presented to the president as candidates for appointment as guardian—belonged to the 1715 expedition. Fray José de Mena’s power to choose veteran Fray José Díez, the third finalist who received the lowest

62. “Reflexiones y notas que ahora son advertidas sobre los puntos que contiene la nueva disposición del Comisario General de Indias según lo que contiene el Breve relativo a los veintiocho dubios,” AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 10, fol. 4r–4v: “[N]otables desavenienzas entre unos, y otros, y han pasado largos años, paraq.e a costa de mucho trabajo se consiga la uniformidad de procederes, y se reduzcan los recien venidos al reconocimiento de los maiores. Si en este intermedio ocurre celebrarse Capitulo unida la Juventud para la Eleccion de sujetos q.e valoren, y goviernen a medida de sus pensamientos, prevalece contra la parte de los ancianos, por ser esta en menor numero de q.e se siguen muchas novedades en el Colegio, disturbios entre sus individuos, y no llegarse â fixar por esta causa una regla para las operaciones comunes, lo q.e no sucedo quando permaneciendo en el Colegio los Ancianos, es suficiente su nume (fol. 4r) ro, exemplo, respecto y authoridad para poner en acuerdo a los menores, y mantener lo q.e es propio, y esta establecido, o por ley, ô costumbre del seminario.” Pedro Borges Morán, “Expediciones misioneras al Colegio de Querétaro (Méjico), 1683–1822,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 42, nos. 165–168 (1982), 826: “. . . cual no la habrá visto la América.” On the vida común, see Chapter 3, and for nuns, Margaret Chowning, “Convent Reform, Catholic Reform, and Bourbon Reform: The View from the Nunnery,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 85, no. 1 (February 2005): 1–37; Margaret Chowning, Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 1752–1863 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 275–309.

62

To Sin No More

number of votes, kept the newcomers from winning the guardianship only a few weeks after arrival. No discretos were elected this time, since the election was limited to replacing a resigning guardian, but this election certainly remained in the colegio residents’ memory for a long time.63 What some purists might have seen as concessions that allowed recently incorporated friars to vote indeed encouraged the new cohort to control the highest offices of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro and set the stage for their political domination for two decades. In the subsequent 1719 guardian election, the president appointed Fray Diego de Alcántara as the new guardian from a shortlist of three candidates that also included Fray Miguel Sevillano and Fray Tomás de la Magdalena. The three of them had arrived from Spain in the same expedition in 1715. In fact, between 1716 and 1737, four members of the 1715 cadre were elected as guardians in six of eight guardian chapters: Fray Diego de Alcántara (1719 and 1733; both times he resigned before his term expired), Fray Pedro Pérez de Mezquía (1724 and 1730; he resigned in 1730), Fray Miguel Sevillano (1727), and Fray Gabriel de Vergara (1737). Only Creole Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa, in 1721, and Peninsular Fray Pedro Muñoz in 1734—both had been in the college since its early years—contested the power of the 1715 cadre. Their domination extended to the discretorio for the same period. It is somewhat surprising how rapidly such a heterogeneous group gained control over the college.64 Friars from the Iberian Peninsula could have developed a strong sense of community among themselves before their arrival in the Americas. No doubt eighteen months of cohabitation in a convent in Puerto de Santa María, Spain, before embarking to the New World, combined with the time spent during the trans-Atlantic voyage, contributed to their unity. Moreover, the 1715 cohort was not comprised of relatively uneducated, inexperienced friars with little or no missionary proficiency; all were ordained priests in their thirties with half over thirty-five, excepting Fray Luis Valcárcel, who was twenty-six. Thirteen friars had already received missionary training and acquired evangelical practice in Spanish colleges. A sense of collective entitlement might have further integrated the group.65 These friars also knew that tangible political

63. Fray José de Mena chose Fray José Díez who had received twelve votes, despite the fact that Díez received fewer votes than Fray Tomás de la Magdalena (sixteen votes) and Fray Miguel Sevillano (thirteen votes), both of whom pertained to the Peninsular group of 1715. “Auto de visita of Fray José de Mena, commissary visitor and president of the guardian chapter,” February 11, 1716, in LPZEAV, fols. 238v–239v. 64. Fray Diego de Alcántara resigned his first term for health reasons and the second one to become the first guardian of the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City. See data on guardian chapters and elected positions for the Colegio de Querétaro in Rex Galindo, “Propaganda Fide,” Appendix A. 65. Borges Morán, “Expediciones misioneras.”

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

63

leverage would provide them with the upper hand in what might otherwise turn into a hostile community. Some local friars at the colegio feared that Spanish greenhorns could not only alter the daily life of the community but reshape the colegio’s missionary agenda. It was thus not surprising that strong dissent developed between the 1715 cadre and veteran missionaries such as Fray José Díez, who was finally appointed guardian of the college in 1716. Disputes between newcomers and more seasoned friars became so acrimonious that grievances quickly reached Madrid. As a result, in late 1716, only a year after their arrival, the commissary general of the Indies strongly reprimanded the cohort of 1715 for introducing “the rift of discord” (la ciçaña de la discordia) to the college. To strengthen Guardian José Díez’s position, the commissary general of the Indies ordered all friars to meet with the guardian in his cell twice a day. If a friar deliberately dismissed the commissary’s orders, he would first be reprimanded in public. If a second misdemeanor occurred, he would eat underneath the table in the dining hall (refectorio). Finally, incorrigible friars would be punished as perturbadores de la Paz or “disturbers of the peace” to spend some time locked in their cells. Acts of delinquency were not uncommon. Thus the Estatutos generales of the Franciscan Order contained a typology of crimes and respective punishments for the convents that applied to the apostolic colleges. Special punishments were reserved for recidivist friars, though sources do not show who might have fallen into this category. The commissary general further encouraged all friars to observe and participate in the daily functions of the community as was customary.66 The struggle for power not only involved young versus veteran missionaries, but also veterans competing among themselves for influence. A dramatic case that illustrates the contentious environment in the Queretaran college occurred during the 1772 guardian chapter. On January 28, 1772, three days before the election of the highest governing officials of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Fray José Joaquín de Ortega, an elderly friar who had spent almost fifty years in the college, officially denounced what he viewed as badly managed internal affairs to the commissary visitor and president of the chapter. In an aggressive tone, Fray Ortega accused the departing officials of dishonest polit-

66. “Carta del Rvdmo. P. Fr. José Sanz, Comisario General de Indias, al P. Fr. José Díez, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, para que todos los religiosos que llegan al Colegio se conformen con las ceremonias del mismo,” Madrid, November 16, 1716, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 8; and “Patente del Rvdmo. P. Fr. José Sanz, Comisario General de Indias, al guardián y demás religiosos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, en que manda por santa obediencia que los religiosos que vienen de España para los Colegios no se desfilien de los mismos para las Provincias antes de cumplir los diez años,” Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, November 18, 1716, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 8. Specific crimes and respective punishments appear in Estatutos generales de Barcelona, 50–60.

64

To Sin No More

ical maneuvers to perpetuate their power in the friary. He urged the commissary visitor of the guardian chapter to prohibit Fray José Miguel de Araujo, still guardian of the college, from holding any office. As a former guardian, Araujo would automatically become a perpetual discreto if his guardianship were described as laudable. In a petition full of legalistic jargon, Father Ortega complained that Fray José Miguel had blatantly broken numerous commitments. The guardian, a sick man according to Ortega, was accused of disobeying papal bulls, rules, and statutes by refusing to refrain from eating meat, neglecting his confession duties for two years, and leaving the convent whenever he pleased as if “he were the absolute Father.” The accuser stated all of this had happened with the acquiescence of the discretorio, whose members acted submissively in order to curry favor and strengthen their position in the community. Moreover, he said, the prelate and his cohort of counselors disobeyed the constitutions when assigning positions among the friars. While some were forced to resign their positions, as was the case of the prefect of missions, others were illegally appointed to powerful offices. Ortega emphasized that the guardian and discretos purposefully disobeyed constitutions and previous orders by illegally separating the offices of vicar and master of novices into two positions instead of merging into a single one, as the bulls ordered, probably to prevent the master of novices from assuming the powers of the office of vicar. He explicitly criticized the overwhelming dictatorial powers of the discretorio, who, in his words, viewed themselves as “Olympos.” To avert Araujo from becoming a permanent member of the discretorio, Fray Ortega requested the commissary visitor to declare the current guardian “incompetent for any other position” after the end of his term. Father Araujo and the chapter president ultimately dismissed Ortega’s accusations.67 Election day proceeded without additional turbulence on February 1, 1772. Fray Romualdo Cartagena was elected guardian after four votes. The four discretos, Frays Miguel Pinilla, Joaquín Ruiz, Antonio Canals, and Juan Domingo Arricivita were not elected until a second balloting.68 In the aftermath, an anonymous friar strongly contested the election of Father Cartagena. Evidence shows that Fray José Joaquín de Ortega also authored this new protest. The writer claimed to have unearthed a conspiracy to appoint Fray Romualdo as guardian with active participation by the chapter president, the former discretos, and the vicar. His accusations were very harsh: bribery and simony (buying offices). He requested voiding the election “because the President of the Chapter was neither a competent Judge nor a legitimate President.” The commissary general of the Indies had delegated his power to pre-

67. LDQ1, fols. 164r–167r: “[C]omo si fuesse ya Padre Absoluto . . . se declare inhabil para otro qualquier cargo.” 68. LEC, fols. 104v–106r.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

65

side over the chapter to three individuals, the last of whom had himself “subdelegated” the task to another, who allegedly “confirmed as Guardian a fellow countryman, novice peer, and friend, which is contemptible.” Indeed, Fray José Joaquín claimed that the commissary general’s appointee had no power to hand over his chapter presidency to others. Again, the friar’s accusations were dismissed and he was reprimanded. He was required to calm down, and “to end his weary old age in peace, charity, and obedience.”69 Ortega’s accusations pointed toward issues of hierarchy and precedence in the Queretaran community that had persisted over the years. In fact, his complaints over the separation of the vicar and the master of novices had a long history of conflict. The general constitutions of the colleges of 1686 ordered that a single friar should hold both offices. However, the college rapidly dismissed the constitutions’ mandates. In fact, as early as 1702, Fray Juan Rico de Luarca, who was inspecting the convent at the time, declared that it would be better if two friars held the positions of vicariate and master of novices.70 The issue remained unsettled in subsequent decades. In 1737, the commissary visitor of the college declared that the master of novices could only enjoy the vicar’s seat at the refectory if the same friar held both positions; otherwise, he had to take a different place at the dining table.71 Twenty years later, another commissary visitor acknowledged the difficulties involved when one individual held both positions. Yet, due to the bulls’s statement that both offices had to be held by the same friar, he determined that the case should be submitted to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith to decide.72 Finally, on July 13, 1772, the Congregation in Rome ruled against the Innocentian bulls of 1686 and separated the offices of vicar and master of novices in all Franciscan propaganda fide seminaries. The Congregation con-

69. “Consulta sobre elecciones,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, 1772, AHPFM-FCSCQ, F, file 8, no. 15: “Que el P. Guardian no lo es, por que el Presidente del Capitulo no era Juez competente, ni legitimo Presi.te, . . . ultimo subdelegado a otro, que acaso lo pretendio, por confirmar en Guardan aun Paisano, Conovicio, y Amigo, que es indigno; como lo consiguio, . . . procurando acavar, su cansada ancianidad en paz, charidad, y obediencia.” Apparently, Friar Manuel de la Vega, commissary general of the Indies had appointed Friar Juan Bravo, oldest senior lecturer in the Provincia del Santo Evangelio and commissioned to delegate the presidency of the guardian chapter at the Colegio de la Santa Cruz. He had appointed Friar Antonio Fernández as provincial minister of Michoacán. See LEC, fols. 102v–103r. 70. Auto de visita of Fray Juan Rico de Luarca, Provincial Minister of Michoacán, commissary visitor and president of the guardian chapter, November 8, 1702, in LPZEAV, fol. 227v. 71. Auto de visita of Fray Felipe Velasco, Provincial Minister of Michoacán, commissary visitor and president of the guardian chapter, commissioned by Fray Pedro Navarrete, commissary general of the Indies, July 14, 1737, in ibid., fol. 258r–v. 72. Auto de visita of Fray José Antonio de Oliva, commissary general of New Spain, January 21, 1757, in LEC, fol. 18r.

66

To Sin No More

firmed the master of novice’s precedence after the vicar and lecturers of theology. In an attached patent letter, the minister general of the Franciscan Order pointed out that the master of novices presided over the community in the absence of both the guardian and vicar. The Santa Cruz discretorio adopted the new ruling during the guardian chapter of 1775, wherein Fray Joaquín Ruiz was elected as vicar and Fray Joaquín Baños as master of novices. Fray Antonio Fernández, the visitor and president of this guardian chapter explained that the minister general’s instructions did not overrule Innocent XI’s brief in which the oldest discreto presided in such cases. Father Antonio suggested that it referred to the issue of precedence and not presidency, though this was not in the language of previous documents issued by the Congregation and minister general.73 Meanwhile, notwithstanding the constitutions of 1686 and superior orders, there had been long periods of de facto separation of both offices, as Fray José Joaquín de Ortega complained. In 1784, Fray Romualdo Cartagena, now the commissary visitor and president of the guardian chapter, member and former guardian of the college, mandated that the vicar and master of novices be elected through secret balloting, like the guardian and discretos. After the secret election, the vicar and master of novices should be appointed by the guardian and discretos. Vicars and masters of novices were elected via secret voting in later years, well into the postindependence period.74 Ortega’s case shows the difficulties that colegios faced after the commissaries general for New Spain and Peru were eliminated. Friars like Ortega felt disempowered because their first recourse of appeal had been moved from closer Mexico City or Lima, the seats of the abolished commissaries general, to distant Madrid. In addition, selecting the commissary visitor to the colegios, which had previously been the purview of respective commissaries general in the Americas, was then carried out by the less accessible commissary general of the Indies. One also wonders about the frequency of these quarrels inside communities better known for harmony and tranquility. Both the Ortega affair and the controversial rise to power of the 1715 cohort from Spain

73. “Patente del Rvdmo. P. Fr. Pascual de Varisio, ministro general de la orden, al guardián y discretorio del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, y adjunto hay un decreto de la Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide fechada en Roma, 13 de julio de 1772, sobre la división de los oficios de vicario y maestro de novicios en los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, y sobre el asiento de éste,” Convento de Araceli, Rome, June 14, 1772, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 2, no. 17; see also LDQ1, fol. 186r. I found the reference to this issue of dividing the two positions in the General Index at the Congregation’s archive in Rome. See Archivo de Propaganda Fide, Indice Generale all’Anno 1767–1778, America, Regolari: Si dividono in dui Religiosi li carichi di Presi.te o Vic.rio é di Maestro de Novicj ne’ Collegi dellé Missni de Pad.e Miss.ri Oss.ti d’America, derogandosi in cio dal Papa alli Statua dei Collegi sud. Approvati dalla sa ino. D. Innocenzio XI. 1772. 74. LDQ2, fols. 23v–24r. See also the secret elections after 1784.

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

67

appeared in the record because they happened during or were related to the guardian chapter and inspection. Franciscan friars understood election day as a quest for power when much was at stake. Beyond the few conflicts captured in the official record, most rivalries and factionalism went unrecorded or remained within respective communities. Rifts occurred over the introduction of what some religious denounced as unorthodox practices in community life. That was particularly the case when new friars who came from other American or Spanish provinces did not hesitate to introduce what they believed were improvements in the vida común or even to transform the ceremonial schedule. Without doubt, diversity within the community brought anxiety and even animosity to the Queretaran college as well as to other Franciscan colleges and provinces. For the most part, members of the community who advocated change were confronted by those who championed the status quo. Even guardians who, sometimes capriciously, maneuvered to vary certain aspects of daily life encountered strong opposition within and without. For conservatives, nothing mattered more than the spiritual routine that the original constitutions and founders of the institution established to secure, they argued, the colleges’ success. Less evident from the sources, quiet and tranquility, song and chant, and murmured orations and prayers generally describes daily life in Franciscan communities. Changes in the routine of a given college, however, did occur over time, but these did not prevent the colleges from achieving their missionizing goals in the Hispanic world.

Conclusions As Fray Pedro González de Agüeros’s genealogical and chronological tree shows, the Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide emerged as pivotal, independent missionary entities in the conversion of America. His print reveals the drastic evolution of the Franciscan missionary program throughout the eighteenth century. Franciscan colleges were not only jockeying with Franciscan provinces to convert and save souls, but they also became the new trunk of the Franciscan soteriological program in America. If we expand this picture to include Spain and its trunk of Franciscan apostolic seminaries and provincial branches, we could see how the colleges formed a trans-Atlantic network that—as discussed in subsequent chapters—helped to consolidate and expand Spanish cultural hegemony in Spanish America. In this arboreal image, Franciscan provinces and colleges were ranked similarly in the American Franciscan structure. That was the result of multifocal synergies from Franciscan authorities in Madrid and Rome, the Holy See, the Spanish monarchy, and local support resulting in the foundation of the Franciscan propaganda fide colleges. The colleges surprisingly flourished

68

To Sin No More

in an unlikely period of anti-mendicant sentiment from ecclesiastical and secular fronts in the late seventeenth century and particularly in the eighteenth century. The Franciscan propaganda fide institution expanded, thrived, and turned into the largest missionary venture ever in Spain and its empire. The eighteenth century thus became a new golden age of missionary endeavors that matched the first century of Franciscan missionary preeminence in the Americas, as González de Argüeros’s writings and this book illustrate. Although the organizational structure was created by the Franciscan Order itself, the colleges’ independence from the traditional provincial structure conferred greater possibilities to develop and quickly respond to contingencies that required the colegios’ overstretched missionary enterprise in the Hispanic world. The election of officials had implications that went beyond the community’s daily life, as they directly intervened in the evangelical direction that the college took. The goal of the colleges, as seen in the following chapters, was to select and train Franciscan friars for a missionary career that encompassed the conversion of Catholics and non-Christians alike. Guardians, discretos, teachers, and commissary-prefects guided this missionary agenda of conversion while also serving as intermediaries between the missionaries and imperial authorities. College authorities responded to upheavals during the late eighteenth century, such as the abolition of the commissaries general of New Spain and Peru that triggered a crisis in the Franciscan program in the Americas. Colleges maneuvered accordingly, maintaining, for instance, their independence from provincials and securing support of the distant commissary general of the Indies. Their achievements thus owe much to their evolution toward an imperial, centralizing institution that dominated the Spanish missionary scene during the heyday and decline of the empire. This chapter has shown how the colleges evolved into a new vanguard of missionary work, a polished and lubricated mechanism (though imperfect) for the “conversion of souls.” Finally, novices, friars, preachers, and missionaries acted within the Franciscan collegiate mandate. However, notwithstanding the importance of the hierarchical structure and the vow of obedience that each member of the community accepted, certain situations allowed personal and independent decision making. And as with any other community, defiance certainly appeared as part of daily life. Ultimately individuals played a key role in the history of the colleges and their missionary expansion. In fact, beyond Catholic and Franciscan common grounds, personal incidents further shaped the formation of each missionary as an individual. As historian Lino Gómez Canedo pointed out years ago, each Franciscan interpreted his Franciscanism with surprising freedom. Regarding his missionary task in America, it is difficult to find among Franciscans any other

CHAPTER 1. AN ATLANTIC INSTITUTION

69

generalizing characteristic besides his eclecticism, namely, their lack of interest in mere theoretical speculations and radical solutions. Generally, Franciscans focused on problems with practical aims and sought concrete and feasible solutions. This does not mean that there were no extremists, both on the left and the right.75

The foundation of the colegios de propaganda fide was indeed a pragmatic response to the missionizing impulse in the late seventeenth century that incorporated members of both “progressive” and “conservative” tendencies.

75. Gómez Canedo, Evangelización y conquista, xiii: “[I]nterpretó su franciscanismo con sorprendente libertad. Por lo que mira a su labor misional en América, es difícil encontrar entre los franciscanos otra característica general que la de su eclecticismo, su poca inclinación a especulaciones meramente teóricas y a soluciones radicales. Por lo general los franciscanos enfocan los problemas con finalidades prácticas y buscan soluciones concretas y posibles. Aunque esto no quiere decir que no aparezcan entre ellos algunos extremistas, tanto por la izquierda como por la derecha.”

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 2

Recruiting Missionaries o convert the Hispanic world, Franciscan colleges for the propagation of the faith had to recruit friars. For Fray Antonio Llinás, founder of the first colleges in the late seventeenth century, only energetic, highly motivated friars should serve in the colleges. A look at Llinás’s own solution to recruiting challenges reveals the nature of the ideal missionary as well as the colleges’ broadly defined raison d’être. To persuade King Charles II (1665– 1700), Llinás envisioned an Atlantic network of propaganda fide colleges in which apostolic friaries in Spain would provide the most “exemplary men” to join “the most virtuous, learned, and experienced [friars] in those [American] countries.” Spanish colleges could also recruit provincial friars who showed an energetic “spirit . . . to evangelize and to convert.” Once trained, they could depart to the American colleges and their missions.1 At least in theory, the new apostolic seminaries had to be filled with devout men who led exemplary lives and had virtuous habits—men, in fact, whose only passion was to serve their communities and the evangelical enterprise on both sides of the Atlantic. Llinás, a Peninsular Franciscan who had served over a decade in the Provincia de Michoacán in New Spain, sought such friars in Spain rather than the Americas. While Llinás’s preoccupations with the missionary quality of his workforce were not new—indeed, they dated back to the earliest days of the Franciscan Order—his focus on Spain might seem uncommon at such a late date in the colonial regime. By the end of the seventeenth century, religious friaries in America were staffed by American-born friars, and then Franciscan colleges adopted a unique path in becoming once again Spaniard-majority institutions. In fact, throughout the eighteenth century, the colleges became the most successful recruiting force of Peninsular personnel for the Americas in a transAtlantic flux that underscores the Spanishness of the propaganda fide institution.2 Demographic data from selected colegios prove this point. For instance,

T

1. Llinás, “Memorial que escribió el P. Fr. Antonio Llinás al Ministro General de la Orden de la Orden y a su majestad solicitando la fundación de los Colegios,” Madrid 1681, AHPFM-FCSCQ, D, file 2, no. 1, fol. 3r: “[M]ui temerosos de D.s. . . . Varones exemplares. . . . [L]os mas Virtuosos, Doctos, y experimentados en aquellos Payses. . . . [E]spiritu no sea de vaguear, sino de evangelizar, y convertir.” 2. There is a general consensus that Spanish friars staffed Franciscan apostolic colleges. Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 113–115; and González Marmolejo, Misioneros

71

72

To Sin No More

the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro recruited approximately 350 friars from Spain distributed among twenty-one expeditions between 1683 and a last voyage in 1822. This college also incorporated at least 191 friars from other American provinces and colleges and 172 additional novices took vows as Franciscan friars up to 1829. Between 1683 and 1829, almost 800 men lived in the Queretaran Franciscan community.3 Likewise, between 1742 and 1820, roughly 260 friars traveled in nineteen expeditions from Spain to the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City. Over 100 laymen took vows as Franciscans in this colegio, and almost 100 friars arrived from other American provinces and colleges until 1820. Between 1733 and 1820, at least 400 men lived in the San Fernando community. Between 1763 and 1818, the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de Tarija (current Bolivia) received 160 friars comprising eleven expeditions from Spain. Lorenzo Calzavarini Ghinello’s study of this colegio concludes that of 139 whose origins are known, 15 were born in America and 124 in Spain. Among the colegios de propaganda fide, the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Zacatecas sought novices and friars born and trained in America instead of Spain.4 The colleges’ preference for Spaniards contrasted with the Americanization of colonial religious and civil institutions during the previous two centuries. In this sense we may view the colegios as precursors of the centralizing Bourbon reforms and the Europeanization of the colonial civil bureaucracy. As the previous data demonstrate, the colleges generally drew from a wide pool of recruiting possibilities. Colleges incorporated novitiates or novice

del desierto; Lorenzo Calzavarini Ghinello, Presencia Franciscana y formación intercultural en el sudeste de Bolivia según documentación del Archivo Franciscano de Tarija, 1606–1936 (Tarija Centro Eclesial de Documentación, 2004), vol. 1, 119–122; Geiger, “The Internal Organization”; and Jones, In Service of Two Masters. I have also consulted three lists of friars from the Discalced college in Pachuca. Five out of eighty-three were listed as Creoles in 1803, three out of seventy in 1807, and nine out of sixty-six in 1810. These documents are found in “Papeles varios: Le acompaña un índice moderno de los documentos aquí contenidos, algunos de los cuales son del siglo XVIII, pero la mayoría son del XIX,” AHPSEM, box 209. 3. From the Queretaran Book of Novices, LNQ, and the informaciones, we know with certainty that sixty-five novices left the Colegio de Querétaro’s novitiate before they took vows, though the number could well increase up to seventy-four novices if we include those whose data are unavailable. 4. Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros, 51–52, 525–534; Calzavarini Ghinello, ed., Presencia Franciscana y formación intercultural en el sudeste de Bolivia, vol. 1, 74, 117– 122; and Geiger, “The Internal Organization.” A list of Zacatecas friars appears in Fray Joseph de San Miguel Domínguez, “Nómina de los religiosos que el Apóstolico Colegio de Propaganda fide de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas . . . tiene así en sus misiones de infieles de la Provincia de Texas, y en las de la nueva colonia del seno mexicano,” in “Información y otros papeles del Colegio Apostólico de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de la ciudad de Zacatecas,” Colegio de Propaganda fide de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, January 15, 1750, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MSS/12046, fols. 46r–50r.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

73

houses to attract young laymen. Provincial friars from other American and Spanish provinces joined the colleges. Moreover, college friars moved around within the propaganda fide network on both sides of the Atlantic. How did a college go about its business of enlisting missionaries? What credentials did recruits possess and how did they compare to those of the ideal missionary? Why did they join the colleges? Did all wish to become missionaries? To answer these questions, in this chapter I examine the various sources from which the Franciscan colleges drew their missionary workforce. Since the colleges, like civil and other ecclesiastical institutions, introduced systematic selection procedures that incorporated contemporary ethnic and religious ideals, the chapter explores the colleges’ recruitment process, giving special attention to the motives behind applicants’ decisions, and drawing conclusions on theoretical and actual missionary features concomitant or unrelated to the goals of the colegios. I peruse the documentation created around selection processes of novices, particularly reports on “limpieza de sangre, vida y costumbres” (purity of bloodline, lifestyle, and habits), and friars’ application letters to enter a college to illustrate processes and illuminate motives. This chapter thus weighs missionary archetypes against the authenticity of the aspirants who joined the propaganda fide organization in the Americas. While Franciscan hagiographies of missionaries describe them as heroic and extraordinary men, who disregarded their own lives in their zeal to convert and save souls, archival sources divulge a range of less colorful, more mundane motives to become a missionary. Besides a spiritual rationale that underscored conversion and salvation, including the salvation of one’s own soul through internal conversion and the conversion of others, some men had worldly reasons as well, particularly health issues, as their principal incentive to join and then to leave a propaganda fide college. Also the reputation of Franciscan propaganda fide cannot be underestimated. Whether to gain social status or distinction, friars and young men sought to enter an institution that soon gained prominence in Spain and Spanish America. Since colleges were part of the Franciscan organizational scheme, it is not surprising that certain elements of the recruiting process paralleled those of other Franciscan provinces and religious orders. It should also be noted that behind the faceless numbers of the colleges’ personnel what seems clear is that each friar brought a different life story, socioeconomic background, and personality to the order, and thus developed a unique position within the hierarchical structure of the friary.

Recruiting Novices A missionary career began in the novitiate. The first selection process that laymen experienced upon requesting admission to the Franciscan Order (and to a Franciscan colegio for the same token) enhanced or hampered their

74

To Sin No More

opportunities to become evangelical ministers. Entering as choristers (also known as choir brothers), lay brothers, or oblates (donados), the three available options within the Franciscan order, marked the aspirant’s occupation and his career within the friary and the order for the rest of his life. After a probational year, both choir and lay brothers took the solemn three vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity that made them Franciscan friars, also known as fraters, or brothers of Saint Francis. However, while choristers—they were thought to have singular intellectual abilities and knowledge essential for the path to priesthood—received a special education to be ordained as Catholic priests, lay brothers became Franciscan friars but never priests. Those considered apt to be chorister friars eventually prepared themselves to preach and confess—in other words, to convert the Hispanic world. Lay friars’ raison d’être in a colegio was less spiritual and more material than their chorister counterparts. Lay brothers were usually in charge of the daily chores within the community, such as in the infirmary and kitchen, monastery portal, refectorio (dining hall), as well as collecting alms. They also assisted in the daily mass, participated in daily spiritual exercises, and sang in the choir. While some lay friars assumed occasional evangelical duties, mostly escorting Franciscan preachers and confessors, they primarily took over menial activities. The small group of donados (oblates) never had an evangelical career in mind nor did the Franciscan Order intend for them to evangelize. Although considered Franciscans, they remained laymen who did not swear the vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. Donados thus lacked the status of friars, and occupied the lowest position in the Franciscan houses. They were considered servants in charge of, for example, cleaning the common areas, cooking, farming, gardening, and building repair.5 Generally then, donados entered monastic life to serve their confreres, and, as the constitución municipal of the college in Zacatecas indicated, to supplant secular servants.6 Because subor-

5. Lay brothers have traditionally been neglected in the study of the evangelization of America. See the path-breaking study by Lavrin, “Lay Brothers.” For Franciscan lay brothers as domestic servants in Franciscan communities in Spain, see Ofelia Rey Castelao and Raquel Iglesias Estepa, “Domestic Service in Spain, 1750–1836: The Domestic Servants of the Clergy,” in Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, ed., Domestic Service and the Formation of European Identity: Understanding the Globalization of Domestic Work, 16th–21st Centuries (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), 135–139. On the duties of choristers and lay brothers, see Compendio de las Questiones selectas y exposición de la Regla de N. P. S. Francisco: Por el R. P. Fr. Leandro de Murcia, Provincial de los Capuchinos de la Provincia de Castilla, Sacado y compendiado por el P. Fr. Gregorio de Salamanca, Predicador de la Provincia de Castilla (Alcalá, Spain: María Fernández, 1666), 58, as quoted in Francisco Javier Gómez Ortín, “Léxico Franciscano,” Revista electrónica de estudios filológicos, December 2007, accessed on November 4, 2017; available at http://www.um.es/tonosdigital/znum14/subs/corpora/indicecorpora.htm. 6. “Constituciones del Colegio de Nra. Sra. de Guadalupe de Zacatecas,” November 13, 1713, AHPSEM, box 201, point V: “Como asimismo mandamos, que no se permitan

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

75

dination was paramount to the friary hierarchical order, and probably to inculcate submission in the lay brothers, in 1806 the discretorio of the college in Querétaro required new lay brothers to spend a period of six years as donados prior to their candidacy. After that date and until the 1830s, most lay brothers spent some time after arrival as donados in the colegio.7 Examining the data from the profession ledgers (libros de profesiones),8 the informaciones de limpieza de sangre, vida y costumbres, and other archival sources, I have reached certain conclusions on the recruiting evolution and profiles for the colegios in Querétaro, Mexico City, and Tarija, where success in recruiting novices varied through time. For the first two, an increase in the flow of enrollments and concomitant taking of vows followed a more subdued, steady pattern of recruitment in the second half of the eighteenth century. The Tarija novitiate, on the other hand, was quite small throughout the colonial period; hence the college relied heavily on the expeditions from Spain, and to a lesser extent, incorporations from other friaries. The first four decades of the 1700s were particularly outstanding for the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro, which enlisted 40 percent of all its novices during the colonial period (104 out of a total of 245 laymen who entered the novitiate). These enrollments translated into larger numbers of professions in the same 1700– 1739 period: 74 out of 172 professions or over 40 percent of the total number for the colegio. Likewise, authorities from the Colegio de San Fernando turned around early recruiting problems by lowering the minimum age to enter the novitiate to less than twenty.9 Over twenty novices professed in the colegio during the 1740s—a peak followed by fluctuating, lower numbers of taking of vows until the end of the Spanish period. The decrease in novice recruitment parallels a vocation crisis in the Franciscan provinces after 1760. For the Mexican provinces, Francisco Morales lays out the multiple causes of this trend that affected the colegios as well. He points out that Bourbon limitations on novice numbers constrained the order’s capability to recruit new members. But even more important, by the end of the eighteenth century, changes in colonial society favoring a secular life over the convent meant that young men preferred marriage and profes-

sirvientes seculares en ninguna oficina, pues para eso, se pueden recibir los Hermanos Donados, que fueren necesarios.” 7. Decree of October 7, 1806, in LDQ2, fol. 101r. See also the informaciones from 1806 onward in AHPFM-FCSCQ, P. 8. Because these ledgers contain information on the profession of novices, namely the ritual oath of the Franciscan vows and the acceptance of the novice as a Franciscan friar, they unveil some information of colegio residents’ trajectories within the institutional hierarchy. 9. For the age of 20, see the internal constitutions of the Colegio de San Fernando, 1735, AHPSEM, box 201.

To Sin No More

76

Table 2.1. Novices at Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, Comparison of 1683–1749, 1750–1799, and 1800–1829 Period

Total

1683–1749 1750–1799 1800–1829 Total

130 80 35 245

Chorister:Lay Choristers Lay brothers Unknown brother ratio 78 39 19 136

46 41 16 105

6 0 0 6

1.70 0.95 1.19 1.29

Source: Informaciones de novicios, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, files 1–15, and Libro de Novicios, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 16.

sional endeavors over prayers, evangelical ministry, and chastity. At least for the colegios, an increase in the number of enlistments of friars from other Spanish and American colleges, and particularly provinces, offset the dramatic reduction of local vocations in the second half of the eighteenth century. In any case, a closer look at the Colegio de la Santa Cruz shows that nevertheless the ratio of professions remained stable—almost three of four novices took vows as friars throughout the century.10 One can, however, observe a dramatic change in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, when approximately half of the thirty-five novices left the Queretaran novitiate, and numbers of professed novices declined and literally halted in the Colegio de San Fernando. The war for Mexican independence in the early 1800s brought such chaos that it almost paralyzed the economy and communications. The state of disarray in the Queretaran house after the Spaniards were expelled in 1827 forced the Queretaran discretorio to make entry requirements for novices more flexible in order to staff the college with Mexican men. Further study of the data on the 1830s for San Fernando is needed to identify and confirm similar practices (see Tables 2.1 and 2.2 and Figures 2.1–2.4). Colleges’ recruiting strategies also varied. At first glance, since colleges required large numbers of priests and missionaries, it seems evident that chorister novices were more desirable than lay brothers and oblates. However, recruiting depended on the discretorios’ interests and observations by the masters of novices, as well as the aspirants’ career goals. Choristers entered the community of Querétaro in slightly greater numbers than lay novices (136:105, ratio 1.29) and professed as friars in a similar, albeit smaller, ratio 10. Francisco Morales, “Mexican Society and the Franciscan Order in a Period of Transition, 1749–1858,” The Americas 54 (1998): 323–356. This contradicts Fray José Picazo’s claim in his auto de visita of the guardian chapter in 1715 that only one novice had successfully stayed in the friary by 1715. See Auto de Visita de Fray José Picazo, provincial minister of Michoacán and commissary visitor to the guardian chapter, August 30, 1715, in LPZEAV, fol. 237r.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

77

Table 2.2. Professed Members at Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, Comparison of 1683–1749, 1750–1799, and 1800–1829 Period

Total

Choristers

Lay brothers

Chorister:lay brother ratio

1683–1749 1750–1799 1800–1829 Total

96 58 18 172

59 28 8 95

37 30 10 77

1.59 0.93 0.80 1.23

Sources: Informaciones de novicios, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, files 1–15, and Libro de Novicios, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 16.

(95:77, ratio 1.23). The colegio in Querétaro enlisted greater numbers of choristers in the first half of the eighteenth century—three choristers for every two lay brothers—although the ratio fell dramatically for the rest of the colonial period, when an average of one chorister entered the novitiate and professed for each lay brother. By then, the Colegio de la Santa Cruz was mostly staffed with missionaries via expeditions from Spain. Transfers from one status to the other were rare in Querétaro: two friars, Cristóbal Albino de Santaella and Toribio Francisco Guerra, were admitted as choristers but professed as lay brothers in the mid-1730s; on the other hand, Franciscan statutes banned lay novices from becoming choristers.11 Strikingly, most of the 100 professions in the Colegio de San Fernando were lay brothers. A 1772 roster shows that 112 friars and two oblates belonged to San Fernando; of these thirty-seven took the vows as friars at the college—though their origins are uncertain— and seventy-two came from Spanish Franciscan provinces. Twenty of the thirty-seven friars professed in San Fernando were lay brothers, a surprising number if we consider the college’s missionary agenda, but one that illustrates the preference for priests from Spain while consigning American-born friars to the relatively menial labors of lay brothers. Yet, the lack of choristers and early-career priests forced the discretorio in 1763 to require that missionaries do the work of deacons and subdeacons, namely, carrying out menial duties during the liturgy at the altar. Because the vast majority of missionaries sent to California were priests from Spain, lay friars populated the colegio disproportionately, serving the smaller number of preachers and missionaries.12

11. Data compiled from my database on novices at the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro. “Ningún Novicio reciba Ordenes, ni el que tomó el Abito para Lego passe al estado de Corista,” Constituciones y Estatutos de la Provincia de San Juan Bautista de Descalzos (Valencia: Jayme de Bordázar, 1688), 37, as quoted in Gómez Ortín, “Léxico Franciscano.” 12. The 1772 roster is in Geiger, “The Internal Organization.” For the origins of Franciscans in the California missions, see Maynard J. Geiger, Franciscan Missionaries in Hispanic California 1769–1848: A Biographical Dictionary (San Marino, California: Hunt-

78

To Sin No More

Figure 2.1. Franciscan friars who left Spain for America, 1500–1822 (total = 8,441). Sources: Pedro Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros, 478–535, and “Expediciones misioneras.”

The Colegio de la Santa Cruz recruited 133 Creoles and 110 Spanishborn novices. Peninsular novices were slightly older on average than their Creole counterparts. There is a one to one balance in the Creole-Peninsular ratio until the 1780s, when larger numbers of Creoles requested admission than did Peninsular laymen. Clearly Creole friars comprised a minority in this community as well as in most other apostolic colleges. Nonetheless, Spanishborn young men’s choice for a colegio at such higher rates compared to Franciscan provinces further underscores the Spanishness of the propaganda fide institution.13 It is noteworthy that in their elections the colegios de propaganda fide practiced neither the controversial alternativa nor the ternativa concomitant to the Franciscan provinces, where a friar from Spain and a Creole “alternated” in the guardianship every three years to preserve political leverage of the European minority within a Creolized Church. Franciscan authorities had developed this system to shield the power of the falling numbers of European friars in the provincial convents. Ironically, the same procedure was never ington Library, 1969). Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros, 50.For the Colegio de San Fernando, in 1742, 12; 1749, 19; 1750, 11; 1759, 16; 1770, 45; 1784, 15; 1786, 22; 1793, 28 (4 died in Puerto Rico); 1794, 2; 1795, 23; 1803, 18; 1804, 13;1805, 6; 1809, 7; 1810, 14; 1811, ?; 1813, 6; 1819, 12; and 1820, 1. 13. Data compiled from my novice database on the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

79

Figure 2.2. Numbers of friars at Colegio de San Fernando, Mexico City, 1730s– 1820s, by place of origin, departures/transfers, and novices who took vows. Source: Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros, 51–52. Professing novices encompass those who took vows (completed studies and other requirements) and served in the colegio.

developed to protect the Creole minority’s political power in the colleges.14 In establishing procedures to receive novices, collegiate authorities followed an already existing general pattern in Franciscan Spanish and American provinces of questioning candidates’ lifestyle, piety, religious commitment, intellectual capabilities, lineage, and ethnicity. The process of scrutinizing vocations and suitability was rather formulaic. Aspirants first sent an application letter to the guardian (head of a college) and discretorio (the college’s council of government) who, after con14. The election minutes from Tarija, Querétaro, and San Fernando unveil no alternativa nor ternativa. Other studies from other colegios do not mention such a system in the elections. For Franciscan provinces practicing the alternativa or ternativa, see Morales, “Ethnic and Social Background,” 67–70; and Antonine Tibesar, “The Alternativa: A Study in Spanish-Creole Relations in Seventeenth-Century Perú,” The Americas 11 (January 1955): 229–283. For an instance of applying the alternativa system and the internal disputes between Creole and Peninsular factions in the seventeenth-century Augustinian province in Mexico, see Rubial García, Una monarquía criolla. For a more general treatment, see also Rubial García, “Votos pactados.”

80

To Sin No More

Figure 2.3. Friars at Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro (1683–1850). Professing novices encompass those who took vows (completed studies and other requirements) and served in the colegio. Sources: “Libro de Novicios,” 1690– 1855; “Libro de Decretos, 1734–1776”; “Libro de Decretos, 1777–1853”; Peticiones de incorporación, E, file 1; Peticiones de desafiliación, E, file 3.

sultation, decided whether to examine the petitioner’s request. Applications had to be voluntary (without family directives), and never perceived as a refuge to avoid civil or ecclesiastical punishment, unwanted brides, or financial debts. When discovered, coerced applications of any type could be reversed, even after admission. Laymen proved their religious inclination through certificates of baptism, communion, and confirmation, a personal interview, and recommendations from clerics well-known to the candidate. The prelate and discretorio further examined his basic knowledge of Catholic doctrine, Latin, and Latin classic authors. Preference for future choristers was given to those who successfully passed the course of sacred theology upon admission, or if the latter was lacking, showed proficiency in Latin.15 Unlike the lay brothers, choristers would serve as priests, confessors, preach15. Patent by Fray Matías de Velasco, commissary general of the Indies, to the commissary of missions for the colleges, Convent of San Francisco of Madrid, September 14, 1743, included in a patent by Fray José Ortiz de Velasco, commissary of missions for the propaganda fide colleges, to the guardians of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Zacatecas, and Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, and the Convento de San Agustín of Maninalco, March 3, 1744, in LPZEAV, fol. 153v.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

81

Figure 2.4. Spanish Franciscan friars arriving in the Americas, 1650–1822. Source: Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros, 478–535, and “Expediciones misioneras.”

ers, and missionaries—tasks that entailed conducting mass in Latin and reading specialized literature in that language. In this first examination of the applicant’s material, the discretorio gathered information about the geographic origins of the aspirant, his parents, and grandparents to proceed with on-site investigations if the aspirant was deemed qualified. Successful candidates in this preliminary phase underwent a thorough investigation (información) that tested their suitability. An appointed commissary conducted the inquiry with a notary of his choice to record the depositions. If the investigation took place close by, local friars from the college conducted the información; at more distant locations guardians appointed prelates from nearby Franciscan houses to serve as commissaries, who commonly delegated their commission to another friar. Upon accepting their tasks, the appointee and the notary first launched a secret investigation into the life and lineage of the candidate that usually lasted a couple of days. The commissary and the notary questioned potential witnesses who knew or had known the applicant, his parents, and his grandparents. Both friars wandered the locale gathering data on the aspirant and searching for reliable witnesses for the ensuing judicial or public información.16 16. Since notaries only kept records of public investigations and only investigations that had no impediments were retained, investigations seem to have been routine. A dif-

82

To Sin No More

The examination of candidates was a thorny affair in a society that valued individuals according to their honor and reputation. Thus, first inquiries had to be conducted in secrecy to avoid defaming the candidate’s and his family’s honor. Only if the covert investigation found no impediments would the inquiry proceed publicly; witnesses were then summoned to a nearby friary, and their testimonies were sworn and recorded by the notary. This sequence of actions was detailed in Fray Fernando de la Rúa’s influential 1666 Instrucción or treatise on how to conduct the inquiries as well as in Fray José de Castro’s 1737 Directorio para las informaciones de los Pretendientes de el Santo Habito.17 De la Rúa in particular emphasized the confidentiality of the initial investigation of reputable men to avoid any offense to their families.18 Despite the friars’ discretion, rumors spread easily in small villages and haciendas where neighbors were closely connected. When, in early June 1798, a couple of friars from the college in Querétaro arrived at Salamanca (in current Guanajuato, Mexico) to investigate candidate José Valdés Machuca, his mother wasted no time in visiting a neighboring hacienda to gather information about her husband and his ancestors. She knew that even vague rumors of her husband’s reputation could affect her and her offspring for generations. As it happened weeks later, the friars ferent view would probably emerge if we had access to reports on secret investigations (which are obviously missing in the archives), particularly those who never passed that stage and the applicant was discarded. 17. Fray Joseph de Castro, Directorio para informaciones de los Pretendientes de el Santo Habito de N. Seraphico P. S. Francisco, en que hallaran los Padres Comissarios de ellas todo lo necessario para una perfecta Informacion: Y los Padres Discretos todo lo que conduce, para calificarlas con acierto (Mexico City: Imprenta Real del Superior Govierno, y del Nuevo Rezado: Por Doña Maria de Ribera, en el Empedradillo, 1737). This directorio was enforced by the Commissary General of New Spain Fray Pedro Navarrete, see, for instance, “Información de Pedro Antonio de Aza,” 1747, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 7, no. 95, fol. 4v: “Fr. Joseph Lince notario de la informacion juridica, de la limpies [sic] de linaje, vida y costumbre de Pedro Antt.o de Aza, pretendiente de ntro. S.to Habito, digo: q aviendo el R. P. Com.o hecho personalm.te ante mi la informacion secreta, preguntado a los testigos segun la serie de todo el interrogatorio de las constituciones graves segun el directorio mandado practicar en todas las Proas, y Colegios de novicios de este Reyno por N.M.R.P. Fr. Pedro Nabarrete excom.o Gral, & dada, en el año pasado de mill setecientos, y treynta, y siete en dies, y nuebe dias del mes de febrero.” 18. Morales, Ethnic and Social Background, 19–21. For Fray Fernando de la Rúa’s Instrucción, interrogatorio y forma que se ha de observar en las informaciones. . . , see ibid., 137–141: “[O]fenda el crédito de cualquier familia, en que se seguirá más grave daño, que pudiera resultar útil, de las más crecidas prendas del pretendiente en su recepción, que se puede escusar decentemente” (137). Juan Diego Hernández y Terán’s 1722 información explicitly mentioned the use of de la Rúa’s questionnaire: “En este sobredho Conv.to de . . . q para maior claridad se pussiese el interrogatorio q ordeno y mando dho N. M. R. P. fr Fernando de la Rua, para que por el sean examinados los testigos de dha informacion.” “Información de Juan Diego Hernández y Terán,” 1722, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 4, no. 45, fol. 3r.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

83

focused their research in the same locale. Valdés professed as a chorister on July 26, 1799.19 The result of these procedures, called informaciones de limpieza de sangre, linaje, vida, y costumbres (investigations of the purity of blood, lineage, life, and habits), were recorded and kept in the colegio archives and constitute a formidable source for learning about the candidates’ stories as well as the colleges’ tactics. The questionnaire was standardized; information contained in these reports does not differ from similar informaciones in other Franciscan provinces, religious orders, and even civil institutions. The ubiquity of such informaciones shows a number of qualities that had to be fulfilled by all entering members. In all investigations, applicants had to demonstrate their Spanish and Christian ancestry. In Iberia this meant that candidates, and their parents and grandparents, had to demonstrate no Muslim, Jewish, or Protestant lineage. In America, purity of blood also demanded that aspirants and their ancestors were reputed as “Spaniards clean from any . . . [negative influence from] Indians, mestizos, Chinese, or mulattoes.” The questionnaires included a panoply of racial terms that followed the taxonomical trends for racial depictions of Native Americans and Africans. Indian, mestizo, mulatto, and black were the most common labels in the questionnaires and informaciones, though sometimes other terms such as chino, castizo, and lobo are found. This system of racial categorization and discrimination developed and evolved in the Americas from similar late medieval practices on the Iberian Peninsula (see Table 2.3 for the questionnaire).20 Inquiries also show that colleges sought aspirants with demonstrated religious zeal, piety, virtue, equanimity, honesty, kindness, and chastity. Important features to seek in a candidate were a particular distaste for material possessions; virginity and particular attentiveness to sexual abstinence; and a meek and even passive disposition. This was relevant in that once novices had successfully passed the first year of probation, they would swear to a lifetime com19. Nevertheless, he left the college for the Provincia de Michoacán three years later. “Información de José Valdés Machuca,” 1798, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 12, no. 162, fol. 7r; LDQ2, fol. 76v. 20. The investigations on the purity of blood, lineage, life, and customs were a mandatory requirement for admissions to the Inquisition, mendicant orders, secular clerics, the universities, and the colleges of lawyers. A study that connects the emergence of religion and racial discrimination in late medieval Spain and its translation to America is María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008). She argues that “in Spanish America, the notion of purity gradually came to be equated with Spanish ancestry, with “Spanishness,” an idea that had little significance in the metropolitan context” (2). A questionnaire of the Inquisition similar to that used by the Franciscan colegios is in Ibid., 279280. For similar requirements to access the college of lawyers in Caracas (current Venezuela) in the late eighteenth century see Ángel Rafael Almarza Villalobos, “La limpieza de sangre en el Colegio de Abogados de Caracas a finales del siglo XVIII,” Fronteras de la Historia 10 (2005).

84

To Sin No More

Table 2.3. Questionnaire from 1756 Informacióna 1. If you know Juan Francisco Joseph de Rivera, and his paternal and maternal parents and grandparents. 2. If the said aspirant is the legitimate son of Don Antonio de Rivera and Doña Juan María Carrillo. 3. If the aspirant, his parents, and his grandparents are of good lineage, faithful Catholics, and not descendants of Jews, Moors, or modern gentiles. 4. If the said aspirant, his parents, or grandparents have any public infamy. 5. If the ancestors of said aspirant are legitimate Spaniards, or if they descend from or are of the races of Mulattos, Lobos, etc. 6. If said aspirant or any of his ancestors or any relatives have been punished by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. 7. If said aspirant or any of his ancestors or relatives have had vile occupations/trades in the Republic. 8. If parents or siblings of said aspirant may live decently without his help and assistance. 9. If said aspirant has a good life and habits, and he is neither the culprit nor suspect of any crimes or transgressions such as homicide, theft, or any other similar or greater ones by which he had been or may be condemned in a juridical procedure. 10. If said aspirant is free of debt or has more debt than the value of his assets and thus for this reason there will be lawsuits or disputes or reasons that may disturb the order or the aspirant. Also whether [the aspirant] is single or married. 11. If witnesses of this información are included [as defined] in any general points of the law such as being relatives of said aspirant, or his ancestors, kinsmen, intimate friends, or enemies. Source: Información de Juan Francisco José de Rivera, 1756, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 8, no. 107, fol. 2v. a

1. Primt.e si conoce á Juan Fran.co Joseph de Rivera, á sus P.es y Abuelos paternos, y maternos. 2. Si dho Pretdt.e es hijo legitimo de D. Ant.o de Rivera, y de D.a Juana M.a Carrillo. 3. Si el dho Pretdt.e sus P.es y Abuelos son de buen linage, fieles, Catholicos, y no descendte de Judios, Moros, ô de Gentiles modernos. 4. Si dho Pretdt.e sus P.es ô Abuelos son comprehendidos en alga infamia publica. 5- Si llos Ascendt.es de dho Pretendt.e son Españoles legtimos, ô si descienden, ô tienen raza de Mulatos, Lobos &c.a 6. Si dho Pretdt.e ô alguno de sus Ascendt.es ô otro qualq.a Deudo suio han sido castigados por el Sto. Oficio de la Ynquisicion. 7. Si dho Pretend.te ô alg.o de sus Ascendt.es ô deudo suio han tenido oficios viles en la Republica. 8. Si sus P.es ô Hermanos de dho Pretendt.e pueden passar decentemt.e la vida, sin que necessiten de su aiuda, y asistencia. 9. Si dho Pretendt.e es de vida, y costumbres aprovadas, de tal modo que no es reo, ni sospechoso de algun crimen, ô delito, como es homicidio, hurtos, ô otros semejantes, ô maiores, por los quales aya sido condenado, ô se tema le condenen por processo juridico. 10. Si dho Pretent.e esta libre de dar quentas, ô tiene mas deudas que su Hazd.a vale de tal manera, que por esso se originen pleytos, ô contiendas, ô que la Religion, ô Pretend.te puedan ser molestados; ô si es libre, ô ligado con Matrimonio. 11. Si â los Testigos de esta Ynformacion les comprehende alguna de las Generales de la Ley; como si son Parientes, de dho Pretendt.e ô sus Ascendientes, ô Deudos, Amigos intimos, ô Enemigos.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

85

mitment to living in poverty, obedience, and chastity, the three principal vows of the Franciscan Order (as well as other mendicant orders). Hence, these investigations were concerned with accepting fit candidates as much as rejecting “any novice who lacked complete aptness in clean blood, education and other necessary qualities.”21 Docility and spirituality paved the way to enter a Franciscan college. Obedience was not just a friar’s vow but also a distinctive quality of the missionary. Obedience, according to Saint Francis, entailed an unconditional acquiescence of the friars to the general prelates of the order, to papal authority, and to guardians.22 Beyond vows, inculcating hierarchy pragmatically owed much to the perpetuation of deference and a sense of duty in each religious. Obedience was crucial not only as a means to prevent members from introducing unrest into the apostolic communities or putting the evangelical ministry in jeopardy, but also for staffing the missionary effort. For this matter, información commissaries and notaries collected details about the aspirants’ childhood and adolescence. After José Pérez Moreno, a Creole from Ahuacatlán (Tepic), was admitted to the novitiate at the Querétaro college in 1702, one of the witnesses to his información underscored his irreproachable behavior as well as his craftsmanship, fulfilling the “obligations of a good son to his mother, helping and succoring her” as needed.23 Such was also the case when Cristóbal de Mazariego wrote from Guadalajara in early 1733 on behalf of Juan Mariano Molina. Not only did he describe the aspirant as “very industrious” but, above all, he accentuated his obedience to his mother “as if he were seven years old.” Mazariego continued by writing that Molina’s vocation had always been like a lay brother of Saint Francis—indeed, he was applying as a chorister—indicated by his constancy and firmness when facing several unspecified adversities.24

21. Prologue of Fray Pedro Navarrete in Castro, Directorio para informaciones: “Novicio alguno, que no tenga todos los cabales, en sangre limpia, literatura, y demàs (p.) calidades necessarias, segun las leyes de la Religion.” 22. More evident in his testament, Saint Francis commanded that all friars “obey their guardians.” See Rodríguez Herrera, Los escritos de San Francisco de Asís, 412–416, 512, quote from testament on p. 640: “Et omnes alii fratres teneantur ita obedire guardianis suis. . . .” 23. “Información de José Pérez Moreno,” 1702, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 1, no. 16: “[A]plicado al travajo de q.e ha passado y vivido con las obligass.ns de buen hijo a su madre socorriendola y aiudandola en su menester. . . .” 24. “Información de Juan Mariano Molina,” 1733, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 6, no. 71, fol. 7r: “[M]ui trabajador, y lo mejor q le hallo es estar hasta oy con tanta sujesion a su M.e como si fuera de siete Años. Su vocasion â sido y es de ser Religioso Lego de N.P.S. franco, y en con S.to de Recoleccion, esta vocasion se la ê provado de varias maneras, y para descargo de mi consiencia hallo pareserme ser de buen espiritu y me persuado â su constancia en medio de barias contradisiones, y q por ellas podia aver desmallado, y mas quando no experimenta nesesidades, ni afanes para mantenerse con moderada desensia, antes si veo q N.P.S. Fran.co le insta y le aviva mas, y mas sus deseos, como el mejor informara â VR.ma

86

To Sin No More

Hierarchy, respect, and obedience were shared values in early modern Spanish society. Children, women, servants, and slaves lived under the authority of the paterfamilias or head of household insofar as these rights did not conflict with their rights as Christians. Likewise, all men and women were subject to civil as well as ecclesiastical power; ultimately men and women were under the supreme authority of the king on earth and God in heaven. Certainly Franciscan authorities preferred new associates who stood out as good sons and good students, having been subordinated to the power of their parents and teachers before submission to the master of novices and college superiors. Aspirants and people in their environment were also probably aware of these criteria.25 Recruiters also sought a reputed inclination for the religious career in novices’ early practices. All aspirants presented certifications of baptism and communion and, for those headed toward the priesthood, an additional proof of their confirmation was required.26 Although piety could not be quantitatively measured, church attendance and receiving the sacraments were checked. Since the mid-sixteenth century, the Council of Trent had in fact sacramentalized daily life in the Catholic world, a process that extended to the Americas. At the same time as parish priests and missionaries painstakingly kept records of parishioners and neophytes attending mass services, holy day observance, and receiving the sacraments, ordinary men and women witnessed and commented on the religious commitment of their neighbors as well. Franciscan commissaries and other authorities not only noted the honesty and good habits of the aspirant but also, as one case illustrates, his religious vow and reputation for visiting places of worship “with much devotion,” and spending most of his days and nights at home.27

a voca, y hallando la recta y prudente determinacion espero meresera el logro q el desea, y yo sup.co y ruego a VR.ma le esepte, y resiva en aprobasion la q mejor dira con las obras, lo q yo por mi ignorancia no alcanso y mas quando VR.ma ni al pretendiente conose ni ami q lo ruego, y pido, puede al presente conoser sino es para mandarme.” 25. On household authority and mirroring in political arenas, see Bianca Premo, Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority, and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 23–29. Parents, teachers, and tutors could not interfere in the rights of their subordinates to membership in the Catholic community and to receiving the sacraments. Until 1776 in Spain (1778 in America), young men and women had the right to marry without parental approval. Only after the Crown’s intervention did parents gain the right to prevent the marriage of their offspring while the latter were under parental authority. See Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988). 26. On the requirement to present certification of baptism, see Castro, Directorio para informaciones, 2. Regarding certification of confirmation, see Informaciones in AHPFM-FCSCQ, P. 27. “Información de Nicolás Antonio Salceda,” 1789, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 11, no. 147: “[H]ombre honesto, y de buenas costumbres, y q.e experimentó en el, una par-

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

87

Besides piety, aspirants had to prove their lineage from old Christian families (i.e., without Jewish, heretical, or Moorish ancestry), physical strength and good health (sans body deformities and contagious diseases), and legitimate birth from parents married in the Church. They were expected to possess an irreproachable reputation in their communities, and thus could not bring scandal to the order. Informaciones also explored the candidate’s and his ancestors’ occupations in order to discard those known to have been involved in any “vile” trade such as comedians, bailiffs, butchers, executioners, minstrels, and town criers. An aspirant and his ancestors must not have been punished by the Inquisition nor descended from slaves. In America, to qualify for a religious post one had to be of Spanish lineage without Indian and African ancestry. If the prelate and the discretorio unanimously approved the investigation, the candidate entered the novitiate for a one-year probation period, after which he swore the Franciscan vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity, and his hair was cut in a circle (tonsure) that symbolized his profession as a friar.28 Franciscan apostolic colleges maintained the general policy of rejecting native and African persons, and their descendants. Since the sixteenth century, this trend was commonplace in other religious orders and the diocesan church in America.29 Early in the colonial period, Franciscans expressed their frustration with the failure to maintain two separate repúblicas, one de indios, and the other, de españoles. They often argued that miscegenation of Indians, Spaniards, and Africans engendered colonial decadence. Their writings are unambiguous about their position on racial discrimination. Franciscan friars

ticular veneracíon a los S.es Sacerdotes a q.nes trataba de su merced, y lo bió frequentar con mucha devocion los templos, y estando lo mas de el dia recogido en su casa.” That same year, witnesses highlighted Manuel Dávila Quevedo’s good manners, studies, industry, and virtue. One witness further swore that he had frequented churches: “[l]e tiene y ha tenido spre por Mozo de buenos procederes, y aplicado desde niño, a los estudios, y empleos de virtud. . . . [S]abe ha sido spre virtuoso, aplicado al estudio, y frecuencia devota de los templos. . . . [S]u ingreso a la Relig.on es por mejor servir a Dios.” From “Información de Manuel Quevedo Dávila,” 1789, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 11, no. 146, fols. 3v, 4r. For the sacramentalization of the Catholic world, see Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770, 14–15; and Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 13– 16. For sixteenth-century Mexico, see Pardo, The Origins of Mexican Catholicism. As Delumeau argued, the sacramentalization of Europe that resulted from application of the Council of Trent decisions took a long time to spread throughout the Catholic world in the early modern period. 28. This contrasts with the three-year novitiate of the Jesuits. Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 218. In the case of the Franciscan Order, the informaciones process is described in Castro, Directorio para informaciones and the informaciones under study. 29. For a synthesis on the Catholic Church’s position on the ordination of Indian priests, see Magnus Lundberg, “El clero indígena en hispanoamérica: de la legislación a la impementación y práctica eclesiástica,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 38, (2008): 39–62.

88

To Sin No More

in sixteenth-century Guadalajara rejected “any mestizo [mixture of Indian and European ancestry], mulatto, or black as interpreter of the audiencias [judicial courts], since they are prone to lie, and some get drunk, and lie and rob the Indians who take cases to justice.” They feared that “the number of mestizoand-mulatto vagabonds is increasing in this land,” and that if no one acted in a timely fashion, they would take over the land.30 While Indians were viewed as potential Christians, friars predominantly doubted their commitment to celibacy. In their minds, Indians were sexually promiscuous, and thus better suited for marriage. A study of the Franciscan province of the Holy Gospel of Mexico in the seventeenth century shows that among over one thousand informaciones, only ten were aimed at Indians and fifty at mestizos.31 Persons of African ancestry particularly attracted the friars’ prejudice. In his history of New Spain written in the early sixteenth century, Fray Toribio de Benavente avowed that blacks were a plague suffered by Indians and Spaniards alike.32

30. “Relación que los Franciscanos de Guadalajara dieron de los conventos que tenía su orden, y de otros negocios generales de aquel Reino,” in Joaquín García Izcalbalceta, ed., Códice Franciscano, 2nd ed. (1886–1892; Mexico City: Editorial Salvador Chávez Hayhoe, 1941), 158: “No conviene que ningún mestizo ni mulato ni negro sea intérprete en ninguna Audiencia, porque son muy aparejados á mentir, y algunos dellos se emborrachan, y engañan y roban á los indios que van á negocio á la justicia. . . . Va creciendo tanto esta tierra de mestizos y mulatos vagabundos, que si no se remedia con tiempo de ponellos en razón.” 31. The best study of the ethnic origins of the friars and the legalities behind ordination of Indians and mestizos is Morales, Ethnic and Social Background. Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta was one of the leading voices against the ordination of Indians as priests, arguing that only marriage could restrain native men from their sexual incontinence. For Robert Ricard, this was one of the major problems in the foundation of the Church in Mexico. Ricard, La conquista espiritual, 418–421. On the other hand, nunneries were open to mestiza novices and nuns from the beginning, though they also suffered discrimination. For a case study of convents for nuns in Cuzco, Peru, see Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 17, 32–33. Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta also opposed the taking of vows by Indian nuns. Jerónimo de Mendieta, Historia Eclesiástica Indiana, 2 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1973), bk. 3, ch. 52, 1:190. The decree that prohibited Indian and mestizo priesthood dated back to 1539 and was sanctioned by the provincial chapter of the Holy Gospel of Mexico in 1567. The document decreed that “neither Indian nor mestizo may be received to the habit of our Order, nor may those born in this country be received, except . . . by unanimous joint action of the father provincial and the definitorium of the province. Any investiture made contrary to this provision is invalid.” (“Ordenamos que ningún indio ni mestizo pueda ser recibido al hábito de nuestra Orden, ni los nacidoes en esta tierra pueden ser recibidos, si no fuere por el P. Provincial y Discretos de la Provincia juntamente, y la receptción de otra manera hecha sea en sí ninguna.”) From “Copia y Relación de la Orden que se tienen en celebrar los capítulos provinciales desta provincia del Santo Evangelio que es de la Orden de San Francisco en la Nueva España,” in Códice Franciscano, 132–133. The quote in English appears in Morales, Ethnic and Social Background, 16. 32. Fray Toribio de Benavente, Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España (Madrid: Dastin, 2001), bk. 1, ch. 1, 72.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

89

Friars writing to their brethren in Europe disseminated prejudice to their readers across the Atlantic, inculcating their xenophobic ideas concealed in a rhetoric that described the New World as corruptive.33 In spite of royal support for an Indian priesthood, the Catholic Church and its branches, including the propaganda fide colleges, remained stubborn in preventing the ordination of indigenous priests. In two cédulas reales on March 12, 1697, and February 1, 1723, Charles II (1665–1700) and Philip V (1700–1746) ordered that Indians be admitted to all religious orders, “educated in the Colleges, and promoted, according to their merit and capacity, to the Ecclesiastical Dignities and public offices.” The cédulas reales further instructed the commissary generals of all the orders in America “to foster the admission of Indians to the orders.” In the 1760s, the Council of the Indies sent new cédulas to jog the commissaries’ memory that all religious orders should “receive and admit to the habit and profession Indians who requested it and had the same conditions as required for the Spaniards in the Sacred Constitutions.” The king ruled that “the quality of the Indians is neither impediment for their admission nor for their promotion to ecclesiastical dignities and public offices in the Republic.”34 The colegios de propaganda fide

33. Mendieta’s bias against Creole friars is clear in his following statements: “[L]os padres viejos y expertos que ha habido en esta tierra que uniformiter sintieron que cuando la religión de San Francisco en Indias dejase de ser cebada con frailes de España, sería cosa perdida, gran cuidado en que de España en ninguna manera envíen frailes que tengan muestras de descuidados en la guarda de su profesión, sino celoso della, aunque vengan pocos, que más harán pocos escogidos que diez tantos no tales.” In Letter by Fr. Jerónimo de Mendieta to an illustrious gentleman, Mexico City, March 20, 1574, in Mariano Cuevas, ed., Documentos Inéditos del Siglo XVI para la Historia de México, 2nd ed. (1914; repr., Mexico City: Porrúa, 1975), 299. For the eighteenth century, see, for instance, the letter by Fray Francisco López Salgueiro, who wrote to his former prelate in Spain that people of African descent “swamp and stain this land to the extent that one can hardly recognize the Spanish blood of those born here.” Thus, he exaggerated, “[o]ut of a hundred informaciones [only a] few are [acceptable].” López, “Misiones de Méjico,” 262. A classic study that analyzes the circulation of the idea that the New World was corrupt and how such decadence influenced nature and human beings is Antonello Gerbi, La disputa del Nuevo Mundo: Historia de una polémica (1750–1900), trans. Antonio Alatorre, 2nd Spanish ed. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1982). 34. Patent by Fray Manuel de Nájera, commissary general of New Spain, to the guardians and other friars of the colegios de propaganda fide in Mexico City, Querétaro, and Zacatecas, and the Convento de San Francisco of Mexico City, February 26, 1767. This patent includes another by Fray Plácido de Pineda, commissary general of the Indies, to all provincial ministers and other superiors in the Indies, Convento de San Francisco in Madrid, October 30, 1766, in LEC, fols. 68v–69v: “[P]ara q.e fuessen admitidos en las Religiones, educados en los Colegios, y promovidos, segun su merito, y capacidad á las Dignidades Eclesiasticas, y oficios públicos[,] . . . fomentar la admission de Yndios en ellas[,] . . . recivan, y admitan á nro Santo Habito y Profession á los Yndios; q.e lo solicitaren, y q.e tengan las mismas Condiciones, q.e piden nras Sagradas Constituciones para los Españoles; pues la qualidad de Yndios, segun la declaracion de su MAg.d no es impedim.to para su admission,

90

To Sin No More

turned a blind eye. An exception that confirms the norm came from Chile in the late eighteenth century, where Franciscan missionaries from the apostolic Colegio de San Ildefonso in Chillán established the Seminario de Naturales, a college to educate and incorporate Indian boys from the Araucanía frontier in southern Chile into Spanish culture. Even though the program also supported the idea of an Indian priesthood, apparently only six Indians were ordained between 1794 and 1811, when the school was closed.35 The terminology used in the investigations to assess potential novices highlights the rejection of Indian and African ancestry in the colleges. The exclusion of Indians, Africans, and their offspring appears in the investigations from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz and shows little change in the pattern of racial jargon used throughout the colonial period and beyond. In the first investigations from the 1690s, commissaries asked applicants to confirm that their parents and grandparents were Spaniards without mixing with mulattoes, Indians, chinos, mestizos. After the 1720s, terms like castizo, lobo, and coyote became commonplace in the investigations.36 Concerns over black ancestry often emerged in replies by witnesses, but particularly after the 1750s, when African lineage turned into an obsessive preoccupation in the informaciones.37 While independence of the Spanish-American colonies brought a reformulation of the concept of citizenship, which extended the meaning of citizen to all racial groups, all post-independence questionnaires for informaciones and witnesses’ testimonies from Querétaro required candidates to prove their racial purity and maintained a disdainful attitude towards African ancestry.38

ni para ser promovidos á las Dignid.s eclesiast.s y oficios publicos de la Republica.” For Jesuit opposition to the Indian priesthood in the Guarani missions on grounds of intellectual level and sexuality, see Ganson, The Guaraní under Spanish Rule, 173. 35. Weber, Bárbaros, 129–130. 36. “Información de Antonio de la Hoz y Bustamante,” 1691, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 1, no. 5: “Españoles, sin mescla de Mulatos, Îndios, Chiños ô Mestisos?” See also “Información de Miguel Gómez Solis,” 1690, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 1, no. 3. For a later información, see “Información de Francisco Joaquín de Coto,” 1731, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 5, no. 66, fol. 1r–1v. 37. Examples of the investigations’ focus on African ancestry in the late colonial period are “Información de Manuel Asunsolo y Llantada, “Información de Vicente Bruno Estrada y Valle,” 1805, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 13, no. 171; and “Información de Carlos Díaz,” 1818, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 13, no. 179. There is also an instance from the Discalced Mercedarian Order in “Información de Esteban Díaz,” 1767, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 9, no. 115, 2r–2v. This does not mean that investigators lost interest in Indian ancestry, as in the “Información de Domingo Esteban Díaz de Gamarra,” 1779, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 10, no. 136; and “Información de Ignacio Medrano y Cardoso,” 1809, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 13, no. 172. For a discussion of these trends in eighteenth-century Mexico, see Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 227–264. 38. For example, in 1806, Francisco de Miranda championed “[q]ue los buenos e inocentes Indios, así como los bizarros pardos, y morenos libres crean firmemente, que somos todos conciudadanos, y que los premios pertenecen exclusivamente al mérito, y a la

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

91

In spite of the new juridical definition of citizenship, which after independence expanded to everyone born on Mexican soil, the informaciones display a different reality vis-à-vis applicants’ racial origins.39 Proof of Spanishness was required even after the expulsion of the Spaniards in 1827, which attests to the continuity of racial-ethnic bias in the Americas. The informaciones for the Querétaro colegio maintained racial descriptors that amounted to epithets such as “black” and “mulatto” in the questionnaires, and witnesses went so far as to refer to lobos in their responses. However, words with an indigenous connotation—indios or mestizos—disappeared from the investigation lexicon. Questionnaires contained derogatory ethnic jargon that had characterized the colonial period until the 1850s, and even then witnesses continued discriminating against persons of African ancestry. In José Homobono Vázquez Tejeda’s investigation of 1829, the first to admit an Indian as a witness in the public investigation, indigenous and “Spanish” witnesses alike swore that José Homobono and his parents and grandparents were not “mixed with [the] race of Blacks, Mulattoes, Lobos, or any other Casta that blemish their lineage. . . . [They have] conserved their integrity and purity of blood.”40 That same year, the first recognized mestizo, chorister Epifanio Pérez Torres, and Indian donado Juan Antonio Montañés entered the Querétaro colegio novitiate. They were followed by two mestizos and four Indians among a few dozen ethnic “españoles” until 1905.41 Of forty-

virtud; en cuya suposición obtendrán en adelante, infaliblemente, las recompensas militares y civiles, por su mérito solamente” (http://www.bicentenarios.es/doc/8060802.htm, accessed September 29, 2017). Point 12 in the Plan de Iguala, which in 1821 ended three centuries of Spanish colonial rule in Mexico, acknowledged the following: “Todos los habitantes de la Nueva España, sin distinción alguna de europeos, africanos ni indios, son ciudadanos de esta monarquía con opción á todo empleo, según su mérito y virtudes.” See the Plan de Iguala and related documents at http://www.sonsofdewittcolony.org// iguala.htm (accessed September 29, 2017). 39. Ver por ejemplo las informaciones de “Información de Agustín Pérez Llera,” fols. 3r–4r, 5v; “Información de José María Barrera Sánchez,” 1822, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 13, no. 181, fols. 2v, 4r–6r; “Información de Manuel Torres Baranda de Estrada,” 1826, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 187. 40. See, for instance, “Información de José María Farfán,” 1827, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 189; “Información de José Homobono Vázquez Tejeda,” 1829, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 193: “misturado con raza de Negros, Mulatos, Lobos, ú otra Casta q.e los maculáse, en su Linage; que han conservado su generacion integridad, y pureza de sangre.” 41. “Información de Epifanio Pérez Torres,” 1829, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 194; “Información de Juan Antonio Montañés,” 1829, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 195; “Información de José Liberato y José Marcelino Elías Nieto,” 1833, AHPFMFCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 201; “Información de José Gumersindo Zúñiga Elias,” 1835, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 205; “Información de José María Salinas,” 1848, AHPFMFCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 211; “Información de Agustín Aguilar Bermúdez,” 1837, AHPFMFCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 208; “Información de José Ignacio Estrada,” 1880, AHPFMFCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 227.

92

To Sin No More

three informaciones conducted between 1827 and 1905, the year of the last available investigation, commissioners interrogated witnesses about candidates’ African ancestry on fifteen occasions until 1848. Spanishness remained a concern until 1880, though only in seven investigations.42 In the last investigation in 1905, four witnesses specifically denied José Guadalupe Figueroa Arellano’s heretic or Jewish ancestry. This case evinces not only the Catholic Church’s prejudice but also popular attitudes towards non-Catholics.43 Reputation and honor were intimately linked to race and social status in the Iberian world. “Tell me with whom you go and I will tell you who you are” (Dime con quien vas y te diré quién eres), is the Spanish proverb that intrinsically connects an individual’s identity, especially social status, to his or her family and social connections. Men and women were encouraged to befriend and marry within their own class; this was especially true for the upper classes. Thus, candidates were particularly interested in proving their preeminence and suitability for the clerical status—already considered prestigious in early modern Iberia and Spanish America—through social connections. It was in the best interest of the aspirants to be associated, as they were, to prominent members of the clerical and civil strata (estamentos), who were viewed as holders of virtue, honor, and reputation. Many families eagerly supported one or more sons and daughters for ecclesiastical careers as a means to advance or consolidate their social status. For some, a clerical career was also a way out of poverty or to get an education.44 A look at the informaciones shows these patterns were also present among aspirants to the Colegio de la Santa Cruz (Querétaro), many of whom had family connections to secular priests and friars.45 42. The first información to eliminate the question on race was in 1831, “Información de Florencio Espinosa López,” 1831, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 199. In the same year, according to the “Información de José Ignacio Muñoz Guevara” (1831, AHPFMFCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 197), witnesses did not answer whether the aspirant and his ancestors were legitimate Spaniards without trace of mulatos, lobos, and so on. Witnesses’ lack of response also occurred in the “Información de Rafael Ramírez Pérez,” 1831, AHPFMFCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 198. In the 1832 “Información de José Vicente Melesio” (1832, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 14, no. 200), witnesses were referred to as Spaniards and they also responded that the candidate and his ancestors were Spaniards. Ironically, the baptismal record of the aspirant shows that his parents were unknown, and that the aspirant was a servant in the home of don Vicente Melesio and doña María Concepción Mójica. 43. See witnesses’ answers in “Información de José Guadalupe Figueroa Arellano,” 1905, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 15, no. 229, fols. 11r–14v. 44. The list of works that deal with importance of the clerical stratum in Spanish America is too large to list. Some superb works are Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred; Burns, Colonial Habits; and Lavrin, Brides of Christ. Ramón Gutiérrez, who uses the same proverb, studied the links between honor and status in colonial New Mexico. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, quote is on p. 209. 45. All informaciones included the question on “vile” or “infamous” behaviors and occupations.” See Castro, Directorio para informaciones, 25. For instance,” the “Información de Baltasar Coronel,” and “Información de José Ignacio Alegre Capetillo,” 1744,

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

93

Consequently, it was not uncommon for members of the colleges to have more than one relative in the Catholic Church. Among the aspirants, Fray Diego Miguel de Bringas y Encinas (born in Sonora, 1759), already a priest when he entered the novitiate of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz on May 7, 1783, stands out. The Bringas family contributed to the religious landscape of Querétaro with Fray Diego Miguel’s two clergyman uncles, as well as each of his seven sisters and two aunts who lived at the Santa Clara de Querétaro convent. In secular and Franciscan investigations, witnesses praised families like the Bringases who held an aura of piety. At an early age Diego Miguel was placed in the custody of Fray Joseph del Río, a Queretaran missionary in the Ures mission in Sonora, who taught him Latin. Still a teenager, he moved to Querétaro to study at the Jesuit Colegio de San Francisco Xavier, where he obtained the degree of bachiller. He was likely ordained to the priesthood in 1781 or 1782. Beyond his family name’s pious reputation, Bringas’s vocation to the clerical state was unquestionable. Even as a youth, Bringas had a reputation for piousness. He was a devout Catholic and a judicious person with a pacific temperament, which won him the affection of others. To highlight his simplicity, witnesses recounted Bringas’s dislike for commercial enterprises and mechanical labor. Even when required to help his brother in his father’s store, he did it regretfully and sorrowfully. According to witnesses’ accounts, Bringas preferred to be physically punished by his father than take any part in commercial transactions or handling cash money. That this type of biographical information, typical of religious hagiographies, abounds in the informaciones reveals how hagiographic discourse permeated Catholicism and thus willingness among the laity to use it to benefit those who sought clerical positions.46 These descriptions contrast somewhat with contemporaries’ and historians’ depictions of Bringas as a talented and well-educated scholar, a missionary with sound managerial and political capacities, a convicing writer and orator, and a royalist schemer who after Mexican independence participated in plotting for years to reconquer Mexico for the Spanish monarchy.47 Some novices had family connections to the Franciscan Order and the colleges. In a few instances, the colleges produced missionary dynasties in the Hispanic world. I have examined some illustrative cases from the novitiate of the

AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 7, no. 88, specified butchers, executioners, and towncriers as vile trades. 46. “Información de Diego Bringas de Manzaneda,” 1783, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 10, no. 141. About Bringas’s sisters at the convent of Santa Clara in Querétaro, see Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 372. 47. Daniel S. Matson and Bernard L. Fontana, “Introduction,” in Friar Bringas Reports to the King: Methods of Indoctrination on the Frontier of New Spain, 1796–1797, Daniel S. Matson and Bernard L. Fontana, trans. and eds. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977), 2–3.

94

To Sin No More

college in Querétaro. José Ignacio Alegre Capetillo, born in Veracruz, whose father was from Havana and well connected through several clerical relatives, was the nephew of a Dominican provincial minister and of the provincial of the Franciscan Provincia de Santa Elena de la Florida. The aspirant belonged to “[o]ne of the best lineages from Havana,” according to a witness. Ordained in February 1745, he was active in missions to Catholics and non-Christians in the Texas mission frontier.48 Miguel Fernández Colina was perhaps the nephew of Fray Antonio de los Ángeles Bustamante, doorman of the colegio in Querétaro whose life had been written by Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa. Fray Miguel Fernández was accepted as a chorister in 1725, thirty-five years after his illustrious ancestor.49 In 1746, Tomás Antonio Arcayos entered the novitiate and professed eleven years after his cousin Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, author of one of the chronicles of the colegios de propaganda fide. Moreover, Tomás Antonio had two uncles who were clerics, one of whom was a Franciscan serving in the Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México. Don Manuel de Arricivita, probably the father of Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, certified that he would provide for Arcayos’s widowed mother, who was impoverished, as well as her sons, if they could not find her father, a wealthy doctor residing in Manila.50 In 1779, Manuel Sanz de Azedo was admitted to the college as a lay brother. Sanz de Azedo was the nephew, on his mother’s side, of Fray Enrique Echasco, who had been a missionary in the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, and of Fray Francisco Echasco, a missionary serving at that time in the Colegio de San Fernando (Mexico City). Both Enrique and Francisco Echasco were originally from the Provincia de Cantabria (Spain), to which the former had returned to join the Franciscan Colegio de San Juan Bautista (Zaráuz, Spain) after leaving Querétaro in 1773.51 It is hardly surprising that witnesses also confirmed the social status and bloodline purity of aspirants by establishing kinship connections with the civil power, the other pillar of colonial society. A vast number of the informaciones

48. “Información de José Ignacio Alegre Capetillo,” 1744, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 7, no. 88: “de los mejores linajes de la Habana.” 49. “Información de Miguel Fernández Colina,” 1725, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 4, no. 54; see also “Información de Antonio de la Hoz y Bustamante,” 1691, AHPFMFCSCQ, P, file 1, no. 5. The life of Fray Antonio de los Ángeles, in Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa, El cherubin custodio de el arbol de la vida, la Santa Cruz de Querétaro: Vida del Ve. siervo de Dios Fray Antonio de los Angeles Bustamante.... (Mexico City: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1731). 50. “Información de Tomás Antonio Arcayos,” 1747, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 7, no. 96. 51. “Información de Manuel Sanz de Azedo,” 1779, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 10, no. 137; and for Fray Enrique Echasco, see “Representacion satisfactoria del Discretorio a los cargos que el Comisario General de Indias hace en su anterior carta del 24 de marzo de 1779,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, August 20, 1779, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 36, fol. 14v.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

95

associated candidates with alcaldes ordinarios, regidores, members of the Inquisition, and university professors. Some were linked to prominent members of government. Notably, connections did not exempt the applicant from the investigation, though it surely helped access to the novitiate. Indubitably, these relationships correlated with the educational background of the missionaries, as higher status generally meant a higher level of education. The case of Don Juan Blas de Beaumont stands out. Probably one of the most famous friars of his time, his credentials speak for themselves: “Master of Arts by the University of Paris, Latin Surgeon,52 Member of the Royal Academy of Madrid, Anatomic ‘demostrador’ and appointed by his Majesty as Main Surgeon of the Royal Hospital of Mexico City.” He was the son of King Philip V’s royal surgeon, reputed to have “great haciendas both in the suburbs of Madrid and Paris.” This madrileño was ordained Fray Pablo de la Purísima Concepción Beaumont on March 7, 1756. Not only did he assist the sick in and out of the colegio, he was also active in preaching to Catholics, and in 1768, traveled to Spain to recruit missionaries for the college. Four years later, he was incorporated into the Provincia de Michoacán due to health problems, where he wrote a monumental history of that Franciscan province.53

52. This term indicated that the individual was a university-trained surgeon. Latin surgeons or cirujanos latinos had been university-trained with Latin-language specialized texts. On the other hand, romance surgeons or cirujanos romances received no university training but rather learned through practical experience. Abraham Zavala Batlle, “El Protomedicato en el Perú,” Acta médica peruana 27 (April/June 2010): 151–157. 53. “Información de Juan Blas Beaumont,” 1756, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 8, no. 105: “asi en los contornos de Madrid, como en los de Paris tienen grandes Haciendas”; LNQ, fol. 102v: “Maestro en Artes en la Universidad Parisiense, Zirujano Latino, Socio de la Rl Academia Matritense, Demostrador Anathomico, y Zirujano Maior del Hospital R.l de Mexico por su Magd.” See also “Patente del M.R.P. Fr. José Antonio Oliva, Comisario General de Nueva España, al hermano corista Fr. Pablo de la Concepción Beaumont, para que no se ejercite en la curación de los enfermos seculares,” Convento Grande de San Francisco de México, March 27, 1756, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 4, no. 24; “Carta del P. Fr. José Miguel de Araujo, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, al P. Fr. Manuel de la Vega, Comisario General de Indias, remitiéndole información sobre el estado del Colegio y de sus misiones, y adjuntando lista de los religiosos del Colegio residentes en el mismo, en sus misiones y en el hospicio de Puebla,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, May 18 and 20, 1769, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 1; “Carta del Rvdmo. P. Fr. Manuel de la Vega, Comisario General de Indias, al P. Fr. José Miguel de Araujo, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, sobre las exenciones a los Lectores, sobre que no salga a curar el P. Fr. Pablo Beaumont, y sobre que los confesores de monjas que no vayan a atenderlas más de una vez a la semana,” Cuarto de Indias del Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, August 20, 1770, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 25; “Certificación del guardián y discretorio del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro a favor del P. Fr. Pablo de la Concepción Beaumont, quien desde al recepción del hábito el 2 de marzo de 1755 ha permanecido hasta el presente en el Colegio,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, June 4, 1772, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 5, no. 53; and LDQ1, fols. 132v–133r. His history of Michoacán was published almost two centuries later: Fray Pablo Beaumont, Crónica de Michoacán por Fr. Pablo Beaumont, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Publicaciones del Archivo General de la Nación, 1932).

96

To Sin No More

Bachiller Don José Agustín Antonio de Sopeña y Laerrán professed four years after Beaumont, studying in Guanajuato and later Mexico City under the tutelage of his uncle, the abbot of the Colegiata de Guadalupe. Don José Agustín studied philosophy in the Colegio de San Ildefonso in the viceregal capital. His uncle, Doctor Don Juan Joaquín de Sopeña y Laerrán, authored many works, including Elementos de Astronomía. His grandfather, Don Juan de Sopeña y Laerrán, embodied the American success story. After migrating from Spain, he became a successful merchant and one of the most important mining entrepreneurs in Guanajuato in the early eighteenth century. He became one of Guanajuato’s richest citizens, where he owned slaves and haciendas and held important public positions in its cabildo and court system. While wealth seems to have dwindled in the subsequent generation, Don José Agustín’s father was still described by witnesses as a well-off owner of haciendas and slaves.54 On average, the social status of novices who entered the Colegio de la Santa Cruz continued the pattern observed by Francisco Morales for the Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México in the seventeenth century. Novices belonged to the typical upper mainstream strata of colonial society. Some were linked to government officials in New Spain and the Iberian Peninsula, with fathers and grandparents holding positions as corregidores, scribes, and alcaldes ordinarios, or to the military such as infantry captains (capitanes de infantería) or lieutenants (alférez). Other novices’ parents were successful tradespeople, such as tailors, merchants, storekeepers, bakers, and farmers. A few owned haciendas and even slaves. Only a few of the aspirants’ trades are known, and of those, a few worked in a relative’s shop, one served as an apothecary (boticario), one as an attorney, and another as a silversmith apprentice. The rest were mostly students. Even though many claimed noble origins, particularly those coming from the Peninsula, only a few were truly members of the highest level in society, the rest being hijosdalgo, or lower noblemen. Socially speaking, friars who came from Spain derived from similar class backgrounds.55

54. Witnesses said don José Sopeña y Laerrán, father of the candidate, owned the hacienda of Loma Granada, 7,000 pesos in the hacienda del Molino and 1,000 pesos in the hacienda of San Gregorio; he also owned several slaves, “Información de José Agustín Antonio de Sopeña y Laerrán,” 1759, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 8, no. 112. See also José Luis Caño Ortigosa, “Mineros en el Cabildo de la villa de Guanajuato: 1660–1741.” Anuario de Estudios Americanos, 63, (January–June, 2006): 187–209. A brief biography of doctor don José Joaquín Sopeña y Laerran appears in Vicente de P. Andrade, Los Capitulares de la Insigne Nacional Colegiata Parroquial de Santa María de Guadalupe (Mexico City: Antigua Tip. de Orozco, Escalerillas 13, 1893), 234–235. 55. For the social and ethnic background of seventeenth-century novices in the Franciscan province of the Holy Gospel in central Mexico, see Morales, Ethnic and Social Background. For the Colegio de Querétaro, see all investigations in AHPFM-FCSCQ, P. For Spain, see Martínez Ruiz, El peso de la Iglesia, 191–197.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

97

Recruiting Friars Colleges recruited mostly ordained friars from other provinces and colleges in Spain and to a lesser degree from American friaries and colleges. The eighteenth century produced a strong revitalization of Franciscan missionary enthusiasm in Spanish America and Spain that compares to the sixteenth-century missionary “golden age,” a pattern broken only by warfare—the War for Spanish Succession (1700–1713), the Jenkins’ Ear War of the 1730s, and the Seven Year’s War (1756–1763). After the 1740s, the number of missionaries crossing the ocean to staff all Franciscan convents in the Americas began to rise, reaching its peak in the 1780s. This increase in Atlantic voyages in the 1780s was a coordinated response by the Crown and the Franciscan Order to the Jesuit expulsion in 1767. In this eighteenth-century missionary apex, colegios de propaganda fide in North and South America attracted most of the new waves of missionaries. At the time of the 1780s peak, Franciscan missionaries assigned to the apostolic seminaries comprised almost 60 percent of all Franciscan religious who traveled to the Americas (350 of 600). This trend increased in the early nineteenth century and until independence as most expeditions and most Franciscans went to colleges instead of provinces (see Figure 2.4). As we have seen, increasing numbers of Spanish missionaries also coincided with declining numbers of novices entering the Colegio de la Santa Cruz and Colegio de San Fernando in this period.56 Recruiting in Spain began as early as 1692, when Queretaran authorities sent commissioners to enlist men committed to following the strict seminary lifestyle and converting non-Christians as well as ministering to the spiritual needs of Catholics. In North America, missionaries from Spain were crucial for the evangelical and communal operability of the colleges in Querétaro, Guatemala City, Pachuca, and Mexico City. The Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (Zacatecas) remained the exception throughout the colonial period, as this college operated with mostly Creole novices and friars who came from other American Franciscan houses. All these colleges, with the exception of the Colegio de Cristo Crucificado in Guatemala City, actively worked in New Spain’s northern frontier missions. In South America, the colegios of Popayán in Colombia, Ocopa in Peru, and Tarija in Bolivia were staffed mostly by Spaniards. A study of the Colegio de Santa Rosa (Ocopa, Peru) revealed that at least 73 percent of the friars were born in Spain. Established in 1755, Tarija became the final destination of 160 missionaries in eleven expeditions from Spain between 1771 and 1822.57 The numbers of expedi-

56. See Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros; and ibid., “Expediciones misioneras.” 57. See, for instance, the decree of November 17, 1760: “Decreto para enviar misión a España reconociendo todos uniformemente la falta de Religiosos que el Colegio tiene,

98

To Sin No More

tions and religious from Spain show the American colleges’ insatiable demand for personnel. The colleges put into effect a system of collecting missionaries from Spain that the Franciscan Order had cunningly practiced since the sixteenth century. Before the colegios were established, American Franciscan provinces had routinely circumvented repeated royal efforts to ban commissioners from America traveling to Spain to recruit friars through delegates to the general chapters of the order in Europe. This scenario officially changed with the establishment of an Atlantic network of colleges of propaganda fide; these colleges could not send representatives who would act as collectors to the general chapters in Spain. Royal priorities to staff these new missionary seminaries consequently granted the colegios the privilege to regularly send recruiting commissioners, and as a byproduct alleviated the prohibition for the Franciscan provinces. Thus, throughout the eighteenth century, both Franciscan colegios and to a lesser degree provincias in the Americas sent recruiters to Spain. In the colegios, authorities were aware of the qualities necessary for such important business. In the 1780s, commissary general of the Indies, Fray Manuel María Trujillo, and veteran Tarijan Fray Manuel Mingo de la Concepción agreed that the ideal recruiter should be an experienced missionary who had preferably held office in the college, and was distinguished by his uncompromising integrity, eloquence, diplomacy, and sagacity. Not only did the recruiter have to convince friars to enroll but also the king and his Council of the Indies to allow their departure for the Americas. To sway royal decision makers, recruiters brought a plethora of reports and recommendations from the highest ecclesiastical and civil authorities that endorsed a certain college’s expedition and the need for more personnel. For purposes of recruitment, appointed commissioners personally visited Franciscan houses in Iberia to announce their college’s need for missionaries or memos were dispatched to all Franciscan provinces. These commissioners enrolled friars from Spanish sister seminaries and, when the numbers of college volunteers dwindled, from Franciscan provinces.58

assi para las Missiones de Fieles, como de infieles, y para dar devido cumplimiento a la sequela de la Comunidad,” in LDQ1, fols. 138v–139r. For Tarija, see the list of friars in Calzavarini Ghinello, ed., Presencia Franciscana y formación intercultural en el sudeste de Bolivia, vol. 1, 74, 117–122; vol. 3, 1407–1584. For the Colegio de Ocopa, see Jay Frederick Lehnertz, “Lands of the Infidels: The Franciscans in the Central Montaña of Peru, 1709–1824” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1974), 396; I thank Cameron Jones for this reference, see his In Service of Two Masters; and Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros, 50–51, 525–534. For Zacatecas see note 4 above. 58. The Spanish monarch repeatedly aduced the costly Atlantic voyages and the collecting commissioners’ biases to send friars to their own provinces in detriment of others in more evangelical need to deter American provinces from sending their own collectors to Spain. Civil authorities argued that Franciscan commissaries general in Madrid could objetively prioritize the real needs of the missionary program in the Americas. See Borges

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

99

To facilitate the recruiting process, colleges wrote guidelines and templates that commissioners used in their recruiting missions in Spain. A unique collection of model letters from the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (Tarija) to Franciscan prelates as well as other ecclesiastical and civil authorities illustrates the features of desirable candidates. The letters show a logical preference for “professional missionaries” from colleges rather than Franciscan provinces in Spain concomitant with Llinás’s initial ideals of Spanish colleges replenishing their American brethren. There was a predilection for friars who had missionary experience on the home front, that is, who had participated in missions to Catholics, a less known though pivotal evangelical aspect of the colleges’ missionary program and the focus of subsequent chapters in this book. Missionary recruiters should first direct their queries for personnel to the guardian and discretorio of all Spanish propaganda fide seminaries (the list included the Colegio de Sahagún, founded before Fray Antonio Llinás established the first college in Querétaro). Following what might have been customary practice in recruiting friars within the Franciscan Order, authorities in Tarija further sought healthy candidates younger than forty, without “the vice to smoke . . . too much tobacco,” who do not “use wine or spirits in a disorderly fashion,” nor who customarily defy their prelates. Recruiters also preferred friars with three years of philosophy and three years of scholastic theology and preaching and/or confessing experience. Potential friars must have demonstrated a desire to go to America. The document includes a response to less suitable candidates, who were advised to carefully reconsider their decision to travel to America. To prevent unfit candidates from opting for missionary vocations, they were encouraged to speak only to their confessors and to meditate on such decision for four or five days. These candidates were obliged to deeply consider their commitment to the eternal salvation of others as much as the salvation of their own souls and a fresh pledge to the Franciscan vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. From the perspective of an American college, joining was a new birth within the Franciscan order, a conversion to a stricter life as a Franciscan.59 The theoretical preference for Spanish colleges was rather impractical. From early on, apostolic colleges in Spain fell short of supplying their American brethren with missionaries. Considering the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, of the 270 friars who traveled from Spain and whose origins are known, only 53 came from apostolic seminaries in Spain and the rest from provincial monasteries.

Morán, El envío de misioneros, 100–105. For the Colegio de Querétaro, see also Borges Morán, “Expediciones misioneras.” 59. Cuaderno con fórmulas para escribir a las autoridades de los colegios de España, AFT, RR-188: “los vicios de fumar sin necesidad y con demasia tabaco, “usar con desorden del vino ô aguardiente.”

100

To Sin No More

For the Colegio de Ocopa in Peru, 31 of a total 360 who crossed the Atlantic came from a Spanish colegio. The Colegio de Tarija also followed this trend. In summary, all Spanish colleges and all Spanish provinces contributed personnel to the colleges in the Americas, with the latter providing the vast majority.60 Thus, geographically and ethnically speaking, friars representing the rich cultural diversity of eighteenth-century Iberia traveled to the propaganda fide convents, as they did to other religious communities. Most of the friars had mastered Castilian, but not all; some who might have spoken Castilian were bilingual in Basque, Catalan, or Galician. A small number of religious men traveled from Italy, France, or Switzerland to the Americas.61 While the origins of Spanish friars varied, most friars who embarked from Cádiz for a Franciscan apostolic college had some type of evangelical experience and second-hand knowledge of the Americas. Most of them were priests (90 percent in contrast to 60 percent of all the Jesuits who arrived in the Americas); many were preachers and confessors with three years of philosophy, three years of scholastic theology, and had studied moral theology; and some had actively participated in popular missions to Catholics in rural areas and urban centers. Clearly, they were not neophytes in the matters of evangelization and conversion.62 This is particularly the case for those who came from

60. Borges Morán, “Expediciones misioneras”; Lehnertz, “Lands of the Infidels,” 396; Calzavarini Ghinello, ed., Presencia Franciscana y formación intercultural en el sudeste de Bolivia, vol. 3, 1407–1584. 61. Michael McCloskey, O.F.M., suspects that in Fray Antonio Llinás’s first expedition, some of the friars “could not even speak Spanish,” referring to the Catalans and Majorcans. McCloskey, The Formative Years, 40. Fray Francisco Fermín de Lasuén, a Basque missionary from Vitoria who was assigned to the missions of California acknowledged in a letter his difficulties in using the Castilian language. Documents held at the Colegio de Escornalbóu in Cataluña were written in both Castilian and Catalan, though sermons were predominantly written in Catalan. This contrasts with Galician sermons from the Colegio de Herbón, written in Castilian instead of the local Galician. 62. Pedro Borges lists all missionary expeditions to America in Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros, 511–540. For the expeditions to Querétaro, see also Borges Morán, “Expediciones misioneras;” and, relying on the former, see Vicente Rodríguez, “Colegio de Querétaro. Último reclutador de misioneros,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 47 (1987): 161– 178. For the period between 1790 and 1830 in New Spain, see Carlos José de Rueda Iturrate, “Envío de misioneros franciscanos a Nueva España,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 57, no. 225–228 (1997): 421–432. Rueda Iturrate points out that almost three-quarters of Franciscan missionaries to America were priests. Half of the priests had a complementary academic preparation. Almost all the priests had licenses to preach, and half of them to hear confessions as well. Almost half of the members of the expeditions between 1790 and 1830 went to the Colegios, especially to the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City with 20 percent, Querétaro and Pachuca, 10 percent each, and Orizaba, 7 percent. Guatemala was the fifth colegio, with only four friars. Most of the missionaries who traveled to the Colegio of Moquegua in South America (est. 1795) were priests with licenses to preach and confess. See Pilar Hernández Aparicio, “El envío de misioneros al Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Moquegua, 1795–1818,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 57, no. 225–228 (1997): 731–757.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

101

Iberian colleges with specific missionary preparation and know-how that exposed them to the type of activities they would meet in the American colleges. Friars from colleges such as Escornalbóu, Herbón, and Sahagún actively preached to Catholics in Cataluña, southeastern France, Galicia, and Castile before their departure from Spain. Returning missionaries from American missions surely conversed with their confreres about the American landscapes and peoples in addition to their evangelical duties. First-hand information also came from missionaries in the field in America who wrote back to Spanish convents. Although it is improbable that friars learned any native language before they actually reached America, the new lands were not unknown to the future missionaries. Even during the waiting period before embarking at Cádiz and the long trans-Atlantic voyage, friars read and heard stories about the American missionary topographies.63 Most friars who left Spain for the Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro between 1683 and 1822 were ordained priests who averaged twenty-nine years of age (half of the newcomers were over thirty), and had already received licenses to administer the sacraments from Iberian bishops. This latter fact was pivotal, since their primary duty would be to give the sacraments to Catholics and frontier non-Catholics in remote missionary outposts such as Texas and Sonora.64 Hence, these missionaries from Spain, mostly in their late twenties and thirties, were on average more mature than friars and novices who entered the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in America. A least 124 religious were in their twenties, 101 were in their thirties, and 9 were in their forties. Occasionally, older or younger members were admitted into the expeditions. The oldest one, 63. For American letters to friars in Spanish colleges, see the “Cartas de América” in the Colegio de Herbón, Archivo Franciscano de Santiago de Compostela, published by Anastasio López, “Cartas de América,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 3 (1915), 64–87; ibid., “Cartas de los misioneros del Colegio de Chillán (Chile),” 1 (1914), 165–76; 2 (1914), 99–126; 3 (1915), 64–67; and ibid., “Misiones de Méjico: Rasgos de la vida del P. Fr. Francisco López Salgueiro. Sus cartas.” Archivo Ibero-Americano 2 (1914): 256–286 There is evidence that suggests communication between returned missionaries and those who left for America. For instance, only three years into his religious career, Fray Antonio Melis left the seminary of Escornalbóu in Cataluña, Spain, for the Colegio de Querétaro in 1692, still twenty-three years of age and a subdeacon. After nine years in Mexico, he returned to Escornalbóu, where he died in 1737, 67 years of age, “Libro verde ÿ del noviciado y de la admision de los missioneros en este Colegio de Escornalbou. . . ,” AHPFC, ms. 4/A/8, fols. 1r, 7v; and Borges Morán, “Expediciones misioneras al Colegio de Querétaro (Méjico), 1683–1822.” Lay brother Fray Manuel Alonso, also called “El Indianillo” (Little Indian), spent ten years in the Colegio de Ocopa, Perú, before he went back to his Colegio of Sahagún. Taurino Burón Castro, “Colegio franciscano de misiones populares de Sahagún (1680), según un manuscrito del año 1805,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 61, no. 238–239 (2001), 206–207. 64. This was also the case in Spanish New Mexico. Norris, After “The Year Eighty”, 2. On the other hand, most of the Jesuits were still students when they embarked for America and Asia. For America see Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros, 538–539. For Asia, Brockey, Journey to the East, 209.

102

To Sin No More

tall and bald Fray Eugenio de Santa María de Jesús, born in Madrid, was 50 years old when he left his home province of Castilla to join the expedition of 1699. Regarding the youngest recruits, records show only two teenagers, donado Bernabé Pablo Paredes, also born in Madrid, was only thirteen when he left Spain in 1749 and donado Ramón Garrido, born in a small town in Toledo, left Spain in the mission of 1752 when he was seventeen.65 Pedro Borges’s detailed study of friars who traveled from Spain destined to the Colegio de la Santa Cruz reveals that at least 106 priests had licenses to preach, 6 friars were described as apostolic preachers or missionaries, 19 had licenses to both preach and confess, and 3 had licenses to confess. Data for 105 friars are incomplete or nonexistent. Other specialties included at least seven donados or oblates, eight chorister brothers, thirteen deacons, seventeen lay brothers, and a few were students of philosophy or theology. Among the most qualified was Fray José Antonio Bernad who traveled to Querétaro in 1749. Bernad was a priest, preacher, former lecturer in theology, doctor in theology, and twice professor of philosophy at the University of Zaragoza. Another was Fray Pedro Amorós (arrived in 1789), having served as a deacon, preacher, and professor of philosophy at the University of Palma of Mallorca. The famed Fray Junípero Serra, who arrived at the Colegio de San Fernando on January 1, 1750, was also a preacher and professor of theology at the same university. An extreme exception was Carlos de Echarri, noted in the lists of the 1789 expedition as a criado or servant, but not a friar. These qualifications contrast with European Jesuits, who were mostly still students when they embarked for the missions to America and Asia.66

Missionary Motivations Thus far I have focused more on requirements and qualities than motives or desires driving individual men to enter a Franciscan propaganda fide seminary. The latter might seem more intriguing, but they are also more difficult to identify. Rigorous scrutiny of the missionary as well as religious vocations requires a certain element of internal, psychological analysis that escapes the written record. However, a careful reading of the plethora of documents that vary from petitions by friars to transfer from a province to a college and the informaciones to the hagiographic material offers causal factors for those who dedicated their lives to an institution centered on propagating the Catholic faith.

65. These figures are approximate since we lack data about all the Spanish friars. 66. Borges Morán, “Expediciones misioneras.” For the education of Jesuits to serve in Asia, see Brockey, Journey to the East, 209. For Mexican Jesuit complaints on the lack of suitable, experienced Spanish missionaries to Mexico, see Clossey, Salvation and Globalization, 144–145.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

103

I also borrow from the work of previous scholars who have studied the motivations of men joining the Jesuits or women joining Catholic nunneries. These studies offer valuable methodological discussions that emerge in the search for individuals’ drives to enter the religious state and the problems faced with the use of sources. In his study of Jesuit motivations, Thomas V. Cohen points out that methodological problems arising using archival and hagiographical materials stem from mistaking the “‘reason’ of the written record with the operating cause of the decision.” In seeking patterns, he suggests sorting out perfunctory catchphrases or maxims, and to take into account that written motives might represent more mundane justifications “to friends, colleagues, and onlookers, for the act of choice than it was the real thought and feeling of a recruit.”67 The sources mix a variety of real and imagined causalities that will leave us with a “certain air of uncertainty,” points Asunción Lavrin in her work on female convents.68 Nonetheless, both argue that patterns reflect on the complex religious realities that men and women faced when entering a religious order. Men who joined the colegios de propaganda fide were certainly moved by a battery of motives to channel their energies into lifelong spiritual and evangelical dedication. Because of the uniqueness of each contender, one can hardly know the multiple driving forces behind each decision. Petitions by friars and lay informaciones to enter a Franciscan college provide vocation tropes that in many cases fulfilled admission formalities, but when contextualized, give some insights into the decision-making process of enlisted laymen and friars. To facilitate the inquiry, let me begin with what does not surface from the archival sources to dismiss certain misconceptions. Some scholars like to imagine missionaries as extraordinary and heroic men lured by the conversion of souls, radical members of society longing for martyrdom, and religious fundamentalists hoping for the second coming of their God to earth and the end of the world. Hence, long-lasting tropes of fundamentalism, radicalism, martyrdom, and conversion of native peoples obscure other causalities for missionary vocations. In fact, the pursuit of martyrdom has traditionally been highlighted as a mark of missionary distinction. Hagiographic literature of the time emphasized the selflessness of missionaries who were called to offer their own lives for the salvation of others. Eulogies of martyrs fill the pages of this biographical literature that sought to encourage others into joining the

67. Here, I have relied on Thomas V. Cohen, from whom I borrowed the quote, and Luke Clossey, whose study of Jesuit missionary motivations guides my own and who directed me to Cohen’s article. See Cohen, “Why the Jesuits Joined, 1540–1600,” Historical Papers/Communications historiques 9, no. 1 (1974): 240; and Clossey, Salvation and Globalization, 114–135. 68. Asunción Lavrin also cautions against overinterpretation of autobiographical and hagiographic material when dealing with vocations in her study of nuns. Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 26–27.

104

To Sin No More

missionary ranks and to attract sympathetic readers for the missionary cause. This genre further marketed the evangelical campaigns in the Americas akin to model-setting early Christianity and other celebrated missionary endeavors in Asia and Protestant Europe, where sensationalist depictions of selfless martyrs pervaded the early modern Catholic world. However, candidate applications tended to focus more on egotistic ideas of self-salvation, as we will soon see, rather than selfless aspiration to martyrdom.69 Even though Franciscan missionaries, like other religious, recognized the dangers of their trade and accepted the chances of a fatal outcome in hostile environments, martyrdom seems to be have been seen more as a risk to be avoided rather than an active intention. Neither aspirants to the novitiate nor incorporated friars show in their applications or in subsequent reports a desire to unnecessarily endanger their lives to seek their own eternal redemption and the salvation of others. If martyrdom does appear in the sources, it is a postmortem panegyric of veneration to the deceased friar in the midst of evangelical adversity. Perhaps college authorities disapproved of new recruits who were perceived as potentially suicidal because they not only risked their own lives, but could also put the lives of others and the entire missionary endeavor in jeopardy. Obviously, if the goal of a missionary is to save souls, a dead missionary has nothing to contribute. However, despite the absence of the search for martyrdom in archival records, missionaries may still have been persuaded by pervasive glorifying notions of it. The death toll in violent situations in remote frontier missions—where killed religious men were more likely to be considered martyrs—pales in comparison to the violent deaths of civilians in the same regions or friars in other evangelical ministries. For instance, itinerant preaching missionaries who traveled through the dioceses—sometimes on arduous tours that lasted over six months—also gave their lives, although their stories and sacrifices did not receive the same attention as those who died in remote regions. If missionaries died, so did Catholic men and women and non-Christian Indians who also populated the periphery of the Spanish empire. Laypeople were rarely elevated to the status of the blessed and venerated of the Church. Nor can we find instances of Native Americans who passionately defended their culture/religion (whether native or Christian) on the path to sainthood. Arguably, despite

69. John Leddy Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World, 2nd rev. ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970 [1956]); Ellen Gunnarsdóttir, Mexican Karismata: The Baroque Vocation of Francisca de los Ángeles, 1674– 1744 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 368–369; Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 46. A good introduction to martyrdom in New Spain is Asunción Lavrin, “Dying for Christ: Martyrdom in New Spain,” in Stephanie Kirk and Sarah Rivett, eds., Religious Transformations in the Early Modern Americas (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2014): 131–157.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

105

the hagiographic spirit behind the ecclesiastical and missionary business, little radicalism materialized, giving way to pragmatism.70 My findings on motives to enter the Colegio de la Santa Cruz fall more in line with Luke Clossey’s conclusions on missionary motivations to join the Jesuit order. Clossey builds on Cohen’s earlier work but reaches different conclusions. Both highlight the soteriological meaning of commitment as a Jesuit. While Cohen contends that Jesuits joined to save themselves first and foremost, Clossey argued that salvation of self and others went hand in hand for most Jesuits. Clossey points out that most Jesuits who entered the order seeking only their own salvation left. He suggests that while most Jesuits sought their own salvation, “labouring for the salvation of potential converts . . . worked out for [their] own salvation.” Similar to the Jesuit aspirants studied by Clossey, requests by laymen to join the Franciscan colleges combined candidates’ desire for salvation, service to their God, spiritual solace, and cloister—features that encompassed their religious and missionary commitments.71 We may find incomprehensible the real motives of laymen, some in their teens, to enter the novitiate and commit as religious men for the rest of their lives. A large number of applicants to the novitiate had clerics and nuns in their families, and were presumably exposed to an often-idealized religious life. Certainly, life in a religious community was different from what they had previously experienced. Investigations of novice applicants unfortunately recorded only a handful of the aspirants’ interrogations, who according to the regulations could not serve as witnesses. For this reason, a close look at the letters of recommendation and witnesses’ testimony sheds some light on the rationale behind the young men’s decisions to join the Franciscan Order, although it appears less clear why they chose the propaganda fide community in Querétaro. Most of the witnesses in the informaciones explicitly declared that aspirants aimed to become friars “to serve God,” a recurrent axiom to stress someone’s priestly vocation.72 What this meant nonetheless took a vari-

70. Less than 1 percent of Iberian Jesuits claimed martyrdom as a reason to join the Company of Jesus. Cohen, “Why the Jesuits Joined, 1540–1600,” 249. 71. Clossey relies on Cohen’s study; most of his statistical data derived from Poland and Spain. Clossey, Salvation and Globalization, 114–135. 72. This was a general reason to become a cleric. See, for instance, “[V]iene a la religion movido de vocacion y por el fin de servir â Dios,” in “Información de José Esteban de Espinosa,” 1763, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 9, no. 117. See also “Información de Francisco Suárez,” 1734, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 6, no. 76; “Información de Juan Antonio Rodríguez Obeso,” 1780, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 10, no. 140; “Información de José Vicente Velasco,” 1781, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 10, no. 143; and “Información de José Manuel Cabrera,” 1804, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 13, no. 170. Rodolfo Aguirre Salvador points out that aspirants to the priesthood in the archbishopric of Mexico used the formulaic desire to serve God as evidence of their vocation. Un Clero en transición: Población clerical, cambio parroquial y política eclesiástica en el arzobispado de México, 1700–1749

106

To Sin No More

ety of routes: To some a life of sacred servitude implied retreat and focus on prayer, while for others it meant connecting with the outside world through the evangelical ministry of preaching, missionizing, and confessing. Juan Pérez de las Casas, aspirant to the novitiate in 1739, asserted that becoming a member of the Franciscan Third Order, terciario or tertiary (lay fraternity within the Franciscan Order) was not enough to fulfill his desire to dedicate his life to his God and Saint Francis. A terciario in Seville before he embarked for Mexico, one witness confirmed that Pérez de las Casas was committed to the Franciscans “to serve God, and withdraw from the world.”73 Service, retreat, and piety combine in many of the informaciones as grounds to become a Franciscan as well as generally a religious man and woman. Such mystical stimulus to enter a religious order was thus on the minds of the men and women whose lives took a different path from most of their relatives, neighbors, and friends. An altruistic service to their God could complement a more egoistic retreat from the world. Here one can identify a selfish soteriological explanation to join the Colegio de la Santa Cruz (and other colegios) much in line with Thomas V. Cohen’s and Luke Clossey’s findings on motives to join the Jesuits. As Clossey points out, retreating from the outside world is “an intense, almost selfish, concern for the salvation of the soul,” that is, one’s own soul.74 Men’s escape from a sinful world inside the walls of a convent or monastery also reflects inner, personal conversions into a thought-to-be elevated state of symbiosis with God through monastic life. In other words, men sought salvation in a religious house to avoid sin and what is more important, relapse.75

(Mexico City: Iberoamerican Vervuert, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instutito de Investigaciones sobre la Universidad y la Educación, Bonilla Artigas Editores, 2012), 86–87. 73. “Información de Juan José Pérez de las Casas,” 1739, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 6, no. 85: “[T]iene por cierto no solicita entrar en la religion temeroso de alguna de estas causas, antes si, por servir a Ds y apartarse del mundo.” The Franciscan Order consisted of the First Order or the male friars, the Second Order or the female nuns of Saint Clare, and the Third Order or lay men and women. The latter was a lay fraternity formed by men and women committed to Franciscan ideals but who remained living and working in their homes and communities. See John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order: From Its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1968), 40–45. 74. Clossey, Salvation and Globalization, 120. 75. See, for instance, Frederick H. Russell, “Augustine: Conversion by the Book,” and Leonard P. Hindsely, O.P., “Monastic Conversion: The Case of Margaret Ebner, ” in James Muldoon, ed., Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997): 13–47. For a contemporary ethnographical example, see Mary Ann Reidhead and Van A. Reidhead, “From Jehova’s Witness to Benedictine Nun: The Roles of Experience and Context in a Double Conversion,” in Andrew Buckser and Stephen D. Glazier, eds., The Anthropology of Religious Conversion (Lanham, Md. and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003), 183–197.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

107

Novices and friars chose the colleges over other options because of their reputation as houses of strict observance of the Franciscan Rule and missionary commitment. Early on, colegios capitalized on the previous fame of their convents as spiritual safe havens. In most cases, the convents belonged to the Recollect branch of the Franciscan Order—known for the contemplative life— before their transformation into colegios de propaganda fide. Such was the case of the Colegios de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, Nuestra Señora de Tarija, and San Miguel de Escornalbóu, well known in the region as former Recollect houses and reputed to be cloisters for their residents. Eventually, the colegios de propaganda fide developed prominence in their own right. There, aspirants and ecclesiastics believed that retreat from worldly pleasures or withdrawal from the siglo in the parlance of the time in an intimate and controlled community helped to encourage a sacred life in men and women. Colleges therefore attracted those who viewed the ecclesiastical state as superior for men, more so if one wanted to withdraw from a world full of temptations orchestrated by the Devil. Above all, sexual desire was a major concern that ecclesiastical authorities, and particularly religious orders, emphasized when retreating from what they interpreted as a world full of wickedness and lewdness. To many religious, propaganda fide convents thus became the place to safeguard their spiritual purity and particularly sexual purity. Interestingly enough, as we will see in the last chapters of this book, strict sexual mores and vigilantism concurred with transgressions.76 Hagiographies took retreat from the world to its highest level: rejection of one’s own biological family to be replaced by Jesus Christ, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, the Franciscan Order, and the Church. Detachment from familial ties proved one’s commitment to poverty and a spiritual life that sought symbiosis with Jesus Christ.77 Citing Luke (14:26), Saint Francis’s first rule emphasized the rejection of loved ones in addition to the self in favor of Jesus Christ. Saint Francis followed Jesus Christ’s discipleship as interpreted by the evangelists Matthew (10:37–40) and Luke (14:25–33):

76. See, for instance, “Información de Juan de Chozas,” 1739, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 7, no. 86; “Carta de los coristas Fr. Francisco Rojas y Fr. Ignacio de Ntra. Sra. de la Luz Echarri, suplicando al guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro patente de incorporación al mismo,” Convento de San Diego de México, December 29, 1801, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 52; and “Letter of Fr. Francisco López Salgueiro to Fr. Antonio Herosa,” Querétaro, April 17, 1738, published in López, “Misiones de Méjico,” 261. 77. This issue is discussed in Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation (London: Burns and Oates; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 44–45, who studied this tradition of mystic heroism in the aftermath of the Council of Trent (1545–1563). To some, it meant even leaving their offspring, as was the case of Saint Jane de Chantal in seventeenth-century France. As he simply puts it, for the religious, it was God or the world, that is, damnation (44).

108

To Sin No More

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.78

College chroniclers placed special attention on highlighting the construction of new familial ties within the religious community and, particularly, with the Sacred Family. In Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús’s biographies, an exemplary case from the Franciscan collegiate hagiography, he enthusiastically substituted his sacred kinship with Jesus Christ for his worldly father and mother. In a vivid passage, Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa describes how Margil’s mother had to insist that the prelate allow her to see her son in his early years as a chorister in the Franciscan house of Valencia, Spain. Margil was forced to walk downstairs to the entrance of the friary, the chronicler writes, “full of virginal modesty, with the arms crossed inside the habit sleeves and his eyes upon the ground.” After a few moments in her presence, “to fulfill the mandate,” he turned around and said, “You have seen me, Señora.”79 Espinosa highlights two major features of Franciscan life in Fray Antonio’s passage: obedience and chastity. Following a set script, hagiographies highlighted the novices’ and friars’ blind submission to serve God and their superiors and, more important, their sexual abstinence. Franciscan authorities feared that 78. “Si quis vult venire ad me et non odit patrem et matrem et uxorem et filios et fratres et sorores, adhuc autem et animam suam, non potest meus esse discipulus.” English translation: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). In other words, as the explanatory note points out: “The disciple’s family must take second place to the absolute dedication involved in following Jesus.” See The Catholic Bible: Personal Study Edition, ed. Jean Marie Hiesberger (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). For the text in Latin and a philological explanation, see Rodríguez Herrera, Los escritos de San Francisco de Asís, 414–416. 79. Fray Isidro Felix de Espinosa, El Peregrino Septentrional Atlante: delineado en la exemplaríssima vida del Venerable Padre F. Antonio Margil de Jesús, facsimile ed., 2 vols. (Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana and Comissió per al Ve Centenari del Descobriment D’America, 1989), 1:32: “[L]leno de virginal pudor, cruzados dentro de las mangas del Abito los brazos, fixos los ojos en tierra, se presentò à la vista de la Madre; y aviendo estado algun espacio en su presencia, por cumplir con el mandato, dio una buelta en circulo, y articulò solas estas palabras: Yà me ha visto, Señora.” Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita’s chronicle follows Espinosa’s biography of Margil, see Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, Crónica seráfica y apostólica del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro en la Nueva España (Mexico City: n.p., 1792). There is an English edition of the latter: Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, Apostolic Chronicle of Juan Domingo Arricivita: The Franciscan Mission Frontier in the Eighteenth Century in Arizona, Texas, and the Californias, trans. George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, revised and indexed by Vivian C. Fisher, introduction and notes by W. Michael Mathes, 2 vols. (Berkeley, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1996), 1:33.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

109

women, even if they were the friar’s mother and sisters, raised men’s sexual appetite and thus, chastity, they observed, could be attained only by avoiding visual and physical contact with them. Despite recurrent fears of temptation and surrender, Catholic doctrine also acknowledged that providence in the form of divine inspiration or signs led the destinies of men and women. In Spanish American societies, as in Europe, the supernatural world was present in the daily lives of men and women. Accordingly, at the same time as the Devil manipulated human beings, God also exercised influence, persuading men and women to follow a specific destiny. People were indeed prone to consider providence as a major force that drove their lives.80 Some candidates therefore avowed that their incorporation to the Queretaran novitiate arose from a call from God. In that light, Franciscan authorities interpreted priest Pedro de Urtiaga y Salazar’s aspirations to the order as he was “moved by a superior impulse.” He was ordained as Fray Pedro de la Concepción in the last days of 1692 and became the bishop of Puerto Rico fifteen years later.81 In an undated petition, José Germán Rodríguez also claimed a call from the divine in his petition to the guardian and discretorio of Querétaro to enter the novitiate. He asserted not only that “the lord, through his kindness, had long called upon [him] for the religious state,” but such call was to commit specifically to the Colegio de la Santa Cruz. José Germán, in this case, was further determined to “ensure [his] salvation.”82 When in 1735 Fray Joaquín Camargo requested admission to the college, he declared that he had a spontaneous “divine inspiration” to dedicate his life to the apostolic ministry. Apparently, God’s stimulus had started only a few days before his application.83

80. For studies of superstitions or beliefs in the supernatural in colonial Mexican society, see Juan Ricardo Jiménez Gómez, ed., Creencias y prácticas religiosas en Querétaro: Siglos XVI–XIX (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, 2004); Antonio Rubial García, La santidad controvertida: Hagiografía y conciencia criolla alrededor de los venerables no canonizados de Nueva España (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999); Brading, Church and State in Bourbon Mexico, 1749–1810; and Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1994). 81. “Información de Pedro de Urtiaga y Salazar,” 1692, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 1, no. 6: “movido de superior ympulso.” 82. “Petición al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro de José Germán Rodríguez sobre sus pretensiones a ser admitido en el Colegio,” Querétaro, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 47: “[D]esde hace mucho tiempo me ha llamado el Sor p.r un efecto de su bondad, â el estado Religioso, y principalmente â el Sag.o instituto de los Apostolicos de esse Colegio . . . asegurando mi salvacion.” 83. “Petición al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro del P. Fr. Joaquín Camargo, de la provincia de Michoacán, y su aceptación,” July 29, 1735, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 26: “[P]or quanto ha dias que me hallo tocado de la divina inspiracion para el S.to exercicio de Missionero Apostolico.” Even today, men and women

110

To Sin No More

A closer look at letters of application from friars who requested admission to the colleges provides more direct, personal insights on motives to transfer from another colegio or provincial convent than novices’ or laymen’s objectives as viewed by witnesses and recorded in the informaciones. Of 71 incoming friars to the Colegio de la Santa Cruz who provided motivational details, 21 cited a desire for the apostolic ministry in its various forms; 22 mentioned health issues; 6 mentioned their need to serve God; and 8 sought to save themselves or to live in cloister removed from worldly affairs. Friars often cited several reasons to become a propaganda fide friar, all of which shed light on their primary motives. For instance, in the summer and again in the winter of 1747, Fray Manuel Francisco González Ibáñez requested admission to the Colegio de la Santa Cruz subsequent to his commitment to the Zacatecas province. He declared that his objectives to join the Queretaran community were to serve his God, withdraw from the world, and save his soul. Fray Manuel Francisco wrote to the guardian at Querétaro that salvation required his singular dedication to his God and his removal from worldly affairs. He confessed his eagerness to leave the Zacatecas region, escaping from what he felt to be an excessive social life. He therefore rejected the possibility of entering the nearby Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Zacatecas not only to separate himself from his “Relatives, and Brothers, since we must leave and reject them for God,” but also from his frequent communications with friends. For Fray Manuel Francisco, as for Margil and others, a new life of dedication to their God and to others could only be sustained if they retreated from all worldly temptations.84 Whether through preaching to and confessing nominal Catholics on the home front, evangelizing non-Christians in the remote frontiers of the empire,

who join the ranks of a religious order refer to God calling, “drawing,” and guiding them into the monastery or convent. See, for instance, the case of Sylvia whose double conversion from Jehovah’s Witnesses into a Benedictine nunnery was the result of God’s “drawing” her. See Reidhead and Reidhead, “From Jehovah’s Witness to Benedictine Nun,” 183–197. 84. “Petición al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro del P. Fr. Manuel Francisco González Ibáñez, hijo de la provincia de la Purísima Concepción de Ntra. Sra. de los Zacatecas y actual maestro de novicios,” Zacatecas, 1747, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 38: “no es otro el motivo que tengo sino solo salvarme. . . . [A]si me instimula a serlo en ese Colegio el estar separado y retirado de mis Parientes, y Hermanos, pues estos los devemos dejar y renunciar por Dios, que este es el motibo que tengo para no aserlo en este Colegio de Guadalupe. . . . [Q]uiero retirarme del todo del mundo y bibir apartado para no tener quien me inquiete, sino solo acordarme quei soi hijo de Sn Fran.co. . . .” See also “Petición al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro del P. hermano Fr. José Cabello, del Colegio de Zacatecas, deseando separarse de sus parientes, y su aceptación,” 1755, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 42. Fray Cabello, from the Zacatecas college, also wanted to distance himself from his relatives, which would help him to better serve his God. Almost six years later he requested approval for returning to the Zacatecas college, stating that the climate of Querétaro handicapped his health, a detriment to his tasks as a lay brother. For his petition to leave Querétaro, see LDQ1, fol. 139r–39v.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

111

or as applied to the self, salvation was the main course on the spiritual menu in an apostolic college. Naturally, because of the colegios’ missionizing objective, friars indicated their zeal to “save all souls” through the apostolic ministry. That was the case, for instance, of Fray Juan Alpuente, who in a 1699 petition to the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, requested admission because he came from Spain to go save non-Catholics on the remote frontier missions, which he could not do in his Discalced Provincia de San Diego de México; although I have not found evidence that he fulfilled his missionary desires.85 Yet other reasons were also presented. In the words of Fray Francisco Javier Castellanos, still a theology student in the Franciscan Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México in 1725, entering the Colegio de la Santa Cruz was “to save myself and to be employed for the good of . . . [others’] Souls through my studies, which I have not yet finished. I have studied a year of Theology, and I could enter in this holy college to conclude . . . [my studies] since the college will very soon begin . . . [teaching] Theology.”86 Fray Juan Antonio Zárate from the Provincia de Michoacán, wanted to serve God and save his soul when he applied; he was admitted to the college in early 1737.87 Inside and outside the Franciscan Order, the colegios de propaganda fide clearly projected a reputation of seclusion and piety that further enhanced their recruitment efforts. For many friars, the colegios represented a model of spiritual perfection that harmonized with what they imagined to be their founder’s and Jesus Christ’s ideology: a life that reconciled spiritual retreat with the global Catholic ideology of conversion. Not all friars’ motives were related to supernatural callings, the prospect of salvation, or their yearning for cloister. Some religious requested incorporation into the apostolic semi-

85. Data derives from Rex Galindo, “Propaganda Fide,” Appendix C. “Petición al guardián y discretorio del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro del P. Fr. Juan Alpuente; había pasado de España a la Provincia de San Diego de México,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, June 3, 1699, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 3. 86. “Petición al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro del P. Fr. Francisco Javier Castellanos hijo de la provincia del Santo Evangelio y su concesión,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, August 25, 1725, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 20: “[E]l salvarme y el emplearme en el bien de las Almas mediantes mis estudios, pues aunq no los he acabado, pero llebo un año de Theologia, y puesto qe esta proximo â avrirse elcurso de theologia en este S.to Colegio, podre entrer en el para concluirlos.” 87. “Petición al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro del P. Fr. Juan Antonio Zárate, de la provincia de Michoacán, y su aceptación,” Convento de San Juan Bautista de Apaseo, February 10, 1737, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 30. See also “Petición al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro del P. Fr. Antonio de Jesús Velasco, hijo de la provincia de la Purísima Concepción, y su concesión,” January 14, 1745, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 33; “Petición al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro del P. Fr. Manuel Francisco González Ibáñez, hijo de la provincia de la Purísima Concepción de Ntra. Sra. de los Zacatecas y actual maestro de novicios,” Zacatecas, 1747, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 38.

112

To Sin No More

naries for more worldly reasons. As already pointed out, transfers on health grounds were mentioned by twenty-two friars who requested admission to the Colegio de la Santa Cruz. Moreover, health problems were mostly cited as a major cause to seek a transfer from one college to another, accounting for seventeen out of the twenty-two. They frequently justified relocation on the need for a more suitable climate, whether prescribed by doctors or because previous destinations impaired their physical condition. Friars who requested departure from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz often used health reasons and lack of necessary strength for their apostolic ministry and communal life in the college. Most expressed their intention to leave Querétaro a few years after becoming affiliated with the college, certainly knowing that early departure could be achieved only through filing a process based on health, lack of strength to continue college activities, difficulties with other friars, changes in the petitioner’s vocation, or continual spiritual affliction or stress. Although in these cases the process of breaking the affiliation was not related to misdeeds, early leaves had practical consequences. In such cases, the commissary general in New Spain or Peru chose the petitioner’s new friary, not the petitioner himself. Upon arrival at their destination, transferred friars entered their new homes without benefits reserved for those who spent a minimum of ten years in a given college and the apostolic ministry, which included precedence in the new friary’s hierarchy and destination province.88 There was nonetheless space for remorse, as happened with Fray Antonio de los Reyes when in 1773 he expressed regret about his petition to disaffiliate from Querétaro in order to return to his home Colegio de San Esteban in Cehegín (Murcia), Spain, after fourteen years of missionary work. Eventually, he left the colegio for Spain only to return as the first bishop of Sonora in 1782.89 Conveniences surely attracted potential missionaries as well. It was common policy that the Franciscan Order offered special rewards to friars who enlisted in the colleges. From the earliest years onward, those who entered a college knew that their commission was temporary and would bring privileges reserved only for high-level authorities in the Franciscan provinces. Initially, gray robes (the distinctive color of the habit of propaganda fide friars was ash gray) who completed the minimum ten-year period with distinction in a college enjoyed the honors of prelates after returning to a Franciscan

88. Most of the transfer applications argued health, spiritual affliction, and lack of strength as major motives to leave the college. See, for instance, “Papeles del P. Fr. Luis Valcárcel, lector de filosofía,” 1717, 1736–1737, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 3, no. 37. The files of a missionary from the Sonora mission frontier requesting disaffiliation and return to Spain with various medical certifications, in “Papeles relativos a la desfiliación del P. Fr. Juan Félix López,” 1785–1786, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 3, no. 88. 89. “Papeles del P. Fr. Antonio de los Reyes,” 1773, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 3, no. 82.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

113

provincial house. This type of recompense to missionary veterans increased after 1769, when Church officials agreed to grant the title of predicadores generales de jure to friars who successfully accomplished their missionary tasks for fourteen years. Pedro Borges argues that Franciscan officials contemplated an increase in rewards to missionaries after the 1760s because of declining missionary vocations. Such incentives to recruit friars, however, turned out to be detrimental to the colleges. For example, during subsequent decades the colleges in Querétaro and Mexico City suffered unprecedented losses of missionaries who sought to return to their provinces for the promised benefits (see the increasing numbers of friars who transferred or otherwise left the colegios after the 1760s in Figures 2.2 and 2.3). Moreover, to make matters worse, some college prelates were tempted to embellish the records of missionary favorites who transferred to the provinces. The commissary general of the Indies, Fray Manuel María Trujillo, admonished the guardian of the Colegio de Tarija for such practices in 1789.90 The Vatican approved the most controversial set of privileges in the late eighteenth century as a byproduct of resolutions to the veintiocho dubios (twenty-eight doubts) that emanated from the colleges of New Spain after the elimination of Franciscan commissaries general in Mexico City and Lima. The resulting bull, Decet Romanum Pontificem, which Pope Pius VI passed with support of the commissary general of the Indies, Fray Pablo de Moya, in 1797, surpassed any previous rewards to veteran missionaries. The bull promised the title of predicadores generales de jure to friars who successfully completed twelve years in the seminaries and of definidores for those with sixteen years of colegio practice. In addition, friars who spent twenty years in a college serving as commissaries of the missions, prelates, or discretos would receive honors of provincial ministers in the provincial friary of their choice. In New Spain, because of strong opposition from the prelates and discretos of Querétaro, Zacatecas, and Mexico City, who feared that ambitious friars with no authentic missionary zeal would join their institutions simply to enhance their political careers, such privileges were not enforced until a royal cédula was released in 1804. When analyzing arrivals and departures, it is, however, difficult to connect cause and effect in this case. Notwithstanding appeals to improve their careers, the number of missionaries from Europe peaked in the

90. See Innocent XI, Ecclessiae Catholicae, Rome, October 16, 1686, in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 60. A good study of the changes in the late eighteenth century is in Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros, 199–202. For Tarija, see Patent by Fray Manuel María Trujillo, commissary general of the Indies, to the guardian of the Colegio de Tarija, Madrid, August 12, 1789, in “Libro primero de Patentes, Decretos y Cartas de los Superiores de N. Orden Seráfica, y de varias Cédulas Reales, desde el tiempo que este Convento Franciscano de Tarija se erigió en Colegio de Propaganda Fide,” AFT, RR-155, fol. 91r–v.

114

To Sin No More

1780s before the 1797 bull, because of the need to fill Jesuit vacancies after their expulsion in 1767. 91 The sharp decline in missionary expeditions from Spain in the 1790s was largely the result of lack of incentives and interruption of Atlantic communications between Spain and its colonies due to warfare. Then in the first decades of the nineteenth century, missionary expeditions increased a bit, perhaps due to rewards offered via the royal cédula of 1804 as well as to friars who escaped French military advances in Spain in 1808. Particularly in the years after Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, veteran missionaries in the colegios raised doubts about the missionary commitment of their comrades who arrived from Spain. In New Spain, in a secret letter from Fray Diego Bringas to Viceroy Félix Calleja, Bringas indicated that some of the arrived missionaries from Spain in 1812 were indeed escaping the terrible situation on the Peninsula caused by French occupation and thus, their residence in the college could only bring disarray and trouble.92 For Mexico, the number of friars from American provinces and colleges entering missionary work via the propaganda fide institution was nonetheless high between 1780 and 1810, though the peak occurred after the Mexican independence in 1821—which halted expeditions from Spain—, and especially after Spanish friars were expelled in 1827 (see Figures 2.2 and2.3).93

91. For the increased privileges or benefits offered to missionaries in the late eighteenth century, see “Patente del Comisario General de Indias Rvdmo. P. Fr. Pablo de Moya, relativa a los veintiocho dubios confirmados por Pio VI en su Breve del 12 de diciembre de 1798, con Cédula de Su Magestad del 22 de enero de 1804, auxiliatoria para su observancia,” Madrid, February 8, 1804, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 17. New Spain’s colleges sent representatives to Madrid to express their concerns about the 1797 bull, including the risks of luring ambitious friars who simply sought benefits. See “Representación hecha al Rey por el P. Fr. Gerónimo Cortazar, Comisario y Apoderado de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, pidiendo suprima el Breve Apostólico relativo a los dubios,” Cuarto de Indias del convento de San Francisco de Madrid, March 1798, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 11; and “Representación de los apoderados PP. Fr. Juan Buenaventura Bestard y Fr. Gerónimo Cortazar al Comisario General de Indias, pidiendo la suspensión del Breve Apostólico conformatorio de los dubios,” Cuarto de Indias del convento de San Francisco de Madrid, February 6, 1798, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 11. 92. His carta reservada appears in the expediente about the expedition of 1812, “Fray Manuel Marín misionero del Colegio Apostólico de Querétaro sobre su regreso á España. Trátase también de que regresen a España los misioneros ineptos para este ministerio,” 1814, AGN, Misiones, vol. 18, exp. 8. See also Borges Morán, “Expediciones misioneras.” 93. For friars from American provinces and colegios who were incorporated into the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City in the 1820s, see “Libro de decretos del Colegio de San Fernando,” Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter AGN), Colección de Documentos para la Historia de México, vol. 14, 2nd ser., T9, fols. 262r–315r.

CHAPTER 2. RECRUITING MISSIONARIES

115

Conclusions Even if the Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide echoed the recruiting patterns of the religious orders in Spanish America during the last century of the empire, unlike other Franciscan convents (and other religious orders), the colleges uniquely staffed their houses with Peninsular rather than Creole friars through an impressive Atlantic transfer of religious from Spain to the Americas. Arguably, this phenomenon can be seen as part of the centralizing and Europeanizing processes that the Bourbon monarchs and their civil servants sought in Spanish America. Yet, paradoxically, recruiting Spanish friars required the acquiescence of local and regional civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the colony. The colleges’ recruitment of Spanish friars rested on long experience in trans-Atlantic recruiting from Spain to the Americas whose logistics were similar to those of other Franciscan friaries and even religious orders in the Hispanic world. The process relied on guidelines and templates that appointed commissioners who traveled to Spain on enlistment missions. It is true that failure to recruit friars from Spanish colleges did not prevent the search for suitable members in Franciscan provinces. In fact, we have seen how both Spanish and American provinces became the main sources of religious for the colegios de propaganda fide. A priori we can predict that the colleges’ predominant recruitment in the Iberian Peninsula led to an Iberian cultural imprint reflected in most Franciscan missionary endeavors in the Americas during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Similar to the application process for entry into Franciscan provincial friaries, the study of novice informaciones showed that purity of blood, respectable professions, and good lineage were key factors for gaining entry to the colleges for the propagation of the faith. While it is known that the selection process contained a strong racial component, it is striking that at least for Querétaro, this racial element lasted well into the nineteenth century, showing a Franciscan mentality that was not only in line with social norms outside of the friary, but one that perpetuated a system based on cultural, socioeconomic, and ethnic distinctions. Thus, when novices and friars began their missionary training, they had already nourished a system that purposely discriminated against people based on the color of their skin and that missionaries carried to their evangelical ministries. Even if independence brought change to ethnic and racial requirements, the idea of republican citizenship still carried an ethnic and racial component. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century were terms referring to Indian and African ancestry as barriers to enter the college finally dropped from the questionnaires. It seems clear that the reputation of the colleges drew many young men and friars to enter the apostolic fellowship. Overall, colleges gave friars (and

116

To Sin No More

their families) certain entitlements in the form of honor, status, and virtue, which turned them into men with tangible power and authority carried for the rest of their lives. The means to fulfill their goals varied, and to some a life of sacred service implied retreat and cloister while for others it meant connecting with the outside world through the evangelical ministry of preaching, missionizing, and confessing. Such ideological stimuli were in the minds of men whose lives took a different path from most of their relatives, neighbors, and friends. Friars ranked their desire to save their own souls and those of others as motives to enter the apostolic colleges, though some might have been lured (even somewhat unwittingly) by other benefits after spending time in a colegio. We have also seen how mundane reasons such as climate and health further justified the transfer of religious men into and out of a colegio. Certainly there were other reasons that escaped the written record. Some friars may also have been disillusioned with their lives in other monasteries and hoped for adventure, and thus were eager to preach and convert souls in exotic, though dangerous, destinations. In some cases, friars who left their provincial houses had to overcome strong internal opposition inside their own provinces, where provincial ministers and prelates feared greater losses in the midst of already waning numbers of personnel in the Age of Enlightenment.94 Even if reasons to join remain rather elusive, around two-thirds of incoming novices and friars stayed on to fulfill the colleges’ missionary commitments among Catholics in cities and remote villages as well as indigenous communities on the periphery of the empire. It is clear that these men also formed part of the intellectual, ethnic, and economic elites of the early modern Hispanic world.

94. Innocent XI’s adamant threat of excommunication for any religious who dissuaded others from enlisting for American missions supports this assumption. Innocent XI, Ecclessiae Catholicae, Rome, June 28, 1686, in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 9. See also Borges Morán, El envío de misioneros, 223–234.

Chapter 3

Training Missionaries n January 1779, Fray Juan Antonio Joaquín de Barreneche was certified to preach and hear confessions by laypersons and religious men and women. According to the authorization signed by Fray Sebastián Flores, guardian of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro, Barreneche passed a final exam focused on moral theology as a prerequisite to receive the certificate. Mission theorists claimed that such specialization was crucial for the conversion of Catholics and non-Christians alike. From then on, with the corresponding bishop’s authorization, Barreneche was entitled to work in the missionary field. To this end, preparation at the colegio was comprehensive and systematic. Barreneche had arrived at the college as a chorister student from the Franciscan Provincia de Santa Elena (Florida) in 1773. Like his colleagues, Barreneche was required to complete a three-year course and pass a lengthy examination on theology. The exam was intended to demonstrate mastery of six years of mandatory philosophy and theology prior to ordination as priests. For two years following his ordination, Barreneche continued to study moral theology under the guidance of Fray Guillermo Rubert. College authorities requested that the course taught by Fray Rubert follow Franciscan Fray Anacletus Reiffenstuel’s well-known book Moralis Theologia (Moral Theology), first published in 1692, with over thirty editions in the eighteenth century. Moreover, Barreneche was also required to attend the daily conferencias (meetings) on moral theology held at the college. He had been successful in all of these educational endeavors prior to obtaining his certifications in early 1779.1 Soon after receiving his licenses to preach and hear confessions, Barreneche became an active missionary. However, his evangelical ministry was cut short when he was killed in the Yuma Indian uprising of 1781 in the California fron-

I

1. For a general view of what Franciscan authorities in Madrid thought of the training of novices and friars in America, see the patent by Fray Antonio de Cardona, commissary general of the Cismontane family to all the religious, Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, April 2, 1698, LPZEAV, fols. 24v–25v. For the appointment of Fray Guillermo Rubert as the lector or lecturer of two choristers, see the decreto of September 20, 1773, in LDQ1, fol. 179v–180v. For the examinations of Fray Juan Antonio Barreneche and the course on moral theology, see the decreto of May 4, 1776, LDQ1, fol. 196r: “los aprobaron por aprovechados en diez materias theologicas.”

117

118

To Sin No More

tier. While his career was uncharacteristically brief, his missionary training was exemplary of the standard training in the colleges, emphasizing the study of theology and philosophy immersed in an environment of asceticism and spirituality, retreat from the world, a strict schedule, and apostolic work.2 In the colegios, Franciscan friars like Barreneche were exposed from the first moment of their novitiate to a stringent daily life and training in linguistics, philosophy, and theology. Missionary training was not intended to create passive defenders of the faith. Rather, missionaries were assertive evangelical ministers at the vanguard of the Catholic religion in the early modern world. Missionaries and preachers were expected to not only teach, but convince men and women that the Franciscans’ worldview provided the true path to eternal salvation. As indoctrinators, missionaries had to acquire the knowledge necessary to persuade sinners of their putative wrongdoings, refute alleged errors, and uproot ideas that in some cases were deeply embedded in popular culture, especially in remote areas not yet evangelized. Thus, the objective of the college training program was to supply missionaries with pedagogic and epistemological techniques to help them in their evangelical endeavors. Missionaries sought to transmit godly messages in the most concise and clear ways for a particular audience. To achieve this, missionaries needed to be knowledgeable of Christian doctrine and credible. Moreover, they had to hold the listener’s attention, which required mastering the language of the intended audience and the art of rhetoric. Even though a priori missionaries lacked all necessary information about the complex ecological landscapes and human geographies in the remote areas where they were to be stationed, they considered themselves well prepared for their most important task, the religious conversion of the frontier. Their idea of fulfillment—missionaries view themselves as civilizing agents responsible for the spiritual wellbeing and salvation of their protégés—was important in helping the missionaries accomplish their evangelical ministry in very adverse conditions. In America, Indian languages were certainly a pivotal aspect of the educational curriculum in the colegios de propaganda fide; missionaries borrowed from a catechetical bilingual tradition in Nahuatl, Otomí, Aymara, and Quechua, among others. Surprisingly, native language training had an erratic trajectory in the colleges. Nevertheless, in addition to their mother tongue, most missionaries had varying levels of competence in at least one additional language—most commonly Latin, the liturgical language of

2. “Patente del P. Fr. Sebastián Flores, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, al P. Fr. Juan Antonio de Barreneche dándole facultad y licencia para predicar y confesar, pero que no use de ellas hasta presentarse a los Ordinarios en cuyos territorios haya de ejercitar el ministerio,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, January 31, 1779, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 5, no. 55; “Libro de los muertos del Colegio (1776–1852),” AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 4, no. 3, fols. 5r, 6v–7r.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

119

the Catholic Church—and some mastered two and more. Central to the training program in the Franciscan colleges was a scholastic pedagogy that aimed at converting the Hispanic world. As discussed in this chapter, missionary instruction was neither a static nor an unpredictable endeavor but the mixed result of experience and contingency.3 What were the specific elements of the Franciscan training program in the colegios de propaganda fide? What and how did veteran missionaries and reformers contribute to college curricula? And, were the missionaries well prepared before beginning their evangelical campaigns to Catholics and to heathens in frontier missions? The colegios de propaganda fide shared many daily-living practices with other Franciscan (and other religious) communities, but they also took their study programs to new levels of proficiency and commitment. Missionary preparation was based on a process of continuous learning that the novice, friar, and missionary embraced upon entering a college. A stringent daily timetable included time for mental prayer, hours of study, classes, dedication to community material needs, and practical preparation for the evangelical ministry. The Franciscan general curriculum occupied the friars in their early years at the colleges. Later, missionary instruction took place in the conferences (conferencias) or meetings commonly held in libraries to discuss and debate topics related to the evangelical ministry. Friars began fine tuning their apostolic skills in these conferencias on moral theology and Indian languages. A teaching philosophy deeply embedded in the scholastic method, together with its content, intensity, and regularity, gave the friars the intellectual skills and knowledge base for a missionary career. This chapter describes such missionary training programs to support the argument that Franciscan friars acquired essential tools for their ministry, and particularly preaching skills. To offer a broader picture, instruction is framed within the daily lives of friars inside their communities.

Vida Común Novices and friars endured a prolonged and intensive program of prayer, spiritual exercise, class, debate, and the regular sequence of sacraments and

3. Lino Gómez Canedo and Félix Saíz Díez argue that missionaries learned the necessary skills when they were actually living and working in the missions. Gómez Canedo, Evangelización y conquista; Saíz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide. In contrast, Legarza points out that the missionary curricula in the colleges were enough to prepare the apostolic ministers. Fidel de Lejarza, Conquista espiritual del Nuevo Santander, vol. 4, Biblioteca “Missionalia Hispánica” (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1947), 13–14. In his study of the Jesuit mission to China, Liam Brockey highlights the most important aspects of the Jesuit missionary program in Portugal—the language and theological training, the popular missions in Europe, and the strict daily life in the Jesuit houses—to conclude that their real apprenticeship started during their long voyage to the Far East. Brockey, Journey to the East.

120

To Sin No More

the Catholic calendar. Life in a college, as arduous as it might seem nowadays, was also difficult for contemporary men. The demands of education, spirituality, and retreat pushed physical and mental faculties to the limit. Franciscan theorists formulated that a rigid and challenging schedule would guide their confreres to avoid the dangers of laxity and sloth. Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa describes Fray Antonio Llinás, one of the ideologues of the colleges, as concerned that the missionaries would “not have an idle instant” so that “the enemy always found them active.”4 For the theorists, a busy life within a strongly hierarchical institution helped develop a sense of hierarchy, subordination, and obedience that proved to be crucial in the establishment of an evangelical enterprise in the distant American territories. The daily life of the Franciscan colleges further offered a model for the management of the spiritual and temporal affairs in the frontier missions. The Franciscan religious who entered the colleges received useful skills in their daily lives that they later applied to their apostolate. Through an intense timetable of continuous prayers and meditation, the colleges sought to induce spiritual trance and a state of self-denial and holiness. Ultimately, Franciscan friars sought spiritual union with Jesus Christ, who they saw as the only means to eternal salvation. Saint Francis himself exemplified the path to purification and self-rejection through rigorous retreats, fasting, and penance after his internal conversion to a life dedicated to the poor. Religious reform movements such as those in sixteenth-century Spain or the colegios later on also rested on the belief that the symbiosis with the Catholic God was contingent with asceticism, spiritual instruction and guidance, and apostolic work. As the influential Spanish mystic Saint Teresa of Ávila wrote in the sixteenth century, once the soul “empties itself of all that is created,” God will “necessarily fill it with himself.” Reading and meditating, punishing the body, and extreme austerity were the first steps in what reformers such as Saint Teresa believed laid a clear-cut path of conversion and consequently eternal salvation. In a practical way, the daily life of a Franciscan apostolic college was orchestrated to enhance the religious community and infuse its members with spiritual potency as a means of acquiring the strength to cope with the hardships of daily routines and the harsh conditions of the missions. It was perfunctory asceticism towards spiritual perfection seasoned with study and preaching that gave the lives of college friars meaning.5 A rig-

4. Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios, Book 1, Chapter 16, 173: “[N]o tuviessen un instante ociosos y que los hallasse el enemigo siempre ocupados.” 5. See Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 47–55, quote on p. 47. For Franciscan reforms and how they shaped the order’s spirituality and missionary agenda in sixteenth-century Spain and New Spain, see Turley, Franciscan Spirituality. For Saint Francis’s conversion and rejection of the body, see Leonardo Boff, San Francisco de Asís: ternura y vigor, 46. Saint Francis might have felt pity for his own body, when he referred

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

121

orous communal life in the colleges created a sense of hierarchy, authority, and obedience within the seminaries as well as the evangelical enterprise. Sources that illustrate the timetables from the colleges of Querétaro in Mexico, Escornalbóu and Herbón in Spain, and Tarija in Bolivia show the intensity of their schedules as well as the slight differences that developed in each convent (see Table 3.1). Clearly, we should analyze these lists as calendars to be followed and consistent with the ideal operation of the colleges, particularly if stemming from hagiographic printed works. On the other hand, internal documents such as patent letters, decrees, and complaints confirm that practice did not differ from theory, although these sources also uncover the difficulties friars faced in following community rhythms. These daily programs comprised a mixture of individual and communal religious rituals, meditation, the learning classroom (study), and brief resting intervals. The goal reflected the dualism of internal and external conversions. Rooted in medieval monasticism and upgraded with post-Tridentine spirituality, the timetable that regulated the lives of the community sought to ensure mental empowerment, intellectual expertise, evangelical proficiency, and order. The day was structured around silent prayers, the canonical hours, the conferencias, sleeping intervals, and meals. Silent prayers, a type of meditation, were aimed at managing the mind to control emotions and the body, which could be achieved through changes in the corporal metabolism. Prayers might have slowed the friars’ metabolic rate by decreasing nervous system activity and thus relieving somnolence and stress. Silent prayer further tackled personal insecurities. Overall, the goal was to elevate the individual spiritually, to improve communal spaces, to foster a sense of Franciscan corporativism, and ultimately to channel mental and physical strength toward conversion of the self and the other. Time and space conflated to nourish the individual while also bonding the community. Mental strength through communal spiritual exercises and the stringency of the Franciscan regime in a college fostered an identity of belonging by creating an “imagined community” so as to enforce strict control over the missionaries. Of course, this rigorous lifestyle persuaded some friars more than others and, consequently communal and individual disobedience erupted in diverse forms.6

to it as “Brother Ass,” hence detaching himself from it. I thank Ignacio Chuecas Saldías for directing me in better understanding the role of the body in Saint Francis’s spirituality. 6. I thank Constanza López and Pamela Cacciavillani, both researchers at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, for their assistance in helping me to better understand the meaning of meditation and its links to silent or mental prayer. For the connection between meditation and body metabolism, see M. S. Chaya and H. R. Nagendral, “Longterm effect of yogic practices on diurnal metabolic rates of healthy subjects,” in International Journal of Yoga 1, no. 1 (January–June 2008): 27–32. See also Lavrin, Brides of Christ, 118– 121; and Molina, To Overcome Oneself, 28–29. My connection of Franciscan communal lives

Time 12:00 12:15 1:15 3:30 3:45 4:00 4:15 4:45 5:00 5:30 6:00

Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, 1813–1815

Colegio de San Miguel, Escornalbóu, 1765

Colegio de San Antonio, Herbón, 1759

Wakening Wakening Matins (one hour) Matins (one hour) Silent prayer (half an hour) Silent prayer (half an hour) Wakening Wakening veteran friars Veteran friars celebrate first mass  Wakening rest of community Choir, silent prayer Prima in choir

Matins (one hour)

Silent prayer (one hour) Wakening for prima and rest of canonical hours. Convent mass. Silent prayer

Canonical hours: prima, terce, sext, none. Convent mass

7:00 8:00 10:00

Wakening Litany and prayer in choir Canonical hours: prima, terce, sext, none

Until 10:00, groups of three celebrate mass Canonical hours: terce, sext, none. Convent mass Conference on moral theology (one hour)

Breakfast, confessions, and study Conference on mystical theology, the rule, or missions (one hour) Lunch

Conference on mystical Lunch theology or languages (one hour). Confessions 12:00 pm Lunch Station of Holy Sacrament (prayer to the Holy Host) and Hail Mary 12:30 Conversation

Conference (one hour)

Lunch

To Sin No More

11:00

Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, Tarija, 1785

122

Table 3.1. Daily Schedule in Querétaro, Escornalbóu, Herbón, and Tarija

Time

Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, 1813–1815

Colegio de San Antonio, Herbón, 1759

Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, Tarija, 1785

Rest Stations of the Cross in cloister Vespers and Complines

Vespers and Complines

Silent prayer in choir

Study until 5:00 Conference on moral theology (one hour)

Conference on moral theology (one hour)

Dinner

Silent prayer

Choir, Station of the Holy Sacrament, and one hour of silent prayer

Dinner

Matins (one hour)

Colegio de San Miguel, Escornalbóu, 1765

1:00 1:30

Prayer, spiritual exercises, rest Vespers and Complines

2:00

Vespers and conference on moral theology (one hour)

2:15 3:00 5:00 5:00 6:00

Study until 5:00

Complines Silent prayer and Station of Holy Sacrament

6:30 7:00 7:15 7:30 8:00 9:00

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

Table 3.1. (continued)

Conference on mystical theology (one hour) Dinner and discipline

Silence

Tota Pulchra and Corona. Miserere and choir, litany, Discipline Hail Mary. Discipline Silence Silence Dinner Silence

123

Sources: In 1813–1815, Fray José Ximeno, discreto, wrote a plan for daily life in the Querétaro college. See “Plan Diario de la vida regular de este Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” AHPSEM, caja 214. For the daily schedule at the college in Escornalbóu in Tarragona, Spain, see Papió, La història d’Escornalbóu, 67–69. For the college in Herbón, see Fray Antonio de Herosa, O.F.M., Memorial de las cosas notables de este Colegio de Herbón, edited by José Luis Soto Pérez, 1756–1759, tratado 1, chap. 8, 305–307 (Santiago: Editorial Eco Franciscano, 2012). For the college in Tarija, see “Régimen y método de vida que se observa en el Franciscano Colegio de Propaganda Fide de la Villa de Tarixa situado en la Provincia de San Antonio de los Charcas en el Reino del Perú,” 1785, AFT, RR-165.

124

To Sin No More

Typical of Christian spaces in other convents and towns, bell tolling guided friars in their daily tasks. As long as matins (the first canonical hour of the day) were held at night, friars woke up to a bell tolling (a son de campana tañida) at midnight or early in the morning. Friars would then return to their cells to sleep before starting their daily activities. Until 10:00 am friars gathered in the choir for silent prayers and the other canonical hours, prima, terce, sext, and none (short liturgical services recited at different hours), while selected priests celebrated the first masses inside their communities and in the church with parishioners. Friars then gathered for the conferencia in the library to discuss topics on the Franciscan rule, mystical or moral theology, or their missionary ministry. Afterward, they went to the refectorio or dining hall for lunch at 11:00 am or noon. Friars dedicated the time before vespers to prayer, study, or rest. Only during Easter Week—when most friars kept a busy schedule hearing confessions and participating in the events—matins were held at 4:00 am. Vespers, the prayers of the afternoon, were around 2:00, after which the conferencia schedule differed in the four colleges. Friars had complines, or the last prayers of the holy service, around 2:00 in the other colleges, while in Querétaro they occurred at 5:30 pm. Religious then convened to dine at the refectorio at 7:00 pm, except for the college in Tarija where this occurred at 8:00 pm because matins took place at 7:00 in the evening. Afterwards, friars fulfilled their disciplinas, or self-punishment, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Finally, after a long day of spiritual devotion, studies, and material maintenance tasks, the bell tolled for silence at 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening for Tarija; all religious were required to seclude themselves in their own cells and avoid assemblies in their rooms. Regarding observance of the schedule, commissary visitors generally mandated that all healthy friars had to attend matins, choir, and prayers. During the winter, this schedule (except for matins) was delayed by half an hour.7 to “imagined communities” owes to Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (New York: Verso, 1991). 7. Ximeno, “Plan Diario de la vida regular de este Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, AHPSEM, box 214. Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa describes the same schedule for the Queretaran college in 1746. Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios, bk. 1, chap. XVI, 173–174. Espinosa’s description of daily life in Querétaro has informed Porter, “Querétaro in Focus”; and Mann, The Power of Song, 55. According to the patents, this seems to have been the normal schedule of the college since its foundation in 1683 with a few exceptions. There were only a few mandates to attend the choir and the prayers in the first years. See auto de visita of Fray Juan Capistrano, commissary general of New Spain, Convento de San Francisco of Querétaro, January 12, 1690, LPZEAV, fol. 2r; and his patent regarding inadequate choir attendance, Convento de San Francisco de México, November 22, 1691, LPZEAV, fols. 3v–4r. See also auto de visita of Fray Manuel de Monzaval, commissary general of New Spain, Convento de San Francisco de Querétaro, July 5, 1696, LPZEAV., fol. 12v. For mandatory attendance at matins and choir, see auto de visita of Fray Bartolomé Giner, commissary general of New Spain,

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

125

Even though sources describe the daily activities of the colegios, it is still difficult to imagine seclusion and spiritual life in an eighteenth-century Franciscan convent. In modern-day societies, our daily rhythms are dictated by the speed of our communication and transportation systems—we are used to fast computers that act as hubs of personal networks and traveling from one side of the world to the other in less than forty-eight hours—and by large urban areas where millions of men and women interact with one another without recognition, and more importantly, the virtual world of the Internet that facilitates communication yet also distances men and women from their peers. Early modern Franciscan convents were conversely places of cloister centered on spiritual retreat in which men (and women in nunneries) searched for an internal approach to their God. As intense as it was, and certainly friars struggled over and some failed its fulfillment, the conventual timetable certainly contributed to becoming disconnected from worldly feelings and needs. In fact, nothing is more characteristic of life in a Franciscan friary than the spiritual exercises, celestial singing and music from the choir, divine ceremonies, silence, and study. Entire communities shared a common lifestyle that has endured, with variations, to the present. Franciscan superiors adamantly required observance of silence in the cloister, monastic meditation in the cells, and attendance at spiritual exercises and mental prayers by all able religious. According to these superiors, Franciscans’ commitment to spiritual obligations could only be conceived with modesty and quietness to enhance rigorous study and spiritual perfection.8 Silence was required in most of the friary: the infirmary, the room where chocolate drinks were made, the dining room, the kitchen, and the cells of the religious. To keep silence, friars were not allowed to visit other cells without the prelate’s permis-

November 13, 1700, LPZEAV, fols. 32r–32v. Fray Pascual de Varisio, minister general of the order, mandated that all his able subjects attend all ceremonies as well as the choir in his patent, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, August 19, 1768, LEC, fol. 83v. For the Escornalbóu college in Tarragona, Spain, see Papió, La història d´Escornalbóu, 67–69. For Tarija, see “Régimen y método de vida que se observa en el Franciscano Colegio de Propaganda Fide de la Villa de Tarixa situado en la Provincia de San Antonio de los Charcas en el Reino del Perú,” 1785, AFT, RR-165; and Rex Galindo, “La sacramentalización de la frontera. El programa misionero franciscano del Colegio Apostólico de Tarija en Bolivia al final de la colonia,” in La frontera en el Mundo Hispánico, edited by Porfirio Sanz Camañes and David Rex Galindo (Quito: Editorial Abya Yala, 2014), 444. 8. Patent by Fray José Picazo, provincial minister of Michoacán, to all the religious in the province, Santiago of Querétaro, November 28, 1717, which includes the patent by Fray Agustín de Mesones, commissary general of New Spain, to all friars and nuns in New Spain, San Francisco of Mexico City, November, 12, 1717, LPZEAV, fol. 94r. A year later, Fray Agustín de Mesones reminded the members of the Queretaran Colegio de la Santa Cruz community that only through study could they avoid an idle life. Auto de visita of Fray Agustín de Mesones, commissary general of New Spain and commissary visitor of the college in Querétaro, February 16, 1718, LPZEAV, fol. 241r.

126

To Sin No More

sion. One friar inspecting the Colegio de Querétaro describes the intention as “trying to temper . . . voices in any place where they talked; thus not transforming the rooms and offices used for the relief of natural and religious necessity into theaters of immoderate and idle conversation.” Those who did not adhere to mandatory silence within the convent were punished. Disobedient friars had to carry a gag in their mouths and confess their misdemeanors publicly in the dining hall. Recidivists were to be punished with a lash by the prelate.9 Attendance at all spiritual and devotional practices was mandatory. Exemptions were rare and only to be granted under special circumstances by the college’s prelate and discretorio. For instance, sick friars, particularly those who stayed in the college’s infirmary, and friars returning from mission or alms-collecting tours, were commonly released from attendance. Also discharged from daily participation in all exercises were friars whose occupations as lecturers (lectores) or chroniclers qualified them to participate in devotions elsewhere. Even though exceptions did occur, it seems that the Colegio de la Santa Cruz reluctantly granted dispensations to the religious.10 One example of the intense spiritual dedication inside an apostolic seminary comes from the colegio in Querétaro. In the spring of 1785, Fray Francisco Roché (or Roig) wrote a short program of spiritual exercises for his brethren. He was a veteran missionary from northeastern Spain who had arrived over twenty years earlier from the Catalan college of propaganda fide in Escornalbóu. He had ministered to Catholics and spent several years on

9. Auto de visita of Fray Francisco Herrero, definidor de la prov de michoacán y comisario visitador del colegio 8 julio 1708, LPZEAV, fol. 232r–232v: “[P]rocurando templar las vozes en qualquiera parte que hablaren; y no haciendo de los lugares, y officinas destinadas para socorro de la necesidad natural y religiosa, theatros de conversacion desmedida, y ociosa.” See also Visita de Fray Agustín de Mesones, comisario general de nueva españa y visitador del colegio, 16 febrero 1718, LPZEAV, fol. 240v. Public punishment in the refectorio was common in the Franciscan Order, including the practice of putting a gag in the mouth of those who broke the silence edict. For Spanish Discalced Franciscans, see Vázquez Valdivia, “El constitucionalismo descalzo franciscano,” 141. 10. Numerous patent letters refer to the issue of mandatory attendance to spiritual exercises of the community. See, for instance, the early patent by Fray Juan Capistrano, commissary general of New Spain, to the guardian and all religious of the college in Querétaro, Convent of San Francisco of Mexico City, November 22, 1691, LPZEAV, fols. 3v– 4r; patent by Fray Juan Rico de Luarca, provincial minister of Michoacán, to all friars of his province, Convento de Santiago de Querétaro, August 23, 1702, LPZEAV, fol. 39r. In his 1759 report to Rome, Fray Tomás de Uribe Larrea pointed out that all religious of the four colleges (Querétaro, Zacatecas, San Fernando, and Guatemala) “live in community and strict regularity; none is exempt of its following (unless sick or disabled)” (“se vive en Comunidad, y regularidad estrecha, sin que ninguno este essempto del sequito de ella (salvo por enferm.d ô imposibilidad”), “Informe rendido a la Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide por el P. Fr. Tomás de Uribe Larrea acerca de la Prefectura de Misiones en algunos puntos de América e Indias Occidentales,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, April 1759, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 1, no. 16, fol. 3v.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

127

the Sonora frontier before he was elected discreto in 1781. His program was intended to be used by directors of spiritual exercises guiding other friars whenever the community called for such occasional periods of extreme spiritual dedication. The schedule of spiritual exercises henceforth should be superimposed over the abovementioned daily activities listed by Fray Diego Ximeno thirty years later (see Table 3.1). Roché mandated that each friar rise at 4:15 am, cross himself, and thank God for his life and the benefits he enjoyed, and offer his daily work and love. Next, he would recite the Our Father, honor the Holy Trinity, and ask for help to avoid offenses and please God. He then would recite a Hail Mary to the Virgin and Saint Joseph, requesting intercession before God. After prayers, each friar would attend mass until 6:30 am, when he had breakfast and a short break until 7:15 am. Then he participated in another round of silent prayer until 8:30 am. Over the next hour he read a spiritual book and embarked on an hour of examining his conscience (examen de conciencia) in preparation for the general confession, after which he rested for fifteen minutes. Until lunch at noon he would rest or prepare his prayers, and then apparently take a nap (siesta) after lunch until 2:00 pm. From 2:00 to 3:00, he would recite the rosary or the crown to the Virgin or another spiritual devotion and rest if there were time, and from 3:00 to 4:00 pm, examine his conscience and prepare for general confession. Over the next hour, he would focus on a spiritual lesson followed by a fifteen-minute to half-hour break that consisted of walking in his cell or the garden if under the watchful eye of a lay friar (a friar who had taken vows but was not an ordained priest). Roché wanted to impede rowdy gatherings in communal spaces, and thus believed that the presence of vigilant friars (lay friars in this instance) would prevent disorderly conduct. The friar’s spiritual exercises would end with a silent prayer followed by rest, dinner, and conversing with his brethren. A third conscience examination was recommended before retiring to his cell around 9:00 pm.11 In monastic life, an important part of a friar’s time was spent praying. Friars learned to recite their prayers by heart in childhood. Throughout their lives, they memorized prayers, songs, and psalms. Some prayers were harder to memorize than others, and thus, in the Queretaran college, for instance, the commissary visitor to the guardian chapter of 1793 substituted the Miserere and Deprofundis or other well-known prayers for Easter psalms since most of the community was not able to recite the psalms by heart.12 Such vari-

11. Fr. Francisco Roig (or Roché), “Diario para exercicios,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, May 14, 1785, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 3, no. 1. 12. Auto de visita of Fray José de Sori, provincial minister of Michoacán, commissary visitor and president of the guardian chapter, Convento de San Francisco de Querétaro, September 6, 1793, LEC, fol. 167v.

128

To Sin No More

ations over the content of prayers proved more difficult when friars addressed the tight daily schedules of the colegios. Matins is probably the most extreme example of the difficulties friars faced in following the vida común and the controversy surrounding it. In fact, nothing raised more passions in the cloister and headaches for Franciscan authorities in and out of any given religious community than matins. Since medieval times, midnight matins characterized the beginning of the day in monastic orders, a tradition that was passed on to the mendicants. Throughout the eighteenth century, matins had nonetheless become an issue of dispute inside the religious communities on both sides of the Atlantic. While in most convents in America and Europe attendance at midnight matins was an exception rather than the norm, colegio Franciscans boasted the strict observance of this spiritual devotion to the extent that matins distinguished their daily life and traditional pledge to spiritual action. Considered a feature identifiable with the rigors of college life, all able friars had to rise at midnight for an hour of matins.13 Keeping with a tradition that led to sleep deprivation proved difficult. In Querétaro in 1770, authorities were reluctant to relieve young, sick, or new members of the community from midnight matins. Ill missionaries in Querétaro even requested additional medical certifications to waive attendance at this midnight liturgical office because “such exemptions are not well received in this holy College, especially in my case, being still young and having not worked at all in this College.” It is unclear whether the Querétaro community had stopped holding midnight matins by 1785, perhaps due to protests, only to resume them later. Other colleges moved them to different times. With the provincial minister’s support, the Colegio de San Antonio in Herbón, Galicia had already canceled the midnight prayers unanimously in 1720. The college in Tarija moved them to 7:00 pm before 1785. In contrast, the college in Escornalbóu still met for midnight matins when Fray Joan Papió wrote his history of the college in 1765, though he recognized the hardship involved in adhering to these communal services. In any case, when it came to schedule changes, colleges did not make decisions alone.14 13. See, for instance, “Constituciones del Colegio de Nra. Sra. de Guadalupe de Zacatecas,” November 13, 1713, item VII, AHPSEM, box 201. 14. “Petición al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro del P. Fr. Enrique Cenizo suplicando patente para la provincia del Santo Evangelio, donde tendrá mejor proporción para buscar su alivio y para el retorno a su Provincia de España; concedido,” 1770, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 3, no. 76. “[Y] reflixionando que por la estrecha observancia con qe se vive en este Sto Colegio, no se llevan a bien dichas dispensas, y con mayor razon en mi, siendo aun joben, y sin haver trabaxado nada en dho Colegio.” For the colegio in Escornalbóu, Cataluña, see Papió, La història d´Escornalbóu, 67. For the Herbón college, see Fray Antonio de Herosa, O.F.M., Memorial de las cosas notables de este Colegio de Herbón ([Ed. José Luis Soto Pérez, 1756–1759] Santiago: Editorial Eco

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

129

Franciscan authorities placed restrictions on seminary residents based on their fear that the colleges, public symbols of strict observance and dedication, would fall into absolute anarchy. Since each friar arrived at the seminaries with different customs, Franciscan authorities committed to keep the apostolic institutions immune to the whims of any individual friar and, even more important, to the abuses of those in charge of the community. “For the sake of a greater service to God, and the conservation of the peace and tranquility of the College and its government,” the commissary general of the Cismontane family and of the Indies banned Queretaran prelates and discretos in 1727 from introducing changes in the laws, rituals, and other aspects of community daily life without authorization by New Spain’s commissary general. Those who defied his order “would be punished for disobedience as disturbers of the peace.”15 Moreover, for the discretorio and prelates, granting exemptions from attending certain community activities could cause friction and irritation if, for instance, the rest of the community believed that they were given to undeserving religious. It was the duty of governing officials to be fair to their subordinates and watchful of those who gave suspicious excuses to exempt themselves from communal activities. In one instance in 1745, friars from the college in Escornalbóu in Cataluña joined forces and complained to Commissary General Fray Juan de la Torre about what they considered an unjustified waiver excusing Fray Francisco Carbonell from attending matins. The friars claimed Carbonell was less deserving of a dispensation than others who actively participated in all community activities. To avoid greater problems, the commissary general revoked his dispensation, at which time Carbonell asserted that he had never intended to avoid his duties without the prelate and discretorio’s approval.16 Critical problems also required drastic solutions. One of those moments came with independence and the expulsion of Spaniards from some countries, putting the colleges on the verge of collapse in America. In a decree signed on Franciscano, 2012), tratado 1, chap. 9, 311. For Tarija, see Rex Galindo, “La sacramentalización de la frontera,” 444. For laxity in observing matins among the Capuchins in Cádiz, Spain, see William J. Callahan, Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750–1874 (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1984), 25. Callahan points out that “the Capuchins rang matins each morning but stayed comfortably in their beds. The provincial visitor of the Clerics Minor of Andalusia found that conditions in the houses of the order had slipped so far below a minimum standard that he forbade the clergy from coming to choir in silk hats, smoking in the house’s environs, lending money to laymen, and decorating their cells with English wallpaper.” 15. Patent by Fray Juan de Soto, commissary general of the Cismontane family and of the Indies, to the guardian and discretos of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro, Convento de San Francisco in Madrid, August 10, 1727, LPZEAV, fol. 148r: “[P]or combenir assi al maior servizio de Dios, y la conserbazion de la paz, y tranquilidad de el Collegio y de su govierno con aperzivimiento de que los trasgresores de esta nra determinazion, seran castigados como ynovedientes, y perturbadores de la paz.” 16. “Various unclassified documents, Escornalbóu,” AHPFC, file 1, D 99.

130

To Sin No More

November 16, 1828, the Queretaran discretorio agreed that the only way to preserve the “laudable custom” of matins was to alternate each night with half of the community as a temporary measure.17 Only four years later, the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro rearranged its liturgical routine. In what looks like an acknowledgement of their unpopularity—the discretorio justified the decision to prevent departures of recently arrived religious—matins were moved to the evenings, between 6:30 and 7:15 p.m. The new spiritual timetable moved the time for prima forward to 4:30 a.m., after which the community gathered for prayers. At 7:30 a.m. on working days and 8 a.m. on holidays, religious recited the minor canonical hours of terce, sext, and none. Vespers and Complines were moved forward to 2:00 in the afternoon. The religious dined at 8:00 in the evening, and bells tolled for silence at 9:00 pm.18 From then on, Queretaran friars could enjoy six straight hours of sleep every night. The refectorio, or dining hall, demonstrates the dynamics that regulated and combined religious devotion with material needs inside a mendicant house. During their meals, friars listened to the Franciscan rule, college statutes, Christian doctrine, scripture passages, or if confessions had replaced morning classes, points of mystical and moral theology. Reprimands also took place in the refectorio. Discipline in the colleges, like in other Franciscan friaries, came under community scrutiny in the dining halls to publicly punish violators, expose illicit behaviors, and pedagogically set examples. In the Querétaro college, while others dined, violators wore gags in their mouths or ate under the table if they were guilty of repeatedly breaking silence. While confinement and selfcorporeal punishment tamed the body to relieve it from the physical desires that encapsulated the spirit, public physical disciplinary actions engendered guilt and shame and set examples for others. Public punishments within Franciscan colleges and friaries imply an emphatic affirmation of power and a ritualistic destruction of the body, as public executions and punishments condemn the body of the convicted person to the authority of the state.19 Each member

17. Decree signed by Fray Miguel Molina, colegio president, Fray José Luis Hijar, Fray Francisco Arana, and Fray Antonio González, November 16, 1828, LDQ2, fol. 153r: “loable costumbre.” 18. Decree of November 3, 1832, in LDQ2, fol. 164v. Father Pérez Llera denounced that the elimination of midnight matins was the result of expelling the Spanish friars in 1827–1828. Fr. José María Pérez Llera, “Apuntes sobre los acontecimientos acaecidos en este Colegio de la Stma. Cruz de Querétaro desde el año de 1821 y sus misiones hasta el mes de diciembre de 1844,” 1821–1844, AHPFM-FCSCQ, Q, no. 20, A, fol. 2v. Curiously, in 1835 matins were also moved to the evening (5 pm) at the colegio in Zacatecas. See José Francisco Sotomayor, Historia del Apostólico Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas, Desde su fundacion hasta nuestros dias, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Zacatecas: Imprenta de la Rosa, 1889), 2:207. 19. See also patent by Fray José Sanz, commissary general of the Indies to the guardian and other religious at the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro, Convento de San

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

131

of the community, according to his status inside the house, had a reserved seat at the table to eat, listen to the readings, and observe punitive spectacles. Deference in seating in the refectorio was the most important aspect of hierarchy and precedence in any Franciscan community, to such a degree that seats vacated while their holders missionized remained empty.20 In line with other Franciscan friaries, since the foundation of the first college in Querétaro in 1683, religious authorities gave importance to the friars’ diet. They knew that friars required nutritious and generous quantities of foodstuffs if they were to succeed in their hectic spiritual and material tasks. Thus, authorities preferred that their subjects “sin for excess than for abject poverty” in nutritional maintenance, while they hoped to prevent religious seeking external aid from friends, relatives, or benefactors.21 This last apprehension concerned the reputation of the colleges as well. What happened inside the walls of the community, reproachable or not, had to remain within. In a society that relied on social approval to measure status, Franciscan colleges carefully developed and maintained a reputation of strict observance and devout commitment to poverty. Mendicant orders came under popular criticism in the Middle Ages, and colleges were well aware that they remained under this scrutiny. The iconic fat and opulent priest of the Middle Ages was still present in the popular imagination. What is also important, such representations were widely accepted in certain areas of Protestant Europe that harbored profound anti-Catholic sentiments. Thus, collegiate friars could accept gifts of raw food but not prepared meals, to avoid, as one commissary general of the Indies pointed out, scandals of “sumptuousness.” Indubitably, guardians of the colleges were also impelled to maintain secrecy about what the friars ate.22 Friars from the colleges ate their three meals in the dining halls. Though diets varied depending on the region, friars seem to have enjoyed a higher dietary standard than most of their neighbors. In 1738, a missionary stationed in Querétaro described culinary specialties in a letter to his former brethren at the Herbón college in Spain. Meals, he claimed, consisted of soups, meat (espe-

Francisco of Madrid, November 18, 1716, LPZEAV, fol. 146v. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 47–50. 20. That was ordered in one of the first guardian chapters; see auto de visita by Fray Bartolomé Giner, commissary general of New Spain, November 13, 1700, LPZEAV, fol. 31v. 21. “Patente del M. R. P. Fr. Juan de Luzuriaga, Comisario General de Nueva España, en que ordena varios puntos para el buen gobierno del Colegio y un inventario de lo que se entregó a los fundadores del Colegio por la Provincia,” Convento de San Francisco de Querétaro, November 28, 1683, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 4, no. 1, fol. 1r–1v. 22. Chumillas, “Patente del Rvdmo. P. Fr. Julián Chumillas, Comisario General de Indias, en que ordena varios puntos para el gobierno del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro. Con varios puntos que resolvieron los padres del Colegio con el mismo fin,” Madrid, May 7, 1692, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 2, fol. 2r.

132

To Sin No More

cially mutton), eggs, fish (dry and fresh), vegetables, legumes, bread, and fruits, sometimes accompanied by a glass of wine. In Tarija, missionaries had yerba mate with sugar for breakfast. The rest of the day, Tarijan meals did not differ from their Queretaran counterparts. For lunch, friars had a bowl of soup, stew of cooked mutton or beef or a mixture of both, a pot with bacon and vegetables, seasonal fruit, and sometimes cheese. For dinner, friars in Tarija had a bowl of cooked vegetables and a stew of lamb. Sundays and Thursdays, fresh lettuce or endive salads replaced cooked vegetables. All this was accompanied by bread at will and a glass of wine with every lunch and dinner.23 While chocolate and tobacco were abundant in New Spain’s colleges, friars in Tarija had more restricted access to the former. Chocolate was prepared in the kitchen early in the morning and served every day to friars who requested it. In the Zacatecas college, the religious could order a cup of chocolate any time.24 Moreover, confessors from the college in Querétaro traditionally drank chocolate with their spiritual sisters when they visited women’s convents.25 Even missionaries were encouraged to drink chocolate after their siesta during the popular missions to Catholics and, in New Spain’s northern frontier missions, chocolate served as consolation for loneliness.26 A 1785 printed document on daily activities reveals that in Tarija habitual consumption of chocolate was reserved for sick friars. Healthy friars enjoyed a chocolate drink only eleven or twelve days a year. As an exception to this rule, preachers received four ounces of chocolate every time they preached moral sermons; surprisingly, that amount was increased to a pound if it was a laudatory sermon. As discussed in Chapter 5, colleges were directed to discourage this type of sermon since their foundation in the late seventeenth century. While the document does not provide an explanation for this reward, hagiographic homilies from colegio pulpits became more common during the second half of the eighteenth century onward. It could be that the infrequent laudatory sermon aimed at eulogizing

23. López, “Misiones de Méjico,” 271–272. For Tarija, see Rex Galindo. “La sacramentalización de la frontera,” 442–443. 24. “Constituciones del Colegio de Nra. Sra. de Guadalupe de Zacatecas,” November 13, 1713, AHPSEM, box 201, item XIV. 25. Gunnarsdóttir, Mexican Karismata, 36. 26. An instance of chocolate use in missions to Catholics appears in Dir1748, fol. 18v. For chocolate use in the Sonora missions, see “Carta del P. Fr. José Miguel de Araujo, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, al P. Fr. Manuel de la Vega, Comisario General de Indias, remitiéndole información sobre el estado del Colegio y de sus misiones, y adjuntando lista de los religiosos del Colegio residentes en el mismo, en sus misiones y en el hospicio de Puebla,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, May 18 and 20, 1769, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 3, no. 1; and Francisco Antonio Barbastro, “Deberes y obligaciones temporales de los misioneros en el norte de Nueva España,” 1780, San Pedro y San Pablo de Tubutama, University of Texas, Austin, Nettie Lee Benson Library, G227, fol. 7v.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

133

persons near death or the recently deceased required more time to prepare than a sermon on morals and hence the subsequent prize.27 In 1744, the commissary general of the Indies prohibited missionaries from the colleges in Mexico City, Querétaro, and Zacatecas from smoking tobacco in cigars unless prescribed to do so by a surgeon and authorized by the guardian. These friars were encouraged to use a pipe when smoking. Consumption of tobacco was widespread not just in American convents and churches but also in Spain. In the mid-seventeenth century, the constitutions of the Zaragoza Archdiocese had to forbid parishioners from bringing tobacco inside the churches, and clergymen were prohibited from using tobacco in churches an hour before and after mass.28 The following instance showcases the dependence on tobacco and chocolate that some friars developed in the colleges. Fray Francisco Villaseca, expelled from the college in Querétaro in the late eighteenth century after accusations of publicly defaming a fellow novice, requested before his departure “a new robe, two tunics, two pairs of sandals, and some chocolate with a few cigars, to alleviate my sad journey.”29 Overall, the colleges were capable of balancing a cloistered life with apostolic ministry, a difficult equilibrium that had troubled Franciscans in the first century after the conquest. In his study of Franciscan spirituality in sixteenthcentury Mexico, Steven Turley found that for some early friars, transition from an eremitic spiritual habitus of contemplation and austerity to active missionary work and establishing the new church proved impossible.30 By the late seventeenth century, however, apostolic Franciscans managed to connect ideals of the eremitic life with a strong sense of evangelical commitment. To do so, they juxtaposed a demanding cloistered daily life with consistent missionary training and practice. An important part of the colleges’ daily schedule was dedicated to intellectual pursuits. Rooted in five centuries of evangelical experience, the colleges developed a complex training program that began

27. Rex Galindo. “La sacramentalización de la frontera,” 442. 28. Patent by Fray José Ortiz de Velasco, commissary for missions of the colegios de propaganda fide, to guardians of the San Fernando (Mexico City), Santa Cruz (Querétaro), and Guadalupe (Zacatecas) colleges, Convento de San Agustín, Maninalco, March 3, 1744, includes the patent by Fray Matías de Velasco, commissary general of the Indies, to the commissary of the colegio de propaganda fide missions, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, September 14, 1743, LPZEAV, fol. 155v. For the case of Zaragoza, see Constituciones sinodales del Arzobispado de Zaragoza (Zaragoza, 1656), título XV, constitución VII, 53v–54r. I thank Max Deardorff for this reference. 29. Letter from Fray Francisco Villaseca to the guardian Father Miralles, Querétaro, October 28, 1799, in “Papeles relativos al asunto de la desfiliación del hermano Fr. Francisco Villaseca,” 1798–1800, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 3, no. 97: “[U]n avito nuevo, dos tunicos, dos pares de sandalias, y un poco de chocolate con unos puros, p.a alivio en mi penosa caminata.” 30. Turley, Franciscan Spirituality.

134

To Sin No More

with the Franciscan curriculum of general education for novices and friars, and being deeply embedded in scholasticism, gave missionaries intellectual skills to convert Catholics and non-Christians.

The Novitiate Chapter 2 showed that the colegios de propaganda fide accepted novices who fulfilled certain requirements of customs, lineage, racial purity, age, legitimacy, and literacy. The recruitment process was controlled by the guardian and the discretorio, who accepted or rejected candidates through secret balloting. Once the aspirant was admitted, he entered the novitiate, that is, a one-year probationary period before becoming a Franciscan friar. Successful novices made solemn vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as friars.31 In theory, novices lived and studied in their own quarters under the strict supervision of the maestro de novicios. In the colegios, masters of novices supervised pupils until they were ordained priests or, in cases of lay brothers or friars with the presbyter order, at least five years after the respective vows.32 How-

31. Details on the admission requirements and process are discussed in Chapter 2. The position on recruiting procedures in early statutes is found in Díez, “Apostólicos empleos,” fols. 17r, 23r; and Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 57–58. For general overviews of the Franciscan novitiate, see Vázquez Valdivia, “El constitucionalismo descalzo franciscano,” 287–305; and Vaquerín Aparicio, “Vida, espiritualidad y proyección social,” 105–122. The year of probation commonly applied to most religious orders, with the exception of the Jesuits, whose novitiate lasted three years; see Brockey, Journey to the East, 218. 32. For the Colegio de San Fernando, see “Volumen en el que se recogen diversos escritos y documentos existentes en el archivo del Colegio, con razón de los cajones en donde se encontraban (siglo XVIII),” AHPSEM, box 201. For the Discalced college in Pachuca, see Estatutos y ordenaciones segun las bulas que nuestro padre Inocencio XI expidió para los colegios de misioneros, acomodadas á la mas estrecha observancia que se practica en la Seráfica Descalcez, para el Colegio de Propaganda Fide de nuestro Seráfico Padre San Francisco de Pachuca en la Nueva España, 10–11; and for the Tarija colegio in Bolivia, see Estatutos y ordenaciones del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Ntra. Señora de los Angeles de la Villa de Tarija, October 9, 1807, in Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, appendix 4, 263. After his visit to the Queretaran college in early 1778, former guardian of San Fernando, Fray Francisco Pangua, who had also presided over its guardian chapter, instructed his Queretaran confreres to observe everything related to education of the youth, emphasizing the subjection of the choristers (before their ordination) and lay students (for a period of six years as the Varisio’s patent ordered) to the discipline of the master of novices. Auto de visita of Fray Francisco Pangua, commissary visitor and president of the guardian chapter, February 10, 1778, LEC, fol. 136v. According to Fray Pacual de Varisio’s patent, until their ordination, choristers lived and worked under the tutelage of the masters of novices, and lay brothers remained under such tutelage for six years. He further reminded his subjects that students could not leave the convents unless necessary and with the due permission by their prelates. See patent by Fray Pascual de Varisio, minister general of the order, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, August 19, 1768, LEC, fols. 89v–90r, 93r.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

135

ever, colleges initially lacked separate areas where novices could spend their year of probation. That was the case for the Queretaran Recollect house (where the most strict observance of the Franciscan rule was practiced) when Fray Antonio Llinás and his associates arrived in 1683. A year later the college admitted its first novice, Pedro Muñoz Manzano, who became Fray Pedro de San Buenaventura. Perhaps, due to complications with accommodations, officials at the Colegio de la Santa Cruz suspended new admissions until the 1690s when thirteen new aspirants appear in the records.33 The college in Querétaro also lacked a coristado (area where choristers or choir students lived and were trained) in the early years, which forced choir students like young Fray Juan de Losada Sotomayor, who had arrived from the Provincia de Andalucía in 1699, to take theology classes at the famous Colegio de San Buenaventura y San Juan Capistrano de Tlatelolco in Mexico City, a college founded in 1662 to train novices and friars though not part of the propaganda fide network.34 Despite orders from various inspectors to build a separate area for the novices, the college in Querétaro still lacked a segregated area for novices in 1709.35 Because the career of a friar was a life-long undertaking, masters of novices had to be observant. Not only did they focus on educating the novices, they were also responsible for identifying those unfit for religious life. Teachers assessed their pupils throughout the academic year and dismissed those judged as “inept.” In the first year, novices familiarized themselves with the new religious environment: a life of abnegation and self-denial; wholehearted dedication to God and to others; and ideals imprinted on the novice’s mind through constant exercises in humility that included daily practice of corporal punishments, prayers, studying, fasting, service to the community, retreat, and cloister under a regime of strict surveillance.36

33. See LNQ, fols. 29r–33r, and “Información de Pedro Muñoz Manzano,” 1684, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 1, no. 1. In the early centuries of the Franciscan Order, new members learned the essentials in close contact with the rest of the community. Only after the Council of Trent (1545–1563) did the Franciscans incorporate into their general statutes a mandate to establish separate houses from the rest of the community for educating the new members. Not all convents had novitiates, however. 34. In 1703, Fray Juan de Losada was appointed commissary for the información de limpieza de sangre of aspirant José Francisco Bambar. The investigation took place in Mexico City, where the commissary was studying at the Colegio de San Buenaventura de Tlatelolco. “Información de José Francisco Bambar,” 1703, AHPFM-FCSCQ, P, file 2, no. 19. 35. Auto de visita of Fray Juan Rico de Luarca, provincial minister of Michoacán, November 8, 1702, LPZEAV, fol. 228r–228v; and auto de visita of Fray Antonio de Trejo, provincial minister of Michoacán, September 6, 1709, fol. 233v. It is unclear when a separate living space for novices was actually completed. 36. Non-approved constituciones, AHPSEM, box 201. Patent by Fray Antonio de Cardona, commissary general of the Cismontane family, to all religious, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, April 2, 1698, LPZEAV, fols. 24v–25r.

136

To Sin No More

The objective for masters of novices was clear: to sort out potential friars’ virtues and shortcomings. Michel Foucault points out that “[t]he success of disciplinary power derives no doubt from the use of simple instruments[:] . . . hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment and their combination in a procedure that is specific to it, the examination.” Using a military example, disciplinary power was based, Foucault claims, on the idea that to impose discipline, the hierarchy had to be vigilant, exercising power in a discreet manner. “In the perfect [military] camp, all power would be exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a part of the overall functioning of power.” For masters of novices their hierarchical position over the novices, power of observation, and finally examination became their main tools to enforce discipline. Eventually in their careers, friars translated such sense of authority, obedience, and control to their evangelical program to native peoples in the frontier missions.37 College prelates were especially cautious with young men (many in their teens), perceived as highly impulsive and unpredictable as well as easily influenced and not fully developed. Besides housing them in the novitiates, students also needed the guardian’s approval to leave the convent always in the company of a lector (professor in charge of lecturing on any relevant theme). It is difficult to know to what extent college seclusion rules were evaded. Patents from Madrid and Mexico City and autos de visita, written after short inspections, suggest that unauthorized leaves for novices and students were common despite keen vigilance. In an illustrative case, in 1718 Fray Agustín de Mesones, commissary general of New Spain, forbade all philosophy and theology students to leave the Querétaro college, although he eventually agreed to let students leave under the surveillance of exemplary veteran religious. The same order forbade any student who had not yet passed the second year of theology instruction to preach outside the college and recommended that those interested in preaching use the dining hall on holidays to gain experience. Of course, novices were not prisoners, and they could leave any colegio to return to their previous lives as laymen before they took vows, as those who did not profess as friars show. Interestingly, there is one recorded case of a novice escaping from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz by jumping the garden wall.38 37. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment, 170–171. Based on two documents used for training novices that rely on Saint Bonaventure’s approach to education—Cartilla y doctrina espiritual para la crianza y educación de los novicios que toman el hábito en la orden de N. P. S. Francisco and Instrucción y doctrina de novicios—Gutiérrez offers a vivid description and interesting interpretation of how life may have been in a Franciscan novitiate, with a special emphasis on the sexual anxieties that cloister and celibacy might have placed on novices. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 67–71. 38. If we are to believe the insistence of college superiors and inspectors, it seems that unauthorized student leaves may have been rather common. Auto de visita of Fray Agustín de Mesones, commissary general of New Spain and commissary visitor of the college, February

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

137

Expulsion of the Spaniards from Mexico in 1827 and the departure of most Queretaran friars brought important changes to the novitiate. In August 1832, the discretorio decreed that the chorister brother Fray José María Espinosa, who had taken vows a year earlier, could live outside novitiate housing as long as he was supervised by the master of novices. He apparently relocated to the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City a few months later, only to petition for rejoining the colegio in Querétaro, which was permitted on “condition that he live inside the Holy Novitiate and subject to all the Holy customs there observed.” Two years later he requested permission to transfer to the Provincia de Michoacán, where he had already been admitted. His unsuccessful request to leave Querétaro was followed by a petition to exit that college and a petition to be assigned to the Colegio de San Fernando two months later. It is not clear if he finally relocated to the Mexico City friary.39

Franciscan General Curriculum The first seven years of instruction in the propaganda fide colleges consisted of the general education program for the Franciscan Order. Friars in the colegios thus nourished a long tradition of missionary preparation that traces back to the order’s early years. Friars like Saint Bonaventure (1221– 1274) deemed that a large-scale evangelical enterprise required carefully prepared ministers, supported by financial aid and a network of convents that eventually became colleges to cultivate theology and the arts and to prepare their brethren for the apostolic career.40 The multireligious environment and 16, 1718, LPZEAV, fol. 240v; and certification by Fray Juan Alonso Ortega, apostolic preacher and former guardian of the Queretaran college, May 2, 1718, LPZEAV, fol. 241v. See also auto de visita of Fray Antonio Fernández, former provincial minister of Michoacán, who took vows at the college in Querétaro, commissary visitor and president of the guardian chapter of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, February 7, 1775, LEC, fol. 118v. Pedro Pañero is the only recorded novice who escaped the college before he took vows as a friar, LNQ, fol. 113r. 39. See decrees of August 22, 1832 and August 16, 1832, respectively, in LDQ2, fols. 163r–163v, 164v, 169v: “[C]ondicion de q.e viviese dentro del S.to Novic.do sujeto en todo á las Stas. constumbres q.e en el se observan.” 40. See the works by Lino Gómez Canedo, “Conventuales, observantes, y reformados (Política indigenista y filiación espiritual de los primeros franciscanos de Indias),” in Gómez Canedo, Evangelización, cultura y promoción social, 129–136; “La reforma interna de la orden franciscana como antecedente para la evangelización de América (Antecedentes espirituales de los primeros misioneros de México),” in ibid., 137–150; “Los primeros misioneros de México y Centroamérica: su ideal franciscano,” in ibid., 159–183; and “Evangelización y conquista,” in ibid., 24–25. See also Rubial, La hermana pobreza, 13–34; Vázquez Valdivia, “El constitucionalismo descalzo franciscano,” 24–26; and Vaquerín Aparicio, “Vida, espiritualidad y proyección social,” 48–51. Vázquez Valdivia points out that Saint Francis opposed the institution of colleges to train missionaries (p. 26). For the origins of the Franciscan education program, see Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Boston; Leiden, The Netherlands; Köln, Germany: Brill, 2000).

138

To Sin No More

Christian expansion on Iberian soil—where Christians, Muslims, and Jews cohabited, not without intermittent violence and warfare—favored an increased interest in the training of missionaries. Raymond Llull (1232–1315), a member of the Franciscan Third Order or Franciscan lay order and a missionary scholar, with experience in converting Muslims on his island of Mallorca, founded a school at the Monastery of Miramar in 1279, where missionaries learned Arabic before preaching to Muslims. Under his influential recommendations, Rome instituted chairs in Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldean in the Roman Curia in the early fourteenth-century, a move followed by the universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca.41 The study of theology and philosophy flourished in the universities throughout the late Middle Ages and influenced ecclesiastical training in monasteries and general curricula. Laymen who entered the colleges of propaganda fide began studying in the first novitiate year. Novices read the Franciscan rule and constitutions, and learned the art of silent prayer and spiritual exercises. In particular, chorister novices, who later became priests and hence missionaries, polished their Latin, read classic authors and the Christian doctrine, studied rhetoric, and were introduced to philosophy and logic, and probably astronomy and mathematics, all of which comprised the backbone of the ecclesiastical curriculum and early modern education. From a pedagogic standpoint, mastery of the necessary rudiments acquired in the first year contributed to the success of the second educational phase in philosophy and theology, since most of the treatises were in Latin. At the time, Latin was the language of scholarship, similar to English nowadays, and rhetoric prepared students to debate in theology classes and, eventually, in their preaching and confessing. The ars rethorica, as shown in Chapter 5, taught missionaries and preachers to keep their listeners’ attention as much as how to persuade and convince.42

41. Kieran McCarty points out that the school in Miramar was “the very first missionary college as such.” The college only lasted for twenty-five years. The famous Franciscan philosopher Fray Roger Bacon (1214/1220–1292) also showed his interest in the preparation of missionaries in a treatise from the 1260s, where he suggested the need for training in Greek, Chaldean, Aramaic, Syrian, and Arabic, McCarty, “Apostolic Colleges,” 52–53. See also Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 28. 42. See, for instance, the undated application, “Petición al guardián y discretos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro de José Germán Rodríguez sobre sus pretensiones a ser admitido en el Colegio,” Querétaro, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 1, no. 47. José Germán pointed out that he had passed the courses in grammar (Latin), rhetoric, and philosophy in the Jesuit College of San Francisco Javier in Querétaro, which he knew were necessary to enter the colegio in Querétaro. Commissaries general approved several patents reminding friars in their provinces and colegios of the need to strengthen the study of Latin, philosophy, and rhetoric. See, for instance, the first patent by Fray Juan de Soto, commissary general of the Cismontane family and the Indies, to all religious, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, July 10, 1727, LPZEAV, fol. 128v; patent of appointment of Fray Domingo Losada as commissary general of the Indies, to all religious, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid,

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

139

The Council of Trent (1545–1563) determined that all newly minted friars would study six years of philosophy and theology while obtaining the three major holy orders—subdeacons, deacons, and finally, priests, at the end of the six-year period. While each college controlled its curriculum—for instance, courses on moral theology were designed by selecting from a large pool of textbooks such as Fray Anacletus Reiffenstuel’s Moralis Theologia (Moral Theology)—bishops had the sole authority to examine the friars in philosophy and theology and grant entry into the major orders, including the priesthood. Friars began the three-year course of “arts” (i.e., philosophy), which focused on logic in addition to Greek and Roman philosophy, while reading classic authors such as Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Pliny, Horace, as well as major Christian philosophers such as the Franciscans John Duns Scotus and Saint Bonaventure. During the three-year course of theology, friars usually studied doctrinal theology, canon law, sacred scripture, Church history, and especially, moral theology, described as “so necessary to instruct, direct, and govern the conscience with rectitude and a sound doctrine.”43 The precise curriculum depended on the aspirant’s status in the order as well as his background and abilities. As mentioned in Chapter 2, candidates could enter the Franciscan Order as donados (oblates), lay brothers, or chorister friars. Since donados never took the vows of a friar and remained engaged December 5, 1729, in LPZEAV, fol. 142v. See Roest, A History of Franciscan Education, 65–87. For the study of arts (philosophy), see José Luis Becerra López, La organización de los estudios en la Nueva España (Mexico City: n.p., 1963), 159–163. For the Jesuits, see Brockey, Journey to the East, 211–213. 43. Patent by Fray José Sanz, commissary general of the Indies to all religious, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, January 11, 1712, LPZEAV, fols. 69r–82r (foliation jumps from 69 to 80). Fr. Julián Chumillas, “Patente del Rvdmo. P. Fr. Julián Chumillas, Comisario General de Indias, en que ordena varios puntos para el gobierno del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro. Con varios puntos que resolvieron los padres del Colegio con el mismo fin,” Madrid, May 7, 1692, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 2. Quote is in second patent by Fray Juan de Soto, commissary general of the Cismontane family and of the Indies, to all religious, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, July 10, 1727, LPZEAV, fol. 128v: “[T]an necesario para instruir, dirigir, y governar las consiencias con rectitud, y sana doctrina.” On the instruction of the clergy in colonial Mexico, see William B. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred: Parish Priests in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 90–91, who relies on two important studies: first, an older but still useful analysis of education in New Spain by Becerra López, La organización de los estudios en la Nueva España, esp. 189–198; and a general overview of education in Guadalajara by Carmen Castañeda, La educación en Guadalajara durante la Colonia, 1552–1821 (Guadalajara: El Colegio de Jalisco and El Colegio de México, 1984). With an emphasis on New Granada in South America, José Abel Salazar offers probably the most complete study of the clergy’s education in America; see P. Fr. José Abel Salazar, Los estudios eclesiásticos superiores en el Nuevo Reino de Granada (1563–1810) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigación Científicas, Instituto Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo, 1946). Bishops were the sole authority for examining and granting the minor and major orders and priesthood ordination; see Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 19.

140

To Sin No More

in maintaining the community’s material livelihood, they learned crafts such as farming, gardening, cooking, carpentry, and masonry. Records from the college in Querétaro show that a few donados who later took vows as lay novices did undergo religious instruction.44 Lay brothers also kept their noses to the grindstone (en el tajo); they worked in the infirmary, kitchen, foyer, dining room, and collected alms. Nominally, they were considered servants of other friars.45 Since lay brothers had to serve their communities through daily chores and heavy manual work, their education in the colleges was restricted to a weekly class in which they learned the rule of Saint Francis, the art of silent prayer, and Christian doctrine. They also assisted in the mass and, like all residents of the friary, regularly attended the choir and spiritual exercises. It is no surprise that to be approved for admission to the Franciscan order, lay novices had to demonstrate their commitment to garden, kitchen, and infirmary. Lay friars were usually discouraged from developing an intellectual appetite, which, in the eyes of the prelates, conflicted with the necessary humility and obedience for those destined to serve the religious community itself. After inspecting the Queretaran Colegio de la Santa Cruz in early 1778 and presiding over its guardian chapter, Fray Francisco Pangua, himself a former guardian of the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, restricted the education of lay brothers to books that were “useful for their souls” such as the rule of Saint Francis, Christian doctrine, devotional material, and liturgy books. No publications on “issues foreign to their state, such as preaching, mystics, profane history, and others of this sort” were allowed.46 Such intellectual exercise was reserved for friars who took the path to priesthood.

44. The first illustrative example is Fray Gerónimo García, who arrived as a donado in Llinás’s first expedition of 1683. He became a lay novice on April 2, 1690 and professed as a lay friar a year later. See “Información de Gerónimo García Muñoz,” 1690, AHPFMFCSCQ, P, file 1, no. 2; and LNQ, fols. 29r, 30r. The 1713 constitución municipal for the college in Zacatecas stated that it was customary in the colleges that lay brothers first entered the seminaries as donados. See “Constituciones del Colegio de Nra. Sra. de Guadalupe de Zacatecas,” November 13, 1713, AHPSEM, box 201, item XX. In 1806, the discretorio of Querétaro decreed that all lay students had a six-year experience as donados. Decree of October 7, 1806, in LDQ2, fol. 101r. 45. This statement might be disputed, especially when evidence exists about certain levels of equality among all friars, within their own realms, inside a college. Nonetheless, Franciscan authorities preferred lay brothers to take serving roles in the colleges, as occurred in nunneries, before hiring outsiders as servants. For servant nuns in colonial Lima, see Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits. 46. Auto de visita of Fr. Francisco Pangua, visitador y presidente capítulo guardianal, February 10, 1778, LEC, fol. 136v: “[U]tiles a sus Almas, como de la Regla, de oracion, Doctrina Christiana, y devocion, mas no de otros asuntos agenos de su estado, como Predicables, misticos directivos, historia profana, y otros de esta calidad.” See also Estatutos y ordenaciones segun las bulas que nuestro padre Inocencio XI. Para el Colegio de Propaganda Fide

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

141

The Franciscan education system revolved around choristers, whose education took a longer and more intellectual path. With more demanding entry prerequisites that included study in Latin, philosophy, and theology, choir novices also learned the rule of Saint Francis, theory and practice of silent prayer, and Christian doctrine while advancing their mastery of moral and mystical theologies, Latin, and native languages.47 As mentioned previously, requirements seem to have varied. For example, the Colegio de San Fernando unsuccessfully attempted to require aspirants to complete the three-year course of philosophy and two years of theology and to demonstrate their progress in an “exact rigorous exam” before admission to its novitiate as choir novices.48 Moreover, since choristers entered the colleges with different educational backgrounds, their curricula could also be written à la carte to meet their needs. Colleges of propaganda fide hence incorporated a flexibility that had characterized the Franciscan general curriculum since the early years. Some novices who entered the colegios were priests or had preaching and confessing licenses from the diocesan authorities and thus could be exempted from some courses. Those who had studied theology before entering a colegio could reduce mandatory study by years. In a 1743 patent letter, the commissary general of the Indies complained that some college prelates seem to have taken liberties in presenting unprepared friars for ordination as priests as the friars had not completed their schooling in philosophy and theology. Exceptions could only be made, the commissary general reminded the guardians, if the young friar had successfully passed the courses of sacred theology before entering the college, which was usually the case for priests who joined the novitiate. In any case, the commissary ordered all religious to study for five years after taking vows for a specific holy order (as mentioned previously, the typical curriculum was in fact six years of philosophy and theology), before being approved for the priesthood, and decreed that the prelate together with the discretorio (council of government of a college with legislative power) could waive some courses on a case-by-case basis.49

de nuestro Seráfico Padre San Francisco de Pachuca en la Nueva España, 4–5; and Estatutos y ordenaciones del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Ntra. Señora de los Angeles de la Villa de Tarija, October 9, 1807, in Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, appendix IV, 261. 47. For the college in Pachuca, see Estatutos y ordenaciones segun las bulas que nuestro padre Inocencio XI. Para el Colegio de Propaganda Fide de nuestro Seráfico Padre San Francisco de Pachuca en la Nueva España, 3. 48. “Volumen en el que se recogen diversos escritos y documentos existentes en el archivo del Colegio, con razón de los cajones en donde se encontraban (siglo XVIII),” AHPSEM, box 201: “por exacto rigoros examen.” 49. Patent by Fray Matías de Velasco, commissary general of the Indies, to the commissary of the colleges, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, September 14, 1743, LPZEAV, fol. 153v. Bert Roest has pointed out that studia generalia was not a rigid system. Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517), 33, 80–81.

142

To Sin No More

Such an exception was made for Fray Pablo de la Purísima Concepción Beaumont, the famous Michoacán chronicler, whose application certainly created strong expectations in the Queretaran community. The son of a famous surgeon, and a well-regarded surgeon himself, he requested admission to the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in 1755. Like many novices who came from Spain, he was approved as a chorister novice without the mandatory informaciones, which were nevertheless conducted before he took vows as a friar on March 7, 1756. Less than a year later, the discretorio of the Quereteran college decreed that he could skip the three-year philosophy course and proceed to focus on theology before beginning the school year. He was also exempt from attending midnight matins and prima “in view of the daily occupation, which is indispensable” for his theology studies.50 After ordination, chorister friars were expected to specialize in moral theology, which could be taken during the three years of general theology, but were commonly an additional specialized two-year course that qualified them to work as preachers, after the customary bishop’s examination and diocesan approval.51 In effect, moral theology became the cornerstone of training Franciscan clerics, preachers, and missionaries in the colleges. But why was moral theology pivotal to the evangelical ministry? As the minister general of the Franciscan order pointed out in 1768, moral theology (the Latin term mores means customs) was the part of theology that “belonged to the direction of customs.” In other words, it was considered the fundamental preaching instrument to reform Catholic believers’ habits. Dogmatic theology, on the other hand, dealt with the theoretical principles of the Christian faith concerned with truths from the Christian God and associated revelations. Thus, when Franciscan authorities in Madrid requested throughout the eighteenth century that friars study moral theology, Franciscan leaders aimed at reinvigorating the long-standing apostolic crusade to eradicate improper behaviors and idolatrous practices, an idea taken to its highest level in the colegios de propaganda fide.52

50. Decree dated February 5, 1757, LDQ1, fol. 131v. He had professed on March 7, 1756; see LNQ, fols. 103v–104r. 51. Auto de visita of Fray Antonio Fernández, Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, February 7, 1775, LEC, fol. 118v. 52. Patent by Fray Pascual de Varisio, minister general of the order, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, August 19, 1768, LEC, fol. 93r: “qe pertenece a la direccion de las costumbres y llamamos theologia Moral.” See also the two patents on education by Fray Juan de Soto, commissary general of the Cismontane family and of the Indies, to all religious, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, July 10, 1727, LPZEAV, fol. 128r–129v. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “Dogmatic theology is that part of theology which treats of the theoretical truths of faith concerning God and His works (dogmata fidei), whereas moral theology has for its subject-matter the practical truths of morality (dogmata morum).” See the entries “Dogmatic Theology,” in Catholic Encyclopedia, available at

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

143

In the classroom, philosophy and theology were taught based on the scholastic method, which has its origins in the medieval centers of higher education in Europe. The controversies and misinterpretations surrounding scholasticism in this context deserve consideration. Particularly in the field of mission studies, the idea that missionaries had a medieval “scholastic,” and therefore backward mentality, has taken deep roots among scholars. Scholasticism, however, is a pedagogic method, and thus a technique devoid of theological or philosophical content. In other words, it does not imply a body of doctrine, much less orthodox doctrine, but a learning technique through debate and argumentation. In medieval schools, “the scholastic method [was] characterized not by the use of Aristotle,” one significant medievalist has pointed out, but rather “by the teaching procedures” that applied the dialectical method to the study of the sacred scriptures. Students used their knowledge of dialectics, the core (and arguably a synonym) of the scholastic method, in their philosophy and theology classes. In the first part of the scholastic lesson—the quaestio— the lector in charge of the classroom read a theme from a text that students would later discuss. The lector posed questions on the chosen topic, and students replied based on diverse interpretations of the text, an intellectual exercise of argumentation and contrasting hypotheses. This also included analyzing the position of Church scholars on the subject matter. The quaestio’s aim was to facilitate comprehension of the text, while the second part—the disputatio— organized pros and cons around the theme previously discussed. Fundamentally, pupils and teachers were involved in a dialogue in which some argued against and others argued in support of certain theological and philosophical positions. The lector then distilled all ideas presented, disputing or corroborating them to finally offer a solution according to his expertise. In general terms, the scholastic method was dialectical in nature; it was scientific because it was inclined towards the “pursuit of problems and new solutions.”53

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14580a.htm (accessed January 17, 2010), and “Moral Theology,” in ibid., www.newadvent.org/cathen/14601a.htm (accessed January 17, 2010). 53. I thank the late Dr. Jeremy duQuesnay Adams for guiding me in this difficult topic and offering bibliographical help, particularly Jean Leclercq, O.S.B., The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi, 3rd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982; reprint, 1985), 2–3, 72, 142, 201–203. For a more recent discussion, see the excellent article by Alex J. Novikoff, “Toward a Cultural History of Scholastic Refutation,” American Historical Review 117(2) (April 2012), 331– 364; and his The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). James Sandos refers to a “scholastic worldview,” in which Fray Junípero Serra “taught [that] the universe was geocentric: spheres orbited an immovable earth as presented in the Ptolemaic system,” to claim that this “scholastic view” opposed the Copernican enlightened approach that the Earth rotates around the sun. See Sandos, Converting California, 80. Besides Sandos, most scholars who

144

To Sin No More

Figure 3.1. Lecture at a Franciscan convent, “Controve in universam artis logicam ad mentem Ducentis et Docentis. . . ,” 1727. Courtesy of the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Library, San Jacinto Museum of History, Houston, Tx.

A Missionary Pedagogy To discuss problems and seek solutions that concerned their evangelical ministry, colegio students and friars gathered in daily meetings called conferencias, or conferences. Also known as ecclesiastical conferences, moral conferences, chapters, or sessions, these were crucial to reinforce preaching and missionary skills and keep them up to date. Overall, the conferencias offered the intellectual context to conceptualize, draft, revise, and improve sermons, pláticas, doctrinas (Catholic catechisms), missionary guides, and other preaching materials. Originally mandated by the Council of Trent as a response to prevalent criticism of priests’ theological and doctrinal preparation, by the late seventeenth century the conferencias were a widespread element of clerical instruction. In many dioceses, the conferences became the setting where clerics discussed their profession, aimed at matters of theology and liturgy. Scholars who have studied these ecclesiastical conferences provide insight into their

study Franciscan missionaries rely on thirteenth-century Franciscans–Saint Francis, Saint Bonaventure, or Fray John Duns Scotus—to describe perceived retrograde eighteenth-century friars’ ethos. See Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 46; Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 94– 95; and Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis, 52.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

145

frequency and contents. In 1672, the archbishop of Paris decreed that all priests under his authority meet once a month for the conferencias.54 In the diocese of Seville, the number of sessions varied depending on the city: for the towns of Écija and Puerto de Santa María between 1785 and 1800, priests held conferences less than once a month on average, with no meetings in some years. In the Diocese of Michoacán, secular priests held conferencias semanarias, or weekly conferences, on Thursdays from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon. Meanwhile, in the Franciscan Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepción de Celaya, an institution of higher education established in the Mexican city of Celaya in 1624 to instruct friars from convents within the Franciscan province of Michoacán, students and teachers held conferencias on Thursdays and Sundays. In 1786, Fray Manuel María Trujillo, commissary general of the Indies, recommended that all Franciscan friars in the Americas hold weekly conferences alternating moral theology, mystical theology, and the Franciscan rule.55 Thus, conference frequency in the Franciscan missionary colleges was rather remarkable when compared to other ecclesiastical institutions, including other missionary orders. The 1686 general constitutions for the colleges of propaganda fide—a set of rules that regulated their operation—required all members of the community to attend two hourly conferences every day. All able friars were expected to assemble in the morning after mass for an hour of discussion focusing on topics germane to preparing for the missions, learning native languages, or debating problems of mystical theology. Participants in these morning meetings debated the arts of prayer, contemplation, private revelations, or visions—in other words, all matters related to the mystical union between

54. In pastoral visitations to Mantova Diocese between 1535 and 1553, priests were criticized for their inadequate knowledge of theology. A century later, the same thing happened in the Liège Diocese. The archbishop of Paris, Harly de Champvallon, decreed in 1672 that: “[A]ll the curés, vicars, confessors and other supply priests and priests residing in the parishes of the diocese must attend a conference once a month, even when the weather was inclement or farms short-staffed.” Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 185–187. 55. The study of moral conferencias in the Seville Archdiocese from their origins to Vatican II is in Manuel Martín Riego, Las conferencias morales y la formación permanente del clero en la Archidiócesis de Sevilla (siglos XVIII al XX) (Seville: Fundación Infanta María Luisa, 1997). For the Michoacán Diocese, see Juvenal Jaramillo Magaña, Hacia una iglesia beligerante: la gestión episcopal de Fray Antonio de San Miguel en Michoacán, 1784–1804, los proyectos ilustrados y las defensas canónicas (Zamora, Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1996), 72–74. For the Franciscan Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepción of Celaya, see Becerra López, La organización de los estudios, 193–194. Manuel María Trujillo, Exhortación pastoral, avisos importantes y reglamentos útiles que para la mejor observación de la disciplina regular e ilustración de toda la literatura en todas las provincias y colegios apostólicos de América y Filipinas (Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, hijos y compañía, por superior permiso, 1786), 228–229.

146

To Sin No More

the soul and God.56 In the evening, usually after Vespers, friars learned and argued cases of moral theology and conscience considered important for delivering confession and penance, key elements of the evangelical ministry.57 The conferencias were so important for missionary preparation that the rules issued by the college in Querétaro for friars stationed in the Sonoran frontier missions in 1777 stated: “Missionaries are entrusted to devote any time remaining following ministry occupations; the missionaries will hold talks [conferenciar] on moral subjects, especially the most common ones in the missions.”58 Similarly, Jay Harrison’s study of the mission field in Texas shows that Guadalupan authorities also requested their missionaries to hold these conferences in Texas.59 In fact, it is no coincidence that missionaries incorporated a similar schedule to indoctrinate their neophytes. For instance, the mission timetable in the Sierra Gorda missions in central Mexico suggested that in the mornings and evenings, a missionary called the Indians together—adults first, followed by the children— to teach Christian doctrine, prayers, and “the most principal mysteries.”60 While morning conferences on mystic theology and native languages were sporadic, as we will see, exemptions to host and attend the sessions on moral theology were extremely rare. It was only during Lent that the discretorio could waive the evening conferences on moral issues if confessors had to devote all their time to hearing confession.61 Chroniclers and lecturers were required to lead and participate in the meetings without exception, even if their duties exempted them from participating in other religious events. The

56. “Mystical Theology,” in Catholic Encyclopedia, available at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14621a.htm (accessed January 17, 2010). 57. Innocent XI, Ecclessiae Catholicae, Rome, October 16, 1686, in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 69. 58. “Constituciones municipales intimadas por el guardián del Colegio Apostólico de la Santa Cruz, P. Fr. Diego Ximénez, a los misioneros que al presente existen y en adelante existieren en las misiones de infieles a cargo de dicho Colegio,” issued on July 20, 1777, in Fr. Diego Ximénez, “Libro primero de patentes perteneciente a la misión de San Antonio de Oquitoa y su pueblo de visita de San Francisco del Ati en que se asientan sólo las de los prelados de la Orden, decretos y autos de Visita (1767–1835),” Mission San Antonio de Oquitoa 1777, AHPFM-FCSCQ, K, file 24, no. 1, fol. 15r. Copies appear in “Libro de patentes, decretos y Autos de Visita de la misión de la Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora de Caborca (1772–1835),” K, file 25, no. 1, 9r–14v, and “Libro de patentes de los prelados de la Orden, Decretos y Autos de visita de la misión de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores del Saric (1767–1827),” K, file 25, no. 2, 12–23. 59. Harrison, “Franciscan Missionary Theory,” 68–69. 60. “Fray Junípero Serra y su noviciado misional en América (1750–1758),” in Gómez Canedo, Evangelización, cultura y promoción social, 584–585; quote is on p. 585. He points out that this program was very similar to the missionary program in the sixteenth century. 61. See nos. 47–49, Innocent XI, Ecclessiae Catholicae, Rome, October 16, 1686, in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 69–70. See also Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide de la Nueva España, bk. 1, chap. XVI, 173–174.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

147

guardian customarily appointed the lecturers who gave the lessons, but only the discretorio could excuse them from their teaching responsibilities. A 1769 decree ordered Fray Miguel Zedeño de Figueroa, a veteran sixty-five-year-old lecturer recently incorporated into the Queretaran college from the Mexican Provincia de Michoacán, to be released from any obligations due to his illness and age, with the exception of the conferencia on moral theology and the penitenciaria (obligation to confess penitents in the college’s church). He was catalogued in the lists of friars of 1772 and 1774 as “habitually sick” and died two years later, on July 25, 1776.62 Curiously, on September 20, 1773, Fray Guillermo Rubert, who was forty-two at the time, was appointed to teach moral theology to the chorister Fray Juan Antonio Joaquín de Barreneche, with whom this chapter began. Fray Rubert was exempted from both the conferencia and his confessional obligations, among other activities, due to his afflictions—he was reported as “maimed and almost useless” in the same lists of 1772 and 1774. He died on January 24, 1782. Sources do not explain the course of action in both cases, although presumably Rubert’s expertise in moral theology had already served to exempt him from attending conferencias on moral theology. In any case, the two sets of elected discretos ruled differently in each case.63

62. Auto de visita of Fray Antonio de Trejo, provincial minister of Michoacán, September 6, 1709, LPZEAV, fol. 234r. For Fray Miguel Zedeño de Figueroa, see the decree of January 26, 1769, in LDQ 1, fol. 156r; “Lista hecha por el P. Fr. Romualdo Cartagena, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, de religiosos del Colegio remitida el 25 de septiembre de 1772,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, September 25, 1772, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 2, no. 9 A; and “Lista hecha por P. Fr. Acisclos Valverde de religiosos del Colegio remitida el 30 de diciembre de 1774,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, December 30, 1774, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 2, no. 9 C: “enfermo habitual” and “manco y casi inservible.” The chronicler Fray Diego Jiménez, elected via secret ballot on April 22, 1772 after the death of the previous chronicler Fray Hermenegildo Vilaplana, enjoyed certain exemptions but had to assist and defend the conferencia on moral theology whenever it was his turn. See the decree of March 3, 1773, LDQ1, fols. 177v–178r. See also the appointment of Fray Diego Bringas as chronicler on August 7, 1794, after the death of the previous chronicler Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, and his attendance at the conferencias in LDQ2, fol. 45r–45v. Fray José Jimeno, appointed chronicler in 1813, had to attend to the conferencias on moral theology and the Hebdomad. See the decree of August 20, 1813, LDQ2, fol. 114v. Nothing is mentioned on the same issue regarding the appointment of Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, who followed Fray Diego Jiménez as chronicler on October 29, 1787. See LDQ2, fol. 34r. 63. Decree of September 20, 1773, LDQ1, fols. 179v–180v. For Rubert’s death, see “Libro de los muertos del Colegio (1776–1852),” 1776–1852, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 4, no. 3, fol. 5r. Another case of waiving attendance at the conferencia was Fray Martín Echenagusia, old and sick, with forty years of missionary experience, who was also excused from matins, hearing night-time confessions, the Hebdomad, the choir, and organizing conferences. See the decree of September 7, 1809, LDQ2, fol. 108v. Fray Mariano Bordoy received dispensation to attend the meetings in 1811, also because of illness; see decree of February 28, 1811, LDQ2, fol. 112v.

148

To Sin No More

The conferencias’ dialectical format was similar to the scholastic lessons held during the first six years of the Franciscan general training. Generally, an appointed lecturer who presided over the meeting—or another experienced friar—was responsible for setting the theme of the meeting, moderating the debate, presenting the final conclusions, and managing the students. At the beginning of the class, he introduced a hypothesis and chose a student or a group of students to defend the assigned thesis while the rest of the class refuted his/their arguments (antithesis). The objective of the conferencias was to better prepare students for explaining their position when faced with people who held different, if not opposing, ideas, and thus, to facilitate students’ capacity to shape and indoctrinate others with different worldviews in their future evangelical careers. Lecturers could, of course, resort to diverse tactics to maximize the efficiency of the short, but intense, classes. One way to improve the learning process was to inform all religious of the topics and authors of the discussion on the day before the conferencia, so that they had time to prepare. Preparation before class prevented disputes during conferencias in which one side “proposed” and the other part “responded” without coherence and learning. The guardian or the lecturer presiding over the conferencia was naturally encouraged to master the topic in order to channel the discussions, resolve doubts, and synthesize arguments according to reputed authors and the most plausible theories held by the Church.64 At the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, friar confessors usually rotated every week for defense of the subject (thesis), while the rest of the class refuted the arguments (antithesis). This system was altered in 1775 when new priests took the role of defending themes unless there were none, in which case the old tradition was followed.65 During the meetings, friars fine-tuned and discussed both the forms of delivery as much as the message content. The conferencias were commonly held in the library, where friars discussed and debated problems and issues that concerned their evangelical ministry to Catholics as well as native peoples on the frontiers of the Spanish empire. In the library, students found the latest resources providing Catholic religious knowledge and scholarship and all else that the friars needed for spiritual and

64. Auto de visita of Fray Pablo Sánchez, former definidor of the Provincia de Michoacán, visitor and president of the guardian chapter, Convento de San Francisco, Querétaro, September 20, 1796, LEC, fol. 176v. Inspectors to the Colegio de San Miguel, Escornalbóu, also ordered “que el día antes se ponga un papel en que estén escritos los puntos de que se ha de conferir el otro día por la mañana y por la tarde, y que se ponga dicho papel en lugar donde pueda ser leído de todos los religiosos,” in Martí Mayor, “Escornalbóu,” 311. 65. Auto de visita of Fray Antonio Fernández, provincial minister of Michoacán, February 7, 1775, LEC, fol. 118v. For similar patterns in the Spanish college in Escornalbóu see also Martí Mayor, “Escornalbóu,” 310–311.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

149

missionary training. Written material such as sermons, guides, and books circulated widely inside the friaries; all choir students and religious clerics could borrow the material from the shelves and cases. According to an 1800 book inventory, the library of the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City was organized into ten subject areas: sacred scriptures (932 books); Patristics or the Church Fathers’ writings in the early centuries of Christianity (402); canon and civil law (1,563); ecclesiastical and profane history (1,943); philosophy, mathematics, and medicine (610); scholastic and doctrinal theology (984); preaching, catechisms, rhetoric, and sermons (1,826); moral theology (1,110); books on asceticism and mysticism (1,365); and literature and miscellaneous (1,051). The colegio library held 11,786 books by the mid-nineteenth century. Thematically, history stands out, followed by homiletics, law, ascetics, moral theology, literature, and doctrinal theology. Similar subjects were featured in the libraries of other colegios. Indeed, Franciscan libraries were among the most important concentrations of printed volumes, comparable in quantity and content to famous libraries in America, such as the Palafoxiana library in Puebla and Jesuit libraries in Puebla and Oaxaca, and even major libraries in Spain. It is no surprise then that much of the missionary’s preparation occurred in college libraries.66 Particularly interesting among the themes developed in the conferencias were sections on moral conscience, confession, and preaching, with a preference for noted Franciscan authorities such as the mentioned Fray Anacletus Reiffenstuel (1641–1703), Fray Martín de Azpilcueta (1492–1586), Fray Francisco Echarri (eighteenth century), or Fray Manuel Rodríguez (sixteenth century). The discussions during the conferencias in the colegios were ephemeral, but a few friars took pains in synthesizing their experiences conducting or attending the meetings. Such sources show that topics during the debates encompassed doctrinal and moral issues to be developed in sermons, preaching, and confessions; various methodologies for teaching Christian doctrine; administration of the sacraments, Catholic liturgy, and other rituals and ceremonies; clerical discipline; moral reformation of Catholics’ way of life;

66. For the library of the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, see “Elenco de los Libros, que hay en esta Libreria de S. Fernando de Mexico oy dia 23 de Julio de 1789,” July 23, 1789, AHPSEM, box 201; and Maynard Geiger, “The Library of the Apostolic College of San Fernando, Mexico, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” The Americas 7, no. 4 (1951). See also the inventories of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz library, “Inventario de la biblioteca del Colegio de Querétaro,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro 1766, AHPFM-FCSCQ, R, file 1, no. 2; “Inventario de la biblioteca del Colegio de Querétaro,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, 1803, AHPFM-FCSCQ, R, file 1, no. 3; and “Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Inventario de la Biblioteca 1815,” 1815, AHPFM-FCSCQ, R, file 1, no. 4. The library of the Colegio de Tarija had over 7,000 books listed in a 1879 inventory. See Lorenzo Calzavarini, OFM, Breve guía histórica, artística y cultural del convento de San Francisco de Tarija (Tarija: Centro Eclesial de Documentación, 2006), 83–95.

150

To Sin No More

and, specific to the American colleges, tactics for evangelizing in frontier regions. Inquiries reflected doubts on basic daily matters that ranged from money lending, labor relations in textile mills, and selling wine, to granting indulgences and sexual ethics. One rare example comes from a late eighteenth–century manuscript book from the colegio in Sahagún (León, Spain), a precursor of the propaganda fide colleges established in 1682, and kept in the Franciscan provincial archive of Santiago, Galicia, which also holds the archive from the propaganda fide college of Herbón.67 Its anonymous author dutifully annotated resolutions to diverse concerns discussed during the conferencias that he attended at his college. For instance, he recorded in one of the deliberations that friars should advise women to refrain from regularly going to mass or for walks if they knowingly incited a man’s lust “because the divine precept that . . . [one must not] cause spiritual ruin to thy neighbor prevails over the ecclesiastical one of hearing mass.” In another example that is showcased below, Fray Hermenegildo Vilaplana (ca. 1721–1771), from the college in Querétaro, published in 1767 a useful guide for confessors that emanated from his years of “conferenciar.” Discussing Vilaplana’s handbook at length serves as a means to situate college training within the ideological debates that confronted theologians during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries over the interpretation and teaching of Catholic doctrine.68 The Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide were the result of a combination of forces aimed at spreading Catholicism throughout the Hispanic world, but a single interpretation of Catholicism did not exist. Scholars who have studied moral treatises and confession manuals show various interpretations

67. The college in Sahagún is an immediate predecessor of the colegios de propaganda fide from which ideas and men circulated to the latter in Europe and the Americas. 68. Fray Hermenegildo Vilaplana, Centinela dogmatico-moral con oportunos avisos al confessor, y penitente. Vigilias apostolicas en que Daniel, y Maximo, Sacerdotes Missioneros, proponen, y resuelven algunas dudas, especialmente sobre el uso de las Opiniones, Tratos, y Contratos (Mexico City: Imprenta de la Bibliotheca Mexicana, 1767), p. 157–158. For the Colegio de Sahagún in Spain, see “Manuscrito de conferencias del Colegio de Sahagún,” APS, box 142, unfoliated: “[P]or preponderar mas el precepto divino que manda no dar causa de ruina espiritual al Proximo, que el Ecclesiastico, qual es el de oir Missa.” José Martí Mayor pointed out in his study of the Escornalbóu colegio that: “Tal preocupación por perfeccionar la predicación misional se colige del mismo horario de la comunidad, en el que se da preferencia al tiempo de estudio y a las reuniones de conjunto en las conferencias, donde se trataba de las distintas materias relacionadas con la moral, teología, predicación, etc. Estas conferencias tenían una importancia extraordinaria y tenían lugar en la biblioteca del Colegio que, por lo mismo, se convirtió en el verdadero laboratorio de ideas y estrategias misioneras.” He further claims that the conferencias helped colegio writers to compose missionary treatises and doctrines. Martí Mayor, “Escornalbóu: Colegio-seminario de misiones de Propaganda Fide (1686–1835),” Archivo Ibero-Americano 42, nos. 165–168 (1982): 310– 311. A good description of the topics argued in the Sevilla Diocese is in Martín Riego, Las conferencias morales.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

151

of Catholic doctrine within the orthodoxy and heterodoxy spectrum by theologians and other scholars. While their studies of such treatises and manuals unveil diversity of opinions and even dissent within the early modern Catholic scholarly community, nowhere else would theological disputes among clerics become more visible than during conference meetings, where attendants had space to argue, debate, and contest. While the documentary evidence does not reveal which moral themes were greatly disputed, some were so contentious that friars and students could not refrain from engaging in discussion with enthusiasm and passion. Sometimes heated debates culminated in fierce quarrels. More often than not, Franciscan authorities lamented how the conference hours had become contested ground for unruly friars, a threat to the harmony of the class and the learning process. In his 1790 inspection of the Quereteran college, Fray Bartolomé Masenes denounced that some religious notably follow the impetuousness of their temperament in proposing, replying, and solving in the conferences on morals that this college holds. . . . This only serves to perturb the spirit instead of examining the truth and deciding the opinions that may or should be followed. To avoid this difficulty so improper in religious men, we order that none . . . may speak in the aforesaid conferences without first asking for and obtaining clear license from the guardian or whoever is presiding [over the conference] in his absence.69

Three years later, another commissary inspector at the same college had to intervene in the ongoing conferencia conflicts. He initially appointed Fray Diego de Bringas as president of the conferencias, probably due to his seniority, confirming his knowledge and responsibilities vis-à-vis mystical and moral

69. Auto de visita of Fray Bartolomé Masenes, former provincial minister of Jalisco, commissary visitor and president of the guardian chapter of the Colegio de Querétaro, Colegio de Querétaro, September 15, 1790, LEC, fols. 160v–161r: “5ª Y haviendo entendido q.e algunos se dejan mover notablemnte de la fogosidad de su genio, en proponer, replicar, o resolver en las Conferencias morales, que se tienen en este Colegio, en conformidad a lo ordenado, por las Leues de la orden y Bulas Apostolicas, lo que mas sirve para perturbacion de los animos que para examinar la verdad, y decidir la opiniones que se puedan o deban seguir: para evitar este inconven.te tan improprio de varones Religiosos, ordenamos q.e ninguno pueda hablar en dhas Confer.as sin qe prim.o pida, y obtenga licencia expresa de el Prelado, o del el qe por su aus.a estuviere presidiendo.” There were also heated disputes in the conferences of moral theology in the Colegio de Escornalbóu, where the inspector suggested in 1717 that each religious should be calm and quiet and after speaking should stay silent. Martí Mayor, “Escornalbóu,” 311. Likewise, in a 1785 report, the archbishop of Seville also reported disputes in the moral theology conferences of his archdiocese. Martín Riego, Las conferencias morales, 70. For the diverse interpretation of Catholic doctrine as pertaining to moral theology and confession, see, for instance, Arturo Morgado García, “Los manuals de confesores en la España del siglo XVIII,” Cuadernos dieciochistas 5 (2004): 123–145.

152

To Sin No More

theologies, which included the duties of solving, directing, and rectifying the cases presented by the students on moral matters. Notwithstanding the president’s authority, the inspector reminded college officials that the guardian retained the ultimate power to concede permission to speak to any religious in attendance and even to moderate “the heat of the disputes.”70 Heated debates indicate that unanimous solutions to some theological conundrums were never attained. Moreover, quarrels among the religious also reveal that expressed opinions went beyond the limits of orthodoxy under which the colleges were supposed to operate. Unending disputes on moral issues during the conferences were contrary to the original ideas of the colegio promoters in the late seventeenth century. Fray Francisco Díaz de San Buenaventura, the commissary general of the Ultramontane family, and Pope Innocent XI sponsored a conservative theology grounded on strict interpretation of the sacred scriptures and reliance on a few Christian scholars deemed the most credible.71 Fearful of scandals and the decline in morals that originate from “the wide freedom to express opinions and to act,” the sponsors of the propaganda fide colleges ordered Franciscan missionaries “to always teach and follow the safest and most probable doctrines.” According to this approach to Catholicism, men and women could only be saved if their ideas and actions followed the most credible clerical opinions to avoid sin and seek salvation. Following these premises, lecturers in the conferencias would then decide what was and what was not strict enough.72 Colleges, however, fluctuated over time vis-a-vis diverse theological approaches regarding the evangelical ministry, particularly preaching and confession. Friars in the colleges were supposed to learn and teach a system of thought that strongly refuted a flexible interpretation of Catholic doctrine, called probabilismo, which contemplated the possibility that questionable acts and opinions might not be sinful. As articulated by the Spanish Dominican Fray Bartolomé de Medina (1527/28–1580) in 1577, “If an opinion is probable, it is allowed to be followed, even if the opposing opinion be more prob-

70. Auto de visita de Fray José de Sori, provincial minister of Michoacán, Convent of San Francisco of Querétaro, September 6, 1793, LEC, fol. 167r: “[M]oderando el calor de las disputas.” 71. Isaac Vázquez Janeiro, “Origen y significado de los colegios de misiones franciscanos,” in Actas del III Congreso Internacional sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo (Siglo XVII) (Madrid: Editorial Deimos, S.A., 1991), 740–745. 72. Innocent XI’s first bull points out that students may learn only the safest and most probable theories, Ecclesiae Catholicae, October 16, 1686, in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 80: “[G]randísimos absurdos se pueden originar cada dia de la mucha licencia de opinar, y operar, con el pretexto de privilegios, y qué escándalos, y relaxaciones se pueden suscitar; amonestamos en el Señor, y mandamos á todos los Misioneros de nuestra Orden, y demas personas, que viven baxo de nuestra direccion, ú obediencia, que siempre enseñen, y sigan las doctrinas mas seguras, y mas probables.”

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

153

able.” In other words, just because it was the least probable means towards salvation did not invalidate an individual’s idea or action on a moral matter. Thus, within a gamut of opinions, even those thought to be less probable (or less credible) answers to a moral question could still be righteous even if its opposite followed a more accepted interpretation within the scholarly community. Probabilist theses spread among the theological scholarship during the seventeenth century, when Jesuits in particular promoted this liberal approach to morality that allowed for less rigorous proscriptions of conduct. By the late seventeenth century, however, “rigorist” theologians and clerical authorities such as Innocent XI, who attacked probabilism as the basis for sinful moral negligence, gained the upper hand in a theology that only accepted the most credible solutions to moral inquiries. The colleges were intended to follow a stricter approach to what was sinful and what was not, effectively reducing the intellectual space for interpreting how they thought their God would classify human acts that may hinder salvation. In theory, the colleges’ approach to sin thus leaned towards a theology grounded on social control through the fear of sin and its consequent eternal damnation. Frequent disputes, however, proved that sometimes not all friars followed a “true” orthodox doctrine, and that perhaps certain lectores were more flexible in their interpretations of Christian doctrine.73 The case of Fray Hermenegildo Vilaplana deserves special attention because of his rank in the Colegio de la Santa Cruz and because he was well published. Vilaplana was already a scholar-preacher, confessor, former lecturer of philosophy, and appointed lecturer of theology in his convent of Valencia, Spain when he arrived in Querétaro with the 1749 expedition. Fifteen years later, the minister general of the order appointed Father Vilaplana chronicler of all colleges in New Spain. According to the general statutes, this position required him to write, compile, and summarize consensual solutions to the doubts posited during missions and the conference meetings, adhering to the “safest doctrines to be followed and preached,” and to print the material for general use.74 As a result, Vilaplana published in 1767—a few months

73. For an explanation of probabilismo, see Leticia Mayer Celis, Rutas de incertidumbre: Ideas alternativas sobre la génesis de la probabilidad, siglos XVII y XVII (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2015), 35–51; Michael Printy, “The Intellectual Origins of Popular Catholicism: Catholic Moral Theology in the Age of Enlightenment,” in The Catholic Historical Review 91, 3 (July 2005): 438–461. For the quote by Spanish Dominican Bartolomé de Medina (1527/28–1580), see p. 447. For the relevance of probabilismo in eighteenth-century Spain, see Andrea J. Smidt, “Fiestas and Fervor: Religious Life and Catholic Enlightenment in the Diocese of Barcelona, 1766–1775” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 2006), 21–22. 74. Innocent XI, Ecclesiae Catholicae, October 16, 1686, in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 62–63: “[D]octrinas mas seguras, que se han de seguir, y predicar; y observado lo que se debe observar, y con licencia del Ordinario, imprimir los enunciados libros.”

154

To Sin No More

before the Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish monarch’s domains—a handbook for confession that compiled moral cases and their solutions with the suggestive title, “Dogmatic-moral guidelines with appropriate counsel to the confessor and penitent.” His subtitle was no less informative of the aim of the book: “Apostolic vigilance in which missionary priests Daniel and Maximiliano suggest and resolve some doubts, especially about the use of opinions, exchanges, and contracts.”75 Topics treated in Vilaplana’s book included the sacrament of confession; the licit use of probable opinions, that is, answers to moral questions that follow opinions considered less credible; theatrical performances; and especially relevant social issues such as money lending, worker exploitation, and the quality of products sold by merchants, such as watered wine. Contrary to what the colleges’ teachings should have been, Vilaplana’s book was characterized by probabilismo. The book not only passed the customary censorship, but censors praised Vilaplana’s probabilismo and its applications. For instance, Fray Joseph García, guardian of the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, acting as calificador or censor of the Inquisition, suggested that if the book were read with a will to seek the truth, “they [readers] will see that probabilismo does not open the door to sin, but instead closes it. Or . . . better [yet], it neither opens nor closes it, but attends to the balance of reason, in the truth of justice.”76 Vilaplana’s probabilismo, then, gives all human beings what they deserve according to their acts, García concluded. Even if their probabilism was moderate, as one scholar points out, the case of Vilaplana and García show that similar to other religious orders, Franciscan ethical and doctrinal interpretations pertinent to preaching and confession vacillated between probabilism and rigorism. At the core of the discussions was who could be absolved during confession. In the missionary field, conforming to more probabilistic arguments, conversions had to be sincere, with the condition that Christians would sin no more, while acknowledging the sinful essentialism of human beings. Authorities were therefore especially careful to avoid the spread of dubious and particularly heretical ideas to men who would later not only indoctrinate the Catholic flock but also spread the Catholic message (and Spanish imperial control) to the frontiers. It is important to keep in mind that the points discussed in the conferencias comprised the intellectual source for the apostolic ministry, and that Fray Hermenegildo’s case shows that certain friars advo-

75. Vilaplana, Centinela dogmatico-moral. 76. Aprobacion: “[Y] veràn, que el Probabilismo no abre puerta à los pecados, sino que antes la cierra. Y por decirlo mejor, ni la cierra, ni la abre; sino que atendidas las balanzas de la razon, en el fiel de la Justicia, dà lo que le pertenece, y lo que es suyo à cada uno.” Ibid., 80–82.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

155

cated for some versatility in the search for solutions to the moral and doctrinal case studies discussed in the colleges.77

Language Instruction The Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide also envisioned the instruction of future missionaries in indigenous languages, drawing from a Franciscan tradition rooted in the Middle Ages that promoted language studies. The late medieval period coincided with the birth and consolidation of the universities, a revival of studies of classic Greek authors, the study of biblical texts in their original languages, and science. Notwithstanding the subordination of knowledge to faith or reason to providence, the late mediaeval period bore witness to the institutionalization and expansion of education and erudition. Franciscan intellectuals supported learning Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean, and Arabic in institutions dedicated to the study of sacred scriptures and preparation of missionaries to evangelize non-Christians. Such was the prevailing atmosphere in the late medieval multi-religious Iberia, when Franciscan tertiary Raymond Llull founded a colegio in the Miramar convent on the island of Mallorca in the 1270s to train his confreres in Arabic. Once they gained proficiency in the language, Franciscan missionaries would preach to Muslim populations in the Middle East and Iberian Peninsula. As pointed out previously, his program influenced the papacy and European universities to found chairs in Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldean. Centuries later, language instruction became a pillar of the European colleges under the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. By then, Catholic clerics, including Franciscans, had already exported this model to America, where ecclesiastical authorities incorporated native languages into the curricula of seminaries and universities. For instance, the university in Mexico City, La Real y Pontificia Universidad de México (founded in 1551, today’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), had two chairs in Nahuatl and Otomí, although these subjects were not required to obtain a university degree.78

77. Francisco Rico Callado points out that Jesuits, like other orders, took diverse approaches to confession and casuistry. Known as proponents of probabilism, some Jesuit missionaries like Pedro de Calatayud (1689–1773) and the Jesuit general Tirso González de Santalla (1624–1705) adhered to certain rigorist theses. He further suggests that Vilaplana was a moderate probabilist. Rico Callado, “La polémica sobre el probabilismo y los desencuentros sobre su uso en la Compañía de Jesús a través del estudio de dos autores: Pedro de Calatayud (1689–1773) y Jerónimo Dutari (1671–1717),” Cuadernos dieciochistas 17 (2016): 297–328. 78. In Europe friars learned Arabic, Chaldean, Ethiopian, Albanian, Greek, and Chinese in the Sacred Congregation’s colegios. McCarty, “Apostolic Colleges,” 51–54; and Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 29. On the establishment in the late sixteenth century of a chair in Nahuatl at the Colegio de San Pedro in Guadalajara for the training of

156

To Sin No More

The conversion of non–Spanish-speaking peoples on the frontiers and the home front of the Hispanic world required linguistic skills. Throughout the early modern period, however, the argument that Christian doctrine had to be preached in the local vernacular to ensure that neophytes correctly understood the Christian faith was contentious. Debates over the use of Spanish or local languages in the conversion of Indians in the sixteenth century extended well into the eighteenth century. In any case, to facilitate training in languages, in addition to daily meetings on moral theology, another daily class or conferencia on native tongues or mystical theology was also required. Early on, Fray Antonio Llinás had suggested the addition of Nahuatl, Otomí, and Tarascan to the Spanish colleges’ curricula in the 1680s.79 Such concerns about training in indigenous languages were shared by his superiors in Madrid and Mexico City, who were all too eager to shield Indian doctrinas and frontier missions from possible secularizing threats. As a strategy to diminish mendicant domination over Indian towns, diocesan authorities had openly criticized mendicant doctrineros (friars in charge of Indian doctrinas) for insufficient knowledge of native languages. The secularization of Indian doctrinas in the mid-seventeenth century by the legendary Bishop of Puebla Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (1600–1659) was still echoing in Franciscan quarters when Fray Antonio de Cardona, commissary general of the Cismontane family, asked in 1698 that Franciscan doctrineros be tested in native languages “with all rigor” to please the bishops and to ensure the best indoctrination of the Indians in the Christian faith.80 Throughout the eighteenth century, friars sent to the missions and Indian doctrinas were required to prove their knowledge of native languages, particularly Otomí and Nahuatl. However, this approach to conversion was not

ecclesiastics, see Castañeda, La educación en Guadalajara, 86–92; and for the Universidad de Mexico, see Rodolfo Aguirre, “El clero secular de Nueva España y la búsqueda de grados de bachiller,” Fronteras de la Historia 13, no. 1 (2008): 133. 79. Llinás, “Memorial que escribió el P. Fr. Antonio Llinás al Ministro General de la Orden de la Orden y a su majestad solicitando la fundación de los Colegios,” Madrid, 1681, AHPFM-FCSCQ, D, file 2, no. 1, fol. 3r. Sebastián García includes the Spanish translation of Innocent XI’s brief “Sacrosancti Apostolatus officium,” May 8, 1682, the first constitution of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, in his article García, “América en la legislación,” 367. For the final constitutions of the colegios and the teaching of Indian languages, see the bull “Ecclesiae Catholicae,” October 16, 1686, in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 69. For debates over the use of Spanish or local indigenous languages in sixteenth-century Mexico and the ambiguous policies stemming from ecclesiastical and royal authorities, see Daniel I. Wasserman-Soler, “Lengua de los Indios, lengua española: Religious Conversion and the Languages of New Spain, ca. 1520–1585,” in Church History 85, no. 4 (December 2016): 690–723. 80. Patent by Fray Antonio de Cardona, commissary general of the Cismontane family, to all religious, Convento de San Francisco, Madrid, April 2, 1698, LPZEAV, fol. 26r: “con todo rrigor.”

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

157

unchallenged. In a debate that echoed early disputes over which language to use to indoctrinate Indians, other missionaries noted that the faith had to be taught in Spanish, since native languages lacked the vocabulary to express abstract ideas such as the Holy Trinity (three representations of God in one) or transubstantiation (the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ).81 Perusal of the constituciones municipales (college’s internal rules or laws) shows that language policies were specific to each college. While the constituciones for the San Fernando and Zacatecas colegios did not require training in indigenous languages and mystical theology, the influential Discalced Franciscan college in Pachuca (New Spain), founded in 1733 as the sole apostolic Discalced seminary of propaganda fide in the Hispanic world, required students and teachers to attend sessions on native languages wherein teachers should use the cartillas (catechetical primers), vocabularies, and books “close to the natives’ pronunciation and dialect.” Due to the Pachuca college’s missionary activities in central Mexico, its internal rules ordered the discretorio to always have a teacher of Nahuatl and Otomí on staff, and as a result, some of its missionaries preached and taught the Christian doctrine in Otomí in the early nineteenth century. Copying Pachuca’s internal regulations, the constituciones municipales of the college in Tarija (Bolivia) ordered respective discretorios to appoint a teacher to instruct students from 10:00 to 11:00 each morning in Chiriguano and Mataguayo, two languages that were spoken by mission neophytes.82 Mute on the issue of learning Nahuatl, Tarascan, or

81. See, for instance, Patent by Fray Agustín de Mesones, Commissary of New Spain, to all religious of New Spain, Convent of San Francisco of Mexico City, November 12, 1717, LPZEAV, fol. 93r–93v; Patent by Fray Juan Fogueras, Commissary of New Spain, to all religious of New Spain, Convent of San Francisco of Mexico City, October 17, 1744, LPZEAV, fol. 157r. The early disputes and conceptual problems vis-a-vis translation are examined in Wasserman-Soler, “Lengua de los Indios, lengua española.” 82. For the colegio in Pachuca, see the “certificaciones” in AHPSEM, box 210; and the Estatutos y ordenaciones segun las bulas que nuestro padre Inocencio XI. Para el Colegio de Propaganda Fide de nuestro Seráfico Padre San Francisco de Pachuca en la Nueva España, Capítulo quinto, “De la conferencia,” 56–57: “que mas se acerquen á la pronunciacion y dialecto de los naturales.” For the colleges of Ocopa and Tarija in Perú and Alto Perú, see chapter 5, “De la conferencia y confesiones,” item 99, in Estatutos y ordenaciones del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Ntra. Señora de los Angeles de la Villa de Tarija, October 9, 1807, in Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, appendix IV, 284–285. For the constituciones municipales for the Colegio de San Fernando, Mexico City, and the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Zacatecas, see “Constitucion.s Municipales, que se habian formado para este Apostolico Colegio; pero no se llegaron á poner en practica por no estár confirmadas, ó corroboradas por el Superior Conveniente,” in “Volumen en el que se recogen diversos escritos y documentos existentes en el archivo del Colegio, con razón de los cajones en donde se encontraban (siglo XVIII),” AHPSEM, box 201; and “Constituciones del Colegio de Nra. Sra. de Guadalupe de Zacatecas,” November 13, 1713, AHPSEM, box 201.

158

To Sin No More

Otomí in spite of the missionaries’ activities in central New Spain, the pertinent 1777 statutes of the Quereteran Colegio de la Santa Cruz for the frontier missions gave power to the president of the missions to order that all missionaries “devote themselves to the study of the languages of their Indians as a precise means” to obtain desired results.83 Similar orders written for the Colegio de San Ildefonso (Chillán, Chile) in 1775 pointed out that missionaries had to refine their mastery of native languages in order to confess, preach, and speak to neophytes since, the orders implied, natives could be easily indoctrinated in their languages, “as experience has shown.”84 If, indeed, friars learned native languages in the colleges, how proficient did they become? Which methodologies did the lecturers develop? How intensive was the instruction? These issues have puzzled scholars who study encounters between indigenous peoples and Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries in America. Reports and hagiographic works show evidence that some friars mastered certain native languages, especially in central New Spain, Peru, and Upper Peru. In a few instances, only after the years of missionary work in the frontier regions, did missionaries became fluent in those territories’ indigenous languages. These reports and chronicles, however, offer few specific clues of language teaching. Franciscan missionaries were hardly neophytes in language learning, as they had received instruction in Latin and perhaps Greek. Some religious knew other languages such as Italian or French. Moreover, bilingual novices and friars who navigated between Castilian and Basque, Catalan, or Galician were not unusual in the colleges. Thus, all religious had been exposed to techniques for learning other tongues. It should be noted though that the colleges nevertheless faced difficulties in consolidating a comprehensive native language program.85

83. “Constituciones municipales intimadas por el guardián del Colegio Apostólico de la Santa Cruz, P. Fr. Diego Ximénez,” issued on July 20, 1777, in Ximénez, “Libro primero de patentes perteneciente a la misión de San Antonio de Oquitoa,” Mission San Antonio de Oquitoa, AHPFM-FCSCQ, K, file 24, no. 1, fol. 14v, quote on item 35, 16v: “35. Deben todos los Misioneros dedicarse al estudio de las Lenguas de sus Yndios, como medio preciso para conseguir de ellos el fruto que desean.” Copies appear in “Libro de patentes, decretos y Autos de Visita de la misión de la Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora de Caborca (1772–1835),” K, file 25, no. 1, fols. 9r–14v, and “Libro de patentes de los prelados de la Orden, Decretos y Autos de visita de la misión de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores del Saric (1767–1827),” K, file 25, no. 2, fols. 12–23. 84. See “Gobierno Temporal de los Indios,” Punto VIII, and “Gobierno Espiritual de los indios,” Punto III, Punto V, and Punto VII, in Método que deberán observar los Misioneros Apostólicos de este Colegio de Propaganda Fide de S. Idelfonso de Chillán en la conversión de los indios de este reino de Chile. Impuesto por el Venerable Discretorio de dicho Colegio con la asistencia de los Padres que hasta ahora se han hallado en las misiones del cargo de dicho Colegio, Colegio de propaganda fide de San Idelfonso in Chillán, November 18, 1775, in Saiz Díez, Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, appendix 1, 224–225, 233–235. 85. Mission and borderland scholars who work on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have traditionally put an emphasis on the Jesuit mastery of native languages while

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

159

Unlike the evening conference on moral theology, evidence—particularly from the colleges’ books of patent letters and decrees—suggests that the shared morning conferences on mystical theology and indigenous languages were rather haphazard.86 Throughout the century, Franciscan authorities on both sides of the Atlantic and college leaders argued about whether the hour dedicated to such learning should be held on a regular or occasional schedule, or completely eliminated. As early as 1692, Fray Julián Chumillas, commissary general of the Indies, at the request of the Quereteran college, echoed royal decrees and general rulings to remind college prelates to hold a conferencia focused on languages to convert native peoples.87 Only a few months later, the commissary inspector Fray Domingo de Ojeda, provincial minister from the Provincia de Michoacán in Mexico, emphasized that training should include, as demanded in the 1686 general constitutions of the colegios, a daily hour of Indian languages or mystical theology as well as an hour dedicated to moral theology.88 In 1700, only eight years after Chumillas’s instructions, the college commissary inspector to Querétaro canceled the conferencia on mystical theology and native lan-

neglecting the Franciscan missionary training in indigenous languages. Franciscan historians Lino Gómez Canedo and Félix Saíz Díez argue that the instruction of Indian languages faded in the classrooms of the colleges because “[a]hora se trataba de cristianizar pequeñas tribus, poseedoras de dialectos propios, primitivos y rudimentarios. Su aprendizaje, por ende, resultaba, casi siempre, moralmente imposible para los que se encontraban fuera de su contacto personal y ambiente propios.” Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide, 150–151. Gómez Canedo expresses a similar view in Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios, Introduction, xxiv–xxv. A superb study of the Jesuit language training of the missionaries in China is Brockey, Journey to the East, 243–286. Brockey points out that missionaries learned the elite’s dialect while they were stationed in China, which posed problems in reaching rural rustics who spoke different dialects. After mission consolidation in the seventeenth century, Chinese Jesuit coadjutors and, in the last decades, Chinese ordained priests became language teachers of new missionaries from Europe. 86. See, for instance, the auto de visita to the guardian chapter of Fray Juan Rico de Luarca, provincial minister of Michoacán, October 18, 1703, LPZEAV, fol. 230v; auto de visita of Fray José Picazo, provincial minister of Michoacán, August 30, 1715, LPZEAV, 236v; and auto de visita of Fray José de Sori, provincial minister of Michoacán, Convent of San Francisco of Querétaro, September 6, 1793, LEC, fol. 167r. 87. The points that the discretorio amended did not mention this issue, hence, we do not know if steps towards teaching native languages were or were not taken, even if they were necessary. Chumillas, “Patente del Rvdmo. P. Fr. Julián Chumillas, Comisario General de Indias, en que ordena varios puntos para el gobierno del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro. Con varios puntos que resolvieron los padres del Colegio con el mismo fin,” Madrid, May 7, 1692, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 2: “Mucho importa la conferencia de Lenguas, y es cassi el todo saverlas para las conversiones, por lo menos la de aquellos, que se van a convertir; y assi deve ponerse todo cuidado, por ser punto, de mas de la conziencia, mui encargado de su Mag.d y demas Leyes Generales.” 88. Auto de visita of Fray Domingo de Ojeda, provincial minister of Michoacán, January 9, 1693, LPZEAV, fol. 223r–223v.

160

To Sin No More

guages, perhaps due to time constraints and difficulties in finding lecturers in Indian languages.89 Commissary visitors issued new calls to hold meetings on mystical theology throughout the rest of the century. Native language training is not explicitly mentioned in these requests, and even conferencias on mystical theology were the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps friars met occasionally for language training, but certainly not as regularly as the conferencias on moral theology.90 A major reason for the failure to impose a systematic language training program was the great diversity of indigenous languages spoken in frontier areas such as the Gran Chaco in southeastern Alto Perú, California, or Texas. The first missionaries to the frontiers were certainly unaware of their ecosystems, indigenous demography, and cultures, and the friars were likely not instructed in local native languages. Even with some training, it would have been surprising for friars to encounter the language(s) they studied at their assigned frontier posts. Some friars learned native languages after their arrival at their missions, where they gained firsthand exposure to native speakers and wrote bilingual confesionarios and other religious works. Some veteran missionaries who returned to the colleges may have supported language training, although it appears that classes were held intermittently. The plan de estudios, the curriculum that the colegio in Zacatecas revised in the late 1780s following Fray Manuel María Trujillo’s 1786 recommendations, highlighted the impossibilities of teaching the rich variety of native languages spoken in Texas and other frontier missions that were under the colegio’s administration. Students in the colleges certainly had access in the libraries to bilingual confesionarios and doctrinas written by their brethren in manuscript or printed formats. Examples of this bilingual catechetical literature are not lacking, evidence of a long tradition of missionary works written in indigenous languages. For instance, missionaries produced bilingual confesionarios in Coahuiltecan, a language from Texas; in Mutsum, a language from California; or in Chiriguano, a language spoken in the Chiriguanía (an area that encompasses southeastern Bolivia and northwestern Paraguay and Argentina). Evangelical ministry in central New Spain and the heart of Peru often required the use of Nahuatl, Otomí, Tarascan, Quechua, and Aymara. While the colleges’ libraries contained some of the most representative colonial works in these languages, the evidence also suggests that only a few missionaries were competent in them. For the case of Texas, Jay Harrison con-

89. Auto de visita of Fray Bartolomé Giner, provincial minister of Michoacán, November 13, 1700, LPZEAV, fol. 32v. 90. See, for instance, provincial minister of Michoacán and inspector Fray José de Sori’s orders LEC, AHPFM-CSCQ, E, file 4, no. 5, Convento de San Francisco, Querétaro, September 6, 1793, fol. 167r.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

161

tends that the lack of language trainers hampered the learning of neophytes’ languages more than anything else.91 Contemporary missionaries were of course all too aware of their linguistic shortcomings. In a 1759 report to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, Fray Tomás de Uribe Larrea, a missionary from the colegio in Querétaro illustrated the language problem while proposing solutions. First, the friar acknowledged that the vast diversity of languages in the frontier missions posed the greatest difficulty for the missionary. While praising the natives’ ease in learning Spanish, Uribe Larrea still recommended systematic study of “the languages of those nations in their missions.” Like others who maintained this position, he pointed out that the mysteries of the faith and Christian obligations should be taught in native languages to avoid ambiguities. Echoing the early missionaries of the sixteenth century, he believed that native peoples could only understand the Christian message correctly if taught in their own language.92 Eventually, some Franciscan missionaries learned the language of the neophytes on site. In California, for instance, Fray Buenaventura Sitjar, a mission-

91. See the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe’s “Plan de Estudios” in “Respuesta del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas al requerimiento de Trujillo de arreglar los estudios conforme a los criteresio expresados en al Exhortación Pastoral,” in José-Luis Soto, “Fray Manuel María Trujillo (1728–1814). Un reformador franciscano de la época de la Ilustración” (master’s thesis, Catholic University of America, 1977), 201. In the early nineteenth century, missionaries from the College of Pachuca Fray Miguel Sosa y Armas and Fray Miguel Lamariano were listed as knowing Nahuatl and Fray Joaquín López Yepes as bilingual in Otomí, “Papeles varios. Le acompaña un índice moderno de los documentos aquí contenidos, algunos de los cuales son del siglo XVIII, pero la mayoría son del XIX,” AHPSEM, box 209. Bartolomé García, “Manual para administrar los Santos Sacramentos de Penitencia, Eucharistia, Extrema-Uncion, y Matrimonio, dar gracias despues de comulgar, y ayudar a bien morir a los Indios de las Naciones: Pajalates, Orejones, Pacaos, Pacóas, Tilijavas, Alasapas, Pausanes, y otras muchas diferentes, que se hallan en las Missiones de Rio de San Antonio, y Rio Grande, pertenecientes à el Colegio de la Santissima Cruz de la Ciudad de Queretaro, como son: Los Pacuâches, Mescâles, Pampôpas, Tâcames, Chayopînes, Venados, Pamâques, y toda la Juventud de Pihuiques, Borrados, Sanipaos, y Manos de Perro [1760],” in Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVIII, ed. Nicolás León (Mexico City: Tipografía de la Viuda de Francisco Díaz de León, Esquina Cinco de Mayo y Callejón de Santa Clara, 1908); “Confesionario en Carmeleño,” Archivo de la Provincia de San Francisco y Santiago de la Orden de Frailes Menores, Zapopan, box 53.1; “Archivo Franciscano de Tarija,” http://www.franciscanosdetarija.com/ pag/ced/archivo.htm (accessed July 31, 2017). For the lack of language trainers in Texas, see Harrison, “Franciscan Missionary Theory,” 67. 92. “Informe rendido a la Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide por el P. Fr. Tomás de Uribe Larrea acerca de la Prefectura de Misiones en algunos puntos de América e Indias Occidentales,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, April 1759, AHPFM, C, file 1, no. 16, 3v–4r: “[P]ara qe los perciban los gentiles sin error en su nativa lengua; porque como en estos barbaros no ai errores contra la fe (salvo que tienen algunas vanas observancias, ô echicerias) sino suma ignorancia, rustiquez, y falta de Policia total.”

162

To Sin No More

ary from the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, mastered the Mutsum language in Mission San Antonio de Padúa, which he helped establish and served for over thirty years. His companion Fray Antonio de la Concepción Horra reported to the viceroy that Father Buenaventura “not only speaks with the Indians in their own language but also is in the habit of teaching them the doctrina in their own language and he wanted me to adopt those practices.”93 A way to overcome the cultural and linguistic barriers that emerged between the friars and the native populations was to cultivate a cadre of Indian missionaries who could preach and evangelize to their own. As obvious as this solution may seem now, most Franciscans were hesitant to recruit native people to the colegios or seminaries, as they had been in the provinces since the sixteenth century, and only in special cases did visionary religious foresee the formation of a Franciscan native clergy. Perhaps a unique case was the establishment of the Seminario de Naturales run by Franciscan missionaries from the colegio in Chillán for the education of indigenous Franciscans in Santiago de Chile in the late eighteenth century, though after limited successes the school closed in 1811. Other Franciscan proposals to train a native clergy never passed the blueprint stage. Because of its projected geographical reach, the failed project of a bold Discalced friar stands out. In the twilight of Spanish rule in America, Fray Mariano López y Pimentel devised a plan for a college under the auspices of the Roman Congregation of Propaganda Fide in the Castle of Chapultepec (Mexico City) that would prepare an indigenous clergy from America and Asia. Criticized by his contemporaries as “utopian” and “foolish,” Fray Mariano alleged in his plan that the best way to save all souls was to rely on native priests. To make his proposal appealing to the Crown, Father Pimentel claimed that the college would save money for the royal treasury in addition to eliminating once and for all the problem of learning the native languages and cultures since, as he suggested, the apostolic effort would rest on native peoples. Among the critics, Fray Diego de Bringas cited logistical impracticalities of recruiting, hosting, and training young men from each Indian nation in New Spain alone, much less those related to the aim of staffing Pimentel’s seminary with people from Asia and America. In any case, his timing could not have been more inopportune, as it came during the crisis of the Spanish empire when Spaniards struggled under French occupation and Americans fought wars for independence from Spain.94

93. Antonio de la Concepción Horra to the Viceroy, July 12, 1798, cited in Sandos, Converting California, 87. 94. Fray Mariano López y Pimentel, “Proyecto practico y piadoso para conquistar a los Gentiles por medio de los Gentiles mismos, sin exponer los intereses del Real Herario, Obra la mas importante, util y necesaria para el bien de la Iglesia de España y sus Americas”; and “Fundación de un Colegio para preparar clero indígena,” c. 1807, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Mss. 12046. His contemporary Fray Diego de Bringas considered

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

163

Reforming the Curriculum At the same time as theological currents affected the colegios, they could not circumvent the educational reform movements in the Hispanic world in the second half of the eighteenth century. Under the auspices of Charles III (1759–1788), the government targeted the education of children, which in many cases was nonexistent or ruinous, and mostly under ecclesiastical control. The Crown and its enlightened ministers also attempted, not without strong opposition, to create new diocesan seminaries and reform the educational system in the religious orders. Curriculum reforms included the introduction of secular education subjected to reason and empiricism rather than divine providence and ecclesiastical authority. Throughout the eighteenth century, science and liberal arts chairs proliferated in European universities, including Spanish centers of higher education. Authorities, including the clergy, endeavored to modify the programs of study for secular and regular clerics, often criticized for their precarious preparation. Reform, however, affected the Hispanic world unevenly. Literacy rates were extremely unequal by region (urban versus rural), and social class. The majority of the population was illiterate in Spain and throughout its empire. It was in this moment of widespread reform that some Franciscans took the opportunity to revise the curriculum in their provinces and ultimately in the Franciscan Order.95 Fray Manuel María Trujillo, Franciscan commissary general of the Indies in Madrid, was probably the most influential enlightened reformer among the Franciscans on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to his amendments to the Franciscan general curriculum, he stood out for his focus on the sciences. His restructuring activities began when he served as provincial minister in 1781 for his province of Granada, where he initiated an important curricular revolution delineated in his plan de estudios published a year later. Trujillo reorganized the education system by requiring certain convents to specialize in Latin and rhetoric, and by pairing the study of philosophy and theology in others. By the end of their training, friars with evangelical commitments in

Father Pimentel’s plan to be infeasible. “Carta del P. Fr. Diego Miguel Bringas al P. Fr. José Ximeno, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, ofreciendo su dictámen sobre el proyecto del P. Fr. López Pimentel relativo a fundar un nuevo tipo de Colegio de Propanga Fide,” Misión de la Purísima Concepción de Arnedo, July 17, 1808, AHPFMFCSCQ, F, file 8, no. 20. For the Seminario de Naturales in Santiago de Chile, see Weber, Bárbaros, 129–130. 95. Two classic works that address the educational reforms in Spain in the second half of the eighteenth century are Richard Herr, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958), 164–180; and Jean Serrailh, La España Ilustrada de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII, trans. Antonio Latorre (1954; Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992), 194–229, 443–472.

164

To Sin No More

the province of Granada should have studied two years of Latin and rhetoric, three years of philosophy, four years of theology, and two years of moral theology and law to finally qualify for examinations in the provincial chapter. The three years of philosophy, he claimed, should include the study of mathematics and physics, suggesting Tomás Vicente Tosca (1651–1723) and Christian Wolff (1679–1754), and geography and cosmography, following, for instance, cartographer Tomás López (1730–1802) and engineer Sebastián Fernández de Medrano (1604–1705). He expanded the conferencias on moral and mystical theology to two days per week and suggested Franciscan Fray Francisco Echarri’s book on moral theology (published in 1727, it had numerous subsequent editions). The plan was implemented, though not without opposition from a coalition of friars led by his provincial minister predecessor.96 As commissary general of the Indies, he brought his spirit for renovation to his new post from the Cuarto de Indias in Madrid in 1785. A year later, he published his Exhortación Pastoral Americana, a meticulous description of his reform program for the Franciscan provinces and colleges in America and the Philippines that echoed his plan de estudios for Granada. Half of the almost 240 pages of the Exhortación highlighted the need to establish discipline in the friaries and colleges. While his criticism was not new as the commissary inspectors of the colegios had repeatedly asserted, Trujillo found inspiration in Saint Bonaventure to list a number of pitfalls in observing the regular discipline. He urged a return to the vow of poverty by uprooting individual greed and excess in the convents; forbade meetings with wicked persons inside and outside the convents; criticized disobedience toward superiors as well as neglect of subordinates by their superiors; reminded religious of the need for charitable acts; and disapproved of the excessive numbers of friars in major monasteries, and conversely, the acute shortage of religious men in smaller ones. Finally, he called for an end to abuse by superiors who, “grasping with both hands the rod of iron, want to govern their brothers as if they were a troop of slaves that roll under their feet.”97 In a long section titled, “Reglamentos de literatura” (Rules of Literature), Father Trujillo urged study of the arts and sciences in Franciscan provinces and colleges to achieve wisdom and virtue. Scholasticism was an absurd method, he claimed, to search for unreachable definitive truths. He described it as a waste of intellectual energy and time for those who spent their days venting

96. In a letter written when he completed his term as provincial minister in 1784, he seemed positive about his successor’s continuity with his plan of studies. Soto, “Fray Manuel María Trujillo,” 46–59, 140–167. 97. Trujillo, Exhortación pastoral, 16–91. Quote is on p. 81: “[E]mpuñando con ambas manos la vara de hierro, quieren gobernar á sus hermanos como si fueran una tropa de esclavos, que ruedan debaxo de sus pies.” See also José-Luis Soto, “Fray Manuel María Trujillo,” 63–66.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

165

their frustration on endless discussions. Instead, such energy should be focused on the extirpation of idolatries, struggling with enlightened atheism, reforming customs, and defending the Church from its ubiquitous enemies. As in Granada, he emphasized the importance of Latin and rhetoric, native languages, and a weekly conference alternating moral theology, the Franciscan rule, and mystical theology. In an unprecedented move, Trujillo also committed himself to the incorporation of physics, anatomy, and geography into the general curriculum of American Franciscans. He emphasized the need to study hydraulics, solid mechanics, optics, astronomy, physical geography, and cosmography. With an insightful overview that would delight any scientist nowadays, he specified the themes to study and the authors to follow. Some of them were pioneering mathematicians, astronomers, and physicists of the time, including renowned scholars such as the Dutchman Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692–1761), a pioneer in the study of static electricity and stress analysis, and the Spaniard Tomás Vicente Tosca, whose widely circulated Compendio Mathematico (1707–1715) preceded Isaac Newton. In fact, the library of Querétaro acquired Tosca’s nine volumes of mathematical and physical treatises, whose tome on hydraulics was requested by Fray Diego de Bringas in 1808 from his mission post in Arnedo, a few hundred miles north of Querétaro.98 The colegio in Zacatecas used Juan Benito Gamarra’s 1774 Elementa Recentioris Philosophiae, a university text that distilled, edited, and copied from contemporary studies in geometry, hydrostatics, geostatics, electricity, machine mechanics, and optics. Gamarra relied on authors such as Isaac Newton, Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin, Tosca, René Descartes, and Musschenbroek.99 The Exhortación reached all provinces and colleges in America, although its application seems to have been uneven as Trujillo predicted. In a memorandum to Trujillo, the college at Zacatecas exposed the difficulties of applying his Exhortación, though it would not affect the college’s common life and spir-

98. Trujillo, Exhortación pastoral, 169–179, 221–222. Tomás Vicente Tosca was an important Spanish mathematician from the last third of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. For his Compendio Matemático, vols. 1–9, in the Queretaran library, see “Inventario de la biblioteca del Colegio de Querétaro,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, 1766, AHPFM-FCSCQ, R, file 1, no. 2, 60–61. “Carta del P. Fr. Diego Miguel Bringas al P. Fr. José Ximeno, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, ofreciendo su dictámen sobre el proyecto del P. Fr. López Pimentel relativo a fundar un nuevo tipo de Colegio de Propanga Fide,” Misión de la Purísima Concepción de Arnedo, July 17, 1808, AHPFM-FCSCQ, F, file 8, no. 20. 99. “Plan de Estudios” in “Respuesta del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas al requerimiento de Trujillo de arrglar los estudios conforme a los criteresio expresados en la Exhortación Pastoral,” in José-Luis Soto, “Fray Manuel María Trujillo,” 205. On Juan Benito Gamarra see Vicente Muñoz Delgado, “La Universidad de Salamanca (1778) y los ‘Elementa Recentioris Philosophiae’ (México 1774) de Juan Benito Diaz Gamarra y Dávalos,” Cuadernos salmantinos de filosofía, no. 8 (1981): 149–174.

166

To Sin No More

ituality—which the guardian and discretorio claimed was already in line with what was required under the colleges’ general constitutions. The introduction of the curriculum, they argued, would have an undesired impact on the college “incompatible with our apostolic ministry.” Zacatecan authorities asserted that such difficulties emerged from their exclusive dedication to the confessional and evangelical ministry to Catholics and non-Christians. Nonetheless, they submitted for approval a new curriculum that emphasized the instruction of moral theology and philosophy and rhetoric during the six years prior to the priesthood and the study of physics following Juan Benito Gamarra’s treatises. On the other hand, the impact of the Exhortación is more visible in the constituciones municipales of the Discalced college in Pachuca, printed in 1791 and widely circulated among the other colegios de propaganda fide. In particular the South American colleges in Tarija, Ocopa, and Chillán heavily relied on them when drafting their new constitutions in the early nineteenth century. Most of Pachuca’s regulations focus on monastic life and evangelical work, but they also emphasize the study (in regular classes or in conferencias) of moral and mystical theologies, sacred scriptures, canon law, the Franciscan rule, and indigenous languages—particularly Nahuatl and Otomi.100 Overall, Trujillo was an enlightened Catholic of his time. A fervent regalist, a dedicated proponent of strict interpretations of the biblical texts, a follower of the safest doctrines, and a promoter of the sciences, his intellectual profile echoes that of other famous Spanish enlightened reformers such as Fray Benito Feijóo (1676–1764), whom he admired, Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes (1723–1802), and Bishop of Barcelona Josep Climent (1706– 1781). Fray Manuel María Trujillo was particularly concerned with the level of academic scholarship in his Franciscan cohort, which he hoped to increase for enhancing the likelihood of their own salvation and the program to save all souls. More preparation and erudition would improve the missionary program, he argued. He urged his subjects to incorporate humanism and science into their curricula, abandon scholasticism for empiricism, rely on scientific works, and reinforce the study of languages—particularly Spanish, Latin, Greek, and Indian languages. In short, he insisted on the use of reason as a tool of inquiry into divine matters. Although explicit instruction in science did not show up in the colleges’ curricula (though science books are listed in college libraries’ inventories and were used as Bringas’s case demonstrates), certainly friars must have had knowledge of architecture, hydraulics, agriculture, botany, or geometry, as the construction and management of frontier missions shows.

100. José-Luis Soto, “Manuel María Trujillo,” 71: “incompatible con nuestro ministerio apostólico.” For Tarija, Ocopa, and Chillán, see Saiz Díez, Los colegios de propaganda fide, appendices with the constitutions.

CHAPTER 3. TRAINING MISSIONARIES

167

Conclusions Fray Juan Antonio Joaquín de Barreneche successfully completed his training before he started his evangelical ministry sometime in 1779. Dutifully, he endured a rigorous daily routine that measured his strength and tested his limits before he embarked on the hardships of the evangelical ministry that awaited him. He fulfilled the intellectual requirements of the colleges’ interdisciplinary curriculum that employed scholasticism as a pedagogic method. When facing Catholics and non-Christians alike, this scholasticism enabled him and other missionaries to argue their positions in theological, philosophical, and spiritual subjects, all fields of study crucial to conversion. Indeed, a strong scholastic background, polished through courses of philosophy and theology in addition to the daily conferencias certainly increased the missionaries’ abilities to debate, dispute, and defend their faith. Barreneche’s scholastic training resembled the missionary instruction of Jesuits who traveled to China studied by Liam Brockey. As in the case of the Jesuits, the colleges of propaganda fide gave Franciscan missionaries “the ability to analyze linguistic structures, the capacity to engage in logical argumentation, and techniques for dealing with abstract philosophical and theological concepts.”101 The colegios de propaganda fide excelled in moral theology training, as missionaries attended the daily conferencias on the topic that equipped them with crucial tools for argumentation. Because moral theology focused on the reformation of customs, its intense scholastic instruction provided friars with rhetorical and theological skills to convert and reform Catholics gone awry and, obviating the linguistic barriers, with additional intellectual capacity to devise the process of conversion of non-Christians on the frontier. All of this was pivotal because as subsequent chapters show, if preachers were to succeed in reforming social customs and moral deviance, they needed to master moral theory and the means and ways to convey their messages. It is also true that Franciscan missionaries like Barreneche faced challenges when it came to addressing indigenous peoples. Linguistic complexities and the fragmentation of native peoples on the periphery of the Spanish empire stymied language instruction in the colegios’ morning conferences. Some friars acquired proficiency in the lingua franca of Mesoamerica and Peru, particularly Nahuatl, Otomi, Quechua, and Aymara, though instruction in these languages also appeared to be erratic. As for the frontier missions, missionaries generally waited until they arrived on site to begin language learning. Franciscan authorities were aware that each community was a collection of men with different opinions, thoughts, personalities, temperament, intel-

101. Brockey, Journey to the East, 210.

168

To Sin No More

ligence, and habits. An examination of the training program and daily life in the colegios offers a glimpse of the anxieties that beset individuals inside the community. As recognized in a municipal constitution, the variety of temperaments and consequent range of opinions and perspectives “precisely require limits to contain them, [as in] laws, constitutions, and statutes to prevent and restrain disorders . . . and to avoid unending disturbances and perpetual confusion.”102 Ultimately, all friars learned differently depending on their status within the community but also, as the debates during the conferencias illustrate, religious had different affinities toward a range of theological epistemologies. In the colegios and later in their evangelical ministry, Franciscans navigated between the practicalities of probabilist moral adaptabilities to the environment and the intolerance of rigorous hermeneutics. Thus, friars acquired intellectual leveraging that reinforced their sense of righteousness, and they eventually applied what they learned according to their own predilections and field conditions while missionizing Catholics and non-Christians.

102. Constituciones municipales of the Colegio de San Fernando, Mexico City, in “Volumen en el que se recogen diversos escritos y documentos existentes en el archivo del Colegio, con razón de los cajones en donde se encontraban (siglo XVIII),” AHPSEM, box 201: “Pues siendo natural la variedad de genios genios de los hombres, es consecucion necesaria la opuesta vicisitud de sus dictamenes, que precisam.te exigen terminos que los contengan, leyes, constituciones, y estatutos, que prevengan, y atagen los desordenes, que excita la animosidad de los genios, p.a que no sean interminables los disturbios, y sempiterna la confusion.”

Chapter 4

Converting Catholics n the summer of 1784, bishop of Oaxaca José Gregorio Alonso de Ortigosa petitioned the guardian of the Franciscan Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro to send a few missionaries to his diocese to evangelize his Catholic subjects. Despite the existence of Dominican friars in Oaxaca since 1528 and a bishopric and its diocesan clergy since 1535, the bishop complained to the Queretaran guardian that the spiritual state of his diocese was deplorable. Alonso de Ortigosa lamented that it was not just ordinary people that were drunkards, but also those of good family and wealth were lost to “lewdness, lack of observance of the holy days, bad child rearing, envy, gossip, scandals, usury and iniquitous contracts, and bad payment of diezmos [tithes].” To justify the friars’ arrival in his domain, the bishop claimed that a mission of zealous men as intrepid as Saint Paul from remote Querétaro could overturn the spiritual disorder and “would be as worthy [a cause] as the conversion of the infidels.”1 After a year-long delay, the authorities from the College of Querétaro agreed to send missionaries to help bring back the lost sheep to the diocesan flock. For months, the Queretaran friars took their itinerant ministry to the roads of New Spain, visiting towns, haciendas, villages, and hamlets of all sorts and sizes on their way to Oaxaca. They preached from the pulpits in churches and from temporary stages in the streets, roads, and squares, led processions, taught Christian doctrine, spread religious devotions, and heard confessions

I

1. “Carta del obispo de Oaxaca al P. Fr. Diego Ximénez,” Antequera, 1785, AHPFMFCSCQ, C, file 3 (II), no. 113; “Carta del obispo de Oaxaca al P. Fr. Juan Sáenz de Gumiel,” Antequera, August 10, 1784, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (II), no. 114. The mission had been delayed because the college was awaiting an expedition with more religious from Spain. “Carta del obispo de Oaxaca al P. Fr. Juan Sáenz de Gumiel, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Oaxaca, September 7, 1784, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (II), no. 115. For an interesting study of the conflicts between local individuals and ecclesiastical authorities over religious practices in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Oaxaca, see David Tavárez, “Autonomy, Honor, and the Ancestors: Native Local Religion in Seventeenth-Century Oaxaca,” in Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, ed. Martin Nesvig (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006); and David Tavárez, The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011).

169

170

To Sin No More

for the salvation of souls. Upon returning to their college, after half a year of wanderings in central New Spain, they were granted a week of rest – a rare respite in a community known for its lengthy schedules of spiritual and missionary dedication. The tour had been long and the toll extremely high—Fray Roque Hernández died in Antequera (now Oaxaca City) and the others returned sick and exhausted. Still, contemporary records described the mission as a success. Oaxacan devotion to these missionaries was so intense it prompted protection over the dead missionary to prevent relic hunters from stripping his robe, flesh, and bones.2 It was not uncommon for American and Spanish ecclesiastical authorities to complain of their flock’s religiosity and morality. To maintain some control, bishops like Alonso de Ortigosa visited communities to measure religious zeal and eliminate what they saw as devotional deviations and intolerable heterodoxy. In fact, the same Alonso de Ortigosa had been involved in a case of idolatry in the rural parish of Acatlán in 1781. The case comprised a large number of suspects and questionable accusations. After consulting with theologians, the bishop decided to grant amnesty to all defendants who confessed their idolatrous practices and showed sincere repentance to sin no more. The decade nonetheless seems to have been filled with reports of suspect practices that piled up on Alonso de Ortigosa’s desk.3 Yet, why would he request Franciscans from distant Querétaro to preach to his parishioners? And why would Franciscans from Querétaro, deeply committed to saving frontier natives, agree to preach to Catholic men and women in Oaxaca? The bishop was probably more interested in less harsh measures—evangelical preaching—to bring his wayward flock into line than judiciary prosecution. He might also have welcomed Franciscan strangers to inspect his diocese, thereby avoiding having to perform pastoral visits himself. At any rate, the bishop’s request was not exceptional, since Franciscan missionaries from the apostolic colleges were well-known throughout the Americas and Europe for their itinerant ministry to Catholics, a major raison d’être for their existence in the first place.

2. The reported success of the mission was an unlikely maneuver by the Franciscan propaganda machine, since the archived letters had been sent by a Capuchin nun, an Augustinian friar, and the cabildo of Oaxaca. “Carta del P. Fr. Juan Sarobe al P. Fr. Juan José Sáenz de Gumiel, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, contándole las circunstancias del fallecimiento del P. Fr. Roque Hernández,” Convento de San Agustín de Oaxaca, January 23, 1786, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 26 A; “Carta respuesta de la ciudad de Oaxaca al P. Fr. Juan José Sáenz de Gumiel, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Oaxaca, February 21, 1786, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 26 C; and “Carta respuesta de Sor Anna Maria, abadesa de las Capuchinas, al P. Fr. Juan José Sáenz de Gumiel, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Convento de Capuchinas del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús de Oaxaca, February 21, 1786, AHPFMFCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 26 B. 3. Tavárez, The Invisible War, 265–266.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

171

The foundational documents of the colegios de propaganda fide show that the conversion of Catholics was paramount. Fray Antonio Llinás, an experienced missionary himself, had planned for the new apostolic seminaries to train other Franciscans to preach to and confess Christians.4 The early statutes of the colleges guide us in comprehending what that entailed. The 1682 constitution of the colegio of Querétaro stated that friars were to direct their attention to non-Christians on the remote frontiers as well as to Catholics. This authorization to establish a college in Querétaro asserted the Franciscan commitment to “preach the Holy Gospel to all creatures, that is: to the faithful by reforming their customs; and to the unfaithful by giving them notice and light of the faith, by baptizing them, and by adding them to the flock of the Roman Holy Church, and enlisting them to its obedience, without which none are saved.”5 The aim of the colleges was soteriologically global. Pope Innocent XI’s bull that approved the establishment of more colleges in 1686 reiterated their commitment to propagate “the Christian Religion, and the Catholic Faith, [for the] proper instruction of the Christian faithful, reformation of the customs, and [. . .] to secure the salvation of the souls throughout the world.”6 While this assertion probably reveals his view of the Sagrada Congregación de Propaganda Fide than the real geographical scope of these apostolic seminaries, the colleges nonetheless had a palpable imprint on the religious lives of men and women throughout the Hispanic world. Contemporaries of the apostolic friars recognized the importance of the Franciscan itinerant preaching campaigns to the Catholics that emanated from propaganda fide seminaries. In a 1731 letter to King Philip V, the archbishop of Mexico praised the missionary labor of the Queretaran friars in his archdiocese, pointing out that they stood for the indefatigable task and continuous exercise of the mission and special direction of the faithful, not only in the vicinities of this court but also

4. Lino Gómez Canedo, “Los Colegios Apostólicos de Propaganda Fide: Su papel en la evangelización de América,” in Evangelización, cultura y promoción social, 557–558. 5. Fray Joseph Ximénez de Samaniego, minister general of the order, patent letter, March 12, 1682, in Fray José Díez, “Apostólicos empleos de los hijos del Seraphín llagado obreros Evangélicos, del Collegio de la Santíssima Cruz de la Ciudad de Querétaro,” 1700, photostat copy at AHPFM-FCSCQ, original at Biblioteca Antoniana, Rome, ms. 153, fol. 15v: “[P]redicando el S.to Evangelio a todas las criaturas; conviene a saber: a los fieles para la rreformasion de sus costumbres; y a los infieles dandoles notisias y luz de la fee, baptisándolos, y agregándolos a el rebaño de la S.ta Iglesia Romana, y alistándolos a su obediensia sin la qual ninguno se salva”; the patent letter, approved by Innocent XI the same year, is also included in García, “América en la legislación,” 362–369, quote on p. 363. 6. Innocent XI, Bull Ecclesiae Catholicae, October 16, 1686, printed in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 38: “[L]a Religion Christiana, y de la Fé Católica, recta instruccion de los Fieles Christianos, reformacion de las costumbres, y para procurar la salvacion de las almas en todas partes.”

172

To Sin No More

in the remote and forgotten places of this kingdom, where their zeal and obedience takes them. One can see in their new profession the exact and punctual observance of what they profess.

The archbishop’s endorsement of this Franciscan itinerant ministry among Catholics further proposed the establishment of a Franciscan hospice to house the propaganda fide friars in the viceregal capital. He argued that there was a great “need in the diocese of useful workers to attend mainly to the cultivation of God’s vineyard.” The hospice of San Fernando was indeed established in 1731, which became the Colegio de San Fernando only two years later.7 Scholars who study Franciscans have nonetheless concentrated on their missionary campaigns to non-Christians in the early stages of the Spanish conquest or on the periphery of the empire, while paying scant attention to their ministry among Catholics in rural and urban Europe and America.8 Similar to remote frontiers, missions to Catholics turned urban and particularly rural

7. Report of the archbishop to the king, Mexico City, November 16, 1731, quoted entirely in Fray Juan Buenaventura Bestard, “Memorias historicas del Apostolico Colegio de Progaganda Fide de S. Fernando de Mexico y de sus Misiones. Recogidas y Coordinadas en forma de Cronica por el P. Fr. Juan Buenaventura Bestard hijo de la S.a Prov.a de Mallorca aora Predicador Ap.co y Escritor del mismo Colegio,” 1789, Mexico City, University of Texas, Austin, Nettie Lee Benson Library, Genaro García Collection, fol. 81: “El Ynstituto especial de èstos Apostólicos Varones es Señor la infatigable tarèa y continuo exercicio de la Mision, y direccion especial de los fieles, no solo en las cercanias de èsta Corte, pero en los demàs remotos y olvidados parajes del Reyno para donde su zelo y la obediencia los destina: siendo en èllos nueva profesion la exâcta y puntual observancia de lo mismo que profesan. . . . [I]nexplicable necesidad con que se halla èsta Diócesis de obreros ùtiles que atiendan principalmente al cultivo de la Viña del Señor, suplico con mi mayor veneracion y rendimiento à V.M. se digne conceder à los referidos P.P. pase à ser Colegio el Hospicio.” The newspaper in Mexico also reported on the foundation of the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, Gaceta de México, Núms. 41–42, por Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, Ministro, é Impresor del Real Tribunal de la Santa Cruzada, April–May, 1731, in Gacetas de México. Castorena y Ursua (1722)–Sahagún de Arévalo (1728 a 1742), ed. Francisco González de Cossío, 3 vols. (1722 and 1728 to 1731) (Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1949), 1:320, 327. These petitions were rather common. See, for instance, the pastoral letter of the archbishop to his priests justifying the need for fathers Francisco Estévez and Francisco Hidalgo’s mission in their curatos, and thus the need for zealous and exemplary men to assist in the confessional and with marriage licenses due to the lack of adequate ecclesiastical personnel, “Carta circular del arzobispo de México a los curas ministros de doctrinas del arzobispado,” Mexico City, July 31, 1684, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 5, fol. 1r. 8. The literature on the Franciscan frontier missions is vast. In English, see, for instance, Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came; Hackel, Children of Coyote; Sandos, Converting California; and Erick D. Langer, Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree: Franciscan Missions on the Chiriguano Frontier in the Heart of South America, 1830–1949 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009). A few works touch upon the Franciscan missions to Christians in Spain and America, such as Brading, Church and State; Melvin, Building Colonial Cities of God; Rico Callado, Misiones populares en España; and Martí Gelabertó, La palabra del predicador.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

173

areas throughout the Hispanic world into religious contested spaces. From a soteriological perspective, Franciscan missions to Catholics and the Franciscan evangelical ministry on the frontiers of Catholicism were intrinsically linked. Central to their existence, the colleges continuously sent itinerant missions to guide nominal Catholics from the late seventeenth century onwards. In America itinerant missionaries targeted an ethnically diversified population living in rural settings and mostly comprised of Hispanicized Indians and peoples of African and mixed descent; interestingly enough, in the business of conversion and salvation, the missionary discourse from popular-mission sources addressed men and women in a different fashion while ethnic distinctions were rare. Arguably, the written material produced for popular missions stood out for its functionality and adaptability to numerous geographical settings, whether in the Iberian Peninsula, New Spain, or Peru. Popular missions like the ones preached by propaganda fide Franciscans aimed at diverse nominal Catholic populations globally, which explains the silence on ethnic differences. More specifically, these Franciscan campaigns sought to re-awaken religious piety that mirrored that of the friars and contributed to shaping eighteenthcentury Catholicism in the Hispanic world.9 In this chapter, I aim to contextualize the Franciscan missionary program within a corpus of scholarship that delves into the nuances of Catholicism and unveils the precariousness of Christianity in not only colonial settings but also in places deemed “old” Christian like Spain. Here, I am following historians like Jean Delumeau, Louis Châtellier, William Christian, Mark Christensen, and Scott Hendrix, whose works showcase the religious landscapes collegiate Franciscans confronted in their itinerant evangelism. To these scholars, there were not just malleable Catholicisms (or Christianities) that adapted to each locale but a level of heterodoxical practices and rituals during the Middle Ages such that one can hardly speak of a Christian society. Accordingly, only in the fifteenth century and especially the sixteenth century can we talk of a centralized Catholic Church attempting to bring coherence to European Catholicism. Delumeau’s provocative thesis is the starting point of these works. He argues that the Christianization of Europe was still a work in progress by the seventeenth century, when, as the result of the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Catholic Church began to methodically indoctrinate and sacramentalize rural Catholic Europe through an intensified missionary program. Delumeau asserts that Catholic missionary activities in the early modern period were part of a general soteriological madness within “a vast geographical and multi-confessional context in which Quakers and Methodists rubbed shoulders with Jesuits, Capuchins and Oratorians.” Catholic revitalist forces hence shared 9. Karen Melvin has recently emphasized the global nature of these popular missions in “The Globalization of Reform.”

174

To Sin No More

many commonalities with contemporaneous religious awakenings in Great Britain and its North American colonies.10 Although not a new phenomenon, missions to Catholics reached a peak momentum in the seventeenth century and lasted until the twentieth century. In the words of French historian Louis Châtellier, European popular missions became so ubiquitous in eighteenth-century Europe that missionary campaigns of indoctrination “took the form of systematic covering of entire regions, where the towns and villages, without exception, were visited one after another” and turned Europe into a “great missionary land.”11 For Scott Hendrix, who borrows from Delumeau, Christianity is ephemeral. He argues that “Christianity has to be rooted and rerooted in every society it enters.”12 Within this context, he claims that the sixteenth-century Catholic reformation revitalized the Church’s evangelical objective as never before, as the aim of these missionaries was “to plant and replant Christianity wherever they served.”13 Re-Christianization was always deemed necessary because both Franciscans and other ecclesiastical authorities questioned popular Catholicism. In our case, Franciscan missionaries sought to “re-Christianize” flocks of nominal Catholics in the rural and urban Hispanic landscapes, albeit their influence was more noticeable in rural areas, which in many cases were less exposed to the diocesan clergy. Franciscan itinerant preachers from the colleges became key agents of religious conversion, a process arguably imperfect that interweaved complex stages and plural viewpoints. To a certain extent, as some scholars point out, when studying the Franciscan missionary program we can also speak of polyphonic Christian messages delivered to multiple audiences and cast into local, individual Catholicisms.14 Even if one can find tensions between the local and the global, the individual and the collective, I focus first on the actors and particularly the processes driving the Franciscan missionary agenda in the eighteenth century, of which religious conversion was pivotal.

10. Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 189. 11. Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor, 60. 12. Hendrix, “Rerooting the Faith,” 575 13. Hendrix, Recultivating the Vineyard, 129. For a critique of Hendrix’s thesis, see the essays in Anna Marie Johnson and John A. Maxfield, eds., The Reformation as Christianization: Essays on Scott Hendrix’s Christianization Thesis (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2012). 14. See, for instance, William A. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981) and the essays in Nesvig, ed., Local Religion in Colonial Mexico. For the idea of multiple Catholicisms, see Mark Z. Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013).

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

175

Conversion Since religious conversion is central to this chapter and the book as a whole, it deserves some conceptual clarification. I concentrate first on semantic usages of conversion to then elucidate a concomitant theoretical approach that will better frame cultural processes resulting from the Franciscan missionary activities in nominally Catholic regions and frontier territories. Franciscan missionaries, like their contemporaries, used conversion interchangeably, referring to the salvation of nominal Catholics, non-Christians, Protestants, Buddhists, or Eastern Orthodox. Conversion, according to the dictionary of authorities of 1726, was defined as “change of life: and usually from bad to good.”15 With this meaning, conversion implied not only recruiting non-Catholics for their eternal salvation under the umbrella of the Catholic Church but also the salvation of sinners who were otherwise condemned to purgatory or, if unredeemable, to hell. A look at the documentation illustrates this last meaning. As a 1776 decree points out, the purpose of the colleges was “the conversion of infidels and sinners.”16 Because Franciscan friars preached to convert or to bring orthodoxy to those Catholics who had strayed, sermons particularly used religious conversion in this sense. Preaching to Catholics around the turn of the nineteenth century, Fray José de San Martín from the college in Querétaro harangued his recalcitrant audience that his purpose was to “convert the toughest sinners.”17 Overall, explained another friar from the same colegio in a sermon announcing his itinerant min-

15. Diccionario de Autoridades [1726], facsimile ed., vol. 1 (Madrid: Gredos, 1990); Diccionario de la lengua castellana en que se explica el verdadero sentido de las voces, su naturaleza y calidad. . . , vol. 1 (Madrid: En la imprenta de Francisco del Hierro, Impresor de la Real Academia Española, 1726): “Significa tambien mudanza de vida: y regularmente de mala à buena.” Convertir: “Reducir, atraher y enderezar al que va errado, ò sigue otra opinion.” In the Catholic Encyclopedia, Benedict Guldner wrote: “[C]onversion refers to a moral change, a turning or returning to God and to the true religion, in which sense it has passed into our modern languages. (For example, the ‘conversions’ of St. Paul, of Constantine the Great, and of St. Augustine.) In the Middle Ages the word conversion was often used in the sense of forsaking the world to enter the religious state. Thus St. Bernard speaks of his conversion. The return of the sinner to a life of virtue is also called a conversion. More commonly do we speak of the conversion of an infidel to the true religion, and most commonly of the conversion of a schismatic or heretic to the Catholic Church.” Guldner, “Conversion,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908), available at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04347a.htm (accessed October 21, 2009). 16. Decree of February 27, 1776, LDQ1, fol. 193v: “Dicho fin, es la conversion de los infieles, y la de los pecadores.” 17. “Sermón de Anuncio,” Fr. José de San Martín, “Sermones morales y pláticas del P. Fr. José de San Martín” (n.p., n.d.), AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 11, 16: “convertir los pecadores mas endurecidos, y de cortar hasta las mas profundas raizes de sus malos habitos.”

176

To Sin No More

istry, missionaries aimed at “converting” Christians through itinerant missions in controlled areas, “from Texas southward.”18 In colonial America, as well as in early modern Europe, the Church’s interest in conversion thus affected non-Christians and Catholics alike.19 Noticeably, to the Franciscans, religious conversion was not a simple act of changing religious affiliation through the sacrament of baptism but a process in which an individual changes his life and conduct to something different, commonly perceived as more pristine by the religious intelligentsia. Conversion hence implies that catechumens before baptism, baptized neophytes, and solid Catholics follow rules imposed by those who claimed to have knowledge of spiritual and religious orthodoxy. Therefore, although conversion can be approached as an instant epiphany, it typically takes time. Works on spiritual re-awakenings in British North America in the eighteenth century are particularly useful in understanding this type of spiritual shift within Catholicism. According to these scholars, British colonies underwent a systematic uplift of religious fervor throughout the mid-eighteenth century. Through profuse preaching campaigns that historians called revivalisms or reawakenings, itinerant preachers transformed sinners into “new lights” through processes of inner metamorphosis. These conversions were loaded with appeals to the senses and the emotions, with strong messages that fostered fear as well as hope. These Protestant phenomena in the northern Atlantic shared similar theological paradigms with Catholic theology that also manifested in the popular Catholic missions of the early modern period.20 Theoretically speaking, sociologists, psychologists, historians, theologians, and anthropologists have studied the process of conversion from different angles and in different geographical areas and times. These studies argue against reducing conversion to a sudden, drastic change from one religious system or faith to another. They highlight the importance of faith revitalization or “reawakening” and inner transformation, which they identify as progressive and linear or circular. Scholars emphasize religious conversion’s con-

18. Fray Juan Hernández wrote: “porque para mi es indubitable, que el que en una Mision no se convirtiere, tan poco se arrepentira, a la hora de la muerte (ablando como solemos dezir de texas abajo)” in his “Sermon del Anuncio,” Fray Juan Hernández, “Libro de sermones,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 9, 251v. 19. John L. Kessell claimed that the conversion of Indians was “more satisfying and closer to the apostolic tradition of the Church. The friars wanted to be apostles in their own right.” John L. Kessell, Friars, Soldiers, and Reformers: Hispanic Arizona and the Sonora Mission Frontier, 1767–1856 (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1976), 3. Like other scholars, his scope is limited to frontier missions. 20. The literature on the “great awakenings” in British America is vast. See, for instance, Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 344–346; and Frank Lambert, Inventing the “Great Awakening” (Princeton, N.J. and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1999), 49–51.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

177

ditionality and incompleteness. Professor of pastoral psychology Lewis R. Rambo’s study of conversion is valuable here. While he concedes that defining conversion—in particular, due to common discrepancies among converts and missionaries on the meaning of a genuine conversion—posits methodological difficulties, Rambo states that change is pivotal. Conversion, he contends, “means turning . . . to new religious groups, ways of life, systems of belief, and modes of relating to a deity or the nature of reality.” In his model, relapse is common in most conversion experiences: self-doubt, resistance, rejection, crises, desires, and reaffirmations alternate throughout the processes of rebirth. Henceforth, his interdisciplinary approach suggests a sequential process or “spiraling effect” among various stages in conversion. This meaning was no different in the eighteenth century.21 Hence, Rambo’s paradigm of religious conversion captures the essence of the Franciscans’ own approach to conversion during their evangelical revivalisms throughout the Hispanic world, the focus of this chapter. As a corollary, this spiritual shift model might further be applied to the frontier loci. In frontier missions, the process of religious conversion began when Spaniards drew (or forced) natives to the missions and lasted through the catechumens’ instruction period and, after baptism, the periods of relapse and spiritual revitalization of frontier neophytes and Catholics. In this sense, religious conversion sought the salvation of non-Catholics within the Catholic community and, once inside, their continued spiritual regeneration through true repentance after confession and penance. Henceforth, in this book, conversion signifies interchangeably the spiritual regeneration of a fallen soul and the salvation of a heathen, using the contemporary parlance. In both cases, to those who undertook conversion, the process entailed changes in way of life, habits, and customs, though clearly the genuine ecclesiastical discourse acknowledged additional challenges to incorporate newcomers in the Americas to the Catholic faith. Conversion was a means to an end: salvation. It is thus noteworthy that conversion was defined as a change from bad to good. Consequently, both missions to Catholics and peripheral missions entailed the ideological and cul21. See, for instance, the essays in Buckser, ed., The Anthropology of Religious Conversion; and Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, quote is on p. 3. Recently, Doung Young Kim applied Rambo’s theses and approaches to his own analysis of Saint Augustine’s religious transformation in Understanding Religious Conversion: The Case of Saint Augustine (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2012). For a historical approach on religious conversion, see the essays in James Muldoon, ed., Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages (Gainesville, Fl.: University Presses of Florida, 1997). In his study of the California missions, historian James A. Sandos raised the problem of equating conversion with baptism. As he rightfully claims, “[C]onversion was a process of some indeterminate length subsequent to rather than symbolized by baptism.” Sandos, Converting California, xv–xvi, 6, 177, quote on p. 129.

178

To Sin No More

tural mutations of Indians and other groups in Spanish America as well as peasants in Europe from perceived wickedness into something purer. At least from a soteriological perspective, so-called popular missions were also catechetical and moralizing ventures concomitant to the evangelical work among non-Christian Indians in frontier missions. Almost a century later, the guardian of the colegio in Tarija (Upper Peru) gave meaning to the 1726 dictionary entry of conversion. Addressing groups of missionaries he underscored that their industry and work would root out adultery and other vices to plant virtues in God’s vineyard, and ultimately bring the human race to safe paths of knowledge and salvation. The affected population of Tarija’s popular missions (and of other colleges) was comprised of mostly indigenous peoples as well as people of Spanish, Indian, and African descent. As a process of rehabilitation with salvific goals, indubitably some clerics justified coerced conversions as a necessary means.22

Imagining a Sinful World In the minds of many clerics, the fruits in God’s vineyard were indeed rotten. To a large extent, rhetorical constructs of the sinful nature of humankind that echoed on both sides of the Atlantic prompted and sustained the Catholic Church calling for conversion and salvation, of which popular missions were persuasive competitors with the Inquisition in eradicating deviances in the Hispanic world. Although theologians have acknowledged the sinful nature of humankind since early Christianity, the Council of Trent further nourished and reaffirmed the belief that humans possess a natural tendency to sin, a theory that ironically resembled theologies of Calvinists and other Protestant reformists (enemies of Roman Catholic theology). This discourse on omnipresent rotten grapes belonged to a pessimist homily of human decadence that emerged in early modern European thought and was deeply rooted in early Christianity and ancient Western philosophy. Sin was redeemed, post-Tridentine theologians agreed, through participation in the liturgy; true confession, penitence, and repentance; and the symbiosis of the human body and soul with the body and blood of Jesus Christ through the

22. Guardians from Tarija began with this general justification in their letters to the presidents of the popular missions, see for instance “Patente para misionar entre fieles dada por Fr. Pedro Rodríguez Regalado, Guardián del Colegio de Tarija, a los PP. Domingo Andrés y Buenaventura Villanueva,” Tarija, September 22, 1809, AFT, RR-483; and “Carta del P. Guardián del Colegio de Tarija, Esteban Primo Ayala, al P. Antonio Comajuncosa, Ex Comisario Prefecto de Misiones,” Tarija, August 7, 1805, AFT, MF-1375. For an analysis on forced conversion see David Rex Galindo, “‘Primero hombres, luego cristianos’: Un análisis sobre la conversión forzosa en la frontera de Texas,” in Colonial Latin American Historical Review 2nd Series 2:3 (Summer 2014): 405–432.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

179

Eucharist.23 In this vein, if men and women were naturally sinful creatures, ecclesiastical men were their healers and, accordingly, their missions became the necessary cure. The rhetoric of sinful humans and their saviors, the missionaries, was regularly invoked on both sides of the Atlantic. The discovery of America incited an ontological debate over the nature of humanity with profound religious connotations. In their writings, missionaries’ rhetoric highlighted the simplicity, sluggishness, ignorance, immorality, and savagery of peasants, urban popular masses, and diverse ethnic groups of the European seaborne empires. In America, not only were American inhabitants viewed as inferior, but, building on theological, natural, environmental or astrological theories, eighteenth-century philosophers also imagined that exposure to America was enough to bring about relapse to the European body and soul. Clerics in Europe and the Americas frequently depicted nominal Catholics, especially those living in rural areas or with non-European lineage, as barbaric, unorthodox, and immoral—people whose actions resembled those of animals more than human beings. More often than not the Catholic clergy and missionaries closely linked the conversion of the non-Christian with that of the European peasant, commonly viewed with contempt as an “ignorant heathen” by European civil and ecclesiastical elites.24 This discourse of Europe’s decadence was so pervasive in missionary circles that clerics nicknamed European rural areas as “our Indies” (nuestras Indias), underscoring their evangelical efforts and conflating indistinct perceptions of early modern European peasants and Native American communities. True, this was a rhetorical scheme. To justify their endeavors, missionaries equated pervasive religious deviations in rural Europe with American spiritual decadence.25 However, let us keep in mind that even though American realities promptly tempered most Europeans’ bewildered imaginations, stereotypes died hard. A personal letter that a missionary stationed in Querétaro wrote to his peers in 1738 at the Colegio de San Antonio in Herbón, Spain illustrates such

23. In Sin and Fear, Delumeau describes how Christianity has perpetuated the scorn of human nature as prone to sin and its connection to self-guilt. He argues that sin within the self was part of the Christian tradition since its origins, but had a strong impulse in the early modern period, creating deep anxieties and fears in each individual and in the Church that tainted their relations. As he points out in his introduction, early modern European men and women were obsessed with sin and damnation. 24. See, for instance, Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). For depictions of peasants as barbarians and brutes in Spain, see Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España, 18, 51; and Fernández Cortizo, “Para que esta gente bárbara fuese política.” 25. Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari, 2nd ed. (Torino, Italy: Giulio Einaudi editori, 2009), 553–561; Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils, 96–97; and Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España, 353.

180

To Sin No More

perceptions. Fray Francisco López Salgueiro, a veteran missionary with twenty years of experience in America, described American society as full of “perversion, vice, idolatries, and sins.” In his personal depiction, Americans committed “very scandalous and public sacrileges, mixed with incest [. . .] and other awful things that are embarrassing to mention,” to the extent that men and women, “rather than Christians, seem [to be] atheists or . . . heretics.” Accusations even touched on the secular clergy, who were scarce and, in the eyes of many, mostly “foolish and bad.” The need to recur to such hyperbole (and a few fabrications) served the purpose of validation to veteran missionaries like López Salgueiro in the eyes of his superiors and brethren, in this case in Spain. It was also a call for assistance. At one point, appealing to his Iberian peers, the friar called on missionaries to take “the sword in hand against so many monsters.”26 Beyond the public domain of published and manuscript treatises, private letters like this one pinpoint the discursive strength of certain driving epistemologies in the ordinary lives of missionaries. To Franciscan religious men, wickedness originated with the Devil (Satan, Lucifer). The world, in fact, was the battlefield of two diametrical forces: a supreme force, creator of all things, which they worshipped as their God, and the Devil, the opponent knight and also representative of evil. According to Catholic theology, the Devil was subservient to God, creator of all things (including the Devil); thus only God’s mighty power permitted Lucifer and his minions to hook stray individuals. Both had legions of supporters: the Christian God was backed by a cadre of angels, whereas the Devil was followed by a group of henchmen referred to as demons. According to early modern European worldviews, everything evolved within the clash of both spiritual forces, and everything could be explained as a result of struggles between God and Satan—good and evil. Inside such a bipolar-

26. López, “Misiones de Méjico,” 261–262, 264: “iniquidad, vicio, idolatrías y pecados, . . . sacrilegios escandalosissimos y públicos, mezclados con incestos . . . y otras enormidades que da empacho referirlas. . . . [M]ás que cristianos, parecen ateystas o hereges permitidos. . . . [N]ecios y malos. . . . [E]spada en mano, a tanto monstruo.” Many contemporaries of Fray Francisco López Salgueiro shared his views that America softened the body and the soul. See, for instance, another letter by his companion in the Queretaran college, Fray Pedro del Barco, who also wrote to his brethren in Spain lamenting that he and other religious in America had to maintain more strictness in their lives because the American atmosphere captivated souls: “[P]riuandose muchas vezes el que pretende su saluacion, de aquellas ilicitas, y honestas libertades, y uisitas que en esa uanda se permiten; y esforzarse cada uno en mantenerse con un teson religioso; para no dexarse arrebatar del arrebatado impulso de embelesos, dulzuras, atractivos, suauidades, hechizos, condescendencias, facilidades, y otras mill ruinas, que tienen estos Reinos para perder las Almas.” In Lino Gómez Canedo, “Una carta del misionero Fray Pedro del Barco, O.F.M.,” Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos 7 (1952): 414. A classic work that describes the origin and ideologies of the European perception of America and its peoples after the eighteenth century is Gerbi’s La disputa del Nuevo Mundo.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

181

ized arena, Franciscan missionaries offered their spiritual swords to fight in this ancient conflict between good and evil that would last until the end of time. It was therefore the Franciscans’ task to rescue fallen men and women from the clutches of Satan through preaching and missions. Subordinate groups were easy prey in this battlefield that involved occult powers, superstition, and revelations.27 Thus, descriptions of wickedness in the itinerant preachers’ rhetoric served as a means of self-justification and promoted nostalgia for the heroic times of the founding Church and previous times. Indeed, without sinners, and likewise, heretics and pagans, the whole business of salvation would have been pointless, leaving missionaries and clerics homeless and unemployed. Moreover, missionaries’ emphasis on the iniquity of their own times, and expressed longing for the more righteous past, was also a rhetorical tool to instill guilt for contemporary wrongdoings. In the mid-eighteenth century, Fray José Ximénez de Jesús, a friar who had arrived at the College of Querétaro in 1730 from the College of the Holy Spirit of Valencia, Spain, harangued his American listeners that they were living in “a time in which Christians lived more forgotten of God. A time in which the world was the most wicked in customs. . . . Vice triumphs and virtue lives disheartened,” to the extent, he continued, that his majesty (God) “should destroy all mortals because of their lewdness, lust, and sensualities.”28 Even though his harsh message was widespread among his religious peers, it also included a good deal of rhetorical artifice to attract the attention of the audience. As discussed in Chapter 5, sermons like the one preached by Fray José Ximénez de Jesús describe a sociology of sin that reverberated on both sides of the Atlantic to lure people to participate in civilizing missions in Spain and America.

27. According to widespread theological ground at this time, Satan was a tool of God to punish iniquity. See among others, Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 170, 173; and Robert Muchembled, Historia del Diablo, Siglos XII–XX, trans. Federico Villegas, 2nd ed., 2nd repr. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006). For the Devil in Queretaran theology, see Fernando Cervantes, “The Devils of Querétaro: Scepticism and Credulity in Late Seventeenth-Century Mexico,” Past and Present 130 (1991); and Cervantes, The Devil in the New World, 113–136. 28. Ximénez de Jesús, “Platica para las Calles Combidando a la Mission,” in “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 1: “En tiempo en q los Xptianos viven mas olvidados de Dios: en tiempos en q el mundo esta mas estragado de Costumbres; quando, como dize San Bernardo; triunfa el vizio, y vive abatida la virtud: en tiempo en q todos o los mas duermen en el pesado sueño de la Culpa sin advertir los peligros q los cercan: quando debia su Magestad acavar con todos los mortales por sus torpezas, luxurias, y sensualidades.”

182

To Sin No More

An Atlantic Missionary Program The Franciscan missionary program of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries followed a consistent logic to reach all individuals in the Hispanic world. First, an expanding network of twenty-nine colleges in Spain and the colonies stretched to reach out to the populations of the empire. Then, each college, acting as a hub of missionary expansion, extended its missionary program over urban areas and hinterlands along with the rural countryside, together forming an area network that spanned the far corners of the Hispanic world. Moreover, Franciscan missions to Catholics and on the periphery of the empire to non-Christians first complemented, and after 1767 supplanted, the extensive Jesuit missionary program, which in the case of the popular missions had already translated to the colonies late in the sixteenth century. In fact, the resemblance of the colleges’ missionary program to their Jesuit and Capuchin counterparts in Europe and America is striking. Both Matteo da Bascio (1495–1552) and Ignatius of Loyola (1491– 1556), founders of the Capuchins and Jesuits, respectively, were enthusiastic preachers and inspired a missionary fervor in their acolytes. Since the midsixteenth century, the Jesuits expanded their civilizing missions in Europe and America. We can for instance find Jesuits missionizing in Naples and its rural hinterland as early as the 1550s and in Asturias in the 1560s, and cultivating New Spain’s vineyards in the twilight of the sixteenth century. Along with the Jesuits, Capuchins also actively contributed to the missionary thrust of sixteenth-century Europe. Visibly, Jesuits and Capuchins normalized the popular missions in the early modern European landscapes. It is thus no surprise that Franciscan missionaries from the colleges would embrace and adapt a missionary framework to convert nominal Catholics that Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries had long tested in their European missions. Besides perusing published Capuchin and Jesuit missionary treatises, particularly mission handbooks and sermons, collegiate Franciscan veterans drew on their own experience to craft missionary guides that reflected the maturing process of their evangelical activities propagating the faith in the Hispanic world. Like the other orders, Franciscans also sought a model of evangelical ministry to be followed by all members of the colleges of propaganda fide, particularly inexperienced missionaries. Mission theorists emphasized that a common model tempered the differences of a diverse pool of missionaries whose social and ideological background might otherwise influence their evangelical ministry in unexpected ways.29

29. By the late seventeenth century, the Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries had already developed a systematic and mature missionary system in Europe. Franciscan religious drew on theoretical missionary treatises that their Capuchin and Jesuit counterparts

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

183

In general, missionary manuals were written with the objective of disseminating a familiar methodology to clerics, particularly new missionaries, who found the handbooks to be an inspirational source of knowledge and experience for their evangelical ministry to Catholics. Anxieties leading to institutionalization of a homogenous style in the missions further exposed concerns that Franciscan diversity hampered Franciscan missionary identity. Such anxieties are reflected in an anonymous 1748 mission guide from the college in Querétaro that praised the ability of the diverse pool of Jesuit missionaries to maintain a uniform missionary system and “never alter the way of the Province where they arrive.” The same author counseled his confreres that such uniformity could be attained if when evangelizing in duets the same missionary always preached while his companion explained the Christian doctrine.30 Compiled in 1803, the title of the missionary guide from Tarija is explicit in the search for consistency: Manual de misioneros para el uso uniforme de los Padres del Colegio. . . (Missionary Handbook for Uniform Use by Padres of the Colegio. . .).31 Even after Mexican independence, the Querétaro discretorio sought to enforce a standardized method for the missions, perhaps the one written in the 1740s.32

published. See, for instance, Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils; Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor. The most comprehensive study of Capuchin and Jesuit popular missions in Spain is Rico Callado, Misiones populares en España. A study of the Franciscan missionary program in Cataluña in the eighteenth century is Gelabertó, La palabra del predicador. 30. The anonymous friar from Querétaro who drafted the 1748 handbook stated that one missionary should always preach and the other explain the doctrine “por q no se vea variedad de missionar en los de un mismo habito, Religion, y instituto: â la verdad, q arrebata â la juiciosa reflexion la grande uniformidad q observan los R.P.P.P. de la Compañia de Jesus en sus Missiones, pues aunque en una Provincia, ô Collegio se junten Missioneros de varias Provincias, nunca alteran en nada el modo, q hallan en la Provincia a donde viene, sin duda será prudente, discreta humildad no hacer juicio, q los antepasados haviendo sido hombres santos, y doctos lo herraban, haviendo visto los Reynos, y Provincias mas largos años jusgando para seguir sus huellas, q la experiencia, ô el Señor les inspiraria lo que se executa por mas conveniente.” In Dir1748, fol. 8v. The Zacatecas guide from the late eighteenth century also pointed toward a similar concern. See MZacatecas, frame 986: “Por todo esto: me hé resuelto â poner en este Quaderno la Practica, que há tenido, y tiene este Colegio Mariano en sus Missiones, paraque no variandose jamas por el curso, y variacion de los tiempos permanesca (con el Espiritu de Nuestros mayores, que nos presedieron, y enseñaron) el amor de la Virgen Smâ como objeto Principal de nuestro Sagrado Ministerio.” The anonymous writer further pointed out in the preamble to proceed with the required clarity for a “new missionary.” MZacatecas, frame 988. For the Jesuit missionary guides and their ministry in southern Italy in the seventeenth century, see Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils, 139–181. 31. “Manual de misioneros para el uso uniforme de los Padres del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de la Villa de San Bernardo de Tarija,” Tarija, 1803, AFT, MF-12 (hereafter MTarija). 32. Auto de visita of Fray Diego Miguel Bringas, former guardian, Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, February 15, 1827, in LEC, fol. 224v: “[E]sto debe zelarse mas estre-

184

To Sin No More

While only a few of these missionary guides developed for the colegios have survived, the sources of their missionizing philosophies are apparent. Guidebooks from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro and Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Zacatecas often cite five well-known European missionaries and theorists: Franciscan Capuchins Fray Feliciano de Sevilla (d. 1722) and Fray José de Caravantes (1628–1694), Spanish Jesuits Pedro de Calatayud (1689–1773) and Miguel Ángel Pascual (b. 1644), and Italian Jesuit Paolo Segneri (1624–1694).33 The libraries of the colleges housed the printed works of these preacher heroes, whose titles revealed their purpose: Fray José de Caravantes’ Práctica de missiones, remedio de pecadores (Mission Practice, Cure for Sinners) and Miguel Ángel Pascual’s series El operario instruido, y oyente aprovechado (The Educated Operative and Diligent Listener), El misionero instruido, El oyente desengañado (The Educated Missionary, the Informed Listener), and El oyente remediado (The Corrected Listener). Pablo Segneri’s (or Señeri) complete works and a wide collection of his printed sermons completed the extensive scholarship on missions found in Franciscan college libraries. When the gates of the friary closed behind them, novices and friars probably not only heard veterans’ mission stories but also devoured the missionary literature within their reach. Franciscan manuals, like their Jesuit and Capuchin counterparts, explained the logistics and steps necessary for successful missionizing and thereby comprise an important source, even if partial, to study Franciscan popular missions.34 College missionary handbooks and college chronicles offer a preliminary glimpse of their evangelical ministry to Catholics in the Hispanic world.35 Mischamente en los que salen á Misionar en cuyo egercicio se observe como siempre el ir á pie, haciendo moderadas jornadas, y sujetandose al Metodo aprovado y mandado observar por el V.e Discretorio.” 33. Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús’s guide is from the early eighteenth century; see ForMargil. See also the anonymous guide from 1748, Dir1748; another from the 1790s, MZacatecas; and the guide from Tarija written in the early nineteenth century, MTarija. 34. All college libraries held these important missionary works. See, for instance, “Inventario de la biblioteca del Colegio de Querétaro,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, 1766, AHPFM-FCSCQ, R, file 1, no. 2; “Inventario de la biblioteca del Colegio de Querétaro,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro 1803, AHPFM-FCSCQ, R, file 1, no. 3. The list of books in the library of the college of San Fernando of Mexico City is in “Elenco de los Libros, que hay en esta Libreria de S. Fernando de Mexico oy dia 23 de Julio de 1789,” July 23, 1789, Archivo Histórico de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México (hereafter AHPSEM), box 201; for a study of this library, see Maynard Geiger, “The Library of the Apostolic College of San Fernando, Mexico, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” The Americas 7, no. 4 (1951). 35. For the handbooks I have perused, see n. 33. Additionally, for the method used in the Colegio de San Miguel, Escornalbóu, Spain, see Papió, La història d´Escornalbóu, 97–105. For Herbón, see Fray Antonio de Herosa, O.F.M., Memorial de las cosas notalbes de este Colegio de Herbón, ed. José Luis Soto Pérez (Santiago: Editorial Eco Franciscano, 2012 [1756–1759], tratado 2do, chap. 8, sec. 90, 304–305.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

185

sionary manuals stressed mental and material preparation for a task that required travel for up to six months (longer in exceptionally extended tours). Accordingly, the guides suggested that before departure, Franciscans should engage in prayer, spiritual exercises, and writing and study of the sermons and doctrines that were to be preached. The guardian, and the vicar or president in his absence, commonly appointed the president or leader of the mission and one or two companions. A mozo or porter, who could be a young layman, a lay brother, or an oblate, accompanied them to assist with material things. The president of the mission, his associates, and the mozo prepared one or two mules to carry their temporal needs, which usually included clothes, a few books, and foodstuffs for the early days of the journey.36 Missionaries further required the customary licenses from secular ecclesiastical authorities— bishops, archbishops, or deans and cabildo in sede-vacante when the diocesan seat was vacant—before entering their jurisdictions. The prelate of the college blessed the mission and selected the route to follow, which manuals suggested should be previously negotiated with the diocese. Overall, guides were meant to leave little to chance in the important preparatory stage of a popular mission, although last-minute changes did occur when an unspecified “evident cause” occurred.37 Since the general laws of the Franciscan Order in America prohibited horseback riding, missionaries were required to travel on foot, unless a missionary became sick during the mission or the nature of the trip required the use of horses. Traveling on foot was deemed an example of humility that countered the arrogance of elites and the display of power. Pragmatism, however, prevailed over orthodoxy. Even if Franciscan authorities reminded friars from the colleges not to ride horses, vast distances often encouraged equestrian travel. Missionaries from the Bolivian colegio at Tarija very likely rode horses and mules during the long journeys throughout Upper Peru and northwestern Argentina that lasted for years in some cases. Even in the twentieth century, friars from Tarija rode mules instead of vehicles to reach isolated parishes in an exercise of commitment but also humility. In the final decades

36. The 1748 guide recommended two rather than three missionaries, referring to Miguel Ángel Pascual’s El missionero instruido (1698), and a mozo to help with manual labor and as proxies for missionaries in face-to-face contact with women. See Dir1748, fols. 10v–14v; and MZacatecas, frame 992. Pachuca’s missionaries left their college in trios. See, for instance, “Papeles varios. Esta caja contiene principalmente certificaciones de misiones (siglos XVIII y XIX), pero también hay otros con diversas noticias. De todos ellos hay un índice reciente y muy completo,” AHPSEM, box 210. 37. Auto de visita of Fray Francisco Pangua, February 10, 1778, in LEC, fol. 135v: “manifiesta causa.” Mission guides recommended that potential missionaries request the licenses and authorizations to evangelize in a specific bishopric before departure. ForMargil, fols. 1r–6r; Dir1748, fols. 3r–5v; and MTarija. For a discussion on this issue, see the following section, “A Triple Alliance.”

186

To Sin No More

of the eighteenth century, inspectors ordered that only healthy religious could leave the colleges to preach and convert Catholics in order to avoid horseback riding. Notwithstanding prohibitions, some peripatetic Franciscan missionaries, like their Jesuit brothers, may have recognized the benefits of riding horses and the use of donkeys on their itinerant ministries to distant locations, particularly to speed their tours and avoid illnesses and unnecessary discomfort. In other cases, returning with valuable items such as alms collections could necessitate the use of faster transport.38 All missionary handbooks drew attention to missionary presentation protocols for meeting with local clergy officials, entering a village, and spreading word about the missionaries’ presence to attract local residents to the confessional. Mission manuals also focused on quotidian affairs that ranged from lodging and meals to processions of penitents, confessions, and celebrating Holy Communion. To inform local clergy when approaching a village, missionaries commonly wrote a letter of introduction to the resident priest or vicar to announce their arrival and to submit their licenses to preach and confess from the bishop. In his guide, Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús offered his missionary colleagues a model letter to present to the ecclesiastical authorities before their arrival, a

38. Two guides from Querétaro and Zacatecas, respectively, recommended traveling on foot to show humility and an example to the common folk. Dir1748, fol. 12v; and MZacatecas, frames 999–1000. For a later reminder of the prohibition, see auto de visita of Fray Bartolomé Masenes, former provincial minister of Jalisco, August 20, 1787, in LEC, fol. 152v. In 1827, Fray Diego Miguel Bringas, upon inspecting the college he knew so well, pointed out that: “Que se corte el abuso de andar á caballo; pues siendo un precepto equipolente de nuestra Regla solo lo puede nonestar al menos una de las tres necesidades: esto debe zelarse mas estrechamente en los que salen á Misionar en cuyo egercicio se observe como siempre el ir á pie, haciendo moderadas jornadas, y sujetandose al Metodo aprovado y mandado observar por el V.e Discretorio.” Auto de visita of Fray Diego Miguel Bringas, former guardian of the college, Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, February 15, 1827, in ibid., fol. 224v. On the other hand, to avoid delays, the Jesuit missionary Pedro de Calatayud recommended traveling on horseback in one of his mission treatises. De Calatayud, Misiones y sermones del P. Pedro de Calatayud, Maestro de Teologia, y misionero apostolico de la Compañia de Jesus, de la Provincia de Castilla. Arte y metodo con que las establece, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (Madrid: Imprenta de Don Benito Cano, 1796), bk. 1, chap. 7, 1, 57–58. For a study of Calatayud’s missionary methodology regarding his support of horseback riding and the use of a mule or “jumentillo,” see Burrieza Sánchez, “Ciudades, misiones y misioneros,” 81. For Tarija in Upper Peru (present-day Bolivia), see MTarija. See also Fray Antonio Comajuncosa’s excerpts from the Franciscan General Statutes for America in “Resumen de los Estatutos Generales para los Frayles de las Indias (escritura del P. Antonio Comajuncosa), Normas para la vida en el Colegio,” Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Àngeles, Tarija, n.d., AFT, RR-164; Fray Benito Izquierdo, “Carta circular de Fr. Benito Izquierdo, Comisario y Prefecto de las 18 Misiones a cargo del Colegio de Tarija,” College of Tarija, June 28, 1810, AFT, RR-489; and Fray Andrés Caro, “Carta circular de Fr. Benito Izquierdo, Comisario y Prefecto de las 18 Misiones a cargo del Colegio de Tarija,” Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Àngeles, Tarija, February 12, 1815, AFT, RR-489.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

187

Table 4.1. Model Letters by Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús and Jesuit Father Fulvio Fontana, early 1700s Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús (c. early eighteenth C.) a

Father Fulvio Fontana (published in 1714) b

Señor Don N: Obedience sends us to carry out our ordinary Missions to your Town with licenses from the Lord Bishop, which we will display when we arrive. Thus, in this letter I inform Your Lordship that, if it is your desire and will that we celebrate them [the Missions], you give us your license so that tomorrow or any day in the morning or in the evening, we enter singing the Litanies of Our Mother to the Church, from which we will walk to kneel to your feet, so that you may direct us . . . as we will follow anything that you require of us, etc.

Sir: Would you please lead, or send your People in procession to _____ where on the _____ of the month _____ at the Church _____, the future mission of Father Fulvio Fontana, of the Society of Jesus, will begin. Try to see that everyone is there at _____ o’clock. And so, [this mission] will continue for several days; [and] such is the precise order of the Most eminent Archbishop that this [request] be executed with great haste.

a “S.r D.n N (fol. 1r) La Obediencia nos embia á hacer nras. Missiones ordinarias á ese su Pueblo de Vm. con las licencias de el S.r Obpo. que presentaremos en llegando á Vm: Por lo qual por esta aviso á Vm, para que si fuere su gusto, y voluntad, que las hagamos nos dé su licencia para que mañana, ó tal dia por la mañana; ó por la tarde, entremos cantando las Letanias de Nra. Sra. hasta la Yglesia; de donde iremos á los pies de Vm, para q.e en todo nos dirija pues estarémos en todo á lo que nos ordenare &.a.” ForMargil, fol. 1r–1v. See also MZacatecas, frames 993–994. b “Formula dell’Avviso, che si manda a’ Signori Curati,” in Paolo Segneri and Fulvio Fontana, Pratica delle Missioni del Padre Paolo Segneri della Compagnia de Giesù predicatore Pontificio continuata dal P. Fulvio Fontana della Medesima Religione. . . (Venice, 1714), 6, as quoted in Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils, 162.

similar format used by Jesuit missionaries in early modern Naples in Italy. The tone of each model letter nonetheless differs. The Jesuit Fulvio Fontana version shows firmness and authority in conducting the mission and passivity of the local priest, who can merely agree to Jesuit petitions backed by the archbishop. In contrast, Margil’s style enhances the authority of the local priest, who at least in Margil’s perspective, seems to control the mission program in his parish (see Table 4.1). It is likely that missionaries and resident clerics negotiated a middle ground on how to convene the mission in the parishes, which in America were ministered by diocesan clergy as well as priests from religious orders (the latter most commonly in rural Indian parishes or doctrinas de indios). Missionaries designed their undertakings as performances to captivate audiences through visuals and passionate oratory. Itinerant missionaries entered a town in procession, praying and singing the rosary, the Te Deum

188

To Sin No More

Laudamus, an Our Father, and a Hail Mary. Surrounded by musicality and vivid spectacle, missionaries hoped to attract residents to offer their soul to God. In his guide from the early eighteenth century, Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús suggested that his peers urge parish ministers to send two men ringing bells and shouting “to the mission, to the mission” (“a la mission, a la mission”) in the streets to gather parishioners. At the end of the century, Fray José Antonio Alcocer pointed out that Zacatecan missionaries called the attention of potential mission-goers by singing their invitation: “Come, sinners/come and let us sing/tender praises/to our Refugio. . . ,” highlighting the connection between the sinners and their salvation through intercession by the Virgin del Refugio and the missionaries.39 Before the crowd, which likely gathered in the streets and on balconies to welcome the missionaries or simply view the spectacle, the missionaries shouted an incantation to expel demons from the village. Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús’s conjuro (spell) reflects the dramatic character of this moment and the subsequent rhetoric of the mission: Who like God, who lives in the Heavens! Oh, foolish and faded enemy of the Omnipotent God. The same one who vanquished you from the Cross and broke your arrogance by redeeming humankind from your cruel tyranny commands you now: That His power annihilates you, his Wisdom confuses you and casts you out to the abyss. And I do it in his name, so you cannot prevent the exaltation and glory that all [of his] Creatures—particularly those from this Town and region where we go in his name—should offer to him as God and Lord and our Savior.40

Friars like Margil believed, Jay Harrison points out, that the Devil and his henchmen wandered among both non-Christian and Catholic communities in the Americas; in fact, friars from the colleges were involved in witchcraft cases and exorcisms. Harrison shows that friars from the colegio in Zacatecas studied demonology via specialized writings such as the famous Malleus

39. ForMargil, fols. 1r–8r, 10v–11r; Dir1748, fols. 3v–4r, 20v, 26r–26v, 29v, 36r; MZacatecas, frames 993–994; and Alcocer, Bosquejo de la Historia, 181–203. For a vivid description of the Escornalbóu college’s missions in Papió, see La història d´Escornalbóu, 97–105. For a general discussion of the first stages of the mission in Europe, see Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor; and Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils, 157–158. 40. ForMargil, fol. 2v: “Quien como Dios, q.e habita en las alturas! Ó estulto, y desvanecido enemigo de el Omnipotente: el mismo que te venció desde la Cruz, y quebranto tu arrogancia redimiendo á el linage humano de tu cruel tyrania, te mande ahora; Su potencia te aniquile, su Sabiduria te confunda, y arroje á el profundo, y Yo en su nombre lo hago, para q.e no puedas impedir la exaltacion, y gloria, q.e como á Dios, y S.or y nro. Redemptor le debemos dar todas sus Criaturas, particularm.te las de este Pueblo, y partido donde vamos en su nombre.” See also Cervantes Aguilar, Fray Simón del Hierro, esp. 19–49, for a description of Margil’s last popular mission.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

189

maleficarum, of which the college kept copies. It is certain that missionaries like Margil and others relied on these works to compile their spells and exorcisms every time they entered a new site.41 If the discourse did not attract attention, perhaps visuals would. The group paraded banners of Jesus Christ and the Virgin of Guadalupe or Refugio—which metaphorically became the shelter (literal meaning of refugio in Spanish) for sinners—and sang the litany before the church, where they kneeled in front of local clerics and civil authorities as a gesture of deference. To draw the inhabitants of a certain locality to daily mission activities, a missionary walked through the streets and preached a brief plática (talk) or sang the rosary before nightfall. Men came first and were followed by women parading in procession with crosses and lanterns led by missionaries singing saetas (flamenco-style melodies/rhythms sung on religious occasions) to attract others. Generally sermons were preached from the pulpit of the church, but in cases of large audiences, missionaries did not hesitate to preach in plazas and other public spaces. Congregations were diverse and, at least in theory, segregated by gender, social class, and ethnicity (see Figure 4.1). While mission guides orchestrated the physical space of the mission, with men and women separated, and authorities occupying the first rows in the church or the seats in outdoor preaching, with the rearmost areas of the church usually reserved to Indians in the American missions, in reality spatial order during the religious devotions and the sermons rested on local authorities who knew their neighbors much better than the Franciscan newcomers. On ranches and haciendas, owners might have exercised their authority on how their workers and their families presented themselves to the friars. On the other extreme, large cities like Potosí in Bolivia or Mexico City and Zacatecas in Mexico presented organizational challenges when the friars paraded through their streets and preached from the altars. Even if authorities attempted to impose some form of spatial order, particularly in the churches, it would have been more difficult to control larger crowds outdoors.42 Compared to Europe, America offered a different demographic pattern consisting of mainly native peoples and castas (peoples of mixed ancestry). As a result, itinerant missionaries preached intensively to Indians and castas throughout rural and urban American territories. As the list of places where missionaries evangelized suggests, they were mostly pueblos de indios, that is, villages and towns with a majority of Hispanicized Indians and a smaller pro-

41. Harrison, “Franciscan Missionary Theory,” 94–97. 42. ForMargil, Dir1748, MZacatecas, and MTarija. There were similar gendered and socioeconomic patterns in the European popular missions. See Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor; Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils, 157–158; and Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España, 119–120.

190

To Sin No More

Figure 4.1. The sermon. Source: Imagini di persone della Elvezia Rezia Valesia, e Tirolo intervenute in abito di penitenza nelle missioni fatte dalli PP. della Comp.a di Giesù Fulvio Fontana, e Gio: Antonio Mariani. Offerte all’Ill.ma Sig.ra Maria Eleonora Contessa d’Herbestain, Colonella nella Reale Fondazione d’Ala d’Insprugg La quale con tanta esemplarita assiste, con quante vivono Dame, sotto il di Lei, non men pio, che prudente governo alle sacre Funzioni della istessa Missione L’anno 1711. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque du Centre Sèvres, Facultés jésuites de Paris et la cote, N 38/122.)

portion of people of mixed descent, yet the missionary literature from the colleges was concerned primarily with social order rather than ethnically diverse populations. Regarding conversion of Catholics, the missionary program was global in nature.43 Hence, missionary handbooks did not make methodological

43. I have compared the list of towns where missionaries preached in Mexico to that of Dorothy Tanck de Estrada, Atlas ilustrado de los pueblos de indios: Nueva España, 1800 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México; El Colegio Mexiquense, A.C.; Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas; Fomento Cultural Banamex, 2005). Through the study of popular missions, in “The Globalization of Reform,” Karen Melvin interweaves the global aspects of early modern Catholicism into the local realities of Mexico.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

191

distinctions between an Indian and a European peasant, as all were considered to be prone to sinful acts and thus requiring the missionary’s redemptive intervention. Thus, from a soteriological perspective, Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús’s guide from the early eighteenth century could completely neglect the issue of ethnic diversity and serve its purpose to convert a peasant in his Valencian home region in Spain or in his new posts in New Spain. Almost a century later, an anonymously authored handbook from Zacatecas recommended reliance on the Jesuit Pablo Señeri’s plain preaching, which the Franciscan apparently found suitable to address what he perceived as a more “ignorant” and “rustic” American audience than Señeri’s Italian flock.44 The 1748 handbook from the colegio in Querétaro explicitly urged readers to carefully avoid describing native peoples and castas as more vicious than Creoles and Peninsulares. More broadly, missionaries’ preaching should preclude, the guide continued, any class and ethnic distinctions between nobles and plebeians, rich and poor, and Spanish versus other groups. However, this directive was held in stark contrast to the strict separation of men and women in processions and sermons to impede any immoral contacts that may jeopardize salvation of the sinners. Like Margil’s handbook, the more elaborate Tarija mission guide written in the early nineteenth century also ignored ethnic distinctions throughout its text while likewise emphasizing the separation of men and women in the processions.45 To lure such a diverse pool of people to confession, the ultimate goal of popular missions, missionaries alternated visual techniques and preaching with postmortem rewards. As discussed in Chapter 5, preachers vividly sought to bring Catholics to conversion and ultimately salvation through the message as much as the rhetoric. Missionaries further relied on indulgences awarded to parishioners who attended the sermons and confessed their sins. Through indulgences sinners could obtain a reduction in the amount of penance for forgiven sins after confession. In the case of plenary indulgences, sinners canceled out their punishments in purgatory, a bargain that Fray Juan Hernández, a religious from the colegio in Querétaro, offered to those who confessed, took communion, and prayed for the Catholic Church during the mission.46

44. The anonymous author suggested that missionaries in training rely on Pablo Señeri’s El Christiano instruido (1693) instead of his Quaresma works, which the guide’s author considered more appropriate for less-prepared audiences. MZacatecas, frame 997. 45. Dir1748, fols. 10r, 41v; MZacatecas, frame 1012; ForMargil; and MTarija. There was a similar gendered and socioeconomic pattern in Europe. See Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor, Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils, 157–158; and Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España, 119–120. 46. “Sermón de Anuncio,” in Hernández, “Libro de sermones,” 273: “[P]erdon de la pena temporal de vida por los pecados ia perdonados en quanto a la culpa.” See also Code of Canon Law, bk. IV, part I, title IV, chap. IV, Indulgences, 992, available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P3I.HTM (accessed November 18, 2008). The meaning of indulgences has not changed since Fray Juan Hernández wrote the sermon.

192

To Sin No More

Trekking the Dioceses The missionary work of the Franciscan colleges in the Hispanic world was vast and unrivaled. Missionary expansion during the Bourbon era, intimately linked to the increase in the number of colegios de propaganda fide, connects to the sprawling character of Christianity as well as expansive Spanish imperial policy. Major reasons for Franciscan evangelical growth included the sheer breadth of territories to cover, the evangelical needs of the populations, and, from an economic standpoint, the possibility of collecting more alms. From a political viewpoint, missionaries spread and consolidated the values of the Spanish Crown—the worldly patron of the Catholic Church that the friars represented—by turning non-Christians and Catholics alike into faithful subjects. Itinerant missions particularly targeted rural areas, which in many cases were isolated and not fully attended to by diocesan clergy, and thus commonly deprived of spiritual guidance. All colleges carried out itinerant missions in their own dioceses along with neighboring bishoprics and, in some cases, distant dioceses. Typically, intensive evangelical campaigns comprised ranchos, hamlets, villages, haciendas, towns, and larger cities, the latter usually being the bishop’s headquarters. It was not uncommon for several groups of missionaries from a particular colegio to preach in different bishoprics at the same time. Missionaries from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro, Mexico preached actively in the dioceses of Durango, Guadalajara, Puebla, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Guatemala, Chiapas, and the archdiocese of Mexico City. Between 1683 and 1703, Queretaran missionaries had already conducted missions in all dioceses in New Spain, sent eight men to missionize New Mexico, and initiated missionary campaigns in Texas and Central America. The Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles in Tarija, favored by its location near the crossroads of trade routes between mining and administrative centers in Potosí and La Plata (now Sucre) and the ranching fields of the Tucumán region, centered its missionary operations in current Bolivia and northwestern Argentina, covering the bishoprics of Tucumán and Salta (the latter established in 1806), Santa Cruz de la Sierra, La Paz, and the La Plata archdiocese. The college also sent missions to regions as distant as the Pacific axis between Pica (currently in Chile) and Arequipa (in Peru), to the areas between Montevideo and Buenos Aires, and in Puno and around Lake Titicaca (see Figures 4.2–4.4).47

47. Lino Gómez Canedo, “Renovación cristiana,” in Evangelización, cultura y promoción social, ed. Soto Pérez. Auto de visita of Fr. Antonio de Trejo, provincial minister of Saint Peter and Saint Paul of Michoacán, September 6, 1709, LPZEAV, fol. 234v. The certifications of the popular missions of the College of Pachuca bore witness to its intense missionary program. “Papeles varios. Le acompaña un índice moderno de los documentos aquí contenidos, algunos de los cuales son del siglo XVIII, pero la mayoría son del XIX,” AHPSEM, box 209; and “Papeles varios. Esta caja contiene principalmente certificaciones

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

193

Figure 4.2. Map of Queretaran popular missions in New Spain (1683–1686) based on data in Lino Gómez Canedo, “Renovación cristiana en la Nueva España del siglo XVII,” in Evangelización, cultura y promoción social: Ensayos y estudios críticos sobre la contribución franciscana a los orígenes cristianos de México (siglos XVI–XVIII), ed. José Luis Soto Pérez (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1993), 416–441. (Map created by Iván Alejandro López Nieto.)

In Europe, geographical distance was reduced, but not missionary intensity. In the kingdom of Galicia in northwestern Spain, missionaries from the Colegio de San Antonio in Herbón actively preached in the dioceses of Santiago, Tuy, Orense, Lugo, Mondoñedo, and Astorga in four- or five-yearly missionary campaigns. To fulfill these grueling commitments, Herbón missionaries alternated every year in their itinerant missions. The kingdom of Galicia that Herbón missionaries covered was mostly rural, as was the Principality of Cataluña trekked by friars from the Colegio de San Miguel in Escornalbóu, who also traveled beyond the bishoprics of the Cataluña principality

de misiones (siglos XVIII y XIX), pero también hay otros con diversas noticias. De todos ellos hay un índice reciente y muy completo,” AHPSEM, box 210. Fray Antonio Comajuncosa y Hortet, Manifiesto Histórico, Geográfico, Topográfico, Apostólico y Político de los que han trabajado, entre fieles e infieles los misioneros franciscanos de Tarija, 1754–1810 (1810; repr., Tarija: Editorial Offset Franciscana, 1993), 65–74.

194

To Sin No More

Figure 4.3. Map of Tarija popular missions in South America (1756–1809) based on data in Fray Antonio Comajuncosa y Hortet, OFM, Manifiesto Histórico, Geográfico, Topográfico, Apostólico y Político de lo que han trabajado, entre fieles e infieles los misioneros franciscanos de Tarija, 1754–1810 (1810; repr., Tarija, Bolivia: Editorial Offset Franciscana, 1993), 65–74. (Map created by Iván Alejandro López Nieto.)

to include southeastern France and Valencia. Escornalbóu’s record is indeed impressive. Missionaries from this colegio preached in over 1,100 places as part of more than 3,000 missionary campaigns between 1686 and 1835. In many small villages they preached once, and in other areas they held fourteen and fifteen missions. They reached all corners of the bishoprics of Tarragona, Tortosa, Lleida, Urgel, Girona, Vic, Solsona, Barcelona, and Valencia in Spain, and Cominges and Elna in France (see Figure 4.5).48 48. A description of the dynamic missionary program of the college of Escornalbóu in Spain is in “Jornadas Apostolicas. Libro en el qual se dá relacion verdadera de las Villas, y Lugares que an corrido los Religiosos moradores deste S.to Collegio de S. Miguel de Escornalbóu. predicando las santas Missiones. Por mandato del M. R. P. Fr. Pedro Font

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

195

Figure 4.4. Map with routes of Tarija popular missions in South America. Source: Alessandro María Corrado, El Colegio franciscano de Tarija y sus misiones. Noticias històricas recogidas por dos misioneros del mismo colegio (Quaracchi, Italy: Tip. del Colegio de S. Buenaventura, 1884). (Courtesy of the Archivo Franciscano de Tarija, Tarija, Bolivia.)

The evangelical ministry in the rural areas of the Hispanic world was difficult. The vastness of the territories to cover in North and South America posed a major challenge to itinerant preachers. Missionaries frequently had to walk extremely long distances through “rough and depopulated” roads to reach villages, ranchos, haciendas and other localities that were bereft of Predicador apostolico, y de dicho Collegio al presente Guadian dignissimo. Se empieça a los veinte y sinco de Agosto de 1724,” Colegio de San Miguel de Escornalbóu, 1724, AHPFC, Ms 4/A/11; and Martí Mayor, “Escornalbóu.” Escornalbóu missionary activity is discussed in Gelabertó, La palabra del predicador, 65–66. For Herbón, see Fray Antonio de Herosa, O.F.M., Memorial de las cosas notalbes de este Colegio de Herbón, ed. José Luis Soto Pérez (Santiago: Editorial Eco Franciscano, 2012 [1756–1759]), tratado 2do, chap. 8, sec. 90, 304–305; and Ofelia Rey Castelao, “Frailes y campesinos: El impacto de un convento rural a fines del Antiguo Régimen,” Semata: Ciencias sociais e humanidades, no. 9, 1997 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Espacios rurais e sociedades campesiñas, coord. por María del Pilar de Torres Luna, Rubén Camilo Lois González, Pegerto Saavedra Fernández): 279–306.

196

To Sin No More

Figure 4.5. Map of dioceses served by the colegios of Herbón (stripped area in northwestern Spain) and Escornalbóu (stripped area in northeastern Spain and southern France) popular missions. Source: Francisco Jorge Torres Villegas, Cartografía hispano científica : ó sea los mapas españoles en que se representa á España bajo todas sus diferentes fases (Madrid: Imprenta de Jose María Alonso, 1852), vol. 2, 51. (Courtesy of the Biblioteca de Castilla y León, Junta de Castilla y León. G 36521 v_2.)

priests. Even if with the foundation of new colleges, each seminary focused on neighboring bishoprics, in America that still meant traversing enormous distances of rough, inhospitable terrain. When the well-experienced missionary Fray Francisco López Salgueiro—a member of the colegio in Herbón and then Querétaro who missionized in Galicia as well as New Spain—described itinerant missions in New Spain in 1738 as “also very arduous,” he was underscoring that preaching to the Catholic faithful in America could be as compelling as in the better-known frontier missions.49 Logically, long journeys required healthy men who endured hundreds of miles for periods of up to six months, the standard time allowed for the missions, although the stipulated time limit varied somewhat according to distance and terrain traveled.50 Once

49. López, “Misiones de Méjico,” 270: “Asperos y algo despoblados. . . . [L]as misiones de fieles son también bastante travajosas.” In some localities, missionaries visited convents, prisons, and hospitals. See, for instance, Margil and del Hierro’s mission of 1725– 1726, Cervantes Aguilar, Fray Simón del Hierro, 19–49. 50. Innocent XI, Bull Ecclesiae Catholicae, October 16, 1686, printed in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 73–74. Margil’s last popular mission began in the Guadalupe colegio of Zacatecas in early October 1725, and finished with his death in Mexico City in August

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

197

the stipulated time period of the mission had concluded, missionaries were expected to return to their college without delay, where they should rest for eight days if they had been away for a six-month period, adding or subtracting days for longer or shorter periods of evangelical ministry.51 Any college’s human resources were stretched to unprecedented limits when Franciscans replaced Jesuits not only on the frontiers, but also in civilizing missions after the Jesuit expulsion from all Spanish domains in 1767. In Mexico, Queretaran missionaries substituted for the expelled Jesuits from the city of Guanajuato for their annual missions throughout the bishopric of Michoacán, which in addition to the archbishopric of Mexico had become the center of Queretaran missionary action. Such was the frequency of evangelical itinerant activities of this Mexican college that a writer listed the intensity of the missionary program in its book of decrees for the 1772–1776 period (see Table 4.2).52 Although missionaries’ passage through a specific bishopric required diocesan permission, itineraries were open to contingencies. First, bishops or priests with firsthand knowledge of his parishioners and the territory suggested possible routes and parishes to visit. The guardian and discretorio of a college could accept the offer as such, propose alternatives, or, ultimately, decline the mission, the latter generally on grounds of lack of missionaries. In suggesting possible itineraries, bishops usually gave priority to remote areas that lacked permanent clergy or regular Inquisition and diocesan inspections. In most cases, the religious traveled with “cordilleras” or maps of the routes to follow,

6, 1726. His companion Fray Simón del Hierro continued missionizing until late April 1727. See Cervantes Aguilar, Fray Simón del Hierro, 19–49. There are also instances from the Tarija colegio, Comajuncosa, Manifiesto Histórico, 65–74. 51. Auto de visita of Fr. Antonio Fernández, Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, February 7, 1775, LEC, fol. 118v. It appears that missionaries were entitled to rest only three days if they missionized less than six months, or more days for longer periods. See “Descansos y dispensas en el Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” AHPSEM, box 214. 52. Reference to mission frequency in the last years of the eighteenth century appears in “Letter of the discretorio of the College of Querétaro to Commissary General of the Indies Fray Pablo de Moya,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, September 24, 1796, in LDQ2, fol. 52v. For Queretaran missionaries’ involvement in the Jesuit “circular missions” (an itinerant evangelical ministry to locales with standing chapels with no permanent priest that Jesuits visited following a circular geographical route on a periodic basis, Rodrigo Moreno Jeria, Misiones en Chile Austral: Los Jesuitas en Chiloé [Seville: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; Diputación de Sevilla, 2007]) in Guanajuato see “Informe del cabildo sede vacante del obispado de Michoacán al Rey sobre la escasez de religiosos útiles que tiene el Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, y la consiguiente necesidad de la misión de España que solicita,” Valladolid 1809, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 32; and “Representación del síndico procurador de Valladolid don Benigno Antonio de Ugarte al discretorio del Colegio proponiéndole exponga al ayuntamiento si acepta la fundación de un Colegio, o a lo menos de un hospicio en la ciudad de Valladolid, en donde la fundación que se planea para Pátzcuaro es mucho más útil y necesaria,” Valladolid, August 27, 1806, AHPFM-FCSCQ, D, file 4 (II), no. 60, fol. 2r.

To Sin No More

198

Table 4.2. List of Popular Missions in Michoacán Diocese and Archdiocese of Mexico, 1770s Year

Michoacán Diocese

Archdiocese of Mexico

1772

Reyes, Indaparapio, Charo, San Luis Potosí, Valle de San Francisco

1773

Tecoman, San Miguel Misquitic, Rincón de Zaragoza, San Juan de la Vega, Chamacuero, Apaseo

Tequisquiapam, Nopala, Huichiapam, Tecosautla, Tlacolilla, Haciendas de Saucillo, Quatisiti, La Agoleta, and La Laja

1774

Irapuato, León, Tequisquiapa, Colima, Almoloyá, Istlahuaca

Hguismón, Huhuatlán, Coxcatlán, Tancanhuich, Huejutla, Tantoyuca

1775

San Luis Potosí, Curucapasco, Curauscazo, Salitre, Tajimora, Pénjamo, Acámbaro, Jerequato, Celaya, Humarán, Tacámbaro, Turicato, Tarequato

Casas Viejas, Santa Rosa, Buenavista, Villa de los Valles, Tamazumchale, San Miguel Coyuca

1776

Hacienda de San Antonio, Hacienda de Paruazan, Pedernales, Peregrina, Santa María del Río, Tinhuindin, Cotija, Peribán, Reyes, Xiquilpan, San Ángel, Turicato

Source: Libro de Decretos, 1734–1776, AHPFM-FCSCQ, E, file 4, no. 4, fol. 279r–279v. There is no information for popular missions at the archdiocese of Mexico City for 1772 and 1776.

as the ones of Colima and Tecalitán shown here that have survived in the archive of the Franciscan province of Michoacán in Celaya (see Figs. 4.6 and 4.7).53 Routes were also contingent on weather or disease and famine. In late October 1778, missionaries Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, Fray Juan Francisco Rivero, and Fray Pedro Pablo Fernández de Ávila delayed their mission to the village of Colima in New Spain because severe storms left the roads impassable. Apparently, the three religious would have continued their trip had it not been for intercession by the priest in Vaniqueo who suggested that the group stay in his parish to “begin the mission in this town.” In his letter to the bishop of Michoacán, Vaniqueo’s priest claimed that the apostolic religious had zealously assisted him in the confessional, and that “all my parishioners eagerly wish to attain the fruits of a Holy Mission . . . [and] I 53. See, for instance, “Carta del obispo de Puebla al P. Fr. Tomás García,” Puebla, October 24, 1733, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 86; and “Carta del obispo de Oaxaca al P. Fr. Hermenegildo Villaplana,” Antequera, May 17, 1756, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (II), no. 110.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

199

Figure 4.6. Map of Colima area in Michoacán diocese. Source: AHPFM-FCSCQ, C (II), no. 123. (Courtesy of the Archivo Histórico, Provincia Franciscana de Michoacán, México.)

gain the satisfaction of seeing my sheep well directed in the Holy Doctrine that these just men offer.” With the bishop’s support, the missionaries preached and confessed in Vaniqueo for a month before resuming their journey to Colima in late November. Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita may have considered prolonging his group’s mission to the Guadalajara diocese to the end of the year. On Christmas Eve, the bishop of Guadalajara granted permission to the three religious to confess, absolve parishioners from certain sins, and validate legal marriages.54

54. In a letter in early 1778, the Bishop of Michoacán congratulated Fray Sebastián Flores for his election as guardian of the college of Querétaro and remarked the importance of the missionaries in his diocese. In early October, he granted a license to preach in Colima, “Carta circular de Don Juan Ignacio de la Rocha, obispo de Michoacán a los curas seculares y regulares de la diócesis,” Valladolid, October 10, 1778, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 42. The letter of the priest of Vaniqueo (Huaniqueo de Morales, Michoacán) and the bishop’s response is in “Carta del Br. don Manuel García, cura de Vaniqueo, a Don Juan Ignacio de la Rocha, obispo de Michoacán,” Vaniqueo, October 20, 1778, AHPFMFCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 43: “[M]al temporal q.e hace en esstos Paises assi por dos copiosos aguaseros, como por lo intransittable de los Caminos. . . . [E]mpesar la Mission en esste

200

To Sin No More

Figure 4.7. Map of the village of Tecalitán and its hinterland, Michoacán diocese. Source: AHPFM-FCSCQ, C (II), no. 123. (Courtesy of the Archivo Histórico, Provincia Franciscana de Michoacán, México.)

Traditionally, college missionaries also held frequent missions in their own towns. In Querétaro, all able members of the college commonly accompanied the missionaries “to the temples, and other parts where they perform their mission.” As they moved through the town in their first mission of September 1683, religious from the college preached “not only from the pulpit, Pueblo. . . . [T]odos mis feligreses desean ansiososos lograr el fruto de una Sta. Mission . . . [y] logre la sattisfassion de que mis obejas queden vien dirigidas con la Santa Doctrina q.e expenden estos justos varones.” See also, “Carta de Don Juan Ignacio de la Rocha, obispo de Michoacán, al P. Fr. Juan Domingo Arricivita,” Valladolid, November 23, 1778, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 44. In 1693, missionaries from Querétaro had to change their itinerary due to rising water levels in Puebla rivers: “Carta del P. Fr. Francisco de San José al arzobispo de México.” For a similar problem in Guadalajara, see “Carta del obispo de Guadalajara al P. Fr. Juan Domingo Arricivita” ” Guadalajara, December 24, 1778, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 76. For contingencies in the itinerary of Margil’s last popular mission in 1725–1726, see Cervantes Aguilar, Fray Simón del Hierro, 19–49.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

201

but also in the squares, corners, and public streets with great benefit to the souls who wished to be saved.”55 At the turn of the eighteenth century, friars from the college in Querétaro were preaching in the streets of the city and its temples every three or six years, unless otherwise necessary. An unusual document from 1768 offers a detailed description of the hectic calendar during the mission in Querétaro. From April 17 until May 9, the missionaries preached every day at four in the afternoon in the monasteries and convents of the city: Our Lady of Guadalupe, April 17, 18, and 19; Saint Francis, April 20, 21, and 22; Colegio de la Santa Cruz and parishes of San Sebastián and Santa Ana, April 23, 24, and 25; convents of Santa Clara and Divina Pastora, April 26, 27, and 28; Saint Augustine and Saint Isidro, April 20, 30, and May 1; Convent of Capuchin nuns, May 2, 3, and 4; beaterios of Santa Rosa de Viterbo and Carmelites, May 5, 6, and 7; and Convento de Santa Clara, after the procession of penitence, May 8. Missionaries finished on May 9 with a service for the souls in purgatory in the Convento de Santa Clara at eight in the morning.56 Sickness and death occurred during popular missions, a fact ignored in the hagiographic literature that recognized only martyrs, or only missionaries killed in frontier missions. Particularly during periods of disease and famine, missionaries joined forces with local friars and clerics to serve the sick and the dying. Sources show how friars in Querétaro became particularly active, giving confession and extreme unction in the city and its hinterland in the epidemics and famines of 1736–1737 and 1785–1786. By 1738, seventeen of twenty-four confessors from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz had become ill and one died. During the agricultural crisis and plague in 1786, of the missionaries and other Queretaran colegio members who were active in preaching and consoling the sick and

55. Gómez Canedo, “Renovación cristiana,” 420: “[N]o sólo en el púlpito, mas en las plazas, esquinas y calles públicas con gran provecho de las almas que desearon salvarse . . . á los templos, y partes en donde hazen la Mission.” For a similar description of San Fernando apostolic friars preaching a mission in Mexico City between October 4 and 28, 1739, see Gaceta de México, no. 143, Imprenta Real del Superior Govierno, De los Herederos de la Viuda de Miguel de Rivera Calderón; en el Empedradillo, October 1739, in Gacetas de México: Castorena y Ursua (1722)–Sahagún de Arévalo (1728 a 1742), ed. Francisco González de Cossío, vol. 2 (1732 to 1736) (Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1949), 205. 56. From “Dase noticia cómo el día 17 de abril de este presente año de 1768 comienza la Misión en esta ciudad de Querétaro, y en todas las iglesias que aquí se expresan será siempre a las cuatro de la tarde,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro 1768, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 5, no. 53: “Dase noticia como el dia diez y siete de Abril de este presente año de 1768 comienza la Mission en esta ciudad de Querétaro. . . .” This type of regime was also common for other colleges. For San Fernando in Mexico City, see Gaceta de México, no. 143, Imprenta Real del Superior Govierno, De los Herederos de la Viuda de Miguel de Rivera Calderón; en el Empedradillo, October 1739, in Gacetas de México (1732 to 1736), 205.

202

To Sin No More

dying, fourteen religious reportedly died of the plague.57 Other men died as a result of the hardships suffered during the itinerant tours. The famous Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús died in Mexico City on August 6, 1726, during another year-long itinerant mission to Catholics.58 In the 1780s, records show that four missionaries from the College of Querétaro died in the Oaxaca and Michoacán bishoprics.59 One of them, Fray Roque Hernández, was buried in the city of Oaxaca in January 1786.60 By 1806, seven middle-aged missionaries from the

57. For the epidemics of 1737–1738, see Fr. Juan Alonso de Ortega, “Noticias varias pertinentes al Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro: traida del agua hasta la huerta y claustro del convento el año de 1735; servicios prestados por los religiosos a los apestados de la ciudad en los años de 1737 y 1738; detalles de la misión dada en Veracruz en 1739; entierro del coronel y síndico don José de Urtiaga. Testimoniadas y escritas por el P. Fr. Juan Alonso de Ortega, entre los años de 1736–1740,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, 1736–1740, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 2, no. 5; and patent by fray Pedro Navarrete, commissary general of New Spain, to the guardian and rest of religious of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz of Querétaro, Convento de San Francisco of Mexico City, December 29, 1738, in LPZEAV, fol. 208r–208v: “[R]eligiosos Ancianos, enfermos, Maestro de Novicios, y Noviziado q.e quedan en el comb.to.” For the famine and epidemic of 1786, see “Copia fiel de la carta e Informe que la ciudad de Querétaro escribe a la Real Audiencia de México, para que el efecto de que facilite el despacho para que el P. Fr. Juan Sarobe pase a España, en solicitud de una misión para el Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Querétaro, December 7, 1786, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 10. According to the libro de muertos, ten friars died in the college and four doing popular missions; see “Libro de los muertos del Colegio (1776–1852),” fols. 6v–8v. An interesting brief study of disease and famine in eighteenth-century Mexico and popular remedies against them is América Molina del Villar, “Remedios contra la enfermedad y el hambre,” in Historia de la vida cotidiana en México. El siglo XVIII: entre tradición y cambio, ed. Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru (Mexico City: El Colegio de México; Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005). For a detailed discussion of the devastating effects of the agrarian calamity in 1785–1786 on the diocese of Michoacán and Bishop Fray Antonio de San Miguel’s responses to the crisis, see Jaramillo Magaña, Hacia una iglesia beligerante, 45–66. 58. For Margil’s last mission and death, see Cervantes Aguilar, Fray Simón del Hierro, 19–38. 59. “Copia fiel de la carta e Informe que la ciudad de Querétaro escribe a la Real Audiencia de México, para que el efecto de que facilite el despacho para que el P. Fr. Juan Sarobe pase a España, en solicitud de una misión para el Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Querétaro, December 7, 1786, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 10; and “Copia fiel de la carta e Informe que hace el señor D.r Don Alonso Martínez Sendero, cura de la ciudad de Querétaro, a don Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta, arzobispo de México, a fin de que su Iltma. informe al Supremo Consejo de Indias sobre la necesidad que tiene el Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro de una misión de España,” Querétaro, December 9, 1786, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 10. 60. “Carta del P. Fr. Juan Sarobe al P. Fr. Juan José Sáenz de Gumiel, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, contándole las circunstancias del fallecimiento del P. Fr. Roque Hernández,” Convento de San Agustín de Oaxaca, January 23, 1786, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 26A; “Carta respuesta de la ciudad de Oaxaca al P. Fr. Juan José Sáenz de Gumiel, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Oaxaca, February 21, 1786, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 26C; and “Carta respuesta de Sor Anna Maria, abadesa de las Capuchinas, al P. Fr. Juan José Sáenz de Gumiel, guardián del

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

203

same college had died evangelizing to Catholics in the Michoacán diocese.61 Even though these men were not elevated to sainthood, friars meticulously recorded their deaths in the libros de muertos or books of deaths, where we can track them. The Tarija colegio’s book of deaths lists at least three friars who died during mission trips. In the mission to Cochabamba and Oruro in the Bolivian altiplano in 1761, Fray Baltasar de San Tadeo—one of the friars who founded the Tarija colegio de propaganda fide in 1755—died in the town of Sica Sica on the road from Cochabamba to La Paz, an itinerary that was continued by his two missionary companions who arrived in Puno and other locales around Lake Titicaca. In 1770, the donado Tiburcio Zabala died in the Concepción valley, where he was buried in the church at Chaguaya. Former guardian Fray Jerónimo Guillén died in 1792 in the town of La Laguna after a mission with two other friars that had lasted almost a year in the villages of Valle Grande and the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.62 As shown by the case of Fray Roque Hernández in Oaxaca at the beginning of this chapter, deaths during missionary work among Catholics increased devoutness wherever they occurred, a direct consequence of the holy reputation that itinerant missionaries had in the Catholic world.63 Despite such hardships, visiting rich dioceses and parishes were incentives for friars who theoretically subsisted on the collection of alms. Because of their mendicant status, Franciscans were banned from owning property and investing. At least on paper, each Franciscan community depended on charity. Generally, communities sustained themselves through donations, the sale of masses and other religious services, and the collection of alms in specie or goods such as bread, oil, wine, textiles, vegetables, and meat. Appointed limosneros (lay brothers and donados who acted as alms collectors) regularly scoured the city of the colleges and the surrounding countryside to collect supplies for the communities. For example, the influence of the colegio in Herbón (Galicia, Spain) covered an area of almost three hundred square miles, reaching 114 parishes

Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Convento de Capuchinas del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús de Oaxaca, February 21, 1786, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 26B. 61. “Carta del obispo de Michoacán al P. Fr. Juan Domingo Arricivita,” Valladolid, April 24, 1779, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 46. Lino Gómez Canedo highlighted the deaths and the need for healthy and good-spirited missionaries, pointing out that “[a]mbas tareas resultaban sumamente arduas y agotadoras, y por ello no podía exigirse de todos. Eran necesario religiosos de gran espíritu y de notable resistencia física. Sorprende el número de misioneros que fallecieron en el actual apostolado de fieles, durante el cual recorrían a pie enormes distancias, apenas sin provisiones de ninguna clase.” Gómez Canedo, “Los Colegios Apostólicos,” 562. 62. The “Libro de Muertos del Colegio de Tarija,” in Calzavarini Ghinello, Presencia Franciscana, vol. 3, 1567–1584. 63. In Spain, the Capuchin Diego José de Cádiz died in a mission in Ronda, where a fervent crowd demanded the public display of his corpse to be venerated. Châtellier, Religion of the Poor, 106–107.

204

To Sin No More

where they regularly preached and collected alms. Due to the Franciscan theoretical refusal of any physical contact with money (evidently banned by their vow of poverty), limosneros collected cash on behalf of the colleges, which they handed over to the síndico, a trustworthy layman in charge of friary finances. Otherwise, when limosneros were not available, a reliable missionary deposited the money in the síndico’s coffer.64 Much was at stake in this case, as the friars put their spiritual raison d’être—salvation of all souls—into practice at the same time as they filled their coffers for their own material survival.65 Competition among colleges, friaries, provinces, and even orders within the Church was thus particularly intense in rich parishes and bishoprics and a cause for strife. One example was the bishopric of Michoacán, which the College of Querétaro protected against other colleges’ intrusion, in part because it was a profitable source of income. From a Queretaran perspective, new foundations in Michoacán would become competitors; therefore, not only were Queretaran discretos reluctant to promote apostolic hospices in the diocese but, when the time came, the discretorio at the Querétaro colegio obdurately opposed other missionary establishments. In spite of continual requests by officials from Valladolid (now Morelia), the capital city of Michoacán, and Pátzcuaro to establish apostolic hospices by other propaganda fide colleges, the Colegio de la Santa Cruz repeatedly argued against them and prevented the foundation of such hospices that would then collect revenue in the rich bishopric. Alms collection was the discretorio’s original reason for rejecting the establishment of a colegio de propaganda fide in Valladolid, fearing that a new apostolic seminary there would diminish the college’s income. The discretos nevertheless showed their best diplomatic skills in negotiations to avoid unnecessary confrontations with city authorities and the cathedral chapter.66

64. For instance, the bishop of Valladolid (Morelia) allowed the limosnero to collect alms in his bishopric while permitting three missionaries to preach in Irapuato and its hinterland. “Carta del obispo de Valladolid al P. Fr. Romualdo Cartagena, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Valladolid, March 14, 1774, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (II), no. 119. For the Herbón colegio’s influence around Herbón and Padrón in Galicia, see Rey Castelao, “Frailes y campesinos,” 279–280. Fray Francisco Antonio Barbastro wrote a treatise on the handling of cash in the Sonora missions: Barbastro, “Deberes y obligaciones temporales de los misioneros en el norte de Nueva España,” 1780, San Pedro y San Pablo de Tubutama, University of Texas, Austin, Nettie Lee Benson Library, G227. 65. An explicit example appears in the “Solicitud del P. Fr. José Jimeno, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, al doctor don Marcos Moriana y Zaprilla, obispo de Michoacán,” March 22, 1809, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 24. The guardian appointed the limosneros with the acquiescence of the discretorio, who cast votes for the appointees by speaking. See auto de visita of Fray José Antonio de Oliva, Commissary General of New Spain, Convent of San Francisco of Querétaro, January 25, 1757, in LEC, fol. 21v. 66. The letter by the chaplain Fernando de Navas Arnanz to establish first a hospice and then a college in Valladolid, Michoacán, and the discretorio’s decree of February 27, 1776 that declined the offer are found in LDQ1, fols. 191r–195v.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

205

In due course, all attempts to establish a hospice in the Michoacán diocese repeatedly failed. In the 1770s, the cathedral chapter (cabildo catedralicio) nominated Valladolid (Morelia) as the ideal place for a Queretaran branch to reinforce the religious devotion of the diocese’s parishioners. To make their case, the cabildo catedralicio of Michoacán took steps in the Spanish Court to proceed with the foundation of the aforesaid hospice in Valladolid, justifying it on ubiquitous vices of the citizens and the wish to introduce devotion to Nuestra Señora de Henar.67 Twenty years later, in 1797, the priest at Uruapan, in a petition to the bishop of Michoacán for supporting the foundation of a hospice in Uruapan by the Queretaran friars, argued that “such cause benefits all his Diocese,” because the friars would have a place to rest when sick and from which they could easily evangelize the coast, the tierra caliente region to the southwest, and the sierra of the diocese, “whose inhabitants neither know God, nor respect the King.” The hospice could thus provide settlers with the “unique and very important business of their salvation.”68 Civil administrators justified the foundation of a hospice or college in Valladolid in 1806 because of inadequate numbers of clerics in the city, which would complicate “[s]piritual nourishment, administration of the Holy Sacraments, and spread of the Divine word to believers.”69 All of these efforts failed, however, because of the college of Querétaro’s resistance. Queretaran authorities particularly litigated against the Discalced colegio de propaganda fide in Pachuca for their missions in the Michoacán diocese and their insistence on opening a new Discalced college in Pátzcuaro at the

67. “Real Cédula al virrey remitiéndole copias del recurso introducido por Fernando de Evar Arnanz, canónigo de la Catedral de Michoacán, solicitando permiso para establecer en aquella ciudad un hospicio de misioneros apostólicos de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, a fin de promover los cultos de Nuestra Señora de Herán, y ordenándole ejecute el informe que se expresa,” San Ildefonso, August 28, 1776, AGN, Reales Cédulas Originales, vol. 236, exp. 92. 68. Copia de la presentación de don Nicolás Santiago de Herrera, cura de Uruapan, al señor don Fr. Antonio de San Miguel, Obispo de Michoacán, sobre la fundación del hospicio, Uruapan, November 12, 1797, in “Copia de las diligencias que a pedimento del cura don Nicolás Santiago de Herrera se practicaron para los fines que expresa, y cuyos originales se remitieron con otros documentos a la ciudad de Valladolid, para que con aprobación del obispo pasasen al Colegio, para que exponiendo en ellas el discretorio lo que le pareciese conveniente pasasen al gobierno de México, a fin de impetrar del Virrey la licencia necesaria para la construcción del hospicio,” Uruapan, November 6, 1797–February 12, 1798, AHPFM-FCSCQ, D, file 4, no. 45, fol. 4v. 69. “Representación del síndico procurador de Valladolid don Benigno Antonio de Ugarte al discretorio del Colegio proponiéndole exponga al ayuntamiento si acepta la fundación de un Colegio, o a lo menos de un hospicio en la ciudad de Valladolid, en donde la fundación que se planea para Pátzcuaro es mucho más útil y necesaria,” Valladolid, August 27, 1806, AHPFM-FCSCQ, D, file 4 (II), no. 60: “[A] los fieles el Pasto Espiritual, la administracion de los Sacramentos, y la Palabra Divina.”

206

To Sin No More

turn of the nineteenth century.70 Again, the college in Querétaro strongly objected to these new establishments on grounds of losing substantial alms collections in the diocese. On the other hand, Queretaran clerics founded hospices in Puebla and Ures, the latter on the Sonora frontier. Other hospices in fact became colleges, as was the case of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Zacatecas and San Fernando in Mexico City. Although their connection to the missions of Texas and Alta California have received the most scholarly attention, these colleges were first established to promote popular missions in the Guadalajara diocese and the archbishopric of Mexico, respectively, and second to support frontier mission expansion.71 Ultimately, growth of the hospice and college network owes as much to the cooperation between civil and ecclesiastic authorities as to the resulting religious fervor prompted by the itinerant preachers. In looking at the successful foundations of colleges, one can identify the triple alliance among civil, diocesan, and regular clergy authorities in the localities as well as in the Court.

A Triple Alliance According to canon law, missionaries required licenses and powers from diocesan authorities—bishops, archbishops, or deans and cabildo in sedevacante when the diocesan seat was vacant—before entering their jurisdictions. Missionaries required episcopal authorization to preach, confess, absolve men and women, administer Holy Communion, or to perform the via crucis (way of the cross or stations of the cross) and the rosary devotion. Diocesan licenses were valid for the time of the mission, customarily six months, though these permits were extended for up to three years during the convulsive first decades of the nineteenth century.72 Furthermore, bishops granted powers to the mis-

70. For the problems with the college in Pachuca, see “Carta de don Nicolás Santiago de Herrera, cura de Uruapan, al P. Fr. Francisco Miralles, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Uruapan, June 28, 1799, AHPFM-FCSCQ, D, file 4, no. 48. 71. Most of the material dealing with the foundation of hospices appears in the AHPFM-FCSCQ, D. 72. See for instance “Solicitud de Fr. Diego Jiménez, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz, al Cabildo de Valladolid,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, February 9 and 12, 1776, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 39. For a three-year license, which coincided with the term of the prelacy granted by the archbishop of Mexico, see “Carta del guardián del colegio P. Fr. Ángel Alonso de Prado al arzobispo de México,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz, Querétaro, July 15, 1816, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 24; and “Carta del guardián del colegio Fr. Ángel Alonso de Prado a Don Pedro José de Fonte, arzobispo de México,” July 20, 1818, AGN, C, file 3 (I), no. 25. That same year, the bishop of Michoacán granted licenses to three Queretaran missionaries for the time of the mission, “Concesión que hace el obispado de Michoacán de las facultades necesarias a favor de los misioneros,” Valladolid, October 14, 1818, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 57. For Tarija see the “Estatutos y ordenaciones municipales del Colegio de Tarija,” AFT, RR-166; the

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

207

sionaries in cases reserved for the Holy See or to themselves such as marriages within the third and fourth degree of kinship. These privileges also included authorizing nullification of marriages that had been impeded because of “hidden crimes” such as adultery or murder or to deal with possible incestual marriages.73 For instance, during a mission to San Miguel de Hauta, in the Mexico archdiocese in 1693, the archbishop granted a dispensation to approve the marriage of a man who had killed another man to marry his wife. The archbishop recommended that the missionaries stealthily, without witnesses or the parish priest’s presence, validate the marriage to avoid further evil acts.74 The intensity of missionizing required close cooperation among all players. Above all, missionaries had to cooperate with diocesan authorities and parish curas (priests) as well as curas doctrineros, men of religious orders in charge of the doctrinas de indios (parishes comprised of indigenous people). All groups needed each other if they were to triumph in the business of salvation. Bishops and archbishops justified the presence of missionaries in their dioceses by the need for more personnel to attend to the spiritual needs of their flock—principally the administration of the sacraments and dispensations—in the vast territories under their authority. Studies show the acute need for priests to confess parishioners in Indian parishes in the bishoprics of Michoacán, Guadalajara, and Mexico in New Spain and of Upper Peru, Salta, and Tucumán in the Río de la Plata viceroyalty in the late colonial period. Diocesan authorities complained that the lack of diocesan confessors and preachers hindered parish priests’ evangelical work among their flock, particularly during Lent and Easter, when priests could not cope with waves of parishioners who wanted to comply with the mandatory annual obligation of confession and communion. This was particularly the case after the secularization of the doctrinas de indios in the mid-eighteenth century, that is, the process of transferring Indian parishes under regular priests to diocesan clerics. As more Indian parishes fell under the jurisdiction of an already thinly stretched secular clergy, diocesan clerics could spend less time in fulfilling their evangelical obligations with their flock, especially in remote rural areas. In many parts of Spanish America during MTarija; and the Certificaciones in AFT-MF. For the College of Herbón in Galicia, Spain, see the diocesan licenses in APS, file 67, no. 19; and APS, file 68, no. 4. The diocesan monopoly over preaching originated at the Council of Trent. Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 18. 73. “Carta del obispo de Michoacán al guardián P. Fr. Miguel de Araujo,” Valladolid, July 14, 1770, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 37: “a los Conyuges impedidos por sus ocultos delictos”; and “Edicto impreso de don Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta, arzobispo de México,” Mexico City, January 20, 1784, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 4. 74. “Carta del P. Fr. Francisco de San José al arzobispo de México,” Ozumba, August 23, 1693, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 6; and “Carta de P. Fr. Francisco de San José al arzobispo de México,” Xochimilco, September 7, 1693, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 8.

208

To Sin No More

the Bourbon era, Franciscan missionaries from the colegios de propaganda fide engaged in missionary campaigns to reverse a decline in religious devotion traditionally associated with eighteenth-century secularizations of Indian doctrinas and the lack of diocesan priests to take the place of the mendicant curas doctrineros. Itinerant preachers thus introduced a surplus of evangelical hands in moments of increased pastoral and confessional activities.75 It is worthwhile to summarize the main points of the secularization process to contextualize the importance of itinerant temporary missions and ultimately the colleges’ focus on this type of ministry as well as the emphasis on moral theology and indigenous language instruction described in the previous chapter. In the seventeenth and principally eighteenth centuries, Indian parishes ministered by Franciscan priests came under siege by competing forces, particularly the diocesan clergy, who criticized the intrusion of the mendicant orders in parish duties to administer sacraments to the Catholic Indian communities. The process of secularizing the doctrinas de indios under mendicant ministry was indeed long. Belligerent bishops such as Juan de Palafox y Mendoza in Puebla in the mid-seventeenth century and later the eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms especially targeted the mendicant monopoly of rural Indian parishes. While secularization was uneven throughout Spanish America, the case of the bishopric of Puebla in New Spain illustrates some of the diocesan maneuvers to gain access to the mendicant doctrinas de indios. Philip IV (1621–1665) appointed Palafox as the new bishop of the Puebla diocese in 1639. Immediately after his arrival in 1640, the bishop introduced new laws in his diocese that threatened the regular clergy. First, he issued a patent to ban the regular orders, especially the mendicants, from religious

75. Certificaciones in the Franciscan archive at Tarija offer an insight into the connection among Tarija missionaries and civil and ecclesiastical authorities; see AFT, MF. For Mexico, see “Carta circular del arzobispo de México a los curas ministros de doctrinas del arzobispado,” Mexico City, July 31, 1684, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 5; and “Report of the Archbishop of Mexico to the King,” Mexico City, November 16, 1731, quoted in its entirety, in Fray Juan Buenaventura Bestard “Memorias historicas del Apostolico Colegio de Progaganda Fide de S. Fernando de Mexico y de sus Misiones,” 1789, Mexico City, 81, in Genaro García Collection, Nettie Lee Benson Library, University of Texas, Austin. See, for instance, the cura’s request for a mission during Lent due to the lack of licensed confessors, in “Carta del gobierno del obispado de Michoacán,” Valladolid, March 21, 1779, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 45. For the bishoprics of Guadalajara and Mexico, see Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 224–225. For the diocese of Michoacán, see Brading, Church and State, 71, 152–155. For the bishoprics of Tucumán and Salta, where friars from the college in Tarija conducted their missions, see Gabriela Caretta, “Con el poder de las palabras y de los hechos: El clero colonial de Salta entre 1770–1840,” in Persistencias y cambios en Salta y el Noroeste Argentino, 1770–1840, comp. Sara Mata de López (Rosario: Prohistoria, 2000), 81–118; and Enrique Cruz, “El clero de la Puna de Jujuy a fines del período colonial,” in Ciencias Sociales y Religión/Ciências Sociais e Religião 13 (February 2011): 131–153.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

209

indoctrination of Indians if they did not submit to an examination on theology and Indian languages. Bishop Palafox further obligated regular clerics to invest in the royal treasury instead of land. His measures especially affected the doctrinas de indios or Indian parishes, which were overwhelmingly under regular doctrineros or regular priests (largely Franciscans). Palafox argued that curas doctrineros, who were mostly regulars, had to prove a reasonable level of knowledge of Indian languages and theology; he consequently expected to expel unqualified mendicants and assign secular priests to the Indian doctrinas under his surveillance. The bishop assumed most of the curas doctrineros were Peninsular friars who lacked knowledge of the autochthonous languages, whereas secular clerics were mainly Creoles who were familiar with, at least to some small degree, the principal native languages, especially Nahuatl. In an unusual turn of events, most curas doctrineros refused to submit to the examination even though failure to comply implied immediate transfer of their doctrinas to the diocesan clergy and the resulting expropriation of all parishes governed by regular clergy in the jurisdiction. In the Toledo chapter meeting of 1645, Franciscans finally renounced, to the satisfaction of the bishop and the king, all Indian parishes in the Puebla-Tlaxcala diocese. The secularization process of most Franciscan doctrinas culminated a century later with the 1749 and 1753 royal decrees that ultimately deprived the friars of their permanent rural bases, forcing them to find an urban retreat, minister from their convents, work on the frontiers, and engage in itinerant evangelical ministry.76 Although it is understandable that popular missions thrived in eighteenthcentury Spanish America as a result of the shortage of diocesan priests—a problem exacerbated after secularization of the mendicant doctrinas—the frequency of bishops delegating their considerable powers over their own diocesan clergy to missionaries who were often strangers is nevertheless intriguing. The presence of missionary outsiders with no political leverage in the diocese was beneficial to the bishops, many of whom were old and sick, who often neglected their annual pastoral visits to their parishes and asked missionaries to survey

76. Secularization of Indian parishes under mendicant priests has been thoroughly studied. See, for instance, Nancy M. Farriss, Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico, 1759– 1821 (London: Athlone, 1968); Brading, Church and State; Óscar Mazín Gómez, Entre dos Majestades: Obispo y Obispado de Michoacán ante las reformas borbóncas, 1758–1772 (Zamora: Colegio de Michoacán, 1987); María Teresa Álvarez Icaza Longoria, La secularización de doctrinas y misiones en el arzobispado de México, 1749–1789 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2015); Piho, “La organización eclesiástica,” 24– 27; and Kenneth J. Andrien, “The Coming of Enlightened Reform in Bourbon Peru: Secularization of the Doctrinas de indios, 1746–1773,” in Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and Its Atlantic Colonies, C. 1750−1830, edited by Gabriel Paquette (London and New York: Routledge, 2009): 183–202. These studies highlighted the mendicants’ crisis that ensued during the secularization of Indian parishes. For a reassessment of mendicant evangelical ministry in the eighteenth century, see Melvin, Building Colonial Cities of God.

210

To Sin No More

them and provide written reports about the quality of the priests and their parishioners.77 A letter by the aged bishop of Oaxaca in 1756 to Queretaran missionary Fray Hermengildo Vilaplana clearly outlined the bishop’s intentions. To the bishop it was paramount that the Queretaran missionaries: carefully inspect all towns of each Parish, so they are well informed if the parishioners know the Christian doctrine; if the Priest explains it frequently; if parishioners are well served with the Holy Sacraments, and with the Masses. . . . If the Priest gives [a] good example to his spiritual flock with the doctrine and with his way of life; if there are scandalous sins of incontinence or enmity, or if married couples are separated; and whether the Priest has tried to avoid such cases and in what ways.78

Bishops repeatedly relied on colegio friars to investigate their diocesan subordinates. In February 1727, José Pérez de Lanciego Eguiluz y Mirafuentes (1656–1728), the 71-year-old archbishop of Mexico, requested that Fray Andrés de Pazos report on how priests under his jurisdiction taught the Christian doctrine and ministered the sacraments. The archbishop was further interested in checking mass attendance, the number of parishioners who died without the sacraments, and the teaching of Castilian. Preaching in the Puebla diocese in late 1727, Father Andrés and his companion Fray José Guerra were also asked by Bishop Juan Antonio de Lardizával y Elorza to check his parish priests’ suitability to administer the sacrament of penance. Although the bishop had already examined and granted the necessary licenses to his clergy, the two missionaries were also requested to discreetly test the priests, “so they would not commit any absurdity.” The bishop further extended his power to grant confession licenses to the Franciscans, since, the bishop blatantly conceded, some of his clerics were “great oafs.”79 Bishop Lardizával y Elorza exposed the all-too-common belief that diocesan clerics were ill-prepared for the evangelical ministry.

77. David Brading points out that bishops in Michoacán were old and, in many cases, sick. The aid that popular missions provided to these elderly bishops was immense. Brading, Church and State, 198–199. 78. “Carta adjunta a la anterior del obispo de Oaxaca al P. Fr. Hermenegildo Villaplana,” Antequera, May 17, 1756, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (II), no. 111: “[R]econozcan con espez.l cuidado todos los Pueblos de cada Curato, asta informarse bien, si los feligreses saven la doctrina xptiana; si el Cura se la explica con freq.a [frecuencia]; Si están bien asistidos en la administrazion de los S.tos Sacram.tos, y con misa en los dias, y Pueblos en q deva darse: Si el Cura dá buen exemplo á sus hijos espirituales con la doctrina, y modo de vida: Si ay pecados de escandalo en materia de incontinenz.a, o, enemistad, o, alg.os casados están separados; y si el Cura ha procurado evitarlos, y e q medios ha usado p.a ello.” 79. “Carta del arzobispo de México al P. Fr. Andrés de Pazos,” Mexico City, February 10, 1727, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 14; “Carta de Juan Antonio, obispo de Puebla, al P. Fr. Andrés de Pazos,” Puebla, November 3, 1727, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

211

William B. Taylor’s study of parish priests in late colonial Mexico, however, demonstrated that priests’ capacity and commitment varied from the dedicated and the talented to the ambitious or the reprehensible. Taylor asserted that the array of possibilities in preparation and competence was almost as diverse as the number of priests. Like the curas, missionaries naturally were tremendously diverse. Historian Lino Gómez Canedo also suggested caution in interpreting the notion of a uniquely Franciscan missionary ethos. Franciscans also varied in their approaches to being and living their own “Franciscanism” and missionary ethos. They were eclectic and pragmatic, even if sometimes extremist. Obviously, during popular missions some curas distrusted the intrusion of meddling missionaries, certainly viewed as the bishop’s agents, into their parishes. Indubitably, relationships between missionaries and host priests depended on the personalities of the actors involved.80 When they happened, squabbles between Franciscan missionaries and parish priests, whether diocesan clergy or regular doctrineros, largely resulted from the burden that friars put on the local economy, particularly in rural and barrio parishes with scarce resources. Priests feared that Franciscan missionaries would not only become an economic burden to the locality, but that missionaries also reduced alms for their parishes.81 Certainly some curas grudgingly accepted the interference of unsolicited intruders who meddled in parish affairs and held enough power to exert influence over the spirituality of the flock. To iron out problems, bishops and college authorities fostered cordiality between missionaries and curas. Cautious bishops sent letters that not only informed parish clerics of the missionaries’ presence in the diocese and their authorized powers, but also warned them to receive and assist the missionaries “charitably” and to avoid “any impediment or conflict” with them. Likewise, Franciscan missionary handbooks, following the example of the Jesuits in Italy and Spain, also suggested that Franciscans write letters of introduction to the parish priests. Once informed of the presence of missionaries, priests organized ceremonial entrances for the visiting preachers as they presented their credentials and showed respect by kneeling respectfully before the diocesan clerics (Figure 4.8).82

3 (I), no. 84: “[T]anteará primero, sin formalidad de Sinodo, ó como mejor le pareciesse para que no cometan algun absurdo. . . . [H]ai algunos mastuerzos de buen tamaño.” 80. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 180–206; and Gómez Canedo, Evangelización y conquista, xiii. 81. The 1798 handbook from Zacatecas counseled missionaries to avoid becoming a burden to the parishes because it discouraged curas from receiving missionaries. MZacatecas, frame 993. 82. In their circular letters, diocesan authorities always requested their parish ministers to host, support, and aid the missionaries. See “Carta circular del Vicario General del arzobispado de México con facultades para misionar,” Mexico City, February 15, 1684, AHPFMFCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 4; “Circular de Juan Antonio, obispo de Puebla, a los párrocos de su diócesis,” Puebla, September 21, 1727, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 83; and “Carta

212

To Sin No More

Figure 4.8. Welcoming the missionaries. Source: Imagini di persone della Elvezia Rezia Valesia, e Tirolo intervenute in abito di penitenza nelle missioni fatte dalli PP. della Comp.a di Giesù Fulvio Fontana, e Gio: Antonio Mariani. Offerte all’Ill.ma Sig.ra Maria Eleonora Contessa d’Herbestain, Colonella nella Reale Fondazione d’Ala d’Insprugg La quale con tanta esemplarita assiste, con quante vivono Dame, sotto il di Lei, non men pio, che prudente governo alle sacre Funzioni della istessa Missione L’anno 1711. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque du Centre Sèvres, Facultés jésuites de Paris et la cote, N 38/122.)

Civil administrators also welcomed missions to the Catholics as a means of inculcating submission to local governments, the viceroy, and the king. Particularly after the 1750s, concerns with authority and fears of rebellion instigated members of local cabildos and other civil officials to solicit missionaries more frequently in their jurisdictions. In some cases, popular missions turned into religious festivals of preemptive political control exercised by the colonial regime, wherein missionaries peacefully reinforced local ecclesiastical and civil power. In the twilight of the eighteenth century, the gobernador circular de Don Juan Ignacio de la Rocha, obispo de Michoacán a los curas seculares y regulares de la diócesis,” Valladolid, October 10, 1778, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 42. For recommendations on maintaining good relations between Jesuit missionaries and diocesan clergy in southern Italy, see Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils, 161–166.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

213

intendente of Charapan, a hamlet west of Valladolid and within the bishopric of Michoacán in New Spain, proposed that a popular mission led by the Queretaran missionaries would be better suited than military intervention to deal with refusal by the indigenous Catholic population to follow the new spiritual precepts of the Church. Charapan bureaucrats suggested that a popular mission would bring the rebellion to its end with “gentle means,” since “rigorous [methods] would arouse hostility against the Sacred Religion. . . .” Punishment would nevertheless be reserved for the leaders, who were to be instructed in the faith and castigated with twenty-five lashes in another parish. Three missionaries were sent to Charapan, Pamatáquaro, and Taréquato to ensure that the parishioners fulfilled the annual precepts of the Catholic Church, that is, confession and communion. Colonial authorities wisely predicted that persuasive missionaries produced less disruptive results than military confrontation.83 Alliance with the authorities did not, however, displace the Franciscan commitment to certain principles of social justice, even if that meant antagonizing colonial economic elites. Some missionary preachers became the voice of the poor and the oppressed in their sermons and treatises. Exasperated by the extortion and trickery by merchants and other employers of their workers, missionaries, while inciting people to work, did so in a socially responsible manner that not only praised the labor of the worker but also highlighted the obligations of the employer. In his 1767 treatise on morality, Fray Hermenegildo Vilaplana attacked owners of obrajes (textile factories) in Querétaro who paid their workers part in cash and part in overpriced cloth that workers sold for less in the city’s market. In a sermon written at the turn of the century, Queretaran missionary Fray Ángel Alonso de Prado used the observance of the holidays to adamantly criticize the “[h]acenderos, miners, obrajeros, and other greedy [people]” for exploiting their workers on Sundays and other holy days. He strongly lamented that rich hacenderos (hacienda owners) had earned their haciendas “at the cost of the feasts and the sweat of the poor . . . without paying them for their sweat, and with deceit and usury. Paying them with goods, tricking them with excessive prices and false promises

83. “Resumen de expediente sobre el tumulto y rebeldía ocurrido en Charapan cuando se les obligó a cumplir los preceptos de la iglesia,” November 13, 1795, AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, box 5352, exp. 78. Apparently, the missionaries succeeded temporarily in their mission. “Aviso que Fray Juan Francisco Rivera, guardián del Colegio Apostólico de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro envía al Virrey Marqués de Branciforte sobre la Misión que mandó éste para los pueblos de Charapan, Pamataquaro, y Tarequato,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, September 9, 1796, AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, box 3404, exp. 1. Priests had the power of ecclesiastical judges of the Church and could thus sentence violators of Church precepts on public corporal punishment and humiliation. Brading, Church and State, 154.

214

To Sin No More

by which you drink their blood.” Scribbling figures, the missionary showed how hacenderos robbed from the daily work of peones (wage workers) not only on regular days but also during the holidays. Hence, he warned that such haciendas would not last unless the owners of the land “founded their fortunes and haciendas on fairness and justice.”84 At the macro level, missionary rhetoric in the last decades of Spanish dominion revealed the social and political anxieties of the period. Rather than remaining passive, missionary sermons became more politicized as new challenges to the political status quo arose and were consolidated in Europe and the Americas. As Chapter 5 shows, clerics fervently expressed their views of the French Revolution, the Spanish war for independence, and the independence movements. Collegiate friars, mostly Spanish, arguably turned to an antirevolutionary ideology as their political philosophy, particularly targeting republican ideas of liberty and equality that could endanger the projects of the enlightened Spanish monarchs. In their preaching, missionaries emphasized that loyalty to God and the king went hand in hand for the salvation of the soul. In 1795, the colegio in Querétaro, the viceroy, and the archbishop of Mexico City agreed on the need for missions in Querétaro as well as for missions by the colleges in Pachuca and Mexico City in their localities and the archdiocese of Mexico to “preserve, to take root, and to augment good order and to banish the concerns and ill-sounding errors of liberty” that emerged from republican ideals.85 Overall, this missionary discourse was an intrinsic part of the religiosity that popular missions promoted throughout the Hispanic world.

The Missionary Religion Between the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and the Second Council of the Vatican in the 1960s, popular missions triggered religious revivals that, albeit temporary, blended the religiosity of the missionaries with local forms of Catholicism.86 Popular missions contributed to a cohesive manifestation of

84. “Plática de no trabajar las Fiestas,” in Fr. Ángel Alonso del Prado, “Libro de sermones y pláticas escrito por el P. Fr. Ángel Alonso del Prado,” n.p. n. d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 10, unfoliated. Father Vilaplana nevertheless explained in the prologue to his book that such practices were banned by the government when the book was already in press, preventing him from introducing amendments. Vilaplana, Centinela dogmaticomoral, 165–172. 85. “Oficio del virrey marqués de Branciforte al Arzobispo de México,” 1795, AGN, Bienes Nacionales, vol. 638, exp. 76; and “Carta del Virrey Branciforte al guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Mexico City, October 13, 1795, AHPFMFCSCQ, L, file 6, no. 21. 86. For examples of popular missions in the twentieth century, see AHPFM, Fondo Provincia, Sección General, Serie Alfabética, box 16, no. 99. These are documents related

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

215

a global Catholicism that to a large extent did not contradict the evolution of local devotions. Like in the case of the confraternities studied by Brian Larkin, the practice of rituals and devotions during the popular missions fostered a belonging to the Catholic ecumene for a diverse population throughout the Hispanic world.87 Through theatrical performances, missionaries created collective spiritual devotions such as the rosary and via crucis, while attracting worshippers to the intimacy of the holy mass and their individual salvation through the sacraments. The missionary religion blended the communal, theatrical piety that scholars have related to Baroque Catholicism with a theology of individual salvation commonly associated with late–eighteenth-century reforms. Indeed, collective participation in the friars’ missionary enterprises shows that piety was as much internal and individualistic as communal and external. The collective missionizing spectacles often culminated with penitential processions, carefully organized in the last days of the mission to ensure that first children, then men, and finally women, paraded through the streets of the village or city showing public repentance. Ultimately, the sacrament of penance, that private moment in which regretful sinners recited their wrongdoings to the priest with only God as witness and committed to sin no more, led to the conversion and salvation of the soul.88 Popular missions stood out for the collective raptures that missionaries engendered to allure sinners to the confident moment of narrating offences, admitting and bemoaning guilt, and asking for forgiveness. Thus, focusing first on the insistence of penance during popular missions underscores the “reforming” as well as “vindictive” natures of the itinerant ministry of Franciscan missionaries from the colegios, borrowing John Bossy’s descriptors. As he points out, by the fifteenth century sacramental penance was sought to reform the customs of sinners as much as to restore the social normative order. Penance affected therefore the individual as much as the community, because the sacra-

to the missions that took place in “El Coecillo,” a neighborhood in the city of León, in late 1911 and early 1912. There are six documents with a letter by the bishop of Leon, dated December 26, 1911, communicating to the delegate general Fray Ángelo M. Ruiz of willingness to grant necessary powers so that the missionaries from the province can travel to missions in El Coecillo. Documents are related to diocesan licenses to marry, preach, and confess, and notes on the topics to be preached with quotations from the authors to use for each theme. 87. Brian Larkin points out that “[in] and through all of their activities confraternities cultivated a sense of Christian unity and fellowship among their diverse memberships.” Larkin, “Confraternities and Communities: The Decline of the Communal Quest for Salvation in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City,” in Nesvig, ed., Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, 190. 88. Brian Larkin, The Very Nature of God: Baroque Catholicism and Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010); Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España; and Molina, To Overcome Oneself, 106–107.

216

To Sin No More

ment “represented a moment of critical transition . . . [,] which, in the words of a speaker of the Council of Trent, ‘reconciled all the members of Christ’ to one another.” Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the sacrament of penance—the path to convert and being saved—was still in the midst of a transformation from a communal ritual to an individual, interior one.89 The Council of Trent sacramentalized the daily life of Catholics. Responding to the Protestant threat against the Catholic clerical monopoly over salvation, the Trent conclave institutionalized the role of ecclesiastics over sacramental administration to parishioners. In 1547, the Council officially confirmed the clerics’ monopoly of administering the Church’s seven sacraments (baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders, and matrimony), a power granted to the diocesan governing body. With the bishop’s authorization, only ordained priests had licenses to give communion and confirmation, hear confessions, grant penance, provide marriage licenses, and perform extreme unction (anointing the sick with holy oils). In other words, the Catholic Church monopolized the conversion and salvation of all souls, which could only be achieved, Trent theology underscored, through authentic confession, administration of penitence, and final symbiosis of the remorseful penitents with the body and blood of God in the eucharist. That is, religious conversion occurred after sincere confession and hasty penitence fueled by the rejection of sin.90 The importance of participation in the sacraments was so pivotal in the daily life of Catholics that the energetic Fray José Jiménez de Jesús, a missionary stationed at the colegio in Querétaro, admonished his listeners in a mid–eighteenth-century farewell sermon (sermón de despedida) to commit themselves to daily sacraments as was advised in “23 Holy Councils; . . . advocated by 112 Canonized Saints; and . . . taught by 180 ecclesiastical doctors and writers.”91 This was not a capricious observation, since the Franciscan preacher knew that the sacramentalization of early modern society had been slow and uneven in Europe and in the Hispanic world during the century after Trent. Arch/diocesan administrative offices were located in urban centers, and thus resident Catholics were generally under strict surveillance by clerics and more likely to participate in the sacraments. The spiritual panorama, however,

89. John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1985), 45–46; R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 221–222. 90. A good summary of the Council of Trent can be found in Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 10–25. 91. “Sermon Vigessimo: Cargo de la Mission” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.p. [1850s], AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 326: “23 Santos Conzilios; os la persuaden 112 Santos Canonizados; y os la enseñan 180 Doctores, y Escriptores Ecclesiasticos.”

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

217

was much different in rural areas, where the numbers of priests were inadequate, and many rural priests in service were not well educated in theology, reducing the effectiveness of their pastoral ministry and administration of the sacraments. For the diocesan governing body, itinerant missions thus became the most feasible way to administer the sacraments in isolated villages that usually received little attention from parish priests, in addition to overseeing parishes where the priests’ ministry was under diocesan supervision. Arguably, popular missions thus became instrumental in the sacramentalization of the early modern Catholic world. Missionaries likewise benefited in extending their influence by the expansion of their ministry and their sacramental powers to the bishoprics, paramount to the collection of alms, while gaining firsthand knowledge of colonial society. If the sacramental path led to eternal salvation, the missionaries certainly had the coordinates. Whereas Jesuits and Capuchins (a branch of the Franciscan order) implemented the sacramentalization of the Hispanic (and European) world in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the eighteenth century was the turn of the Franciscan apostolic seminaries for the propagation of the faith. Reforming the faith and lives of nominal Christians required that missionaries spend long days dedicated to the confessional and the pulpit, preaching and hearing confessions day and night during their stay in a certain locality.92 Confession had to be done “on time, and as is mandatory [with the sinner] . . . confessing clearly his sins, and repenting them before death” to ensure eternal salvation, according to missionary preaching in the mid-eighteenth century.93 Missionaries encouraged individuals to confess their sins at least once a month “if your occupations do not allow for more,” though they showed flexibility in rural and remote areas where priests were few and distant. Individuals were strongly encouraged to perform an “examination of conscience and the acts of contrition.”94 Missionaries from the colleges toured the villages to hear confessions of the sick in their homes. Moreover, missionaries actively counseled and confessed nuns and beatas (pious lay women who took the vows of

92. References to missionaries’ extensive dedication to the confessional and pulpit are commonplace. See, for instance, “Sermon de Despedida,” in Hernández, “Libro de sermones,” n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 9, unfoliated. The Tarijan certificaciones also reveal the exhaustive dedication of the missionaries to preaching and confessing; see, for instance, the certificaciones in AFT, MF-1375 until 1380. 93. “Sermon segundo: Circunstancias de la Confesion buena,” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 49: “con tiempo, y como se debe . . . confesando claramente sus pecados, y arrepintiendose de ellos antes q llegue la muerte.” 94. “Sermon de persev.a y despedida,” in Fr. José Antonio Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” 1746–1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, 376: “[S]i tus ocupaciones no permiten mas . . . [,] examen de conciencia y actos de contricion.”

218

To Sin No More

poverty, celibacy, obedience, and enclosure without professing as nuns) of the convents where they missionized, and particularly, near the colleges.95 Parishioners who might have been afraid of confessing to their local priests due to shame or fear may have preferred to confess during the “holy missions” to newcomers who would soon leave. Others might simply have been afraid of confessing some if not all of their sins to any clerics. Missionaries relied on various tactics to attract those who felt doubt or shame to confess, particularly targeting sexual misconduct. Visual paraphernalia included paintings of a damned man or woman or a vivid story of those who suffered eternal condemnation in hell. The Tarija college manual for missionaries included a list of representations to entice listeners to the final act of general confession and contrition. In his missionary handbook, Father Margil encouraged starting the first night with the sermon of the good confession and the hazards of the bad confession, especially addressing those who said nothing about “their sins because of shame.”96 To ensure the secrecy of confession, Fray José Antonio Bernad reminded his audience in central Mexico in the 1750s that believers should not fear that missionaries would reveal the contents of their confession no matter how abominable, because “we cannot even speak [your words] to you after your confession.” This restriction included even sexual offenses, so important to the missionaries.97 In America, confessing native peoples whose mother tongue was not Spanish (or who refused to confess in Castilian) posed additional challenges to Franciscan missionaries from the colleges, who came mostly from Spain like their predecessors in the early stages of the Spanish conquest, and could not speak or understand Indian languages. The Third Councils of Lima (1582–1583) and Mexico (1585) forbade clerics to rely on translators during

95. Patent by Fray José Sanz, Commissary General of the Indies, to the guardian and all religious of the College of the Holy Cross of Querétaro, Convent of San Francisco of Madrid, November 18, 1716, LPZEAV, fols. 146v–147r. For Queretaran spiritual counseling of nuns and beatas in Querétaro, see Gunnarsdóttir, Mexican Karismata. For the College of Tarija, see “Methodo practico para vivir una vida perfectamente christiana. Reglas muy provechosas dadas a las Señoras Recogidas de la Ciudad de La Plata,” AFT, MS-29. For the college of Herbón in northwestern Spain, see the diocesan licenses for preaching to and confessing nuns in APS, file 67, no. 19; and APS, file 68, no. 4. See also Charles C. Noel, “Missionary Preachers in Spain: Teaching Social Virtue in the Eighteenth Century,” The American Historical Review 90, no. 4 (1985), 884. 96. ForMargil, fols. 9r–14r; “los pecados por vergüenza” quote on fol. 12r. Upon dealing with sins against the sixth commandment, Fray Antonio Margil recommended that before the act of contrition in which the sinner repented his sins, the preacher refer to the case of the woman who did not confess her sex-related sins. A detailed list of nine tactics to address recalcitrant sinners appears in Dir1748. For Cataluña and the college at Escornalbóu, see Gelabertó, La palabra del predicador, 71–72. 97. “Sermón de introducción para la Misión,” in Bernad, “Libro de sermones,” 1746– 1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, 161: “[N]o podemos hablarlas ni aun á ti mismo despues de confesado.”

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

219

confessions. Missionaries and parishioners might also have refrained from local translators for the shame and fear associated with neighbors learning one’s sins. As the previous chapter showed, language training was erratic at its best in the colegios. Sources show that only a few friars in Mexican colleges understood Nahuatl, Otomí, or Tarascan, the major Indian languages in central New Spain. The situation might have been similar in other regions as most religious men also came from Spain and indigenous languages varied. It would be too easy nonetheless to claim that missions were doomed because preachers were unintelligible to their Indian audiences or missionaries failed to confess Indian parishioners in their language. To facilitate confession and the examination of conscience, missionaries probably relied on numerous bilingual confession manuals produced in Spanish America since the sixteenth century. Convent libraries kept these manuals, which missionaries borrowed on their evangelical tours and even carried to frontier missions. Preaching, a pivotal aspect to convert Indians in Franciscan missions, also posited linguistic problems. Most preachers who lacked local language skills probably resorted to using Indian translators during sermons or when they taught the Christian doctrine from the altar. Greater success seems to have occurred for missionaries with language training such as Pachucan Fray Miguel de Sosa. His Nahuatl preaching in an 1801 mission in Santa Cruz Tlacatepeque allegedly encouraged Indians to denounce the existence of five caves with idols. Language could perhaps have been less of a barrier, as there were bilingual Indians in most of the communities. On the other hand, most of the performances during the missionizing period were familiar to native peoples, who had been exposed to Spanish culture for over two centuries. Usually visual paraphernalia such as paintings of a damned man or woman while reciting vivid stories of those who suffered eternal condemnation in hell did not go unappreciated among sermon attendees and probably remorse and fear was felt by listeners, whether indigenous, Creole, or of mixed ancestry.98 Throughout the mission, the preachers’ battle to save souls was certainly psychological and individual in nature as much as it was a collective effort. Collectivity and individuality mixed throughout the missions in earlymodern Catholicism. As historian J. Michelle Molina contends in her study

98. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 226, 242–243. The bishop of Oaxaca insisted that Fray Hermenegildo Vilaplana, Fray Antonio Pinilla, and an unnamed third Franciscan teach the Christian doctrine to native peoples who did not know Castilian. See “Carta del obispo de Oaxaca al P. Fr. Hermenegildo Villaplana,” Antequera, May 17, 1756, AHPFMFCSCQ, C, file 3 (II), no. 110. For the Pachuca mission of 1801, see reports in “Misión de los PP. Fr. Francisco Badillo, presidente, Fr. Tiburcio de San José López, Fr. Miguel de Loza y Fr. Simón de los Reyes. Año de 1801,” in “Papeles varios. Le acompaña un índice moderno de los documentos aquí contenidos, algunos de los cuales son del siglo XVIII, pero la mayoría son del XIX,” AHPSEM, box 209.

220

To Sin No More

of New Spain’s Jesuit civilizing missions, “[t]he spiritual practices introduced in the seventeenth century–itinerant missions in New Spain, particularly the general confession and the examination of conscience, drew heavily upon narrative practices that fostered a new, individualized sense of spiritual selfhood.” Communal participation in the friars’ missionary enterprises shows, as Molina observes, that piety was as much internal and individualistic as communal and external. Such collective piety supported individual salvation through the sacramental symbiosis with Jesus Christ and God.99 Missionaries organized daily parades wherein the community marched to lure people to the mission and to encourage sacramental obligations in the last days of the mission. This last part culminated with a final procession of penitents, carefully organized with crosses, civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and the friars presiding and then children, men, and finally women, in proper order and separated, parading through the streets of the village or town showing public repentance. Some penitents wore ropes around their neck, crowns of thorns over their heads, and even carried crosses.100 Certain missionaries actually encouraged corporal punishments such as flagellation and hair shirts (cilicios) in the processions; others, such as Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús in the early eighteenth century disavowed the use of bloody instruments. Practices of self-punishment such as flogging and beating the chest with a stone were very common in Spain and its colonies, especially during holy days like Easter, when the penitential Nazarenes flogged themselves. However grotesque it may seem, the spectacle of moans, bloodshed, and associated noise from the chains and strikes attracted parishioners. Toward the end of the century, voices were raised to eradicate the bloody event, culminating in the official ban of public processions of flagellants in 1780. The prohibition was largely ignored, as flagellants still circulated through the religious landscape of the Hispanic world (Figure 4.9 (a)–(c)).101

99. Molina, To Overcome Oneself, 129–130. 100. These are common recommendations in the mission instructional material analyzed here. See, for instance, ForMargil, fol. 6r–6v; Gelabertó, La palabra del predicador, 41; MTarija, preamble; and Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España, 119. 101. Interestingly enough, Margil de Jesús rejects corporal punishment in the penitence procession at the end of the mission, something that Fray Antonio Alcocer also rejected in 1788, as a result of a shift of opinion and royal intervention. Margil wrote, “[S]olo sí advierto q.e no se permiten disciplinas de sangre, por q.e no nos embarazen nra. Función,” in ForMargil, fol. 15v. See also, Alcocer, Bosquejo de la Historia, p. 192: “el que suele ser tal, que tienen no poco trabajo los Misioneros en estar quitando las penitencias que llevan algunos con atrocidad, sin embargo de decirles, cuando se exhorta a esta penitencia, qué es lo que podrán hacer, arreglándose a la cédula de nuestro católico Monarca de 20 de febrero de 1777, la que, aunque en América no se ha publicado, se observa por parte de este Colegio y, aun desde antes que se tuviera de ella noticia, ya se evitaba en las dichas procesiones de Penitencia lo que en ella se previene, especialmente las disciplinas de

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS 221

Figure 4.9. Penitents (a)–(c). Source: Imagini di persone della Elvezia Rezia Valesia, e Tirolo intervenute in abito di penitenza nelle missioni fatte dalli PP. della Comp.a di Giesù Fulvio Fontana, e Gio: Antonio Mariani. Offerte all’Ill.ma Sig.ra Maria Eleonora Contessa d’Herbestain, Colonella nella Reale Fondazione d’Ala d’Insprugg La quale con tanta esemplarita assiste, con quante vivono Dame, sotto il di Lei, non men pio, che prudente governo alle sacre Funzioni della istessa Missione L’anno 1711. (Courtesy of the Bibliothèque du Centre Sèvres, Facultés jésuites de Paris et la cote, N 38/122.)

222

To Sin No More

The final preaching stage was introduced with the sermón de despedida that authors of mission guides suggested should not last more than half an hour. The audience would be tired and “it is not prudent to bother them with a long sermon,” one anonymous missionary guide from the 1740s suggested. Even though the mission had reached an end, missionaries nonetheless stayed in the town or city for a couple more days if a large number of people required the hearing of more confessions.102 To the friars, what mattered most was to leave the area with as many souls as possible headed for eternal salvation, even if extra spiritual dedication was required. Missionaries also consolidated, if not introduced, certain religious devotions among the peoples of the Atlantic world. Missionaries of propaganda fide—on par with Jesuits and other religious orders—expanded devotions in the form of Hail Marys, litanies, coplas, saetas (a religious short song), alabados (a song of praise dedicated to the holy sacrament and the Virgin Mary), rosaries, and the via crucis that forged an early modern Catholic identity that can still be seen in America, including the southwest United States, as well as in Spain. For instance, Margil’s alabado circulated amply in New Spain, including its northern frontiers and there is ample evidence that similar alabados sung in the missions to the Catholics were also taught and sung in the frontier missions. As a matter of fact, alabados and other musical devotions

sangre, que jamás se permiten.” The missionary guide for Querétaro in 1748 recognized the presence of individuals practicing corporal punishments in the procession of general penance the last days of the mission. Dir1748, fol. 67v: “[D]espues todos los que van lados ý con Cruces â cuestas, y entre estos se entreveran los que â cara descubierta, vienen con sus sogas, y coronas; cerca de la Imagen van los disciplinantes, ê immediatos â la Imagen los Sacerdotes.” The sermons habitually referred to the need of corporal punishment to tame the body and expiate sins; see a late eighteenth-century example in “Sermón de Anuncio,” in San Martín, “Sermones morales y pláticas del P. Fr. José de San Martín,” 20–22. For a similar description of a bloody procession led by Queretaran apostolic friars in Mexico City in 1731, see Gaceta de México, no. 38, by Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, minister, Impresor del Real Tribunal de la Santa Cruzada, January 1731, in Gacetas de México (1722 and 1728 to 1731), 302. For the use of self-inflicted punishments as edifying spectacles in the mission processions in Spain, see Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España, 198–199. The practice of public self-punishment was so widespread that the Spanish government forbade public flogging in 1780, although with little success. Fernández, La España Moderna: Siglo XVIII, 659. Milagros León Vegas points out that the Charles III’s royal order ended the flagellant processions, at least nominally; see her “Entre el misticismo y la aberración: Declive de los flagelantes en Antequera siglo XVI,” Baetica: Estudios de Arte, Geografía e Historia, 31 (2009), 386. There is a reference to this 1780 decree in Fray Francisco, “Sermones de misión del P. Francisco,” College of Herbón, APS, file 181. 102. All missionary handbooks dealt with this last aspect of the mission. Most mission books of sermons include the “farewell sermon.” the second in Dir1748, fol. 68v: “media hora quando mas, conciderando â el concurso cansado, y que no es prudencia molestarlo con largo sermón,” see also the whole chapter 12: “de la procesión y despedida,” fols. 66r–70v.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

223

such as the saetas comprised a backbone to the missionary program, not only among Catholic populations in the Hispanic world, but also new converts (conversos vivos) on the imperial peripheries.103 Moreover, among the various collective devotions and exercises performed in the missions, Franciscan missionaries from the colleges put particular emphasis on the Marian rosary and the Christ-centered devotion to the via crucis. The via crucis, also referred to as via sacra, way of the cross, or stations of the cross, is a religious devotion traditionally associated with the Franciscan Order that has survived since the Middle Ages. It was probably one of the major devotional practices that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century itinerant missionaries institutionalized in European and American popular culture. In southern Germany, the via crucis was widespread after the pastoral labor of Capuchin missionaries such as Martin von Cochem in the seventeenth century, while the Capuchin Fray Diego José de Cádiz helped sponsor this expression of piety in eighteenth-century Spain.104 The via crucis is a representation of the via dolorosa in Jerusalem, the fourteen stages that pilgrims follow to re-enact the passion of Jesus Christ before his crucifixion on Mount Calvary. Since its foundation in the early thirteenth century, the Franciscan

103. See the mission handbooks, ForMargil; MZacatecas; Dir1748; MTarija. The Tarija mission guide offers a plentiful corpus of coplas and saetas sung during the sermons, MTarija. See also the descriptions of the missions in the Colleges of Zacatecas in New Spain and Escornalbóu in Spain, Alcocer, Bosquejo de la Historia; Cervantes Aguilar, Fray Simón del Hierro; and Papió, La història d’Escornalbóu, 97–105. See the brief description of the mission in Puebla de los Ángeles in 1732, which resulted in the establishment of an hospice outside the city, Gaceta de México, Núms. 52, 61, Imprenta Real del Superior Govierno, de los Herederos de la Viuda de Miguel de Rivera Calderón; en el Empedradillo, January 1732, December 1732, in Gacetas de México (1732 to 1736), 19, 76. Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide de la Nueva España, 2nd ed. (1746; Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan Historians, 1964), 595, 594–595, n. 5. I thank Kristin Mann’s work on the pivotal role of music in the Jesuit and Franciscan frontier missions of northern New Spain for this reference. Mann, “Christmas in the Missions of Northern New Spain,” The Americas 66, no. 3 (2010): 346, n. 60; and The Power of Song. Mann refers to the Alabado that Lino Gómez Canedo copied from Fray José Díez, Apostólicos empleos, 1700, about the popular missions preached in Guatemala. Margil’s Alabado was printed by the College of Orizaba, Versos que los RR. PP. missioneros del Colegio Apostólico de San José de Gracia de la Villa de Orizava, cantan en sus misiones (Puebla: Oficina del Oratorio de S. Felipe Neri, 1820), Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Carso, microfilm reel 31, 808.1 V.A. 104. The institutionalization of the Via Crucis or Way of the Cross in Europe occurred in the eighteenth century. Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor, 123–125. He observes that the Way of the Cross was widespread in eighteenth-century southern Germany after the pastoral labor of Capuchin missionaries such as Martin von Cochem in the previous century. Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor, 123. Roberto Fernández also points out that Capuchin missionaries such as Fray Diego José de Cádiz impelled the Via Crucis in eighteenth-century Spain. Fernández, La España Moderna. Siglo XVIII, 661. See also Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España, 217–218.

224

To Sin No More

Order was in charge of maintaining the sacred places in the Holy Land, which the order still carries out until today.105 Initially performed inside Franciscan churches, enactments of the way of the cross became an outdoor spiritual event in the popular missions. By exposing the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ to their audiences, missionaries aimed at creating an environment of sorrow and repentance, not only among participants but also among reluctant observers who stayed away from the grim spectacle. Slow-paced music accompanied the drama to mark the rhythm of Jesus’ crucifixion and to unleash profound fear and deep remorse. It seems likely that skeptics of missionary preaching in nearby locales were aware of these events. The missionaries deliberately created an oppressive atmosphere in order to provoke general contrition that targeted all social and ethnic denominations in the colony as well as in the metropole. The general constitutions of the colleges—Pope Innocent XI’s 1686 bulls, Catholicae Ecclesiae—as well as missionary handbooks endorsed the religious observance of the stations of the cross from early on.106 The statutes of the college of Tarija suggested that during their missions, the Tarijan missionaries “will try to plant the Via Crucis where it was lacking, and some Fridays [the missionaries] with the whole town will be able to visit the Stations, which they will conclude with a fervent talk of Jesus Crucified, pondering the inexorable love of Our Redeemer in wanting to die to save us.”107 If the melodrama of the parades and/or salvation of the individual participant were not enough to draw parishioners to via crucis, friars further promised salvation of deceased relatives from Purgatory. In this way, attendance at the via crucis became an example of Christian charity for others to follow. One theologian from the college in Querétaro explained to his audience that participants in the procession obtained partial and plenary indulgences and supported the salvation of two souls from Purgatory. Although these indulgences might have seemed excessive, he assumed that God was generous with those who fervently performed this Christ-centric

105. “Stations of the Cross,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Gale, 2003), vol. 13: 499–501. 106. Innocent XI, Bull Ecclesiae Catholicae, Rome, June 28, 1686, printed in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 29–30. See the missionary guidelines in ForMargil, Dir1748, MTarija, and Alcocer, Bosquejo de la Historia, 181–203. 107. Estatutos y ordenaciones municipales del Colegio de Tarija, AFT, RR-166, 93: “[P]rocurarán plantar el Vía Crucis, donde no le huviere, y alguno de los Viernes podrán visitar las Estaciones, con todo el Pueblo, la que concluirán con una fervorosa platica de Jesus Crucificado, ponderándoles el inextimable amor de ntro. Redentor en querer morir para salvarnos.” 108. “Sermon de persev.a y despedida,” in Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” 1746– 1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, 380–382.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

225

devotion to attain salvation.108 As a result of missionary campaigns, a popular appetite for salvation, theatricality of religious performances, and the emphasis on Jesus Christ, the via crucis soon became mainstream folklore in the Hispanic world. Bishops and archbishops also entrusted the propaganda fide missionaries to extend performance of the stations of the cross in their missionary campaigns in Spain and America. Probably under the auspices of Pope Benedict XIV (papacy from August 17, 1740–May 3, 1758), secular priests and diocesan authorities more frequently requested that missionaries from the colleges perform the via crucis in their popular missions.109 This ecclesiastical support ranged from large urban centers to small rural communities throughout the Hispanic world. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the archbishop of Mexico City, Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta, showed extraordinary support of the via crucis devotion by rewarding participants with eighty days of indulgences (i.e., subtracting eighty days of purgatory) to those who attended, prayed, and meditated during the stations and another eighty days for listening to the Catholic doctrine and the sermons. In all, Catholics could redeem 160 days of penance in purgatory.110 Priests such as Dr. Agustín Francisco Esquivel y Vargas of La Piedad, a small town in the Michoacán diocese, described missions from the colleges of Querétaro and Zacatecas as crucial contributors to the religiosity of his largely Indian and casta parishioners. Writing in the mid-1760s about local devotion to a statue of the crucified Christ, he praised the lasting influence of Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús’s 1726 mission to La Piedad, evinced by the continued practice of the stations of the cross (via crucis) and thrilling devotions to the Virgin Mary.111 The priest of Tacámbaro, a small town in the bishopric of Michoacán, thanked the guardian of the college of Querétaro for the mission sent to his village in 1787, which achieved the “general reform and moral discipline, the establishment of the tender devotion to the via sacra . . . and preser-

109. Fray José Antonio Alcocer suggests in his history of the College of Zacatecas that Pope Benedict XIV was behind establishing the via crucis as an important religious devotion. Alcocer, Bosquejo de la Historia, 190: “En todos los días se exhorta a la devoción de María Santísima, de su Rosario y de la Vía Sacra. Estas devociones procuran establecer con el ejemplo. En donde las cruces de la Vía Sacra no están puestas como determina el Papa Benedicto XIV para el logro de las indulgencias, se ponen por los Misioneros y éstos las andan con los fieles, meditando en cada cruz, etc. . . .” Bishops from Galicia requested missionaries from the college at Herbón to perform the via crucis. See, for instance, Galician bishops’ licenses in APS, file 68, no. 4. 110. See, for example, “Facultades comunicadas por don Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta, arzobispo de México, para la misión de Querétaro,” Mexico City, February 15, 1786, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 4, no. 8. An example of the request of the Via Crucis by the bishop of Michoacán is “Carta del obispo de Michocán al guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz,” Valladolid, September 15, 1769, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 36. 111. Brading, Church and State, 150–152.

226

To Sin No More

vation from spiritual relapses.”112 In 1794, the prelate of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro responded to a petition by the priest in Xsichu (the current town of Xichú in Guanajuato, Mexico), a mining center at the eastern tip of current state of Guanajuato, to conduct a mission in his parish by asking the archbishop of Mexico City for permission to send two groups of missionaries to his archdiocese and to establish the via crucis devotion in that town and other localities where they would preach.113 A series of certifications issued by diocesan and regular parish priests in central Mexico dating from 1740 until 1804 offers an overview of the content of these missions and their devotional foci. Most refer to the initiation of via crucis devotions. After a 1740 mission to the communities of Santiago de Chapantongo, Chilcuautla, and their hinterland in the current state of Hidalgo, the two Augustinians in charge of these doctrinas reported that missionaries from the Discalced colegio de propaganda fide in Pachuca performed the via crucis throughout their mission. Missionaries preached on the importance of performing the stations of Christ’s passion, which parishioners seem to have followed according to reports. The last day of the mission, parishioners from Chilcuautla and its hinterlands rushed to receive holy communion. In a mission to the Huasteca region, certifications from Panuco and Tampico also bear witness to the importance in establishing veneration of the via sacra. These reports went beyond describing what happened during the missionaries’ stays in parishes. In so far as the results might have been short-lived, certification writers alike shared a particular optimism about their flock’s spiritual regeneration after the popular mission for which they thanked the missionaries. In a mission to Cardonal, Zimapán, and Huichipan, also in current Hidalgo in 1796, priests agreed that missionaries had achieved with their continual public sermons and public penances, greater participation [in] the sacraments, cessation of scandals, particularly the breakup of . . . longtime friendships, reunion of separated spouses, reconciliation of enemies, and an increase in alms collection.114

The promotion of the Christ-centric devotion of the via crucis continued into the nineteenth century, as Franciscan missionaries and diocesan clerics joined

112. “Carta del B.r don José Gregorio Sochaga al guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz, P. Fr. Juan José Sáenz de Gumiel,” Tacámbaro, April 23, 1787, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), i. 113. “Despacho de misiones dado a los Reverendos Padres del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, May 20, 1794, AGN, Bienes Nacionales, vol. 584, exp. 16. 114. The certificaciones are found in AHPSEM, box 210. In Building Colonial Cities of God (156–163), Karen Melvin relies on these sources in her study of urban popular missions. She points out that these missions promoted the via crucis.

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

227

forces to encourage believers to recreate the passion of Jesus Christ in the streets and churches of their villages and towns. In 1811, the priest in nearby Celaya submitted a request for a mission in his parish. In response, the bishop of Michoacán granted the customary licenses and faculties to the missionaries and approved the enactment of the via crucis for improving the spiritual guidance of his parishioners and the salvation of their souls. The bishop wanted to foster general participation in the sermons and doctrinal speeches, and participation in the sacraments of confession and communion, while emphasizing devotion to his Catholic majesty Ferdinand VII and “to the legitimate government that represents him.”115 As these cases for New Spain show, it was the missionary campaigns, a popular appetite for salvation, theatricality of religious performances, and the emphasis on their leader Jesus Christ that turned the via crucis into mainstream religiosity in the eighteenth-century Hispanic world, and thus juxtaposed individual piety and collective devotion in religious representations. Another important phenomenon of religious devotion adopted in the popular missions was the rosary, a prayer that consists of reciting fifteen rounds of ten Hail Marys and an Our Father in between each series of Hail Marys. In each of the fifteen sequences, the devotee meditates on the mysteries of redemption. The devotion had been initiated by the Dominican Order in the early thirteenth century, and by the late seventeenth century Franciscan apostolic missionaries not only incorporated the rosary into their spiritual exercises inside the colleges, but also recited the rosary in their itinerant missions as a remedy against religious deviance and sin.116 Mission handbooks reportedly recommended that missionaries explain the importance of devotion to the

115. “Solicitud del P. Fr. Ángel Alonso del Prado, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz, al obispo electo de Michoacán don Manuel Abad,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro and Valladolid, October 31, 1811, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 54. For diocesan licenses to propagate the via crucis in the early nineteenth century, see “Licencias que concede Juan Cruz, obispo de Guadalajara, a los religiosos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Guadalajara, April 30, 1813, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 80; and “Facultades que concede el cabildo gobernador del obispado de Michoacán a los religiosos del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Valladolid, November 28, 1822, AHPFMFCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 61. 116. A succinct explanation of the rosary appears in Thurston, Herbert, and Andrew Shipman, “The Rosary,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912), available at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13184b.htm (accessed February 14, 2009). In summer 1688, the bishop of Guadalajara provided Fray Antonio Ezcaray, president, Fray Francisco Estévez, and Fray Francisco Hidalgo with rosaries in addition to Christian pensamientos and máximas (Christian booklets) for the missions to the Catholics of his diocese. “Carta del obispo de Guadalajara al P. Fr. Antonio Ezcaray”; and “Carta del obispo de Guadalajara al P. Fr. Antonio Ezcaray.” Accordingly, Fray Francisco Roché prayed the rosary or followed other devotions between two and three in the afternoon. Fr. Francisco Roig (or Roché), “Diario para exercicios,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, May 14, 1785, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 3, no. 1.

228

To Sin No More

rosary and to the via crucis, establishing both Christological and Marian devotions. Missionaries were encouraged to bring rosaries with them and to teach by example. Franciscan missionaries commonly organized processions during the mission in which participants sang the rosary, especially when they approached Dominican convents where this Marian devotion was firmly institutionalized.117 Missionaries urged Catholics to routinely recite the rosary and to invoke the Virgin Mary to favor them in their daily occupations and to intercede for them with God.118 Missionaries typically carried their rosaries on their cord and/or around their neck, despite mandates to prohibit the latter public displays.119 Preaching in colonial Mexico as well as in Spain in the 1740s and 1750s, Fray José Antonio Bernad underscored the importance of the rosary as a mission devotion to be preserved after the missionaries’ departure. In his “perseverance and farewell sermon” (sermón de perseverancia y despedida), he urged listeners to set a good example with the rosary, as this could provide the faithful with spiritual peace and eternal salvation.120 The certificaciones sent to college authorities confirm the centrality of the religious devotion to the rosary as well as the via crucis in their itinerant missions. For instance, reports that parish priests from the doctrinas sent to the Discalced Franciscan college in Pachuca in a 1749 mission around Tula and its hinterlands in the Puebla diocese remarked that Fathers Miguel Gonzalez del Pinal, Francisco Arrien, and Josef Zapata successively explained the Christian doctrine, preached doctrinal sermons, and especially cultivated the via crucis and the rosary.121

117. ForMargil, Dir1748, MTarija, and Alcocer, Bosquejo de la Historia, 181–203. 118. See, for instance, the last sermon of the missions: “Sermon Vigessimo: Cargo de la Mission” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 327. 119. Among Fray Francisco Cordón’s belongings before he was incarcerated in the Inquisition prison (Mexico City) for soliciting sexual advances during confession or acting as a solicitante in the confessional in the contemporary jargon, on September 10, 1789, two rosaries were listed, one around his neck and the other on his cord. “Fr. Francisco Cordón Misionero Apostólico de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, últimamente incorporado en la Provincia de los Observantes de Michoacán, y guardián del Convento de Valladolid, por solicitante,” 1777–1789, 1815, AGN, Inquisición, vol. 1160, fol. 466r–466v. Early in the century, the commissary general of the Indies had prohibited that missionaries display their rosaries around the neck: “Patente del Rvdmo. P. Fr. Lucas Álvarez de Toledo, Comisario General de Indias, para que se vista en el Colegio el mismo color que usan en las Provincias; inclusa en la representación que sobre el particular hicieron los Colegios el 12 de noviembre de 1708,” Convento de San Francisco de Madrid, December 19, 1707, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 7. 120. “Sermon de persev.a y despedida,” in Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” 1746– 1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, 375–376. 121. See the curas’ reports in “Mision de los H.s P.s Fr. Miguel Gonzalez del Pinal, Fr. Fran.co Arrien y Fr. Josef Zapata en 6. Pueblos, 1749,” in “Papeles varios. Esta caja

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

229

Missionaries particularly resorted to such religious displays in times of calamity. Franciscan authorities from the college in Querétaro relied on rosary processions to protect the village and its residents from evils such as diseases and what they viewed as abominable popular festivities, particularly profane comedies, two phenomena which they believed to be interrelated. For the missionaries, comedies induced men and women to sin, as both sexes openly intermingled at theatres. Ultimately, they viewed comedies as a cause of calamities imposed by God as a response to wickedness. In a struggle that lasted for the entire eighteenth century, to prevent the establishment of profane theaters in Querétaro, the discretorio commonly sent two friars to parade the streets of the city with their rosaries in hand, while in the college’s church the religious prayed rogations. The cabildo of Querétaro viewed missionary efforts favorably, but also frequently allowed performances of the contested comedies, the origin of all evils in the town according to the Franciscans from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz and, therefore, an obstruction to conversion.122

Conclusions The theatrical performances during popular missions created collective spiritual displays that embraced popular devotions such as the rosary and the via crucis, in addition to daily mass attendance. But collective expressions of religiosity also implied more internalized or private actions through the sacraments. Franciscan missionaries of propaganda fide emphasized the sacramentalization of Catholic believers’ daily lives, endorsing regular penitence and communion for nominal Catholics, and the holiness of marriage. More broadly, this chapter has shown that Franciscan missionaries were pivotal in the Catholic Church’s global enterprise of conversion and salvation embraced by the Council of Trent. The promotion of popular devotions to the via crucis and the rosary are two instances of the imprint of the Franciscan missionaries upon development of early modern Catholicism in the Hispanic world. By enacting the sacrifice of Christ, whom the missionaries proclaimed gave his own life to save humankind from original sin, the Franciscans aimed at instigating shame and the repentance of sinners, the core of religious conversion and eternal salva-

contiene principalmente certificaciones de misiones (siglos XVIII y XIX), pero también hay otros con diversas noticias. De todos ellos hay un índice reciente y muy completo,” AHPSEM, box 210. This material is not foliated. 122. The religious usually walked the street where the theater stood to conduct their rosary prayers. “Copia de las cartas que el año de 1779 escribió el Vble. Discretorio contra las comedias al Excmo. Sr. Virrey don Martín Mayorga y al Iltmo. Sr. Arzobispo,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, November 18, 1779, AHPFM-FCSCQ, F, file 7, no. 11.

230

To Sin No More

tion. Through popular missions to Catholics, Franciscan friars catechized their listeners and introduced them to collective and individual forms of piety. Musicality, theatricality, religious performances, or individual confession and penance were pivotal elements in the missionary visits to each locality. As such, Franciscan missionaries developed a missionary methodology that closely imitated the European Jesuit and Capuchin missionary theories. Not only was the format similar, but missionaries on both sides of the Atlantic fostered the development of religious devoutness in eighteenth-century rural and urban settings through a common agenda that highlighted external religiosity (sermons, mass, musical and theatrical expressions) as well as internal piety as a means to achieve conversion and the concomitant salvation of souls. We may thus place the missionary religion within the Baroque-enlightened Catholic transition. While college missions certainly borrowed from the dramatically charged visual representations that sought to create a collective hysteria of fear and terror to persuade people to seek salvation—all characteristic of the Spanish religious Baroque—it is also true that the missions culminated in the intimacy of confession, when isolated individuals faced their fate before God at a daunting moment of individual spirituality, of frank request and singular, silent repentance only broken in grieving whispers. The fact that both collective, theatrical representations and individual piety were represented throughout the mission shows that clerics understood salvation as a collective as well as an individual effort. Dozens of missionaries were literally on the road in a given year. They traveled through the most remote parts of the bishoprics, areas technically under ecclesiastical as well as Spanish political control, but whose men and women, so-called rustics (rústicos) in Europe and America, lived behind a shield of only nominal adherence to the Church, and perhaps, to the Spanish imperial government. Although missionaries surely increased parishioners’ religiosity and participation in the sacraments, their footprint was ephemeral. Religious devotion and practice probably dwindled quickly after the missionaries departed, though in some cases zealous parish priests and religious seem to have prompted their parishioners to continue the missionary fervor, as was the case of Ixmiquilpan (archdiocese of Mexico) in 1722. According to the testimony of Augustinian Fray Alexo Pérez, Fray Andrés de Pazos and his apostolic associates were crucial in the popular devotion to the rosary, sung in the streets on Mondays for souls in purgatory, while walking in procession with the image of the crucifixion. Skulls and painted souls were also part of the ceremonial parade. The mission introduced the veneration of Saint Joseph with seven Our Fathers and Hail Marys at night. Moreover, the Augustinian friar continued, on Saturday evenings, gatherings of men and women sang the rosary in the church. Apparently, it was difficult for Fray Alexo to maintain the religious fervor that the missionaries brought and he pled for their

CHAPTER 4. CONVERTING CATHOLICS

231

return.123 It is clear that missionaries did not travel about unnoticed. When the friars entered a town in New Spain, Fray Francisco López Salgueiro wrote to his religious brothers in Herbón in 1738, parishioners and the secular clergy went into the streets for the reception, some shouting their “horrendous sins.”124 Even Indians awaited the friars with “bugle, drum, incense, hornpipes [chirimías], . . . and bells.” They then threw flowers before the friars’ feet, whom they called “very holy Fathers.”125 Popular missions were but one effort among others that the Catholic Church promoted in the early modern period to submit its own versions of Catholicism to the masses of Catholics in Europe and America. From a soteorological viewpoint, it is difficult and perhaps pointless to measure their success. To prevent men and women from sinning again was a difficult task, and as scholars have pointed out, the global business of Christianizing required that missionaries and clerics enter each locality over and again. In measuring success, Zacatecan Fray Simón del Hierro wrote in his notes of Margil and his popular mission of 1725–1727 that “[o]nly God may understand.”126

123. “Carta del P. Fr. Alexo Pérez, agustino, al P. Fr. Andrés de Pazos,” January 30, 1722, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 11. 124. “Las misiones de fieles son también bastante travajosas. . . [,] asperos y algo despoblados. . . [,] pecados horrorosíssimos.” López, “Misiones de Méjico,” 270. 125. “[C]larín, tambor, incienso, chirimas. . . . y campanas. . . [,] Padres santíssimos.” Ibid., 271. For Indian participation in popular missions, see also Cervantes Aguilar, Fray Simón del Hierro, 27. 126. Cervantes Aguilar, Fray Simón del Hierro, 33: “¿Cuál fue el fruto? Sólo Dios puede comprenderlo.”

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 5

Missionary Preaching “

hat shall I say of you damned lads,” inquired Fray Antonio de Herosa from the pulpit, who “like . . . pigs think of nothing else but how to wallow in the mire of your fornication?” To Father Antonio, a missionary stationed in the colegio at Herbón in northwestern Spain in the mid-eighteenth century, the question was rhetorical and the answer clear. Everlasting torments awaited sinners who fell into “dishonest vices,” ranging from concubinage and adultery to sodomy and bestiality. Ubiquitous lust, according to missionaries like Herosa, took most souls “to the abyss of eternal damnation” and wrought havoc on the Christian republic. The fire of lust or the worms that eat flesh rotted by lewdness, missionaries moaned, was rampant in towns and villages of rural Galicia as well as of other parts of the Spanish Atlantic world. Such visceral discourse by the missionaries was aggressive and filled with metaphors to produce rejection and disgust of indecency. To divert parishioners from such sins, contemporary missionaries harangued their audiences in their preaching, comparing them to “lewd” or “filthy pigs,” “lascivious cows,” or runaway horses delivered to hell for slaughter.1 Missionaries viewed peasant, rural communities as pockets of recalcitrant simpletons in need of a spiritual cure. The prescribed remedy was conversion through confession and repentance. As discussed in the previous chapter, methodologies of the Franciscan itinerant missionaries from the apostolic colleges of propaganda fide included traveling the streets of hamlets, towns, haciendas, and cities in itinerant preaching campaigns aimed at the Catholic populations of Spain and Spanish America. During these popular missions, friars exhibited a cornucopia of visual effects to reform customs and motivate

W

1. Fray Antonio de Herosa, “Sermón sobre el Sexto Mandamiento, Lujuria,” in “Libro de sermones del P. Antonio de Herosa del Colegio de Herbón,” Archivo Provincial de Santiago (hereafter APS), file 177, Colegio de Herbón, 383: “Que dire de vosotros malditos mozos desvocados qe como animales de zerda no pensais de noche, ni de dia en otra cossa mas qe como revolcaros en el lodo de vra fornica.on y torpeza?” Ibid., 381: “[Q]e tan lamentables estragos tiene hecho en la Republica Xptiana, qe casi abarrer se lleva las mas de las almas al avismo de una condena.on eterna.” Ibid., 385: “[Q]ue lo digan tantas sodomías, bestialidades, y poluciones como el dia de oy se practican.” See also Fray Patricio de Gálvez, “Sermón de deshonestos para misión,” in “Sermones de misión del P. Patricio de Gálvez del Colegio de Cehegín, 1797,” APS, file 179, vol. 1, Colegio de Cehegín, 250–253, 256.

233

234

To Sin No More

repentance. In addition to the imagery, missionaries also relied on a tailored message essential to convert sinners and ensure their eternal salvation. Gray robes acted as communicators of the Christian doctrine to the Catholic flock, messengers of God, and reformers with the sole objective of salvation. Through doctrinal speeches and sermons, the Franciscan religious, like other clerics, infused moral and social codes with the objective of changing ways of life. Through missionary preaching that was catechetical and reformist, Franciscan missionaries called for a catharsis among Catholic practitioners. The content of missionary preaching was pedagogical in the sense that preachers taught the Catholic doctrine and the sins that diverted Catholics from salvation. Preachers were also moral and social reformists who set the path to achieve conversion or as they pointed out rhetorically, the remedies to cure parishioners’ spiritual illnesses. The preaching repertoire covered was variable and depended on the audience, time available, and what the friars perceived to be needed by the flock. Normally, sermons embraced specific issues such as a good death, truthful confession, commandments of the Catholic Church, universal judgment, or terrifying descriptions of hell; moral themes such as lust, comedies, attire, and gaming; and social topics such as relationships between parents and children, condemned criminals and executions, or relations between neighboring enemies. Franciscans painstakingly employed an array of rhetorical devices. Preaching was incendiary, with missionaries presenting themselves as intermediaries who sought to deliver their audience from their present “miserable state” and awake them from the “unpleasant and dangerous dream” that was their daily life. Furthermore, clerics described their remedy as the only cure, the single path to eternity. Thus, evangelizers metaphorically pointed out that their words awakened their listeners from their terrifying dreams, namely, their sinful lives, and comforted their souls. Unsurprisingly, many of the sermons and speeches during the popular missions resembled those preached in the so-called “great awakenings” in the eighteenth-century British colonies. Historians have noticed how eighteenth-century evangelism flourished among the British colonists as well as in the British Isles. The similarities of both Franciscan popular missions in the Hispanic world and Protestant religious revivalism in Britain and its North American colonies become more obvious when comparing their fiery sermons and charismatic methods to convert their listeners for their salvation.2 The Franciscan solution towards salvation was 2. There is a vast literature on the “great awakenings,” in British North America. See, for instance, Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 2007); and Frank Lambert, Inventing the “Great Awakening” (Princeton, N.J. and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1999). Scholars still need to explore the similarities of both Protestant and Catholic itinerant revivalist movements.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

235

twofold. A Franciscan missionary from the College of Querétaro unambiguously asserted that men and women were expected to “attend the sermons, and . . . make a good confession.”3 The previous chapter discussed the logistics of popular missions and their aims; by focusing on preaching this chapter explores its content. Through the spoken word, clerics shaped religious beliefs and established procedures to motivate listeners to adopt virtuous behavior morally, socially, and politically and to eschew vices. Even if in early modern America and Europe religious knowledge was already disseminated through the written word, as texts were written, printed, and distributed across the Atlantic, it was received mostly through preaching. As Arnold Hunt points out in his study of English preachers in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the written word did not save souls “because it lacked the converting power of the spoken voice.” Although ephemeral, preaching was still the most powerful tool to transmit messages to wide audiences.4 Hence, by studying missionary sermons and pláticas (both religious discourses delivered to the public, the former more elaborate than the latter), this chapter examines the social and moral spirit that circulated in the colegios de propaganda fide and the message delivered by missionaries in their preaching. The material produced for missionary preaching aimed at inspiring people to return to the Church’s orthodoxy. In this sense, it was an oratory distinct from the traditional, panegyric sermon commonly preached and printed in the Hispanic world. While panegyric sermons idealized relevant individuals as examples of holiness and as Catholic references for other clerics and non-religious members of society to follow, the missionary sermon was preached and written to educate and to bring repentance to attendees.5 Most sermons printed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries belonged to the panegyric genre or focused on highlighting a religious festivity. A study of printed sermons in New Spain in this period shows that the number of sermons published to educate and reform Catholics pales in comparison to panegyric oratory.6 Stylistically, panegyric sermon writers commonly relied on a Baroque style that favored florid discourse difficult to decipher by audiences. By the

3. “Platica para las Calles Combidando a la Mission,” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, fol. 1: “[P]ara sacaros del estado miserable en q os hallais, y para dispertaros de ese sueño tan pesado como peligroso.” “oigais las vozes q os damos, q acudais a los Sermones; y q os dispongais para hazer una buena Confesion.” 4. Arnold Hunt, The Art of Preaching: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590– 1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 10. 5. On panegyric sermons, see Mónica Díaz, Indigenous Writings from the Convent: Negotiating Ethnic Autonomy in Colonial Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010), 111–112. 6. Statistical data on printed sermons comes from Herrejón Peredo, Del sermón al discurso cívico, 19.

236

To Sin No More

eighteenth century, reformist contemporaries complained that sermons had turned into public fora in which arrogant men bragged of their scholarship and wisdom with long, dull speeches filled with incomprehensible jargon and Latinisms. Thus, reducing panegyric sermons was a first step towards reform. By the late 1600s, the Roman Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith and the Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide showed their preference for plain speech with a moral and social content. The apostolic colleges were a response intended to reintroduce the social and moral spirit that missionaries believed should characterize official religious oratory. Behind the scenes was an orchestrated attempt by ecclesiastical theologians and authorities to introduce a religious speech that centered on the reformation of believers. Because Franciscan apostolic colleges specialized in training novices and friars in moral theology, “so necessary to instruct, direct, and govern the conscience with rectitude, and a sound doctrine,” the commissary general of the Indies reminded his friars in 1727, ecclesiastical authorities imposed a ban on panegyric sermons to collegiate friars who preached in their missions to Catholics.7 Even when the prohibition was relaxed in the last decades of the 1700s, collegiate missionaries were still required to include points of Christian doctrine in any sermons that did not specifically address morality or matters of faith.8 To carry out their colossal enterprise, in addition to thoughtful planning and conspicuous spectacle, friars polished their speeches to impose their own definition of what it meant to be a good Christian. The spoken word mattered. In a period when literacy rates were low, these public speeches were the most important means of mass communication used to mold religious beliefs and convey moral, social, and political virtues. Since popular missions were short-lived events, missionaries believed that horrific tales of eternal damnation would have a stronger, longer impact over their audiences. This does not mean that missionaries hid the loving aspect of God. On the contrary, what seems as a contradictory discourse of fearing a loving God was purposely built around the emotional call for contrition and a commitment to sin no more. Mission preaching, while catechetical, was intentionally emotional. Franciscan missionaries knew that a message of fear and love would have longer-lasting effects than if their only focus were on the loving God.

7. Chapter 3 of this book showed that morality content grew so important in the training of the colleges that religious were required to complete two years of specialization in moral theology and to attend mandatory conferences on the same in addition to the customary three years of theology. Quote is in second patent by Fray Juan de Soto, Commissary General of the Cismontane Family and of the Indies, to all religious, San Francisco of Madrid, July 10, 1727, LPZEAV, fol. 128v: “tan necesario para instruir, dirigir, y governar las consiencias con rectitud, y sana doctrina.” 8. Auto de visita of Fray Bartolomé Manesses, former provincial minister of Michoacán, September 15, 1790, LEC, fol. 160v.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

237

This was in line with political theories of the time. Early modern authorities relied on a carrot-and-stick mechanism to secure harmony and loyalty among the king’s subjects. As Alejandro Cañeque points out, “lacking effective means to exercise power, the skillful manipulation of royal emotions, above all love and anger, appears as a highly efficient technology of power that creates in the subjects a predisposition toward obedience based on the threat of punishment and the hope for mercy.”9 In any case, Franciscan missionary rhetoric instigated fear and guilt to facilitate repentance, engaging in what one scholar called a “macabre pedagogy.”10 Ultimately, these Franciscan missionaries left an imprint, even if ephemeral, on their parishioners’ minds. Franciscan missionaries from the colleges imposed their own precepts to bring eternal salvation through crafted discourse that reflected intense preparation and meditation. They spent long hours in college libraries preparing the content and eloquence of their own orations in written form by reading handwritten and published mission guides, sermons, and pláticas. As discussed in Chapter 3, friars were greatly dedicated to the study of moral theology to reform the customs of Christians. Taking into account the various administrative and spiritual occupations of the missionaries, crafting sermons could take decades of painstaking work. Because preparation was arduous, missionaries were particularly careful to safeguard their writings from theft, fires, or rain. It is therefore not surprising that a large quantity of these preaching materials has survived in Franciscan archives. Some sermons and pláticas were kept as loose-leafed collections and others were stitched together in leather bindings. Bound books were more manageable and portable, and consequently easier to preserve than their loose-leaf counterparts. Currently, Franciscan archives that hold the colleges’ repositories in Celaya (Querétaro), Barcelona (Escornalbóu), Santiago (Herbón), Tarija (Tarija), and Zapopan (Zacatecas) are rich in loose and bound sermons, pláticas, preaching guides, and draft versions. Preaching material was also recyclable, and in some cases, sermons

9. Alejandro Cañeque, “The Emotions of Power: Love, Anger, and Fear, or How to Rule the Spanish Empire,” in Javier Villa-Flores, Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, eds., Emotions and Daily Life in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014), quote on p. 115. 10. Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 373. William Taylor points out that some late eighteenth-century priest handbooks eroded the fear message to emphasize “his [God’s] benevolence, patience, and great charity even if his love was met with ingratitude.” He points out that these manuals confronted the message in Montenegro’s Itinerario para párrocos that endorsed “corporal punishment and emphasis on the priest as judge.” The Fourth Provincial Mexican Council highlighted the role of the priest as a loving teacher. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 161–162, 169. Since popular missions mainly addressed sinners and recidivism, whom the loving preacher and loving God could not stop from sinning, Franciscan missionaries instead continued building on the rhetoric of fear and condemnation to prevent relapse.

238

To Sin No More

were passed on to other users. Some were even reused until the twentieth century. Certainly, many were lost. Fray Antonio de Herosa’s first book of sermons was lost to a fire during a popular mission in Galicia in May 1745. In a later compilation, he recounted the loss of clothing, religious jewelry, paintings, and books. The friar especially regretted the loss of an irreplaceable manuscript comprised of sixty mission sermons that took sixteen years to write. In spite of his guardianship of the college of Herbón and illnesses, he painstakingly wrote another book containing thirty-six sermons for the missions, Easter, and Lent.11 This typology of material comprises the principal source for this chapter. While most citations come from sermons written by friars stationed in the Queretaran colegio, sermons found in other abovementioned archives have a similar format, content, and purpose. Sermons and pláticas were written and preached in the vernacular, although citations from the scriptures, Church Fathers, theological and philosophical treatises, and Roman and Greek classics were usually in Latin. While we may never know to what extent the written word aligned with what was actually preached, we certainly know that the ideas in the sermons and pláticas circulated inside and outside the communities. Not all preachers put their orations in a written format, but those who did certainly relied on other sermons, preaching guides, cases of conscience, and examples. Itinerant missionaries brought written sermons with them on their preaching tours and perused these texts to craft the oral versions. Moreover, because most sermons in this study were kept in manuscript format and never underwent the customary review/censorship process before publication, they were arguably closer to the preached word than printed sermons. Some evidence on the similarities between the written sermon and its oral version comes from Inquisition records, such as when preachers were accused of heterodox content in their preaching. For example, in 1711, Fray Ángel García Duque, at the time guardian of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, was denounced by Antonio Pérez de Espinosa, vicar, ecclesiastical judge, and commissary of the Inquisition in Querétaro, for a sermon preached on the day of the Holy Cross. The accuser solicited revocation of García Duque’s licenses to preach and confess because Antonio Pérez asserted that García Duque’s sermon falsely accused secular clerics and Dominicans of scandalous behaviors and exposed their internal conflicts during the Corpus Christi festivities, which was detrimental to the Church’s image. Antonio Pérez solicited Father García Duque’s written 11. Fray Antonio de Herosa in his introduction to his “Libro de sermones del P. Antonio de Herosa del Colegio de Herbón,” APS, file 177. Some books of sermons and pláticas were signed by their authors and/or successive users or have distinct writings from different periods. See, for instance, “Libro de doctrinas para mission,” APS, file 183, College of Herbón; and “Manual predicable de misiones del P. Bernardo Bernárdez de Herbón, 1822,” APS, file 184, College of Herbón. The latter manual was used by parish priests after 1864.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

239

sermon to support his claim, because “as is his habit, Fr. Angel neither says anything that he does not write, nor writes anything that has not been brought to maturity.”12 The charges were nonetheless dismissed. In addition to their doctrinal purpose to convert nominal Catholics, written sermons and pláticas were also used as textbooks for training missionaries. Many studies of sermons have taken a literary approach. I study sermons from a socio-historical perspective to analyze their impact on the culture of the time, and pertinent to both religious and laity. Through sermons we may better understand the missionaries’ views of social, political, and moral issues and their connection with the society in which they preached. Scholars seem to agree that most sermons were written (and some published) first and foremost with a subsidiary meaning for the religious. In other words, they were intended to train other preachers.13 We have a few cases of sermons preached during missions being bound and printed as sermonarios by well-known preachers such as Jesuit Pedro de Calatayud (1689–1773), Dominican Anto-

12. I have found Stefano Dall’Aglio’s work particularly helpful in understanding the interconnectivities between preaching, oral cultures, orality, and written texts; see, for instance, his “Sermons from Orality to Writing in Early Modern Italy,” The Italianist 34, no. 3 (October 2014): 463–477; and “Voices under Trial: Inquisition, Abjuration, and Preachers’ Orality in Sixteenth-century Italy,” Renaissance Studies 31, no. 1 (2015): 25– 42. Like Arnold Hunt, he also points out that in studying preaching one needs to keep in mind not only the preacher and its message (the text) but the audience, the temporal and spatial context, the language(s), and the reactions to the sermons. (I thank my colleague Manuela Bragagnolo for these references.) “Denuncia de un sermón que predicó el dia 14 de septiembre de 1711 el Rdo P.e Guardian del Convento de la Sta Cruz de Querétaro, Fr. Ángel García Duque, en la fiesta de la exaltación de la Sta Cruz,” 1711, AGN, Inquisición, vol. 750: “[S]egun su costumbre ni el R. P. Fr. Angel dice cosa que no escriva, ni escrive cosa que no sea a su vez con previa madurez.” 13. Dr. Octavio Luna first suggested this to me in a personal communication during my research for this book in the Franciscan Archives in Celaya, Guanajuato. See also Luna, La encarnación y la pasión de Jesucristo en los Sermones de San Antonio de Padua, Studia Antoniana 47 (Roma Edizioni Antonianum, 2003), 35–63. Federico Palomo also suggests that bound sermons had a pedagogic aim instead of being actually preached. Palomo, “Malos panes para buenas hambres: Comunicación e identidad religiosa de los misioneros de interior en la península Ibérica (siglos XVI–XVIII),” Penélope 28 (2003): 17. See also Hilary Dansey Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age: A Study of Some Preachers of the Reign of Philip III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 30, 35–37. Gwendolyn Barnes, “Sermons and the Discourse of Power: The Rhetoric of Religious Oratory in Spain (1550– 1900)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1988), 17, 26–27, 94–95, claims that “[s]ermonarios were published for a variety of reasons. In the first place, they served as models for ‘novice’ preachers to follow. (They were intended for veteran preachers as much as novices.)” (pp. 94–95). Châtellier points out in The Religion of the Poor, 99, that “Father Calatayud—who must have been a bit of a woman-hater—sought to show the young religious who were being trained by reading his notebooks that women were just as guilty as men of the crime he was prosecuting so ardently.” I contend that sermons were written as a result of preaching activities and used during itinerant evangelical campaigns. These, of course, became the structure or outline for other missionaries to write their own sermons.

240

To Sin No More

nio Garcés (1701–1773), and the Franciscan Capuchins Miguel de Santander (1744–1831) and Diego José de Cádiz (1743–1801). Their sermons circulated widely and could be found in the colleges’ libraries. I have perused archival manuscript sermons written by propaganda fide missionaries, mostly bound but also a few sermones sueltos (loose-leaf sermons). Bound sermons usually, but not always, were written by a single author, and could have been bound at a later date for better preservation. Franciscan colegio missionaries likely attempted publication of their own sermons. Perhaps considering publication, in the last page of his bound collection of sermons handwritten in the late 1680s, missionary Fray José Díez submitted the contents to the authority of the Catholic Church and respective doctors, “imploring whoever reads them to pray for me,” and signing the book “to comply with the Holy Council of Trent and our constitutions.”14 Yet sermons were not only adaptable to multiple users but also to diverse audiences in several contexts. Because sermons lacked references to specific locations or personalities, but rather made allusions to an unnamed place or gentleman so-and-so (“N.” or “&”), they could have been preached in a number of places, underscoring their portability, for instance, from Spain to America. In an undated sermon, an anonymous missionary advised his fellow readers that “if you preach this plática in a small place or town[,] you may say what follows however you please or in another plática, better suited to the character of the rural poor.”15 In any case, I have not found any of these bound sermons by propaganda fide in print. Instead only a handful were printed, and these mainly in the nineteenth century. Most missionaries had already acquired preaching experience in their home provinces and colleges in Spain before arriving in the Americas. Some brought books and manuscripts, particularly their own handwritten sermon books as well as missionary guides and printed sermons that widely circulated in Europe and America, with them. Fray José Antonio Bernad reused sermons he preached in Spain before he sailed for Mexico in 1749. His three sermons for the souls in purgatory were preached in Zaragoza and nearby areas before

14. See the last page of Fray José Díez, “Libro de sermones del P. Fr. José Díez (1686–1689),” Querétaro 1686–1690, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 1: “[S]uplicando a el q.e los leyere, ruege á Dios por mi.” 15. Most of the mission sermons that I have used did not refer to a particular place, as they used the capitalized N or the ampersand so the preacher could change the place where it was preached. In the sermon announcing the mission, an anonymous Franciscan asked for “a que se yunten, todos en assistencia en estos dias; los Señores, &, o cabezas & y lo restante de este Pueblo o ciudad &.,” in “Sermón preparatorio de misión.” Anonymous, “Pláticas sobre los mandamientos, novísimos, pecado y otros varios,” n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 18, unfoliated: “Si predicares esta Platica en algun Pueblo, o lugar corto puedes decir esto que sigue en donde te pareciere o sino decirlo en otra platica, mas acomodada al genio de los Pobres rusticos.”

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

241

his departure from Aragón.16 In fact, American missionary preaching heavily borrowed from an intellectual, religious Atlantic world, as the previous chapters have shown.

Ars Praedicandi The science of oratory—homiletics, the art of religious preaching, or ars praedicandi—revitalized preaching as a technique to convert Christians since the Council of Trent (1545–1563). In its fourth session, the council decreed that bishops, archbishops, and priests should preach to the people for their “spiritual nourishment.”17 Borrowing from classical rhetorical topos, preaching had “to teach, to delight, and to motivate,” the preachers’ three essential tasks to impact their audiences. The aim of the mission sermon, theorists emphasized, was to instruct listeners in the rudiments of the Catholic faith and reform their customs. The message had to be poignant in order to affect parishioners’ feelings. Besides carefully crafting the content of their sermons, preachers also polished the aesthetics. According to this ars praedicandi, preaching was an art measured in words as well as in gestures. The campaigns of conversion that the Catholic Church launched after Trent required masters and transmitters of God’s word and people prepared in the art of preaching and theology.18 Printed and manuscript sermons and preaching guides circulated across the Atlantic to foster evangelical ministry in the Americas as well as Europe. Theorists wrote these guides to teach future preachers and missionaries the appropriate content to communicate and how to do so. Fray Luis de Granada (1504–1588) and Fray Martín de Velasco (c. 1621–?) are two outstanding authors of early-modern European ars praedicandi used in Spanish America. Missionaries and novices consulted the sermonarios (anthologies of sermons), books of pláticas, and reference collections by such authors and others at colegio libraries. Preaching and mission guides offered the friars enough material to draft their own oratory from an extensive pool of topics that included cornerstone themes of Catholic doctrine such as the Ten Commandments and spiritual devotions to the Virgin Mary in her various dedications (or avoca-

16. Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” 1746–1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2. 17. See Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 15–16. Nevertheless, the ars praedicandi has its roots in the Middle Ages. See Luna, La encarnación y la pasión de Jesucristo. 18. Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age, 60–61; Barnes, “Sermons and the Discourse of Power,” 28–29: “[E]nseñar, deleitar y mover”; and Carmen Fernández Rodríguez, Delia Rosado Martín, and Fermín Marín Barriguete, “La sociedad del siglo XVIII a través del sermonario: Aproximación a su estudio,” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea 4 (1983): 35.

242

To Sin No More

tions) and to the saints. Moreover, religious also distilled preparatory information from sermons, pláticas, and references centered on social, political, and moral issues. In all cases, sermon authors wrote extensively about sexuality, profane spectacles, and gender relations, and to a lesser extent about socioeconomic and political subjects.19 College librarians commonly shelved the books on ars praedicandi and mission science under their own specific categories, which comprised the largest section on library bookshelves. Friars could easily consult works by mission celebrities such as the abovementioned Pedro de Calatayud, Antonio Garcés, Miguel de Santander, and José de Cádiz as well as the Italian Jesuit Paolo Segneri and the Spanish Capuchin Pedro de Caravantes; the Pláticas Dominicales of the enlightened bishop of Barcelona, José Climent; Fray Luis de Granada’s Sermones Morales y Panegíricos; and former Queretaran missionary, Fray Francisco de la Concepción Barbosa, who published his Manual de Predicadores (Preachers’ Handbook) in 1728, after transferring to the Provincia de la Santa Evangelio de Mexico. These works and others carefully codified the oratorical techniques for apprentices to produce their own sermons. Students of mission theory were undoubtedly aware of the content of colegio libraries, where they spent hours preparing and attending philosophy and theology classes, and moral theology conferences. In addition to the printed sermonarios and manuals stockpiled in the libraries, individuals could also consult locally produced orations in manuscript form stored in the college archives. Missionaries synthesized theoretical treatises after careful study and analysis, selecting and writing their own speeches before their departure for the missions.20 Good preaching required experience, talent for performing in front of crowds, and meticulous preparation. Before departure, missionaries spent long hours elaborating sermons, drawing from official theology and ecclesiastical precepts. They familiarized themselves with the message to avoid discrepancies and to prevent errors that could bring them to the attention of ecclesiastical authorities who policed and chastised unorthodox ideas. As the 1711 Inquisition case of Fray Ángel García Duque shows, preachers were responsible for

19. Mission sermonarios included a repertoire of sermons and pláticas with a moral and social emphasis, including themes such as lewdness, bad habits, gallantry, drunkenness, proper attire, dances, comedies, gender relations, and gambling. 20. By 1815, the library at the Colegio de la Santa Cruz of Querétaro kept over 1,500 books on preaching and missionary sciences in sections titled, “Predicables Romancistas Sencillos, y Duplicados,” and “Predicables Latinos Sencillos, y Duplicados,” “Colegio de la Santa Cruz: Inventario de la Biblioteca 1815.” By 1800, the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City held over 1,800 preaching and mission books under the category, “Predicables, Catequistas, Retórica Sacra.” Geiger, “The Library of the Apostolic College of San Fernando,” 432. The library at the colegio in Tarija was also rich in homily material with 783 books labeled as “Retorica, sermonarios, catecismos y pastorales,” in an 1879 inventory. Calzavarini, Breve guía histórica, 90.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

243

the content of their sermons, which in some cases caught the attention of the custodians of Catholic orthodoxy. Memorizing seems to have been discouraged, particularly for less-experienced preachers, to avoid getting tongue-tied when nervous or forgetting parts of discourses. Naturally, the issue of possible improvisation in the pulpit raises questions over the trustworthiness of the manuscript sermons as sources of actual preaching. However, I want to emphasize that nonetheless, unpublished sermons are the closest record of the actual preaching event, notwithstanding subsequent embellishments and additions; Latinisms and footnotes or margin notes are easily identified.21 As part of the reforms in the second half of the eighteenth century, preachers dropped Latinisms from sermons. Early texts relied on long Latin quotes that to some degree disrupted the fluidity of the discourse. The Fourth Council of Mexico of 1771 introduced changes in preaching, including the elimination of quotes in Latin, which the audience was unlikely to have understood. As the century advanced, sermons gradually substituted a more transparent vernacular for a language dense with Latinisms, technicalities, and pomposity.22 The format of mission sermons from the colleges resembled the traditional structure: a theme and an introduction, followed by the body of the sermon divided into three parts in honor of the Holy Trinity, and its conclusion.23 By the time a missionary faced his audience, he carried the knowledge of years of study, preaching in the monastic churches, and long hours in the preparatory study of oratory subjects, guides, and sermonarios. Before being allowed to participate in popular missions, any inexperienced friar was required to practice his sermons on Christian doctrine and moral theology in the privacy of his community, where he rehearsed “the way to form his voice, compose his actions, and other necessary requisites leading to such ministry,” in front of his often critical confrères. Only then could experienced missionaries approve friars to conduct missions, which commonly mixed neophytes with veterans.24 Missionaries departed from the colleges with their written sermons

21. Barnes and Smith pose the idea that preachers relied on scholarship, techniques, and wisdom in their preaching. They drafted sermons that served as their preaching guides. They also claim that memorizing and reading sermons were frowned upon by the theorists of preaching. Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age, 31–32; Barnes, “Sermons and the Discourse of Power,” 100–102. Barnes argues that the published sermons were much more crafted, corrected, and scholarly argued than their handwritten and perhaps preached originals. 22. The sermons under study follow Herrejón’s ideas that in the eighteenth century, New Spain’s sermons show the transition from the florid Baroque to restrained modernity, Herrejón Peredo, Del sermón al discurso cívico, 89–90. 23. Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age. 24. Auto de visita of Fray Bartolomé Masenes, former provincial minister of Jalisco, August 20, 1787, LEC, fol. 152v: “egercitandose en el modo de formar las voces componer sus acciones, y demas requisitos necesarios, y conducentes á dho Ministerio.”

244

To Sin No More

and reference books carried on the backs of mules. While there was space for impromptu performances, missionaries used their years of scholarship and acquired techniques to communicate to the masses. Rhetorical strategies varied in the missionary modus operandi. Drawing from mission guides and sermons, I highlight major rhetorical devices employed by the Franciscan missionaries that other scholars have also identified in the ars praedicandi. In his study of the Franciscan preaching tradition, Corrie Norman convincingly demonstrates that authority derived from God himself was essential to legitimize Franciscan oratory. To credibly portray themselves as the sole mediators between the natural and supernatural worlds, since Saint Francis and the early Franciscans, friars justified their authority by appealing to New Testament as well as Old Testament figures and to their God. Following this practice, college missionaries usually compared themselves to Moses, apostles, prophets, angels, and in some cases to Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit. As one missionary wrote in his sermón de anuncio (opening sermon) in the mid-eighteenth century, it was “only the Lord’s virtue that sent them.” Therefore, he warned, to scorn missionaries’ words was to despise God’s words.25 Missionaries claimed that God spoke through them. Even at the turn of the nineteenth century, Fray José de San Martín alerted his listeners that when he spoke, “the Lord himself [. . .] speaks.”26 As the rhetoric ironically went, by showing humility, clergymen revealed themselves to the audience as insignificant, ignorant, and unworthy of their God, and thus, not fit for the sacred ministry. Missionaries intentionally called attention to their low status and lack of merit to highlight their ministry as accepting the difficult task of serving as God’s direct emissaries. Paradoxically, this modest discourse of the undeserving friar did not contradict the sense of authority and righteousness that emanated from the preacher’s words but rather reinforced it.27

25. “Sermon del Anuncio,” in Hernández, “Libro de sermones,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 9, 253v: “La virtud sola del señor que los embiava.” Indeed, they gave their listeners the idea that their God sent them to the Christian republic “no solo . . . para beneficio de los vivos, sino para alivio, y refrigerio de las venditas animas del purgatorio.” In ibid., 251v. Corrie Norman, “The Franciscan Preaching Tradition and Its Sixteenth-Century Legacy: The Case of Cornelio Musso,” The Catholic Historical Review 85, no. 2 (April 1999), 217. 26. “Platica de Ronda,” in San Martín, “Sermones morales y pláticas del P. Fr. José de San Martín,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 11, 4–5: “[E]l mismo S.r es quien os habla, bien conoceis.” 27. See, for instance, “Sermón de introducción para la Misión,” in Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” 1746–1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, 153; “Platica de Ronda,” in San Martín, “Sermones morales y pláticas del P. Fr. José de San Martín,” n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 11, 6–7; and “Sermón de Anuncio,” in ibid., 14.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

245

Theorists and missionaries alike were concerned with conveying the religious message to the largest number of listeners. For techniques in tailoring a comprehensible, straightforward sermon, college missionaries drew from a long preaching tradition when writing their own homilies. Missionaries found inspiration in their founder Francis of Assisi and other early Franciscans. Quoting from the Bible, the rule of Saint Francis pointed out that preaching had to use a “balanced and sincere language (cf. Psalms 11:7; 17:31) to benefit and edify the people.” Distancing from the panegyric sermon commonly preached from the early modern altars, Franciscan missionary preaching stood out for its “moral-penitential” approach that echoed the order’s oratorical origins in the thirteenth century. Following the order’s rule, early Franciscan preaching was aimed at describing “vices and virtues, punishment and glory,” in preparation for the moment of confession and penance. Franciscan preaching therefore was intended to move listeners to convert. This emphasis on penitential preaching that relied on vivid examples to foster reform had distinguished Franciscans from their late medieval Dominican contemporaries’ more elaborate, abstract, and scholastic sermons. For Franciscans, eloquence and comprehensibility were features to address when crafting a sermon. Early on Francis and others had sanctioned brevity in their speeches, a recurring theme since Saint Paul: people should be reached “with brevity in the sermon, because the Lord used brief words on earth (cf. Rom 9, 28).” A contemporary of Francis, Fray Anthony of Padua (1195–1231) reminded other preachers that preaching should ultimately change lives through “sincere, perfect, and durable conversion.”28 These susceptibilities caught up with the mission sermon throughout the early modern period in Europe and moved to the Americas with the Jesuits and Franciscans. Missionary guides often suggested various means of preventing tedium and exciting the senses of sermon-goers. In the early 1700s, veteran missionary Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús proposed in his mission guide that missionaries alternate days of preaching the Christian doctrine “with clarity and brevity” for half an hour with teaching how to pray for fifteen minutes. Friars were encouraged to avoid long sermons (less than an hour) “because some [listeners] usually leave.” For many parishioners, “an hour of sermon feels like a year of martyrdom and three hours of comedy like fifteen minutes,” reported one

28. Regla bulada, 1223, in Rodríguez Herrera, Los escritos de San Francisco de Asís, 590–591: “[E]n la predicación que hacen, sea ponderado y sincero su lenguaje (cf. Sal 11,7; 17, 31), para provecho y edificación del pueblo, anunciándoles los vicios y las virtudes, la pena y la gloria, con brevedad de sermón; porque palabra abreviada hizo el Señor sobre la tierra (cf. Rom 9, 28)” (emphasis in original). Norman, “The Franciscan Preaching Tradition,” 210–215, quote on pp. 210–211, and Saint Anthony of Padua’s quote on p. 215.

246

To Sin No More

friar in early seventeenth-century Spain.29 Franciscan authorities also worried that long evening sermons could extend the missions to late hours, which they feared would lead to sexual encounters.30 Mission guides also urged missionaries to alternate sermons with explanations of Catholic doctrine. Thus the anonymous author of a 1748 mission handbook encouraged the mission duo or trio to tailor their speeches carefully, avoiding long clarifications and digressions that only served to boost the friars’ self-importance. The same guide emphasized the catechetical and reformist meanings of Franciscan popular missions. From a content perspective, the catechetical instruction suggested in this handbook (and in others) did not differ from Franciscan indoctrination in the Americas since the sixteenth century. As the guide pointed out, one missionary taught plainly and briefly (never longer than thirty minutes) the ten commandments, Catholic Church commandments, mysteries of the Church (including the Holy Trinity and resurrection), and concluded with devotion to the rosary or the way of the cross. This catechetical teaching should introduce “some brief honest tales to imprint their explanation on the memories of the rustics.”31 This form of tandem preaching and instructing was common practice elsewhere as the Tarija guide suggested. In 1749, for instance, missionaries from the Discalced college in Pachuca—Frays Miguel González del Pinal, Francisco Arrien, and Josef Zapata—also alternated their preaching in such ways that their message could reach all listeners, regardless of their education.32

29. ForMargil: “[N]o pasen mucho de hora; por que algunos se suelen retirar.” See also MTarija, 12; Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age, 10: “[U]na hora de sermón parece un año de martirio, y tres de una comedia, un cuarto de hora.” 30. Auto de visita of Fray José de Sori, provincial minister of Michoacán, Convento de San Francisco, Querétaro, September 6, 1793, LEC, fol. 166v. Fears about late-night sermons also appear in the following suspended proceedings: Auto de visita of Fray Pablo Sánchez, former definidor of Michoacán, Convento de San Francisco of Querétaro, September 20, 1796, LEC, fol. 176r. Barnes, “Sermons and the Discourse of Power,” 12–13. 31. Dir1748, fols. 6r–7r: “[I]ntroduciendo algunos cuentecitos honestos para imprimir en las memorias de los Rusticos su explicacion, y reduciendolo todo â solo espacio de media hora, lo demas parece amor proprio.” For the content of the sixteenth-century Franciscan catechism, which included the decalogue, the Catholic Church commandments, holy communion, the seven mortal sins, fourteen corporal and spiritual works of mercy, the five senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch), and the virtues, see for early Mexico, Louise M. Burkhart, “The ‘Little Doctrine” and Indigenous Catechesis in New Spain,” Hispanic American Historical Review 94, no. 2 (2014): 167–206; and for early Peru, Alan Durston, Pastoral Quechua: The History of Christian Translation in Colonial Peru, 1550–1650 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). (I thank my colleagues Max Deardorff and José Luis Paz Nomey for suggesting the latter work.) 32. See “Mision de los H.s P.s Fr. Miguel Gonzalez del Pinal, Fr. Fran.co Arrien y Fr. Josef Zapata en 6. Pueblos. 1749,” in “Papeles varios. Esta caja contiene principalmente certificaciones de misiones (siglos XVIII y XIX), pero también hay otros con diversas noticias. De todos ellos hay un índice reciente y muy completo,” AHPSEM, box 210, unfoliated. For Tarija see MTarija, 12–13.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

247

More than the formalities of who did what during preaching, scholars have been keener to identify what and how. Throughout the eighteenth century, mission preaching departed from the aesthetics that depicted Baroque oratory. Preachers and missionaries in the seventeenth century were commonly discouraged from introducing theological or ideological innovations in their sermonizing and pláticas. In Baroque-style preaching, oratory techniques first and foremost focused on how to preach rather than the sermon’s content. Avoiding doctrinal and theological novelties, Baroque preaching theorists preferably embellished their words rhetorically and aesthetically to attract the audience’s attention. As one scholar of Spanish oratory points out, “the preacher’s skill, then, resided in his ability to communicate the familiar in exciting new ways.” In the Age of Enlightenment, preaching theorists and critics emphasized the need for content unencumbered from decorative elements that obscured meaning. This was the case for mission sermons, which had to stress the pedagogic objective of doctrinal and moral themes in addition to being exhortative in bringing transformation. In this sense, eighteenth-century mission sermons complemented catechetical imagery displayed in sacred temples and popular devotions as well as in frontier missions—a visual, pedagogical culture that covered religious buildings in Spain and Spanish America with murals, paintings, ornaments, and statutes focused on enticing listeners and viewers to convert. The missionary guide from the Tarija college recommended that the preacher keep a clean skull in his left hand and a torch in the right and his companions hold a crucified Christ while preaching the sermon on death. The anonymous author of this guide endorsed such practices “to expose them [audience members] to some palpable disappointment, or to do some extraordinary diligence to awaken them and move them to true penance.” Altogether, sermons, pláticas, and visual imagery such as banners, crosses, rosaries, skulls, fire, and drawings of condemned persons aimed at indoctrinating those who were perceived as illiterate rustic people.33 It might seem contradictory that the

33. See, for instance, Barnes, “Sermons and the Discourse of Power,” 12–13, 42, 47; quote is on pp. 12–13. In his study of eighteenth-century missionary preaching in Spain, Charles C. Noel points out that the message was the central element of the art of preaching, unlike the previous century, which had been characterized by the exaggerated embellishment of the sermons. Eighteenth-century sermons thus focused on moral education and teaching Christian social values, an aspect that had waned in the Golden Age. Noel, “Missionary Preachers in Spain,” 874–876. For colonial Mexico, the best work of this transition is Herrejón Peredo, Del sermón al discurso cívico. For the use of religious imagery as a conversion tool that complements sermons, see Mtarija, 22–25: “[P]ara ponerlos a la vista algún desengaño palpable, o hacer alguna extraordinaria diligencia para despertarlos y moverlos a la verdadera penitencia”; Robert H. Jackson, Conflict and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: The Augustinian War on and Beyond the Chichimeca Frontier (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013); Paola Corti, Fernando Guzmán, and Magdalena Pereira, “El indio

248

To Sin No More

moral, penitential missionary preaching during popular missions mixed a direct, clear language typical of “enlightened” sermons with theatrical paraphernalia more characteristic of the Baroque period. As mentioned in Chapter 4 and highlighted here, preaching shifted throughout the century to a more straightforward, moralizing oratory within a visually and musically embellished context. Particularly in the last half of the eighteenth century and thereafter, more missionaries like Fray José de San Martín, who arrived in the colegio at Querétaro from Spain in 1785, championed plain-style preaching. He preached to his listeners with “clear truths, without beating about the bush; with ingenious terms and clear clauses. [He advocated] . . . a clear style that reveals the fervor and zeal of our souls instead of the complex discourses of a mundane wisdom.” To the new cadre of missionaries, only clarity would attract individuals to the missions and thus their aim would be fulfilled: “to convert the most hardened sinners, and to cut the deepest roots of their bad habits.” According to one scholar’s study of the transition that religious oratory underwent in the eighteenth century, Father San Martín’s sermons were “enlightened,” as his language was clear and straightforward, meant to be comprehensible to the general public.34 Contemporary observers remarked on the bluntness of the missionaries’ sermons and speeches during their popular missions. Around the same time of San Martín’s sermons, the priest at Tacámbaro in central New Spain wrote about Franciscan missionary oratory as follows: [T]he words that came out of their mouths were light beams that illuminated all the world and woke those who slept in the Tenebrae [darkness] of sin and in the shades of Death. The theme of their sermons was the most appropriate and pertinent to the needs of these Souls. [Missionaries] were maintained and supported by the quintessence of the Sacred Scriptures, the Sound Doctrine of the Holy Fathers of the Church, and finally inspired by their exemplary Virtues, and taught under

trifronte de Parinacota: un enigma iconográfico,” Colonial Latin American Review 20, no. 3 (2011): 381–400; and Fernando Guzmán, Marta Maier, Magdalena Pereira, et al., “Programa iconográfico y material en las pinturas murales de la iglesia de San Andrés de Pachama, Chile,” Colonial Latin American Review 25, no. 2 (2016): 245–264. 34. “Plática de Anuncio,” in San Martín, “Sermones morales y pláticas del P. Fr. José de San Martín,” n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 11, 15–16: “[N]ingun esmero pondremos, en que los sermones estén con mucho artificio; ni que el estilo sea eloquente, ni elevado; ni que los conceptos sean subtiles, ni delicados; ni mucho menos en que la Rethorica sea, como en el dia se usa. Predicaremos si, verdades claritas, si ambages, ni rodeos, con terminos ingenuos, y clausulas llanas; con un estilo claro; qe más bien descubra el fervor, y zelo de ntros espiritus, que los artificios discursos de una sabiduria mundana.” “esto es de convertir los pecadores mas endurecidos, y de cortar hasta las mas profundas raizes de sus malos habitos.” See Herrejón Peredo, Del sermón al discurso cívico.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

249

similes and expressions, although very smooth and plain, but very adapted to the way of thinking of the listeners.35

Entrenched in the dualistic nature of Christianity, missionary rhetoric used “light” and “darkness” as recurring metaphors in sermons and speeches to marshal the opposing sides of good and evil, God and Satan. Where darkness reigned, they illuminated a path towards righteousness. Because missionaries believed that sinners lived in figurative dimness, they sought to lure them into the light of their Christian message. And the religious men performed with torches, ghastly paintings, crucifixes, and skulls to create the macabre spectacle that Jean Delumeau pinpoints in his work on sin and fear in early modern Europe. They also believed that gestures and sound augmented the reactions of sermon-goers. Following guidance from the Council of Trent, friars resorted to theatrical performances complete with powerful voices and gestures to impel listeners to convert.36 An anonymous missionary said they preached with “voices like frightening thunders,” because softer tones failed to catch the attention of listeners.37 Some Franciscans admitted that such tactics startled the audience and hence sermons were often brutally straightforward. Much was at stake in the minds of the missionaries since they believed that their words might propel lifestyle changes in people living in sin who risked eternal condemnation in the flames of hell.

35. “Carta del B.r don José Gregorio Sochaga al guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz, P. Fr. Juan José Sáenz de Gumiel,” Tacámbaro, April 23, 1787, AHPFM-FCSCQ, C, file 3 (I), no. 51: “[C]ada palabra de las q.e salian de sus bocas, eran Rayos de Luz, q.e despertaban á aquellos, q.e dormian en las Tinieblas del pecado, y en las sombras de la Muerte, y que iluminaban á todo el Mundo. La materia de sus Sermones, era la mas oportuna, y correspondiente á las necesidades de estas Almas, y como estaban sostenidos, y apollados, ya con la quinta esencia de la Sagrada Escriptura, Sana Doctrina de los Santos P.P. de la Yglesia, y finalmente Animados con sus exemplares Virtudes, y dados á entender vajo unos Similes, y expresiones, aunque mui tersas, mui poposas; pero mui acomodadas á el modo de entender de los Oyentes.” 36. Smith cites a few examples of religious men preaching so adamantly and loud to their congregations that one hurt his right arm and another one died three days later “after having shouted too loudly in a sermon.” Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age, 65. A classic work that studies the historical connection of fear and sin as a means to regenerate lives and the obsession of the Catholic and Protestant churches in this regard is Delumeau, Sin and Fear. For the dualistic nature of Christianity, see Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 50. 37. “Sermón preparatorio de misión,” in Anonymous, “Pláticas sobre los mandamientos, novísimos, pecado y otros varios,” n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 18, unfoliated: “[V]oces como espantosos truenos.”

250

To Sin No More

Fear Fear was ubiquitous in Franciscan missionary discourse. In their duty to elucidate paths to conversion and salvation, missionaries emphasized the need to inculcate a “holy fear of God,” borrowing from a biblical tradition that considered fear of God as the ultimate expression of love and wisdom. According to Christian theology, fear of God served as guidance for a devout life (fear of God was “the beginning of wisdom” [Psalm 111:10]). A Judeo-Christian maxim stated that “Blessed is everyone that feareth the Lord” (Psalm 128). As emphasized by both Protestant and Catholic theologians, fear of God was a means to virtue and salvation. Precisely because popular missions and preaching were ephemeral and had a short-lived spiritual impact, missionaries focused on sinners’ intentions to reform their lives and sin no more through the sacrament of penance. Friars knew of the difficulties of complete contrition and thus pursued fear as a path to penitence (even if remorse coming from the love of God would always be welcome).38 In the mid-eighteenth century, Fray Juan Hernández lamented in a sermon against dancing how weddings with dances, bereft of “the blush, the modesty, and the holy fear of God,” led men and women to “a thousand disorders and lewdness.”39 As we will see, this Franciscan missionary message was powerful and persuasive, seeking to ensure a deeper reformation of customs for non-Christians, heretics, and Catholics gone astray. Franciscan missionaries, like other clerics, also used fear of the Devil and eternal damnation in hell to prompt conversion. To a large extent, fear of God and the Devil complemented each other as two sides of a coin. Most sermons only cited the Devil tangentially, always to invoke the causality of wrongdoing. However, Franciscans believed and taught that his existence

38. For a study of the sacrament of penance and the psychological and theological motives to remorse before the Reformation, see Tentler, Sin and Confession, 250–273. (I thank Jay Harrison for this reference.) “Attrition,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02065a.htm (accessed October 12, 2017). The biblical references cited in this article are Ecclesiasticus 1:13; 2:19 sqq., i, 28; ii, 1; ii, 19; Proverbs 14:26–27; and the Psalmist prayers (Psalms 118, 120). In the New Testament, Matthew pointed out that Christ certainly urged his followers to “fear him who can destroy both soul and body into hell” (Matthew 10:28). The quote from Psalm 128 comes from Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 5. That the theology of “fear of God” also influenced Protestant thinking, see, for instance, John Cotton (1693–1757), a Puritan cleric, in his sermon, “A Holy Fear of God and His Judgments,” preached on November 3, 1727, which explains why his listeners should fear their God, and the implications of that fear regarding their salvation or damnation; available at http://www.mountainretreatorg.net/classics/holy_ fear_judgements.shtml (accessed October 12, 2017). 39. “Sermon contra Vailes,” in Hernández, “Libro de sermones,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 9, 227: “[E]l rubor, la modestia, y el santo temor de Dios, . . . [M]il desordenes y torpezas.”

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

251

was real. In their preaching and doctrinal teachings, the missionaries followed the Augustinian theological approach to a Devil subservient to God. Accordingly, the Devil served God’s purpose to redress sinful conduct through his kingdom’s terrifying existence. In a sermon against lewd behavior written in the mid-eighteenth century, Fray José Ximénez de Jesús borrowed from Augustinian theology to assert that the Devil was like a chained dog which could only reach what the chain permitted. Thus, “the Devil can only execute what God allows him,” the missionary clarified. The Devil and his henchmen, accordingly, acted under the mandates of an omnipotent God and served his purposes. This Catholic demonology was similar to Protestants’ own ideas of Satan, who likewise borrowed from Saint Augustine’s treatises. In New England, Puritans, like the colegio Franciscan missionaries, also highlighted in their teachings that God allowed Satan to test Christian faith and to act as “the Executioner of the Wrath of God upon a sinful world.” Puritans claimed evil happened because “the Lord [. . .] permitted Satan so far to prevail as he did.” Drawing from the same sources as Fray José Ximénez de Jesús, Increase Mather (1639–1723), an influential Puritan preacher and theologian in New England, wrote in 1674 that de Devil was a prisoner with “a long Chain giveh him, and goeth with it ranging and raging up and down the World.” To Puritans like Increase Mather, his influential son Cotton Mather (1663–1728), and others, “God contained Satan’s destructive urge ‘to winnow’ humankind and then sanctified it as a mandate ‘to cleanse Away the chaffe.’” They, however, acknowledged that while God would rise victorious over Satan on the day of judgment, the final victory did not prevent individual losses. Souls were lost, Puritans thought, in the war between good and evil. The Puritan theological approach to salvation thus differed from the Catholic (and hence Franciscan) soteriology in which it presupposed that God elects those to be saved. Franciscan missionaries on the other hand believed that heaven’s door was open to everyone who converted under the umbrella of the Catholic Church. Indubitably, God’s intentions were nonetheless indecipherable to the human intellect and his actions unpredictable. Fear of God and Lucifer represented a unique whole that acknowledged the power of the creator of all things.40

40. “Sermon Dezimo octavo y primero de luxuria,” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 301: “el Demonio solo puede executar lo qe Dios le permite.” The idea that the Devil operates under the tutelage of God was at the core of the theological debates in early Christianity. Saint Augustine of Hippo was one of the first supporters of Satan’s limited power. For a good discussion of the origin of the image of the Devil in medieval Western society and his subordination to God, see Muchembled, Historia del Diablo, Siglos XII–XX, 19–47, 178–179. Quotes are from seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury sermons by Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, and John Norton, in Richard God-

252

To Sin No More

This does not mean that Franciscan missionaries vindicated the deeds of the “king of darkness” in their preaching. Missionaries celebrated the salvation of souls as God’s joy, while lamenting the Devil who, in the words of Fray José Díez in the late 1600s, “shouts because these days people let their feelings run wild in sins, gluttony, games, dances, and offenses against God.”41 For missionaries, the joy of worldly pleasures meant eternal damnation in the fires of hell. To avoid eternal punishment, the true eternal joy could only be found in the reformation of behavior and participation in confession, penitence, and truthful contrition, what religious viewed as the only means of salvation.42 The fear of eternal torment was a common theme in Christian theology since the Middle Ages. In the early thirteenth century, Saint Francis advised Christians that worldly life was but a stage towards eternal damnation and individuals had to prepare their souls and bodies for the day of their death and the day of judgment. As he pointed out in his Second Letter to the Faithful: Everyone should know that, no matter where or how a man dies, in mortal sin and without atonement (that is, if he could have atoned but did not), the devil will wrest his soul from the body and he will suffer such terrible agony and tribulation that no one can possibly imagine what it is like unless he himself has suffered so. . . . Worms will eat his body and his soul in this brief sojourn on earth, and he will go to Hell where he will suffer torment without end.43

beer, The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 91. Although Fernando Cervantes discusses the same issues and reaches the same conclusions, he shows that Quereteran friars’ Devil differed from traditional theology that granted the Devil free will, a suggestion that the sermons of this study corroborate. The measure of liberty of movement of the Devil seems to be a matter of nuance, but as Muchembled claims, God was omnipresent and omnipotent, with infinite power over all his creation, including the Devil and his henchmen. This contradicts Fernando Cervantes’ thesis that the Queretaran friars’ theology of Satan was innovative. See Cervantes, The Devil in the New World, 125–148. 41. “Dominica sexagésima. Mission. Ss.ta Cruz, 1687,” in Díez, “Libro de sermones del P. Fr. José Díez (1686–1689),” Querétaro, 1686–1690, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 1: “[D]á voces para q.e en estos dias mas se desenfrene el hombre en los pecados, y glotonerias, juegos, y bailes, y ofensas contra Dios.” 42. Fray José Díez lamented (in ibid.): “Ay de vosotros q.e gozais de los placeres del mundo, de las riquezas, de los vicios deshonestos, y de las glotonerias, q.e no es por bien tanto gozo, porque? separati estis in diem malis, estais ya en la capilla para ir a la orca del infierno, y por eso seos permiten esos regalos, y gustos del mundo, por que alla no avís de tener gusto, sino tormento eterno. . . . [P]revenirnos con la confesi- (fol. r) sion, y penit.a pidiendo á su Divina Mag.d no permita ayga ofensas en estos dias, siguiendole q.do como labrador siembra su Divina palabra, sembrando nosotros lagrimas, . . . aconsejando a los q.e están en el ocio del pecado, q.e salgan de estado tan peligroso. . . .” 43. Cited in Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 55. The entire letter in Latin and Spanish translation, with a philological analysis, appears in Rodríguez Herrera, Los escritos de San Francisco de Asís, 237–272.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

253

Details of the torments were traditionally a matter of speculation, though their veracity was unquestionable to early modern individuals no matter how gruesomely hell was described. Nothing could have a more dramatic effect than the description of hell to a fearful audience. Sermons and pláticas also included explicit and vivid descriptions of Satan’s kingdom. In one illustrative instance from around 1750, the veteran missionary from Querétaro Fray José Antonio Bernad described, not without sarcasm, what happened to those who appeared in the presence of Lucifer. I quote at length to demonstrate the nature of his rhetoric: Lucifer welcomed [the sinner] with open arms, and hugged him to the extent that the wretch was burning like iron coming out from the forge. Welcome to this your palace where you will see the pleasures that I have prepared for you. Hello, said Lucifer to the other daemons. Embrace our good Friend, who has brought so many others to us with his bad example. Look, he might come tired from his way. Take him to my bath so he can amuse himself. Then they threw him into the pond of sulfur-and-tar fire wherein many daemons in the shape of dragons and snakes were bathing and caused him intolerable suffering. Take him promptly to bed so he can rest. Which bed was ready for him? Burning red-hot coals. So, Lucifer said, bring for his delight a very beautiful woman. Immediately, a horrendous dragon, with lightning bolts coming out of its eyes and mouth, embraced him [the sinner] and said that these were the pleasures that he would enjoy here. Bring him a snack to eat. They brought him a nasty plate with vipers and basilisks. Despite his refusal, they forced him to eat it. Give him a pitcher of water. They put in his mouth a boiler of melted lead.44

44. “Del recibimiento que tuvo en el infierno un condenado escandaloso,” in Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” n.p. 1746–1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, 159: “[Q]uien lo recivio con los brazos abiertos, y le dio tal abrazo que al punto quedo el miserable mas encendido qe el hierro quando le sacan de la fragua. sea Vd bien benido á este su palacio donde vera los gustos qe le tengo prevenidos (ola dixo Lucifer á los dem.s vaian todos abrazando á nuestro buen Amigo, que á tantos nos ha traido con su mal exemplo p.a qe vengan con el. Miren qe vendra cansado del camino llevenle á mi baño á que se recree Con esto le arrojaron en un estanque de fuego de azufre, y alquitran en que andaban nadando muchos demonios en forma de dragones, y serp.s causandole intolerables dolores. Llevenle presto á la cama á que descanse. Que cama el tenia dispuesta? Brasas ardientes. Ea dixo Lucifer taniganle [sic] para su deleite una Muger muy hermosa. Al punto vno un Dragon muy horrible, arrojando raios por los ojos, y la voca, y abrazandose con el le abrazaba, y le decia estos son los deleites que as de gozar aqui. Traiganle un bocado que coma, Trajeronle un plato asquerosissimo de aspides vivoras, y basiliscos, y por mas que lo reuso, le hicieron qe los tragara. Denle un bacaro [sic] de agua. Pusieronle en la voca una caldera de plomo derretido.”

254

To Sin No More

The hideous message combined with extravagant performances aimed at producing the desired state of fear of eternal condemnation among sermongoers. The preachers’ battle was certainly psychological in nature. The images of Satan, his henchmen, and his kingdom of hell were not metaphors, but real torments to the eyes and ears of those who heard the sermons. If words were not enough, missionaries further displayed canvases of condemned souls and hell to move the audiences visually. The gray robes did not offer speculation, but rather preached with authoritative certainty to illustrate what awaited sinners. For early modern theologians, the Devil was real; he was king of hell, who, with God’s permission, claimed wicked souls. Although God provoked fear, he was portrayed as merciful. Missionaries carefully seasoned their menu of salvation with redemption condiments. Friars affirmed that all sinners could be saved if they attended the sermons, confessed their sins sincerely, and committed themselves to sin no more. Missionaries proclaimed that theirs was a war against Satan and vice, but not against the people themselves. After vividly describing the torments of hell, the same Fray José Antonio Bernad offered redemption to all sinners despite their “obscenities, sacrileges, bestialities, and other greater [offenses] that I do not want to mention in public.” The merciful God preached by the missionaries tendered options for a new start, free of guilt.45 In an instance from the twilight of the eighteenth century, Fray José de San Martín offered his audience salvation regardless of the most unspeakable sins if parishioners repented after an honest confession and undertook their penance, or in his words, “if you mourn them [your sins] truly repented.” Fray José cited Isaiah’s “Come now, let us set things right, says the LORD: Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow: Though they be crimson red, they may become white as wool” [Isaiah 1 v 18]. Missionaries also portrayed a god that “came with his open arms offering his mercy and the forgiveness of . . . sins.”46 Or as Fray

45. This was a characteristic trope of sin as a path to condemnation, and remorse towards salvation. Fray José Antonio Bernad, “Sermón de introducción para la Misión,” in Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” n.p. 1746–1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, 159: “[D]e las culpas mas enormes de torpezas, sacrilegios, bestialidades, y aun de otras maiores que no quiero nombrar tan en publico.” 46. “Platica de Ronda,” in San Martín, “Sermones morales y pláticas del P. Fr. José de San Martín,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 11, 6–7: “[T]e ofresco mas en nombre de Dios, que me embia un perdona general de todas tus culpas [The missionary had license from the Bishop or Archbishop to forgive almost all sins reserved to them], si arrepentido las lloras de verdad [Isaie 1 v 18]. Assi me manda dios que te lo diga con esas palabras: aunque tu Alma esté mas negra que una pez con las culpas, yo te las perdonaré, yo te lavaré de ellas, y la dejaré mas limpia qe la nieve mas blanca: quasi nix dealbabutur. . . . [V]iene con los brazos abiertos ofreciendote esta misericordia, y el perdon de tus pecados.” See also “Sermon del Anuncio,” in Hernández, “Libro de sermones,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

255

José Díez preached to his listeners in the late seventeenth century, “God is merciful: he is also stern.”47 The image of an implacable but just God and his evil and lesser enemy echoed the early modern political ethos that also depicted kings as fair but severe. The power of European monarchies grew in the late medieval period, culminating in the eighteenth century with an enlightened despotism in which the king was a divine figure. According to this ideology of royal despotism, so prevalent in the eighteenth-century Spanish and French courts, kings’ actions on behalf of the welfare of their subjects required no popular participation as royal proceedings were only accountable before God. Eighteenthcentury French and Spanish kings were divine figures themselves. Therefore, the image of an omnipotent, omnipresent, and avenging God prompted fear among Catholics as much as it conveyed a message of royal supremacy. Take, for instance, that it was God and not the Devil who punished sinners, the latter being simply the executioner of God’s will. The similarity between politics and religion in this case is striking. The king, like God, exercised supreme power over his subjects, with the capacity to condemn culprits or show mercy to remorseful delinquents. In any case, it was the king’s executioner, who tortured and executed, under the king’s orders, recalcitrant delinquents. Both God and the king, proprietors of their subjects’ lives, were thus vengeful and merciful. Three aspects that repeatedly appear in missionary preaching and that deserve some attention concern moral, social, and political virtues in the Catholic republic as pivotal matters of divine as well as civic propriety.48

Moral Virtue Nothing attracted the interest of the Catholic Church more than sins of the flesh, which was thought to corrupt the body as well as the soul.49 Sexu-

FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 9, 255–256; and “Sermon segundo: Circunstancias de la Confesion buena,” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 49. 47. “Plática dada en la dominica cuarta post epifanía,” Querétaro, 1688, in Díez, “Libro de sermones del P. Fr. José Díez (1686–1689),” Querétaro 1686–1690, AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 1: “Dios es misericordioso: tambien es Justiciero.” 48. For an analysis of the relations between the Devil and royal power, see Muchembled, Historia del Diablo, 36, 176–179. 49. Many studies explore relations between clerics and sexuality in the early modern world, including a rather large number of works that focus on clerics’ sexual behaviors. For a comprehensive and controversial study of the role of women and sexuality in Christianity from a historical and theological perspective, see Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church, trans. Peter Heinegg (New York and London: Doubleday, 1990). A good starting point that links Christianity with sexuality is Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice, 2nd ed. (Abingdon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2010).

256

To Sin No More

ality was the most recurrent theme in missionary sermons and pláticas, underpinning the ecclesiastic anxieties with the body and its needs. Lust “is the superlative sin of all sins,” wrote Fray José Ximénez de Jesús from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro in the mid-eighteenth century. Lewdness was perceived as a strong force that drove men and women to horrendous habits difficult to curb and thereby an obstruction to their conversion. In fact, sermons against lewdness were pivotal in the mission repertoire; most of the books of sermons and pláticas that I studied include at least one devoted to sins against the sixth commandment.50 Why were Franciscan preachers so obsessed with sex and sexual activities? Sex was a double-edged sword that friars encountered as they became engaged in long campaigns to reform parishioners’ morality. Friars simultaneously attacked their flock’s sexual behaviors while fearing and fighting their own sexual desires. Whether through repressive means, like the infamous Inquisition, or more persuasive tactics while preaching or administering confession, the Catholic Church sought to control sexuality. Indeed, pastoral literature such as confession manuals, Catholic catechisms, and sermons gave particular emphasis to sex.51 In general, real or imagined sexual activities were one of the greatest Franciscan obsessions in their missionary campaigns to non-Christians as much as to Catholics. In moral crusades, religious men adamantly targeted popular dances, gambling, and theatrical representations, which they viewed not only as competition to their own ministry, but as an axis of evil. Of course, neither the word sex nor sexuality appears in the sources. As historian Merry WiesnerHanks points out, using the term sexuality for the early modern period is anachronistic. However, behind contemporary terms such as lujuria, torpezas, sensualidades, and lascivia lurk everyday sexual attitudes, desires, and acts, either imagined or real.52 Too often Franciscan religious imagined Catholic believers as promiscuous and lascivious. Friars especially targeted the outside world where they claimed the Devil reigned with lust and debauchery. Friars lamented that lewdness ripped away any reason from the person, exposing the beast inside each individual and eventually eliminating the boundaries between the beast

50. “Sermon Dezimo Nono, y segundo de Luxuria,” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 314, sheets are re-numbered: “[E]s el pecado superlativo de todos los pecados.” 51. Michel Foucault points out that not only did early modern Catholic clerics attempted to restrict sexual activities of Catholics through confession, they also created and controlled the discourse on sex. He further asserts that “[f]rom the Christian penance to the present day, sex was a privileged theme of confession.” In History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), quote is on p. 61. 52. Wiesner-Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

257

inside and the human. Early modern ecclesiastics feared that men and women who engaged in sexual encounters could ultimately erase the differences between the animal and the human, opening the doors to sodomy and bestiality, two of the worst sins in the eyes of the Catholic Church (both punishable by death). Like the case of Fray Antonio de Herosa in Galicia, Spain at the beginning of this chapter, in their zoological representations of humans friars exposed their fears that without vigilance and guidance by the Catholic Church their “animalistic” flock would engage in illicit sexual acts that transgressed biblical teachings vis-à-vis the natural order. Sinners were compared to beasts, and as such, their illicit sexual acts particularly blurred “distinction and difference between [the sinners] and the brutes.”53 Rural peoples in Spain and America—mostly indigenous villages and peoples of mixed ancestry in the latter case—were particular targets of this metaphor. Interestingly enough, Franciscan missionaries not only commonly addressed peasant communities, but many religious men came from rural areas themselves. No doubt friars used any means at hand to attack anything that refuted their doctrinal teachings and put at risk the salvation of all souls, including their own eternal salvation. Franciscan missionaries were particularly adamant in their struggle against fandangos (popular dances), gambling, and spectacles, which they viewed as empires of lust. Not only did clerics and friars fear the contents of theatrical performances, they suspected that men and women made overtures to each other in theaters where couples met without surveillance in dimly-lit, private areas. Their attitude towards theatre did not differ much from the general opinions of other contemporary ecclesiastical authorities. The Catholic Church did not easily budge in its attacks against profane comedies, which men like the Bishop of Puebla, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, considered as “professorships from where wickedness was taught.”54 A look at a legajo or file from the Querétaro college archive in Celaya illustrates the college’s longlasting crusade against profane performances. This century-long litigation between the friars and the promoters of comedies in their city shows the cler53. “Sermon Dezimo Nono, y segundo de Luxuria,” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 317, 310 re-numbered: “como bruto pecas torpe deshonesto,” “entre ti, y los brutos no ay mas distinzion, y diferenzia.” For a discussion of the fears of breaking the lines between human and beastlike behavior see Muchembled, Historia del Diablo, Siglos XII–XX, 41–47. 54. The phrase by Bishop Palafox is quoted in Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán, ¿Relajados o reprimidos? Diversiones públicas y vida social en la ciudad de México durante el Siglo de las Luces (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987; reprint, 2001), 56: “al mismo tiempo, coherente con su visión didáctica del teatro, la Iglesia lanzó en varios momentos ataques furibundos contra las comedias profanas a las que consideraban como “cátedras donde se enseñan maldades.”

258

To Sin No More

ics’ anxieties about uncontrolled spaces, their political leverage in Querétaro, and ultimately their readiness to influence the public sphere. In 1718, the guardian and discretorio of the colegio in Querétaro thanked Don Francisco de Valenzuela y Venegas, judge of the Audiencia Real in Mexico City (the highest judiciary tribunal in New Spain), for uniting with them before the viceroy against what they called “abominations.” The religious expressed to Don Francisco their indignation that a local theater showed, “before the wives of Christ, nuns from Santa Clara (and even in front of the nun novices) such an obscene comedy as ‘Is It Difficult to Watch over a Woman?’” The Queretaran Franciscans were referring to Spanish playwright Agustín Moreto’s (1618–1669) famous comedy, “No puede ser el guardar una mujer,” first performed before the Spanish monarch in the royal court in Madrid in 1659, which was published in 1661 and went through many editions (and interpretations) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Because of its popularity in Spain, the play probably drew large crowds of spectators. By focusing on this renowned comedy, Queretaran Franciscan authorities strategically attempted to get the cabildo on their side by condemning those who promoted plays and sanctifying the town’s opposition to profane representations. The friars were so successful in their arm wrestling with the promoters and their supporters that the viceroy Don Baltasar de Zúñiga y Guzmán (term 1716–1722) retreated from his initial position of allowing the performances and ordered the alcalde mayor of Querétaro to cancel all comedies in the city, including Moreto’s play.55 Fifteen years later, renewed attempts by the local governing council (cabildo del ayuntamiento) and the order of Saint Hippolitus to establish a theater annoyed the Queretaran Franciscan authorities. Some members of the cabildo had long sought a fixed place or coliseum for theatrical presentations. As in Mexico City, the

55. “Carta de don Francisco Valenzuela Venegas al P. Fr. José Díez comunicándoles haber dado orden al Alcalde Mayor para que haga suspender cierta representación,” Mexico City, October 15, 1718, AHPFM-FCSCQ, F, file 7, no. 13 (A): “Como se puede (Señor) suffrir q.e se represente delante de las esposas de Jesuchristo Religiosas de S.ta Clara (y aun delante de las Novicias) una comedia tan obscena como la de: es difficultoso guardar una muger? pobres de los q.e fomentan y consienten semejantes abominaciones, y dichosos los q.e ayudaren a desterrar tan maldita peste de la Xptiandad”; and “Carta al licenciado don Francisco de Valenzuela y Venegas sobre la decisión de oponerse a la representación de comedias,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, October 23, 1718, AHPFM-FCSCQ, F, file 7, no. 13 (B). For Agustín Moreto’s famous comedy, “No puede ser el guardar una mujer,” see Debora Vaccari, “Sobre la edición de una loa inédita para la comedia No puede ser el guardar una mujer de Moreto,” in El patrimonio del teatro clásico español: actualidad y perspectivas: homenaje a Francisco Ruiz Ramón: Actas del Congreso del TC/12. Olmedo, 22 al 15 de julio de 2013, ed. Germán Vega García-Luengos, Héctor Urzáiz Tortajada, Pedro Conde Parrado (Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad de Valladolid; Olmedo: Ayuntamiento, 2015): 713–722.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

259

Hippolitan friars were delighted with the idea of offering some space in their hospital in Querétaro in exchange for cash. The discretorio of the college urgently commissioned Fray Diego de Alcántara, who was at the time in the viceregal capital attending the establishment of the Colegio de San Fernando, to present the college’s vigorous disapproval of a coliseum in Querétaro to the viceroy Don Juan Antonio Vizarrón y Eguiarreta (term 1734–1740), who also sided with the Franciscans. If that was not enough, the guardian and discretorio sent two preachers into the streets of Querétaro preaching sermons to discourage pedestrians from watching productions of itinerant thespians.56 The crisis nevertheless continued for the Queretaran friars. In the second half of the eighteenth century, new theater companies, with the support of some local authorities and the popular masses, attempted to establish a permanent theater venue. This time, the college in Querétaro responded with fierce opposition to end profane plays once and for all. In 1779, the guardian and discretos of the college alerted Don Martín Mayorga, viceroy of New Spain (term 1779–1783), that their main aim in banning the theater project was the “extirpation of vices, reformation of customs, and promotion of virtues.”57 The conflict between the college and the cabildo over profane theatrical productions in the city of Querétaro nevertheless reignited four years later. Don Pedro Vida, teniente general of the city, and other supporters defended the importance of comedies, while the city’s procurador general headed another group that opposed the performances. Ultimately, the procurador general, with the friars’ patronage, convinced the cabildo to ban comedies and to postpone building a theater.58 During the convulsive second decade of the nineteenth century, the College of Querétaro time and again confronted those wanting to build a theater

56. Viqueira Albán, ¿Relajados o reprimidos? “Carta del P. Fr. Diego de Alcántara al P. Presidente in capite sobre la propuesta que le había encargado para el Virrey respecto de las comedias,” Hospicio de San Fernando de México, April 18, 1734, AHPFM-FCSCQ, F, file 7, no. 13 (C): “Estuve con el S.r Vyrrei. Le hice la propuesta q V.P. me encarga sobre comedias & Y me dixo (aviendole en brebe dicho las malas consequencias, la costumbre qe á avido de proqurarlas impedir los Apostolicos Y el favor q avian dado sus antecesores) q era bien hecho, q proseguiria su Ex.a en lo mismo para cuio fin me dixo escriviria al Illl Corregidor de esa Ciudad, mandandole q no las permitiese.” 57. “Copia de las cartas que el año de 1779 escribió el Vble. Discretorio contra las comedias al Excmo. Sr. Virrey don Martín Mayorga y al Iltmo. Sr. Arzobispo,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, November 18, 1779, AHPFM-FCSCQ, F, file 7, no. 11: “[O]bjeto principal de su ereccion se establece a sus Misioneros hijos, la extirpacion de los vicios, la reformacion de las costumbres, y el fomento de las virtudes.” 58. “Copia del exp. sobre comedias del Cabildo del ayuntamiento de esta ciudad de Querétaro hecho al Excmo. Sr. Virrey por ocuros que, en intento de que no se permitiese en este lugar el establecimiento de Coliseo, ni representaciones de Compañías volantes, interpuso el Colegio de la Santa Cruz de dicha ciudad,” April 3–May 2, 1783, AHPFMFCSCQ, F, file 7, no. 14.

260

To Sin No More

with the acquiescence of some members of the cabildo. In the name of enlightenment, a certain Don José Mariano Galván argued that Querétaro deserved a theater like other major European cities and courts. Even the Holy See, he said, tolerated plays in Rome, the capital of Catholicism. The discretorio of Querétaro attacked any and all construction projects recalling their long struggle against the theater in the city and their achievements in their moral campaigns to reform the lives of Catholic believers.59 Even if a theater was never built in colonial Querétaro, men and women in Querétaro and other places throughout the Hispanic world also sought venues such as parks, streets, plazas, or private homes far from clerics’ scrutiny to intermingle. While these public spaces might have remained unchecked, indubitably nothing horrified the religious more than interactions between men and women in the churches. Preachers were taught to be particularly alert in houses of worship where, they believed, both men and women flirted shamelessly. Franciscans feared that men went to church to meet women and during their spiritual devotions men thought of women. According to Queretaran missionary Fray José Ximénez de Jesús, in a sermon against lewdness in the mid-eighteenth century, when men and women listened to mass, they did so only “with the body because [the] heart is burning in lewdness and burning in the flames of concupiscence.” The same friar lamented that young women visited the churches only “to be seen and desired,” and women in general went to church to show their “makeup, dressing, and galas. . . .”60 His moral crusade was representative of a widespread discourse in the Queretaran college and other seminaries. By policing public spaces in colonial society (e.g., antitheater campaigns), clerics left few places for men and women to socialize, and the church was one of them. Thus, clerical paranoia about “illicit” behavior in church was likely grounded at least partially in reality, a reality that the religious themselves contributed to. Some men and women’s less decorous

59. See “Copia del informe que dio sobre comedias el Lic. don Vicente Lino Sotelo en nombre de la ciudad de Querétaro contra la solicitud de don Mariano Galván para poner Coliseo,” Querétaro, September 6, 1816, AHPFM-FCSCQ, F, file 7, no. 38; and “Representación del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro al arzobispo de México pidiendo para que se vuelvan a prohibir las representaciones de comedias en la ciudad de Querétaro,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, January 13, 1819, AHPFM-FCSCQ, F, file 7, no. 39, fol. 1r: “[Q]ue pueden contribuir al exceso y corrupcion.” 60. Quotes are in “Sermon Dezimo octavo y primero de luxuria,” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 302–303: “Si cogeis el rosario pasais con las manos las cuentas, pero el corazon lo teneis en la amiga; si vais a la Yglesia, es solo por ver mugeres; si ois misa es solo con el cuerpo; porqe el corazon lo teneis ardiendo en luxuria, y quemandose en llamas de concupiscenzia sin aver quien os saque de aqui. . . . [P]or ser vista, y deseada; para la Yglesia son los afeites, los aliños, y las galas, y hasta en las Yglesias estais ardiendo en fuego de concupiscenzia, y luxuria.”

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

261

actions in churches may also be understood as a political statement of defiance against an institution that represented oppression rather than salvation.61 To Franciscan missionaries, lewdness was so prevalent it required impromptu extirpation. Franciscans sternly denounced that lust had spread like an infectious disease and was more widespread than ever. Missionaries were not conservative about overstating wrongdoing. The same Fray José Ximénez de Jesús asserted that “almost everybody is touched by this vice and trapped in this hell, where they burn in this damned fire of lewdness.”62 Sexual incontinence, like hell, he argued, implied the three characteristic punishments: the fire of concupiscence, the worm that gnaws conscience, and “stench.” Stench metaphorically identified sinners who led a double life, maintaining a core of sin while masquerading as responsible citizens.63 A contemporary of Ximénez de Jesús, Fray Juan Hernández, asserted in a sermon against dancing that “more souls are lost nowadays than in previous times, since there is more human malice and Lucifer has enthroned his power . . . [in] the vice of lewdness.”64 The friars blamed both men and women for the moral deterioration of society. However, friars commonly denounced women as the principal culprits. Women, missionaries cried out, incited men with their behavior and dress. Women were repeatedly described as lustful, the perdition of men, and a tool of the Devil. Images of women as sensual, weak, promiscuous, and the origin of sexual misdeeds abound in the missionaries’ contemporaneous literature. Depictions of women in sermons were polarized and divided 61. In an interesting Inquisitorial case studied by Zeb Tortirici, the tribunal officials were particularly appalled by the testimony of a woman who imagined having sexual relations with Jesus Christ during mass. See Zeb Tortorici, “Masturbation, Salvation, and Desire: Connecting Sexuality and Religiosity in Colonial Mexico,” The Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 3 (2007). The church was the most sacred place in Christianity; thus the scope of sacrilegious behaviors by those who challenged Catholicism extended to churches. For instance, during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in the province of New Mexico, Pueblo native peoples were reported to have committed scatological sacrileges and sexual relations on the altars and elsewhere inside mission churches. See Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came. 62. “Sermon Dezimo octavo y primero de luxuria,” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 305: “[N]o a estado mas desenfrenada la luxuria, ni mas perdido el temor de Dios, qe lo esta oy. . . . [C]asi todo el mundo esta tocado de este vizio; esta metido en este infierno, y arde en este maldito fuego de la luxuria. . . . [E]n este siglo desdichado con los luxuriosos, y laszivos.” 63. Sermon authors followed a tradition that dated back to medieval authors such as Saint Thomas de Villanueva (also mentioned by Fray José Antonio Bernad in his sermon on lewdness), Saint Bonaventure, Saint Augustine, and other doctors of the Church. 64. “Sermon contra Vailes,” in Hernández, “Libro de sermones,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 9, 227: “Pero io pienso, que maior numero de almas se pierden el dia de oy, que no en los tiempos pasados; pues es mas la malicia humana, y luzifer tiene su poder sobre el vicio de la lascivia, mui entronizado.”

262

To Sin No More

between the lustful (many times of ethnically mixed origin) at one end and the Virgin Mary and nuns on the other as representatives of female virginity. Throughout the early modern Catholic world, the Virgin Mary—the perfect spouse, albeit chaste—embodied purity and orthodoxy as much as political and social order. Virginity signaled the proper status of those entering the clergy as well as those to be married. Or as Ulrike Strasser points out in her study of gender, religion, and politics in seventeenth-century southern Germany, virginity “reaffirmed sanctity and even heightened valorization of matrimony,” marriage being microscopically the binding element of the household—the nucleus of a well-functioning social order. Besides their preaching, Franciscan missionaries particularly embraced the Marian-centered devotion of the rosary to underscore compliance with the social and political order of the Old Regime.65 Reflecting this general pattern in the mid-eighteenth century, the Queretaran missionary Fray Juan Hernández pointed out that the Devil used women to capture men like fishermen used nets to fish. “The woman is a Devil’s net,” he clarified, “and thus, she takes the man by three different ways, which are: by staring at them, by talking to them, and by touching them.” He suggested parishioners sing saetas that underscored his view towards women: “Man, escape from women,/ who are the Devil’s nets/ with their caress[es] and lies,/ you commit great sins.”66 Illustratively, he pejoratively described the mugercillas as “dissolute, provocative, adulterers, flattering, and profane.”67 For Fray Juan Hernández, “the woman is fire, and the man is straw.” This common discourse, similar to previous and contemporary sources in other colegios,

65. Indeed, missionaries and preachers especially targeted sexual morals in their sermons. In a sermon preached to nuns, Fray José Díez equated virginity to the “porcion mas illustre del rebaño de Xpto,” and hence, the increase of nuns-virgins explicitly amplified the “gozo” of the Mother of the Church, who was also a virgin. See “Dominica tercera de adviento. Santa Cruz, 1688,” in Díez, “Libro de sermones del P. Fr. José Díez (1686– 1689),” Querétaro 1686–1690, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 1; Ulrike Strasser, State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 40. 66. “Sermón de lujuria,” in Hernández, “Libro de sermones,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 9, 207: “Es la muger una red del Diablo, y pro eso coge al hombre por medio della de tres maneras; que son por mirarlas, por platicar con ellas, y por palparlas: estos son tres escollos en que el miserable hombre toprieza [sic] a cada paso; y esto han de ser la idea deste vrebe rato paraque considerandolos los huigan los hombres, y advirtiendolos, los eviten las mugeres; y de la suerte guardaran sus almas de toda fornicacion, y torpeza, que a lo que les exhorta &a. . . . [H]uie hombre las mugeres,/ que son las redes del Diablo/ con sus carizias, y enbustes,/ cometes grandes pecados.” 67. “Sermon del Anuncio,” in Hernández, “Libro de sermones,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 9, 275v: “licenciosas, provocativas, adulteras, adulteras, alagueñas, profanas.” He also lamented that women had “vendido tu cuerpo, tu honrra, tu punto, tu reputacion, y fama, solo por un vil gusto, solo por un vil interes.”

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

263

informed Hernández’s religious brethren when they read his sermons on lust as well as those who heard him during his preaching.68 Another illustrative example of misogynist discourse comes from Fray José Antonio Bernad, a lecturer in philosophy and instructor at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, which he left for Querétaro in 1749. It is likely that he preached his sermon against lewdness (or something similar) in Spain as well as in popular missions in New Spain. Bernad’s sermon begins with a passage from Book of Revelation in which a woman dressed in purple and gold holds “a valuable cup filled with abomination and filth,” while seated on a beast with seven heads and ten horns. Once he invoked the image, he targeted his male audience with words imbued with religious fervor: I warn you about that profane and embellished woman. Consider what she is and you will find that everything is appearance. . . . She wants you to drink a moral poison. For that despicable delight she wants to leave you without God and make you a slave of the Devil.

After connecting the woman, the beast (the Devil), and the male sinners from John’s Book of Revelation, the friar then advised his audience “that only one dishonest woman is enough to pollute and to rot the entire world with her bad example, with her depravity, with her charm, [that] serves as a trap.”69 Bernad’s zeal likely underscores his own anxieties and those of other religious about breaking vows of chastity. As an antithesis to the lustful woman he presented the Virgin Mary, a classic icon in Catholic theology and counterpoint to sin. Such depictions of women as sensual and lustful have been persistent in Christian theology since the early centuries of Christianity. Two influential Fathers of the Catholic Church, Saint Jerome (ca. 345–420) and his contemporary Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), set a pattern for centuries to come. “If it is good for a man not to touch a woman,” Saint Jerome adduced, “then it is bad for him to touch one, for bad, and bad only, is the opposite of good.” “Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of a man downwards,” claimed Saint Augustine, “as the caresses of a woman.” The Franciscan order

68. “Sermón de lujuria,” in Ibid., 210: “la mujer es fuego, y el hombre es paja.” 69. “Sermón sobre la lujuria,” in Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” n.p., 1746– 1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, 324: “[U]n precioso vaso lleno de abominacion, y de inmundicia. . . . Advierte hombre á essa muger profana, y adornada pessa bien lo que es, y allaras que todo es apariencia, y que en vaso de oro te quiere hacer beber un mortal veneno, por esse vil deleite te quiere dexar sin Dios, y hacerte esclavo del Demonio. . . . [Q]ue solo una muger desonesta es bastante para inficionar y corromper toda la tierra; pues ella con su mal exemplo con su disolucion con su atractivo sirve de laso, y de tropiezo á infinitas Almas.”

264

To Sin No More

borrowed the bipolar rethoric that confronted the Virgin Mary's purity against female dishonesty. In Saint Francis’s prayers, novices and friars alike found consolation in the Virgin Mary, a symbol of virtue “among all women.” Devotions also pointed out her distinctiveness: “[T]here has not yet been born any other like you among all women.” This discourse crowned the Virgin as a leading figure in Catholic spirituality, an example to be followed. Saint Francis’s Rule further advised fellow Franciscans that only under the sanctity of the sacrament of penance should they have contact with women, but even in this case, always keeping their wits about them.70 Saint Bonaventure, one of the most influential medieval theologians of the Seraphic Order and an inspirational source to novices, epitomized the image of women in the Franciscan discourse: Woman [. . .] is the confusion of Man, an insatiable beast, a continuous anxiety, an incessant warfare, a daily ruin, a house of tempest, a hindrance to devotion. Man must flee the society of woman for three reasons; first because she will ensnare him, second because she will corrupt him, third because she will rob him of his potency and his possessions.

He added, “[W]oman [is] but an enemy of love, an inescapable punishment, an unavoidable evil, a temptation built into nature, a disaster made of desire, a danger to every household.”71

70. I thank Dr. Joci Caldwell-Ryan, professor in the women’s studies program at Southern Methodist University, for making these quotes available to me, which come from professor of ethics, Miguel A. de la Torre, “Quotations Track Church’s Anti-Woman Legacy,” February 25, 2005, available at http://www.ethicsdaily.com/news.php?view Story=5420, (accessed October 12, 2017). In this article Dr. de la Torre also asks, “Why would a smart, gifted woman be attracted to a Christianity defined by men attempting to preserve and justify their patriarchal authority?” In his first rule, Saint Francis counseled his confrères to avoid “bad looks and contact with women,” except for the time of confession and penance, a moment when the friar should carefully deal with women. The idea of how friars should relate to women translated to the Rule of the order, item XI: “Que los frailes no entren en monasterios de monjas,” which in the first paragraph orders his religious brothers “que no tengan sospechosas relaciones o consejos de mujeres.” Rodríguez Herrera, Los escritos de San Francisco de Asís, 618. The quote from Saint Francis’s prayer is “Oficio de la Pasión de Cristo,” Rodríguez Herrera, Los escritos de San Francisco de Asís, 141. For the origins and development of a perjorative discourse on women in the Catholic Church, see an interesting and provocative work that analyzes it from a historical and theological perspective and its connection to marriage and sexuality. Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom. A brief summary of the position of the early fathers of the early Church and sexuality also appears in Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 16. 71. Quotes from Valerie I. J. Flint, “Conversion and Compromise in Thirteenth-Century England,” in Conversion: Old Worlds and New, ed. Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton (University of Rochester Press: Rochester, N.Y., 2003), 8–9. Valerie Flint points out that the first quote is copied from the thirteenth-century English Speculum Laicorum, and the second quote is drawn from a passage by Maximus the Confessor. For the influence of Saint

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

265

Women occupied a subordinate position within the patriarchal social order of the early modern Hispanic world evidenced in the legal, political, and cultural lexicons of the time. Such misogynistic discourse nonetheless is somewhat incongruous considering that most church attendees were women. Women had filled Catholic churches since the Middle Ages, participating in popular religious events and transmitting early religiosity to their offspring. In general, women were held as devout members of their communities but they were also depicted as emotional, weak-minded, irrational, capricious, and, of course, lustful. Interestingly enough, the gender line in the colleges apparently blurred at times, when friars seemed to have cross-dressed in female lay costumes to participate in unspecified religious devotions. Cross-dressing customs might have become too overt when upon inspecting the Colegio de la Santa Cruz during the guardian chapter of 1772, Fray Antonio Fernández forbade all religious from dressing like women “even with the pretext of devotion.” Fernanda Molina, in her study on sodomy in seventeenth-century Peru, suggests that clerics might not be dressing strictly as women but instead with an effeminate touch that gave account of the frivolity and sumptuousness of the ecclesiastical appearance as well as the challenges to gender norms. In the dozens of criminal cases against clerics for this behavior that she found in the archdiocese of Lima’s archives, authorities instructed that clerics should not “become effeminate with locks, manes, and other hair abuses” or “cause scandal with this superfluous and womanly dressing.” Molina points out that such “concern not only lies in the aesthetic alteration of masculinity, but in the possibility of an alteration of gender roles and behaviors.”72 It is not clear if such instances occurred inside the community or during public services in the church. Women’s reactions to inflammatory sermons likely varied. Many probably did not view themselves as targets of the speeches, believing they fit more closely with the Virgin Mary model. Others certainly showed indifference, while others uncompromisingly refused to follow the teachings of the Church. It was also

Bonaventure in the education of Franciscan novices and the sexual obsessions of the Franciscan Order, see Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 67–71. 72. Auto de visita of Fray Antonio Fernández, provincial minister of Michoacán, January 29, 1772, LEC, fol. 104r: “q.e en lo futuro de ningun modo se permita, el q.e ningun Religoso se disfrace en Avito secular, con especialidad de muger, aunq.e sea con pretexto de devocion.” Contemporaries pointed out that women’s devoutness surpassed that of men. An introductory study on gender via a legal lens is Susan Kingsley Kent, “Gender Rules: Law and Politics,” in A Companion to Gender History, ed. Teresa A. Meade and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Malden, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004): 86–109. Fernanda Molina, “Los Sodomitas Virreinales: Entre Sujetos Jurídicos y Especie,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 67, no. 1 (2010), quotes on p. 43: “[N]o se afeminen con mechones, melenas y otros abusos de sus cabellos. . . . [o] causando escandalo con este aliño superfluo y mujeril. . . . [Q]ue la preocupación no sólo estriba en la alteración estética de la masculinidad, sino en la posibilidad de una alteración de los roles y comportamientos de género.”

266

To Sin No More

likely that the influence of preachers’ words dissolved within a short period of everyday activities. Some women defied the misogynist messages and sought different sources of spiritual inspiration and religious beliefs, even at the expense of Inquisitorial prosecution. The fact that women’s attitudes and dress codes were continuously criticized by the missionaries shows that women continued to resist, dismiss, and forget about the clergy’s censure.73 Even if women's responses, like their male counterparts, are difficult to identify in the sources, particularly the effect of such mysoginist discourses in the audience, missionary preaching accompanied by musical and visual support, could not have gone undetected. Recent studies on audience reactions show that preaching was a two-way experience in that listeners responded and preachers engaged with listeners’ reactions. Concerns with the length of a sermon, spatial arrangement of the audience, alternation of preaching and doctrine, visual and theatrical paraphernalia, and language employed indicate that missionaries were not oblivious to their listeners. Even if attendance does not imply listening, it is hard to ignore the catharsis that sermons and pláticas may have produced in an agitated audience—let us not forget that missionaries used all their rhetorical, visual, and theatrical might to attract listeners’ attention and to eventually prompt their conversion. Moreover, the rarity of itinerant missions in any given locality certainly turned the missionaries’ presence into an event difficult to ignore, comparable to local patron festivities. In a letter written in 1738 to his fellow brothers in the Colegio de Herbón in Galicia, northwestern Spain, Queretaran Fray Francisco López Salgueiro felt that missionaries commonly touched the hearts of their listeners. He claimed that popular missions did not go unnoticed wherever they occurred—parishioners and the local clergy welcomed the missionaries, heard their words, and even shouted their “horrendous sins.”74 At least while a mission lasted, some women and men likely internalized some of the missionaries' teachings. One place to look for the impact of sermons is the “certificaciones” written by priests to report on the missions’ influence to college officials and archived in college repositories, such as those from the Discalced college in

73. Flint wonders, like other scholars, about women’s reaction to the “misogynist sermons,” explicitly acknowledging that such sermons were actually preached. Besides Flint and de la Torre’s concern with why women entered the Church and laymen’s and laywomen’s reactions to the sermons, I have also asked why friars wrote what they wrote and in which context, taking into account that we are not certain of the content of their actual preaching. See Flint, “Conversion and Compromise,” 7. 74. See, for instance, Hunt, The Art of Hearing; essays in Larissa Taylor, ed., Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period (Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2001); and Fray Francisco López Salgueiro’s letter to Fray Antonio Herosa, guardian of the Apostolic Seminary of Herbón in Galicia, Spain, Querétaro, April 17, 1738, published in López, “Misiones de Méjico,” 270: “pecados horrorosíssimos.”

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

267

Pachuca and the college in Tarija. According to these sources, large crowds reportedly attended the Pachuca missionaries’ preaching during a 1740 mission to the current state of Hidalgo. Not only did the friars convince parishioners to embrace the practice of the via crucis after their moving oratory in the communities of Santiago de Chapantongo, Chilcuautla, and their hinterlands, but also contributed to raise funds for masses dedicated to souls in purgatory. Augustinian Fray Joseph de Rivera, prior to the Chilquautla convent, testified that on the last day missionaries’ sermons drew people “of both sexes to their repentance, for . . . our eyes saw impressive public mortifications. This function closed with a farewell sermon and a song, which could barely be heard due to much weeping that suggested the deep . . . sadness due to the [anticipated] absence of the Missionaries.” Certificaciones written by parish priests, regular clergy, and civil authorities from the areas in which the Tarija missionaries conducted their popular missions also eulogize the missionaries’ evangelical deeds and pivotal role that preaching played in the conversion of sinners. If we may gauge the effectiveness of preaching through these testimonies, we find common threads of large numbers of people in attendance; instructive, fervent doctrinal teachings; and proficient, moving exhortations that brought listeners to the confessionals.75 Among these certifications are rare instances of sermons preached in indigenous languages. One of these uncommon cases comes from an 1804 mission in the parish of Tlalnepantla, northwest of Mexico City (current Estado de México). Reports by civil and ecclesiastical authorities on a thirtysix-day mission show the effects of preaching in Otomí by missionaries from the Discalced college at Pachuca in various indigenous communities in and around Tlalnepantla. These accounts coincide on the effectiveness of Discalced Franciscan preaching. Here, like in the 1740 mission to Chilquautla, the farewell sermon caused the crowd to burst into “tears and sobs.” As a corollary the reporters claim that Indians gave up certain idolatrous practices and burned their idols. Arguably these sources could have been written to

75. The Pachuca certificaciones are found in AHPSEM, box 210. See also the certificaciones from the popular mission to the Tucuman frontier in 1805–1806. Fray Antonio de Comajuncosa (president of this popular mission), Fray Bernardo Durán, Fray Pedro Regalado Rodríguez, and the lay friar Fray Martín Romero toured some parishes in the extensive diocese of Tucuman. Documents on this itinerant mission include Certificación de Don José Gabriel de Figueroa, cura beneficiado de San Pablo de Chiguana, Salta, October 13, 1805, AFT, MF-1376; Certificación de Don Tomás Almonte, cura de San Pedro Nolasco de Calchaquí, San Carlos, November 18, 1805, AFT, MF-1377; Certificación de don Juan José Refoxos, cura de Santa María de Catamarca, Santa María de Catamarca, December 9, 1805, AFT, MF-1378; Certificación del Cabildo, Justicia, y Regimiento de San Miguel de Tucumán, January 13, 1806, AFT, MF-1379; and Certificación de don Alberto Puch, alcalde ordinario, y don Saturnino Domingo de Eguia, San Salvador de Jujui, April 8, 1806, AFT, MF-1380.

268

To Sin No More

eulogize the preachers’ work in fighting idolatries and vice; on the other hand, the priest probably did not wish to minimize his own work among his parishioners and his command of the Otomí language.76 That moralizing sermons widely circulated within Franciscan communities, further evinces fear of transgressions among their peers. These sermons were also preserved as instructional material in part to prevent other friars from violating their celibacy vows. Franciscan authorities sought to recruit young men who excelled in religious zeal, virtue, tranquility, honesty, goodness, and morality. Ideally, new associates were young men, preferably virgins committed to sexual abstinence, and without marital obligations. Franciscan authorities further argued that Indians, mestizos, and people of African descent were sexually promiscuous and unfit for the clerical state.77 By sanctifying chastity, they followed the sacred mandates of Jesus Christ, God turned human in Christian theology, who putatively favored “eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12). Hence began the long tradition that favors celibate, male priests (spiritual leaders of the Catholic Church) over sexually active, married men. By the twelfth century, various Councils prohibited a married, Catholic priesthood.78 More often than not, at least publicly, friars preferred to blame female penitents as agitators for their Franciscan confrères’ carnal indiscretions, rather than blaming a friar’s weakness for succumbing to temptation, notwithstanding that over and again religious authorities adamantly forbade the religious to leave their colleges alone. Bonaventure’s guide for novices illustrates such internal tussles to control the corporeal self and the widespread fear that all clergy were likely recidivists. Writers of sermons proclaimed the sacredness of the Church and the holiness of confession to novice missionaries, who they felt could fall into the trap of solicitation in the confessional and give free rein to their own sexual appetites in the itinerant missions once away from the college’s strict vigilance. Cases of sexual solicitation in the confessional illustrate the existence of illicit sexual behaviors among Franciscan missionaries. Some friars found sexual relief outside of their communities as much as within. According to Jorge René González Marmolejo, compared to all other orders, the Franciscans had the largest number of prosecutions for solicitation in the confessional in New Spain, and among the Franciscans, the propaganda fide friars stood out. One obvious reason for these data is that Franciscans outnumbered all other orders. Moreover, in González’s 76. Certificaciones, AHPSEM, box 210: “[M]anifestaron muchissimas personas de âmbos sexos su arrepentimiento; pues sin faltar a la christiana modestia, vieron los ojos espantosas mortificaciones publicas. . . . con lagrimas y sollozos.” 77. Widowers could also become friars and priests. 78. Wiesner-Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality, chapter 1. See also Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

269

study, Peninsular friars outnumbered criollos in using the confessional for sexual advances. Thus, propaganda fide friars, most of whom were from Spain, were more likely to solicit women and men in the confessional than provincial gray robes who were mostly Creoles. A major factor could have been a sense of less control in the colonies than in Spain, particularly in the itinerant missions and remote frontiers. Thus, sermons against lust were also meant to address these problems.79

Social Virtue Franciscan sexual anxieties also reflected social concerns germane to the political, religious, and socio-economic foundations of early modern society. The social fabric in the Hispanic world was grounded on a political theory that legitimized a patriarchal system at the levels of family, society, the state, and the Catholic Church. According to this theory, the king was in charge of the welfare of his subjects in the same way a father took care of his extended family. Likewise, European political theorists equated children’s deference to their fathers to the one vassals owed their king. This metaphoric representation of vassals as children and the King’s parental duties of protection was commonplace in early modern Europe. A French royal decree from 1639 clarified that “The natural reverence of children for their parents is linked to the legitimate obedience of subjects to their sovereign.” In England, King James I wrote in 1598 that “[a]s the kindly father ought to foresee all inconveniences and dangers that may arise toward his children, and [will] . . . hazard . . . his own person . . . to prevent the same; so ought the King towards his people.” In America, the conquest brought Native Americans under the patriarchal protection of the Spanish king. Early on Franciscan influential discourse per-

79. There are interesting Inquisitorial cases in the Archivo General de la Nación, Ramo Inquisición. See, for instance, “Tanto de la relación de la causa de Fr. Francisco Martín del orden de San Francisco, Misionero Apostólico del Convento de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, sacerdote, confesor y predicador, natural de Ciudad Rodrigo en los reinos de España de edad de 40 años poco más o menos, por solicitante,” 1717–1719, AGN, Inquisición, vol. 1184, exp. 24; “Publicación de testigos que se da en la causa que sigue el Inquisidor fiscal contra Fray Pedro Zavaleta de la orden de San Francisco, misionero del colegio apostólico de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro por solicitante,” 1775, AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, box 1107, exp. 4; and “El señor inquisidor fiscal del Santo Oficio contra el P. Fr. Francisco Cobas, religioso misionero del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, por solicitante,” 1798, AGN, Inquisición, vol. 1390, exp. 4. For Saint Bonaventure’s appeals for self-control to novices, see Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came. Jorge René González Marmolejo, Sexo y confesión: La Iglesia y la penitencia en los siglos XVIII y XIX en la Nueva España (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia/Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Plaza y Valdés Editores, 2002), 81, 186–191. For a good study of solicitation in the confessional in early modern Spain, see Adelina Sarrión Mora, Sexualidad y confesión: La solicitación ante el Tribunal del Santo Oficio (siglos XVI–XIX) (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1994).

270

To Sin No More

petuated a conception of the “wretched (miserable) Indian,” which in political and clerical parlance meant that child-like Indians required protection. As Isidro Sariñana (1630–1696), professor of sacred scriptures at the Pontificial University in Mexico City, pointed out in his pamphlet Llanto del Occidente en el ocaso del más claro sol de las Españas, published in 1666 to honor King Philip IV’s reign (1621–1665), it was the king’s duty to look after and protect his orphan children.80 Scholars agree that the extended family—that is, the microcosm of the state—was the vertebral column of the social body in early modern Europe. Authority emanated from the top at both the macro and micro levels. The paterpotestas—the king, father of the fatherland—held his kingdom through a bidirectional liaison of duties and rights. The paterfamilias, head of the household—epicenter of the early modern family—exercised power and carried out duties towards his inferiors. In this sense, the paterfamilias could be the biological father, the spiritual father, the master, the tutor, or government officials of a locality, a province, and a kingdom. The monarch demonstrated power and obligation to his subjects and vassals, like the husband to his wife, children, servants, and slaves. In return, good vassals and obedient sons, wives, daughters, servants, and slaves showed deference to their spiritual leaders, civil authorities, the king, and the head of household. To prevent social upheavals the paterfamilias and its rights and obligations had to be protected. Through education and indoctrination, clerics taught listeners the place in society that God reserved for men, women, and children; masters, slaves, and servants; nobles and plebeians; elders and youths; and rich and poor. Thus, since household structure reflected the broader political order, political theorists and clerics concentrated on reinforcing family stability.81 In this context, society was a hierarchical pyramid in which each layer fit perfectly and bore the pressure of higher-level elements to remain stable. The social framework of early modern society was particularly supported by those at the bottom. Stability of the forces of action and reaction implied knowing and using the rights and obligations of each stratum of the social ladder. To

80. French royal decree quoted in Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 3; King James I, The Trve Lawe of Free Monarchies (1598), quoted in R. Dean Davenport, “Patriarchy and Politics: A Comparative Evaluation of the Religious, Political and Social Thought of Sir Robert Filmer and Robert Lewis Dabney” (Ph.D. diss.: Baylor University, 2006), 16. For America, see Alejandro Cañeque, The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico (New York: Routledge, 2004), 186–192. 81. In addition to the works cited in n. 80, see also Seed, To Love, Honor and Obey; and for the late colonial and early republican periods, see Silvia Marina Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985), esp. 53–97.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

271

secure social stability and prevent unrest, individuals had to be taught and reminded of their duties, particularly the masses at the bottom. As active members and essential guarantors of this ranked system, sermon writers as well as theologians wrote extensively on the rights and duties of parents and children. Succinctly put, as a missionary from Herbón wrote in 1799, “he who despises his father despises God Himself. Understand the same all lower groups with respect to their superiors: women with respect to their husbands; pupils and children with respect to their tutors and caregivers; servants with respect to their masters; youths with respect to elders; disciples regarding masters; and all people regarding the king and his ministers.”82 This early modern rhetoric strongly emphasized the role that children played in society as bearers not only of familial lineage but also the scaffolding upon which the political state operated. Like in Europe, children in the Americas consequently were the first front in the religious and cultural struggle to prepare good subjects and Christians. As the American frontiers expanded, children unquestionably remained an important target for conversion. Franciscan missionaries pressed parents to lead exemplary lives and educate, indoctrinate, and teach their children “from the tender years.” To secure conversion and the republic’s order, missionaries commonly stressed children’s Christian education and the transmission of social, political, and moral virtues at an early, malleable age.83 Friars in Spain and America argued that children quickly grasped Christian rudiments towards their conversion and salvation, which friars could later easily polish. “And if they [parents] could not teach it [the Christian doctrine] themselves,” a missionary from the college in Querétaro suggested in the 1730s, “they should send them to the school so they can learn it [Christian doctrine].” It was assumed that since schools did not exist in most places, clerics (if not parents) took the leading role in educating the youth. Pedagogically speaking, missionaries discouraged children from memorizing the Christian doctrine. Instead, parents should teach their children to understand the obligations of good Christians (reject vices and acquire virtues,

82. Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España, 271–280. See, for instance, Fray Francisco (unknown surname), “Segundo Sermón de Padres de Familia,” in “Sermones de misión del p. francisco,” College of Herbón, ca. 1799, APS, file 181, fol. 61r (although this page is unfoliated): “[E]l q.e desprecia a su p.e, desprecia al mismo Dios. Entiendan lo mismo todos los inferiores respecto de sus Superiores: las mugeres respecto de sus maridos; los pupilos, y menores respecto de sus Tutores, y curadores; los Criados resp.o de sus Amos; los mozos resp.o de los viejos; los discip.os resp.o de los Maestros; y todo el pueblo resp.o del Rey, y sus Ministros.” 83. “Sermon Vigesimo Secundo: Crianza de Hixos,” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, 362: “[D]esde los años tiernos. . . . [S]i llegan a crezer sin disciplina, y educazion toman fuerzas las torzidas inclinaziones, y no ay poder qe los incline a lo bueno.”

272

To Sin No More

wrote the Jesuit Alonso de Andrade [1590–1672] in 1642), and to be honest in the confessional and prepare for the sacraments.84 Missionaries reminded parents to provide their offspring with a comfortable home, food, and all else available within their means. This also meant providing an opportunity to study or to learn a trade. Parents were expected to further support their children’s free decision making vis-à-vis their marital or religious status, as “called by God.” Of all the sermons dealing with parents and their children examined in this study, those preached in America further underscored this responsibility even in the case of illegitimate children; European sermons remained silent on this matter. Although sex outside of wedlock was illicit, missionaries like Fray Ángel Alonso del Prado, who preached at the turn of the nineteenth century, advised parents to care for their illegitimate children as well. While Franciscan missionaries lamented that fornication out of wedlock brought sin and damnation, they also reminded fathers of their responsibility to illegitimate sons and daughters. Regardless of their birth status, missionaries instructed fathers to pay for their daughters’ dowries for marriage or the nunnery. This was important in a colonial society with large numbers of illegitimate offspring. Moreover, it made economic sense. The church provided shelter for orphans and abandoned infants—as usually happened with illegitimate children—ultimately assuming their custody in parishes and orphanages and additional burdens to the ecclesiastics’ coffers. But concerns with illegitimacy also targeted women, who generally supported their progeny born out of wedlock alone. Friars feared that single and independent mothers challenged the religious social ideal centered on the family and the patriarchal system that celebrated the domestic and passive woman and the active and provider man. Notwithstanding the economic difficulties borne by single mothers, friars liked to point out that such women challenged the patriarchal order and “symbolized the dangers of excessive freedom.”85

84. Quotes are from Fray José Antonio Bernad, “Doctrina 5 sobre el 4 mand.o,” in Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” n.p., 1746–1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, 91: “y si por si no pudieren enseñarsela enbiarlos á la escuela para qe la aprendan.” All sermon repertoires include preaching on parental guidance, rights, and obligations. See, for instance, Fray Francisco (surname unknown), “Sermones de misión del p. francisco,” College of Herbón, ca. 1799, APS, file 181, fol. 51v. See also Fray Patricio de Gálvez, College of Cehegín in southeastern Spain, “Sermón de los Padres de Familia,” in “Sermones de misión del P. Patricio de Gálvez del Colegio de Cehegín, 1797,” APS, file 179, vol. 1, 190–215. Alonso de Andrade, El buen soldado Católico y sus obligaciones (Madrid: Francisco Maroto, 1642), part 1, 5. 85. A good introduction to illegitimacy in Spanish America is Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). Fray Ángel Alonso de Prado, “Platica

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

273

Writing about the problem of illegitimacy in New Spain, some missionaries vigorously reminded their audience to take responsibility for their actions and consequences. Clerics believed that a mother should take care of her illegitimate children until they were three years old. It was then the father’s obligation to look after them until they married or could make a living for themselves. Moreover, to further protect the rights of the mother and her illegitimate children in the fin-de-siècle, Fray Ángel Alonso del Prado admonished that “[I]f the mother has no means[,] . . . [after] the child is born, she must support it at the expense of the father.”86 Fray Alonso and others aimed such “reminders” at fathers about their obligations to their children in and out of wedlock and indirectly addressed the socioeconomic problems of abandonment and single motherhood. Above all, parents, like the religious themselves, could only succeed through their own good example. As Alonso del Prado pointed out, the paterfamilias had to “be prominent in providing a good example; otherwise advice and punishment to the offspring will be futile.” All missionaries agreed with Prado’s statement that parents had to be exemplary, strict, and righteous. They encouraged strict discipline and education at an early age to prevent children from growing up with devious tendencies that ultimately were difficult to change. These late–eighteenth-century efforts to control children were in line with what Bianca Premo views as Bourbon “enlightened” social policies to break into the private realm and to enhance the “king’s power and wealth.” She points out that the Spanish state became increasingly attentive to children—to their education, rearing, and control—a reflection of the same royal aspirations to control the empire. The objective of Bourbon officials was “to entrench the traditional ideology of monarch as father as they reached deeper into the lives of colonial families.” In this sense, propaganda fide missionaries became agents of the king.87

de los Padres de Familia,” in Prado, “Libro de sermones y pláticas escrito por el P. Fr. Ángel Alonso del Prado,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 10, unfoliated. 86. “Doctrina 5 sobre el 4 mand.o,” in Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” n.p., 1746– 1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, 92: “En la Madre reside la obligacion de la crianza en los 3 primeros años, y en el Padre los restante de la vida y en caso de no poder hacerlo el uno de ellos debera el otro pagarlo todo.” Also, “Platica de los Padres de Familia,” in Prado, “Libro de sermones y pláticas escrito por el P. Fr. Ángel Alonso del Prado,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 10, unfoliated: “[A] que Dios les llama. . . . Que pensaban, q.e no hai mas, q.e tener hijos, y dexarlos tirados p.r ai? . . . Que la Madre de esos hijos ilegitimos, los debe alimentar hasta los 3 a.s Y el Padre desde los tres as hasta, q.e tome estado, o a lo menos hasta, q.e el tal hijo, o hija, lo pueda ganar p.r si. Y si la Madre no tiene con q.e desde, q.e nace, se ha de sustentar a espensas del Padre. Y la ley civil, si condena lo contrario esta corregida, como contraria a los sagrados canones.” 87. See, for instance, “Sermón 27 de los Padres de Familia,” in Fray José Fiz y Muñoz, 1788, “Sermones del P.P. José Fiz y Muñoz,” APS, file 178, 366–379. Quote is from “Platica de los Padres de Familia,” in Prado, “Libro de sermones y pláticas escrito por el P. Fr.

274

To Sin No More

Early modern society accepted the use of corporal punishment as an educational tool. Nonetheless, at least in their sermons, Franciscan missionaries suggested that corporal punishment be a last resort. In a rhetorical twist that would be echoed in the frontiers of empire, preachers from the colleges of propaganda fide said a father’s punishment for his children should be grounded in paternal love. Corporal punishments of children, as painful as they were to the parents, reflected a fatherly love aimed at conversion and salvation. Here Franciscans seem to be drawing on theology rooted in the Old Testament, as in this case missionaries closely followed the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus. They cited Ecclesiasticus 30: “He that loveth his son, frequently chastiseth him, that he may rejoice in his latter end.” Father Alonso del Prado, writing at the end of the eighteenth century, who relied less on Latinisms than his predecessors, nonetheless eagerly argued his position here with long biblical Latin quotes. The Book of Proverbs inspired his justification of corporal punishment of children: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son” [Proverbs 13, v. 24]. “Withhold not correction from a child: for if you strike him with the rod, he shall not die . . . and deliver his soul from hell” [Proverbs 23, 13–14]. The religious also warned that corporal chastisement had to be charitable and not excessive, according to age and the offense. In a discourse that echoed in the distant missions of Texas, Sonora, the Gran Chaco in southeastern Bolivia and Argentina, and California, eternal salvation justified the means. If necessary, missionaries claimed, parents should exercise corporal punishments to cast the lives of their children in the Christian mold, and that included Native American neophytes in frontier missions.88

Ángel Alonso del Prado,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 10, unfoliated: “[S]ino ban delante con el buen exem.o en vano, seran consejos, y castigos p.a los hijos . . . lleno de vicios, y maldades.” Bianca Premo, Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority, and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 139–141. 88. Old Testament citations were commonplace throughout the eighteenth century, as a look at Fray José Ximénez de Jesús’ 1730s sermons, Fray José Antonio Bernad’s 1750s sermons, and Fray Ángel Alonso del Prado’s 1790s sermons suggests. Fray José Ximénez de Jesús, “Sermon Vigesimo Secundo: Crianza de Hixos,” in Ximénez de Jesús, “Libro de pláticas, sermones y ejemplos del P. Fr. José Ximénez de Jesús,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 13, fol. 362: “Qui diligit filium suum assiduat illi flagella, ut lætetur in novissimo suo” (emphasis in original). Fray José Antonio Bernad, “Doctrina 5 sobre el 4 mand.o” in Bernad, “Libro de sermones, pláticas y exemplos sueltos del P. Fr. José Antonio Bernad dados en España y Nueva España,” n.p. 1746–1752, AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 2, fol. 93: “El que perdona la vara dice el espiritu S.o aborrece á su Hijo: qui parcit virge odit q luim suum.” Similar quotes also appear in Fray Ángel Alonso del Prado, “Platica de los Padres de Familia,” in Prado, “Libro de sermones y pláticas escrito por el P. Fr. Ángel Alonso del Prado,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 10, unfoliated: “Qui Filium suum diligit asiduatei flagela,” and citing Proverbs: “Qui parcit virgæ odit filium suum” [Proverbs 13, v. 24]; “Noli subtrahere a puero disciplinam: si enim percusseris eum virga,

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

275

By the end of the eighteenth century, preachers also strongly advocated for hard work to overcome economic difficulties. In two surviving documents from Fray José de San Martín and Fray Ángel Alonso del Prado (both arrived in the same 1785 expedition from Spain to Querétaro), a work ethic to support and provide for the family is found that resembles a capitalist message. For these friars, work was not only necessary but holy. Ultimately, hard work benefited the family, ensured the marital or religious status of their offspring, including the dowries, helped with obtaining medical treatment in times of illness, paid for the Christian burials of deceased household members, and secured relief in purgatory through donations to the Church. How could it be any other way? Franciscans, since the foundation of the order, had vehemently expressed their contempt for laziness, “the mother and root of all vices,” repeated Fray Alonso del Prado, who even went as far as to denounce those who worked just enough to remain in poverty as moral sinners. Even women should work whenever needed, wrote this missionary. He categorically criticized as a “diabolic practice” (práctica diabólica) those husbands who forbade their wives to work on grounds of dishonor to the family. Work was a blessing, wrote Prado: “The Pope works, the King works, the Bishop and all of us have to work to fulfill our duties, or otherwise there is no glory.” Nonetheless, women had to perform “womanly works” that centered on her abilities to sew and clean and were agreed upon by missionaries.89 While Father Prado incited people to work, he did so in a socially responsible environment that not only praised the labor of the worker, but also the elite’s obligations. In a sermon written at the turn of the century on the observance of the holy days, the missionary criticized the “[h]acenderos [hacienda owners], miners, obrajeros, y other greedy [people]” for exploiting their workers on Sundays and other holy feasts. But his message went beyond labor exploitation to a call against the rich Creole entrepreneurs of New Spain, borrowing from a popular saying in Spain at that time: “Yndiano Rico,

non morietur. . . . [E]t animam ejus de inferno liberabis [Proverbs 23 v. 13–14]. . . . [E]t curva illos a pueritia illorum” [Ecclessiasticus 7, v. 25]. See also from the College of Cehegín in Murcia, P. Gálvez, “Sermón de los Padres de Familia,” in his book of sermons, College of Cehegín, APS, file 179, pp. 207. He also cites Eccl. 30 to justify corporal punishment of children through whippings, beatings, and slaps (“azotes, palos y bofetadas”). 89. “Platica de los Padres de Familia,” in Prado, “Libro de sermones y pláticas escrito por el P. Fr. Ángel Alonso del Prado,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 10, unfoliated: “[M]adre y raiz de todos los vicios. . . . El Papa trabaja, el Rey trabaja, el obispo, y todos hemos de trabajar p.a cumplir nras oblig.s y sino no hai gloria”; and “Padres de Familia,” in San Martín, “Sermones morales y pláticas del P. Fr. José de San Martín,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 11, 90–91. The sermonario only includes a portion of the sermon, which ends abruptly. See also the anonymous sermon writer from the college in Herbón, “Doctrina de las Obligaciones de los Casados,” in “Libro de doctrinas para misión,” APS, file 183, unfoliated.

276

To Sin No More

hijo caballero, Nieto Mendicante.” He blatantly accused American Creoles of squandering the fortunes amassed by their Peninsular ancestors. But his accusations went beyond generational financial ruin. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Prado also accused rich hacenderos of overexploiting peasants. He blamed them for acquiring their haciendas “at the costs of holy days and the sweat of the poor, . . . without paying them for their sweat, and with deceit and usury.” The friar lamented that these rich landowners kept their workers in debt by paying them with goods for which they charged excessive prices. Scribbling figures, the missionary showed how hacenderos robbed from their peones (wage workers) not only on regular days, but particularly during the holy days. Hence, he asserted that such haciendas would not last, unless owners of the land “founded their fortunes and haciendas on fairness and justice.”90 Besides urging social justice for the poor and the peasants in their preaching, Franciscan missionaries were active in times of famine and pestilence, leading rogativas (rogations) and processions, petitions aimed at asking God to forgive the inhabitants of a given locale and return prosperity. In Murcia, in southeastern Spain, a dry but fertile area, missionaries from the Colegio de Cehegín led rogativas calling for rain during the 1790s. The southeastern tip of the Iberian Peninsula was particularly susceptible to cycles of long, intense droughts with interregna of torrential precipitation that wrought havoc to the region. In 1797, Fray Patricio de Gálvez, a missionary from this colegio, wrote his “Sermón de Rogativa para Agua” (sermon asking for water) to remind his audience that only by detesting their sins would God respond to their supplications and grant them comfort in the midst of extreme suffering and calamities. Droughts typically caused famine and pestilence that devastated entire regions. Famine and epidemics had also visited Querétaro in the 1730s and again in the 1780s, as discussed in Chapter 4. Priests from the

90. “Plática de no trabajar las Fiestas,” in Prado, “Libro de sermones y pláticas escrito por el P. Fr. Ángel Alonso del Prado,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 10, unfoliated: “Hacenderos, Mineros, obrajeros, y demas abarientos. . . . De donde ha de venir, sino de q.e vras haciendas son en muchos, ganadadas contra las fiestas, contra el sudor del pobre, q.e haceis en ellas trabajar, sin pagarle su sudor, y con trampas, y usuras, con q.e los pagais con generos, dandoles gato p.r libre, con exceso en el precio, y falsas habilita.s con q.e los bebeis la sangre. Haciendas tan mal ganadas, como han de durar?” . . . Junta a esto lo q.e le llevas de mas en los gene.s habil.s &.a en cada año a cada uno; luego en quarenta, o cincuenta a.s sacas la hacienda mal ganada. Desengañense: funden en equid.d y justicia sus caudales, y haciendas, y les duraran.” In his treatise on morality, Fray Hermenegildo Vilaplana attacked owners of obrajes (textile factories) in Querétaro who paid their workers part in cash and part in overpriced cloth that workers sold for less in the city’s market. Father Vilaplana nevertheless explained in his prologue to his book that such practices were banned by the government when the book was already in press, preventing him from introducing amendments. Vilaplana, Centinela dogmatico-moral, 165–172.

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

277

Queretaran seminary actively collaborated with other clerics in giving extreme unction, hearing confessions, and applying penance and other sacraments to the terminally ill as well as helping with the burials. Helping the poor in their sermons and actively participating in care of the sick certainly coincided with the principles of Saint Francis’s Rule.91

Political Virtue In 1759, King Charles III (1759–1788) acceded to the Spanish throne. His reign was the culmination of a centralizing process that began with his father Philip V early in the century. Known as the Bourbon reforms honoring the name of the French royal house enthroned in Spain after the last Hapsburg king, Charles II “The Bewitched” (1665–1700), the new monarchs introduced a battery of new policies that sought to bolster royal authority over Spanish and American subjects, including the ecclesiastics. Particularly in the second half of the eighteenth century, the Bourbon reforms catalyzed a centralizing process of the bureaucratic apparatus that sought to maximize royal revenues collected in the monarch’s European and American dominions to sustain the empire and its transformation.92 Reformers particularly targeted the Catholic Church, viewed as too powerful and independent of royal scrutiny. The Concordat of 1753 with Rome granted the universal right of the king to appoint most of the ecclesiastical offices and, more importantly, to control the tithes—for the most part with the acquiescence of regalist bishops and archbishops. Some reformers believed that the ecclesiastics, particularly from the religious orders, had amassed fortunes that encumbered the economic progress of the empire. Critics such as Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, Minister of the Treasury during Charles III’s reign, were certainly aghast at the material prosperity that the religious enjoyed throughout the eighteenth century. Reformers lamented with bitterness that clerics had abandoned their spiritual mission for a life of idleness and permissiveness in overcrowded convents. Perhaps the best known example of the arm wrestling between the Bourbon monarchs and the religious orders was the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 from the Spanish Crown’s dominions,

91. Rogativas or rogations were petitions for various reasons that ranged from calamitous times produced by droughts, epidemics, earthquakes, to wars, births in the royal family, or a new pontiff. For a study of the rogativas in early modern Spain, see Antonio Luis Cortés Peña, “Entre la religiosidad popular y la institucional: Las rogativas en la España moderna,” Hispania 55, no. 191 (1995). See the 1790s case of Murcia in Fray Patricio de Gálvez, “Sermón de Rogativa para Agua,” in “Sermones de misión del P. Patricio de Gálvez del Colegio de Cehegín, 1797,” APS, file 179, vol. 1, Colegio de Cehegín, 286–297. 92. There is a vast literature on the Bourbon reforms. See, for instance, Allan J. Kuethe and Kenneth J. Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century: War and the Bourbon Reforms, 1713–1796 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

278

To Sin No More

and six years later, Charles III’s success at securing Rome’s suppression of the order.93 The move to tighten royal control over the Franciscan Order in Spanish America took place shortly thereafter. In 1769, the Council of the Indies, with Franciscan acquiescence in Madrid, suppressed the two commissaries general in New Spain and Peru as part of the centripetal forces that were shaping the Bourbon reforms of the 1760s.94 Regalist notables exposed ideological reasons to distrust the religious, some of whom were suspected of supporting ideas rooted in medieval thought, such as the notion that potestas in the medieval sense (sovereignty) derives from God to the people and from the latter to the rulers, who, in the case of imperial Spain, was the king. According to this logic, because potestas rested with the people instead of the king, incapable rulers could be removed from office. In contrast, enlightened despots claimed that sovereignty derived directly from God to the rulers, without the intervention of the people; in other words, the monarchs were vested with a divine right to govern their subjects. This political philosophy of government therefore stripped people of the power to control, limit, or monitor royal authority.95 Franciscan authorities in Madrid complied with the new theories of government and sent patent letters to their subjects in America during the late 1760s to fortify the king’s sovereignty over the colonists. Beyond the economic aspects behind the centralization of Spanish rule in America, Madrid’s anxieties over colonists’ loyalty increased as royal authority constrained colonial life. Civil officials knew that the Catholic Church was a pivotal institution

93. See John Lynch, La España del siglo XVIII, trans. Juan Faci, 2nd ed. (Barcelona: Crítica, 1999), 168–170, 241–246; Roberto Fernández, La España Moderna: Siglo XVIII, ed. Historia 16 and Javier Tusell, vol. 4, Manual de Historia de España (Madrid: Historia 16, 1993), 643–644, 670–671; and a brief synthesis of church and state relations in eighteenth-century Spanish America in Bakewell, A History of Latin America to 1825, 369–373. 94. The decree of June 21, 1769 abolished the commissary general of New Spain, concluding Fray Manuel de Nájera’s tenure as the last commissary general in North America. Torre Curiel, Vicarios en entredicho, 67. That same year the commissary general of Perú was also abolished. 95. See, for instance, the Count of Floridablanca’s anti-clerical ideas in Lynch, La España del siglo XVIII, 250. A brief discussion of the differences between mediaeval political thought and enlightened despotism appears in Herrejón Peredo, Del sermón al discurso cívico, 78. For the application of regalist ideas in late colonial Spanish America, especially to the regular orders, see Weber, Bárbaros, 129–130. In Press Censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 81–84, Cyndia Susan Clegg points out that in the seventeenth century fires were lighted and fed in London and Paris to burn the books of Juan de Mariana, Francisco Suárez, and others who endorsed the medieval idea of a popular intermediation in the origins of regal power in response to new ideas about a direct divine origin of that power. (I thank my colleague José Luis Egío for this reference.)

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

279

in exercising religious and social control over the monarch’s subjects in the Iberian and American territories; not surprisingly, clerics were expected to preach due loyalty to God, the king, and his civil representatives. Civil authorities in Spain during the decade of the Jesuits’ expulsion compelled the Catholic Church to circulate among its parishioners a message of the sacredness of the king’s patronage over America. Fray Pedro Juan de Molina, minister general of the Franciscans, reported in a patent issued in 1766 to all his religious subjects a royal cédula that ordered all friars to avoid criticism and to use moderate language when commenting on the king’s and his ministers’ orders.96 Always suspicious of foreigners’ loyalty and foreign ideas, two years later the Council of the Indies further forbade foreigners from entering any religious order within the king’s dominions.97 Suspicions about inadequate allegiance to the king, however, never ceased, as waves of revolutionary thought and action expanded through and transformed Europe and the Americas in the decades around 1800. The Hispanic world felt the political maelstrom left by the U.S. war for independence (1776–1783), the French Revolution in 1789, the beheading of the French king and queen in 1792, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808, and the wars for independence in the Americas during the 1810s. Selected sermons and pláticas in the last years of the eighteenth century and first decades of the nineteenth century also reflect the political anxieties of the period. As a general pattern in these sources, one can contend that missionaries’ sermons became more politicized as new challenges to the political regime arose and consolidated in Europe and America. To shore up royal power, the friars’ orations celebrated loyalty to the king and his official representatives. Borrowing again from the words of Fray Ángel Alonso de Prado: Republicans or subjects . . . should love, honor, and revere them [the authorities] and also have the obligation to obey them in anything related to the good government of towns or republics, and give them the necessary favor and help to have justice. If this is lacking they offend God.

96. “Patente del Rvdmo. P. Fr. Pedro Juan de Molina, ministro general de la orden de San Francisco, en que manda no se murmure sino que se use de templanza en la lengua sobre las órdenes del Rey y sus ministros,” Convento de San Francisco de Sevilla, October 24, 1766, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 2, no. 11. 97. “Patente del P. Fr. Manuel de la Vega, Comisario General de Indias, al guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, para que no se admita al santo hábito a ningún extranjero; y para que se remita una nómina de religiosos del Colegio, sus patrias, oficios, etc., y que esto se haga siempre que se envíen las tablas capitulares,” Cuarto de Indias del convento de San Francisco de Madrid, December 21, 1768, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 22.

280

To Sin No More

Moreover, the youth were expected to pay particular reverence and respect to the elderly. To maintain the social order, missionaries preached against licentious mocking of community elders, among whom wisdom rested.98 Yet, the same missionaries who reassured royal government also reiterated the role the Catholic Church played in the maintenance of the Old Regime and the challenges the Church faced in the age of Enlightenment. A man of his times, Fray Ángel knew of the multiple attacks on the Catholic Church in late eighteenth-century society. He countered those who criticized the clerics or openly revealed their defects by citing Constantine’s putative response to accusations against the Nicean Council bishops: “I am not the one to judge you, but to honor the priests, even those who are bad, as Jesus Christ orders.” Paraphrasing Constantine, the Franciscan said that if he saw a secular or religious priest sinning, he would cover the offense with his mantle. Therefore, “sacrilegious” accusers committed mortal sin, he warned. Preachers shouted to their audiences that attacking the Catholic Church would inevitably lead them to the kingdom of hell.99 Fray Ángel’s times were difficult for the ecclesiastics on all fronts. Opposition to the missions sent to Catholics arose throughout the eighteenth century, but particularly in the last decades, when the friars’ sermons were more focused on social issues. Moreover, in Europe and the Americas, missionaries confronted strong resistance from intellectuals, whose ideas directly conflicted with the preachers’ emotional calls and who viewed with contempt the lack of rationality in the preachers’ performances. Nonetheless, it should also be noted that enlightened secular thinkers and missionaries did not have conflicting views on every front. Some missionaries, like their enlightened lay contemporaries, prayed for a work ethic, social reforms that brought relief to the poor, preservation of the patriarchal system, divinity of the monarch, and the importance of authority and hierarchy as a means towards liberty under the umbrella of God and king. In a very Franciscan vein, some friars’ sermons showed a preference for the “poor of spirit or humble of heart, who usually are the rustic villagers,

98. “Platica de los Hijos a los Padres,” in Prado, “Libro de sermones y pláticas escrito por el P. Fr. Ángel Alonso del Prado,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 10, unfoliated: “[D]eben los republica.os, o subditos estan a ellos subordinados. Los deben amar, honrrar, y reverenciar, y tambien tienen obligacion de obedecerlos en todo lo q.e pertenece al buen govierno de los Pueblos, o republicas, y darles el favor y auxilio necesario, p.a hacer justicia; y si en esto se falta se ofende a Dios.” 99. “Platica de los Hijos a los Padres,” in Prado, “Libro de sermones y pláticas escrito por el P. Fr. Ángel Alonso del Prado,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 10, unfoliated: “A mi no me toca juzgar de vosotros, sino de honrar a los Sacerd.s aunq.e sean malos, como manda Jesuchristo. Y decia el Magni.co emperad.r de si: Si yo con mis proprios ojos viese pecar a un sacerdote del S.or o alguno de aquellos q.e viven monastica vida, (q.e son los Relig.s), con mi capa iria a cubrirle p.r q.e nadie lo viese” (emphasis in original).

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

281

plebeian folks and other common people, who attend [the missions] regularly with good intention and spirit, who usually benefit from the doctrine and healthy advice that the Preachers distribute from the pulpit.” These friars shared common ground with the view of agrarian society as the true holder of political, moral, and social virtues. As Charles C. Noel demonstrated, missionary preachers in eighteenth-century Spain supported a Catholic agrarian utopia wherein peasants, artisans, notables, and clerics lived harmoniously off the land and its products, merchants and businessmen kept a low profile, and, hence exploitation was anathema. In this sense, missionary preachers’ praise of the peasantry compares to Thomas Jefferson’s agrarianism and the belief that only a rural society of free independent farmers could prevent republican virtue from leading to tyranny. Naturally, Franciscan missionaries did not defend a republican regime sustained by the labor of independent economic units represented by the farmer and the yeoman. The message of the missionaries who toiled the rural areas of the Hispanic world in their popular missions certainly favored the common folk over the “haughty, arrogant, vain, and . . . presumptuous” upper classes and the people with the most power and authority but within the limits of a Christian republic under the sovereignty of a Catholic monarch.100 Rather than challenging the political system, friars criticized a wholly “enlightened” society that would be more dedicated to self-flattery than to the cultivation of the soul. Veteran missionaries often showed awareness that their attempts to convert fell on deaf ears, particularly those of well-educated listeners. In their writings to fellow missionaries, they reported that some sermon-goers came to mock the religious spectacle, while reminding potential missionaries to focus on the peasantry, whom the Franciscans believed would unquestionably follow the missionary.101 But peasants and other commoners also had their own agendas. Despite attempts to seal off the frontiers, revolutionary ideas from France and the recently independent United States infiltrated the porous frontiers of the Spanish Atlantic world. Franciscan missionaries defended the order and deference to the Catholic monarchy, and the traditional social ladder with the family at the center of the community. They openly declared their own views of impor-

100. Noel, “Missionary Preachers in Spain.” “Plática de Anuncio,” in San Martín, “Sermones morales y pláticas del P. Fr. José de San Martín,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 11, 15: “[L]os pobres de spiritu, u humildes de corazon, quales suelen ser, los rusticos Aldeanos; gente plebeia, y demas personas del vulgo, qe asisten por lo regular con buena intencion, y espiritu, suelen aprovecahrse de la doctrina, y sanos consejos, qe reparten desde el pulpito los Predicadores. . . . [S]obervios, arrogantes, vanos, y curiosos, presumidos. . . . de los letrados, del os escribas, y Fariseos; de la gente de mas capacidad, y autoridad, raro, ó ninguno se convirtio.” 101. Noel, “Missionary Preachers in Spain.”

282

To Sin No More

tant events such as the French Revolution, the Spanish war for independence against the French, and the American wars for independence from Spain. Particularly active in his preaching against the ideals of the French revolution was Fray José de San Martín, a missionary from the Colegio de Querétaro who wrote two sermons explicitly addressing the meaning of liberty under the new French republican regime or a theocratic state. Only one of these speeches has survived in the Franciscan archive in Celaya. Titled “Sermon on True and False Liberty,” Father San Martín predictably asserted that true liberty could be found only under “God’s law,” whereas the empire of reason advocated by the French republicans represented a state of false liberty. To him, as well as other clerics, liberty and the pursuit of happiness could only be achieved within the Church, which provided the way to follow Jesus Christ and their God.102 Under the centripetal political forces of the eighteenth century, missionary sermons embraced a language of kinship that had rhetorical significance in the broader political context and was accessible to the legions of peasant attendees during the popular missions. Relying on the familial parlance, the sermons that I peruse in this study as well as others preached in the Americas and Spain illustrate the asymmetrical relationships of the monarch with his vassals as well as the political duties and obligations embedded in such dissimilarities. Similar to the paterfamilias who guides and protects his household, whose members owe him obedience and respect, civil servants, clerics, and particularly the monarch provided his subjects with security and leadership in exchange for loyalty, deference, and submissiveness. This political philosophy just described of enlightened despotism came under assault throughout the Hispanic world in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Scott Eastman has illustrated in his study of sermons preached in Spain and New Spain during this period how Catholicism and kingship “provided ideological ammunition for those fighting the French in Spain” and ironically for both sides of insurgents and royalists fighting each other in New Spain. It seems that the colegios de propaganda fide aligned formally with the Spanish Crown throughout the American wars for independence (1808–1826). In Mexico, perhaps the most notorious loyalist missionary was the Creole Fray Diego Miguel Bringas, a missionary from the Queretaran college whose activities against Mexican independence lasted well into the late 1820s. Just three months after the Grito de Dolores on September 16, 1810

102. “Sermon 1.º sobre la verdadera, y falsa libertad,” in San Martín, “Sermones morales y pláticas del P. Fr. José de San Martín,” n.p., n.d., AHPFM-FCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 1, 22–24: “[L]os dos siguientes sermones, los hice en tiempo en que los Franceses establecian las Republicas; inspirando en los corazones de todos, la falsa y mal entendida Libertad: por ello el uno es sobre: la verdadera, y falsa libertad. El otro: sobre la diferencia que ay: del obrar como perfectamente libre, á la de obrar como perfecto libertino.”

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

283

that initiated the Mexican war for independence, loyalist Bringas preached a sermon in Guanajuato against the “traitors to America, to Spain, and to the Church” because they “declare war against their fathers, their sons, their brothers, their monarch, their country and against the sacred religion.” The war then was a fratricide within the household as much as the larger family of the Spanish monarch and his subjects. Echoing events on Iberian soil, he went on to describe Father Miguel Hidalgo’s uprising as the consequence of the impious Napoleon Bonaparte and the ungodly French republican ideas. Throughout the conflict, Bringas and other missionaries from the Querétaro seminary were active as chaplains in the royal armies and preached sermons against the insurgents.103 Because these missionaries subscribed to the theory of enlightened despotism, which supported the idea that sovereignty passed directly from God to the rulers, they repudiated any overthrow of monarchical power, which they considered a direct attack against the Catholic Church.104 Both San Martín and Bringas lived through the independence of Mexico in 1821 and, on the other side of the Atlantic, the beheading of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1792, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain and the restoration of absolutist Ferdinand VII (1808–1833).

Conclusions Franciscan missionaries from the colegios de propaganda fide built a framework around their preaching to convert Catholics and non-Christians alike. Borrowing from other clerics’ ideas and combined with their own theology and experience, missionaries left their colleges with a cornucopia of scholarship that sought to mold a Christian citizenry in the early modern Hispanic world. With a pedagogical purpose, missionaries wrote sermons to inculcate certain views of morality and socio-economic, gender, and political relations. First and foremost, through preaching, missionaries disseminated their message of moral, social, and political virtues to gain eternal salvation for their listeners. In the friars’ social organigram, each human being occupied a specific position

103. Fray Diego Miguel Bringas, Sermón que en la reconquista de Guanajuato, predicó extemporáneamente en la iglesia parroquial de dicha ciudad, el padre Fray Diego Miguel Bringas (1810), available at http://www.pim.unam.mx/catalogos/hyd/HYDII/HYDII154. pdf (accessed October 12, 2017). In a detailed report, the guardian of the colegio in Querétaro informed the commissioner general of the Indies on the activities of certain missionaries during the first year of the conflict. See “Respuesta dada a la anterior carta del Rvdmo. P. Fr. Pablo de Moya, Comisario General de Indias, fechada el 9 de julio de 1811, por el P. Fr. Ángel Alonso de Prado, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, October 23, 1811, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 3, no. 109. Scott Eastman, Preaching Spanish Nationalism across the Hispanic Atlantic, 1759–1823 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012), 122–134, quote on p. 131. 104. Herrejón Peredo, Del sermón al discurso cívico, 78.

284

To Sin No More

and played a particular role. We have seen that women were of particular interest to the missionaries. In the Christian republic, women ought to be exemplary daughters and sisters, devout wives, and exceptionally pure nuns. Virginity and sexual purity entered the friars’ discourse so often that sermons portray the missionaries’ ideal as much as their anxieties with the body and sexuality. The sermonarios, or collections of sermons and speeches, show that the Franciscan apostolic colleges were nodes in an Atlantic network of ideas that traveled with the missionaries to and from the centers and peripheries of Spanish power. The missionaries tried to impose, sometimes unsuccessfully, their own system of thought through preaching tours on both sides of the Atlantic. This was an attempt to perpetuate a patriarchal structure that valued deference and order and originated in the intimacy of the family to the social, political, and religious macro-levels. Particularly after the 1760s, Franciscan missionaries from the colegios became a branch of civil as well as ecclesiastical power over the colonies in a more visible fashion. Under pressure by the secular government, missionaries preached the social benefits of enlightened despotism for colonial society. Franciscan preaching supported the premise that God, the king, and their officials were united to govern for the well-being and happiness of their subjects. For the religious that was the true freedom.105 “Children” were not only natural offspring, but also the children of the republic, namely, all subjects, servants, slaves, and native peoples. Children, natural or civil, the religious asserted, owed obedience, reverence, and help to their natural parents, the head of the household, masters, elders, civil notables, the monarch, and, above all, the spiritual fathers—the clerics. On the other hand, biological parents, tutors, masters, civil authorities, clerics, and the king had to provide for their subordinates. That meant feeding them, educating them, and providing good examples. Those who mismanaged any of these duties, the Franciscans insisted, would incur mortal sin. Ultimately, the missionaries’ discourse, perhaps accidentally, perpetuated their mission on earth. Sin, the Devil, and hell were so widespread in early modern society that the aim of the friars to save all souls seemed impractical. If the business of salvation depended on clients, they were certainly plentiful. Missionaries believed that vice and diabolical behaviors were rampant among independent non-Christians on the frontiers of Spanish control.106 Friars also

105. A clear instance of Viceroy Branciforte requesting the collegiate friars of Querétaro to preach for the subordination to God, the King, and government officials and to repudiate the false liberty, meaning republicanism, is the “Carta muy reservada del Virrey Branciforte al guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, relativa a la Orden Real del 22 de mayo último, encargando se predique contra la libertad y errores del tiempo,” Mexico City, October 7, 1795, AHPFM-FCSCQ, L, file 6, no. 22. 106. For Franciscan beliefs in widespread wickedness, witchcraft, and diabolism among native peoples in the frontier regions of Guatemala and Texas, see Jay Harrison, “Franciscan

CHAPTER 5. MISSIONARY PREACHING

285

confronted sin within the Catholic communities. As sermons and pláticas asserted over and again, human nature leaned toward wickedness. Thus, the missionary discourse justified its own existence and perpetuated its place in society. The Franciscan rhetoric asserted that some sinners converted in response to the preachers’ words, while others pulled back from conversion— fell back into their sinful acts—and some rejected the message from their lives, leaving large numbers in the population in need of further preaching. Missionaries advised their audience that “another Mission from Hell enters” the locality following their “Holy Mission.”107 Relapse along with intense efforts to secure that people sin no more were commonplace in the Franciscan missions of Christianization and re-Christianization in the Hispanic world and beyond.

Missionary Theory and Practice in Eighteenth-Century New Spain: The Propaganda Fide Friars in the Texas Missions, 1690–1821” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 2012), 98–100. Maria F. Wade describes the “religious combat” that friars waged against evil in New Spain’s northern frontiers in Missions, Missionaries, anad Native Americans: Long-Term Processes and Daily Practices (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008). 107. “Sermon de Despedida,” in Hernández, “Libro de sermones,” n.p., n.d., AHPFMFCSCQ, H, file 7, no. 9, unfoliated: “quando luego ha de entrar otra Mision del infierno.”

This page intentionally left blank

Epilogue: Frontiers n the late eighteenth century, Fray Francisco Antonio Barbastro, a Franciscan missionary from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro, wrote a series of missionary treatises for the use of his missionary confreres who ministered to independent Indians on the Sonora frontier missions. Throughout his career in northwestern Mexico, where he resided for almost three decades (1773–1800), the tireless friar wrote prolifically. To assist missionary apprentices in the instruction of mission neophytes, he wrote bilingual catechisms, dictionaries, prayers, sermons, and pláticas in Spanish and Ópata, one of the native languages of the region. He found his works “beneficial to whoever read them, with nothing less than pious inclination.” Barbastro also wrote on the mundane management of the missions and the always thorny issue of poverty. His treatises reveal his concerns with the evangelical ministry and missionary life in remote areas distant from the control of Franciscan and civil authorities. To administer the sacraments to native peoples, to instruct them in the Christian doctrine and to preach to them, he suggested the missions keep “a Bible, a handbook, some moral and preaching books, particularly catechetical.” Overall, in accordance with the soteriological scope of the colleges, he offered advice to help his fellow Franciscans in the conversion and salvation of Sonoran peoples. In doing so, Barbastro’s writings distilled his intellectual and missionary experiences in Spain, central Mexico, and remote Sonora.1

I

1. Fray Francisco Antonio Barbastro, “Deberes y obligaciones temporales de los misioneros en el norte de Nueva España,” 1780, San Pedro y San Pablo de Tubutama, University of Texas, Austin, Nettie Lee Benson Library, G227, fol. 1r: “Se nos manda administrar al pueblo los Stos Sacramentos, instruir, y predicar al Pueblo, luego podemos tener una biblia un manual, algunos libros morales y predicables, especialmente catequistas.” In a letter to the guardian of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro, he asserted that “[t]engo escritos cuatro cartapacios sobre la necesidad que tiene (y paso a probar ser obligación) todo ministro de saber el idioma de los indios que administra, y he comenzado a escribir otro trabajo de la excelencia del ministerio y animado a él a todos los ministros” and he continued that such treaties would be “serán provechosos a quien los lea, con pía afición, y no más.” In Fr. Francisco Antonio Barbastro, “Carta del P. Fr. Francisco Antonio Barbastro al guardián P. Fr. Esteban Salazar,” May 27, 1782, AHPFM-FCSCQ, K, file 16, second part, no. 10. The catalogue for the colegio inventory has this quote in its title, but the document is missing. See also Gómez Canedo, Evangelización y conquista, 159, n. 19; and Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios, “Introducción,” xxv. The Opata documents are in the Ayer Collection, Ms. 1640, Newberry Library. See also Barbastro’s “Sermones, confesionario breve, cathecismo breve, oraciones, vocabulario breve en la lengua Opata,” Bancroft Library, HHB

287

288

To Sin No More

We know very little of Barbastro’s life before his tenure in Sonora. He entered the order in a Franciscan convent in Zaragoza, Aragón, in 1754. A decade later, he joined the college at Calamocha (also in Aragón) from which he departed to Querétaro in 1769. Like other missionaries, including Fray Junípero Serra, Fray Francisco Antonio ministered to Catholics in Europe as well as Mexico. Before he traveled to Sonora in 1773, he prepared for his evangelical duties in the libraries of the colegios de San Roque in Calamocha and de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro, where he customarily attended the daily conferences on theology. He preached from convent pulpits and very likely from provisional stages during his itinerant tours. He administered sacraments and heard confessions. Altogether, he sought to convert Catholics to his own vision of Catholicism. Similar to Serra and most missionaries, scholarly interest in Barbastro has tended to focus on his evangelical efforts to convert nonChristians in frontier missions. But for Barbastro, Serra, and many other missionaries, frontier missions were the last stage of a long journey that began the day they took their vows in a Franciscan convent.2 This book has followed the friars’ steps before they reached the frontier missions. To close the circle, this epilogue connects the missionaries’ evangelism on the periphery of the Spanish empire to the themes of the book. First, I discuss how the frontier ministry borrowed from the colleges’ training ethos and the conversion of Catholics. In frontier missions, missionaries preached, catechized, and introduced a Christian way of life in line with their Catholicism. While the challenges and mechanics of frontier conversion might differ from other pastoral scenarios, this book has emphasized similarities. College friars aimed at bringing moral observance and religious piety to the daily lives of Catholics and non-Christians alike. From a soteriological perspective, the ephemeral rural mission and the frontier mission had analogous

M-M 483. I became aware of this compendium of preaching material in Cynthia Radding, “Crosses, Caves, and Matachinis: Divergent Appropriations of Catholic Discourse in Northwestern New Spain,” The Americas 55, no. 2 (1998): 184, n. 16. Radding also argues that missionaries wrote catechisms and sermon material in bilingual editions for their Franciscan associates and native catechists to use in the indoctrination of indigenous peoples in Sonora. Apparently they were widely circulated among the missionaries, who annotated the different idiomatic variants of each native language. Ibid., 187–188. 2. See for instance, E. del Hoyo, “Francisco Antonio Barbastro,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2003, accessed online. He had arrived at Querétaro from the Apostolic College of Calamocha in Spain, where he probably preached to the faithful (he was listed as apostolic preacher), in the 1769 expedition. Borges Morán, “Expediciones misioneras.” In 1772, he was residing in the Colegio de la Santa Cruz. He traveled to the Sonora missions in 1773. See “Lista hecha por el P. Fr. Romualdo Cartagena, guardián del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, de religiosos del Colegio remitida el 25 de septiembre de 1772”; and “Lista de religiosos del Colegio remitida el 7 de enero de 1774,” Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, January 7, 1774, AHPFM-FCSCQ, M, file 2, no. 9B.

EPILOGUE: FRONTIERS

289

salvific aspirations. Notwithstanding rhetorical hyperbole, describing rural Europe as “las Indias de acá” indicates these similarities. I conclude with a discussion that puts the Franciscan colleges squarely at the center of historiographic debates that connect early modern colonialism, global Catholicism, and the missions. The colleges’ manifold evangelical ministries represent a vivid example of the universal scope of the Catholic Church in the early modern period. As the 1686 constitutions asserted, the colleges embraced a commitment to propagating “the Christian Religion, and the Catholic Faith, proper instruction of the Christian faithful, reform of customs,” and to “secure the salvation of souls throughout the world.”3 Thus, missionaries like Fray Junípero Serra, the canonized missionary mentioned at the beginning of this book, exemplified the colleges’ global evangelical labors, a matter lauded by Pope Francis in his canonization. In fact, Fray Francisco Palou’s 1787 biography of Serra depicts a friar who is preaching to non-Christian indigenous peoples on his left and to Catholics on his right, encapsulating the typologies of his ministry (see Fig. E.1). Both the college constitutions and Serra’s image show the Franciscan seminaries’ miscellaneous commitments to Christianize and re-Christianize the world. It further encapsulates the essence of the goal of this book: the Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide, through missionary training and far-reaching evangelism, contributed to globalization of the Catholic Church and shaped early modern Catholicism.

Frontiers Franciscan missionary instruction and evangelical ministry continued in the frontier missions, where teaching and learning were part of everyday experience for missionaries and natives. Missionaries brought years of theological instruction in their apostolic seminaries and their practical evangelical ministry in Catholic areas of the Hispanic world to their missionary campaigns on the periphery of the empire. The Franciscan instruction program gave the religious necessary tools to think critically and to debate philosophical, theological, and doctrinal problems. Courses on classic languages developed the friars’ linguistic capacity. Moreover, the educational system enhanced the argumentation competence of the friar, an ability helpful not only in confronting other opinions but in seeking commonality between Catholicism and indigenous beliefs. Scholasticism helped friars discuss diverse opinions and worldviews to

3. “La Religion Christiana, y de la Fé Católica, recta instruccion de los Fieles Christianos, reformacion de las costumbres, y para procurar la salvacion de las almas en todas partes.” Inocencius XI, Bull Ecclesiae Catholicae, October 16, 1686, printed in Ibarra, Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, 38.

290

To Sin No More

Figure E.1. Fray Junípero Serra preaching to Catholics and American indigenous peoples. Source: Fray Francisco Palou, Verdadera Historia. . . , 1787 (with permission from The Academy of American Franciscan History).

challenge views considered erroneous and to support their ideas about attaining salvation.4 In the first chapters of this book, I examined recruiting processes of the colegios and their scholarly milieus in search of the missionary ethos. We have seen that intellectual brainstorming was a daily activity in the Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide. Concerns about the qualifications of future missionaries started during the novitiate, a one-year period of probation when supervisors tested the abilities of those committed to a Franciscan career. All friars on the priesthood path (and hence missionary track) in the colegios and Franciscan provinces shared a general curriculum of six years of philosophy and theology and two additional years of moral theology. What distinguished the Franciscan colegios from other Franciscan convents, as well as other religious

4. Jesuit missionaries went through a similar training program prior to their arrival in China. See Brockey, Journey to the East, 210.

EPILOGUE: FRONTIERS

291

orders and diocesan seminaries, was the frequency of their missionary instruction. In the colegios, students routinely gathered with other friars, including veteran missionaries, to discuss and debate evangelical subjects and moral conundrums in daily conferences. Apprentices practiced via preaching mockups in the dining hall and studied the deeds of other missionaries in the library. After obtaining required licenses from bishops, they preached in college churches, open spaces of hamlets, haciendas, towns, and cities, and other churches and convents. Off the record, within their own communities, students, friars, and missionaries conversed about the missions and the conversion program. Any Franciscan missionary traveling to the frontiers of Spanish America had at least ten years of theoretical and practical missionary schooling. Lastly, the always expanding mission frontier further reinvigorated the learning of missionaries with the addition of new landscapes and cultures. Frontiers posed new challenges to the missionaries, who navigated through uncharted terrain. To incorporate in situ experiences and address contingencies, missionaries exported their training model outside the colleges’ walls. For example, friars gathered whenever possible to convene conferences on moral theology; theirs was a learn-by-doing process, or in current scientific jargon, a trial-and-error predicament. As the catechisms perused by the friars—some of which were written in bilingual texts—demonstrate, deliberations on sexual mores, marriage, drinking, and property likely occupied most of the time of these meetings whenever they happened. The 1777 general rules for the Sonora missions ordered the two missionaries stationed in each mission to hold conferencias of their own regularly to discuss “moral subjects, especially the most frequent[ly occurring] in the missions.” We can only imagine how difficult it must have been to continue these meetings. The rules were mute for missions run by only one friar. There were also great difficulties in gathering the religious from missions located several days away from each other and in hostile, isolated territories. Moreover, friars engaged most of their time on spiritual and material guardianship of the missions, with little time for scholarly reflections. Secular priests faced similar challenges in meeting for conferencias in European and particularly larger American dioceses. If conferencias took place in frontier regions, they were certainly conducted with a frequency limited by circumstances. In any case, this practice shows the portability of the college training model to remote areas.5 Books were transportable and missions

5. “Constituciones municipales intimadas por el guardián del Colegio Apostólico de la Santa Cruz P. Fr. Diego Ximénez a los misioneros que al presente existen y en adelante existieren en las misiones de infieles a cargo de dicho Colegio,” Querétaro, July 20, 1777, in Ximénez, “Libro primero de patentes perteneciente a la misión de San Antonio de Oquitoa y su pueblo de visita de San Francisco del Ati en que se asientan sólo las de los prelados de la Orden, decretos y autos de Visita (1767–1835),” Mission San Antonio de Oquitoa 1777, AHPFM-FCSCQ, K, file 24, no. 1, fol. 16r: “Material morales, especialmente las

292

To Sin No More

collected their own modest libraries. For instance, missionaries in Texas, Upper California, and Sonora uniformly followed Jesuit Bartolomé Castaño’s brief catechism, which became a popular instruction pamphlet for teaching the basic rudiments of Christian doctrine to “rustic” peoples throughout the Hispanic world in the second half of the seventeenth century.6 There has been heated debate over living conditions in the Franciscan missions. Whether or not native peoples favored the presence of missionaries, conversion was about imposing a daily regime in accordance with Catholic doctrine and Spanish lifestyles. The missionaries of Saint Francis first sought to congregate the indigenous populations in closed, fixed localities where the religious could accordingly guide and control the lives of indigenous non-Catholics and neophytes. The mission timetable resembled Franciscan activities in the apostolic seminaries and popular missions. Everyday life in frontier missions, as in the colleges, was structured around the tolling of bells and the annual calendar of religious precepts. Missionaries required that mission neophytes regularly observe liturgical activities and learn the Christian doctrine. Once baptized, Indians were also expected to follow the spiritual regime of their new Christian leaders. Daily life in the frontier missions, as in other parts of the Spanish empire, was sacramentalized and embedded into major Catholic holidays. Neophytes, under the Franciscan fathers’ guidance, observed Christmas, Lent, Corpus Christi, the major feast days, and local festivities like the day of the patron saint of the mission. Neophytes regularly heard mass on Saturdays, Sundays, and holy feasts. In addition, sacramental and devotional rituals regulated the lives of those living in the missions. In frontier missions, men and women lived apart except for couples who had received the sacrament of holy matrimony. Moreover, Catholic Indians, like Catholics in other parts of the world, had to fulfill the annual obligatory precept of confession. Those deemed eligible received the eucharist. At the core of scholarly criticism of the mission system is the level of coercion that indigenous peoples endured. Certainly, threats and punishments also regulated daily life in the frontier missions.7

mas frecuentes en las misiones.” Regarding difficulties of holding conferencias in the Texas missions, see Harrison, “Franciscan Missionary Theory and Practice,” 68–69. 6. For the use of Father Bartolomé Castaño’s catechism in California (Catecismo breve de lo que preferentemente ha de saber el cristiano, México, 1664), see Fray Pedro Font, Fray Pedro Font: Diario Íntimo y Diario de Fray Tomás Eixarch, edited by Julio César Montané Martí (Sonora: Plaza y Valdés, 2002), 167, n. 356; and Daniel D. McGarry, “Educational Methods of the Franciscans in Spanish California,” The Americas 6 (1950), 336, n. 10. For the use of Father Castaño’s catechism to instruct Catholic Indians by Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús in his last popular mission in 1725–1726, see the notes of his companion Fray Simón del Hierro, Fray Simón del Hierro, by Cervantes Aguilar, 23. 7. For Texas, see Guidelines for a Texas Mission: Instructions for the Missionary of Mission Concepción in San Antonio, edited by Howard Benoist and María Eva Flores, C.D.P. Transcript of the Spanish original and English version based on translation by Fr. Benedict

EPILOGUE: FRONTIERS

293

Inside the colegios and during the popular missions, strict regulation of daily activities and rhythms instigated a sense of corporativism—whether belonging to the Franciscan community or to the Catholic ecumene—as well as control. As discussed in Chapter 3, convent life and its regulation of time via the tolling of a bell were intended to divest Franciscans of their mundane feelings and needs, that is, to transform them into religious brothers. Demanding daily routines in the colegios, like in popular missions, sought to break the body and to elevate the soul. In frontier missions, anthropologist Maria Wade alleges, daily and liturgical routines were part of missionary strategies to “overhaul [neophytes] of all conscious and unconscious behavior.” Missionaries set a time schedule to “reset and regulate the internal clocks of neophytes and instill habits of work, cleanliness, orderliness, and restrained behavior.” In other words, missionaries introduced rituals, devotions, and rhythms to transform, reform, and convert indigenous peoples into the missionaries’ Catholicism and lifestyle. The 1780s guide for the Purísima Concepción mission in Texas offers a glimpse into the mission’s weekly spiritual life. On Mondays and Wednesdays, Concepción neophytes recited Castaño’s catechism and the act of contrition at sunset. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, they recited the Our Father, Hail Mary, and other prayers. On Fridays, they sang and performed the via crucis inside the church, and during Lent mission residents performed the via crucis outdoors. On Saturdays before sunset, friars and neophytes gathered to recite the rosary and conclude with Margil’s alabado. Mission Indians could also enjoy certain exemptions from attending religious events in frontier missions. Especially on holy feasts, neophytes were “dispensed from reciting the Doctrina and praying the Way of the Cross, but not from praying the Rosary on Saturdays.”8

Leutenegger, O.F.M, 4th ed., vol. 1, Documents Relating to the Old Spanish Missions of Texas (San Antonio, Tex.: Old Spanish Missions Historical Research Library, Our Lady of the Lake University, 1994); Jay Harrison, “Franciscan Concepts of the Congregated Mission and the Apostolic Ministry in Eighteenth-Century Texas,” in From la Florida to la California, 323–339; and Wade, Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans, 193–199. For Sonora, see “Constituciones municipales intimadas por el guardián del Colegio Apostólico de la Santa Cruz P. Fr. Diego Ximénez a los misioneros que al presente existen y en adelante existieren en las misiones de infieles a cargo de dicho Colegio,” Querétaro, July 20, 1777, in Ximénez, “Libro primero de patentes perteneciente a la misión de San Antonio de Oquitoa y su pueblo de visita de San Francisco del Ati en que se asientan sólo las de los prelados de la Orden, decretos y autos de Visita (1767–1835),” Mission San Antonio de Oquitoa 1777, AHPFM-FCSCQ, K, file 24, no. 1, fols. 16v–19v. For the missions under the Tarija missionaries, see Fray Antonio Comajuncosa, “Informe general de todas nuestras misiones, elevado ante el Virrey de Buenos Aires,” Potosí, February 26, 1800, in Calzavarini Ghinello, Presencia franciscana, vol. 2, 770. 8. Guidelines for a Texas Mission. For spiritual life in New Spain’s northern missions, see Guest, “The Patente of José Gasol,” 217; Mann, The Power of Song, 4–5; and Wade, Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans, chap. 10, quotes on p. 192. For the missions under the college of Tarija, see Comajuncosa, “Informe general.”

294

To Sin No More

Friars relied on spectacular visual effects to lure native peoples and Catholics alike. There are studies on mission buildings that show how under the guidance of the friars, indigenous masons and artisans decorated the churches with murals, sculptures, and paintings with catechetical and reformation purposes.9 On the frontier, as in urban and rural settings, sacred theatrical and musical performances also excited the senses of the audiences to catalyze conversion. Friars sang saetas, litanies, and alabados, used paintings of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, the saints, or the flames of hell. Friars paraded with their flock in processions to celebrate major holy feasts such as Corpus Christi, Christmas, and Easter. In the Purísima Concepción mission in Texas, the author of the guide suggested the following: The evening before the principal feast of the Most Holy Virgin, namely the Immaculate Conception, the Rosary is said in procession in the plaza and the Indians sing the mysteries. In the meantime, firecrackers are set off and lights are lit in front of the friary. If so desired, oil lamps are used, and candles are given to the Indian women to illuminate their homes. When the Rosary is ended, the missionary sings the Litany, and the services end with the usual Salve.10

On Saturdays, after praying the rosary, some neophytes played the violin and guitar. Choristers sang during mass, the most important ritual of Catholicism, where neophytes and Catholic native peoples congregated as a community to learn doctrine, pray, and consume the body of Christ. As a historian of the California missions points out, “[M]usic . . . was supposed to arouse the emotions of the congregation and to move their collective spirits into harmony with Jesus Christ.”11 Rituals geared towards the senses, including music, ultimately sought to bring about the confession and repentance of sinners. Like in popular missions, the preservation of morality ranked high in frontier missions. Franciscan missionaries, for instance, obsessively returned to the sins related to lewdness (against the sixth commandment), one of the most frequent themes in the missionary conversion of the Spanish Atlantic world. In a 1760 bilingual catechism from the missions of Texas, Fray Bartolomé García developed more questions on Indian sexual behavior than any other topic. Concerns about fornication varied and included the frequency of sexual intercourse,

9. See, for instance, Guzmán et al., “Programa iconográfico y material”; and Corti, Guzmán, and Pereira, “El indio trifronte de Parinacota.” 10. Guidelines for a Texas Mission, 7. 11. The use of sacred music, singing, and musical instruments for religious purposes was widespread in the Catholic world. For the role of music in the conversion of California natives, see Sandos, Converting California, 128–153, quote on p. 131. The only general study of music in the frontier missions of northern New Spain is Mann, The Power of Song.

EPILOGUE: FRONTIERS

295

adultery, cohabitation of sinners, bestiality, sodomy, and masturbation. Friars were expected to inquire whether sexual encounters happened in the church, a major concern for the missionaries. To Catholic clerics, the church was the most sacred space, and sexual intercourse inside the building was among the worst sacrileges. Friars were perturbed by what they viewed as sexual promiscuity and widespread immorality among Native Americans. Ultimately, García’s catechism suggested that friars intimidate neophytes through the power of confession and contrition and the plausibility of eternal condemnation: I don’t confess you now because you have not stopped sinning. I order you to leave that house and to live in other house. You will not return to the house where that woman (that man) lives and you will not talk to her/to him alone, and you will not visit her/him. If you don’t do so, the Devil will trick you and you will sin again.12

“To sin no more” was a motto for salvation in the centers and peripheries of the Hispanic world. The recurrence of sin alarmed friars who struggled to impose their ethics over non-Christian Indians, mission neophytes, and their Catholic flock. However, unlike the urban and particularly rural regions of Spain and Spanish America where the Catholic Church’s leverage over parishioners’ daily lives was limited, neophytes and native peoples who lived in the frontier missions bore the unparalleled burden of daily scrutiny by their spiritual caretakers. The fact that missionaries preferred the congregation of indigenous peoples and neophytes living in mission compounds rather than serving them in their own communities shows the level of control exercised by zealous friars eager to establish the city of God in distant territories beyond secular scrutiny. Studies show that the mission neophytes fulfilled the annual precept of confession more often than parishioners in Spain and the core

12. Bartolomé García, “Manual para administrar los Santos Sacramentos de Penitencia, Eucharistia, Extrema-Uncion, y Matrimonio, dar gracias despues de comulgar, y ayudar a bien morir a los Indios de las Naciones: Pajalates, Orejones, Pacaos, Pacóas, Tilijavas, Alasapas, Pausanes, y otras muchas diferentes, que se hallan en las Missiones de Rio de San Antonio, y Rio Grande, pertenecientes à el Colegio de la Santissima Cruz de la Ciudad de Quertaro, como son: Los Pacuâches, Mescâles, Pampôpas, Tâcames, Chayopînes, Venados, Pamâques, y toda la Juventud de Pihuiques, Borrados, Sanipaos, y Manos de Perro [1760],” in Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVIII, edited by Nicolás León (Mexico City: Tipografía de la Viuda de Francisco Díaz de León, Esquina Cinco de Mayo y Callejón de Santa Clara, 1908), 471–472: “Yo no te confiesso ahora, porque todavia no te has quitado de los pecados: Yo te mando, que salgas de essa Casa, y vivirás en otra Casa; y no bolverás otra vez á la Casa donde está essa muger (esse hombre) y no le hablarás á solas, y no la visitarás: si no hazes assi te engañará el demonio, y bolverás á pecar.” The situation in colonial Alta California was not different from other mission frontiers. See especially Sandos, Converting California. Wade points out that missionary concerns over sexual behaviors were widespread. Wade, Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans, 216–220.

296

To Sin No More

areas of Spanish occupation because of the missionaries’ close vigilance of mission native peoples.13 The practice of confession allowed the friars to intrude in the private lives of parishioners and Indians alike. Social control was channeled through private hearings of men and women that could expose deeds practiced outside the watchful vigilance of the clerics. Fact omissions during confession thus highly alarmed the missionaries, who did not wish to lose an opportunity to transform the illicit practices of their spiritual flock into sound Catholic customs. During their missions to Catholic believers, Franciscan preachers complained that penitents hid sins (particularly those related to sexual acts) when confessing. In his confession manual for Texas missions, Fray Bartolomé García urged his associates to be straightforwardly demanding with Indian neophytes to prevent omissions: “Tell me all the sins that you have committed. Don’t lie to me. If you lie to me, and if you don’t tell me all the sins, your confession will be bad and the Devil will take you to hell.” A bilingual confession guide manuscript from the California missions written in Mutsum-Castilian begins with an admonition for missionaries to pass on to the person in the confessional: “Don’t be afraid, don’t be ashamed to confess. I will not reprimand you. Thus, confess all of your sins you have committed so [that] God forgives you.”14 Confession manuals not only reveal certain anxieties of the self and the other but also how friars could unintentionally have contributed to the perpetuation of certain behaviors. These manuals were meant to be useful to Franciscan newcomers who might therefore easily identify customs thought to be pervasive among native peoples, particularly sexual promiscuity. But, as Maria Wade points out, questions over real or imagined practices marked as “deviant and sinful” may have indeed introduced “these behaviors” in the communities. Following work by theorists such as Michel Foucault, Wade contends that confessional interrogations offered the means to gather infor-

13. Wade, Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans, 22. Throughout the colonial period, missionaries sought to establish a utopian city of God in the Americas where they alone would direct the lives of indigenous peoples into their salvation. The establishment of a “republic of Indians” and the “New Indian Church” as part of global Catholicism acquiesced with Franciscan desires to exercise control over the American churches. See, for instance, Edwin Edward Sylvest, Motifs of Franciscan Mission Theory in Sixteenth-Century New Spain Province of the Holy Gospel (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1975). 14. García, “Manual para administrar los Santos Sacramentos,” 464–466 (quote is on p. 464): “No me tengas miedo: no me tengas verguenza. Dime todos los pecados que has hecho. No me engañes: si me engañas, y si no me dices todos los pecados, te confessarás mal, y te llevará el Demonio á el Infierno.” See also the Californian confessional manual in Mutsum, “Confesionario carmeleño,” in Archivo Franciscano de Zapopan, Caja 53.1: “No tengas miedo, no tengas vergüenza p.a confesarte. No te regañare. Por eso confiesa todos los pecados q.e hiziste, para q.e Dios te perdone. . . .”

EPILOGUE: FRONTIERS

297

mation and to exercise control over large communities that in some cases comprised hundreds of native people. These manuals were devised to “acquire information (knowledge) in order to exert repression (power) and achieve modification of behavior (knowledge/power).” As a by-product of the repetitive confession questionnaires, the confessor and the confessed, the friar and the neophyte, set in motion a bidirectional cultural and sexual dialogue that influenced both.15 Naturally, the missionary would already have explained the torments reserved for sinners in hell. The friars’ God was vengeful but also merciful, and the doors to salvation after confession and repentance were opened to all, regardless of the sins committed and the ethnic origin of the penitent. As mediators, friars held responsibility and power to intercede between God and the neophytes, supplanting the role of pre-Hispanic spiritual leaders. Fear of God, like fear of hell, was part of the missionary effort to instigate social control over the European and American populations, in rural and urban areas as well as the remote frontiers of the empire. The compelling message was universal and applied to all audiences, whether clerics, old Christians, or recent converts. Hell awaited those who were not baptized or did not confess their sins. In the mind of the friar, flesh was seen as weak and a deceiver of the soul. To the missionaries, the transformation of customs was ephemeral, and independent non-Christian Indians, like Catholic subjects of the Hispanic monarchy, required the close guidance of missionaries in the long process of conversion. For missionaries, peasants and urban lower classes in Europe and in the colonies, like frontier Indians, were ignorant brutes in desperate need of being civilized and Christianized. Baptism only seemed to set up those baptized members of the Catholic ecumene to sin. Clerics and Franciscan missionaries knew that after conversion, the Devil would still set his net to recapture souls from the epic battlefields between good and evil. Within the ecclesiastical dogma that all men were prone to sin, the medicine to cure deviations in Europe and America looked alike. This was the case despite the fact that Europeans, unlike independent Indians, were nominally Catholics. As described previously, even in Europe, missionaries lamented that the Indies were on both sides of the Atlantic.16 Thus, the measure of success or failure

15. Wade, Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans, 216–220. See García, “Manual para administrar los Santos Sacramentos,” 464–466. 16. Some of the missionaries’ discourse describing Europeans and heathens is surprisingly similar. A Jesuit missionary wrote about the peasant communities in southern Italy that there was “extreme ruin of many souls and how they are lost on account of the dreadful ignorance that reigns in these mountains. . . . [I]n the ecclesiastic [realm] as in the secular, you would have compassion for them.” In fact, the missionary continued, “just as some of ours [Jesuits] go to the Indies, here, it seems to me, they could accomplish as much in the service of God . . . because there is a great necessity to extirpate many errors, superstitions,

298

To Sin No More

in the conversion of individuals posits an unsolvable conundrum. Conversion was intrinsically linked to salvation, which not only accounted for souls that clerics thought they had saved—including individuals putatively saved in their deathbeds—but also for the immeasurable number of souls saved after death, particularly those stranded in transitional purgatory to redeem their guilt before reaching eternal salvation. The friars were aware of this. Zacatecan missionary Fray Simón del Hierro pointed out in his notes on the popular mission in the Mexican diocese of Durango in the mid-1730s that “only in the Last Day of Judgment will we know the fruits [of the mission] and the shock to remote peoples, the benefit of those souls and the incredible cases.”17 Remarkably, the Franciscan missionary program of conversion adapted to local needs in pragmatic ways. Let us not forget that missionaries themselves came from a society in which Catholicism was personal as much as communal, local as much as global. However, frontier missions tested the missionaries’ adaptability to local environments in new ways. In a practical response to indigenous dances, the Franciscan author of a missionary guide suggested that neophytes at the Purísima Concepción mission in San Antonio, Texas, should be allowed to perform a dance called mitote “when no superstition, no question of celebrating an enemy’s death, nor any sinful motive are present.” He defended the lawfulness of the mitote if “done for mere diversion, because among the Indians it is the same as the fandango among the Spaniards.”18 Despite friars’ aversion to the fandangos, by permitting controlled excesses in the missions friars likely believed they avoided worse evils. Whenever possible, Franciscans exercised control over native peoples with an iron fist. At the core of the missionaries’ frustration was the hope of replicating the colleges’ daily regime in the frontier missions. But non-Christian Indians and neophytes were not friars. The missionary effort was contingent on the realities of frontier life and many times escaped their control. As historian David Weber contended, “[M]issionaries’ methods, successes, and failures depended on Indian initiatives as much as they did on missionary zeal, Bourbon policies, or propinquity to Spanish colonists.”19 The imperial frontiers that expanded behind the footsteps of the religious men from the apostolic colleges of propaganda fide tested their endurance and adaptation capacities. More often than not, friars had to come to terms

and abuses of which there are an abundance.” As quoted in Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils, 95. Regarding the Indies, also in Spain, see Gelabertó, La palabra del predicador, 64; and Rico Callado, Misiones Populares en España, 67. 17. Cervantes Aguilar, Fray Simón del Hierro, 55–56: “Los frutos y conmoción de tan remotas gentes, el provecho de aquellas almas y casos prodigiosos, el día del Juicio se conocerán.” Cf. Wade, Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans, 232–236; and Sandos, Converting California, esp. 174–178. 18. Guidelines for a Texas Mission, 37. 19. Weber, Bárbaros, 136.

EPILOGUE: FRONTIERS

299

with native populations and the realities of power and control that permeated Indian–European relations to propagate the Catholic faith. In most remote areas like Texas, the Araucanía in Chile, or the Gran Chaco in Upper Peru, missionaries were subject to the will of native populations who set the norms and procedures of interfaith dialogue. This was particularly the case of equestrian Indian bands in northern New Spain, southern Chile, the Pampas, and on the Gran Chaco frontiers. In many cases, to the sorrow of the missionaries, native peoples visited, stayed, and left their Franciscan hosts at will. In San Sabá, Texas, in the 1750s, Franciscan missionaries from the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Querétaro and the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City founded a mission a couple of miles away from the Spanish fort. Despite promises by Apaches to settle in the missions, the padres learned early on that the Indians they hoped to convert avoided settling permanently in the mission but instead used it as a seasonal camp. A few months after its foundation, a coalition of northern native nations led by the Comanches and Wichitas destroyed the Franciscan compound and killed two friars. San Sabá was a fiasco, but the padres did not give up their conversion enterprise in Texas, as they were doing in other Spanish American frontier areas. Resilience derived from a sense of self-righteousness was part of the Franciscan ethos when it came to the conversion of non-Christians and Catholics on every front.20 In the 1750s and again in the 1780s, missionaries unwillingly introduced a new method in the conversion of native peoples of San Sabá and the Colorado River area in northern Sonora, respectively. As an experiment promoted by enlightened bureaucrats, in both cases, neophytes, rather than living with the friars in the mission compounds, lived in their rancherías alongside heathen natives. In both cases, the missions were attacked and destroyed by native peoples a few months after their establishment. Friars blamed the policy of dispersion of neophytes as a cause of the missions’ failures because it complicated their indoctrination. Neophytes living with their heathen fellows, the religious complained, only shared the friars’ worldview at their convenience, but went back to their pre-Christian ways when they left the mission. That not only hampered their conversion (a longer process to reform habitual behaviors on the frontiers), but put the entire missionary effort in jeopardy. Eventually, after strong Franciscan opposition to the new mission method,

20. Elizabeth A.H. John, Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795, 2nd rev. ed. (1975; repr., University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 297–303, 358; Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 188–189; Weber, Bárbaros, 68–85; Chipman y Joseph, Spanish Texas, 1519–1821, 163–169; Matthew Babcock, Apache Adaptation to Hispanic Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 65–75; and Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman, 163–189. On evangelization in San Sabá, see Robert S. Weddle, The San Saba Mission: Spanish Pivot in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999).

300

To Sin No More

Franciscan missionaries from the Colegio de San Fernando were successful in establishing new evangelical posts in Alta California based on the traditional system in which missionaries controlled the material and spiritual affairs of the neophytes in mission compounds.21 Cultural gaps between sedentary European agriculturists and hunter-gatherers and horticulturists posed one of the major challenges in conversion of indigenous peoples at the periphery of the Spanish empire in the eighteenth century. To convert nomadic peoples, friars first had to “civilize” them by bringing them together in stable communities. In contrast to already converted regions where inhabitants were living in permanent communities and friars sought to control (or resume control of) their flocks’ spiritual affairs, on the nomadic frontiers of the empire, friars controlled both the temporal and spiritual affairs of their flock. To a great extent, Franciscans’ preference for a method that managed both temporal and spiritual matters in the missions owed as much to ongoing failures (relapses of indigenous people to their preconversion ways) as to changes in missionizing theory per se. As the frontier advanced, the machinery of converting peoples to the Franciscan missionaries’ Catholicism required tinkering.

Coda Walking through the Vatican City, one rapidly grasps the global reach of the Catholic Church. Every day visitors from all over the world, many of whom are Catholic pilgrims, wander through Bernini’s columns and Saint Peter’s Square on their way to the Basilica and the Vatican museums. Many come to the City to hear Pope Francis’s Wednesday general audiences. Flags from various nations and continents ripple to symbolize the symbiosis between their global faith and national identities. It is from this view that the local and the universal coalesce. Observing the general audience presided over by Pope Francis, himself an Argentine—the first non-European pope in 1,300 years—one literally senses the global significance of Catholicism. That the pope as well as the Franciscan minister general and the Jesuit superior general come from the Americas is no oddity but rather the culmination of a process that began with the first global empires in the sixteenth century. By focusing on the Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide, this book has illustrated parts of that process.

21. The congregation of native peoples in the missions was at the core of the evangelical ministry on the frontiers, and particularly after failure of the San Sabá and Yuma missions. Moreover, because these two missions also had nearby Spanish settlements, colonists and their herds did not respect the lands of the rancherías. A good analysis of the controversies and Franciscan reluctance to innovate the traditional missionary strategies on the empire’s frontiers in the Americas is Weber, Bárbaros, 102–137; and Harrison, “Franciscan Concepts of the Congregated Mission.”

EPILOGUE: FRONTIERS

301

As discussed in this book, Franciscan colleges created an Atlantic network of missionary centers where friars were trained, from which they ministered to Catholics and expanded the mission frontier, and which molded early modern Catholicism in the Hispanic world. Franciscan missionaries sought to convert and to save Christians and non-Christians alike following a pattern of Christianization and re-Christianization that unfolded with Spanish expansion. Thus, missionaries from the colleges trekked the countryside and urban centers in Spain and America, where they evangelized nominal Catholics believed to have gone astray. This book explored how Franciscans brought Catholicism in the form of rituals, prayers, and devotions into accord with the missionaries’ Catholic practices. My goal was to illuminate mechanisms of religious conversion utilized by the missionary friars and their impact on Spanish and American societies. Hence, I emphasized the role played by the colegios of propaganda fide and their popular missions as conversion arenas where friars, through the ritualization and sacramentalization of the Spanish Atlantic world, aimed at converting and saving Catholics. Conversion in this sense implied not the presentation of Christianity anew, but rather purging heterodox practices with a particular emphasis on moral reform, and familiarizing parishioners with the missionaries’ institutional Catholicism. Many of the campaigns to extirpate deviant behaviors and reform lives in the centers of Spanish dominion in the Americas and Spain reverberated in the evangelical ministry in the distant territories of Texas, California, Tucumán, or southern Chile. Both ministries were two sides of the same coin. In fact, some of the patterns developed in the popular missions were put in place on the frontiers, including processions, music, theatrical performances, images, and crowdpleasing rhetoric in sermons. The evangelical ministry became an Atlantic phenomenon par excellence as itinerant missions in rural and urban Spain transferred to Catholic rural and urban communities in America and served as a background to remote missions on the American frontiers. This book points out that by emphasizing the repetitious nature of sin, Franciscan missionaries insisted on the importance of contrition and confession as well as public penitence as the path towards conversion and salvation. But friars, along with clerics, believed that men and women were incorrigible. Thus relapse was central to the Catholic theology of conversion as well as to this study. In the midst of perceived decadence, immorality, and recurrent debauchery, we can attest that even if the religious exaggerated their discourse, iniquity and relapse formed the core of their soteriological theology and substantiated the missionaries’ raison d’être. If society tends to sin, the priest offers the cure; as disease warrants the physician, sin validates the spiritual healer. With this excuse, missionaries filled the Hispanic world throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to mold peoples’ beliefs and actions.

302

To Sin No More

In researching how behavioral reform was achieved, I found that the colleges’ missionary methodologies did not fit strictly into Baroque or enlightened religiosities. The sharp transition from Baroque into Enlightenment periods blurs in this study of the Franciscan missionary religion. Indeed, I find that the religion emanating from these propaganda fide missionaries challenges the labels of compartmentalized Baroque versus Enlightened Catholicisms. It is the mixture of visual and oral effects aimed at inspiring a collective sorrow or sense of contrition to achieve salvation, patterns that scholars depict as typically Baroque with the individualism of confession and the emphasis on mental prayers more in line with a reformed, enlightened Church that complicate the encapsulation of the missionary religiosity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries into watertight cultural models. The fact that both collective, theatrical representations and individual piety were represented throughout the missionizing shows that clerics understood salvation as a collective as well as an individual effort. The current study adds to current work on global Catholicism in the early modern period. This book has put the Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide squarely within the new scholarship that brings together the Catholic mission to convert extra-European peoples and the pastoral ministry to guide Catholics. As scholars point out, European imperialism turned the Catholic Church from a European institution into a global organization that operated at the local level with a universal scope of conversion and salvation. In most studies the Jesuit Order represents the quintessential global Catholic organization. As Luke Clossey argues in his study of Jesuit global missionizing, we can only understand the nature of what he defines as “global salvific Catholicism” by emphasizing the Catholic Church’s global enterprise was to save all souls. Rather than compartmentalizing missions to non-Christians and missions to Catholics, he connects the Jesuit missionary agenda to non-Christians in Mexico and China with their European campaigns in remote and urban areas of Germany. By approaching missionary expansion and conversion as a soteriological phenomenon, he contends that missionaries and their “contemporaries could and did appreciate the ultimate similarity among a pagan, a Lutheran, and a straying Catholic.” As he claims, uniformity in the interests of the Church derives from inherited converting, salvific goals rather than an institutional consistency. Emphasizing the conversion process and its subsequent soteriology, this book has brought the forgotten Franciscan colegios de propaganda fide to the forefront of Clossey’s “global salvific Catholicism” in the eighteenth century through studying its conversion campaigns to save souls in the Hispanic world. 22

22. Clossey, Salvation and Globalization, last chapter; quote is on p. 240.

EPILOGUE: FRONTIERS

303

This book shows that pastoral ministries in Spain and the Americas had much in common. Luke Clossey, Karen Melvin, and Scott Hendrix point out that such connections are pivotal to understanding the conversion of America as part of rather than an exception to a systematic program to Christianize and re-Christianize the world.23 The business of conversion carried out by the Franciscan apostolic colleges was enormous and the colleges’ imprint on popular religiosity palpable. I believe that underscoring the meaning of conversion as the friars comprehended it facilitates this view. From a theological and cultural viewpoint, the evangelical ministry of the Franciscan missionaries underscored conversion as a process of behavioral transformation that could imply a change of religious association—that is, from a Native American religion to Catholicism—or a mutation within a religious community such as the Catholic Church, not just a point-in-time ritual of passage. In brief, missionaries yearned to change the lifestyles of non-Christians as much as those of Catholics. While I have concentrated on the pastoral ministry of the Franciscan college missionaries in New Spain and to a lesser degree in parts of Spain and the hinterlands of Tarija, other colleges elsewhere in Spain and the Americas had similar ambitions. Therefore, one can safely assert that the apostolic enterprise of the twenty-nine colleges covered most regions in the center and periphery of the Spanish empire. Overall, the Franciscan colleges became centers of imperial, Catholic expansion and consolidation throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By comparing the frontier missions with missions to Catholics, it appears that Franciscan distrust of devotional continuity in frontier settings was not new. Franciscans had evangelized rural areas in Europe and America and knew that their impact would be short-lived. That friars over and again depicted their times as vicious and their contemporary fellow humans as naturally wicked was purposeful. Salvation required not only baptism but also true repentance and acts of contrition, which was more likely to be achieved under continuous surveillance by those who claimed to be emissaries of the their God. To prevent relapse, the Franciscan missionary program rested on the precept of to sin no more. Or repeating Scott Hendrix’s description on the nature of Christian evangelism in the early modern period, the Franciscan colleges trained and then sent missionaries “to plant and replant Christianity wherever they served.”24 Conversion—the transformation of behavior and human salvation—had a similar theological meaning in Cataluña’s isolated mountains as in the inaccessible tierra caliente of Michoacán, in the Tucuman province in northern Argentina, or on the Texas plains.

23. Clossey, Salvation and Globalization; Melvin, Building Colonial Cities of God; Melvin, “The Globalization of Reform”; Hendrix, Recultivating the Vineyard; and Hendrix, “Rerooting the Faith.” 24. Hendrix, Recultivating the Vineyard, 129.

This page intentionally left blank

References Archives Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Seville, Spain Archivo Franciscano de Tarija (AFT), Tarija, Bolivia Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Mexico City Archivo de la Provincia de Santiago, Convento de San Francisco (APS), Santiago de Compostela, Spain Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Michoacán (AHPFM), Convento de San Francisco, Celaya, Guanajuato, México Archivo Histórico de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México (AHPSEM), Cholula, Puebla, México. Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Cataluña (AHPFC), Barcelona, Spain Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain Catholic Mission Archives, Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio, Texas Fondo del Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro (FCSQC), Archivo Histórico de la Provincia Franciscana de Michoacán (AHPFM), Convento de San Francisco, Celaya, Guanajuato, México Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin, Texas

Printed Primary Sources Alcocer, Fray José Antonio. Bosquejo de la Historia del Colegio de Nuestra Señorade Guadalupe y sus Misiones. Año de 1788. Edited by Fray Rafael Cervantes. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1958. Andrade, Alonso de. El buen soldado Católico y sus obligaciones. Madrid: Francisco Maroto, 1642. Anonymous. Acto de Contricion de un pecador, que se hallaba preso en la Villa, y Corte de Madrid al tiempo de la proclamacion al throno de nuestro amado, y querido rei D. Fernando el Sexto. Sevilla: Imprenta bajo de Nuestra Señora del Populo, en Calle Genova, n.d. Arricivita, Fray Juan Domingo. Apostolic Chronicle of Juan Domingo Arricivita: The Franciscan Mission Frontier in the Eighteenth Century in Arizona, Texas, and the Californias. Translated by George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey; revised and indexed by Vivian C. Fisher; introduction and notes by W. Michael Mathes. 2 vols. Berkeley, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1996.

305

306

To Sin No More

———. Crónica seráfica y apostólica del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro en la Nueva España. México, 1792. Beaumont, Fr. Pablo. Crónica de Michoacán por Fr. Pablo Beaumont. 3 vols. Mexico City: Publicaciones del Archivo General de la Nación, 1932. Benavente, Fray Toribio de. Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España. Madrid: Dastin, 2001. Bringas, Fray Diego Miguel. Sermón que en la reconquista de Guanajuato, predicó extemporáneamente en la iglesia parroquial de dicha ciudad, el padre Fray Diego Miguel Bringas. (1810). Calatayud, Pedro de. Misiones y sermones del P. Pedro de Calatayud, Maestro de Teologia, y misionero apostolico de la Compañia de Jesus, de la Provincia de Castilla: Arte y metodo con que las establece. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. Madrid: Imprenta de Don Benito Cano, 1796. Castro, Fray Joseph de. Directorio para informaciones de los Pretendientes de el Santo Habito de N. Seraphico P. S. Francisco, en que hallaran los Padres Comissarios de ellas todo lo necessario para una perfecta Informacion: Y los Padres Discretos todo lo que conduce, para calificarlas con acierto. Mexico City: Imprenta Real del Superior Govierno, y del Nuevo Rezado: Por Doña Maria de Ribera, en el Empedradillo, 1737. Comajuncosa y Hortet, Fray Antonio. Manifiesto Histórico, Geográfico, Topográfico, Apostólico y Político de los que han trabajado, entre fieles e infieles los misioneros franciscanos de Tarija, 1754–1810. 1810. Reprint, Tarija: Editorial Offset Franciscana, 1993. Espinosa, Fray Isidro Felix de. Crónica de los Colegios de Progaganda Fide de la Nueva España. 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan Historians, 1964. ———. El Peregrino Septentrional Atlante: delineado en la exemplaríssima vida del Venerable Padre F. Antonio Margil de Jesús. Facsimile ed. Vol. 1, Misioneros Valencianos en Indias. Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana and Comissió per al Ve Centenari del Descobriment D’America, 1989. ———. El cherubin custodio de el arbol de la vida, la Santa Cruz de Querétaro. Vida del Ve. siervo de Dios Fray Antonio de los Angeles Bustamante. . . . Mexico City: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1731. Estatutos y ordenaciones segun las bulas que nuestro padre Inocencio XI. expidió para los colegios de misioneros, acomodadas á la mas estrecha observancia que se practica en la Seráfica Descalcez, Para el Colegio de Propaganda Fide de nuestro Seráfico Padre San Francisco de Pachuca en la Nueva España: Aprobadas por el Real y Supremo consejo de las Indias, auxîliadas por Real Cédula de S. M., y revisadas y mandadas observar por nuestro Reverendísimo Padre Comisario General de Indias Fray Manuel María Truxillo. Madrid: Imprenta de Don Benito Cano, 1791. Estatutos Generales de Barcelona, para la familia cismontana de la Regular Observancia de N.P. San Francisco, ultimamente reconocidos, y con mejor metodo dispuestos en la Congregacion general, celebrada en la ciudad de Segovia el año del Señor de 1621. Madrid: Imprenta Real por Tomas Iunti, impressor del Rey, 1622.

REFERENCES

307

Font, Fray Pedro. Fray Pedro Font: Diario Íntimo y Diario de Fray Tomás Eixarch. Edited by Julio César Montané Martí. Sonora: Plaza y Valdés, 2002. Gacetas de México. Castorena y Ursua (1722)–Sahagún de Arévalo (1728 a 1742). Edited by Francisco González de Cossío. Vol. 1 (1722 and 1728 to 1731) and Vol. 2 (1732 to 1736). Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1949. García, Bartolomé. “Manual para administrar los Santos Sacramentos de Penitencia, Eucharistia, Extrema-Uncion, y Matrimonio, dar gracias despues de comulgar, y ayudar a bien morir a los Indios de las Naciones: Pajalates, Orejones, Pacaos, Pacóas, Tilijavas, Alasapas, Pausanes, y otras muchas diferentes, que se hallan en las Missiones de Rio de San Antonio, y Rio Grande, pertenecientes à el Colegio de la Santissima Cruz de la Ciudad de Queretaro, como son: Los Pacuâches, Mescâles, Pampôpas, Tâcames, Chayopînes, Venados, Pamâques, y toda la Juventud de Pihuiques, Borrados, Sanipaos, y Manos de Perro [1760].” In Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVIII, edited by Nicolás León, 451–512. Mexico City: Tipografía de la Viuda de Francisco Díaz de León, Esquina Cinco de Mayo y Callejón de Santa Clara, 1908. García Izcalbalceta, Joaquín, ed. Códice Franciscano. 2nd ed. 1886–1892. Reprint, Mexico City: Editorial Salvador Chávez Hayhoe, 1941. González de Agüeros, Fray Pedro. “Arbol Cronologico que manifiesta los Comisarios Generales de Indias del Orden de San Francisco y Plan de todas las provincias con sus conventos: Y de los colegios con sus misiones, que existen en las dos Américas, é Islas Filipinas.” Madrid: Imprenta de Benito Cano, 1789. ———. Descripción de la provincia y Archipielago de Chilóe en el Reyno de Chile y Obispado de la Concepción dedicado à nuestro católico monarca Don Cárlos IV (que Dios guarde). Madrid: Imprenta de Don Benito Cano, 1791. Guidelines for a Texas Mission: Instructions for the Missionary of Mission Concepción in San Antonio. Edited by Howard Benoist and María Eva Flores, C.D.P. Transcript of the Spanish original and English version based on the translation by Fr. Benedict Leutenegger, O.F.M. 4th ed. Vol. 1, Documents Relating to the Old Spanish Missions of Texas. San Antonio: Old Spanish Missions Historical Research Library, Our Lady of the Lake University, 1994. Herosa, O.F.M., Fray Antonio de. Memorial de las cosas notables de este Colegio de Herbón. [1756–1759] Edited by José Luis Soto Pérez. Santiago: Editorial Eco Franciscano, 2012. Ibarra, Joaquín. Breve apostólico de Pio Sexto, y Estatutos Generales para la erección y gobierno de las custodias de misioneros observantes de Propaganda Fide en las Provincias Internas de Nueva España. Madrid: D. Joachín Ibarra, Impresor de Cámara de S. M., 1781. Mendieta, Jerónimo de. Historia Eclesiástica Indiana. 2 vols. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1973. Papió, Joan. Facsímil del llibre de “La història d’Escornalbóu” del pare Joan Papió. Any 1765. 2nd ed. Valls: Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya, 1987.

308

To Sin No More

Parrondo, Domingo. Historia de los Colegios-Seminarios de Misiones de la Regular Observancia de N. S. P. S. Francisco, exîstentes en esta Península de España. Madrid: Oficina de Don Francisco Martinez Dávila, impresor de cámara de S.M., 1818. Trujillo, Manuel María. Exhortación pastoral, avisos importantes y reglamentos útiles que para la mejor observación de la disciplina regular e ilustración de toda la literatura en todas las provincias y colegios apostólicos de América y Filipinas. Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, hijos y compañía, por superior permiso, 1786. Versos que los RR. PP. missioneros del Colegio Apostólico de San José de Gracia de la Villa de Orizava, cantan en sus misiones. Puebla: Oficina del Oratorio de S. Felipe Neri, 1820. Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Carso. Microfilm Reel 31. 808.1 V.A. Vilaplana, Fr. Hermenegildo. Centinela dogmatico-moral con oportunos avisos al confessor, y penitente. Vigilias apostolicas en que Daniel, y Maximo, Sacerdotes Missioneros, proponen, y resuelven algunas dudas, especialmente sobre el uso de las Opiniones, Tratos, y Contratos. Mexico City: Imprenta de la Bibliotheca Mexicana, 1767.

Secondary Sources Actas del I Congreso sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo. Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1987. Actas del II Congreso sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo: Siglo XVI. Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1988. Actas del III Congreso sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo: Siglo XVII. Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1991. Actas del IV Congreso sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo: Siglo XVIII. Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1993. Actas del V Congreso sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo: Siglos XIX–XX. Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1997. Aguirre, Rodolfo. “El clero secular de Nueva España y la búsqueda de grados de bachiller.” Fronteras de la Historia 13, no. 1 (2008): 119–138. ———. “El ingreso al clero desde un libro de exámenes del arzobispado de México, 1717–1727.” Fronteras de la Historia 11 (2006): 211–240. ———. Un Clero en transición: Población clerical, cambio parroquial y política eclesiástica en el arzobispado de México, 1700–1749. Mexico City: Iberoamerican Vervuert, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instutito de Investigaciones sobre la Universidad y la Educación, Bonilla Artigas Editores, 2012. Almarza Villalobos, Ángel Rafael. “La limpieza de sangre en el Colegio de Abogados de Caracas a finales del siglo XVIII.” Fronteras de la Historia 10 (2005): 305–328. Álvarez Icaza Longoria, María Teresa. La secularización de doctrinas y misiones en el arzobispado de México, 1749–1789. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2015. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. 2nd ed. New York: Verso, 1991.

REFERENCES

309

Andrade, P. Vicente de. Los Capitulares de la Insigne Nacional Colegiata Parroquial de Santa María de Guadalupe. Mexico City: Antigua Tip. de Orozco, Escalerillas 13, 1893. Andrien, Kenneth. “The Coming of Enlightened Reform in Bourbon Peru: Secularization of the Doctrinas de indios, 1746–1773.” In Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and Its Atlantic Colonies, c. 1750–1830, edited by Gabriel Paquette, 183–202. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Arrom, Silvia Marina. The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985. Atienza, Ángela. Tiempos de conventos: Una historia social de las fundaciones en la España moderna. Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, Universidad de la Rioja, 2008. Atienza López, Ángela. “Fundaciones frustradas y efímeras en la España Moderna: Memoria de los conventos franciscanos que no pudieron ser.” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 39 (2014): 189–209. Babcock, Matthew. Apache Adaptation to Hispanic Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Bakewell, Peter, and Jacqueline Holler. A History of Latin America to 1825: The Blackwell History of the World. 3rd ed. Oxford and Malden, Mass.: WileyBlackwell Publishers, 2010. Barnes, Gwendolyn. “Sermons and the Discourse of Power: The Rhetoric of Religious Oratory in Spain (1550–1900).” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1988. Barr, Juliana. Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, 2007. Barrio Gozalo, Maximiliano. “El clero bajo sospecha a principios del siglo XVIII: El Informe de Macanaz y la respuesta de los obispos.” Investigaciones históricas: Época moderna y contemporánea 22 (2002): 47–62. ———. El Clero en la España Moderna. Córdoba: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Caja Sur Obra Social, 2010. Baudot, Georges. “Los precursores franciscanos de Sahagún del siglo XIII al siglo XVI en Asia y América.” Estudios de cultura Náhuatl 32 (2001): 159– 173. Becerra López, José Luis. La organización de los estudios en la Nueva España. Mexico City: n.p., 1963. Beebe, Rose Marie, and Robert M. Senkewicz. Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary. Before Gold: California under Spain and Mexico Series. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press; Berkeley, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2015. ———. “Uncertainty on the Mission Frontier: Missionary Recruitment and Institutional Stability in Alta California in the 1790s.” In Francis in the Americas: Essays on the Franciscan Family in North and South America, edited by John F. Schwaller, 295–322. Berkeley, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2005.

310

To Sin No More

Boff, Leonardo. San Francisco de Asís: ternura y vigor, translated by Francisco Lledías Juntádez. Bilbao, Spain: Editorial Sal Terrae, 1992. Borges Morán, Pedro. El envío de misioneros a América durante la época española. Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1977. ———. “Expediciones misioneras al Colegio de Querétaro (Méjico), 1683– 1822.” Archivo Ibero-Americano 42, no. 165–168 (1982): 809–858. Borges, Pedro. “Las órdenes misioneras.” In Historia de la Iglesia en América y Filipinas, edited by Pedro Borges, 1: 209–244. Estudio Teológico de San Ildefonso de Toledo; Quinto Centenario (España). Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1992. ———, ed. Historia de la Iglesia en América y Filipinas. 2 vols. Estudio Teológico de San Ildefonso de Toledo; Quinto Centenario (España). Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1992. Bossy, John. Christianity in the West, 1400–1700. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1985. Brading, David A. Church and State in Bourbon Mexico: The Diocese of Michoacán, 1749–1810. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ———. “La devoción católica y la heterodoxia en el México Borbónico.” In Manifestaciones religiosas en el mundo colonial americano, edited by Clara García Ayluardo and Manuel Ramos Medina, 25–49. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Centro de Estudios de Historia de Mexico Condumex, and Universidad Iberoamericana, 1997. Brockey, Liam Matthew. Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579– 1724. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill, N.C. and London: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Buckser, Andrew, and Stephen D. Glazier, eds. The Anthropology of Religious Conversion. Lanham, Md. and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003. Burkhart, Louise M. “The ‘Little Doctrine” and Indigenous Catechesis in New Spain.” Hispanic American Historical Review 94, no. 2 (2014): 167–206. Burns, Kathryn. Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999. Burón Castro, Taurino. “Colegio franciscano de misiones populares de Sahagún (1680), según un manuscrito del año 1805.” Archivo Ibero-Americano 61, nos. 238–239 (2001): 165–250. Burrieza Sánchez, Javier. “Ciudades, misiones y misioneros jesuitas en la España del siglo XVIII.” Investigaciones históricas: Época moderna y contemporánea 18 (1998): 75–108. Callahan, William J. Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750–1874. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1984. Calzavarini Ghinello, Lorenzo. Presencia Franciscana y formación intercultural en el sudeste de Bolivia según documentación del Archivo Franciscano de Tarija, 1606–1936. 3 vols. Tarija: Centro Eclesial de Documentación, 2004–2006.

REFERENCES

311

Cañeque, Alejandro. “The Emotions of Power: Love, Anger, and Fear, or How to Rule the Spanish Empire.” In Emotions and Daily Life in Colonial Mexico, edited by Javier Villa-Flores and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, 89–121. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014. ———. The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico. New York: Routledge, 2004. Caño Ortigosa, José Luis. “Mineros en el Cabildo de la villa de Guanajuato: 1660–1741.” Anuario de Estudios Americano 63 (January–June, 2006): 187– 209. Caretta, Gabriela. “Con el poder de las palabras y de los hechos: El clero colonial de Salta entre 1770–1840.” In Persistencias y cambios en Salta y el Noroeste Argentino, 1770–1840, compiled by Sara Mata de López, 81–118. Rosario: Prohistoria, 2000. Carreno, Alberto María. “The Missionary Influence of the College of Zacatecas.” The Americas 7 (1951): 297–320. Castañeda, Carmen. La educación en Guadalajara durante la Colonia, 1552– 1821. Guadalajara: El Colegio de Jalisco and El Colegio de México, 1984. Castelao, Ofelia Rey, and Raquel Iglesias Estepa. “Domestic Service in Spain, 1750–1836: The Domestic Servants of the Clergy.” In Domestic Service and the Formation of European Identity: Understanding the Globalization of Domestic Work, 16th–21st Centuries, edited by Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, 127–140. Bern: Peter Lang, 2004. The Catholic Bible: Personal Study Edition. Edited by Jean Marie Hiesberger. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Cervantes, Fernando. The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain. New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1994. ———. “The Devils of Querétaro: Scepticism and Credulity in Late SeventeenthCentury Mexico.” Past and Present 130 (1991): 51–69. Cervantes Aguilar, Rafael. Fray Simón del Hierro (1700–1765) y el Norte de México. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, 1986. Châtellier, Louis. The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and the Formation of Modern Catholicism, c. 1500–c.1800. Translated by Brian Pearce. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Chauvet, Fidel de Jesús. La iglesia de San Fernando y su extinto colegio apostólico. Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Bernardino de Sahagún, 1980. Chaya, M. S., and H. R. Nagendral. “Long-term effect of yogic practices on diurnal metabolic rates of healthy subjects.” International Journal of Yoga 1, no. 1 (January–June 2008): 27–32. Chowning, Margaret. Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 1752–1863. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Christensen, Mark Z. Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Berkeley: The Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013. Clegg, Cyndia Susan. Press Censorship in Jacobean England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

312

To Sin No More

Clossey, Luke. Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Cohen, Thomas V. “Why the Jesuits Joined, 1540–1600.” Historical Papers/Communications historiques 9, no. 1 (1974): 237–258. Cortés Peña, Antonio Luis. “Entre la religiosidad popular y la institucional. Las rogativas en la España moderna.” Hispania 55, no. 191 (1995): 1027–1042. Corti, Paola, Fernando Guzmán, and Magdalena Pereira. “El indio trifronte de Parinacota: Un enigma iconográfico.” Colonial Latin American Review 20, no. 3 (2011): 381–400. Crewe, Ryan. “Building a Visible Church: The Mexican Mission Enterprise in the Early Spanish Atlantic, 1521–1600.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2009. Cruz, Enrique. El clero de la Puna de Jujuy a fines del período colonial.” Ciencias Sociales y Religión/Ciências Sociais e Religião 13 (February 2011): 131– 153. Cuevas, Mariano, ed. Documentos Inéditos del Siglo XVI para la Historia de México. 2nd ed. 1914. Reprint, Mexico City: Porrúa, 1975. Dall’Aglio, Stefano. “Sermons from Orality to Writing in Early Modern Italy.” The Italianist 34, no. 3 (October 2014): 463–477. ———. “Voices under Trial: Inquisition, Abjuration, and Preachers’ Orality in Sixteenth-century Italy,” Renaissance Studies 31, no. 1 (2015): 25– 42. Daniel, E. Randolph. The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1975. Davenport, Dean. “Patriarchy and Politics: A Comparative Evaluation of the Religious, Political and Social Thought of Sir Robert Filmer and Robert Lewis Dabney.” Ph.D. diss., Baylor University, 2006. Deeds, Susan M. Defiance and Deference in Mexico’s Colonial North: Indians under Spanish Rule in Nueva Vizcaya. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Delumeau, Jean. Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation. London: Burns and Oates; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977. ———. Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th–18th Centuries. Translated by Eric Nicholson. New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1990. Díaz, Mónica. Indigenous Writings from the Convent: Negotiating Ethnic Autonomy in Colonial Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010. Durston, Alan. Pastoral Quechua: The History of Christian Translation in Colonial Peru, 1550–1650. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Duverger, Christian. La Conversión de los Indios de Nueva España: Con el Texto de los Coloquios de los Doce de Bernardino de Sahagún (1564). Translated by María Dolores de la Peña. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993. Eastman, Scott. Preaching Spanish Nationalism across the Hispanic Atlantic, 1759– 1823. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012. Escandón, Patricia. “La alianza de altar y trono: El imperio español y los colegios franciscanos de América.” In De la Iglesia Indiana: Homenaje a Elsa Cecilia Frost, coordinated by Patricia Escandón, 131–161. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2006.

REFERENCES

313

———. “La geopolítica, el imperio español y los colegios franciscanos apostólicos de América.” Calafia 2, no. 3 (2007). Available at http://iih.tij.uabc.mx/ iihDigital.html (accessed September 11, 2016). Espinosa Sánchez, Juan Manuel. “Newton en la ciencia novohispana del siglo XVIII.” Ph.D. diss., Universidad Autónomo Metropolitana, Iztapalapa, 2006. Farriss, Nancy M. Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico, 1759–1821. London: Athlone, 1968. Fernández, Roberto. La España Moderna. Siglo XVIII. Edited by Historia 16 and Javier Tusell. 6 vols. Vol. 4, Manual de Historia de España. Madrid: Historia 16, 1993. Fernández Cortizo, Camilo. “Para que esta gente bárbara fuese política y doméstica y enseñada en la doctrina cristiana: Iglesia, Estado y reforma religiosa en Galicia (siglos XVI–XVII).” Manuscrits 25 (2007): 157–186. Fernández Rodríguez, Carmen, Delia Rosado Martín, and Fermín Marín Barriguete. “La sociedad del siglo XVIII a través del sermonario: Aproximación a su estudio.” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea 4 (1983): 35– 57. Flint, Valerie I. J. “Conversion and Compromise in Thirteenth-Century England.” In Conversion: Old Worlds and New, edited by Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton, 1–29. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2003. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Ganson, Barbara. The Guaraní under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003. García, Sebastián. “América en la legislación franciscana del S. XVII.” In Actas del III Congreso Internacional sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo (Siglo XVII), 323–380. Madrid: Editorial Deimos, S.A., 1991. García Oro, José. Los Franciscanos en España: Historia de un Itinerario Religioso. Santiago de Compostela: Editorial el Eco Franciscano, 2006. Gato, Purificación. “El informe del P. Gregorio de Bolívar a la Congregación de Propaganda Fide de 1623.” In Actas del III Congreso Internacional sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo (Siglo XVII), 493–548. Madrid: Editorial Deimos, S.A., 1991. Geiger, Maynard. “The Internal Organization and Activities of San Fernando College, Mexico (1734–1858).” The Americas 6, no. 1 (1949): 3–31. ———. “The Library of the Apostolic College of San Fernando, Mexico, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” The Americas 7, no. 4 (1951): 425– 434. ———. “The Scholastic Career and Preaching Apostolate of Fray Junípero Serra, O.F.M., S.T.D. (1730–1749).” The Americas 4, no. 1 (1947): 65– 82. Gelabertó, Martí. La palabra del predicador: Contrarreforma y superstición en Cataluña (siglos XVII–XVIII). Lérida: Editorial Milenio, 2005. Gerbi, Antonello. La disputa del Nuevo Mundo: Historia de una polémica (1750– 1900). Translated by Antonio Alatorre. 2nd Spanish ed. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1982.

314

To Sin No More

Gerbner, Katharine. “Theorizing Conversion: Christianity, Colonization, and Consciousness in the Early Modern Atlantic World,” History Compass 13/3 (2015): 134–147. Godbeer, Richard. The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Gómez Canedo, Lino. Evangelización, cultura y promoción social: Ensayos y estudios críticos sobre la contribución franciscana a los orígenes cristianos de México (Siglos XVI–XVIII). Edited by José Luis Soto Pérez. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1993. ———. Evangelización y conquista: Experiencia franciscana en Hispanoamérica. 1977. Reprint, Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1988. ———. “Los Colegios Apostólicos de Propaganda Fide: Su papel en la evangelización de América.” In Evangelización, cultura y promoción social: Ensayos y estudios críticos sobre la contribución franciscana a los orígenes cristianos de México (siglos XVI–XVIII), edited by José Luis Soto Pérez, 553–569. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1993. ———. “Renovación cristiana en la Nueva España del siglo XVII.” In Evangelización, cultura y promoción social: Ensayos y estudios críticos sobre la contribución franciscana a los orígenes cristianos de México (siglos XVI–XVIII), edited by José Luis Soto Pérez, 416–441. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1993. ———. “Una carta del misionero Fray Pedro del Barco, O.F.M.” Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos 7 (1952): 409–414. Gómez Ortín, Francisco Javier. “Léxico Franciscano.” Available at http://www. um.es/tonosdigital/znum14/subs/corpora/indicecorpora.htm (accessed April 13, 2007). González Marmolejo, Jorge René. Misioneros del desierto: Estructura, organización y vida cotidiana de los colegios apostólicos de propaganda fide de la Nueva España, siglo 18. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2009. ———. Sexo y confesión. La Iglesia y la penitencia en los siglos XVIII y XIX en la Nueva España. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia/ Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Plaza y Valdés Editores, 2002. Greer, Allan. Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Gruzinski, Serge. “La ‘segunda aculturación’: El Estado ilustrado y la religiosidad indígena en Nueva España (177–1800).” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 8 (1985): 175–200. Guest, Francis F. “The Patente of José Gasol, October 1, 1806.” The Americas 49, no. 2 (1992): 207–231. Gunnarsdóttir, Ellen. Mexican Karismata: The Baroque Vocation of Francisca de los Ángeles, 1674–1744. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Gutiérrez, Ramón A. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in Colonial New Mexico: 1500–1846. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991. Guzmán, Fernando, Marta Maier, Magdalena Pereira, et al., “Programa iconográfico y material en las pinturas murales de la iglesia de San Andrés de Pachama, Chile,” Colonial Latin American Review 25, no. 2 (2016): 245–264.

REFERENCES

315

Habig, Marion A. “The Franciscan Provinces of Spanish North America.” The Americas 1, no. 3 (January 1945): 330–344. ———. “The Franciscan Provinces of South America.” The Americas 2, no. 2 (October 1945): 189–210. Hackel, Steven W. Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian–Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769–1850. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press and Omohundro Institute, 2005. ———. Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father. New York: Hill and Wang, 2013. Hämäläinen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. Lamar Series in Western History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, in association with William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, 2008. Harrison, Jay. “Franciscan Missionary Theory and Practice in Eighteenth-Century New Spain: The Propaganda Fide Friars in the Texas Missions, 1690–1821.” Ph.D. diss.: The Catholic University of America, 2012. ———. “Franciscan Concepts of the Congregated Mission and the Apostolic Ministry in Eighteenth-Century Texas.” In From La Florida to La California: Franciscan Evangelization in the Spanish Borderlands, edited by Timothy J. Johnson and Gert Melville, 323–339. Berkeley, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013. Hendrix, Scott H. Recultivating the Vineyard: The Reformation Agendas of Christianization. Louisville, Ky. and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. ———. “Rerooting the Faith: The Reformation as Re-Christianization.” Church History 69 (2000): 558–577. Hering Torres, Max Sebastián. “‘Limpieza de Sangre’ ¿Racismo en la Edad Moderna?” Tiempos Modernos 9 (2003–2004): 1–16. Hernández Aparicio, Pilar. “El envío de misioneros al Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Moquegua, 1795–1818.” Archivo Ibero-Americano 57, no. 225–228 (1997): 731–757. Herr, Richard. The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958. Herrejón Peredo, Carlos. Del sermón al discurso cívico. México, 1760–1834. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán and El Colegio de México, 2003. Hindsley, Leonard P., O.P. “Monastic Conversion: The Case of Margaret Ebner.” In Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, edited by James Muldoon, 31–46. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997. Hunt, Arnold. The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590– 1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Hunt, Lynn. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Jackson, Robert H. Conflict and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: The Augustinian War on and Beyond the Chichimeca Frontier. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013. Jaramillo Magaña, Juvenal. Hacia una iglesia beligerante: la gestión episcopal de Fray Antonio de San Miguel en Michoacán, 1784–1804, los proyectos ilustrados y las defensas canónicas. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1996.

316

To Sin No More

Jiménez Gómez, Juan Ricardo, ed. Creencias y prácticas religiosas en Querétaro. Siglos XVI–XIX. Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, 2004. John, Elizabeth A.H. Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795. 2nd rev. ed. 1975. Reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Johnson, Anna Marie, and John A. Maxfield, eds. The Reformation as Christianization: Essays on Scott Hendrix’s Christianization Thesis. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2012. Johnson, Timothy J., and Gert Melville, eds. From La Florida to La California: Franciscan Evangelization in the Spanish Borderlands. Berkeley, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013. Jones, Cameron. In Service of Two Masters: The Missionaries of Ocopa, Indigenous Resistance, and Spanish Governance in Bourbon Peru. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Oceanside, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, Forthcoming. ———. “In Service of God and King: Conflicts between Bourbon Reformers and the Missionaries of Santa Rosa de Ocopa in Peru, 1709–1824.” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 2013. Katznelson, Ira, and Miri Rubin, eds. Religious Conversion: History, Experience and Meaning. Farnham, UK, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2014. Kent, Susan Kingsley. “Gender Rules: Law and Politics.” In A Companion to Gender History, edited by Teresa A. Meade and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, 86–109. Malden, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Kessell, John L. Friars, Soldiers, and Reformers: Hispanic Arizona and the Sonora Mission Frontier, 1767–1856. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976. Kim, Doung Young. Understanding Religious Conversion: The Case of Saint Augustine. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2012. Kowalsky, N., and J. Metzler. Inventory of the Historical Archives of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples or “De Propaganda Fide.” 3rd enl. ed. Rome: Pontificia Universitas Urbaniana, 1988. Kuethe, Allan J., and Kenneth J. Andrien. The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century: War and the Bourbon Reforms, 1713–1796. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Lambert, Frank. Inventing the “Great Awakening.” Princeton, N.J. and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1999. Langenbacher Jiménez, Ferdy, O.F.M. Origen, desarrollo e influjo de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide en la Iglesia y Sociedad de la recién fundada República Boliviana (1834–1877). Vol. 15, Analecta Franciscana, V. 15. Nova Series: Documenta et Studia 3. Grottaferrata: Frati Editori di Quaracchi, 2005. Langer, Erick, and Robert H. Jackson, eds. The New Latin American Mission History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Larkin, Brian. “Confraternities and Communities: The Decline of the Communal Quest for Salvation in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City.” In Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, edited by Martin Nesvig. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.

REFERENCES

317

———. The Very Nature of God: Baroque Catholicism and Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico City. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010. Lavrin, Asunción. Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008. ———. “Dying for Christ: Martyrdom in New Spain.” In Religious Transformations in the Early Modern Americas, edited by Stephanie Kirk and Sarah Rivett, 131–157. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. ———. “Frailes mendicantes en México: Aproximación al estudio de la masculinidad en Nueva España. Discurso de Ingreso de Asunción Lavrin.” Memorias de la Academia Mexicana de la Historia 55 (2014): 131–164. ———. “Lay Brothers: The Other Men in the Mendicant Orders of New Spain.” The Americas 72, no. 3 (July 2015): 411–438. Leclercq, Jean, O.S.B. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture. Translated by Catharine Misrahi. 3rd ed. 1982. Reprint, New York: Fordham University Press, 1985. Lehnertz, Jay Frederick. “Lands of the Infidels: The Franciscans in the Central Montaña of Peru, 1709–1824.” Ph.D. diss.: University of Wisconsin, 1974. Lejarza, Fidel de. Conquista espiritual del Nuevo Santander. Vol. 4, Biblioteca “Missionalia Hispánica”. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1947. León Vegas, Milagros. “Entre el misticismo y la aberración: Declive de los flagelantes en Antequera, siglo XVI.” Baetica: Estudios de Arte, Geografía e Historia, 31 (2009). López, Atanasio. “Misiones de Méjico. Rasgos de la vida del P. Fr. Francisco López Salgueiro. Sus cartas.” Archivo Ibero-Americano 2 (1914): 256–286. Luna, Octavio. La encarnación y la pasión de Jesucristo en los Sermones de San Antonio de Padua, Studia Antoniana 47. Rome: Roma Edizioni Antonianum, 2003. Lundberg, Magnus. “El clero indígena en hispanoamérica: de la legislación a la impementación y práctica eclesiástica.” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 38 (2008): 39–62. Lynch, John. Fray Juan de Santa Gertrudis and the Marvels of New Granada. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 1999. ———. La España del siglo XVIII. Translated by Juan Faci. 2nd ed. Barcelona: Crítica, 1999. ———. New Worlds: A Religious History of Latin America. New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 2012. Malvido, Elsa. “Los novicios de San Francisco en la ciudad de México. La Edad de Hierro (1649–1749).” Historia Mexicana 36, no. 4 (1987): 699–738. Mann, Kristin Dutcher. “Christmas in the Missions of Northern New Spain.” The Americas 66, no. 3 (2010): 331–351. ———. The Power of Song: Music and Dance in Mission Communities of Northern New Spain. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Berkeley, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2010.

318

To Sin No More

Martí Mayor, José. “Escornalbóu: Colegio-seminario de misiones de Propaganda Fide (1686–1835).” Archivo Ibero-Americano 42, no. 165–168 (1982): 293– 342. Martín Riego, Manuel. Las conferencias morales y la formación permanente del clero en la Archidiócesis de Sevilla (Siglos XVIII al XX). Seville: Fundación Infanta María Luisa, 1997. Martínez, María Elena. Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008. Martínez Ruiz, Enrique, coord. El peso de la Iglesia: Cuatro siglos de Órdenes Religiosas en España. Madrid: Actas, 2004. Martínez-Serna, J. Gabriel. “Procurators and the Making of the Jesuits’ Atlantic Network.” In Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830, edited by Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault, 181–209. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009. Mayer Celis, Leticia. Rutas de incertidumbre: Ideas alternativas sobre la génesis de la probabilidad, siglos XVII y XVII. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2015. Mazín Gómez, Óscar. Entre dos Majestades: Obispo y Obispado de Michoacán ante las reformas borbóncas, 1758–1772. Zamora: Colegio de Michoacán, 1987. McCarty, Kieran. “Apostolic Colleges of the Propagation of the Faith–Old and New World Background.” The Americas 19 (1962): 50–59. McCloskey, Michael B., O.F.M. The Formative Years of the Missionary College of Santa Cruz of Querétaro, 1683–1733. Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955. McGarry, Daniel D. “Educational Methods of the Franciscans in Spanish California.” The Americas 6 (1950): 335–358. Melvin, Karen. Building Colonial Cities of God: Mendicant Orders and Urban Culture in New Spain. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012. ———. “The Globalization of Reform.” In Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation, edited by Mary Laven, Alexandra Bamji, and Geert Janssen, 435–450. Farnham, UK, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2013. Molina, Fernanda. “Los Sodomitas virreinales: Entre Sujetos Jurídicos y Especie.” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 67, no. 1 (2010). Molina, J. Michelle. To Overcome Oneself: The Jesuit Ethic and Spirit of Global Expansion, 1520–1767. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Molina del Villar, América. “Remedios contra la enfermedad y el hambre.” In Historia de la vida cotidiana en México. El siglo XVIII: entre tradición y cambio, edited by Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru, 179–212. Mexico City: El Colegio de México; Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005. Morales, Francisco. Ethnic and Social Background of the Franciscan Friars in Seventeenth-Century Mexico. Monograph Series, Vol. X. Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1973. ———. “Mexican Society and the Franciscan Order in a Period of Transition, 1749–1858.” The Americas 54 (1998): 323–356.

REFERENCES

319

Moreno Jeria, Rodrigo. Misiones en Chile Austral: Los Jesuitas en Chiloé. Sevilla: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; Diputación de Sevilla, 2007. Morgado García, Arturo. “Los manuales de confesores en la España del siglo XVIII.” Cuadernos dieciochistas 5 (2004): 123–145. Muchembled, Robert. Historia del Diablo, Siglos XII–XX. Translated by Federico Villegas. 2nd ed. Reprint, Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006. Muldoon, James, ed. Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1997. Muñoz Delgado, Vicente. “La Universidad de Salamanca (1778) y los ‘Elementa Recentioris Philosophiae’ (México 1774) de Juan Benito Diaz Gamarra y Dávalos.” Cuadernos salmantinos de filosofía no. 8 (1981): 149–174. Muñoz G., Enrique. “Los misioneros del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro: Ambiente histórico, formación y actividad apostólica en el siglo XVIII.” Dissertatio ad Licentiam, Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1998. Nesvig, Martin, ed. Local Religion in Colonial Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. Noel, Charles C. “Missionary Preachers in Spain: Teaching Social Virtue in the Eighteenth Century.” American Historical Review 90, no. 4 (1985): 866–892. Norman, Corrie. “The Franciscan Preaching Tradition and Its Sixteenth-Century Legacy: The Case of Cornelio Musso.” The Catholic Historical Review 85, no. 2 (April, 1999): 208–232. Norris, Jim. After “The Year Eighty”: The Demise of Franciscan Power in Spanish New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico in cooperation with Academy of American Franciscan History, 2000. Novikoff, Alex J.“Toward a CulturalHistory of Scholastic Refutation.” American Historical Review 117(2) (April 2012), 331–364. ———. The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. O’Hara, Matthew D. A Flock Divided: Race, Religion, and Politics in Mexico, 1749–1857. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010. Pagden, Anthony. The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Palomo, Federico. “Malos panes para buenas hambres: Comunicación e identidad religiosa de los misioneros de interior en la península Ibérica (siglos XVI– XVIII).” Penélope 28 (2003): 7–30. Pardo, Osvaldo F. The Origins of Mexican Catholicism: Nahua Rituals and Christian Sacraments in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Pazzis Pi Corrales, Magdalena de, and David García Hernán. “Aproximación al modo de vida conventual de los Franciscanos Descalzos. La provincial de San Juan Bautista en el siglo XVIII a través de los libros de patentes.” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 16 (1995): 409–428.

320

To Sin No More

Pérez Morera, Jesús. “El árbol genealógico de las órdenes franciscana y dominica en el arte virreinal.” Anales del Museo de América 4 (1996): 119–126. Phelan, John Leddy. The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World. 2nd rev. ed. 1956. Reprint, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970. Picazo Muntaner, Antoni. “El ideario de Fray Antoni Llinás, OFM, para la creación del primer colegio de Propaganda Fide de América.” Archivo Ibero-Americano 60 (2000): 437–446. Piho, Virve. “La organización eclesiástica de la Nueva España durante los siglos XVI y XVII.” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 10 (1991): 11–30. Po-Chia Hsia, R. The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Porter, Charles R. “Querétaro in Focus: The Franciscan Missionary Colleges and the Texas Missions.” Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture 19 (2008): 9–51. Premo, Bianca. Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority, and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Prosperi, Adriano. Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari. 2nd ed. Torino, Italy: Giulio Einaudi editori, 2009. Radding, Cynthia. “Crosses, Caves, and Matachinis: Divergent Appropriations of Catholic Discourse in Northwestern New Spain.” The Americas 55, no. 2 (1998): 177–203. ———. Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative History in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic. Durham, N.C. and London: Duke University Press, 2005. Rambo, Lewis R. Understanding Religious Conversion. New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1993. Ramos, Gabriela. “Conversion of Indigenous People in the Peruvian Andes: Politics and Historical Understanding.” History Compass 14, no. 8 (2016): 359– 369. Ranke-Heinemann, Uta. Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church. Translated by Peter Heinegg. New York and London: Doubleday, 1990. Reff, Daniel T. Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Reidhead, Mary Ann, and Van A. Reidhead. “From Jehova’s Witness to Benedictine Nun: The Roles of Experience and Context in a Double Conversion.” In The Anthropology of Religious Conversion, edited by Andrew Buckser and Stephen D. Glazier, 183–197. Lanham, Md. and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003. Rex Galindo, David. “La sacramentalización de la frontera. El programa misionero franciscano del Colegio Apostólico de Tarija en Bolivia al final de la colonia.” In La frontera en el Mundo Hispánico, edited by Porfirio Sanz Camañes and David Rex Galindo, 437–458. Quito: Editorial Abya Yala, 2014.

REFERENCES

321

———. “‘Primero hombres, luego cristianos’: Un análisis sobre la conversión forzosa en la frontera de Texas.” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 2nd ser. 2, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 405–432. ———. “Propaganda Fide: Training Franciscan Missionaries in New Spain.” Ph.D. diss.: Southern Methodist University, 2010. Ricard, Robert. La conquista espiritual de México: Ensayo sobre el apostolado y los métodos misioneros de las órdenes mendicantes en la Nueva España de 1523– 1524 a 1572. Translated by Ángel María Garibay K. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986. Rico Callado, Francisco Luis. Misiones Populares en España entre el Barroco y la Ilustración. Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, Diputación de Valencia, 2006. ———. “La polémica sobre el probabilismo y los desencuentros sobre su uso en la Compañía de Jesús a través del estudio de dos autores: Pedro de Calatayud (1689–1773) y Jerónimo Dutari (1671–1717).” Cuadernos dieciochistas 17 (2016): 297–328. Rodríguez, Vicente. “Colegio de Querétaro: Último reclutador de misioneros.” Archivo Ibero-Americano 47 (1987): 161–178. Rodríguez Herrera, Isidoro, and Alfonso Ortega Carmona. Los escritos de San Francisco de Asís. 2nd ed. Murcia: Servicio de Publicaciones Instituto Teológico Franciscano; Editorial Espigas, 2003. Roest, Bert. A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517). Leiden, The Netherlands; Boston, USA; Köln, Germany: Brill, 2000. Rubial, Antonio. La hermana pobreza. El franciscanismo: de la Edad Media a la evangelización novohispana, Colección Seminarios. Mexico City: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1996. Rubial García, Antonio. La santidad controvertida. Hagiografía y conciencia criolla alrededor de los venerables no canonizados de Nueva España. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999. ———. Una monarquía criolla: la provincia agustina de México en el siglo XVII. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1990. ———. “Votos pactados. Las prácticas políticas entre los mendicantes novohispanos.” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 26 (2002): 51–83. Rueda Iturrate, Carlos José de. “Envío de misioneros franciscanos a Nueva España.” Archivo Ibero-Americano 57, no. 225–228 (1997): 421–432. Russell, Frederick H. “Augustine: Conversion by the Book.” In Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, edited by James Muldoon, 13–30. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1997. Saeger, James Schofield. The Chaco Mission Frontier: The Guaycuruan Experience. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000. Saiz Díez, Félix. Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide en Hispanoamérica. 2nd ed. Lima: CETA, 1992. Salazar, P. Fr. José Abel. Los estudios eclesiásticos superiores en el Nuevo Reino de Granada (1563–1810). Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigación Científica, Insituto Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo, 1946. Sandos, James. Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004.

322

To Sin No More

Sarmiento Pérez, José. “Órdenes en la Diócesis de Badajoz (1800–1835).” Norba. Revista de Historia 18 (2005): 195–213. Sarrión Mora, Adelina. Sexualidad y confesión. La solicitación ante el Tribunal del Santo Oficio (siglos XVI–XIX). Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1994. Schwaller, John F., ed. Francis in the Americas: Essays on the Franciscan Family in North and South America. Berkeley, Calif.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2005. ———. The History of the Catholic Church in Latin America. New York and London, New York University Press, 2011. Seed, Patricia. To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988. Selwyn, Jennifer D. A Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuits’ Civilizing Mission in Early Modern Naples. Hants, England, Burlington, Vt., and Rome: Ashgate Publishing; Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2004. Serrailh, Jean. La España Ilustrada de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII. Trans. Antonio Latorre. 1954; Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992. Serrera, Ramón María. “La saturación de eclesiásticos en la Lima barroca.” Caravelle 76–77 (2001): 255–263. Smidt, Andrea J. “Fiestas and Fervor: Religious Life and Catholic Enlightenment in the Diocese of Barcelona, 1766–1775.” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 2006. Smith, Hilary Dansey. Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age: A Study of Some Preachers of the Reign of Philip III. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Soto, José-Luis. “Fray Manuel María Trujillo (1728–1814). Un reformador franciscano de la época de la Ilustración.” Master’s thesis, Catholic University of America, 1977. Sotomayor, José Francisco. Historia del Apostólico Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas, Desde su fundacion hasta nuestros dias. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Zacatecas: Imprenta de la Rosa, 1889. Strasser, Ulrike. State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Tanck de Estrada, Dorothy. Atlas ilustrado de los pueblos de indios: Nueva España, 1800. Mexico City: El Colegio de México; El Colegio Mexiquense, A.C.; Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas; Fomento Cultural Banamex, 2005. Tavárez, David. “Autonomy, Honor, and the Ancestors: Native Local Religion in Seventeenth-Century Oaxaca.” In Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, edited by Martin Nesvig, 118–144. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. ———. The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011. Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin Books, 2001. Taylor, Larissa, ed. Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2001.

REFERENCES

323

Taylor, William B. “Between Nativitas and Mexico City: An Eighteenth-Century Pastor’s Local Religion.” In Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, edited by Martin Nesvig, 90–117. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. ———. Magistrates of the Sacred: Parish Priests in Eighteenth-Century Mexico. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996. Tentler, Thomas N. Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977. Tibesar, Antonine. Franciscan Beginnings in Colonial Peru. Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1953. ———. “The “Alternativa”: A Study in Spanish–Creole Relations in Seventeenthcentury Peru.” The Americas (1955): 229–83. ———. “The Franciscan Doctrinero versus the Franciscan Misionero in Seventeenth-century Peru.” The Americas (1957): 115–24. ———. “The Suppression of the Religious Order in Peru, 1826–1830 or the King versus the Peruvian Friars: The King Won.” The Americas (1982): 205–239. Torre Curiel, José Refugio de la. Twilight of the Mission Frontier: Shifting Interethnic Alliances and Social Organization in Sonora, 1768–1855. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; Berkeley: The Academy of American Franciscan History, 2012. ———. Vicarios en entredicho. Crisis y desestructuración de la provincia franciscana de Santiago de Xalisco, 1749–1860. Zamora, Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán and Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 2001. Tortorici, Zeb. “Masturbation, Salvation, and Desire: Connecting Sexuality and Religiosity in Colonial Mexico.” The Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 3 (2007): 355–372. Turley, Steven E. Franciscan Spirituality and Mission in New Spain, 1524–1599: Conflict beneath the Sycamore Tree (Luke 19:1–10). Farnham/Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2014. Twinam, Ann. Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999. Vaccari, Debora. “Sobre la edición de una loa inédita para la comedia No puede ser el guardar una mujer de Moreto.” In El patrimonio del teatro clásico español: actualidad y perspectivas: homenaje a Francisco Ruiz Ramón: Actas del Congreso del TC/12. Olmedo, 22 al 15 de julio de 2013, edited by Germán vega García-Luengos, Héctor Urzáiz Tortajada, Pedro Conde Parrado. 713– 722. Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad de valladolid; Olmedo: Ayuntamiento, 2015. Vaquerín Aparicio, Daniel. “Vida, espiritualidad y proyección social de los franciscanos descalzos en la España de la Ilustración.” Ph.D. diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2004. Vázquez Janeiro, Isaac. “Origen y significado de los colegios de misiones franciscanos.” In Actas del III Congreso Internacional sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo (Siglo XVII), 323–380. Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1991.

324

To Sin No More

Vázquez Valdivia, Paloma. “El constitucionalismo descalzo franciscano.” Ph.D. diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2002. Viqueira Albán, Juan Pedro. ¿Relajados o reprimidos? Diversiones públicas y vida social en la ciudad de México durante el Siglo de las Luces. 1987. Reprint, Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001. Wade, Maria F. Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans: Long-Term Processes and Daily Practices. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008. Wasserman-Soler, Daniel I. “Lengua de los Indios, lengua española: Religious Conversion and the Languages of New Spain, ca. 1520–1585.” Church History 85, no. 4 (December 2016): 690–723. Weber, David J. Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. ———. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992. Weber, David J., and Jane M. Rausch, eds. Where Cultures Meet: Frontiers in Latin American History. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1994. Weddle, Robert S. The San Saba Mission: Spanish Pivot in Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999. Wiesner-Hanks, Merry. Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice, 2nd ed. Abingdon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2010. Zavala Batlle, Abraham. “El Protomedicato en el Perú.” Acta médica peruana 27 (April/June 2010): 151–157.

Index Acámbaro, 198 Acatlán, 170 acculturation, 9, 14, 28 administration, 22, 29, 48, 149, 160, 205, 207, 216–217 adultery, 178, 207, 233, 295 Africa, 34 African, 83, 87–92, 115, 173, 178, 268 Agoleta, La, 198 agrarianism, 281 agriculture,-al, 166, 201 Agüeros, Fray Pedro González de, 25, 28, 67 Aguilar Bermúdez, Agustín, 91 Ahuacatlán, 85 alabados (songs of praise), 10, 222–223, 293–294 Margil's alabado, 222–223, 293 alcalde mayor, 75, 95–96, 258, 267 Alcántara, Fray Diego de, 52, 62, 259 Alegre Capetillo, Fray José Ignacio, 92, 94 alliance, 49, 206, 213 alms, 38, 40, 74, 126, 140, 186, 192, 203– 204, 206, 211, 217, 226 Amorós, Fray Pedro, 102 animalistic, 257; see also barbarians anxiety, 67, 136, 168, 179, 183, 214, 256, 258, 263–264, 269, 278–279, 284, 296 Apache, 299 Apaseo, 111, 198 apostolate, 120 apostolic seminaries, 2, 4, 15, 34, 38, 40, 58, 67, 71, 97, 99, 171, 217, 289, 292 apprentice,-ship, 119, 242, 287, 291 Arabic, 32, 138, 155 Araucanía (Chile), 2, 90, 299 Arcayos, Fray Tomás Antonio, 94 archbishop,-ic, 105, 145, 151, 171–172, 185, 187, 197, 206–208, 210, 214, 225–226, 241, 254, 277 archdiocese, 133, 145, 151, 171, 192, 198, 207, 214, 226, 230, 265 Aristotle, 139, 143 Arizona, 4, 9–10, 93, 108, 176, 235 Arricivita, Fray Juan Domingo, 44–45, 55– 56, 64, 94, 108, 147, 198–200, 203 Arricivita, Manuel de, 94 ars praedicandi, 241–242, 244 ascetic,-ism, 15, 118, 120, 149 astrology,-ical, 179 astronomy,-er(s), 138, 165 Asturias, 3, 182 atheism,-ist(s), 165, 180 Augustinian, 5, 8, 79, 170, 226, 230, 247, 251, 267

austerity, 120, 133 Ayeta, Fray Francisco de, 40–41 Bacon, Fray Roger, 138 balloting, 51, 64, 66, 134 Baños, Fray Joaquín, 66 baptism, 14–15, 53, 80, 86, 176–177, 216, 297, 303 barbarians, 179 Barbastro, Fray Francisco Antonio, 132, 204, 287–288 Barreneche, Fray Juan Antonio Joaquín de, 117, 147, 167 beast, 256–257, 263–264 Benavente (Motolinía), Fray Toribio de, 88 benefactors, 131 Bernad, Fray José Antonio, 49, 52, 65, 95, 102, 204, 217–218, 224, 228, 240– 241, 244, 253–254, 261, 263, 272–274 bestiality, 233, 254, 257, 295 bible, 54, 108, 245, 287 bishopric Astorga, 193 Barcelona, 3, 39, 54, 63, 153, 166, 194, 237, 242, 278 Chiapas, 192 Cominges, 194 Durango, 192, 298 Elna, 194 Girona, 194 Guadalajara, 192, 199, 206–207 Guatemala, 192 La Paz, 63, 129, 192, 203 La Plata Archdiocese, 192 Lleida, 21, 194 Lugo, 193 Mexico City Archdiocese, 192, 198 Michoacán, 145, 202, 208 Mondoñedo, 193 Oaxaca, 149, 169–170, 192, 202–203, 210 Orense, 193 Puebla, 149, 156, 192, 206, 208–210, 228, 257 Salta, 192, 207–208, 267 Santa Cruz de la Sierra, 192, 203 Santiago, 5, 46, 101, 123, 125–126, 128, 150, 161–163, 184, 193, 195, 205– 206, 226, 233, 237, 267 Solsona, 194 Tarragona, 39, 44, 123, 125, 194 Tortosa, 194 Tucumán, 192, 207–208, 267, 301 Tuy, 193 Urgel, 194

325

326

Valencia, 3, 21, 39, 44, 77, 108, 153, 181, 194 Vic, 66, 194 Bolivia,-n, 2–3, 8, 29, 39, 72, 97, 121, 157, 160, 185–186, 189, 192, 194–195, 203, 274; see also Upper Peru borderlands, 9, 11, 13 botany, 166 Bourbon, 4, 11, 22, 29–30, 57, 61, 72, 75, 109, 115, 192, 208–209, 215, 273, 277–278, 298 bribery, 64 Bringas y Encinas, Fray Diego Miguel de, 93 Britain,-ish, 174, 176, 234 brotherhood, 53 Buddhists, 175 bureaucratic,-racy,-rat(s), 26, 28, 72, 213, 277, 299 Cádiz, Capuchin Fray Diego José de, 223, 240 Cádiz, Spain, 129 Calamocha, 3, 39, 288 Calatayud, Pedro de, 155, 184, 186, 239, 242 California, 1, 4, 9–12, 14, 21, 48, 60, 77, 100, 104, 117, 143, 160–162, 172, 177, 206, 270, 274, 292–296, 298, 300–301 Calvinists, 178 Canals, Fray Antonio, 64 canonize,-ation, 1–2, 289 Cantabria, Province of, 94 Capuchins, 173, 182, 184, 217, 240 Caravantes, Fray Capuchin Pedro de, 242 Cardona, Fray Antonio de, 117, 135, 156 Carmelites, 201 Cartagena, Fray Romualdo, 64, 66, 147, 204, 288 Cataluña, 3, 40, 44, 49, 101, 129, 193 catechesis,-ism,-ist(s),-ized,-etical, 118, 144, 149, 157, 160, 178, 230, 234, 236, 246–247, 256, 287–288, 291–295 catechumens, 176–177 Cehegín, 3, 39, 112, 276 Celaya, 15–16, 25, 145, 198, 227, 237, 239, 257, 282 celibacy, 88, 136, 218, 268 censorship, 154, 238, 278 ceremonial,-y, 1, 54, 56–57, 67, 125, 149, 211, 230 Cerro Gordo, 34 Chagas, Fray Antonio das, 33 chaplain, 204, 283 charity, 65, 203, 224, 237 Charles II, 16, 34–35, 71 Charles III, 12, 163, 222, 277–278 Charles IV, 25 chastity, 74, 76, 83, 85, 87, 99, 108–109, 134, 263, 268

To Sin No More

Chile, 3, 9, 25, 29, 39–40, 90, 101, 158, 162–163, 192, 197, 248, 299, 301 Chillán, 3, 39–41, 90, 101, 158, 162, 166 China, 87, 119, 159, 167, 290, 302 chinese, 32, 83, 155, 159 chocolate, 125, 132–133 choir, 74, 122–125, 129, 135, 140–141, 147, 149 chorister, 45, 74, 76–77, 80, 83, 85, 91, 94, 102, 108, 117, 134–135, 137–139, 141–142, 147, 294 Christmas, 199, 223, 292, 294 cilices, 16 College of Nuestra Señora de la Hoz, 33–35 Colleges for the Propagation of the Faith, 1, 23, 31, 115 College of Cristo Crucificado (Guatemala), 3, 8, 13, 39, 97 College of la Purísima Concepción (Nueva Barcelona), 3 College of la Santa Cruz (Querétaro), 3, 9, 51–52, 56, 62–63, 72, 75–76, 92– 93, 97, 99, 101–102, 105–106, 111– 112, 117, 122–123, 126, 135–136, 140, 142, 148, 153, 158, 169, 181, 192, 197, 199, 201–202, 204–205, 218, 225, 235, 238, 256, 259, 265, 287, 299 College of Nuestra Señora (Zapopan), 3, 237 College of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (Zacatecas), 3, 39, 55, 72, 97, 110, 130, 157, 161 College of Nuestra Señora de la Oliva (Recas), 3, 39 College of Nuestra Señora de las Gracias (Popayán), 3, 52 College of Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (Tarija), 3, 9, 40, 47, 52, 55, 58, 72, 75, 97, 99–100, 107, 113, 121–124, 128, 132, 157, 166, 185, 192, 224, 237, 267 College of Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de la Moheda (Grimaldo), 3, 39 College of Nuestra Señora del Mayor Dolor (Moquegua), 3 College of Olite (Olite), 3 College of San Antonio (Arcos de la Frontera), 3, 39 College of San Antonio (Herbón), 3, 9, 122–123, 128, 179, 193 College of San Buenaventura (Baeza), 3, 12–13, 39, 135 College of San Carlos (San Lorenzo, Argentina), 3 College of San Esteban (Cehegín), 3, 112 College of San Fernando (Mexico City), 3, 12, 39, 45, 47, 51–52, 55, 58, 60, 62,

INDEX

72, 75–80, 94, 97, 100, 102, 114, 134, 137, 140–141, 149, 154, 157, 162, 168, 172, 242, 259, 299–300 College of San Francisco (Pachuca), 3, 55, 93 College of San Francisco (Panamá), 3 College of San Ildefonso (Chillán), 3, 90, 96, 158 College of San Joaquín (Cali), 3 College of San José (Tarata), 3 College of San José de la Gracia (Orizaba), 3 College of San Juan (Villaviciosa), 3, 39, 94 College of San Juan Bautista (Zarauz), 3, 94 College of San Miguel (Escornalbóu), 3, 9, 15, 41, 122–123, 148, 184, 193–195 College of San Roque (Calamocha), 3 College of Santa (Ocopa), 3, 97 College of Santo Espíritu del Monte (Valencia), 3, 44, 181 colonialism,-ization,-izing, 9, 13, 18, 289 Comajuncosa, Fray Antonio, 47, 194 Comanche, 14, 299 comedy,-ians, 87, 229, 234, 242, 245, 257– 259 commandments, 234, 241, 246 Commissary General of New Spain, 32, 42– 43, 49–50, 52, 57, 65, 82, 89, 124– 126, 131, 136, 202, 204, 278 Commissary General of the Indies, 25, 42– 43, 45, 49, 53–54, 56–58, 63–66, 68, 80, 89, 98, 113, 130–131, 133, 138– 139, 141, 145, 159, 163–164, 197, 218, 228, 236 commissary of missions, 80 commissary–prefect of missions, 37, 47–48, 68 complines, 123–124, 130 Concepción, Fray Pablo de la Purísima, 95, 142 concubinage, 233 condemn,-ed,-nation, 23, 84, 130, 175, 218–219, 234, 237, 247, 249, 254– 255, 258, 295 conference,-ia, 11, 117, 119, 121–124, 144– 154, 156, 159–160, 164, 166–168, 236, 242, 288, 291 confirmation, 48, 80, 86, 216 Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, 30, 36–37, 41, 45, 65, 155, 161, 236 conscience, 127, 139, 146, 149, 217, 219– 220, 236, 238, 261 contrition, 18–19, 22, 217–218, 224, 236, 250,252, 293, 295, 301–303 conversion, 1–2, 7–9, 12, 14–18, 20, 22–23, 26, 28–29, 31–34, 38, 67–68, 73, 99– 100, 103, 106, 110–111, 117–118,

327

120–121, 154, 156, 167, 169, 171, 173–179, 190–191, 215–216, 229– 230, 233–234, 241, 245, 247, 250, 256, 264, 266–267, 271, 274, 285, 287–288, 291–292, 294, 297–303 corporal punishment, 135, 213, 220, 222, 237, 274–275 Cortázar, Fray Jerónimo, 58 Council of the Indies, 34, 36, 38, 40, 45, 59, 89, 98, 278–279 Council of Trent, 18, 22, 86–87, 107, 135, 139, 144, 173, 178, 207, 214, 216, 229, 240–241, 249 Creole, 8, 43–44, 62, 72, 78–79, 85, 89, 97, 115, 191, 209, 219, 269, 275–276, 282 cross, 10, 108, 123, 127, 188–189, 206, 218, 220, 223–225, 238, 246–247, 249, 265, 288, 293 Curauscazo, 198 curriculum, 23, 118–119, 134, 137–139, 141, 160, 163, 165–167, 290 Curucapasco, 198 deacon, 77, 102, 139 democratic,-ization, 49, 59 demon, 180, 188; see also devil Descartes, 165 despotism, 255, 278, 282–284 deviant, 20, 23, 296, 301 devil, 21, 57, 107, 109, 179–181, 183, 187– 189, 191, 212, 250–252, 254–256, 261–263, 284, 295–298; see also Lucifer; Satan diabolic,-ism, 109, 275, 284; see also devil Díez, Fray José, 35, 42–43, 47–48, 53, 61– 63, 171, 223, 240, 252, 255, 258, 262 diocese; see bishopric dishonest,-y, 63, 233, 263–264 disobedience, 121, 129, 164 dogma, 15, 18, 297 donado; see oblate drunk,-ard(s),-enness, 88, 169, 242 Duque García, Fray Ángel, 238–239, 242 Echasco, Fray Enrique, 94 Echasco, Fray Francisco, 94 election, 42, 49–53, 59–64, 66–68, 78–79, 199 enlightened despotism, 255, 278, 282–284 Enlightenment, 2, 9, 12, 116, 153, 247, 260, 280, 302 Escornalbóu, Tarragona, 44 Espinosa, Fray Isidro Félix de, 15, 108 Espinosa, Fray José María, 137 Estévez, Fray Francisco, 42, 172, 227 eucharist, 179, 216, 292 eunuchs, 255, 264, 268 evil, 19, 31, 34, 180–181, 207, 229, 249, 251, 255–256, 264, 285, 297–298

328

excommunication, 116 exorcisms, 188–189 Extremadura, 3, 39 factionalism, 7, 44, 67 farm,-er,-ing, 74, 96, 140, 145, 281 Ferdinand VI, 19 Ferdinand VII, 227, 283 Fernández Colina, Fray Miguel, 94 flagellation,-ant(s), 220, 222 Flores, Fray Sebastián, 117–118, 199 fornication, 233, 272, 294 Francis of Assisi, 245 Franciscanism, 68, 211 Galicia, 2–3, 39, 101, 128, 150, 193, 196, 203–204, 207, 225, 233, 238, 257, 266 Garcés, Fray Antonio, 242 García, Fray Bartolomé, 161, 294–296 Gasol, Fray José, 42, 51, 293 gender, 83, 189, 242, 262, 265, 272, 283 General Constitutions of the Franciscan Order, 54 gentiles, 84, 161–162 government(ance), 8, 11, 26, 30, 43, 46, 49, 53, 58, 79, 95–96, 129, 141, 163, 212, 214, 222, 227, 230, 270, 276, 278– 280, 284 Gran Chaco, 2, 160, 274, 299 Granada, Fray Luis de, 241–242 gray robes, 112, 234, 254, 269 Grito de Dolores, 282 guilt, 130, 179, 181, 215, 237, 254, 298 hagiographic,-al,-y, 9, 16–17, 73, 93, 102– 103, 105, 107–108, 121, 132, 158, 201 Hail Mary, 122–123, 127, 188, 293 Havana, 94 heaven, 22, 86, 188, 251, 268 hell, 22–23, 175, 218–219, 233–234, 249– 250, 252–254, 261, 274, 280, 284– 285, 294, 296–297 heresy,-tic(s),tical, 32, 34, 48, 87, 92, 154, 175, 180–181, 250 Herosa, Fray Antonio de, 123, 128, 184, 195, 233, 238, 257 heterodoxy, 151, 170 hierarchy, 46, 57, 65, 75, 85–86, 112, 120– 121, 131, 136, 280 Hispanicized, 173, 189 Homer, 139 homicide, 84 hospital, 95, 196, 259 humility, 135, 140, 185–186, 244 Iberian Peninsula, 2, 20, 33–34, 39, 62, 83, 96, 114–115, 155, 173, 276 idols,-atry,-trous, 14, 31, 48, 142, 165, 170, 180, 219, 267–268 immorality, 31, 179, 191, 295, 301

To Sin No More

incest, 180 indigenous, 9, 11, 13–14, 18, 36, 89, 91, 116, 155–160, 162, 166–167, 169, 178, 207–208, 213, 219, 235, 246, 257, 267, 288–290, 292–296, 298, 300 indoctrination, 14, 20, 93, 156, 174, 209, 246, 270, 288, 299 Indulgences, 150, 191, 224–225 infidel, 98, 100, 169, 175 Inquisition, 48, 83–84, 87, 95, 154, 178, 197, 228, 238–239, 242, 256 interethnic, 9 interfaith, 299 interrogations, 105, 296 investigation, 81–83, 85, 87, 90–93, 95–96, 105, 135 Jehova, 106 jew(s),-ish, 34, 83–84, 87, 92, 138 Jiménez de Samaniego, Fray José, 33, 35, 171 justice, 88, 154, 213–214, 276, 279 landowners, 276 languages, native Aymara, 118, 160, 167 Mutsum, 160, 162, 296 Nahuatl, 34, 118, 155–157, 160–161, 166–167, 209, 219 Otomí, 34, 118, 155–157, 160–161, 219, 267–268 Quechua, 118, 160, 167, 246 Tarascan, 34, 156–157, 160, 219 lash, 16, 126, 213 laxity, 7, 30, 120, 129 lay people, 12, 15, 23, 31, 51, 72–78, 80, 102–105, 110, 129, 134, 136, 138– 140, 185, 203–204, 266 lector(s),-urer(s), 32, 65–66, 102, 112, 117, 126, 136, 143, 146–148, 152–153, 158, 160, 263 Lent, 146, 207–208, 238, 292–293 lewdness, 31, 107, 169, 181, 233, 242, 250, 256, 260–261, 263, 294 liberty, 141, 214, 252, 280, 282, 284 Lima, 1, 6, 25–26, 43, 53, 57, 59, 66, 86, 113, 140, 218, 265, 274 litanies, 187, 222, 294 literacy, 134, 163, 236 Llinás, Fray Antonio, 1–2, 15, 17, 20, 30, 32–35, 38, 44, 71, 99–100, 120, 135, 156, 171 Llull, Raymond, 138, 155 Losada Sotomayor, Fray Juan de, 135 love, 86, 108, 127, 143, 224, 236–237, 250, 264, 270, 274, 279 Luarca, Fray Juan Rico de, 65, 126, 135, 159 Lucifer, 180, 251, 253, 261; see also devil; Satan Luke, 12, 103, 105–108, 302–303

INDEX

lust, 150, 181, 233–234, 256–257, 261– 263, 265, 269 Madrid, 2, 5–6, 10–11, 16–17, 19, 25–28, 31, 33–38, 41–43, 45, 49, 53–59, 63, 66–67, 71, 80, 88–89, 95, 98, 102, 113–114, 117, 119, 125, 129, 131, 133–136, 138–139, 141–142, 145, 152, 156, 159, 162–164, 175, 186, 196, 218, 228, 236, 258, 269, 272, 278–279 Mallorca, 15–16, 102, 138, 155, 172 Margil de Jesús, Fray Antonio, 10, 13, 39, 47–48, 108, 184, 186–188, 191, 202, 220, 225, 245, 292 marriage, 21, 75, 86, 88, 172, 199, 207, 216, 229, 262, 264, 272, 291 martyrdom, 103–105, 245 mass, 37, 40–41, 48, 50, 74, 81, 86–87, 122, 124, 127, 129, 133, 140, 145, 150, 179, 203, 210, 215, 229–231, 236, 244, 259–261, 265, 267, 271, 292, 294 master of novices, 64–66, 86, 134, 137 masturbation, 261, 295 mathematical, 165 Matins, 122–124, 128–130, 142, 147 matrimony, 48, 216, 262, 292 medicine, 32, 149, 297 mental prayer, 119, 121, 125, 302 mestizo, 83, 88, 90–91, 268 Middle Ages, 23, 25, 106, 131, 138, 155, 173, 175, 177, 223, 241, 252, 265 Minister General of the Franciscan Order, 66, 142 Moors, 84 mortifications, 267 mulatto(es), 83–84, 88, 90–91 music,-al,-ality,-ally, 9, 15, 125, 188, 222– 224, 230, 248, 266, 294, 301 Muslim, 34, 83, 138, 155 mystic,-ism, 107, 120, 140, 146, 149 Napoleonic, 279, 283 New Mexico, 7, 10, 21–22, 35, 53, 92, 101, 169, 192, 215, 237, 261 Nicean, 280 none, 13, 122, 124, 126, 130, 148, 151, 171 novitiate, 42, 72–73, 75–77, 85, 87, 91, 93– 95, 104–106, 109, 118, 134–138, 141, 290 nun(s),-nery, 12, 61, 88, 103, 105–106, 110, 125, 140, 201, 217–218, 258, 262, 272, 284 obedience, 35, 43, 46, 53, 57, 65, 68, 74, 85–87, 99, 108, 120–121, 134, 136, 140, 171–172, 187, 218, 237, 269, 282, 284 oblate, 51, 74, 76–77, 91, 102, 139–140, 185, 203

329

obscenities, 254 opening sermon (sermón de anuncio), 175–176, 191, 222, 244, 248, 254, 262, 281 ordination, 48, 87–89, 117, 134, 139, 141–142 orthodox(y), 17–18, 143, 151–153, 175–176, 185, 235, 243, 262 Our Father, 127, 188, 227, 230, 293 pagan, 181, 302 panegyric, 104, 235–236, 245 paterfamilias, 86, 270, 273, 282 patronage, 32, 36, 259, 279 penitence, 16, 18, 22, 178, 201, 216, 220, 229, 250, 252, 301 penitent, 22, 147, 154, 186, 216, 220– 221, 268, 296–297 Pérez de Espinosa, Antonio, 238 Pérez de Mezquía, Fray Pedro, 62 Peru, 3, 8, 29–31, 39–41, 43, 46–50, 57, 66, 68, 97, 100, 112, 158, 160, 167, 173, 178, 185, 192, 207, 265, 278, 299 perversion, 180 pestilence, 276 Philip V, 89, 95, 171, 277 Picazo, Fray José de, 42–43 Pinilla, Fray Miguel, 64 pious,-iety,-ness, 22, 79, 83, 86–87, 93, 106, 111, 173, 215, 220, 223, 227, 230, 288, 302 Plan de Iguala, 91 Pope Benedict XIV, 44, 225 Pope Gregorius XV, 30 Pope Innocent XI, 2, 33, 36, 38, 41, 152, 171, 224 Pope Pius VI, 59, 113 poverty, 37, 74, 85, 87, 92, 99, 107, 131, 134, 164, 204, 218, 275, 287 precepts, 213, 237, 242, 292 prefect of missions, 37, 47–48, 64, 68 Prieto, Fray Gerónimo, 53 prima, 122, 124, 130, 142 Primo y Ayala, Fray Esteban, 51 probabilism, 153–155 promiscuity, 295–296 Protestant(s),-ism, 32, 83, 104, 131, 175– 176, 178, 216, 234, 249–251 Province of the Holy Gospel, 28, 88, 96, 296 psalms, 127, 250 purgatory, 175, 191, 201, 224–225, 230, 240, 267, 275, 298 Puritan, 250–251 purity of blood, 73, 75, 83, 135 Quakers, 173 rebellion, 212–213 recidivist, 63, 126, 268

330

regalist, 166, 277–278 retreat, 106–107, 111, 116, 118, 120, 125, 135, 209 revivalism, 176–177, 234 revolt, 7, 35, 261 ritual, 10, 14, 22, 75, 121, 129, 149, 173, 215–216, 292–294, 301, 303 Roché, Fray Francisco, 126, 227 rosary,-ies, 127, 187, 189, 206, 215, 222– 223, 227–230, 246–247, 262, 293–294 royalist, 93, 282 Rúa, Fray Fernando de la, 82 Rubert, Fray Guillermo, 117, 147 Ruiz, Fray Joaquín, 64, 66 Rule of Saint Francis, 140–141, 245 sacrifice, 104, 224, 229 sacrilege, 180, 254, 261, 295 Saint Bonaventure, 136–137, 139, 144, 164, 261, 264, 269 sainthood, 1, 104, 203 San Buenaventura (Muñoz Manzano), Fray Pedro de, 135 San José, Fray Francisco de, 39, 200, 207 Santander, Miguel de, 240, 242 Sanz de Azedo, Fray Manuel, 94 Satan, 180–181, 249, 251–254; see also devil; Lucifer scandal, 87, 131, 152, 169, 226, 265 scholasticism, 134, 143, 164, 166–167, 289 scholastic method, 119, 143 science, 9, 155, 163–164, 166, 241–242 Seraphic Order, 2, 29, 40, 264 Serra, Fray Junípero, 1, 48, 102, 143, 146, 288–290 sex, 218, 229, 256, 267, 272 slave, 86–87, 96, 164, 263, 270, 284 sodomy, 233, 257, 265, 295 Sonora, 9, 26, 93, 101, 112, 127, 132, 176, 204, 206, 274, 287–288, 291–293, 299 Stations of the Cross, 123, 206, 223–225; see also Via Crucis; Way of the Cross superstition, 14, 109, 181, 297–298 Texas, 4, 10–11, 13–14, 48, 72, 94, 101, 108, 132, 146, 160–161, 172, 176, 178, 192, 204, 206, 208, 274, 284– 285, 287, 292–294, 296, 298–299, 301, 303 theater, 126, 229, 257–260 tithe, 29, 169, 277

To Sin No More

tobacco, 99, 132–133 Toledo, 3, 6, 10, 32, 53–54, 102, 209, 228 Torre, Fray Juan de la, 32, 129 transubstantiation, 157 Tridentine, 121, 178 tyranny, 188, 281 UNESCO, 10 Upper Peru, 50, 158, 178, 185–186, 207, 299 Uribe Larrea, Fray Tomás de, 126, 161 Valdés Machuca, Fray José, 82–83 Valverde, Fray Acisclos, 62, 147 Vatican, 1, 113, 145, 191, 214, 300 Vázquez Tejeda, Fray José Homobono, 91 Velasco, Fray Martín de, 241 Veracruz, 94, 202 Vespers, 123–124, 130, 146 Via Crucis, 10, 206, 215, 222–229, 267, 293; see also Stations of the Cross; Way of the Cross vicar, 26, 47, 64–66, 145, 185–186, 238 viceregal, 57, 96, 172, 259, 270 viceroy, 28, 114, 162, 212, 214, 258–259, 284 vices, 178, 205, 233, 235, 245, 259, 271, 275 Virgin Mary, 10, 107, 222,225, 228, 241, 262–265,294 virgin(s),-ity, 83, 262, 268, 284 vocation, 40, 75–76, 79, 85, 93, 99, 102– 105, 112–113 vows, 43, 47, 72, 74–76, 79–80, 85, 87–88, 99, 127, 134, 136–137, 139–142, 217, 263, 268, 288 war, 8, 30, 76, 97, 162, 169–170, 214, 247, 251, 254, 277, 279, 282–283 Way of the Cross, 10, 206, 223–224, 246, 293; see also Stations of the Cross; Via Crucis witchcraft, 188, 284 Xalisco, 28, 46 Yucatan, 12, 174 Zacatecas, 3, 9–10, 13, 28, 39, 42, 44–45, 49, 55, 59, 72, 74, 80, 89, 97–98, 110– 111, 113, 126, 128, 130, 132–133, 140, 157, 160–161, 165, 183–184, 186, 188–189, 191, 196, 206, 211, 223, 225, 237