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.