The Americas 61:4 April 2005, 565-570 Copyright by the Academy of American Franciscan History INTRODUCTION: FRANCISCANS IN COLONIAL LATIN AMERICA The history of the Franciscan order in the Americas has been a staple of Latin American history for decades. The origins of this journal can be found in a small group of dedicated Franciscans eager to share the culture and history of Latin America with others in the United States. The landmark studies and chronicles of Franciscans, in particular, and Church history, in general, dominated Latin American history throughout much of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, for the last few decades studies of the religious orders fell out of favor among historians as attention was rightly turned to native and subaltern peoples and their agency with the colonial state. The early studies tended to focus on the activities of the early missionaries engaged in what Robert Ricard characterized as the spiritual conquest. 1 Scholars today are far less interested in these quasi- hagiographic studies and far more interested in the actual working out of the conversion of native peoples to Christianity. The conversion too is seen less as a forgone conclusion and more as part of a negotiation or as Louise Burkhart has termed it a "moral dialogue." 2 These articles mark an exciting new era in Franciscan history, looking at the complex processes that marked the evangelization of the New World. In the old history, on the one hand, the missionaries were normally characterized as saintly, self-effacing, fervently embracing apostolic poverty, and the natives 1 Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico: An Essay on the Apostolate and the Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain, 1523-1572, translated by Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966). While Ricard in many ways opened the field to scholarly investigation, others have followed. Among the more key works are Georges Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico: The First Chronicles of Mexican Civilization, 1520-1569, translated by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1995), Edwin Sylvest, Motifs of Franciscan Mission Theory in Sixteenth-Century New Spain, Province of the Holy Gospel (Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1975), and Antonio Rubial, La hermana pobreza. El franciscanismo: de la edad media a la evangelizacion novohispana (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1996). 2 Louise Burkhart, The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989. 565
566 FRANCISCANS IN COLONIAL LATIN AMERICA were portrayed as humble, simple, guileless, and eager to embrace Christianity. On the other hand, the secular clergy and most Spanish officials were characterized as being poorly educated, venial, corrupt, and lazy. In these articles, while we see many of the old themes coming back (especially conflicts between secular and regular clergy and conflicts of jurisdictions), the authors have discovered that the stories differed from what we had been led to believe. A wonderful example of things not being what they seemed forms the heart of Jeanette Peterson's study of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Taking Stafford Poole's work as one of her points of departure, rather than investigating the legend of Guadalupe, the pious myth of her apparition to Juan Diego, Peterson looks at the concrete reality of the image itself. 3 A painting on a rough canvas, executed in the early to mid-sixteenth century, the painting became the central image of the cult of the Virgin at Tepeyac. Her study diverges dramatically from others in that she offers a synthesis of diverse works written from many disciplinary perspectives. Her goal is to better understand the actual image of the Virgin of Guadalupe as distinct from the cult that grew up around that image. An additional theme that she develops that links her work to the others in this collection is the Franciscan Order. The group of native artists from which the purported painter of the image of the virgin came was one associated with the Franciscan chapel of San Jose de los Naturales. The Franciscan experience in Yucatan provides another example of how the new historical approach diverges from tradition. In his fascinating study, John Chuchiak focuses on some of the events surrounding the variously vilified and praised yet always enigmatic character of Fr. Diego de Landa. 4 Landa, as is well known, had two careers in Yucatan, one as a friar (and, eventually provincial) and another later as Bishop. In Chuchiak's analysis the seemingly clear-cut divisions between secular clerics and regular clerics become muddied when confronted with reality, rather than in an imagined colonial state. Although Landa became the bishop and thus temporal head of the local diocese and its secular clerics, he continued to favor his confreres of the Friars Minor. The nature of Church-State relations in the sixteenth century tended to ally the secular clergy, and bishops, with the civil authorities against the regulars. But in the special case of the Yucatan, Landa and the Franciscans, the episcopal authority allied with the friars. 3 Stafford Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531-1797 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995). 4 Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
JOHN F. SCHWALLER 567 t Marsilli's view of the Franciscans in Arequipa builds upon groundbreaking work of Fr. Antonine Tibesar. 5 Here too, modern analysis finds that our earlier notions seem rather simplistic when confronted with the actual reality of the situation. Tibesar imagined that the anti-secular sentiments of the natives were based on some sort of affection for the friars. Marsilli demonstrates rather convincingly that this was not in fact the situation, but that other, deeper, political issues lurked behind this reality. Tibesar's analysis had failed to take into consideration the agency of the native peoples and their ability to work within the colonial system to further their own ends. Cabrera's study of the Cuban Franciscans at the end of the seventeenth century provides a curious insight into the inner workings of the order. On the surface, the squabbles and arguments take on a timeless character. In many ways, they were arguments voiced in the sixteenth century when the order first arrived in the New World. For the Franciscans, the questions raised by Cabrera strike to the heart of the order's identity. Each new generation of friars sought to recapture the apostolic simplicity of the founder of the order, seeing their own brothers in the order as embodying something less than true apostolic poverty and dedication. The history of the order is in many ways a quest to regain the simplicity of vision of St. Francis. 6 These articles all point to some basic issues. Although the evangelization begs to be viewed as the selfless activity of dedicated priests and missionaries, although miracles need to be studied in the context of the culture in which they developed, the historian needs to be aware of underlying issues. The traditional view has been that the local bishop and secular clergy were in opposition to the members of the religious orders, the regular clergy. The two branches of the clergy responded to different hierarchies and perceived of themselves as significantly different, the one from the other. As the head of the secular clergy within his territory, the bishop was expected to support the power and authority of his office and to protect the privileges and powers of the secular clergy. Under Bishop Diego de Landa, the authority of the local bishop to police against idolatry became invested in the Franciscan Order. This simply contradicts much of what has been written about the structure of the Catholic Church in early colonial Latin America. In Yucatan, under Landa, the Franciscans, a religious order, became the agents of the local bishop. 5 Antonine Tibesar, Franciscan Beginnings in Colonial Peru (Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1953). 6 An accessible introduction to the history and development of the Franciscan order can be found in William J. Short, The Franciscans (Wilmington: M. Glazier, 1989).
568 FRANCISCANS IN COLONIAL LATIN AMERICA It is interesting to contrast the experiences in Yucatan with those in the Archdiocese of Mexico under Fr. Pedro de Montiifar, a Dominican, or even under Fr. Juan de Zumarraga, a Franciscan. 7 As Chuchiak himself has shown, Landa differed greatly even from his predecessor Fr. Francisco Toral, also a Franciscan. In general, in none of these cases did the bishop, although a regular, favor his own order as much as Landa did in Yucatan. At the end of the story, Landa remains one of the truly curious players in the colonial church. He seems to be quite simply monomaniacal in his fervor against idolatry, something that seldom reached a high level of concern in other dioceses in the sixteenth century. Chuchiak does point out that although the Maya were continually threatened with investigations against idolatry, the ensuing conflicts between Church and state did give them an opportunity for agency in playing one Spanish camp against the other. This can provide a fruitful area for further study, the degree to which natives became active participants in these struggles within the Spanish colonial hegemony. The Spanish monarchs envisioned themselves as the patrons of the Church in Latin America, thanks to grants from various popes. Their authority had as its cornerstone the power to appoint bishops and archbishops throughout the territory. The regular clergy did not fall clearly under the control of the local bishops, and therefore did not respond to royal direction as well as the seculars. From 1574 on, the Spanish monarchs sought to extend their patronage rights to encompass the regular clergy, or to restrict the regulars to a much more limited role. The kings particularly sought to remove the regulars from parishes and restrict them to their convents and monasteries. While the process of secularization can be seen in simple terms of the replacement of religious with seculars, there were many underlying issues, that would come to bear in a specific area, as seen in the case of Arequipa. Traditional thinking, based on accounts written by the friars themselves, held that the natives became extremely attached to the friars. As bishops eventually assigned the parishes to members of the secular clergy, from time to time disputes arose. The friars, not entirely enthusiastic about the process of secularization, claimed that the natives simply would not accept any other type of priest. In her work, Marsilli clearly demonstrates that while the early chroniclers might have imagined this to be the case, a close look at the situation uncovers other processes at work. 7 To date the best biography of Zumarraga was written well over a century ago: Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, Fray Juan de Zumarraga, 2 vols. (Mexico: Andrade y Morales, 1881).
JOHN F. SCHWALLER 569 The sketchy status of investigations dealing with secularization in central Mexico does not allow us easy comparison with what Marsilli has uncovered in Arequipa. Likewise, we lack in-depth studies of secular and regular relationships in other Peruvian dioceses. Marsilli introduces the notion of a "spiritual economy" to analyze the various pressures acting on the Church, and State, in light of the secularization efforts of the late sixteenth century. A clearer development of this concept and how each of the protagonists participated in the spiritual economy can be of tremendous assistance, both for Marsilli and for others looking at similar conflicts. The one caveat that might be introduced is to warn that in dealing with spiritual history while economics and politics might play a very large role, we cannot, and should not, ignore the spiritual aspect. The work of Cabrera on the Franciscans of colonial Cuba raises many questions. The Cuban Church has received far less scrutiny than other regions. Similarly, the Franciscans in Cuba remain relatively unstudied. The province of which Cuba was a part has its origins in the sixteenth-century missionary efforts of the Franciscans in Spanish Florida. The Province of Santa Elena was at one time one of the largest and most prosperous in the Americas, with dozens of convents in both Florida and Cuba. On the North American mainland, there are only a very few vestiges of the former glory. By the late eighteenth century, the province consisted of only the Cuban convents, with Florida having been ceded, recovered, and lost again. The expulsion of the Jesuits sent off a shock wave within the religious community. As a result, many orders, such as the Franciscans, entered a difficult period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Cuban Franciscans were confronted with two major problems. On the one hand, they simply needed more members, and they looked to Spain itself as a source. On the other hand, the friars who did live and serve in Cuba had fallen away from the apostolic ideals of the order and frankly needed reform. On the mainland of the Americas at least part of this problem was addressed through the creation of the Colleges for the Propagation of the Faith. 8 These institutions would recruit new friars, train them, and support them as they entered into missions both in already established areas and in the frontiers. Yet the Propaganda Fide movement did not reach Cuba, and so the Franciscans pursued traditional methods of reform and recruitment. 8 Michael B. McCloskey, The Formative Years of the Missionary College of Santa Cruz ofqueretaro, 1683-1733 (Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955).
570 FRANCISCANS IN COLONIAL LATIN AMERICA For sixty-one years The Americas has been one of the leading journals of Latin American history. In the very first issue the editors outlined their aspirations. They wrote: "With this issue The Americas is launched upon a career which it hopes will be of real service to the scholarship and cultural relations of all the American republics." 9 The early history of the journal reflected the interests of the editors in the history of the Franciscan Order. With the passage of time, and the growth of the scholarly community dedicated to Latin American history, the number of articles focusing on the Franciscans, or the Catholic Church for that matter, began to decline. These essays help to remind us of the origins of the journal and of the dedication of the Franciscan order to supporting historians in their pursuit of a deeper understanding of the history of Latin America. Without the financial and moral support of the Order this journal would never have come into existence, nor would it have survived over sixty years. The Managing Editor and Associate Editors for the first volume were all friars. Today all members of that group are lay persons. The pages of the journal routinely include articles on an extremely wide range of topics. Nevertheless, the support of the Franciscan Order continues to be essential for the existence of the journal. It is hoped that these essays will help to inform scholars about new research touching on the Franciscan Order, and remind us all of the tremendous debt to the Order for its support of scholarship over these last six decades. Peace and Good University of Minnesota Morris, Minnesota JOHN F. SCHWALLER 9 "Inter-American Notes," The Americas 1:1 (July 1944), p. 111.