Cortés clearly pointed out this deficiency, and asked for more workers in so promising a field. The request was supported by Father Olmedo, and also by others, who, without caring for the salvation of souls, had found friars an effective means to promote the subjugation of the natives, and especially to maintan control, so as to assure possession of the grants and serfs. The presence of the holy men proved also a stimulus to the soldiers during the hardships of a march, or the dangers of a battle, only too clearly recognized by Cortés, who, for that matter, was sincere in the acts of devotion with which he began and ended his undertakings. So were his companions, with more or less feeling, since it would have been heresy to neglect Christian forms, however much the inward nature disregarded them. With the prevailing simplicity and religious zeal most men, indeed, felt comforted by these rites, which to them constituted a great consolation.
The king was aware of the need of spiritual guides for soldier as well as native, and commended the subject to his councils and to the pontiff; but the little known of the conquest and the country during the first years infused a cautious hesitation on the part of both laity and churchmen,[1] and the field remained neglected. During the siege of the capital five religious teachers figured among the thousand fighters, with their two hundred thousand auxiliaries, Father Olmedo, the three clergymen, Juan Diaz, Juan de Leon, and Juan Ruis de Guevara, the last two of Narvaez' expedition, and the Franciscan Pedro Melgarejo de Urrea, who had come to sell indulgences. To this number might be added the interpreter Agui-
- ↑ Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., 187. The Dominician Remesal charges the delay in part to the want of interest taken by Fonseca in the conquests of Cortés. Hist. Chyapa, 9, and his hostility must have had its effect. Brasseur de Bourbourg pleads that the hesitation of theologians and jurists to declare the validity of Spain's right to these countries — 'évidence en l'honneur de la religion catholique et des ministres de Charles V.' — -was the retarding cause for not sending friars to protect the natives. Hist. Nat. Civ., iv. 576.
