Among the orders of monks were always to be found from the earliest days men who had come to America to render good service to God and their king, at the same time ridding themselves of the monotony of conventual life, and winning renown for their respective orders and distinction for themselves. Many of them earned the coveted crown of martyrdom, fearlessly carrying the gospel and the arts of peace among savages, and a much larger number won fame either by their charity and missionary labors, or by their learning and writings upon various topics, especially on the countries where they dwelt or journeyed. Not a few attained to high position, and thus secured a larger field for usefulness. But it must be confessed that the regular orders also contained unworthy members, men who shrank from poverty and discipline, some of whom were vain, covetous, and profligate, and looked upon their mission in the New World only as an opportunity to gratify their desire for a life of ease and pleasure.
After the spiritual conquest of Mexico, it was an easy matter for these ecclesiastics to have themselves assigned to parishes or doctrinas, which, though an outward show of religion was maintained, became hotbeds of vice; even the sacred act of confession being profaned. This scandalous immorality was, in the second half of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth century, most noticeable at the seats of some of the dioceses and in small towns; in the capital the clergy were somewhat restrained from open exhibitions of vice by the presence of the superior authorities of New Spain.
The day came when the supreme government decided that the friars should be restricted to their own proper functions, and not be allowed any longer to encroach on those of the secular clergy, and the authorities encouraged the latter to assert their rights.[1] A long contest ensued, in which the religious orders struggled for every point, but they were defeated; and
- ↑ Reales Cédulas, MS., 90-2.
