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.