Mexican Church Research Articles

Imperial Policy and Church Income: The Sixteenth Century Mexican Church

The long-traditional view of the Roman Catholic Church in Spanish America as a monolithic, wealthy, and all powerful institution has been gradually modified by successive studies over the last thirty years. From these examinations emerges the picture of a complex institution characterized by diversity, and internal conflict. New research continues to enlarge and clarify understanding of the Church's role as an institution of the Spanish empire.What follows will, in highlighting the colonial Church's relationship to the Spanish crown, add to this view of it as a complex and diverse institution. An examination of crown policy with regard to Church finance in the sixteenth century shows that the episcopal hierarchy of the Mexican colonial Church had a subordinate relationship to the crown in the era of the Counter Reformation. Rather than a strong Church influencing the crown, what emerges is the portrait of a relatively weak, dependent institution, supported by the king. The secular church hierarchy had only enough power to carry out its function and serve as a counterpoint to the religious orders, not enough to achieve financial independence on its own. The basis for this relationship lies in the patrimonial nature of Castilian government and its dominant position over the Church hierarchy because of thePatronato Real.

Theologies of Repression

At the end of their National Conference this summer, the bishops of the Philippines spoke out strongly against human rights abuses in their country. They recited a long list of the names of people killed in the past year, including priests, journalists, trade unionists and other community leaders. Such denunciations of violence and repression are now fairly standard parts of the conclusions of many bishops’ conferences, but the Philippine bishops’ statement is interesting because it singles out the use of ‘religious fanatics’ in the government agencies’ counter-insurgency campaigns. The bishops condemned this as an ‘unholy strategy’, and claim that it is only ‘conducive to the worst forms of terrorism’. The arming and training of fanatical religious groups to fight the New People’s Army had led the civilian Home Defence Force to become ‘instruments of terror rather than peace’.Though the Philippine bishops’ conference was addressing itself to its own local situation, they are clearly aware that this use of certain groups of Christians by repressive governments is not peculiar to their own country. Other local Catholic hierarchies have spoken out strongly against various religious groups. In recent months Mexican Church leaders, together with labour leaders and others, have called for the expulsion of various evangelical, fundamentalist sects from Mexico. The enormous financial resources of these sects, together with their political and social impact, has led to accusations that they are an integral part of US foreign policy in the region, and even that they operate as a front for the CIA.

The Impact of Federalism on Mexican Church-State Relations, 1824-1835: The Case of the State of Mexico

A number of first-rate scholarly studies in recent years have considerably enhanced our understanding of the troubled, sometimes tumultuous, relationship between the state and the Mexican Church in the century stretching from the reign of Charles III (1759-1788) to the era of Benito Juárez (1855-1876). Nancy Farriss, for example, has detailed the Bourbon drive to exert royal authority over the conduct and activities of the powerful and influential clergy and the latter's claim to exemption from that authority. Farriss, Karl Schmitt, and James Breedlove have demonstrated the connection between the state ecclesiastical reforms and the clergy's decisive role in the Mexican independence movement culminating in 1821. Ann Staples has ably ventured an overview of Church-state relations in the crucial but long-neglected early independence period of the first federal republic, 1824-1835. Michael Costeloe, Asunción Lavrin, Jan Bazant, Brian Hamnet, and Robert Knowlton have examined some of the Church's key economic activities and the impact of state reforms upon each. State policy toward the Church in the northern Mexican borderlands has received the attention of C. Alan Hutchinson, Manuel P. Servín, David J. Weber, John L. Kessell, Lawrence and Lucia Kinnaird, and others. Together with earlier works, these studies have documented a drama which began with the absolutistinspired reforms by the Crown, which regarded ecclesiastical privilege and power as incompatible with its own interests, and ended violently with the political and economic power of the Church and its clergy severely reduced and subordinated to the secular state.

The Impact of Federalism on Mexican Church-State Relations, 1824-1835: The Case of the State of Mexico

A number of first-rate scholarly studies in recent years have considerably enhanced our understanding of the troubled, sometimes tumultuous, relationship between the state and the Mexican Church in the century stretching from the reign of Charles III (1759-1788) to the era of Benito Juárez (1855-1876). Nancy Farriss, for example, has detailed the Bourbon drive to exert royal authority over the conduct and activities of the powerful and influential clergy and the latter's claim to exemption from that authority. Farriss, Karl Schmitt, and James Breedlove have demonstrated the connection between the state ecclesiastical reforms and the clergy's decisive role in the Mexican independence movement culminating in 1821. Ann Staples has ably ventured an overview of Church-state relations in the crucial but long-neglected early independence period of the first federal republic, 1824-1835. Michael Costeloe, Asunción Lavrin, Jan Bazant, Brian Hamnet, and Robert Knowlton have examined some of the Church's key economic activities and the impact of state reforms upon each. State policy toward the Church in the northern Mexican borderlands has received the attention of C. Alan Hutchinson, Manuel P. Servín, David J. Weber, John L. Kessell, Lawrence and Lucia Kinnaird, and others. Together with earlier works, these studies have documented a drama which began with the absolutistinspired reforms by the Crown, which regarded ecclesiastical privilege and power as incompatible with its own interests, and ended violently with the political and economic power of the Church and its clergy severely reduced and subordinated to the secular state.

Church Law on the Ordination of Indians and Castas in New Spain

ONE of the most pressing questions that faced the Roman Catholic Church in colonial Mexico was that of a native clergy. In an effort to resolve it, both Church and state groped toward a policy that would reconcile the conflicting demands of Christian idealism and social reality. Eventually an accommodation was reached, but the process that led to it was remarkably complex. The confusion and difficulties that surrounded the issue can be seen most clearly in the history of the legislation of the bishops of New Spain regarding the ordination to the priesthood of Indians and castas (mixedbloods), specifically mestizos. Johann Specker has distinguished three stages in the Church's approach to the ordination of non-Europeans in Spanish America.1 The first stage, roughly from 1524 to 1555, was one of idealism and was characterized by the first moves toward an Indian clergy. It ended in failure. This stage included the famous Franciscan college at Tlatelolco and is the one that has been most studied. The second stage was that of formal exclusion, specifically as found in the legislation of the Mexican Church Councils of 1555 and 1585. The third stage, which began toward the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century, was the period of practical accommodation, when in some way or another Indians and persons of mixed ancestry began to enter the ranks of the clergy.2

The Mexican Inquisition and the Indians: Sources for the Ethnohistorian

The Holy Office of the Inquisition in colonial Mexico had as its purpose the defense of Spanish religion and Spanish-Catholic culture against individuals who held heretical views and people who showed lack of respect for religious principles. Inquisition trials of Indians suggest that a prime concern of the Mexican Church in the sixteenth century was recurrent idolatry and religious syncretism. During the remainder of the colonial period and until 1818, the Holy Office of the Inquisition continued to investigate Indian transgressions against orthodoxy, and to provide the modern researcher with unique documentation for the study of mixture of religious beliefs. The “Procesos de Indios” and other subsidiary documentation from Inquisition archives present crucial data for the ethnologist and ethnohistorian, preserving for him a view of native religion at the time of Spanish contact, eyewitness accounts of post-conquest idolatry and sacrifice, burial rites, native dances and ceremonies as well as data on genealogy, social organization, political intrigues, and cultural dislocation as the Iberian and Mesoamerican civilizations collided. As “culture shock” continued to reverberate across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Inquisition manuscripts reveal the extent of Indian resistance or accommodation to Spanish Catholic culture.

Marriage Patterns of Persons of African Descent in a Colonial Mexico City Parish

DTJURING THE THREE CENTURIES OF colonial rule, more than 200,000 African slaves were brought into Mexico.' Historians and social scientists have paid relatively scant attention to the fate of the black man in either the colonial or modem period of Mexican history. And although it is generally known that considerable racial mixing, loosely described as mestizaje, took place in Hispanic America, scholars have not attempted a detailed analysis of the extent and direction of this miscegenation in terms of actual marriage patterns of persons of African descent. Despite the voluminous colonial marriage records available in the numerous Mexican church archives, few scholars have attempted to delve into such interesting questions as the following:

The Mexican Church and the Rebellion of the Polkos

O-N January 11, 1847, Valentin G6mez, Farias, vice president of Mexico, signed a law which authorized the government to appropriate ecclesiastical property and goods to the maximum value of fifteen million pesos.' One third of this sum was to be taken from the regular and secular clergy within the archbishopric. The purpose of this radical measure was to obtain the funds which General Antonio L6pez de Santa Anna had insisted were necessary if he was to continue to prosecute the war against the invading United States army. In spite of the military danger, both public and clerical reaction to the law was immediately hostile, and within four days rumors of imminent armed rebellion to force repeal of the law were reported in the press.2 Faced with this threat, G6mez Farias moved a regiment and a battalion of the National Guard, suspected of revolutionary intentions, to barracks located at some distance from the National Palace.3 Then on January 16 the clergy, who had been openly condemning this latest assault on the wealth of the Church, were forbidden by the government to make political speeches. Still the bishops and their chapters in every Mexican diocese continued to denounce the law in numerous representations hurriedly dispatched to the central government and to the Congress.4 Furthermore, the proclerical press lost no time in rousing

The Mexican Church and the Rebellion of the Polkos

The Mexican Church and the Rebellion of the Polkos

“ War by Fire and Blood ” The Church and the Chichimecas 1585

“The Justice of warring against the notorious Chichimeca Indians of Mexico was a burning issue throughout the sixteenth century.” This simple statement covers more than half a century of theological, canonical, legal, and philosophical debate over whether or not the Spanish government was justified in waging total war a fuego y a sangre against the wild Indian tribes to the north of the capital. Should these Indians continue to be regarded, as they had been in the past, as wards of the Spanish Crown and so be punished as errant children, “ delincuentes,” or should they all, men, women, and children, be declared enemies of the Spanish nation and the Christian religion and so be punished by being pursued, hunted down, subjugated, and either enslaved or exterminated? This debate went to the heart of the question of the nature and justice of Spanish rule in the Indies and it vexed the consciences of viceroys, audiencias, colonists, and churchmen. It was only natural, then, that the question should be submitted to the most important ecclesiastical gathering of colonial Mexico—the Third Mexican Provincial Council of 1585. Though passing references are sometimes made to the consideration given to the Chichimecan question by the Council, no serious study has ever been made of the discussions and arguments nor of the official stand taken by the Mexican Church. This is particularly to be regretted since such a study casts some interesting light on the mentality of the second generation of Spanish settlers in Mexico.

Salvador De Ocampo, A Mexican Sculptor

The Historian of Art in colonial Mexico can find his way fairly well in the field of painting, since the signatures of painters appear on the pictures; in the field of architecture a growing body of published documents makes it possible to become familiar with the personalities of the architects. In regard to sculpture, however, there is practically no information available. We know hardly the names of any of the men who carved the church fronts and furniture, or who made the hundreds of gilded altarpieces that we admire in Mexican churches—those altarpieces whose loss one so much deplores on entering a nave decorated with modern trash. Yet sculpture is in many ways the most distinguished, the most characteristic, and the most interesting of the Mexican arts. It is imperative to push forward the investigation of colonial sculpture, not only in terms of general concepts, but also by defining the character of individual sculptors, their development, their tastes and capacities, and the influences which they felt and in turn transmitted.

Salvador De Ocampo, A Mexican Sculptor

The Historian of Art in colonial Mexico can find his way fairly well in the field of painting, since the signatures of painters appear on the pictures; in the field of architecture a growing body of published documents makes it possible to become familiar with the personalities of the architects. In regard to sculpture, however, there is practically no information available. We know hardly the names of any of the men who carved the church fronts and furniture, or who made the hundreds of gilded altarpieces that we admire in Mexican churches—those altarpieces whose loss one so much deplores on entering a nave decorated with modern trash. Yet sculpture is in many ways the most distinguished, the most characteristic, and the most interesting of the Mexican arts. It is imperative to push forward the investigation of colonial sculpture, not only in terms of general concepts, but also by defining the character of individual sculptors, their development, their tastes and capacities, and the influences which they felt and in turn transmitted.

Roots of the Mexican Church Conflict

Roots of the Mexican Church Conflict

Mexican Church and State End Three-Year Conflict

Mexican Church and State End Three-Year Conflict