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Jesuit Contributions to the Ideology of Spanish Empire in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Peggy K. Liss
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Extract

Jesuits arrived in Mexico in 1572. They had come from a Spain unified by an imperial ideology—its prime components a single faith, shared cultural values and traditions, and belief in a royal mystique—allowing, indeed encouraging, expansion of the monarchy overseas. Spanish Jesuits, some of whom articulated adherence to this ideology, by 1580 had established their religious order among the most respected corporations in Mexican society. Through preaching, ministering to the needy, and missionary work, but above all through gaining a near monopoly on secondary education in New Spain, members of the Society of Jesus achieved a position of prestige and influence within all strata of society. In order to understand, therefore, how Jesuits contributed to the maintenance of Mexican ties to Spanish empire, it is first necessary to get some idea of the nature of their system of education, its curriculum, teaching methods, and aims in New Spain.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , April 1973 , pp. 449 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1973

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References

1 See Part I of this essay. Robledo, Xavier Gómez, in Humanismo en México en el siglo XVI. El Sistema del Colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo (Mexico, 1954)Google Scholar overstates his thesis, for example.

2 Translated and printed in Fitzpatrick, Edward A., ed., St. Ignatius and the Ratio Studiorum (New York, 1933), pp. 46–118 Google Scholar. Part IV of the Constitutions, which were published in 1552, laid the groundwork for the Ratio Studiorum of 1599, the Jesuit rules for education.

3 Loyola, XII: 2, exp. A; Fitzpatrick, pp. 49, 68.

4 Ibid., pp. 17–18. Those subjects studied between Latin grammar and theology Loyola termed “the liberal arts,” thereby using the term as synonymous with humane letters and artes (logic, natural and moral philosophy, metaphysics) combined. (Loyola, VI: 4; Fitzpatrick, p. 73.)

5 V:1; ibid., p. 68.

6 Preamble to Part Four; ibid., p. 49.

7 St. Ignatius’ Idea of a Jesuit University (Milwaukee, 1954), p. 175.

8 Vocht, Henry de, “Les débuts de l’enseignement classique dans la Compagnie de Jésus et leurs rapports avec l’Humanisme,” Les Etudes Classiques, 13 (1945), pp. 193–209 Google Scholar, states how the twin humanistic ideals of Christian and human perfection, espoused by Erasmus and applied to teaching by Luis Vives, also guided Jesuit teachers. Loyola prescribed reading St. Thomas in scholastic doctrine, following the doctrine of Aristotle in logic, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysics (XIV: 1–3; Fitzpatrick, pp. 106–107). In his later years Loyola rejected Erasmian ideas and forbade his followers to read him. His earlier attitude is a subject of historical debate. See Garíca Villoslada, R., Loyola y Erasmo; Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, The Golden Age of Spain, 1516–1659 (New York, 1971), p. 328, and also see pp. 232–33 Google Scholar, referred to below.

9 Bolgar, R. R. in the New Cambridge Modern History, III, p. 433 Google Scholar. The Ratio Studiorum of 1599 substantiates these statements. Fitzpatrick, pp. 119–254, includes the translated text.

10 Vocht, p. 208; Ratio Studiorum in Fitzpatrick, pp. 209–210.

11 Bolgar, p. 435. Also see the Ratio Studiorum of 1599, which incorporated much of what had become standard Jesuit practice.

12 Fitzpatrick, pp. 222–231; Vocht, pp. 206–207.

13 See Rice, Eugene F. Jr., The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Harvard Univ., 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 “Juan Harlem,” a Flemish Jesuit, writing from Valladolid in 1579, warned Mercurian that, in the University there, neglect of eloquence was dooming humanistic studies. He noted the impending demise of “literary culture,” such as it is, due to the rusty and barbaric language employed.…” He added that “there are excellent professors of theology here.” Other foreign Jesuits made similar complaints of conditions at Salamanca and Alcalá. Scorraille, Raúl de S. J., El P. Francisco Suárez de la Compañía de Jesús según sus cartas, sus demás escritos inéditos, y crecido número de documentos nuevos (Barcelona, 1917), I, pp. 77–78 Google Scholar.

15 See Bataillon, Marcel, Erasme et L’Espagne (Paris, 1937)Google Scholar.

16 Annual Letter of 1579, in Monumenta Mexicana, I (1570–1580), edited by Zubillaga, Félix S.J. as vol. 77 of Monumenta Historica Societatis lesu (Rome, 1956)Google Scholar, — hereinafter referred to as MM—Doc. 173, p. 436; Francisco de Florencia, S. J., Historia de la Provincia de la Compañía de Jesús de Nueva España (Mexico, 1694; facsimile ed., Mexico, 1955), passim; Relación breve de la venida de los de la Compañía de Jesús a la Nueva España, edited by Francisco González Cossio (Mexico, 1945), p. 29—written in 1602 and long listed as “anonymous,” Ernest Burrus now argues convincingly its author was Gaspar de Villerías, S. J., Mexican creole and official historian of the Province (see Part One, n. 50); Juan Sánchez Baquero, S.J., “Relación breve del principio y progresso de la Provincia de la Nueva España de la Jesús” (1609?), published as Fundación de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España, 1571–1580, edited by Félix Ayuso (Mexico, 1945), p. 111.

17 Florencia, pp. 159–160.

18 Ibid., p. 185.

19 Relación breve, p. 27. These sermons can at least be accepted as the sort of thing probably said. They are consonant with contemporary statements asserting that Jesuit colleges were founded “for letters as for virtue” (Sánchez Baquero, p. 71). The annual letter of 1579 made the same statement and reported both to be flourishing (MM I, p. 436).

20 Mercurian to P. Sánchez, March 31, 1576; MM I, Doc. 92, p. 209 Google Scholar.

21 Ibid. Mercurian and Sánchez both assumed that the introduction of studies in Latin grammar meant the inauguration of “estudios de humanidad.” (See Mercurian to Juan de la Plaza, Oct. 23, 1573; MM I, Doc. 29, p. 80). The Relación breve also considered “estudios públicos de Humanidad” as “the beginning and source of good instruction, erudition, and letters” (p. 26). Its author, also, in stating that “a hundred students in the Colegio de San Ildefonso studied humane letters, philosophy, and scholastic and moral theology,” disclosed that in Mexico as in Europe the courses below philosophy were known collectively as “humane letters” (p. 29).

22 Monumenta Paedagogica (Rome, 1965), I, pp. 326–327 Google Scholar; Jacobsen, Jerome V. S. J., Educational Foundations of the Jesuits in Sixteenth Century New Spain (Berkeley, 1939), pp. 112, 156 Google Scholar. Drawn up by the Prefect of Studies, Diego Ledesma, it stated as the purposes of “literary schools” training boys in methods of good government and in just lawmaking, contributing to bringing about their intellectual perfection, and equipping them to practice, defend, and propagate their religion. Texts specified for liberal arts included in rhetoric, works of Cicero, Quintilian, and Aristotle; in oratory, all of Cicero and some of Quintilian, Seneca, and Livy; in poetry, Virgil, Horace, Martial, and some Plautus.

23 In private instructions to Juan de la Plaza, Jan. 1579, Mercurian stated that, concerning studies, Lanuchi’s influence on P. Sánchez had been too great. (MM I, Doc. 167, p. 417). See Annual Letter of 1577, MM I, pp. 256–260; Relación breve, p. 26.

24 March 12, 1576; MM I, Doc. 79, pp. 188–189; also Mercurian to Sánchez, April 22, 1575; ibid., Doc. 64, p. 164.

25 June 20, 1577; ibid., Doc. 109, pp. 283–284.

26 Ibid., pp. 188–189. Francisco Toledo taught at the Roman College.

27 Bolgar, p. 433.

28 MM I, p. 209.

29 Icazbalceta, Joaquín García, Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVI (Mexico, 1954), edited by Carlo, Agustín Millares, p. 296 Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., p. 280; Medina, José Toribio, La Imprenta en México (1539–1821), (Santiago de Chile, 1908), I, pp. 232, 235 Google Scholar.

31 Leonard, Irving, Books of the Brave (Harvard Univ., 1949), p. 208 Google Scholar. In a shipment of 1584 from Spain were books by Cicero, Terence, Lucan, Virgil, Ovid, and Seneca, some of them compiled as texts; Francisco Fernández del Castillo, ed., Libros y libreros en el siglo XVI (Mexico 1914), pp. 263–281. Documents listing numeros shipments of books in the 1580s unfortunately tend to note numbers of cases rather than titles and, in 1585, the names of the mule-drivers carrying them to the capital from Veracruz (p. 328).

32 Plaza to Mercurian, July 5, 1574; MM I, Doc. 53, pp. 117–119 Google Scholar; Mercurian to Lanuchi, Feb. 20, 1578; ibid., Doc. 126, p. 358 Google Scholar.

33 A Jesuit text on rhetoric by P. Bernardino Llanos published in Mexico in 1605, gave a brief exposition of rhetorical rules and then some examples from poems of Horace, Ovid, Martial and so on. Also published in the early 1600s were thesauruses of poetry and grammar books. Gallegos Rocafull, José M., El pensamiento mexicano en los siglos XVI y XVII (Mexico, 1951), pp. 211–212 Google Scholar. Also see Decorme, Gerard S. J., La obra de los jesuitas mexicanos durante la época colonial, 1572–1767 (Mexico, 1941), I, pp. 151–152 Google Scholar.

34 Sánchez Baquero, p. 144.

35 Ibid., pp. 146–147.

36 Ibid., p. 148.

37 Jacobsen, p. 28. Also see Sánchez Baquero, pp. 108–109; Gallegos Rocafull, pp. 298–315; Robles, Oswaldo, Filósofos mexicanos del siglo XVI (Mexico, 1950), pp. 75–97 Google Scholar.

38 Rubio averred himself a Thomist, according to Robles, p. 97. His text on logic was used by four of the eight chairholders or professors in philosophy at Alcalá; Addy, George M., “Alcalá before Reform—the Decadence of a Spanish University,” HAHR, 48 (1968), p. 577 Google Scholar.

39 Sánchez Baquero, pp. 107–109; Florencia, pp. 191–194; Robles, p. 68; Gallegos Rocafull, pp. 235, 240. Robles says that Hortigosa was praised by Francisco Suárez as “maestro de maestros” as an extraordinary philosopher and theologian and that Rubio was heir to the teachings of Domingo de Soto and studied under Toledo who also taught Francisco Suárez. The point here is that these Jesuits in Mexico were in the mainstream of the Spanish scholastic upsurge and that that movement also strongly influenced Jesuit schools elsewhere; here Toledo is important in both Roman and Spanish teaching of philosophy.

40 MM I, p. 312.

41 See Gómez Robledo, op. cit.

42 Sánchez Baquero, p. 71.

43 See Decorme, I, and note 33 above; also Leonard, Irving A., Baroque Times in Old Mexico (Univ. of Michigan, 1959)Google Scholar.

44 Coránica y historia religiosa de la Provincia de la Compañía de Jesús de México en Nueva España (1650), published in Mexico, 1896, II, pp. 3–4 Google Scholar.

45 Ibid., I, p. 94.

46 More liberal and more secular currents of thought associated with the ideas of Erasmus in Spain were relatively uncensured in Mexico until the 1570s, or a decade or so after they were proscribed in Spain. See José Miranda, El erasmista mexicano Fray Alonso Cabello (Mexico, 1958); and Bataillon, , “Erasmo y el Nuevo Mundo,” appended to the Spanish edition, translated as Erasmo y España (Mexico and Buenos Aires, 1966), II, pp. 435–454 Google Scholar.

47 Op. cit., I, p. 247.

48 “The Heritage of Latin America,” in Hartz, Louis, ed., The Founding of New Societies (New York, 1964), p. 152 Google Scholar.

49 Johnson, Kenneth C., “Latin American Political Thought: Some Literary Foundations,” in Burnett, Ben and Johnson, K. C., eds., Political Forces in Latin America: Dimensions of the Quest for Stability (Belmont, 1968), p. 479 Google Scholar.

50 See Part I of this essay; also Letter of Hernán Cortés to Charles V, Feb. 3, 1544, Gayangos, Pascual de, ed., Cartas y Relaciones de Hernán Cortés al emperador Carlos V (Paris, 1866), pp. 567–568 Google Scholar; Castillo, Bernal Díaz del, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico (New York, 1956), p. 33 Google Scholar.

51 See Part I.

52 Sánchez Baquero, pp. 41–42; also see pp. 31, 60; and Relación breve, pp. 22, 28, 111.

53 Alegre, Francisco Javier, Historia de la Provincia de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España, ed. Burrus, Ernest J. S. J. and Zubillaga, Félix S. J. (Rome, 1956), I, p. 155 Google Scholar, stated with pride that the nobility of all the land attended the Jesuit Colegio de San Ildefonso.

54 In instructions to Juan de la Plaza of Jan. 1579, Mercurian wrote: “no se permita que los Nuestros sean Ilamados criollos; mas se tenga la buena estimación que se deve entre religiosos.” (MM I, p. 420).

55 See Part I.

56 In 1585, 37 out to 144 Jesuits in Mexico had been born there and, by 1572, sixty out of 216. (MM II, Doc. 222, pp. 743–759); Burras, Ernest S.J., “Pioneer Jesuit Apostles among the Indians of New Spain (1572–1604),” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 25 (1956), pp. 574–597 Google Scholar; and his “Pedro de Mercado and the Mexican Jesuit Recruits,” Mid-America, 37 (1955), pp. 140–152. P. Sánchez agreed with Mercurian that “sons of Spaniards born in this land” must do exceptionally well in the novitiate (MM I, p. 420).

57 P. 26.

58 See Part I.

59 MM I, p. 322. It continues: “Y asi les enseñarán cómo an de ser buenos casados, y saber regir sus haciendas y criar y casar sus hijos …” and other such European preferences.

60 I, pp. 541–543.

61 MM I, p. 338; see Part I, p. 19 and n. 63.

62 Cuevas, Mariano, ed., Documentos inéditos del siglo XVI para la historia de México (Mexico, 1914), p. 479 Google Scholar. The parecer is undated.

63 Simpson, Lesley B., Studies in the Administration of the Indians in New Spain (Berkeley, 1938), III Google Scholar. The Repartimiento System of Native Labor in New Spain and Guatemala, ch. 5.

64 MM I, p. 338.

65 Bolton, , “The Mission as a Frontier Institution in the Spanish American Colonies,” in his Wider Horizons of American History (New York, 1939)Google Scholar.

66 Cicero, , “The Dream of Scipio,” has the General make this statement. Virgil, Aeneid, VI: 847–852 Google Scholar: “tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (hae tibi erunt artes) pacique imponere morem.” Ovid lauds Rome in “Transformations,” 15.440–445, for example. Horace, “Songs,” 3: 5.

67 Balbuena studied at the Colegio Máximo in Mexico City. See Pelayo, Marcelino Menéndez y, Historia de la Poesia Hispano-Americana (Santander, 1948), I, pp. 50–52 Google Scholar.

68 Its text and a description of the festivities were included in a letter of Pedro de Morales to Mercurian, subsequently printed by Ricardo in 1579. See Sánchez Baquero, p. 126; de Souza, José Mariano Beristain, Biblioteca Hispano-Americana Septentrional (2nd ed., Amecameca, 1883), III, pp. 277–278 Google Scholar; Garcia Icazbalceta, op. cit., pp. 301–308; and Harvey Leroy Johnson, “An Edition of Triunfo de Los Santos with a Consideration of Jesuit School Plays in Mexico before 1650,” unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1941. Also above, n. 47.

69 MM I, p. 318; Sánchez Baquero, p. 137.

70 See Leonard, Baroque, pp. 193–214; and his Góngora, Don Carlos de Sigüenza y, A Mexican Savant of the Seventeenth Century (Berkeley, 1929)Google Scholar; Francisco Pérez Salazar, ed., Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Obras (Mexico, 1928).

71 Sánchez Baquero, p. 108; Pérez de Rivas, I, ch. 24; Decorme, I, p. 180; Félix Osores, Noticias bio-bibliográficas de alumnos distinguidos del Colegio de San Pedro, San Pablo y San Ildefonso de México, vols. XIX, XXI of Genaro García, ed., Documentos inéditos ó muy raros para la historia de México (Mexico, 1908).

72 A fragment survives; Obras, pp. 331–340.

73 See Maza, Francisco de la, El guadalupanismo mexicano (Mexico, 1953)Google Scholar.

74 Mercurian to Moya de Contreras, March 12, 1576; MM I, Doc. 80, pp. 192–193 Google Scholar. Mercurian to P. Sánchez, March 31, 1576; ibid., Doc. 92, pp. 206–214 Google Scholar. Moya de Contreras to Philip II, Sept. 25, 1575; Troncoso, Francisco del Paso y, ed., Epistolario de Nueva España, 1505–1818 (Mexico, 1940), XI, p. 266 Google Scholar. Pedro de Morales wrote a well known treatise on the Virgin (1614?); see Medina, op. cit., p. 242. Also see Pérez de Rivas, II, p. 3; Florencia’s, Francisco de La estrella del norte de México … (Mexico, 1688)Google Scholar. Clavijero and other eighteenth-century Jesuit reformers were also among her devotees.

75 Ramos, , El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México (Mexico and Buenos Aires, 1951)Google Scholar.

76 Correspondence between Tovar and Acosta appears in Icazbalceta, Joaquín García, Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga (Mexico, 1947), IV, pp. 89–95 Google Scholar. Also see George Kubler and Charles Gibson, “The Tovar Calendar,” Memoirs of the Conn. Academy of Arts and Sciences, 11 (New Haven, 1951); the introduction by Edmundo O’Gorman to José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Mexico and Buenos Aires, 1962); John L. Phelan, “Neo-Aztecism in the Eighteenth Century and the Genesis of Mexican Nationalism,” in Stanley Diamond, ed., Culture in History. Essays in honor of Paul Radin (New York, 1960), pp. 760–771; and for Tovar, Part I of this essay.

77 Burrus, “Pedro de Mercado,” p. 149 and his “Jesuitas portugeses na Nova Espanha (1588–1767), Brotéria, 57 (1953), p. 549 Google Scholar. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, members from other European countries came in small numbers. For example, see Otaker Odlozilik, “Czech Missionaries in New Spain,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 25 (1945), pp. 428–454. And of course there was Eusebio F. Kino, and others as well.

78 See Bataillon, Marcel, “Les commencements de la Compagnie de Jésus en Espagne,” Annuaire du Collège de France, 46 (1946), pp. 164–168 Google Scholar; and Albert A. Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts de “pureté de sang” en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1960).

79 See above, n. 56.

80 See Maneiro, Juan Luis and Fabri, Manuel, Vidas de Mexicanos Ilustres del Siglo XVIII (Mexico, 1956)Google Scholar; Decorme, I, Lib. II; Bernabé Navarro, Cultura Mexicana Moderna en el Siglo XVIII (Mexico, 1964); and Peggy K. Korn [Liss], “Topics in Mexican Historiography, 1750–1810: the Bourbon Reforms, the Enlightenment, and the Background of Revolution,” in Investigaciones Contemporáneas sobre Historia de México. Memorias de la Tercera Reunión de Historiadores Mexicanos y Norteamericanos. Oaxtepec, Morelos, 4–7 de noviembre de 1969 (México, 1971), pp. 157–95 and commentary following.

81 The author has written one, now in manuscript.

82 See Konetzke, Richard, “La condición legal de los criollos y las causas de la independencia,” Estudios Americanos, 2 (1950), p. 45 Google Scholar; and Korn, Peggy K. [Liss], “The Problem of the Roots of Revolution: Society and Intellectual Ferment in Mexico on the Eve of Independence,” in Pike, Fredrick B., ed., Latin American History: Select Problems (New York, 1969), pp. 99–132 Google Scholar.

83 See above, n. 48.

84 Foster, George H., Culture and Conquest; America’s Spanish Heritage (New York, 1960), p. 9 Google Scholar. Also Siegel, Bernard J., et al., “Acculturation: an Exploratory Formulation,” American Anthropologist, 56 (1954), pp. 973–1000 Google Scholar.

85 See Glick, Thomas and Pi-Sunyer, Oriol, “Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 11 (1969), pp. 136–154 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 Compare, for example, with Shiels, Edward, “The Intellectuals and the Powers: Some Perspectives for Comparative Analysis,” ibid., 1 (1958), pp. 5–22 Google Scholar.

87 His introduction, as editor, to Education and Political Development (Princeton, 1965), p. 3 Google Scholar.

88 Doctrines of Imperialism (New York, 1965), p. 36 Google Scholar.

89 Lichtheim, , “Imperialism: I,” Commentary, 49:4 (1970)Google Scholar, and his Imperialism (New York, 1971)Google Scholar.