Financing the Santa Cruz Church

Santa Cruz’s physical church was not financed by the state. In 1695, Diego de Vargas gave the missionaries possession of a building that had been built by San Lazaro, "until they rebuilt their church." It probably had been pillaged for building materials by the time he returned in 1703.

No doubt under pressure from de Vargas to restore the settlement, a new building was erected. In 1706, Juan Álvarez told the next governor, Francisco Cuervo, "the villa has a small church and a bell." The Franciscan custodio admitted the order had not assigned a friar to the site, but that Pedro Mata "carries all the ornaments and the altar from San Juan."

The order didn’t give the settlement the same status as that given to Natives, who were their especial charge. As can be seen in the table below, services and rites were conducted by whoever was available, except for the tenures of Juan Mingues from 1710 to 1715 and of Manuel de Sopeña from 1726 to 1732, Both those men were assigned to Santa Clara, and Sopeña may have been at San Ildefonso part of the time.

In 1730, Benito Crespo noted the friar for Santa Cruz was "endowed for the pueblo of Santa Clara, where he has never resided." He added the local church had been "built at the expense of its Spanish citizens."

Some see those words and think they’re testimony to the devoutness of the local settlers. Instead, they were a legal statement of responsibility. The obispo de Durango meant the building had not been funded by "the royal exchequer" that underwrote the activities of the Franciscans.

As noted in earlier posts, the visit by Crespo provoked the local friars into, at least, providing a semblance of service to the missions like Santa Clara the bishop thought could be decommissioned. When José Irigoyen was sent to Santa Cruz in 1732 from San Ildefonso, he found the building the Franciscans had rarely used to be in poor condition. He sent a proposal to the governor to restore it with Native labor. Gervasio Cruzat y Góngora refused because the friar didn’t have the proper authorization from Mexico City and hadn’t mentioned how he would pay for materials.

Cruzat did visit Santa Cruz and agreed the church was "beyond repair and in danger of collapsing." A petition was forwarded to the viceroy asking for permission to rebuild "at their own cost." Permission was granted in 1733, but by then Irigoyen had other interests, including the heresies of Miguel de Quintana.

The alcalde, Juan Estevan García de Noriega, may have been the one who handled the actual construction financing. In 1740, he signed a petition to establish a Sacrament Confraternity. Irigoygen by then had returned to the community.

Confraternities were one tool used by Franciscans to raise money to support themselves after they lost control of the tithes. David Brading noted, in 1775, Native villages in México were contributing so much of their "lands, capital and cattle" to the societies that supported church ceremonies, they were too poor to pay government taxes. The next year, officials in Madrid recognized the groups were secular in nature, not spiritual, and ruled their property was under the jurisdiction of the crown, not the church.

In 1740, the abuses weren’t yet obvious, and the bishop of Durango approved the one in Santa Cruz in January of 1741.

The next year Fray Antonio Galbadón acquired land for the proposed church from Antonia Serna. She was a cousin of García de Noriega’s wife through the Canary Island Lujáns who had settled in La Cañada before the Revolt.

When Serna died in 1776, the administer of her estate, Juan Pablo Martín Serrano, testified the land donation had been made "verbally" to him, so he sent the necessary legal papers.

One reason Martín Serrano had to recertify her gift was Franciscans and members of other orders had been using their abilities to write or witness wills to influence their contents. In 1754, Ferdinand VI forbid them from so interfering.

Santa Cruz had had its own problem in 1752 when José de Atienza’s heirs claimed the "disposal of his goods contrary to the statements of his widow." The ensuing testimony revealed the "counterfeited testimony of the Fray Manual de Sopeña," according to Ralph Twitchell.

Atienza was the notary who replaced Quintana in 1722. Atienza’s widow, Estafánia Trujillo, was the sister of Quintana’s widow, Gertrudis Trujillo. One suspects that if either Quintana or Atienza were still alive and still allowed to witness wills this particular case wouldn’t have arisen.

				Santa Cruz Friars
Begin Yr	End Yr	Friar			Primary Assignment
1710	1715	Juan		Mingues	Santa Clara
1712		Antonio		Aparico
1719		José Antonio	de	Torres
1721		Carlos		Delgado
1721		Miguel	de	Sopeña
1721	1721	José Antonio		Guerra
1726	1732	Miguel	de	Sopeña	Santa Clara
1727	1727	Francisco		Irazabal
1732		Juan José		Pérez Mirabal
1732	1732	Juan Antonio		Sánchez
1732		José	de	Bustamante
1732	1732	José		Irigoyen	San Ildefonso
1732	1733	José	de	Eguia
1733	1734	Juan José		Pérez Mirabal
1733	1733	Miguel	de	Sopeña
1734		Juan José	de	Oronzoro
1734		José		Irigoyen
1734		José Antonio		Guerra
1734	1734	Juan Antonio	de	Ezeiza
1734		Juan		Sánchez de la Cruz
1734		Juan José	de	Oronzoro
1734	1735	Juan Antonio		Sánchez	Santa Clara
1735	1735	Juan José		Pérez Mirabal
1735		Antonio		Gabaldón	Santa Clara
1735		José		Irigoyen
1735		José Antonio		Guerra
1735	1735	Juan George	del	Pino
1736	1736	Juan José		Pérez Mirabal
1736	1736	Antonio		Gabaldón
1736	1736	Juan George	del	Pino
1737	1737	José		Irigoyen
1737	1738	Miguel	de	Sopeña	Santa Clara
1737	1737	Juan José		Pérez Mirabal
1738	1741	José		Irigoyen
1741	1741	Juan Antonio		Sánchez
1741	1743	Antonio		Gabaldón
1741		Antonio		Zamora
1743	1743	Juan George	del	Pino
1743	1743	Juan José		Hernández
1744		Juan George	del	Pino
1744	1760	Antonio		Gabaldón
1745		Juan José		Hernández
1747		Juan José	de	Oronzoro
1747	1748	Juan José		Hernández
1747	1748	Miguel	de	Sopeña
1756		José		García de Noriega
1758		Miguel		Gómez Cayuela
1759		Francisco		Guzman
1760	1765	Francisco		Campo Redondo
1760		Mariano		Rodríguez de la Torre
1760	1760	Juan José		Pérez Mirabal

Notes: Antonia Serna was the daughter of Felipe de la Serna and Isabel Luján. She married Matías Madrid, who had died in 1727. They had two daughters, who would each have received a quarter of his estate then. He was the son of Roque de Madrid. The land Antonia ceded may have come from her half, or may have come from her inheritance from her parents. García de Noriega married the daughter of her second cousin, Juana Luján.

Martín de Elizacoechea was bishop of Durango in 1741. Transfer of notarization responsibilities was discussed in the post for 17 July 2016.

Álvarez, Juan. Declaration, Nambé, 12 January 1706; translation in Adolph F. A. Bandelier and Fanny R. Bandelier, Historical Documents Relating to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, volume 3, 1937, translated and edited by Charles Wilson Hackett.

Bancroft, Hubert. History of Mexico, Volume III, 1600-1803, 1883; on wills.

Brading, D. A. Church and State in Bourbon Mexico, 1994.

Chávez, Angélico. Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, 1678-1900, 1957; on confraternity and source for table of priests.

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

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.

Cruzat y Góngora, Gervasio. Quoted by John L. Kessell, The Missions of New Mexico since 1776, 1980.

Domínguez, Francisco Atanasio. A Description of New Mexico, 1776, translated by Eleanor B. Adams and Angélico Chávez as The Missions of New Mexico, 1776, 1956; on church acquisition of Serna land.

Kessell, John L., Rick Hendricks, and Meredith Dodge. To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico, two volumes, 1914; José de Atienza case is in volume 2.

Vargas, Diego de. Possession given, Santa Cruz, 22 April 1695, translation in Twitchell, volume 1.

Miguel de Quintana’s Religion

Miguel de Quintana’s religious views evolved during his conflicts with local friars. In the beginning he utilized the metaphors then being propagated by the Franciscans to formulate his thoughts. His first poetic colloquia were addressed to Mary. In the second he said, she "frees you from the arrogant lion" and will intercede for him. In the third she said, "I am the refuge where the afflicted find solace."

When his problems with the friars persisted, Quintana turned directly to Jesus as represented in the Gospel of John. In that book, Jesus said "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me, walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life." Earlier he had said, "he that doth truth, cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are done in God."

In the fourth coloquio, the one in which he was transferring his allegiance from Mary to her son, Quintana referred to his writing as "the supreme and divine light granted to you by the immense power of God." In the next poem set he wrote, "God is who grants you that light" and added "Trust in Jesus, Miguel, for that light you carry is bright."

When that rendering of his relationship with Christ failed to persuade the Franciscans, Quintana appealed to the love Jesus had promised when he said, "as the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you." In the same fourth coloquio quoted above, Quintana added "your poems and canticles raise you to Jesus, your God and sweet husband" and told the character Miguel "expect to be rewarded through His love."

When his problems with the friars continued, he turned to things he probably as taught was a student in Mexico City. At that time, Francisco Lomelí and Clark Colahan wrote the meditations of Miguel de Molinos were popular. They said the Spanish mystic had said "God is who He is." In the fifth coloquio, Quintana referred to "God is God," and repeated that phrase in his subsequent poems.

Finally, when he has been accused of listening to the devil, Quintana went beyond what he had been taught to describe a God very much like that of the Enlightenment, a God who "is very wise," is "Greek in His judgement," and "does not ask the impossible." He ultimately appealed to the implied reciprocity of John "I am come a light into the world; that whomsoever believeth in me, may not remain in darkness."

His trajectory from received to independent thought was the one thing most feared by the Church. Molinos’ Spiritual Guide had been accepted by the Church when it was published in 1675, but when it stimulated others to seek mystical communions with God that bypassed the clergy, he was condemned by the Inquisition.

Quintana was never willing to make the confession of error that Molinos did in 1687 before he was sentenced to life in prison, while Quintana was still a youth. In his last coloquio, the God of John told the character Miguel, "do not fear those varied and different thoughts, for all are rightly guided by My love," and reminded him again, "the inner light that you enjoy is Miguel, from Jesus Christ and not an illusion of the devil."

Notes: Quotations in order are from Gospel of John 8:12, 3:21, 15:9, and 12:46. English translations from Douay version as the closest Roman Catholic one in time to Quintana.

Douay College. The Holy Bible, New Testament,1582 at Rheims.

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

Quintana, Miguel de. Coloquios, 1732 and 1737; originals and translations in Lomelí.

Wikipedia. Entry on "Miguel de Molinas."

Christmas or Easter

The rosary is a selective narrative of Christ’s life. The gospels described his birth, his deeds, and his death. The Joyful Mysteries focus on the first, the Sorrowful and the Glorious on the last. The Luminous Mysteries, which touch only a few events in the adult savior’s life, weren’t introduced until 2002 by John Paul II.

The popular imagination only seems able to embrace one ceremonial event a year. It’s either the birth, which dominates in this country today with Christmas, or it’s the death, which was reenacted in recent memory by the Penitentes.

When Franciscans first followed Hernan Cortés, the Aztecs were using music and dance in rituals that celebrated the December birth of Huitzilopochtli. Some agreed to be baptized after Pedro de Gante wrote religious songs in Nahuatl for a nativity in 1525. He said, they heard "the angels sing: Today the Redeemer of the Earth is born!"

Nativity customs spread so quickly among local communities, Dominicans and Jesuits adopted the Franciscans’ use of drama. The street theater that produced the first Christmas plays in Mexico City flourished. While it became less popular in the seventeenth century, fragments continued to be performed.

No doubt Miguel de Quintana learned to compose in the coloquio form when he was in school in Mexico City. The identity of the person who asked him to use his skill in Santa Cruz to create Christmas dramas is impossible to answer. If it were a friar, the most likely man, based on chronology, was Juan Mínguez, whose death in 1720 opened the Santa Cruz sanctuary to itinerants.

Mínguez was from the same social milieu in the capital as Quintana, and just a few years younger. Jim Norris didn’t know his age when he professed, but he was at least 15 when Quintana came north at age 22. The friar’s father was an artisan from Spain who lived in Mexico City. His mother’s father was a merchant from Parral. Quintana’s godfather, Agustín Flores Urrutia de Vergara, was a constable to the Inquisition. His wife’s grandfather had prospected for minerals around Parral.

The man who denounced Quintana, Manuel de Sopeña, was 21 years old in 1707 when Mínguez, was at least 29. All that’s known of his family was his father migrated from Vizcaya and married Francisca de Velarde in Mexico City. Like Mínguez, Sopeña entered the Franciscan order in Mexico City. The decade between their noviates coincided with the first years of the transition from the Hapsburgs whom the Franciscans supported and the Bourbons whom they were opposing in the War for Spanish Succession.

The identity of the person who asked Quintana to write a new coloquio in 1726 was hidden at the time to prevent criticisms directed at the author ricocheting onto the patron. However, everything suggests the person who asked was from an old family, probably one of his local in-laws. Four of his children married individuals whose parents lived in La Cañada before the revolt: the Martín Serranos, the Archuletas, and, through a feral line, the Gómez de Robledos. Two wed descendants of a man killed at San Domingo.

It’s not known if Sopeña was critical of Christmas plays in general or just of ones written by laymen. What is clear was that his censure of Quintana coincided with a transition in religious practices in Santa Cruz from those centered on Christmas to those centered on Easter week. As a penance, he demanded Quintana attend meetings of the Third Order meetings where, presumably, he was encouraging forms of self-inflicted pain like those mentioned in the post for 10 April 2016.

Sopeña wasn’t alone. Pedro Montaño arrived in Bernalillo in 1710. In 1729, before Quintana was denounced, he had the Inquisition prosecute Pedro Durán y Chaves for refusing confession, refusing to take ashes on Ash Wednesday, and making fun of processions. Chaves told natives listening to Montaño read to them that he had books "that weren’t so boring."

If one were to guess what book Chaves owned, one would suggest some version of The Golden Legend mentioned in the post for 1 May 2016. Its legends about Mary’s parents and Joseph were more interesting than the gospels, which took them as background dramatis personae necessary to the more important story of Christ’s ministry.

He was the son of Fernando de Chaves, whose senility was mentioned in the post for 7 April 2014. By this time, Angélico Chávez said, Pedro "was extremely ill and out of his senses." When he died, his family rejected the rights of this second wife and her children.

The shift from the joys of birth to the horrors of death was reinforced by the replacement of baptisms as the sacrament that determined one’s grace, with confession and atonement.

At the same time, friars were reinforcing their directions with sermons like the one recalled by Quintana that emphasized the hell that awaited the baptized if they didn’t conform.

In 1733, while Quintana’s case was waiting review by the Holy Office tribunal in Mexico City, Martín Hurtado and Pedro Alcántara García Jurado entered the Albuquerque church where Montaño was preaching and called him the "governor of Hell."

The first was the son of Andrés Hurtado, who had held the encomienda of Santa Ana. García Jurado’s father came from Mexico City as a child in 1693, and later married Hurtado’s daughter. At the time, Franciscans were criticizing the two for demanding people at Santa Ana work without pay.

The substitution of Easter rituals for Christmas ones may have occurred without controversy in Mexico City where few Roman Catholics may have had strong ties to older traditions and congregations were so large priests couldn’t monitor everyone. The individuals Sopeña and Montaño attacked in Nuevo México were ones whose families were here before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Their religious views probably were more archaic than their peers in Mexico City because they had been isolated from changes that affected the capital for so long. The new generation of priests probably saw them being as recalcitrant as the pueblos that continued older practices, and thus deserving the same punishment.

Notes: Quintana said he was asked to write the last coloquio in 1726. The two men mentioned in the post for 10 July 2016 who were close to him were Mínguez, who was dead in 1726, and Juan de Tagle who probably died in early 1727. Norris didn’t know Mínguez’s age when he professed in 1694. The earliest age for acceptance by the order was 16.

The marriage alliances of Quintana’s children were described in the post for 19 June 2016. His description of a sermon appeared in the entry for 3 July 2016. Esquibel only hypothesized Quintana attended the cathedral school, partly based on the identity of his godfather. Street theater was discussed in the post for 26 June 2016.

Chávez, Angélico. Chávez: A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico, 1989.

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

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.

Greenleaf, Richard E. "The Inquisition in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico," New Mexico Historical Review 60:29-60:1985.

Norris, Jim. After "The Year Eighty," 2000; on Hurtado and García.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico: Compiled and Chronologically Arranged, volume 2, 1914; on complaints between 6 April 1732 and 23 July 1733 by Ramón García Jurado against Diego Aries de Espinosa at Santa Ana.

Weckmann, Luis. The Medieval Heritage of Mexico, 1992; quotation from Gante’s 27 June 1529 letter to Franciscans in Flanders.

The Mass and the Rosary

Behind the politics and personalities that drove the conflict between Miguel de Quintana and the Franciscans in the 1730s in Santa Cruz lay demographic changes. As was implied in the post for 3 April 2016, the number of Franciscans wasn’t increasing as quickly as the population in Nueva España. That led to what today would be called leveraging resources. The order needed to find techniques that provided equivalent religious experiences to more people with less manpower.

The one notable innovation in Santa Cruz in these years was the use of the rosary. The beads and prayer cycle themselves weren’t new. They date back farther than the Dominicans who are associated with them. Herbert Thurston and Andrew Shipman said the order of the prayers and the accompanying meditations was standardized in the late 1400s.

What was new in Nuevo México was that the regimen for prayer was mentioned. Neither Roque de Madrid nor Leonor Domínguez nor Antonio Velarde talked about it. They all mentioned masses. Madrid noted the one of the eve of battle, Domínguez the ones before Easter, and Velarde ones celebrated every morning by Juan George del Pino.

The communal experience of the mass was more important to Benito Crespo than the solitude of the confession or the rosary. The Puebla diocese, where he served after his years in Durango, remembered he was "jealous of the dignity and splendor of divine worship" and that, in 1735, "recommended the faithful observance of sacred rites in the celebration of Masses."

When the bishop visited Santa Fé in 1730, he noted the poorest Jesuit church had "its church better adorned than in the one of the villa of Santa Fe, which surpasses all those of this district" and that it did "not even have vestments for high mass."

Masses required clergymen. When no friar was assigned to a mission, or when a priest was away, commending parishioners recite the rosary was a way the church could demand the same daily attention from them.

Today, the rosary assumes the presence of beads to make it easier to keep track of the prayers. It also often is accompanied by individual pictures of the 15 mysteries to stimulate contemplation on their meanings.

Not many wills from the area have survived. Ralph Twitchell listed a dozen, and Henrietta Martinez Christmas has translated nine of those. None described any kind of beads that could be construed as rosaries. A few mentioned coral, but as I suggested in the post for 29 May 2016, they may have been amulets against the evil eye.

Three women mentioned pictures or statues, but only the crucifixes could have been used for the mysteries. Quintana’s daughter, Lugarda, left a "a holy Christ, of bronze" in 1749, along with fourteen images of saints, all small." The next year, Rosa Martín Serrano, the wife of Nicolás López, left "a statue of St. Jose."

At the end of the decade, in 1759, Teresa Herrera left "seven holy pictures on wool." She also owned a small and a large crucifix, and a "statue of the Immaculate Conception." She had been married to Diego Martín Serrano and Bartolomé Trujillo.

These images were little different from those willed earlier by Cristóbal Torres and his wife, Angela Leyba. In addition to the picture of Our Lady of Los Remedios, mentioned in the post for 29 May 2016, he owned a picture of Our Lady of the Rosary, a crucifix, and a "statue of Saint Joseph" in 1726. She had "nine pictures of different kinds," the statue of Los Remedios mentioned before, and a "bronze crucifix" the next year.

Quintana may not have been unique in saying the rosary, but no one left the material evidence to know.

Notes: Madrid was mentioned in the post for 2 June 2015, Domínguez in the one for 2 April 2015, Velarde the one for 23 August 2015.

Archdiocese of Puebla. "Excmo. Sr. Don Benito Crespo (1734-1737)," their website; translation by Google.

Christmas, Henrietta Martinez. 1598 New Mexico, blog.

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. Adams noted this particular paragraph was hard to translate because some of the words were lost when it was bound.

Herrera, Teresa. Will, 1759, translated by Christmas as "Teresa Herrera - Will 1759," 20 May 2013.

Leyba, Angela. Will, 1727, translated by Christmas as "Angela Leyba - Will 1727," 30 July 2014.

Martín Serrano, Rosa. Will, 1750, translated by Christmas as "Rosa Martín Serrano - Will 1750," 15 November 2013.

Quintana, Gertrudis Lugarda de. Will, 12 May 1749; translated in Francisco A. Lomelí and Clark A. Colahan, Defying the Inquisition in Colonial New Mexico, 2006.

Thurston, Herbert, and Andrew Shipman. "The Rosary." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912

Torres, Cristóbal. Will, 1726, translated by Christmas as "Cristóbal Torrez - Will 1726," 28 July 2014.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico: Compiled and Chronologically Arranged, volume 1, 1914.