696
CHURCH GOVERNMENT.
ber were scattered throughout the country, and in such towns as Carrion, founded in Atlixco Valley by royal permit of 1579.[1] Puebla had fast assumed the second rank as a city in Mexico, and justly so with its respectable population, its cathedral,[2] and its many convents, representing nearly all the orders in New Spain.[3]
Tlascala
- ↑ Torquemada, i. 319-22. In San Pablo Valley were a number of Spanish agriculturists; at Tlascala resided 50; Atlixco Valley yielded fully 100,000 fanegas of wheat. The estimates of English visitors in 1556 to 1572 give Puebla 600 to 1,000 households; Tlascala, 200,000 Indians, who paid 13,000 fanegas of corn yearly. Hawks makes its population in 1572, 16,000 households, which paid no tribute. Huexotzinco had been reduced to 8,000 families, through disease and oppression. Cholula is credited with 60,000 Indians—others say 1,000 houses—and Acatzinco with 50,000. Cochineal culture was proposed for Tepeaca in 1580. Henriquez, Instruc., in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., iii. 489; Chilton, Hawks, and Tonison, in Hakluyt's Voy., iii. 453-63; Eerste Scheeps-Toqt, in Aa, Naaukeurige Versameling, xxii.; Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., 546; Franciscanos, Rel., in Prov. del S. Evang., MS., 183-200; Vetancurt, Chron., 27-9. Tlascala still enjoyed special protection, and by decree of 1552 no Spaniard could there form estates to the prejudice of the natives. Órdenes de la Corona, MS., ii. 14.
- ↑ The latter was begun in 1552, according to the plans of Juan Gomez de Mora. Owing to frequent interruptions it stood still unfinished at the close of the century. Garcia, Cated. Puebla, in Soc. Mex. Geog., Boletin, viii. 175.
- ↑ One dedicated to the stigmata of Saint Francis, built upon a site chosen in 1530 by Father Toribio Motolinia, on the bank of the River Atoyac, and containing a novitiate and a school of philosophy with over 70 religiosos. It was the burial-place of the blessed Sebastian de Aparicio, and contained a venerated image like that of Remedios, within a silver eagle, originally presented by Cortés to the Tlascaltec chief Acxotecatl Cocomitzin. Santa Bárbara of the barefooted Franciscans, founded in 1591, had a school of philosophy, and fifty religious; amongst its novices once was Felipe de Jesus, patron saint of the city of Mexico. The Dominicans had three convents and houses; the
