In accordance with the terms of the 1867 convention which effected the transfer of Russian America to the United States, the archives of the Russian American Company at Novoarkhangelsk (Sitka) were transmitted to Washington, D. C. Inventoried and bound in 67 volumes and labeled Archives of the Russian American Company, they are now in the National Archives. Although microfilmed for the University of California at Berkeley, these archives have not been translated or published, and apparently, scant use has been made of them, although Bancroft had extracts made of many documents and used some of the material in his histories of Alaska, California, and of the Northwest Coast.

In the words of the Brazilian historian, “Brazil was born Franciscan,” since it was a Franciscan, Frei Henrique Soares de Coimbra, and his confreres, who said the first Holy Mass on Brazilian soil in 1500.

After that, in 1516, two anonymous Franciscans were massacred by the Indians near Porto Seguro. Various groups of Franciscans in Brazil are mentioned during the rest of the sixteenth century, until, in 1584, Fr. Francisco Gonzaga, while visiting Portugal in his capacity as Minister General, and presiding at the provincial chapter of the Franciscan Province of St. Anthony in Portugal, decreed the founding of the custody, or minor-province, of St. Anthony in Brazil. He did this over the objections of some of the friars assisting at the chapter, who thought their numbers too small to think of founding a new mission.

Perhaps the most characteristic feature of the colonial policy devised by the Hapsburgs to govern Spanish holdings in America was the system of intervention, checks, balances, and overlapping authority. Many modern students express impatient disapproval of this system, assuming that it resulted in governmental inefficiency if not complete stagnation. By applying a different set of criteria, however, and one which was certainly more in the minds of those who fashioned the Spanish colonial structure, intervention, checks and balances may be judged a brilliantly conceived means of maintaining under colonial status a vast overseas empire. Considered in these terms, it is the opinion of the writer that nowhere was the success of this system more evident than on the level of local administration in the “ Indies,” where it served to prevent the rise of an unchecked spirit of local autonomy while tending to preserve sentiments of loyalty to the crown.

Religious education in Brazil can be conveniently divided into four phases or periods:

I. 1553-1759
II. 1759-1891
III. 1891-1931
IV. 1931 to the present.

During this early period religious education in Brazil was, practically speaking, in the hands of the Society of Jesus.

The movement known as the Counter-Reformation attached great importance to cultural formation. Three great personalities of the sixteenth century dominate this intellectual renascence which can rightly be called Catholic humanism. They are St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, in Spain; Thomas More, the excellent Hellenist and sociologist, in England; and St. Angela Merici in Italy, who founded the Congregation of the Ursulines, dedicated especially to the education of women.

In colonial times four ecclesiastical Councils were held in Mexico City: in 1555, 1565, 1585, and in 1771. Their decisions and enactments affected directly the extensive territory of New Spain and indirectly that of the Philippines.

The last two of these Councils ordered the publishing of three catechisms, of which two were actually printed. The 1585 Council decreed the publishing of a catechism, which, as we shall see, was taken over substantially by the 1771 Council for its lay catechism and partially also for its parochial manual.

En la ciudad de Mexico, sabado veynte y seis dias del mes de henero de mill e quinientos y ochenta y cinco años, el sancto concilio provincial mexicano, canonicamente congregado, presidiendo en el el Ill.mo don Pedro Moya de Contreras, Arçobispo desta dicha ciudad, y assistiendo en el, en nombre de su Magestad, como Visitador, Governador y Capitan general que es desta Nueba España y Presidente del Audiencia Real, que en ella reside, y los reverendissimos obispos sufraganeos convocados, conviene a saber: don fray Gomez de Cordova, Obispo de Guatemala; don fray Joan Medina, Obispo de Mechoacán; don Diego Romano, Obispo de Tlaxcala; don fray Gregorio de Montalvo, Obispo de Yucatán; don fray Domingo de Alçola, Obispo de la Nueba Galizia; y don fray Bartholomé de Ledesma, Obispo de Guaxaca.

Cathechismus quo rudimenta christianae religionis tenerae aetati traderentur, quem jussu Concilii Provincialis Mexicani composuit, vidimusque mss. in Actis eiusdem Concilii apud Archivum nostrae Metropolitanae Ecclesiae asservatis tomo 1 a folio 445 usque ad 455, exstatque etiam tomo 3 a folio 20 usque ad 33, Episcoporum Concilio assistentium subscriptione munitus et signatus die 16 Octobris anno 1585.