The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World

THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM

OF THE FRANCISCANS IN

THE NEW WORLD

THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM

OF THE FRANCISCANS IN

THE NEW WORLD

BY

JOHN LEDDY PHELAN

SECOND EDITION, REVISED

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES

1970

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, LTD.

LONDON, ENGLAND

COPYRIGHT © 1970, BY

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

ISBN 0-520-01404-9

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 76-99486

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

SECOND EDITION, REVISED 1970

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 1956 IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS IN HISTORY SERIES,

VOLUME 52, pp. 1-160.

Para Lesley Byrd Simpson

Maestro y Amigo

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The first edition of this book was published by the University of California Press in their Publications in History series, No. 52,1956. This is a second revised and expanded edition. The first edition was in fact a revision of my doctoral dissertation which degree I received from the University of California in Berkeley in June, 1951.

I should like to express my appreciation to the members of my doctoral committee: Dr. James F. King (Chairman), Dr. George Hammond and Dr. Lesley Byrd Simpson. They all gave generously of their time, their advice and their knowledge. The late Dr. Ernst H. Kantorowicz also read the dissertation, and he offered many valuable suggestions for changes. As I was writing the dissertation, I derived much stimulation from several conversations with the late Dr. Leonardo Olschki.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to those who reviewed the 1956 edition in various scholarly journals. From these reviews I gathered many useful suggestions, which I have incorporated into this revised edition. The reviewers were: C. J. Bishko, Pedro Borges, O.F.M., Angelico Chaves, O.F.M., the late Clarence Haring, Michael B. McCloskey, O.F.M., Luis Nicolau D’Olwer, Bobert Ricard, Francis Borgia Steck, O.F.M., Isidorius A. Villapadierna, O.P.M. and Wilcomb E. Washburn.

Among those who were outstandingly generous with their advice and their encouragement both in their publications and in several personal meetings with me were Robert Ricard and Marcel Bataillon. Howard Kaminsky and Ross Parmenter also proved to be informed commentators of the first edition. I should also like to extend my appreciation to my friends and colleagues of the Academy of American Franciscan History. It is my understanding that the Academy will soon publish an English translation of Mendieta’s Historia eclesiástica indiana.

Some of the research and the writing for this revised edition was done in London in the fall and early winter of 1967-68.1 have received much assistance and unfailing courtesy from the staffs of the libraries of the University of London and the British Museum. I am deeply grateful to all my friends in London who made my stay there both enjoyable and stimulating. The writing of the second edition was made possible by a research grant from the University of Wisconsin Ibero-American Ford Fund and the Research Committee of the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin.

Grateful though I am to all those who criticized the 1956 edition, I freely assume sole responsibility for the final text in this edition.

Madison, Wisconsin JOHN LEDDY PHELAN

September, 1968

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER I THE UNIVERSAL MONARCHY OF THE SPANISH HABSBURGS

CHAPTER II THE APOCALYPSE IN THE AGE OF DISCOVERY

CHAPTER III HERNÁN CORTÉS, THE MOSES OF THE NEW WORLD

CHAPTER IV GERONIMO DE MENDIETA AND CHARLES V

CHAPTER V THE INDIAN CHURCH AND THE PRIMITIVE APOSTOLIC CHURCH

CHAPTER VI THE INDIANS, GENUS ANGELICUM

CHAPTER VII THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM IN THE AGE OF DISCOVERY

CHAPTER VIII THE SILVER AGE OF PHILIP II

CHAPTER IX THE HISPANIZATION VERSUS THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE INDIANS

CHAPTER X THE EPIDEMICS—WHO IS BEING PUNISHED?

CHAPTER XI THE REPARTIMIENTO— THE WORST AND MOST HARMFUL PESTILENCE OF ALL

CHAPTER XII THE FALL OF THE INDIAN JERUSALEM

CHAPTER XIII JUAN DE TORQUEMADA’S MONARQUÍA INDIANA

CHAPTER XIV THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: THE PURITANS, THE PORTUGUESE AND THE CREOLES

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

PROLOGUE

GERÓNIMO DE MENDIETA, O.F.M., the author of the Historia eclesiástica indiana, was born in Vitoria, Spain in 1525 and died in New Spain (Mexico) in 1604. According to a contemporary biographer, Juan de Torquemada, O.F.M., he was the last of forty legitimate children that his father sired by his three wives?¹ As Ramón Iglesia observed, Mendieta fue digno hijo de padre tan vigoroso, aunque su energía marchara por otros cauces? He took the Franciscan habit in Spain at an early age. In 1554 he arrived in New Spain, where, with the exception of one trip to Spain (1570-1573), he devoted the rest of his long life to missionary labors among the Indians.

This essay is not a biography. Admirable biographies of Mendieta have already been written by others? One of my purposes is to revivify the peculiarly Franciscan world that Mendieta inhabited; another is to set forth the essentially medieval origin of his thought as well as to point out that some of his ideas foreshadowed conceptions that were to be popular in the eighteenth century and even later. I am Mendieta’s expositor, not his advocate or his accuser.

One of the last flowerings of medieval Franciscan mysticism, the two apexes of which were the image of the Apocalypse and the sanctification of poverty, can be found in the writings of Gerónimo de Mendieta. His temperamental inclination toward this tradition was intensified by the severe demographic and economic crisis through which New Spain was passing during the last decades of the sixteenth century. If this essay proves anything at all, it demonstrates the truth of an aphorism that cannot be stressed too often. That is, that the Middle Ages sang its swan song in the New World in the sixteenth century?

[1]

PARTI

ESCHATOLOGY OF THE DISCOVERY AND

CONQUEST OF THE NEW WORLD

1 For notes to the Prologue see p. 129.

CHAPTER I

THE UNIVERSAL MONARCHY

OF THE SPANISH HABSBURGS

No COLONIAL empire in modern times was built upon so extensive a philosophical and theological foundation as that empire which the Spaniards created for themselves in the New World. During the very years when the conquistadores were exploring and colonizing the unknown wilderness of two continents and taking by storm the exotic and indigenous civilizations of the Aztecs and the Incas, many historians and theologians in Spain were defining the means that ought to be employed to secure their conquest as well as the ultimate purposes for which this new empire ought to exist. In acquiring her overseas empire Spain used her conscience as well as the sword. The fact that the Spanish empire was consciously and simultaneously constructed with ideas as well as deeds can be attributed in no small measure to the historical coincidence that the age of Spain’s greatest intellectual vitality, the siglo de oro of the literary historians, corresponded with the period in which Spain’s military, political, and economic power reached its zenith.

There are three main axes around which revolved most of the ideas of that huge corpus of political-ecclesiastical theory which enveloped the creation of Spain’s overseas empire. One point of view was non- ecclesiastical. Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda stressed the civilizing mission of Spain toward the Indians. López de Gomara, on the other hand, made much of the terrestrial immortality that the greatest of the conquistadores, Hernan Cortes, won by his exploits. Certain ideas identified with Italian humanism influenced the articulation of this point of view.¹

The second axis was constructed by the Dominican theologians in Spain. Bartolomé de Las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria were its two most influential representatives, but Domingo de Soto and Melchor Cano were also major figures in the movement. Boman and canon law and Aristotelian logic were the key orientations of this pattern of thought. Although all the Dominicans underscored the importance of converting the Indians, otherworldliness as such was never a predominant feature of their essentially ecclesiastical and juridical conception of the conquest. The Dominicans often preoccupied themselves with questions relating to the nature of Spanish sovereignty over the Indies.

[5]

A major tenet of the Dominican school was the principle that Spanish laymen were not justified in exploiting native labor under the pretext of Christianizing the Indians.

Vitoria brought out the this-worldly aspect of the ecclesiastical justification of the conquest. In the process of defining the rights of Charles V to the New World, Vitoria revealed himself as the spokesman of modern internationalism, not Christian universalism. His ultimate frame of reference was that all the nations and the peoples of the globe belong to one world community.² The gospel ought to be preached to the Indians, but the Spaniards must respect the political sovereignty and the private property that the Indian nations and citizens possessed by virtue of their membership in the world community of nations.’ The common denominator of Vitoria’s world community, founded on the jus gentium of Roman law, is the nation-state—an idea which is the kernel of modern internationalism—whereas in medieval Christian universalism the common denominator is man.⁴

Because Las Casas was preoccupied with the means that ought to be used in converting the heathen, he on occasion put more emphasis on Christian universalism. Vitoria’s conception of the world community of nations, nevertheless, was deeply interwoven with Las Casas’ thinking. His view of the conquest of America was essentially ecclesiastical. He saw the problems of his day through the eyes of a canon lawyer.*

In the writings of Gerónimo de Mendieta one encounters perhaps the most articulate expression of the third compound of ideas relating to the New World in the sixteenth century. Mendieta was responsible for formulating what must be considered the mystical interpretation of the conquest.’ Both Las Casas and Mendieta were the heirs of the distinctive but interrelated traditions of their respective orders. The keys that unlock the doors of Las Casas’ mind are Aristotelian logic and Roman and ecclesiastical jurisprudence, philosophical systems which were closely linked with the Dominican Order since the time of St. Dominic himself. These concepts will never lead to an understanding of a mystical mind such as Mendieta’s. His apocalyptical, Messianic, and prophetic mysticism had its roots in the life of St. Francis himself and in the Spiritual and Observant movements among the Franciscans in the Middle Ages. The methods of exegesis—the typological interpretation of the Bible—provide the most reliable guides with which to explore the peculiarly Franciscan world which Mendieta inhabited.

The method of proving by analogy, popular in the Middle Ages and alien since then, was based upon the conviction that the Holy Scriptures contained most of the knowledge that was possible for man to grasp. The language of the Bible under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost was thought to convey truths which were beyond the power and the scope of natural reason. A complex system of Biblical interpretation was evolved to explain the ultimate meaning of these divine mysteries. The literal or the historical sense of the Bible was the truth really, actually, and immediately intended by the Holy Ghost. The typical meaning of the Sacred Scriptures derived its name from the fact that it was based upon the figurative or the typical relation of Biblical persons, objects, or events to a new truth. The new truth is called the antitype; its Biblical correspondent is the type. It is spiritual in that it bears the same relationship to the literal meaning as the soul does to the body. It is mystical because of the more occult nature of its meaning. The typical sense is the scriptural truth which the Holy Ghost intended to convey really, actually, but not immediately. There are three levels of the typical meaning, each based upon the character of the type and the antitype. The antitype is either a truth to be believed (allegorical) or a boon to be hoped for (anagogical) or again a virtue to be practiced (tropologica!).⁷

Mendieta’s exegesis of the parable from Luke 14 is his vision of the universal monarchy of the Spanish Habsburgs:

There was a man who gave a great supper, and sent out many invitations. And when the time came for his supper, he sent one of his own servants telling the invited guests to come, for all was now ready. All of them with one accord, began making excuses. I have bought a farm, the first said to him, and I must needs go and look over it; I pray thee count me excused. And another said, I have bought five pair of oxen, and I am on my way to make trial of them; I pray thee, count me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and so I am unable to come. The servant came back and told his master all this, whereupon the host fell into a rage, and said to his servant, Quick, go out into the streets and lanes of the city; bring in the poor, the cripples, the blind and the lame. And when the servant told him, Sir, all has been done according to thy command, but there is room left still, the master said to his servant, Go out into the highways and the hedgerows, and give them no choice but to come in, that my house may be filled. I tell you, none of those who were first invited shall taste of my supper. Luke 14: 16-24®

The host is Christ, according to Mendieta. The supper that He is preparing is the banquet of eternal happiness in Heaven. The three invitations to the guests symbolize the different methods of converting the people of the three principal faiths that still remain on the margin of Christianity—the Jews, the Moslems, and the Gentiles. The hour of the supper is the end of the world. The conversion of these three groups means that the Last Judgment is soon to come? For their conversion would fulfill God’s sole purpose for having created man:

We well know (if we wish to consider the matter) that this business and task of searching, calling and procuring souls for Heaven is of such importance that our Almighty God… has done nothing else (in our way of speaking) during almost seven thousand years since He created the first man. By means of His illuminations, warnings and punishments, by means of His servants the patriarchs and prophets, by means of His own son in person and later by means of the apostles, the martyrs, the preachers and the saints, God has been calling all the peoples of the earth to hasten to prepare themselves to enter and to enjoy that everlasting feast that wiU be endless. This vocation of God shaU not cease until the number of the predestined is reached, which according to the vision of St. John must include all nations, all languages and all peoples.¹⁰

Mendieta’s words are a restatement of the popular medieval belief that God had originally created man to fill up the depopulated ranks of Paradise caused by the expulsion of the fallen angels. Original sin had frustrated this intention. Christ’s atonement had made possible the resumption of this task.

Each of the invitations to the guests is the prototype of the different methods which should be used in calling the Jews, the Moslems, and the Gentiles. The first summons corresponds to the Jews, who are labeled perfidious.¹¹ The truth of the Word need only be announced to the chosen people of the Old Testament, who sin out of pure malice. Hence the simple invitation would suffice. The second invitation corresponds to the false Moslems. The mere preaching of the gospel would not be enough, as it was for the Jews. The ministers of the Church must persuade the Moslems, who had some knowledge of the Bible, by constant examples of right living and good works. Some degree of compulsion was necessary for the followers of the false prophet. The most forceful kind of persuasion was required, however, for the Gentiles; for unlike the Jews, or the Moslems to a lesser extent, the Gentiles had no contact with the Sacred Scriptures:

For this reason God said to his servant in reference to the Gentiles: Give them no choice but to come in. He did not mean that the Gentiles should be compelled by harsh ill-treatment (as some do which only shocks and alienates them); but He meant that the Gentiles should be compelled in the sense of being guided by the power and the authority of fathers who have the faculty to discipline their children for committing evil and harmful actions and to reward them for good and beneficial deeds, especially in respect to all those matters relating to the obligations necessary for eternal salvation."

The parable in Luke 14 has figured in some of the great debates of Christian history. In his controversy with the Donatists, Augustine of Hippo used this parable. In the late seventeenth century the same parable figured prominently in the polemic between Pierre Bayle and the Jesuit publicist Maimbourg, during the course of which Bayle formulated his sweeping defense of religious toleration." Luke 14 also happens to be a significant parable for the ideological history of Spanish imperialism. Many decades before Mendieta wrote his Historia, Las Casas and Sepúlveda in the Valladolid debate (1550-1551) clashed over its exegesis.

In El único modo de atraer a todos los pueblos a la verdadera fe Las Casas insisted that the Church in every age is bound to follow rigorously the missionary methods that Christ himself established for the benefit of the Twelve Apostles. Since the original apostles preached solely by means of peaceful and rational persuasion, employing no coercion whatsoever, it is not licit for the Spaniards to wage war against the infidels of the New World, even for the purpose of converting them. Las Casas cited Matthew 10: 14, with evident approval: and wherever they will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that city or house; I promise you, it shall go less hard with the land of Sodom and Gomorrha at the day of judgment, than with that city. Only God is entitled to punish those infidels who refuse to listen to the Truth.¹* Las Casas contended that the parable in Luke did not sanction external compulsion against the Gentiles by means of war, but rather it meant internal compulsion through the inspiration of God and His angels.

Sepúlveda’s exegesis is quite different. He suggested that the servant’s first invitation—introduc eos—corresponded to the Primitive Apostolic Church, that is, the Christian Church before the reign of the Emperor Constantine (311-337). Coercion then was not used. The servant’s third invitation—compelle eos—corresponded to the Church after Constantine. During the reign of that emperor there emerged for the first time one unified Christian society, Christianorum Imperium. This union meant that the Church acquired a secular arm, which under the legitimate authorization of the spiritual power could employ force to convert the heathen."

Part of the drama of the spiritual conquest of the New World comes to light when these three different exegeses of the parable of Luke are placed in juxtaposition. Sepúlveda, a this-worldly humanist, and Mendieta, an otherworldly mystic, agree on the necessity to use force to convert the infidels. There is, however, a difference of emphasis. Mendieta would limit the use of force. Sepúlveda expressed no anxiety on this score. The military campaign waged by Cortes against Tenochtitlán (1519-1521) was divinely inspired, licit, and necessary, according to Mendieta. The Aztec state and its pagan religion had to be overthrown. Once organized pagan opposition had been routed, the further use of force was superfluous and even harmful, for it would only alienate the natives. The paternal relationship between friars and Indians, a basic idea in Mendieta’s thinking, would be sufficient to consolidate the conversion. Two or three Spanish garrisons in New Spain would provide a satisfactory guarantee against the remote possibility of an Indian rebellion, according to Mendieta."

Mendieta’s defense of the moderate use of coercion was typical of many other Franciscan missionaries in New Spain. Motolinia was one of the notable advocates of this idea. This attitude stressed the practical necessity of destroying paganism as the prerequisite for missionizing. The Franciscans’ partiality for Cortes ought not to be overlooked. The Dominican theologians, however, usually minimized and often repudiated the principle of force. Obviously this divergence of opinion has something to do with the intense rivalry between these two mendicant orders. The Dominican school was composed mainly of gifted theologians who taught at the University of Salamanca, whereas the Franciscans who wrote about these matters were active missionaries among the Indians. The a priori, bookish note characteristic of the Dominican school was totally lacking among the Franciscan chroniclers in New Spain, who were empirical in their missionary approach and eclectic in their methods.

Mendieta implicitly but unmistakably repudiated Las Casas’ famous a priori postulate that there is an only method of converting all the races of mankind in all times and in all places. Mendieta’s defense of a minimum of coercion would have aroused Las Casas’ ire. The only Las Casas-like note in Mendieta’s thinking is that ill-treatment of the natives would alienate them from the new religion, but this is an idea that both the Dominican theologians in Spain and the Franciscan missionaries in New Spain arrived at independently.

Mendieta, Sepúlveda, and Las Casas justified their own points of view historically. In contrast with Las Casas, Sepúlveda and Mendieta agreed that the non-Christians are to be called in different manners. Sepúlveda stressed the temporal factor, that is, the contrast between the pre-Constaninian and the post-Constaninian churches. Mendieta put a decisive emphasis upon the spatial factor. Compulsion was increased in proportion to the distance that separated the Jews, the Moslems, and the Gentiles from the Holy Land. Geographical proximity determined the relative knowledge of the Scriptures of each of