¹ The Jesuits had not been founded at that time. When they arrived later, they would become the fifth of the great religious orders to labor in Spanish America.

² Los Intereses Católicos in América. (Mexico, 1863.) Two volumes. 1,536.

³ Herbert Holzapfel, The History of the Franciscan Order, trans, and ed. by Antonine Tibesar and Gervase Brinkman (Teutopolis, 1948), p. 347.

⁴ This appointment of the Franciscan Commissary General of the Indies is discussed and the reasons for it are given in some detail in Casado, Vicente Rodríguez, “Notas sobre las Relaciones de la Iglesia y El Estado en Indias en el Reinado de Carlos III,” Revista de Indias, 11, (Enero-Junio. 1951) pp. 89–109, especially pp. 102–107.Google Scholar

⁵ Rodríguez Casado, op. cit., p. 108. The question of Philip II’s attempt to duplicate his success with the Augustinians and the other Orders is dealt with on pages 17–110.

It should be noted that royal persistence was almost completely victorious. In 1711 the Spanish American Mercedarians were placed under a Procurador General with residence in Madrid. In 1802, the Dominicans received their Vicario General de España. Only the Augustinians still remained under Roman superiors. See “Expediente seguido por la Orden de Predicadores para la suspensión del Capítulo.” Lima, Marzo de 1822 in Biblioteca Nacional de Lima. Sala de Investigaciones. Documento no. 9883.

⁶ Tibesar, Antonine, “The Alternativa” The Americas. 11, (1955), 229–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ See Tibesar, Antonine, “The Alternativa” The Americas (1955) p. 351, note 22.Google Scholar

⁸ Farriss, Nancy M., Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico. 1759–1821 (University of London, 1968) pp. 70–123.Google Scholar This is the best exposition that I know of in English. In Spanish see, de Covarrubias, Joseph, Máximas sobre Recursos de Fuerza y Protección (Madrid, 2nd edition, 1786).Google Scholar

⁹ Farriss, op. cit., pp. 120, ff.

¹⁰ Archivo Arzobispal de Lima (AAL), Sección San Agustín, legajo 12.

¹¹ Fuerza del R.P.M. Fray Felix Bonet, Archivo de la Corte Superior de Lima. Real Audiencia, Asuntos Eclesiásticos, 1819–1849.

¹² Archivo de la Corte Superior de Lima. Real Audiencia, Asuntos Eclesiásticos, 1803–1816.

¹³ Herrera, Bartolomé, “Exposición del Capítulo Metropolitano,” in El Católico, 1 (1855) page 283.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Victor Eyzaguirre, José Ignacio, Los Intereses, 2, 58.Google Scholar It should be noted that the recurso described here does not correspond with the recurso de fuerza described by Calderon, Francisco Garcia, Diccionario de la Legislación Peruana (Lima, 1879), 11,1631,1632.Google Scholar His description is based on what the laws say the recurso would be; not what it actually had become.

¹⁵ A.G.I. Estado (Perú) Lima 3.

^l6 Matraya, Juan Joseph y Ricci, , El Moralista Filalethico Americano, (Lima, 1819).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Letter of Dr. José García Oro. specialist in the life and time of Cardinal Cisneros, to the author. November 21. 1980.

¹⁸ After the sad experience of the Peruvian Jesuits under Fr. José de Acosta with the admission of mestizos into that order, some questioned the wisdom of admitting even creoles. The problem was settled by a decision limiting the Creole novices to a small percentage of each class. See, Cuevas, Mariano, Historia de la Iglesia en México (5 vols.; Mexico, 1946–1947), IV, 182.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Morales, Francisco, Ethnic and Social Background of the Franciscan Friars in Seventeenth Century Mexico, (Washington. 1973).Google Scholar

²⁰ Hurtado de Mendoza, Andrés. 285–299. de Mendiburu, Manuel, Diccionario histórico-biográfico del Perú, (Lima, 1880) 4.Google Scholar Artide, “Hurtado de Mendoza, Andrés,” pp. 285–299.

²¹ See, Tibesar, Antonine, “San Juan de la Penitencia,” in Franziskanische Studien, 33 (1951), 97,ff.Google Scholar

²² de Ayala, Felipe Guamán Poma, Primer Nueva Corónica (Paris, 1936). folio 536.Google Scholar

²³ English translation in Appendix I. On Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala’s work see Adorno, Rolena. “Paradigms Lost: A Peruvian Indian surveys Spanish Society.” in Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, 5 (Spring, 1979) pp. 77–96.Google Scholar

²⁴ Tibesar, Antonine, “The Lima Pastors, 1750–1820,” The Americas 27, (July, 1971) 39–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ This may give an impression that the penetration of the Creole into the civil service and military was not yet substantial. Burkholder, Mark A. and Chandler, D. S., From Impotence to Authority. The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 1687–1808, (Columbia, Missouri, 1977)Google Scholar cites the gradual creole domination of that institution. In part, that is confirmed by the Goyeneche family of Arequipa. One brother, José Manuel, became a General, another, Pedro Mariano, was an oidor while a third, José Sebastián, became a bishop.

²⁶ Oro’s letter to the author already cited.

²⁷ Since only 57 of the 100 relaciones touched on this aspect, very possibly the 17% for the entire group is too low.

²⁸ Rodríguez, Jaime O. in his The Emergence of Spanish America (Berkeley, 1975) p. 68 Google Scholar says that the Bourbons secularized Spanish life.

²⁹ In 1737, there were 479 friars in the Franciscan province of Lima, See, “Registro y Nomina de Todos los Religiosos que tiene esta Provincia de los Doze Apostoles de Jesus de Lima… año de 1737.” ASFL. No. 72. In 1776, there were 359 friars in the same province. See, Nomina de los Religiosos de la Provincia de los Doce Apostoles de Lima (Lima, 25 de Septiembre de 1776).

³⁰ Constituciones del Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. ASFL. Registro 7, no. 15. An appendix at the end of the constitutions lists the books which are to be transferred to begin the library of the colegio. There is also a list of 16 conventos and 23 doctrinas together with the contribution which each is to give each year to the colegio. The colegio itself was built on a site behind the present Palacio de Justicia—therefore outside the walls of Lima.

³¹ Carta Suplicatoria. Lima, Febrero 20, 1756, Sobre la secularización de las doctrinas. ASFL, Registro 17, no. 32, pp. 273–293. in all fairness, it must be said that the royal decree was amended to permit those friars who were in the doctrinas to remain there until they died. In this way, the orders did not have to find added quarters for them. The order would, of course, lose the income of the doctrina at the time of the death of the incumbent friar.

³² See, del Castillo, Guillermo Céspedes, Lima y Buenos Aires: repereussiones económicas de la creación del Virreinato del Plata (Sevilla, 1947).Google Scholar

³³ ASFL, Registro 47, document 24.

³⁴ Reforma de la Provincia de San Agustín de Lima. Biblioteca Nacional de Lima. Sala de Investigaciones, document DE 11694.

³⁵ See, Colección de las Cartas del Canonista de la Sierra, (Lima, 1832). The author does not reveal his identity. The colección contains nine lengthy cartas. They are extremely well written and reveal that author as a very knowledgeable man and an expert canonist. The cartas are calm and inspire respect even though this author cannot agree with their basic thesis: there were no valid vows in Peru because the religious do not observe the vida comun.

³⁶ “Notas sobre las Relaciones de la Iglesia y el Estado en Indias en el Reinado de Carlos III,” Revista de Indias, XI (enero-junio, 1951) 89–109.

³⁷ Rodríguez Casado, op. cit., Revista de Indias, XI, 93.

³⁸ See, Merino, Luis, Las Noticias secretas de América: Estudio crítico de las acusaciones de Ulloa sobre general relajación del Clero Colonial 1720–1765 (Washington, 1956).Google Scholar

³⁹ Rodríguez Casado, op. cit., p. 97.

⁴⁰ Merino, op. cit., pp. 99–173.

⁴¹ The Franciscans in their Chapter of Valencia in 1768 has already voted to reduce the number of Franciscans in Spain by a process of attrition and limitation of novices. Perhaps they felt that they had thereby already satisfied the demands of the king. See, Amorós, León, “Estadística de los Conventos y Religiosos de las Provincias Franciscanas de España en el año de 1768,” Archivo Ibero-Americano, 16 (1956), pp. 421–444.Google Scholar

⁴² Tibesar, Antonine, “The Peruvian Church at the time of Independence,” The Americas, 26, (1970), appendix I, 370–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Dean Echague in his letter to the Holy See of August 30, 1828 (ASV, Seg. di Stato, Rub. 251, fasc. 8) characterises religious life then as “… la vida escandalosa y la conducta licenciosa.…”

⁴³ MacKenna, Benjamín Vicuña, La Independencia del Perú 1809–1819 (Lima, 1924), pp. 52–55.Google Scholar See also, González, Manuel Revuelta, La Exclaustración (1833–1840), (Madrid, 1976), pp. 48, ff.Google Scholar While Revuelta deals primarily with Spain, the discussion on the general state of the religious orders there casts much light also on the orders in the New World. The friars in the Americas were governed from Spain, not from Rome.

⁴⁴ Sarrailh, Jean, (trans. Antonio Alatorre), La España Illustrada de la Segunda Mitad del Siglo XVIII (Mexico, 1957).Google Scholar Góngora, Mario offers many insights on the enlightenment in the Americas. See his “Estudios sobre el Galicanismo y la ‘Illustración católica’ en America Española,” in Revista Chilena de Historia y Geografía, (1957) pp. 96–151.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Pelayo, Marcelino Menéndez. Historia de los Heterodoxos Españoles (Santander, 1948), 6, 82.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Ibid, p. 81.

⁴⁷ One deputy at the Cortes said: “A que dejarlos entrar en los conventos, si han de volver a salir?” Ibid., p. 82.

⁴⁸ Menéndez Pelayo, op. cit., p. 83.

⁴⁹ It should be noted that this was the same Cortes which deliberately rejected the solution to the “American Question” presented to it by the 78 Spanish American delegates there. See, Rodríguez, Mario, “The American Question at the Cortes of Madrid.” The Americas, 38, (January, 1982) 293–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁰ Revuelta, op. cit., p. 80,f.

⁵¹ Secularization is not a cancellation of the vows of a religious. It was merely a declaration of the transfer of the vow of obedience from the religious superior to the bishop. Since the bishop was named by the state, in effect it transferred the religious from the control of the Pope through the religious superiors to the control of the state through the bishop. The secularized still was bound by three vows. Usually the secularized was obliged the wear some portion of his religious garb under the cassock of the diocesan clergy. By church law only the Pope could grant the indult of secularization.

The indult could be either personal, if granted to an individual, or general, if granted to many for reasons of public order—such as the religious driven out by the French revolution. The Spanish Cortes in 1820 wanted a general secularization. See “Secularization” in The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1912), XIII, 677, f.

⁵² Diario de las Sesiones de Cortes. Legislatura de 1820. (Madrid, 1871), II, 1150ff. See also, Diario de las Actas y Discusiones de las Cortes. Legislatura de 1820 y 1821. (Madrid, 1821), X.

⁵³ Menéndez Pelayo, op. cit., VI, 111, note 1. He notes also that the Conde de Torreno, the famous Liberal leader, “apuntó… no faltará quien comprase los conventos para destruirlos y aprovecharse de la piedra, madera y demás materiales.…”

⁵⁴ Revuelta, op. cit., p. 20 gives the number of all male religious in 1820 as 33,546 out of a total population of ten and a half million. So many afraid of so few.

⁵⁵ José Aparici to Cardinal Ercole Consalvi. Rome, September 19, 1820 “…the present conditions in Spain have persuaded His Majesty to request from His Holiness un Breve General which would empower the archbishops, bishops and other diocesan ordinaries in view of the public necessity… to secularize all Regulars, Monks, mendicants and others without any other demand than the proof that they possess the congrua required by the laws of each diocese. Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV), Segret, di Stato. Esteri. Rubrica 262, Busta 548, fase. 6.

⁵⁶ Colección de los Decretos y Ordenes Generales expedidas por las Cortes Ordinarias de los años de 1820 y 1821 (Madrid, 1821), VII, 20.

⁵⁷ The effects of this Breve of September 30, 1820 are explained in the Colección Eclesiástica Española (14 volumes. Madrid, 1823–24), VII, 144ff.

⁵⁸ Decretos y Ordenes, VII, 156–159.

⁵⁹ Decretos y Ordenes, IX, 169.

⁶⁰ Revuelta, op. cit., p. 18, note 5.

⁶¹ Colección Española Ecclesiàstica, XIII, 316.

⁶² Diario, II, 1197.

⁶³ This bando and the oficio are found in “Libro de Actas y Resoluciones del Colegio de Misioneros de Propaganda Fide de Moquegua” in Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Lima. Sección de Límites. No pagination. The viceroy’s bando is contained in the oficio from Goyeneche advising the Moquegua friars to acknowledge him as their superior. The Moquegua friars decided that the royal decree was contrary to the rule of St. Francis, which they had vowed and that they would prefer to go back to Spain. They voted, therefore, to disband the community. See, Domínguez, Fernando, El Colegio Franciscano de Propaganda Fide de Moquegua (Madrid, 1955) pp. 353–356.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ See, Appendix II.

⁶⁵ Unanue, Joseph Hipólito. Guía Política, Eclesiástica y Militar del Virrey-nato del Perú para el año de 1796 (Lima, n.d.),Google Scholar passim. I have selected Unanue’s figures because I believe they are the most accurate.

⁶⁶ Unanue, loc. cit.

⁶⁷ The archbishop Las Heras refused the request. See, Ugarte, Rubén Vargas, El Episcopado en los Tiempos de la Emancipación Sudamericana (Buenos Aires, 1954) pp. 404–411.Google Scholar See also, García, Pedro y Sanz, , Apuntes para la Historia Eclesiástica del Perú. Parte, Segunda. (Lima, 1876) pp. 321–333.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ In a meeting of April 23, 1822, the Franciscan Definitorio and the Provincial voted, in response to a request from the Supremo Gobierno (San Martín) for all plata labrada, that the capellanes y los mayordomos should do so. ASFL. Vol. 61, folio 501v.

⁶⁹ See, “Rodríguez de Mendoza, Toribio” in Diccionario Enciclopédico del Perú (n.d.). III, 68–69.

⁷⁰ Vicuña MacKenna, op. cit., p. 113 says of Fray Diego Cisneros that he was in Lima with a monopoly granted by Charles IV to import liturgical books: missals, breviaries and the like. Shielded by the Queen María Louisa, Cisneros engaged in the importation of the books of the French and English philosophers. Toribio Rodríguez de Mendoza was one of his closest friends who enjoyed free entry into his personal library of works on the Index. García y Sanz, op. cit., pp. 262,ff. note 1, says that Cisneros was the first in Lima to speak in favor of the suppression of all religious orders, including his own. He died in Lima in 1812.

⁷¹ See “La Visita del Colegio de San Carlos por Don Manuel Pardo ( 1815–1817) y su clausura de orden del Virrey Pezuela (1817),” in Revista Histórica, XVII ( 1948), 180–308. It is a very interesting and personal account of the history of San Carlos by Rodríguez Mendoza.

⁷² Tibesar, Antonine, “The Peruvian Church at the Time of Independence,” The Americas. 26 (April, 1970) 349–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷³ Tibesar, “Peruvian Church” p. 354, note 20.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Fr. Valeriano Cora, a secularized Augustinian had been elected a diputado to the Congress in 1827. Archivo del Congreso del Perú. Congreso Constituyente General. Informes de las Comisiones, tomo 6, fol. 77v, September 13, 1827. The Committee decided that since Cora was not a citizen, he could not be elected a diputado.

⁷⁵ Vicuña MacKenna. op. cit., pp. 54,ff.

⁷⁶ Archbishop Bartolomé de las Heras, the last Spanish prelate of Lima, agrees with MacKenna. However, he felt that this love of independence was inspired by the fear that the Spanish Cortes was about to place the friars under the bishops. (See Leturia, Pedro, La Emancipación Hispanoamericana en los informes Espicopales a Pio VII (Buenos Aires, 1935) p. 98.Google Scholar Perhaps with equal justification, one could attempt to explain the sudden surge in the pro-independence zeal of the diocesan clergy of coastal Peru after the Spanish Cortes passed the law on June 29, 1820 establishing the junta diocesana to manage the money income of the diocesan clergy. The junta, composed of laymen, was to collect all money income of the clergy: salary, stole fees. Mass stipends, and the like. For this they were to receive 6% of the total. The remainder of the money they were to distribute in equal shares to each diocesan clérigo: canon, pastor or substitute. No provision was made for any special allowance for any dignidad. (See, Menéndez Pelayo, op. cit., VI, 112.) When the first member of this junta arrived in Trujillo in early 1821, his coming evoked strong disapproval. (See, Archivo Nacional, Lima. Ramo Eclesiástico. Colección Diéguez. Caja I, no. 1.)

⁷⁷ Vicuña MacKenna, op. cit., p. 55.

⁷⁸ The idea of secularization—the permission for a religious to live as a diocesan priest—was not unknown in Peru in 1825. The problem must have become quite acute about the middle of the eighteenth century. Pope Benedict XIV on March 4, 1747 issued an apostolic constitution on the subject outlining authoritative guidelines on the manner in which the problem was to be solved. (Several copies are found in ASV. Seg. di Stato, Rubrica 251, together with Echague’s letter of August 30, 1828 in which he describes the problems occasioned by the secularization decree of 1826.) The archbishop’s archives in Lima contain copies of several indults of secularization before 1826 granted by the Roman Congregatio de Episcopis et Regularibus—the oldest dates from 1807. But the Roman archive of that same Congregatio shows that numerous Latin Americans were petitioners for the same favor. Thus, in a meeting of March 25, 1822 that Congregatio granted secularization to 23 Chilean friars (12 Dominicans, 10 Franciscans and 2 Augustinians). See its archive in ASV, Registrum Regularium anno 1822, no.221.

⁷⁸ (con’t.)

Gomez Ferreyra, Avelino Ignacio S. J., Viajeros Pontificios al Río de la Plata y Chile (1823–25): La Primera Misión Pontifícia a Hispano-América (Córdoba, Argentina) 1970, pp. 156–166 Google Scholar furnishes added figures on secularizations by Roman rescript before 1825 but he does not cite his sources. When Bishop Giovanni Muzi arrived in Chile early in 1824 with among other powers, that to grant rescripts of secularization, Ferreyra (op.cit., p. 157) says that he granted more than 377 in less than eight months. Included among these were some Peruvians: Eusebio Casaverde, Valerio Cora and others. The difference between the secularizations of Muzi and those which the Peruvian Congress intended to grant was the source of the power to grant them. The Church said that only the Church could do so; the Peruvian Congress maintained that the supreme government of the Republic had that right without any reference to the “Court of Rome,” as the cant phrase had it in that moment in Peru. To make the point very clear, I will quote Francisco Javier Mariátegui, Ministro de Estado en el Despacho de Gobierno y Relaciones Exteriores to Echague “…that the Peruvian Government should exercise the highest and most sacred right incumbent upon it which is the determination of every aspect of the temporalities which the religious enjoy and of the manner in which they must live in the bosom of this Republic.” (AAL, Notas del Supremo Gobierno, 1826–1829, April 14, 1828).

⁷⁹ Ayuso, Fernando, El Clero Ex-Regular de Lima, á los Verdaderos Creyentes de la República Peruana (Lima, 1831), p. 6,ff.Google Scholar Ayuso was a secularized Spanish Franciscan who had come to Lima from Colombia with Bolívar.

⁸⁰ AAL, Notas del Supremo Gobierno, 1826–1829.

⁸¹ Archivio Propaganda Fide, Scritture referrite nei Congressi: América Meridionale, 1804–1825. Vol. 5, fols. 599–602.

⁸² El Peruano, no. 28. September 6, 1826, page 1.

⁸³ Apendice al Diccionario Histórico-Biográfico del Perú confeccionado por Evaristo San Cristoval. (Lima, 1938) IV, 383, ff. San Cristoval says that Bolivar “delegó toda la autoridad suprema de la república.” Possibly this was a personal delegation, since García-Calderón [op. cit., I, 525] insists that before the Peruvian Constitution of 1828 no such Consejo existed. García-Calderón , does state that “El Presidente del Consejo debía ejercer el mando á falta del Presidente de la República.…”

⁸⁴ El Peruano, no. 31. September 16, 1826, p.l and 2. On July 8, 1826 the same publication had carried similar news about Colombia, Ibid., no. 11, p.4.

⁸⁵ There is no indication in any Lima archive that there were any consultations with church authorities before this decree was issued.

⁸⁶ Nothing was said about the junta diocesana with its 6% tax as decreed by the Cortes of Madrid, mentioned above. Maybe their ministerio was not as sagrado.

⁸⁷ I really do not know enough about Santa Cruz to be able to hazard a guess concerning the motives which moved him to issue this decree. However, a document in ASV. Seg. di Stato. Esteri. Rubrica 279, fase. 3 may be significant. It is a report of Nuncio Baluffi in Bogotá, Desptach no. 705 of July 27, 1838. It encloses a confidential letter (no longer enclosed) from Archbishop Jorge Benavente of Lima, also a Bolivian. Benavente informs the nuncio that Santa Cruz wanted to suppress all the religious still in Lima in order to facilitate the takeover by the state of the endowments of all cofradías and capellanías. Benavente claimed to be on very friendly terms with Santa Cruz and he believed that he succeeded in changing the general’s mind. However, Santa Cruz had sent José Joaquín Mora to Rome and Benavente was uneasy concerning the proposals which that Liberal might make there. On Mora see Munguió, Luis, Don José Joaquín de Mora y El Perú del Ochocientos, (Berkeley, 1957).Google Scholar

⁸⁸ I have no evidence that the question ever came to a formal vote in the Congress of 1827.

⁸⁹ This is clear from a long oficio from the Minister of Government, Mariano Alvarez, to Echague, August 17,1829. Some religious had invoked a recurso de fuerza before the Suprema Corte de Justicia to restore the Provincials with all their former rights. According to Alvarez, the Señor Fiscal de la Suprema Corte said: “…no hay mérito… los religiosos no están al alcance de las providencias del Supremo Gobierno.…” (AAL, Notas del Supremo Gobierno, 1826–1829.) Does that mean that the religious were outcasts or perhaps outlaws?

⁹⁰ I have not made a special study of the conventual barracks in Lima but thsre are mentions in the documents of the use of every convento as either barracks or prison, except Santo Domingo, San Pedro and San Agustín. La Merced was used as a prison for political prisoners since about 1810, los Descalzos as a jail for priests since about 1816, the other conventos as barracks. The effect on the lay brothers who served as door keepers is mentioned in La Cotorra, no. 8, August 21, 1822, p. 62–63: “…desde que se alojaron las tropas en los conventos los Legos Porteros se han hecho á ver entrar indistintamente machos y hembras á todas horas.……

⁹¹ See Appendix III: Plan General y Resumen.

⁹² Echague’s note of August 4, 1829 to the local superior of each convent to be suppressed and certification that the note had been received in AAL, Notas del Supremo Gobierno, 1826–1829.

⁹³ Tibesar, Antonine, “Raphael Maria Taurel, Papal Consul General in Lima, 1853: Report on Conditions in Peru,” in Inter-American Review of Bibliography (April, 1981) page 66.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ This entire matter is discussed at length in Echague’s letter to the Holy See of August 30,1828 so often referred to above.

⁹⁵ AAL, “Secularizaciones y Exclaustraciones” in Documentos Importantes.

⁹⁶ There are four considerandos. The religious are considered in the third.

⁹⁷ No one could teach or study at San Carlos unless he enjoyed limpieza de sangre or was considered white. It is ironic that the Inquisition, so ridiculed by the carolinos. was the institution which declared the limpieza de sangre.

⁹⁸ San Francisco in Lima in April 1851 had only 25 priests, most of them old. Thus letter of Kalendas Aprilis, 1851 of Fray José de Zepeda, Guardian of San Francisco, to the Pope, in ASV, Congregatio de Episcopis et Regularibus no.