injunctions came from the crown against any but secular 'clergymen being nominated for vacant benefices.[1] The result was a better state of affairs; the ranks of the seculars were reënforced by worthy and able men, and they soon gained the ascendency among the people.
During the first two centuries after the conquest the church offered preferment to natives of America, many of whom held bishoprics,[2] and other high positions; but in the latter part of the eighteenth century, all royal orders to the contrary notwithstanding, the number of native-born priests thus promoted had become very small.[3] A cédula of May 2, 1792, ordered that one half the prebendaries of the cathedral should be conferred on natives of America; but a suggestion, said to have emanated from Archbishop Haro, to the effect that Americans should have only inferior offices in order to keep them ever humble and submissive, seems to have been adopted. The result of this policy was that in 1808 all the bishoprics of New Spain with one exception,[4] the greater portion of the canon stalls, and a large number of the rich curacies were in the hands of Spaniards from Europe.
- ↑ The secularization of the curacies was carried on without trouble as early as 1760. Marfil, Instruc., 20-1, in Linares, Instruc., MS.
- ↑ Zamacois, Hist. Méj., x. 1375-8, tries to prove that the government distributed her favors equally among creoles and natives of Old Spain; but Alaman, who cannot be accused of enmity toward the mother country, says that out of 706 bishops appointed in Spanish America before the revolution, 105 were native Americans, and but few of them were appointed to the most important sees. Hist. Méj., i. 14. In the last century there was discrimination against the creoles. No native of Yucatan was ever bishop of that diocese. Ancona, Hist. Yuc., ii. 333-4.
- ↑ The high offices of the church were reserved for natives of Spain. Zavala, Ensayo Hist., i. 66. Archbishop Lorenzana recommended that the natives should be forced to learn the Spanish language, and as this could not be readily accomplished, the creole priests, who for good reasons opposed that measure, were accused of selfish motives, for as they knew the Indian languages the curacies of Indian towns would all fall to their lot. This was denied by a creole Franciscan, Father Francisco de la Rosa Figueroa, who asserted that the secular priests from Old Spain never desired curatos de Indies, preferring the parishes of Spaniards in Mexico, or higher preferment, 'con la sombra de las sagradas mitras, mayormente los que vn Sr Arzobispo ô Obispo trae en su familia, que luego van subiendo y exaltando hasta ocupar los Juzgados eclesiásticos, ô los chores de las Cathedrales en las Prebendas.' Vindicias de la Verdad, MS., 30-31. The same writer gives 51 names of native Mexicans, and 27 of Peruvians, who became bishops and archbishops. Id., 70-5.
- ↑ That of Puebla, held by Manuel Gonzalez del Campillo.
