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Liturgy, Devotion, and Religious Reform in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Brian R. Larkin
Brian R. Larkin*
Affiliation:
St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota
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Extract

On February 16, 1696, Doña Inés Velarde, the widow of Capitán Don Miguel de Vera, a former notary of the Mexico City Cabildo, redacted her will before Juan de Condarco y Caceres, a notary public in New Spain’s capital. Despite the typhus (matlazáhuatl) epidemic that ravaged the city in that year, Doña Inés was in good health. She had carefully prepared for the pious act of will writing, issuing over thirty meticulously designed religious directives in her last will and testament. Two directives in particular reveal much about colonial Mexican religious sensibilities. In the thirty-seventh clause of her twenty-page will, she founded a perpetual act of charity with the capital of 3,000 pesos.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , April 2004 , pp. 493 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2004 

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References

1 Will of Inés Velarde, notarized by Condarco, Juan de y Caceres, , Mexico City, 16 February 1696, Archivo General de Notarías del Districto Federal, Mexico City (hereinafter AN), Notary #122, vol. 793, fols. 49–59.Google Scholar

2 The historiography on Spanish lay devotions is growing. For a sampling of this literature, see n. 3 below. Much work on lay, Spanish religiosity, however, focuses on heterodoxy. See, for example, Curcio-Nagy, Linda, “Rosa de Escalante’s Private Party: Popular Female Religiosity in Colonial Mexico City” in Women in the Inquisition, Spain and the New World ed. Giles, Mary E. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Holler, Jacqueline, “More Sins than the Queen of England: Marina de San Miguel before the Mexican Inquisition” in Women in the Inquisition Google Scholar. Studies of Spanish monastic, especially female monastic, piety are numerous. For a brief overview, see, Lavrin, Asunción, “Female Religious” in Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America ed. Hobermann, Louisa Schell and Socolow, Susan Migden (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986)Google Scholar. Attention to indigenous religion in colonial Mexico enjoys a long history. For a concise, interpretative overview, see Taylor, William B., Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 47–73.Google Scholar

3 This insight calls for an expansion of the concept of “local religion”—a concept that implicitly deemphasizes the ritual practices of the universal Church aimed at ultimate questions of salvation as it celebrates highly localized and, in most cases, instrumental, extra-liturgical functions. See Christian, William A., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Taylor, William utilizes the concept of local religion in his study of parish priests and rural parishioners in Bourbon Mexico. Magistrates of the Sacred, pp. 47–73, 239–300Google Scholar. Taylor, however, examines religious practice in largely indigenous villages, where the gap between Church-prescribed ritual practice and local devotions was certainly wider than in predominantly Spanish population centers.

4 For good introductions to the process of religious reform, see Brading, David, “Tridentine Catholicism and Enlightened Despotism in Bourbon Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Studies 15 (1983), pp. 1–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brading, David, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 492–513Google Scholar; and Brading, David, Church and State in Bourbon Mexico: The Diocese of Michoacán, 1749–1810 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other authors primarily interested in questions of social control or ritual have also examined religious reform as parts of larger works. See, for example, Viqueira Albán, Juan Pedro, ¿Relajados o reprimidos? diversiones públicas y vida social en la ciudad de México durante el Siglo de las Luces (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987), pp. 132–160 Google Scholar; Ayluardo, Clara García, “Confraternity, Cult and Crown in Colonial Mexico City” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1989), pp. 173–206, 249–282Google Scholar; and Ayluardo, Clara Garcia, “A World of Images: Cult, Ritual, and Society in Colonial Mexico City,” in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico ed. Beezley, William H., Martin, Cheryl English, and French, William (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1994)Google Scholar; and Curcio-Nagy, Linda A., “Giants and Gypsies: Corpus Christi in Colonial Mexico City” in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance. Pamela Voekel has recently published the most complete history of religious reform in Bourbon Mexico Google Scholar, examining controversies over cemetery burials, the medicalization of death, and the rise of the bounded, autonomous individual. Alone Before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity in Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).

5 For other aspects of late-eighteenth-century religious reform in Mexico see, Larkin, Brian R., “The Splendor of Worship: Baroque Catholicism, Religious Reform, and Last Wills and Testaments in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 8 (Fall 1999): pp. 405–442 Google ScholarPubMed; Larkin, Brian R., “Baroque and Reformed Catholicism: Religious and Cultural Change in Eighteenth-Century Mexico” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1999).Google Scholar

6 In speaking of the rationale for fasting, the Bishop of Puebla, y Fuero, Francisco Fabian, remarked that through abstinence Christians formed a “union and company with the mortification and cross of Christ.” Colección de providencias diocesanas del obispado de la Puebla de Los Ángeles, hechas y ordenadas… (Puebla: Real Seminario Palafoxiano, 1770), pp. 216–218.Google Scholar

7 Ramsey, Ann W., Liturgy, Politics, and Salvation: The Catholic League in Paris and the Nature of Catholic Reform, 1540–1630 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1999), pp. 51–53.Google Scholar

8 For a liturgist’s argument in favor of expanding the definition of liturgy to include lay organized and led ritual actions outside the bounds of the sacraments, see Flanigan, C. Clifford, Ashley, Kathleen, and Sheingorn, Pamela, “Liturgy as Social Performance: Expanding the Definitions” in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church ed. Heffernan, Thomas J. and Ann Matter, E. (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 2001).Google Scholar

9 The difference between clerical and lay liturgical piety was a matter of degree. The priest at the altar truly consecrated the bread and wine, making Christ physically present in the world. Other forms of liturgical devotions constructed “unions” with holy figures and formed a mystical identity between actor and holy figure but did not make the holy figure physically present within the world.

10 On the question of images and the Eucharist as loci of the real presence of divinity see Christian, Local Religion, pp. 23–69; and Rubin, Miri, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 12–77.Google Scholar

11 Other concerns, such as a desire for sociability and/or the wish to display social status, as well as the need to attain grace, certainly encouraged Catholics to perform religious activities.

12 Schroeder, H. J. O.P., Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1978), p. 73.Google Scholar

13 Schroeder, Canons, pp. 145–146.

14 Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 12–13.

15 Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).Google Scholar

16 Miri Rubin argues that women and men practiced Eucharistic devotions during the late-medieval period and critiques Bynum for essentializing female piety. Corpus Christi, p. 9.

17 Ramsey, Ann Woodson, “Piety in Paris during the League, 1585–1590: An Urban Community in Transition” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1991), pp. 210–1Google Scholar; and Black, Christopher F., Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 26–30.Google Scholar

18 Flynn, Maureen, Sacred Charity: Confraternities and Social Welfare in Spain, 1400–1700 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 126–134 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Christian, Local Religion, pp. 185–186; and Martínez, Alicia Bazarte, Las cofradías de españoles en la ciudad de México (1526-1860) (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 1989).Google Scholar

19 Concilio III provincial mexicano: celebrado en México el año 1585, confirmado en Roma por el papa Sixto V, y mandado observar por el gobierno español en diversas reales órdenes (Barcelona: Miró y D. Marsá, 1870), p. 195.Google Scholar

20 Brading, The First America, pp. 236–237.

21 Boneta, José, Gritos del purgatorio y medios para callarlos: libro primero y segundo (Puebla: Diego Fernández de León, 1708), pp. 234–235 Google Scholar, unpaginated novena.

22 Published novenas and devotional exercises regularly instructed practitioners to pray with arms outstretched in the form of a cross, fast, and scourge themselves. See, for example, Cabrera, Cayetano de y Quintero, , Hebdomadario trino, exercicios devotos, y obsequiosos desagravios a la santissima, amabilissima, y missericordiosissima TRINIDAD, por la execrable ingratitud, y grossero olvido de los mortales, en el mas pronto obsequio, devocion, y agradecimiento debido a tan soberano mysterio. Dispuestos, y prepartidos por las tres semanas anteriores a la Dominica de la Santissima Trinidad. (Mexico City: Viuda de Don Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1745), pp. 14, 20, 26, 29, 42, 48Google Scholar; and Exercicios espirituales de el divino infante Jesus, disposicion, que una alma devota de este mysterio, ha observado en el santo adviento, comenzando desde el dia veinte y dos de noviembre, hasta cumplir treinta y tres dias, que son los previos a la pasqua. a devocion de un zeloso del aprovechamiento de las almas (Mexico City: D. Felipe de Zuniga, y Ontiveros, 1774), pp. 33, 40–41, 43–44, 52–53.

23 For the history of this catechism, see Burrus, Ernest J. S.J., “The Author of the Mexican Council Catechisms,” Americas 15 (1958), pp. 171–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Every faithful Christian is strongly obliged to have wholehearted devotion to the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ, our light, because on it he sought to die to redeem us of our sins and the evil enemy. And therefore, you are to be become accustomed to sign and cross yourself, making three crosses. The first on the forehead, so that God may free us from evil thoughts. The second on the mouth, so that God may free us from evil words. The third on the chest, so that God may free us from evil deeds. Saying the following: by the sign of the Holy Cross, free us Lord, Our God, from our Enemies. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, Amen. Ripalda, Gerónimo, Catecismo y exposicion breve de la doctrina Christiana… (Puebla: Pedro de la Rosa, 1784), pp. 1–3 Google Scholar. The earliest complete Spanish version of this work I encountered in the National Library in Mexico is the 1784 edition.

25 Ripalda, Catecismo, pp. 38–39.

26 This minority was predominantly Spanish. Only 2% of wills identified the testator as non-Spanish. Moreover, men were twice as likely as women to prepare a will. Although notaries did not record occupational data in over 40% of will sample, it is clear that merchants (large and petty), priests, artisans, professionals—such as lawyers, administrators, notaries, physicians and teachers—and rural land owners wrote most of the wills recorded in eighteenth-century Mexico City.

27 Will of Antonio Marco de Mendieta, notarized by Condarco, Juan de y Caceres, , Mexico City, 1 December 1696, AN, Notary #122, vol. 793, fols. 485–488.Google Scholar

28 Will of María Josefa de la Cotera y Calvo, notarized by y Aguilar, Francisco Calapiz, Mexico City, 15 Feb. 1813, AN, Notary #155, vol. 924, fols. 82–86 Google Scholar. Silvia Marina Arrom finds that mourners hired boys from the Hospicio de Pobres to accompany and pray for the dead into the last third of the nineteenth century. Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774–1871 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 201, 275.

29 Will of Francisco Javier de Aguirre, notarized by Pozo, Juan Manuel, Mexico City, 18 Aug. 1813, AN, Notary #522, vol. 3511, fols. 117–120.Google Scholar

30 Will of Bernardo Juan Arias, notarized by de Alba, Ignacio Javier, Mexico City, 3 Aug. 1779, AN, Notary #31, vol. 264, fols. 36–38.Google Scholar

31 Will of Maria Antonia Sandoval García Bravo, notarized by y Cabanillas, Manuel Ymaz, Mexico City, 24 Dec. 1813, AN, Notary #738, vol. 5229, fols. 89–91.Google Scholar

32 Maureen Flynn discusses symbolic forms of charity in Sacred Charity, pp. 44–72.

33 Hope, D. M., “The Medieval Western Rites.” In The Study of Liturgy, ed. Jones, Cheslyn, Wainwright, Geoffrey, and SJ, Edward Yarnold. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 238.Google Scholar

34 See, for example, the rite of burial and the rite of giving communion after the mass proper, Venegas, Miguel, Manual de párrocos para administrar los santos sacramentos y exercer otras funciones ecclesiasticas conforme al ritual romano (Mexico City: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1731), pp. 54, 92–98.Google Scholar

35 The Third Mexican Provincial Council recommended this practice. Concilio III, p. 334. The Fourth Mexican Provincial Council stated that churches should retain the custom, indicating that it was actually practiced. Concilio provincial mexicano IV. Celebrado en la ciudad de México el año de 1771. Se imprime completo por vez primera de orden del illmo. y rmo. sr dr. d. Rafael Sabás Comacho, IIIer. obispo de Querétaro (Queretaro: Imprenta de la Escuela de Artes, 1898), p. 168.

36 Will of Jacinto del Conal y Rozo, notarized by y Moctezuma, José Cano, Mexico City, 4 Sept. 1813, AN, Notary #158, vol. 960, fols. 50–51.Google Scholar

37 Will of Francisco José Ponce de León Enrríquez Ladrón de Guevara, notarized by de Anaya, José Antonio, Mexico City, 23 Dec. 1737, AN, Notary #23, vol. 186, fols. 313–317.Google Scholar

38 Will of José Domingo de la Peña, notarized by de Cosgaya, Toribio Fernández, Mexico City, 5 Nov. 1737, AN, Notary #235, vol. 1466, fols. 333–334.Google Scholar

39 Will of Juan de Mata Barbosa, notarized by Troncoso, José Antonio, Mexico City, 5 June 1779, AN, Notary #670, vol. 4534, vol. 48–50.Google Scholar

40 Will of José Núñez de Azebado, notarized by Espinosa, Ramón de, Mexico City, 13 Jan. 1696, AN, Notary #218, vol. 1419, fols. 2–8.Google Scholar

41 Will of José Antonio Rodriguez, notarized by y Cabanillas, Manuel Ymaz, Mexico City, 6 April 1813, AN, Notary #738, vol. 5229, fols. 26–27.Google Scholar

42 Will of Juana María de Virruega, notarized by Arroyo, Juan Antonio, Mexico City, 9 Nov. 1737, AN, Notary #19, vol. 134, fols. 724–728.Google Scholar

43 Will of Sor María Josefa del Niño Jesús (Marfa Josefa Fernández Pinta), notarized by Arroyo, Mariano Buenaventura, Mexico City, 14 Sept. 1779, AN, Notary #29, vol. 236, fols. 196–199.Google Scholar

44 Will of María Dolores de la Cruz Saravia, notarized by Moya, José María, Mexico City, 31 July 1813, AN, Notary #425, vol. 2820, fols. 115–118.Google Scholar

45 Joint Will of Francisca García del Valle y Araujo and Baltazar de Vidaurre, notarized by Ochoa, José Manuel, Mexico City, 2 June 1779, AN, Notary #480, vol. 3264, fols. 41–43.Google Scholar

46 Will of Josefa Joaquina Ramírez, notarized by León, Diego Jacinto, Mexico City, 11 May 1779, AN, Notary #350, vol. 2307, fols. 161–164.Google Scholar

47 For the Saturday office of the Virgin, see Harper, John, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy: From the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 134–135.Google Scholar

48 de Haro, Alonso Núñez y Peralta, , Sermones escogidos, pláticas espirituales privadas, y dos pastorales, anteriormente impresas en México (Madrid: Hija de Ibarra, 1806), 2:260.Google Scholar

49 Núñez de Haro y Peralta, Sermones, 2:256-257.

50 Núñez de Haro y Peralta, Sermones, 1:211.

51 Núñez de Haro y Peralta, Sermones, 3:261-263.

52 Saenger, Paul, “Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages,” in The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, ed. Chartier, Roger, trans. Cochrane, Lydia G. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 145–146.Google Scholar

53 Seed, Patricia, To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 47–55.Google Scholar

54 The campaign to devalue public acts of penitential piety was universal in Catholic countries in the eighteenth century. See Chadwick, Owen, The Popes and the European Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 33–36.Google Scholar

55 Concilio provincial mexicano IV, p. 161.

56 In seventeenth-century Spain socially prominent groups monopolized public self-flagellation. Flynn, Sacred Charity, pp. 127–133.

57 Concilio provincial mexicano IV, p. 161.

58 Bynum Walker, Holy Feast, pp. 245–259.

59 See Schroeder, Canons, p. 254; Concilio 111, pp. 341–346. People over the age of 21 were required to take only one meal at midday on indicated days throughout the liturgical year. Furthermore, they were to refrain from consuming eggs, cheese, milk, and lard during the 40 days of Lent and to abstain from meat every Friday and Saturday during the year.

60 Concilio III, pp. 341–343.

61 Concilio provincial mexicano IV, p. 172.

62 Fabián y Fuero, Colección de providencias, pp. 216–218.

63 Fabián y Fuero, Colección de providencias, p. 514.

64 Lorenzana, Francisco Antonio y Butrón, , Cartas pastorales y edictos del Illmo Señor D. Francisco Antonio Lorenzana y Buitron, Arzobispo de México, (Mexico City: Joseph Antonio de Hogal, 1770), p. 19.Google Scholar

65 Decree of Archbishop Alonso Nunez de Haro y Peralta concerning fasting, Mexico City, 13 February 1787, Archivo de la Catedral Metropolitana, Mexico City, Edictos, Caja 6.

66 See Concilio III, p. 422. Some printed documents on the Church in the nineteenth century are included in the edition of the proceedings of the Third Mexican Provincial Council I consulted. The cathedral chapter of Mexico allowed all to partake of any food (meat and dairy products) on days of partial abstinence but did not allow the faithful to eat freely on fast days.

67 Núñez de Haro y Peralta, Sermones, 1:284.

68 In fact, the post-Tridentine Church encouraged devotions like reading prayer books, lighting candles, signing hymns, and praying the rosary during mass. S. J., Clifford Howell, “From Trent to Vatican II,” in The Study of Liturgy, pp. 244–245 Google Scholar; Klauser, Theoder, A Short History of the Western Liturgy: An Account and Some Reflections, 2nd Edition, trans. Halliburton, John (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 120 Google Scholar; and Chadwick, Popes, p. 72.

69 Núñez de Haro y Peralta, Sermones, 1:220.

70 Saenger, “Books of Hours,” p. 149; Boneta, Gritos del Purgatorio, pp. 178–179.

71 Catecismo para uso de los párrocos hecho por el IV concilio provincial mexicano, celebrado año de 1772 (Mexico City: Joseph de Jauregui, 1772), pp. 292–294.

72 Schroeder, Canons, p. 151; Concilio III, pp. 312–313. The masses of San Amador were a series of thirty-three masses celebrated on specific days to different saints, each mass performed with a fixed number of candles. The masses of San Vicente were one of the many names given to trentals, or a series of thirty or more masses usually said consecutively over thirty or more days by one priest, and better known in English as the masses of St. Gregory. Late-medieval devotional tracts attributed extraordinary efficacy to both of these—and many other—mass cycles in freeing souls from purgatory. For a discussion of late-medieval mass cycles see Gil, Fernando Martínez, Muerte y sociedad en la España de los Austrias (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1993), pp. 209–240.Google Scholar

73 Concilio provincial mexicano IV, p. 158.

74 Concilio provincial mexicano IV, p. 164–165.

75 Núñez de Haro y Peralta, Sermones, 1:290.

76 Performative and cognitive approaches to Catholic practice in eighteenth-century Mexico City, however, were not mutually exclusive. Many testators included liturgical and non-liturgical pious directives in their wills.

77 The sample consists of 246 wills from 1696, 248 from 1737, 222 from 1779, and 244 from 1813. I chose these years using the demographic crises tables from Pescador, Juan Javier, De bautizados a fieles difuntos: familia y mentalidades en una parroquia urbana, Santa Catarina de México, 1568–1820 (Mexico City: Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Demográficos y de Desarrollo Urbano, 1992), pp. 95, 103.Google Scholar

78 I studied 68 percent of all wills written in 1696, 75 percent in 1737, 97 percent in 1779, and 87 percent in 1813.1 consulted fifteen notaries (33 percent) of all active notaries for 1696; twenty-four (36 percent) for 1737; forty-four (67 percent) for 1779; and nineteen (42 percent) for 1813. For a discussion of notarial clientele networks, see Larkin,“Baroque and Reformed Catholicism,” pp. 132–133.

79 The exception is 1779. I consulted all notaries who proved wills in that year. Twenty of these notaries proved less than three wills.