Miguel de Quintana’s Art

Miguel de Quintana had a trained aesthetic sensibility. If indeed he did attend the Cathedral School in Mexico City, he learned the common verse forms. His teachers may have been secular clergymen, perhaps ones trained by Jesuits.

He recalled he used to write "coloquio para festejar al Niño Dios en su nacimiento," which Francisco Lomelí and Clark Colahan translated as "plays in celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus."

In the early years, a coloquio was a part of larger play that could be performed separately. It was much like a rondo within a sonata. It was always part of the larger composition, but followed rules unique to itself, and could be extracted and played separately.

Franciscans adapted Spanish dramatic forms to the Aztec language to induce natives to be baptized. Dominicans and Jesuits expanded the genres.

The most popular were the auto sacramentales, which were mounted on carriages that drove through the streets. Each auto depicted a different scene, and included a coloquio. The ones that survived in New Mexico focused on Joseph, the inns, the shepherds, the magi, Jesus in the temple, and holy week. Arthur Campa noted they survived in fragments and by 1934 had been fused into a single drama.

The coloquio was a dialogue between two characters that had no narrative impulse. James Crawford believed they originated in Italy and were brought to Spain as amusements of the aristocracy. He described them as casuistical, meaning they dramatized two sides of moral questions by applying them to mundane events.

Carlos Eduardo Castañeda noted the coloquio evolved into a simpler dramatic genre "in the form of a dialogue, written either in verse or prose." He said, it "gained special popularity in Mexico."

Eight coloquio written by Miguel de Quintana were preserved in the files of the Holy Office in Ciudad de México. Six were given to Manuel Sopeña in 1732, but only two may been written for him. One was written for José Irigoyen in 1732, and one for Juan Sánchez de la Cruz in 1737.

There were committed in an acuarterón, a kind of personal notebook made from folio pages cut into fourths measuring 4.5" by 6.5." As shown in the photograph of a page made by the translators, he transcribed them as if they were appearing on a printed page with the verses in two columns separated by a commentary written at a right angle. The prose was below.

One coloquio has two sets of verses and prose, but six only have one. One had no prose, while the one he gave to Irigoyen had no marginal commentary.

They all began with the line, "Jesús, María, y José," followed by a four line verses that took the form ABCB. The rhymed lines ended with vowel or assonant sounds.

Cree, Mi-guel, con vi-va fe
que Di-os no te ha con-fun-di-do
ni su di-vi-na gran-de-za
es-tá en-jo-ja-do con-ti-go.

Spanish theorists emphasize the total number of syllables to the line, unlike the English who count the number of stressed syllables (the ones in bold above). Quintana varied his number of syllables, but did tend to make the rhyming second and fourth lines shorter in the style of the seguidilla real that alternated between lines containing 10 and 6 syllables.

Angélico Chávez noted Quintana had a "marked facility in rhyming within the limits of the quatrain in trimeter," meaning three stressed syllables. The translators used the quoted verse to illustrate his "poetic virtuosity" because the verb "enjojado" does not refer to the preceding noun, "grandeza," but to the one before, "Dios."

The verses were dialogues between Miguel and God. Following Franciscan conventions, Miguel was personified as a poor sinner seeking guidance.

Following the coloquios proper, the prose described events which precipitated the conversations. They may have been modeled on instructions for actors or producers. The ones that probably were written before Sopeña threatened to denounce him described the character Miguel

- Seeing a vision of Juan de Tagle
- Being unable to complete a Christmas coloquio and changing to the Miguel series
- Being unable to complete saying the rosary when contemplating the Sorrowful Mysteries

These contained his most vivid writing. Tagle’s ghost was described with his "hands stuck in his sleeves like a dead man’s" with "his eyes being two fountains of tears" and his face, "capilla calada," the color of "a chapel recently whitewashed with lime." Behind him the altar cloths were red, "encarnado."

One of the prose sections specific to Sopeña dealt with the horrors with which Quintana was threatened. The other mentioned Miguel no longer was participating in the Third Order. The one Quintana gave to Irigoyen specifically mentioned threats of the Inquisition.

He wrote another coloquio in 1737 for Cruz. In the prose section, he claimed "The reverend father who is the commissary of the Holy Office and his notary have come, Miguel, with frivolous pretexts dressed in the passions to hit you with a cat-o’-nine tails." The translators noted the original wording, "a dar gatazo," might have been a subtle pun if the word gatazo was derived from catear. The latter implied a conspiracy.

The form he used was neither linear nor was it based on oral tradition, though the translators noted several times when he chose colloquial rather than formal words. If one reads his coloquios as published from top to bottom, one becomes lost in the repetitions. Instead, one should read the prose first, then read the dialogues as illustrations of the moral quandaries raised by events.

Notes: The quoted verse was written in 1737 for Cruz. The translation loses the verbal dexterity:

Believe, Miguel, with living faith
that God has not confused you,
nor is His divine might
angry with you.

Campa, Arthur L. Spanish Religious Folktheatre in the Spanish Southwest (First Cycle), 1934.

Castañeda, Carlos Eduardo. "The First American Play," The Catholic World, January 1932; quoted by Campa.

Chávez, Angélico. "The Mad Poet of Santa Cruz," New Mexico Folklore Record 3:10-17:1949.

Crawford, James Pyle Wickersham. Spanish Drama Before Lope de Vega, 1922; on coloquio.

Hart, Stephen M. A Companion to Latin American Literature, 2007; on development of drama in México.

Lomelí, Francisco A. and Clark A. Colahan. Defying the Inquisition in Colonial New Mexico, 2006; contains Spanish and English versions of all documents described here.

Quintana, Miguel de. Coloquio, 1732 and 1737, reprinted in Spanish and English by Lomelí.

Montaño, Mary Caroline. Tradiciones Nuevomexicanas, 2001; on developments in New Mexico.

Miguel de Quintana’s Family

Miguel de Quintana came to Nuevo México with the colonists recruited from Mexico City by Cristóbal de Velasco in 1693. He traveled with his wife, Gertrudis de Trujillo, her parents, and her sister’s family.

Gertrudis’ mother, María Ruiz de Aguilar, was the daughter of the Nicolás Ruiz de Aguilar who had angered Franciscans in 1659 when the governor asked him to monitor their pueblo labor practices. The Inquisition in Mexico City found him guilty of "obstructing the missionary program" in 1664. He was caught in the same controversy that ensnared Francisco Gómez Robledo.

Aguilar had married Mariana de los Ángeles Guerrero in 1652 in Ciudad de Mexico. María was born in 1654 in Mexico City. While he was in Santa Fé, he fathered three children with Catalina Marquez. It’s not clear if Mariana had died and Nicolas remarried, or if she stayed south. Catalina’s three boys used her name. One step-brother, Nicolás, and some of their cousins returned with Diego de Vargas.

María was around 11-years-old when her father died in 1666. If Mariana were still alive, the girl might have had dim memories of her father’s situation and more vivid ones from tales told by her mother or stepmother. Quintana may have heard them sometime before María and her husband returned to México in 1705.

Gertrudis’ sister, Estefánia, was married to José de Atienza Sevillano. His father, José de Atienza de Alcalá y Escobar, had migrated to Nueva España from the area of Toledo in Spain. Several hundred years before, people with the same last name in the same area were convicted of being secret Jews, according to Stanley Hordes.

Quintana’s own family was more obscure. All his grandparents were born in Nueva España, with his maternal grandfather, Francisco de Valdés Altamirano, from the Toluca valley. While his wife’s ancestors were classed as meztisos, nothing was said about Miguel in 1673 other than he was of "sound body."

José Esquibel and John Colligan traced the family back to the powerful Álvarez de Toledos. Although long rumored to be conversos, Antonio Domínguez Ortiz said their genealogy suggested they were Christians who had adopted some customs from their Arab conquerors in Al-Ándalus.

Miguel and Gertrudis had at least ten children. A baptismal certificate survives for only one, Nicolás, who was born in 1712. His godparents were Juana Martín Serrano and Diego Marques.

Marriage records for their children and baptismal records for their grandchildren are equally sparse. Two Quintanas married children of María Luján and Pedro Sánchez de Iñigo, whose brother had been alcalde in Santa Cruz in 1713. Michaela married his son Pedro, while her brother Juan Tadeo married Francisca Xaviera.

The 1731 baptismal record for a child of María and Pedro was the first entry in Santa Cruz’s bound register. The names of the godparents were damaged so only Antonio survived for the man, and Magdalen (torn) Vaca for the woman. Juan and Xaviera’s marriage entry survived in better condition. María and Pedro were their witnesses. Their first baptismal entry was made in 1735 with Antonio Tafoya and Prudensia Gonzales as sponsors.

No sacramental records survived for their oldest daughter, Gertrudis Lugarda, who married Ascencio Archuleta. He was the grandson of Juan de Archuleta, but apparently had disappeared long before Lugardia wrote her will in 1749. She had borne three children, but reserved a few things for a niece, one guesses she might have been raising.

The Quintanas’ daughter Antonia does not appear in the Santa Cruz records. Angélico Chávez said her husband was Juan Gómez del Castillo. His mother was Juana Luján, the daughter of Matías. Chávez thought his father was Bartolomé Gómez Robledo, the illegitimate son of Bartolomé. The latter was the brother of the Francisco mentioned above and of Andrés, the father-in-law of Ignacio de Roybal. They probably were living in the San Ildefonso area when their first child was born in 1732.

The first child’s name to appear in the sacramental record after Quintana was denounced by Manuel de Sopeña in March of 1732 was their oldest boy. José had been born in 1698 and married to Lugarda Tafoya when they had a son in April. She had previously been married to Juan Sayago, who was killed during the Villasur expedition in 1720. Chávez thought he might have been related to Francisco de la Rosa, since both also were called González. It’s possible José was also a widow, but all that’s known about him was he was killed by Indians in 1748. The godparents in 1732 were Antonio Tafoya and Prudencia González.

Another son, Francisco Xavier, remarried after Quintana agreed to his fate in January of 1737. He married Juana Martín in September of 1737, with Manuel de la Rosa and Gertrudis Jirón de Tejeda as witnesses. Their first surviving baptismal record was from 1747. Francisco’s first wife, María Rosa Trujillo, died in 1728. It’s not known if she was local or a cousin through one of his mother’s brothers.

Three adolescent boys, beside Juan, were living at home when Quintana was denounced. Their marriages weren’t recorded and their first baptismal records in the Santa Cruz register appeared after 1737. Nicolás, who was 20 in 1732, married Mariana de Herrera; Manuel, who was 16, married María Feliciana Medina, and Juan José, who was 13, married Petronila Romero. Mariana’s family had roots in the Río Abajo before the Revolt. Pedro Asensio Tafoya and Ana sponsored the baptism of her son in 1745.

Feliciana’s maternal grandfather in Chimayó was Cristóbal Martín Serrano. Her paternal grandfather, Diego Medina’s daughter married Diego Romero, the son of Salvador, in 1714. The first recorded sponsors for her children were her parents, José Isidro de Medina and María Catarina Martín in 1743.

Little is known about Juan José and Petronila, except she died in Belen. He may have moved south where he had cousins. His father’s younger brother, José, had come after the Reconquest. He joined the presidio and married Antonia Luján. They moved to Bernalillo, perhaps after her mother, Juana Domínguez, died. Antonia’s father, Domingo Luján, died in 1693. Juana later was accused of living with Lorenzo de Madrid, whom she subsequently married.

Family genealogists have found references to two other children for Miguel and Gertrudis. Juan Baptista was born in 1708 and alive in 1712 when Quintana testified he had seven children. He may have died after that, or moved away.

The other, María, survives, so far, as only a name, with no birth date. She may have died young.

Notes: Gertrudis’ full name was Gertrudis de la Santa Trinidad Moreno de Trujillo. Miguel was born Miguel Matías de Quintana. Juan Sayago also was called Juan Gallegos. Mariana de Herrera also was listed as María Antonia de Herrera. The connections between the Medinas and Martín Serranos in Chimayó were mentioned in the post for 4 November 2015.

Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio. Los Judeoconversos en España y América, 1971; quoted in Wikipedia entry on Pedro Álvarez de Toledo.

Esquibel, José A. and John B. Colligan. The Spanish Recolonization of New Mexico, 1999; cited by Hordes on Quintana’s family; cited by López for Aguilar’s marriage in Mexico City.

Geni genealogical website. Entries on Quintana’s family including María Ruiz de Aguilar and her Márquez kin; some are anonymous; other contributions were made by Ben M. Angel, Laura Elaine Chamas-Ortega, Ric Dickinson, Orlando Ricardo Mestas, and Henry Joseph Romero.

Hordes, Stanley M. To the End of the Earth, 2005.

Lomelí, Francisco A. and Clark A. Colahan. Defying the Inquisition in Colonial New Mexico, 2006; contains Spanish and English versions of all documents described.

López, Nancy Lucía. Entry for Mariana de los Ángeles Guerrero on My New México Roots website, updated 25 January 2015.

New Mexico Genealogical Society. New Mexico Baptisms, Santa Cruz de la Cañada Church, Volume I, 1710 to 1794, transcribed by Virginia Langham Olmstead and compiled by Margaret Leonard Windham and Evelyn Luján Baca, 1994.

_____. 100 Years of Marriages, 1726-1826, Santa Cruz de la Cañada, New Mexico, extracted and compiled by Henrietta Martinez Christmas and Patricia Sánchez Rau.

Quintana, Lugarda de. Will, Santa Cruz, 1749; in Lomelí. She wrote "my husband is absent, and I do not know where."

Quintana, Miguel de. Lawsuit against Joseph Trujillo for a theft of two horses, 8 August to 24 October, 1712; in Lomelí.

Sánchez, Joseph E. "Nicolás de Aguilar and the Jurisdiction of Salinas in the Province of New Mexico, 1659-1662," Revista Complutense de Historia de América 22:139-160:1996; quotation on Aguilar.

Velázquez de la Cadena, Pedro. List of families going to New Mexico, 4 September 1693, in John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith Dodge, To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995.

Inquisition versus Miguel de Quintana

The official record of the Inquisition’s proceedings against Miguel de Quintana is presented below.

1732 March 17
Around 5 pm on the Monday that began the third week of Lent, Manuel de Sopeña reported he had been given nine sheets of paper "containing many reckless and scandalous assertions" by Quintana. His statement before the commissary of the Holy Office, José Antonio Guerrero, was notarized by José Irigoyen. Sopeña identified himself as the "minister of Nueva Villa de Santa Cruz."

1732 June 29
Quintana told Irigoyen he could not "comply with the obligation of annually going to confession and taking Communion," because "God did not ask the impossible of any of His children." He give the friar a paper justifying his refusal.

1732 July 1
Irigoyen denounced Quintana to the Holy Office, and notarized his own statement.

1732 July 12
Guerrero sent Quintana’s papers with the statements by Sopeña and Irigoyen to the Inquisition’s Holy Tribunal in Ciudad de México.

1734 May 22
The Inquisition in Mexico City reviewed Quintana’s case in its Secret Court. The men’s initial conclusion was "the case may well stem from feeblemindedness," but allowed the possibility that he was "ruled by some evil spirit." However, they said, they could not "form an opinion" because they knew nothing of this "life and habits, his abilities and talents." The Inquisitor, Diego Mangado y Cavijo, returned the paperwork to Guerrero "to reexamine and verify the statements of the two friars, according to standard directions." The Santa Fé commissary also was told to interview Quintana.

1734 May 27
Two inquisitors wrote a letter of instructions to Guerrero. In addition to the above, they told him to officially warn Quintana "drawing his attention to this court’s order that he should not inwardly believe or outwardly express such heretical assertions and that failure to comply will lead to prosecution to the fullest extent of the law." They further instructed him to have Quintana "sign a promise of obedience."

1734 November 4
Manuel de Sopeña was recalled from Picurís, but was no longer sure how many sheets of writing had been given to him by Quintana. When asked, he said the man "has his lucid intervals, but he is not completely convinced he is in his right mind, as witnessed by an occasion when he is said to have thrown stones. He does not recall who told him that, but people say that it must be fifteen years ago when this happened."

Sopeña also noted Quintana sometimes had trouble speaking when he was helping him with mass, "rarely goes to mass, giving as an excuse pain in the spleen," and did not participate in the Third Order of Saint Francis, the one open the laymen. He was told his testimony was to be kept secret. Irigoyen was the witness.

1734 November 5
Irigoyen, who was now described as a retired preacher, was recalled. Witnesses to the secret proceedings were the Franciscan’s vice custos and Francisco Manuel Bravo Lerchundi, the missionary to Pecos. The notary was José de Eguía.

The friar remembered it was around 9 in the morning on July 1 of 1732 that he had submitted his signed denunciation. He adds he told Quintana to confess on June 19 around 11 in the morning. He admitted he did not "know whether Quintana regularly takes the most holy sacraments or does virtuous actions," but does not attribute his actions "to madness or simplemindedness." He found not "a single thing to add, change or modify" in his first statement.

1734 November 8
Quintana was interrogated by Joseph Antonio Guerrero in secret in Santa Fé, with Irigoyen as the witness. Quintana explained why he thought God put "these thoughts in his mind."

1734 November 10
Guerrero sent a report to Inquisition in Ciudad de México that said he had questioned Sopeña, Irigoyen, and Quintana as instructed. He added that, since there was no sign Quintana was not mentally deficient in anyway, "I did not bring to his attention the extreme seriousness of the matter, nor did I officially warn him of the consequences as instructed."

1735 March 15
Authorities in Mexico City reviewed the documents sent by Guerrero. They noted he didn’t warn Quintana as instructed.

1735 March 24
Diego Mangado y Clavijo decided Quintana was suffering "from some delusion or damage to the imagination." He ordered Guerrero to make Quintana "appear before him and a notary, place him under oath, and warm him along the safe and easy path, which is in keeping of the commandments of God and His Holy Church, threatening him that if he should slip back into his ravings, the Holy Office will treat him with all severity." He also told Guerrero to give him a "learned and prudent confessor to him to hear his confessions."

1736 March 11
Guerrero sent more papers to Mexico City that said "Quintana was sick in bed, as he is now, and to judge by his condition, near death."

1736 July 24
Inquisitors in Ciudad de México acknowledged receipt of Guerrero’s report. They ordered him again to confront Quintana in the presence of a notary and tell him "not to publicize or tell anyone at all about these ravings he calls revelations or inspirations." He was to warn him, if he continued, he "would be treated with all the severity of the law and subject to the punishments applied to the obstinate, a fraud, and a rebel."

1737 January 22
Irigoyen went to Quintana’s house to order him to appear in Santa Fé, but found he was too sick to obey.

1737 January 23
Guerrero went to Quintana’s house at "about nine o’clock in the morning" to tell him "he should have nothing more to do with ridiculous revelations and publicizing them under the penalty of being punished as someone obstinate, a fraud, and a rebel." Quintana agreed. Guerrero assigned Irigoyen as his confessor.

Notes: Francisco A. Lomelí and Clark A. Colahan. Defying the Inquisition in Colonial New Mexico, 2006; contains Spanish and English versions of all documents described here.

José Irigoyen

Benito Crespo visited Santa Cruz in 1730 as part of his review of Franciscan missions within the bishopric of Durango. He reported that Christianized natives in Nuevo México, without specifying where, refused to confess to priests who didn’t speak their languages. His later list of the most negligent priests included Manuel de Sopeña of Santa Clara, Juan Sánchez de la Cruz of San Juan de los Caballeros, José Irigoyen of San Ildefonso, Antonio Gabaldón of Nambé, and Juan José Pérez de Mirabal of Taos.

One consequence of Crespo’s asserting his authority was friars no longer could excommunicate parishioners without his approval. Rather than provoke the bishop into defending his privileges, Irigoyen denounced a Santa Cruz poet and dramatist to the Inquisition in 1732 for refusing to confess to him or Sopeña. By then, Miguel de Quintana’s mind had become so fevered, the Holy Office in Ciudad de México demanded evidence he wasn’t feebleminded.

Irigoyen may have felt maligned by Crespo. Juan Miguel Menchero had depositions from two alcaldes that claimed the friar had "mastered the various Tanoan subgroups, despite being transferred often among those pueblos." In fact he spent time in two Towa speaking pueblos (Jémez, Pecos), two Tiwa (Isleta, Picurís), one Tano (Galiesteo), and two Tewa (Tesuque, Nambé).

The Franciscan also was assigned to four Keres locations (Ácoma, Cochití, San Felipe, Zía), who did not speak a Tanoan language. Except for the two local Tewa-speaking communities (San Ildefonso, Santa Clara), he didn’t spend two full years in any non-Castilian speaking mission.

Jim Norris published biographical details about the six priests who names appeared in the proceedings against Quintana. Three were born in Spain, Pérez de Mirabal in Málaga and Sánchez de la Cruz from some unknown location. Juan de Tagle, who was dead by the time Crespo visited the kingdom, was a Cantabrian and, apparently, close to Quintana.

The other three were first-generation criollos. Joseph Antonio Guerrero’s father came from Madrid, Sopeña’s from Viscaya, and Irigoyen’s from Navarre. The first two entered the convento grande de San Francisco in Mexico City. Irigoyen went through San Francisco de Puebla.

I don’t know if the conflicts between the two cultural groups mentioned in the post for 30 March 2016 infiltrated the Franciscan training centers, or if the two groups simply had different responses to the same situations based on childhood or adolescent experiences. It remains, the native-born friars were the ones who attacked Quintana, who himself probably was trained at the cathedral school in Ciudad de México.

I also don’t know if friars from Mexico City had more status than those from Puebla at the missionary school they both attended. What does seem clear is that Irigoyen was particularly eager to distinguish himself. He was the youngest of the men, professed in 1716 at age 17 and, at 27, one of the youngest sent to Nuevo México. Until he reached San Ildefonso in 1730, his longest assignements had been 16 months as Galisteo, 13 months at Isleta and 10 months at San Felipe. He later joined the friars proselytizing the Navajo.

Knowledge about Irigoyen is important because there are two versions of events in Santa Cruz. He controlled the official record as notary to the Inquisition office in Santa Fé headed by Guerrero. As such, he not only collected all the key documents, but also highlighted the heretical passages before they were sent to Mexico City.

The second version is the one that must be teased from details of Quintana’s life and from parsing translations of official documents.

Notes: Lomelí and Colahan made an important point about the differences between saying Nueva México and Nuevo México, and suggested the timing of the transition from one to the other was significant. Unfortunately, so many translators have been oblivious to such nuances, that it’s impossible to know which term were used without consulting their primary sources. For this reason, I am standardizing on the modern usage of Nuevo.

The post for 10 April 2016 has more on Irigoyen’s work with the Navajo. The post for 6 April 2016 discussed the missionary training school at Santiago de Tlatelolco where New Mexico friars were trained.

Chávez, Angélico. Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, 1678-1900, 1957.

Crespo y Monroy, Benito. Letter to the viceroy, Juan Vásquez de Acuña, 8 September 1730; translation in Eleanor B. Adams, Bishop Tamarón’s Visitation of New Mexico, 1760, 1954; see post for 3 April 2016 for more details.

_____. Memorial ajustado que de órden del consejo supremo de Indias se ha hecho del pleyto, que siguió el Illmo, Madrid, 1738; cited by Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico, 1530-1888, 1889. Bancroft listed five others as also negligent.

Esquibel, José Antonio. "The People of the Camino Real: A Genealogical Appendix," in Christine Preston, Douglas Preston and José Antonio Esquibel, The Royal Road, 1998; on Quintana’s education.

Lomelí, Francisco A. and Clark A. Colahan. Defying the Inquisition in Colonial New Mexico, 2006.

Mangado y Calvijo, Diego. Instructions to Joseph Antonio Guerrero, 22 May 1734, Ciudad de México; translation in Lomelí and Collahan.

Norris, Jim. After "The Year Eighty," 2000.