Franciscans and the Bishop

Franciscans were not beyond Bourbon reforms that emphasized accountability and metrics for measuring success. Along with financial support came audits and inspections to verify report accuracy.

Ferdinand of Aragon had negotiated control of church moneys in 1502 when pope Alexander VI "conferred the tithes of all the Indies on the king on condition that he should endow the churches and provide an adequate maintenance for their ministers." This bull coincided with the onset of Columbus’s fourth voyage, and ensured the church’s standing in the New World.

He already had been granted the power to nominate high ecclesiastical leaders during the conquest of Granada in 1486. Julian II extended patronato to the New World in 1508. The two agreed any proposal for a new mission would be reviewed by the audiencia, the viceroy, and the bishop before being presented to the Consejo de Indias. In return, the Vatican gained control of the Papal States on the Italian peninsula.

Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV of France, used patronato real to nominate religious leaders in the New World who appreciated the need for centralized secular power. He appointed Juan de Vizarrón arzobispo de México in 1730. The Andalusian had studied in Rome at the College of San Clemente before serving in Seville where he was Philip’s chaplain.

In 1734, Vizarrón renewed the church’s efforts to collect diezmo from Jesuit haciendas. The order proposed a "temporary arrangement" to the audiencia, who rejected it. The members felt both they and the archbishop/viceroy had been "insulted." They ordered full payment of tithes from 1734, and forwarded the paperwork to Madrid. According to Hubert Howe Bancroft, the "king’s council" ordered payment and demanded "sworn statements" declaring the value of the order’s estates.

In Nuevo México, subordination of religious orders to secular clergy was more important than tithes. The mere fact the obispo de Durango visited Santa Fé in 1730 was seen as an affront. Benito Crespo’s ensconcement of Santiago de Roybal as Vicario y Juez Esclesiástico was taken as provocation. The Franciscan’s local custodio, Andrés Varo, considered himself to be the legitimate local vicar.

Philip had appointed Crespo in 1722. Born in a small village in Castile near the border with Estremadura, he had trained at San Marcos de León in Salamanca and was a knight of Santiago. That military order had been under crown control since Ferdinand asserted his authority in 1499.

Roybal had been ordained in México by Crespo. He, no doubt, was selected because he was the son of Francesca de Gómez Robledo and Ignacio de Roybal. They had sent the boy to Mexico City for his education.

On his way back to Durango Crespo wrote the viceroy that the Franciscans were collecting fees for 40 friars, but only had deployed 33. The Santa Cruz parish was included in the endowment for Santa Clara, "where he has never resided." He recommended transferring Santa Cruz, along with the other Spanish-speaking parishes, to his jurisdiction, and consolidating Santa Clara and San Juan de Caballeros into the mission at San Ildefonso.

The Franciscan’s immediate response was to send Juan Miguel Menchero north in 1731 to develop a counterstrategy. Soon after, Santa Cruz began keeping better baptismal records that would prove they were serving the villa and would document the numbers of souls brought into the church. They had kept reasonably complete records from 1710 to 1714. After that only chance notes survived.

In a separate letter to the viceroy, Crespo criticized the fees charged by friars for baptisms, burials and other sacraments because they were "so high and exorbitant that there were no fixed schedule except the will of the father missionaries." To encourage more participation by parishioners and natives, he fixed price schedules. He cited a royal order from 1725 as his justification.

Menchero countered with an order that "no friar was to charge an Indian any fee whatsoever for administering the sacraments."

Year	Baptisms	DM's	Marriages
1710	2	1
1711	8	1
1712	8	1
1713	43
1714	12	5
1715	3	3
1716		4
1717		4
1718		8
1719		5
1720	2	5
1721	27	1
1722		2
1723		6
1724
1725		4
1726	1	3	4
1727		6	6
1728		3	7
1729			1
1730		1	12
1731	3		4
1732	50		1
1733	35		16
1734	62		7
1735	38		6
1736	26		9
1737	2		15
1738	48		8
1739	19		10
Santa Cruz de la Cañada

Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, and San Juan de los Caballeros were given bound books in 1726 for recording baptisms, marriages, and deaths. They’re our only detailed record of the population between then and 1760. The diligencias matrimoniales are missing. Angélico Chávez believed Roybal, "kept or removed only the DMs pertaining to his term," but suggested no motive. It also may be the Franciscans refused to forward them to him, and they subsequently were lost.

With a forgivable bias towards the Franciscans, Chávez believed Roybal, "with the brashness of youth, had continued enraging some of his adversaries," and was moved to El Paso in 1733.

That didn’t relieve Menchero of secular oversight. Crespo sent Juan Bustamante in his place.

He was another second generation migrant from northern Spain who had ties with the local elite. Chávez believed he was the son, nephew or brother of the earlier governor from El Paso, Juan Domingo de Bustamante.

Notes: The New Mexico Genealogical Society began transcribing and translating the sacramental books in 1976. They’ve published their extracts for Santa Cruz baptisms and marriages, and for Santa Clara and Juan de los Caballeros marriages. Microfilms of the originals are available.

Adams, Eleanor B. Bishop Tamarón’s Visitation of New Mexico, 1760, 1954.

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

Bancroft, Hubert Howe. History of Mexico, Volume III, 1600-1803, 1883.

Chávez, Angélico. "El Vicario Don Santiago Roybal," El Palacio 65:231-252:1948.

_____. New Mexico Roots, Ltd, 1982; on missing diligencias matrimoniales.

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition; on Bustamante.

Crespo y Monroy, Benito. Letter to the viceroy, Juan Vásquez de Acuña, 8 September 1730; translation in Adams; recommended consolidating missions.

_____. Letter to the viceroy, Juan Vásquez de Acuña, 25 September 1730; translation in Adams; on fees for services.

Crivelli, Camillus. "Mexico," The Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 10, 1911; quotation summarizing bull of Alexander VI.

Kessell, John L. Kiva, Cross and Crown, 1995; Menchero quotation.

Traboulay, David M. Columbus and Las Casas: The Conquest and Christianization of America, 1492-1566, 1994.

Wikipedia. Entry for Juan Antonio de Vizarrón y Eguiarreta."

Table: Data from 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.

A number of Apaches were baptized in 1713.

Entrepreneurs in the North

Spain never had effective Protestant movements like those in England, Scandinavia, and parts of Germany and France. Ferdinand established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478 to unify the peninsula and deflect interference from the pope.

When he expelled the Jews in 1492 and the Moors in 1502, he exiled much of his educated class including his bankers and progressive farmers. Members of the nobility did not rush to fill the void, although men who entered trade in the far north were less likely to be denounced as conversos or convertos.

In Nuevo México, the men who developed the wool trade had ties either to the Protestants of France or to recent immigrants from the north of Spain. Santiago de Roybal, mentioned in the post for 9 March 2016 as the man most interested in opening trade through Pierre Mallet in 1740, was the son of an immigrant from Caldas de Reyes in Galicia near Compostela who enlisted with Diego de Vargas.

His father, Ignacio Roybal, had married Francisca Gómez Robledo. Her uncle, Francisco Gómez Robledo, was the encomendero and trader tried as a Jewish converso in the 1660s. One of their daughters married Jean l’Archevêque and another married his son, Miguel. As mentioned in the post for 7 July 2015, Jean was descended from Huguenots.

Jean groomed his son to be a trader. It’s likely the young man continued the business after his father died in 1720. When Miguel died, his widow, María, married a Cantabrian-born merchant. José de Reaño de Tagle’s parents were José de Reaño and Teresa de Tagle Bustamante.

When he died in 1743, Reaño’s inventory of trade goods included 90 fanegas of piñon, 300 buckskins, dressed buffalo hides, Navajo baskets, Mexican pack saddles, and bundles of carpet. He left 1,300 wethers and 1,000 pregnant ewes worth 4,300 pesos. His ranch was south of Santa Fé, but he also owned a league of pasture land in the Piedra Lumbre where he built corrals and a wooden shelter.

His employees included a foreman, Antonio de Sandoval, who had claim to some wethers, a mulato slave from México named Pedro, and "7 little Indian herders." Gerónimo Martín owed him fifty pesos "which he agreed to give the year of ‘forty’ 200 lambs with the assurance of herding them at his expense until the year forty-three."

Reaño had been using his livestock as venture capital since at least 1739, when he gave 600 ewes to Francisco Sáez on the understanding he would be given back 114 lambs every year for five years. He probably expected Sáez to graze them on his land at Piedra Lumbre, or perhaps farther south at Ojo Caliente.

The partidario was the son of Augustín Sáez of Parral and Antonia Márquez. His mother’s stepfather was Diego Arias de Quirós, a soldier from Asturias who enlisted with de Vargas. In 1714, while Francisco was still a child, he married María Gómez de Robledo. She was the great-aunt of Reaño’s wife through her mother, Francisca Gómez Robledo.

Another of Francisca’s sisters, Margarita, married Jacinto Peláez. Like Ignacio de Roybal, he came as a soldier with de Vargas. After the native of Asturias was granted land at Jacona, east of San Ildefonso, Ignacio requested the adjoining tract. Margarita’s daughter, María, was raised by Francisca and Ignacio. It was her daughter, María Francisca Fernández de la Pedrerea, who married the member of Mallet’s party who stayed in Santa Fé, Juan Bautista Alarí. Her father had come from Galicia.

Francisca’s third sister, Lucía, married a man from Ciudad de México. Their son, Felipe, married his second cousin, who was the sister of the woman who married Alarí. He died young, and Santiago took over rearing their son, Blas. In 1753, he donated a flour mill located on the river above the city to him.

The web of relationships built on kinship, shared cultural backgrounds, and military experience brought Santiago and his family into contact with the governors. In 1740, Gaspar de Mendoza let Pierre Mallet leave the kingdom. In 1744, Joaquín Codallos lifted the embargo on wool exports and intervened to protect the estate of Santiago’s sister María when Reaño died.

He returned the favors in 1745 when Mendoza’s fourteen-year-old daughter married Codallos. As the only secular clergyman in the kingdom, Santiago was able to shield the politicians from scrutiny by the Franciscans by performing the marriage himself.

Gómez de Robledo Family
Francisco Gómez de Robledo
	Francisco Gómez de Robledo, tried by Inquisition
		Antonio Gómez de Robledo - [Juana Luján]
	Andrés Gómez de Robledo
		Margarita Gómez de Robledo marry Jacinto Peláez (Asturias)
			María Peláez marry Juan Fernández de la Pedrera (Galicia)
				Francisca Fernández de la Pedrera marry Juan Bautista Alarí (Québec)
				Teresa Fernández de la Pedrera marry son of Lucía Gómez Robledo
		María Gómez de Robledo marry Diego Arias de Quirós (Asturias)
			Stepdaugher Antonia Márquez marry Augustín Sáez
				Francisco Sáez contract with José de Reaño de Tagle
		Francesca Gómez de Robledo marry Ignacio de Roybal (Galicia)
			Manuela Roybal marry Jean l’Archevêque (France)
			María Roybal marry Miguel l’Archevêque
				Marry José de Reaño de Tagle (Cantabria)
			Santiago de Roybal
		Lucía Gómez Robledo marry Miguel de Dios Sandoval Martínez
			Felipe de Dios Sandoval Martínez marry Teresa Fernández de la Pedrera
				Blas Felipe de Sandoval Fernández de la Pedrera

Notes: Most of the details on the growth of the wool industry came from Baxter; most about the families came from Chávez. Francisco Gómez Robledo was discussed in 2014 posts for March 22, March 23 and March 24. A friar, Francisco de la Concepción González, in fact did try to prevent the Mendoza-Codallos wedding, according to Norris.

Baxter, John O. Las Carneradas, 1987.

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

Center for Land Grant Studies. "The Piedra Lumbre Grant," available online.

Christmas, Henrietta Martinez. 1598 New Mexico, blog.

Codallos y Rabal, Joachin. Estate proceedings, José Reaño, 17 April 1744, Santa Fé; translated by Christmas, entry for 23 April 2014.

Hendricks, Rick. "Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza," Office of State Historian New Mexico History website.

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

Reaño de Tagle, José de. Will and inventory, 1743, in Twitchell.

_____. Will and inventory, 1743; published by Christmas, entry for 21 April 2014.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson Twitchell. Spanish Archives of New Mexico, volume 1, 1914; on flour mill.