¹ The assertion was first made by FatherVera, Fortino Hipólito in his work Apuntamientos históricos de los concilios provinciales mexicanos (Mexico, 1893).Google Scholar It is quoted by Navarro, Bérnabe in his article “La Iglesia y los Indios en el IIIier Concilio Mexicano.” Abside, VIII, (1944), p. 443.Google Scholar Navarro refers to the fact that the Council secured the just payment of Indian wages as “una verdadera gloria de la Iglesia.”

² Apropos of this, Simpson remarks, “It should be borne in mind that the repartimiento was always considered a makeshift, an expedient to keep the machinery moving against that happy day when the Indian would work for wages without compulsion.” Simpson, Lesley Byrd, Studies in the Administration of the Indians in New Spain, III: The Repartimiento System of Native Labor in New Spain and Guatemala [Ibero-Americana 13] (Berkeley, 1938), p. 18.Google Scholar

³ The Third Mexican Provincial Council was convoked in February, 1584, by Pedro Moya de Contreras, third Archbishop of Mexico, and sat in session from January to November, 1585. The bishops who attended the Council were, in addition to Moya de Contreras, the following: Fernando Gómez de Córdova of Guatemala, Juan de Medina Rincón of Michoacán, Diego Román of Tlaxacala, Gregorio de Montalvo of Yucatán, Domingo de Alzola of Guadalajara, Bartolomé de Ledesma of Oaxaca. Domingo de Salazar of Manila and Pedro de Feria of Chiapa (who broke his leg on the journey to Mexico City) both sent their advice by letter.

The Mexican Councils have been unjustly neglected in historical research. The standard works on the Third Council are Vera’s Apuntamientos and an earlier work, Compendio histórico del Concilio Tercero Mexicano (Amecameca, 1879). Father Vera did not have access to the original documents and papers of the Councils but based his works on some indices of the original papers. The originals are presently in the Bancroft Library of the University of California where they are catalogued as Mexican Manuscripts 266, 267, 268, and 269. Hereinafter they will be cited as Concilios provinciales, MM 266, 267, 268, and 269. All quotations from these documents are made with the kind permission of the Director of the Bancroft Library.

Navarro’s article, already cited, is a good distillation of the most important elements in the Council’s decrees. Like Vera, he did not have access to the Bancroft originals and so all his citations of the conciliar decrees are from the printed Latin editions. The decrees were originally composed in Castilian and then translated into Latin by the eminent Jesuit, Father Juan de la Plaza. The Latin is much longer and more diffuse than the original Spanish. All quotations from the decrees in this article are from the Latin, with any variation from the original being footnoted. Two copies of the Spanish original can be found in Concilios provinciales, MM 266, fol. 33–147, and in MM 267 (which contains the complete public acts of the Third Council).

Since so little has been written on the Mexican Councils, it is not difficult to formulate a comprehensive bibliography. In addition to the Navarro article and the two works by Vera, there are the following:

Burrus, Ernest J. S.J., “Salazar’s Report to the Third Mexican Council,” The Americas, XVII, (1960–1961), pp. 65–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Burrus, Ernest J. S.J., “The Author of the Mexican Council Catechisms,” Ibid., XV (1958–1959), pp. 171–182.Google Scholar

Poole, Stafford C.M., “Research Possibilities of the Third Mexican Council,” Manuscripta, 5 (1961), pp. 151–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Rodríguez, Manuel Juan, La Iglesia en Nueva España, a la luz del IIIier Concilio Mexicano (1585–1896), (Isola dei Liri, 1937).Google Scholar

Zubillaga, Félix S.J., “Tercer Concilio Mexicano, 1585: Los memoriales del P. Juan de la Plaza, SI,” Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 30 (1961), pp. 180–244.Google Scholar

⁴ Cuevas, Mariano S.J., Historia de la Iglesia en México (Tlálpam, D. F., México, 1922), 2, 98.Google Scholar

⁵ Libro V, Título VIII, párrafo II. Decretos del III Consilio Provincial Mexicano, Concilios Provinciales, MM 267, f. 83r. Vera, Compendio, p. 18, n. 11, mentions that there was a copy of the Directory for Confessors in the archdiocesan archives in 1879. If it is still there, I have been unable to find it. The Bishop of Puebla had a copy which he brought to the Fourth Mexican Council in 1771. Anyone applying for confessional faculties or for a position as a parish priest had to be examined in this directory. According to Vera, the sections pertinent to the Indians included the following: “(1) Acerca de los Indios, vejaciones y agravios e otras injusticias que contra ellos se cometen; (2) Acerca de los repartimientos de los Indios a labores, casas y minas; (3) Acerca del repartimiento de Indios para minas.” Despite the fact that the Latin decree refers to the directory as “editum” it is evident from the testimony of Vera, loc. cit., and Beristáin, Biblioteca, II, p. 278, that it existed only in manuscript form. It is a pity that it has not survived, as the confessional was one practical means that the Council had of implementing and enforcing its decrees in favor of the Indians.

⁶ Libro V, título I, párrafo 12. Decretos del III Concilio Provincial Mexicano, Concilios Provinciales, MM 267, f. 7Sv.

⁷ Ibid. Simpson, in Studies: the Repartimiento System, pp. 84–92, lists thirty examples of abuses of the repartimientos by ecclesiastics.

⁸ Libro I, título 1, párrafo V. Decretos del III Concilio Provincial Mexicano, Concilios Provinciales, MM 267, f. 2r. The orginal Spanish says that this should be done “rigorosamente.”

⁹ The entire question of the Church’s attitude toward the forced labor of the Indian needs more study. It is obvious, both from the existing records and from the complaints of churchmen who inveighed against abuses, that many ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical organizations profited handsomely by the repartimientos. “The Church, like all the other institutions brought in by the Spaniards, rested, in its physical part, upon the labor of the Indians, and the clergy’s use of repartimientos and forced labor generally differed in no essential respect from that of other agencies.” Simpson, , Studies: the Repartimiento System, p. 82.Google Scholar Yet there was no lack of clerics, whether “mendicant moderates” like Motolinia or “root and branch” like Mendieta, who sought to protect the Indian laborer, in one way or another. Cf. Phelan, John L., The Millenial Kingdom of,the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley, 1956),Google Scholar passim. Thus, about 1580, Fathers Antonio Rubio and Pedro de Ortigosa (who had taught theology to Moya de Contreras), both of whom attended the Council, sent an opinion to Philip II, condemning the repartimientos. Cuevas, , Historia, 2, 245–247.Google Scholar Likewise Moya de Contreras himself in a letter to the king (1585), denounced the system. Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario de Nueva España, XII, 128-129. The burning condemnation by the Franciscan Fray Gaspar de Recarte is described with the Franciscan memorial to the Third Council, into which it was incorporated.

¹⁰ The Council’s attitude toward the repartimientos makes more understandable the frenzied resistance that it met from the civil authorities of New Spain—and from every other class of colonial society, from religious and clerics down through the doctors, silver merchants, and beatas. Final approbation was not forthcoming from Rome until 1589 and from Spain until 1591. The furious struggle that must have taken place in Spain for approval—a mere shadow of which can be found in the conciliar documents—probably lies hidden in the Archive of the Indies. The enemies of the Council did manage to prevent the printing of its decrees until 1622. As mentioned, the Directory for Confessors was never printed at all. Fray Francisco de Jiménez, Rector of the College of San Luis in Puebla, writing in 1588, accused the viceroy Villamanrique of having im-prisoned one of the bishops immediately after the Council. Cf. Icaz-balceta, Joaquín García, Nueva colección de documentas para la historia de México (México, 1886–1892), p. 157.Google Scholar The letters of bishops and religious of this period are full of complaints about restrictions of ecclesiastical liberty by the civil government. For an example from the Third Council, see Burras, “The Salazar Report.”

¹¹ This letter is a fascinating survey of almost everything of interest in the Mexican Church. Two copies can be found in Concilios provinciales, MM 269, fol. 24–41 and 43–50.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ For example, the question on the morality of total war against the Chichimeca Indians was submitted by the City of Mexico to the Council after its convocation.

¹⁴ On January 22, 1585, just a few days before the opening of the Third Council, Moya de Contreras, in a letter to Philip II, condemned the repartimientos as the “principal ruina y diminución de los indios” and enumerated the principal abuses of the system. See note 9, supra. Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta, in a list of short recommendations to the Council, included one on the labor situation, “que se remedie la rotura y vejación incomportable que al presente tienen los indios del servicio forzoso personal que los van acabando y destruyendo sus pueblos y repúblicas y aun les dan ocasión para que el nombre de cristianos les sea odioso.” Concilios provinciales, MM 268, fol. 255. The report by Gaspar de Recarte, mentioned below, also seems to have been drawn up with the Council in mind.

¹⁵ Ortiz de Hinojosa was later presentado to the bishopric of Guatemala but died before his consecration.

¹⁶ Ortiz had briefly mentioned the subject of the repartimientos in an earlier set of recommendations to the Council but had not gone into any detail. The first set of recommendations can be found in Concilios provinciales, MM 268, fol. 233, and the second set in the same volume, fol. 227–228.

¹⁷ One of the commonest complaints in the conciliar documents is that the Indians received only a real or half a real for a full day’s labor. In the time of Viceroy Villamanrique (whose term began at about the same time the Third Council ended), the customary work period was a full week while the pay varied according to custom. Thus, some Indians engaged in building a house were supposed to earn four reales a week, while those engaged in building the cathedral of Los Angeles (Puebla) earned the same, plus another real for food. In the construction of mining buildings, the pay was supposed to be half a real and food per day. Cf. Zavala, Silvio and Casteló, María, Fuentes para la historia de trabajo en Nueva España, III (México, 1940), p. 8.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Cf. Simpson, , Studies: the Repartimiento System, pp. 84–92.Google Scholar

¹⁹ The Council itself stated in the preamble to the questions submitted to the consultors and in its letter to the king that it had received opinions from the Jesuits, Dominicans, Augustinians, and the City of Mexico. Of all the opinions, only those of the Franciscans and the unanimous opinion of all the consultors are still in the conciliar documents.

²⁰ Recarte, as has been mentioned, was one of the chief opponents of the repartimientos. All that is known about him is taken from the correspondence of Mendieta. About the year 1584, he was a preacher at the convent of San Francisco in Mexico City. After the Council he left for Spain for the purpose of opposing the repartimientos. It seems that he was responsible for the dispatching of many cédulas favorable to the Indians. In 1587 Mendieta recommended him to Philip II as “a chosen servant of Jesus Christ.” Cuevas, Mariano S.J., Documentos inéditos del siglo xvi para la bistorta de México (Mexico, 1914), p. 24.Google Scholar

²¹ At this point, the authors of the summary are not content merely to state the doubt but rather launch into a philippic against the entire mining repartimiento. They point out that it would seem to be lawful since all of Mexico and even the mother-country depend on the mines for support. On the other hand, there are a sufficient number of mulattoes, mestizos, and vagabond Spaniards to carry on the work. Their bitter description of conditions in the mines merits reproduction.

It is a pitiful thing to see them come from six, eight, ten or more leagues … and they make them work all day and a good part of the night, or the whole night, making them haul the ore up steep cliffs and putting them in mines which are usually so deep that the said Indians can make their way only with torches and lighted lamps. And they go into the water, submerged up to the neck for a whole day, in order to take out the ore or to drain it, from which it follows that the cold and excessive work kill them and the wage that they take away is only half a real a day. Concilios provinciales, MM 269, fol. 114.

The style of this section closely resembles that of Recarte.

²² Ibid.

²³ The memorial was signed by Fray Pedro de San Sebastián (the provincial), Fray Juan Ramírez, Fray Diego Vengel, Fray Pedro Oroz, and Fray Gaspar de Recarte.

²⁴ Concilios provinciales, MM 269, fol. 126. The memorial is undated. As might be expected, many of the ideas common to the Franciscan controversialists of this period, especially Mendieta, are to be found in this memorial, e. g., the comparison of the Indians with the Jews in bondage in Egypt; the fact that Indians are forced to work while Mexico is full of lazy and vagabond Spaniards; the idea that the gift of faith alone justified the Spanish conquest of the New World; the apocalyptic and prophetic tone which sees temporal misfortunes such as plagues and wars as a punishment for the injustices of the Spaniards towards the Indians.

²⁵ Ibid., fol. 127.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ This concept of the Indians as a means of keeping the peace seems to be unique to this report.

³¹ Hanke, Lewis, in The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Philadelphia, 1949), pp. 88–90,Google Scholar has some interesting observations on the Spanish tenderness toward criticism by foreigners.

³² Concilios provinciales, MM 269, fol. 128.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ Recarte’s first report is dated September 14, the other is undated. The person to whom it was sent is not indicated but it was probably Moya de Contreras who was busy collecting opinions on various questions prior to the opening of the Council. In the summary that follows, references will be made to both the Franciscan memorial and the original Recarte document which can be found in Cuevas, Documentos inéditos, pp. 354 ff.

³⁵ Concilios provinciales, MM 269, fol. 128. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 360.Google Scholar In this objection an appeal is made to the famous dictum of Aristotle that “generado unius est corruptio alterius.”

³⁶ Concilios provinciales, loc. cit. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 361.Google Scholar

³⁷ Concilios provinciales, fol. 129. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, pp. 361–362.Google Scholar

³⁸ Concilios provinciales, loe. cit. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 362.Google Scholar

³⁹ In support of this, Recarte quotes the famous Spanish theologian Domingo Soto, “Non sunt servi nisi in bonum suum, nempe ut non ingenio sed corporum robore valeant, doceantur, instituanturque ab aliis qui ingenio pollent. Et servitus illa libertatem non tollit, neque rerum dominum, quod in ipsa fundatur.” Oddly, he did not go on to quote the end of this paragraph, “eademque ratione dicuntur natura liberi.” Cf. Commentarium Fratris Dominici Soto, Segobiensis, Theologi Ordinis Praedicatorum, … in Quartum Sententiarum (Venetiis, 1583), dist. 5, quaestio unica, art. 10, p. 308b.

⁴⁰ Concilios provinciales, loc. cit. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, pp. 362–363.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Concilios provinciales, loe. cit. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 363.Google Scholar

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ I Timothy 6: 10.

⁴⁴ This objection is answered more at length in Recarte’s original memorial than it is in the Franciscan one. It seems that some advanced the opinion that the repartimientos were necessary to maintain the Catholic religion in the New World. Recarte stigmatizes this as erroneous and blasphemous and suggests that the repartimientos and the Catholic religion agree as well as pride and humility, sensuality and chastity. “I think that the Spaniards are more zealous to bloat their pocketbooks than they are for the Holy Faith or the spiritual profit of their neighbor.” Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 365.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Concilios provinciales, fol. 130. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, pp. 366–369.Google Scholar This objection is also answered much more at length in the original Recarte memorial. His bluntness in dealing with the Spaniards can at times be disconcerting. “They say that if the repartimientos are taken away, the Indies will be depopulated. So small is the benefit that bad Spanish Christians do in these Indies in comparison with the very great harm that they do to the Indians with their evil Uves and abominable examples that little would have been lost if they had never been brought to these lands and less would be lost if they should leave them.” Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 367.Google Scholar He concludes by saying that the repartimientos are weeds sown among the wheat and must be uprooted. Cf. also Phelan, , The Millenial Kingdom, p. 94.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ This is at the beginning of Recarte’s second report of 1584, although in the Franciscan memorial it is continuous with what preceded. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 370.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Concilios provinciales, fol. 130. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 370.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ Concilios provinciales, loc. cit. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 371.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Concilios provinciales, loe. cit. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 372.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² In Recarte’s original memorial three other objections are interposed. The first is that the repartimientos are so deeply rooted in the land that it is better not to talk about them in the pulpit or even outside of it. Recarte answers that if the preacher looked only to the numbers of persons who profit by his sermons, he would never preach against anything because the number of those who benefit is small. But the preacher of the gospel, like the sower of seed, must always work in hope of some return, of some small gain. And God works in his own way to move the human heart. The other two objections are both based on the idea that removal of the repartimientos would scandalize the Spaniards, that is, would be the occasion of sin for them, especially by revolt (as happened with the promulgation of the New Laws in Peru) and disturbance of public order. Recarte analyzes this type of scandal and finds it false, malicious, and pharisaic.

⁵³ Concilios provinciales, fol. 130. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 376.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Cf. Summa Theologiae, I–II, a. 76, q. 2.

⁵⁵ Concilios provinciales, fol. 131. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 377.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ The last part of this answer, to be found in the original Recarte report, was not used by the Franciscans. “But, believe me, just as there was a Red Sea to drown Pharao and his vassals in their pursuit of the Children of Israel, so shall there be a sea of hell for you unfortunate Spaniards who unjustly offend and oppress these poor Indians.” Concilios provinciales, fol. 132. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 378.Google Scholar For a similar comparison by Mendieta, , cf. Phelan, , The Millenial Kingdom, p. 95.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Moral theologians at the present time would definitely give a negative answer since one cannot use probabilism in violation of the certain right of another, such as the natural right to liberty. Most treatments of probabilism are to be found in the Latin manuals of moral theology, such as Noldin, Iorio, et al. It will be noticed that Recarte’s stand is probabiliorist.

⁵⁸ Concilios provinciales, fol. 132. Cuevas, , Documentos inéditos, p. 380.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Concilios provinciales, fol. 133. Cuevas, loc. cit.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ There are two shorter Franciscan memorials which parallel this one exactly. Their purpose is unknown. However they do emphasize a point not fully elaborated in the other memorials, that is, that the repartimientos cannot be separated from the abuses which follow naturally from the very essence of the system. “We say that … it is impossible, morally speaking, to strip them of their evU circumstances, unless they are abolished altogether.” Concilios provinciales, MM 269, fol. 124. And again, the repartimientos are a moral act “evil, vicious, unjust, and dangerous, because it is making partial slaves of those whom God and nature make free and it is putting them in danger of hating the faith.”

⁶² Concilios provinciales, MM 269, fol. 136v–137r. It is interesting to note that two of these consultors, Hinojosa and Vique, approved total war against the Chichimeca Indians of the north and the permanent enslavement of the captives taken in that war.

⁶³ According to the consultors this was the method used in the time of Luis de Velasco I (1550–1564). At this spot in the manuscript there is a marginal note which someone has tried to erase, to the effect that “And in all Peru there are no repartidores, nor in many parts of this kingdom, as in Oaxaca, Los Angeles, and Michoacán, but rather the alcaldes mayores take this office.”

⁶⁴ The letter to the king, of which there are two copies in the Bancroft documents, was dated October 16, 1585, and contains recommendations, judgments, and complaints about a wide variety of subjects affecting the Church. It begins in volume 269, folio 49.

⁶⁵ Concilios provinciales, MM 269, fol. 49.

⁶⁶ The cocoliztle, 1575–1579. It has been estimated the epidemics of smallpox and measles reduced the native population by half from 1565 to 1600. Cf. the estimates of Cook and Simpson, in Population in Mexico in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 1–48,Google Scholar as quoted in Phelan, , The Millenial Kingdom, p. 88.Google Scholar A description can also be found in Vera, Compendio, p. 487, note 105. Mendieta estimated that half a million natives died in the 1576–1579 period.

⁶⁷ As has been mentioned, there are no copies of these reports in the Bancroft documents.

⁶⁸ MM 269, fol. 50.

⁶⁹ Ibid.

⁷⁰ Ibid.

⁷¹ Simpson, , in Studies: the Repartimiento System, p. 10,Google Scholar feels that the strictures laid on the system by Mendieta were justified. Phelan, p. 141, thinks that the bold 1594 letter of the Franciscans was authored by Mendieta. Though both authors praise the Franciscan letter, I personally do not feel that it ranks with either the Franciscan memorial to the Third Council or with the bishops’ letter to Philip II. Both documents are, to my thinking, passionate, indignant, courageous, and indicative of a high sense of duty and justice.