Book: To Sin No More: Franciscans and Conversion in the Hispanic World, 1683-1830 (Stanford University Press; AAFH, 2018)

David Rex Galindo

For 300 years, Franciscans were at the forefront of the spread of Catholicism in the New World. In the late seventeenth century, Franciscans developed a far-reaching, systematic missionary program in Spain and the Americas. After founding the first college of propaganda fide in the Mexican city of Querétaro, the Franciscan Order established six additional colleges in New Spain, ten in South America, and twelve in Spain. From these colleges Franciscans proselytized Indians in frontier territories as well as Catholics in rural and urban areas in eighteenth-century Spain and Spanish America. To Sin No More is the first book to study these colleges, their missionaries, and their multifaceted, sweeping missionary programs. By focusing on the recruitment of non-Catholics to Catholicism as well as the deepening of religious fervor among Catholics, David Rex Galindo shows how the Franciscan colleges expanded and shaped popular Catholicism in the eighteenth-century Spanish Atlantic world. This book explores the motivations driving Franciscan friars, their lives inside the colleges, their training, and their ministry among Catholics, an often-overlooked duty that paralleled missionary deployments. Rex Galindo argues that Franciscan missionaries aimed to reform or "reawaken" Catholic parishioners just as much as they sought to convert non-Christian Indians.

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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Recruiting Novices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Recruiting Friars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Missionary Motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 73 97 102 115 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 O 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 nine1. 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 4 To Sin No More Notes from Table I.1 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. a 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 Franen 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 FrancisMemoria 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 CatholiHistoria 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 Francis20. 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.

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Book: To Sin No More: Franciscans and Conversion in the Hispanic World, 1683-1830 (Stanford University Press; AAFH, 2018)

Book: To Sin No More: Franciscans and Conversion in the Hispanic World, 1683-1830 (Stanford University Press; AAFH, 2018)

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