Introduction

To speak of the Franciscan Order in New Spain is to refer to the first and one of the most important orders that came to convert, indoctrinate, missionize, colonize, teach, and govern the Indians of that region. The impact of the order is to be seen in architecture, agriculture, culture – in so many aspects of colonial life that it is difficult to capture its full range. To study the novices of the order is to take a partial view of the formation of a group that might one day take on the manifold functions of missionizing on the northern frontier.

In seventeenth-century New Spain the Franciscans held six provinces: El Santo Evangelio de México (1536); San Pedro y San Pablo de Michoacán (1565); San José de Yucatan (1536); the Provincia Descalza de San Diego (1599); Santiago de Jalisco (1606); and San Francisco de Zacatecas (1603). However, by the mid-seventeenth century, in spite of their size and spatial extent, most of the religious orders had passed their prime and, with the secularization of parishes whose benefits they had enjoyed for more than a century, they received a serious economic and political setback. Now they were forbidden to minister the sacraments, to go out to instruct the Indians, or to invest in either rural or urban land. They were ordered, instead, to deposit their monies in the royal coffers of Madrid.

Among the many justifications that the Crown and Bishop Palafox advanced to order the secularization of the parishes, was one of great weight, and which was directed especially at the Franciscans.