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aspect, or they painted lewd persons with the attributes and dress of saints. During lent the inhabitants of the capital used to perform pilgrimage to a place called the Humilladero, on foot and in silent meditation. When Serna came he found that this journey of penance had been transformed into a carnival march, wherein the wealthy appeared in carriages, and others in convivial groups, all bent on enjoyment. To this the prelate sought to put a stop, under threat of excommunication, and he also did his best to check drunkenness and other vices, though herein the corrupt and unfriendly officials under the weak Guadalcázar offered no assistance.

The zealous introduction of reforms by Gelves had at first won the admiring coöperation of Serna,19 but when he found them extending too far within ecclesiastic precincts impatience turned into open hostility, for the prelate was exceedingly jealous concerning his prerogatives, and possessed of a stubbornness which readily developed into unreasonable zeal. He took in dudgeon the well meant counsels concerning the reform of abuses in the ecclesiastical court, and his resentment was increased by the decision in the matter of doctrinas. On several occasions he forgot the dignity of his station, and that the viceroy was the personal representative of the king whom both served. In the palaces of the great, tale-bearers are never lacking, and reports of the prelatic outbursts lost nothing in the recital, but Gelves, desiring to avoid a rupture, took no notice of them. This moderation, however, did not produce the effect desired, for the prelate began not only to censure the acts of the viceroy with unseemly freedom, but to lean openly to the cause of those opposed to him, as though a formal compact had been entered into between them.

Thus, in the short space of two years Gelves, while he had restored in a signal manner the outward observance of the law, had failed to establish order

19 See his letters in Doc. Hist. Mex., série ii. tom. ii.-iii., passim.

·

where order was most needed, and at the close of 1623 he found arrayed against him the archbishop and the friars, the audiencia and the cabildo of Mexico. The lower class of the people knew no will but that of the church, when that will was signified; the upper class, composed almost entirely of men with but a single interest, that of plundering the royal treasury, was manipulated by the two great corporations. Against such a combination any man protected only by an autocrat six thousand miles away must have been powerless, and it needed but the most trivial circumstance to bring about an outbreak. The occasion was not long wanting.

In September 1622, Manuel Soto, a person employed at the public granary of Mexico, denounced to the viceroy Melchor Perez de Varaez, alcalde mayor of Metepec,20 accusing him of forcing the Indians of his jurisdiction to purchase grain of him at an exorbitant price, and to sell to him their cattle and produce at merely nominal rates, as well as of other oppressive acts. The viceroy caused the charges to be investigated, and the proofs being irrefutable, ordered the less important to be made grounds of action in Mexico while the more grave he referred to the India council. Meanwhile Varaez had been under arrest in a private house, and Gelves now ordered that, under bonds, he should be given the freedom of the city. Varaez demurred to this, alleging that bonds should not be exacted from him for a cause so trivial, but the viceroy peremptorily ordered compliance,21 and referred

20 The count of La Cortina says that his jurisdiction was that of Ixtlahuaca. Doc. Hist. Mex., série ii. tom. iii. 62; Alcaraz, in Liceo Mex., ii. 122, makes the same mistaken statement. The two places are near to one another. Varaez was a person of some consequence and a knight of Santiago. Sosa, Espicop. Mex., 60. He was the intimate friend of the powerful oidores Pedro de Vergara Gaviria and Galdos de Valencia, who through their influence with their associates in that body had procured for him an appointment as corregidor of Mexico. The fiscal had claimed that he could not hold both offices. On appeal to the India Council that body decided that he was incompetent, and condemned the oidores to pay each a fine of one hundred ducados. They resisted payment, but Gelves, who had arrived meanwhile, compelled them to pay it. Mex., Rel. Sum., 8; Doc. Hist. Mex., série ii. tom. iii. 62-3. 21 Varaez alleged further that his denouncer was an insignificant mulatto

QUESTION OF SANCTUARY.

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the cause to the oidor Alonso Vazquez de Cisne

ros.

22

The proceedings went on too slowly to suit the humor of the marquis. After consultation with his legal adviser, Luis de Herrera, but without the concurrence of the audiencia, he ordered the case to be referred to the fiscal of Panamá, Juan de Alvarado Bracamonte, who had just come from Manila. Bracamonte proceeded with activity, sending Sancho de Baraona, a clerk of the audiencia, to the province of Metepec to collect additional evidence. To the new referee Varaez objected, and the viceroy ordered Francisco Enriquez de Ávila, a corregidor of Mexico, to sit with him. These judges deemed it advisable to exact from the accused a bond to answer to any judgment they might render, and Varaez, fearing lest he might be again imprisoned, sword in hand and accompanied by dependants, entered a coach and hastened to claim sanctuary at the convent of Santo Domingo. Almost simultaneously the judges sentenced him to pay a fine of sixty thousand pesos, and to perpetual banishment from the Indies.

Shortly afterward, Soto having alleged that Varaez contemplated fleeing to Spain, guards were placed at the door of his cell, and all communication with him was forbidden. He contrived, however, that a memorial should reach the archbishop, in which it was claimed that the presence of the guards was in violation of the right of sanctuary.23 The ecclesiastical

unworthy of credence. What he and his friends felt the most was that the viceroy would not allow these to be his judges, and that undoubtedly he would be obliged to return to his jurisdiction. In this way their trading operations would come to an end. Id., Mex. Rel. Svm., 4.

22 He had arrived recently from Spain, and bore the reputation of being an honest man. For two months he refused to accept the charge, but the viceroy compelled him to do so. Soto alleged that Cisneros was not impartial in this matter, since he was an intimate friend of Gaviria and his guest. Ubi sup., and Alcaraz, in Liceo Mex., ii. 123.

23 That the prelate himself visited Varaez, as is stated by the author of the Relacion Somaria, seems extremely improbable. Still the circumstance is also mentioned by the conde de la Cortina: y con estruendo y aparato y li cenciosa ostentacion, y visitando al retraido, volvia á su casa mas prendado, y dado el filo á los aceros.' The count also states that Varaez objected to the

judge ordered that the guards should be removed within two days, a demand to which the civil judges refused to accede because Varaez, having in effect broken jail, was not entitled to sanctuary. If the point were not well taken it was certainly debatable; but the archbishop, taking the case out of the hands of his provisor, excommunicated Soto, the judges, the guards, and even the counsel employed by them. The persons so excommunicated immediately appealed to the audiencia, and in accordance with the royal provision governing such cases, sentence was suspended, and absolution ad reincidentiam given at first for twenty days and then for a further period of fifteen.24

A few days afterward Gelves called upon the archbishop to send the notary to him that he might be purged of contempt. After repeated instances the prelate reluctantly consented to do so. The notary appeared before the viceroy accompanied by the archbishop's secretary, whom the marquis immediately dismissed, in a very discourteous manner, as was afterward alleged by the prelate.25 The notary made certain important statements, but these being reduced to writing he refused to sign the deposition without permission from his prelate. For this he was adjudged guilty of contumacy, and, being condemned to loss of property and banishment, he was taken to San Juan de Ulúa that he might be sent to Spain. 20

guards only because of the expense occasioned to him by their presence. Doc. Hist. Mex., série ii. tom. iii. 645; Mex., Rel. Svm., 5. In the matter of the right of sanctuary civil authorities in Spain had issued a number of exemptions which greatly restricted the privilege.

24 The archbishop demanded a copy of certain orders from the clerk of the audiencia, C. de Osorio, and being denied he excommunicated him.

25 Gelves was attended by Herrera, Bracamonte, Father Burguillos, and Baraona. These men, together with the vicar of La Merced, some superiors of the religious orders, and a few others, were the viceroy's trusted advisers. Father Alonso de Villaroel, a priest who afterward testified in support of the archbishop's side of the controversy, calls them: aquellos malos cristianos de sus consejeros aduladores...que le engañaban y le adulaban y le dieron por consejo diciéndole que él era legado del Papa en las Indias y rey en ellas, y así podia hacer en nombre de S. M. lo que quisiese en las Indias.' Doc. Hist. Mex., série ii. tom. ii. 356.

26 The cabildo of Mexico, in the letter to which reference has been made,

CHILDISH PROCEEDINGS.

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This act of the viceroy was undoubtedly legal, but the archbishop immediately declared that he had incurred the censures mentioned in the bull called in cana domini. He therefore excommuicated him, ordering his name to be placed in the list of excommunicated persons affixed to the church door.

27

29

Gelves now called the oidores and the alcaldes together in order to get their opinion concerning the right of the archbishop to excommunicate him. Their answer was evasive, 28 and he submitted the matter to a second assemblage, composed of ecclesiastics and laymen, who decided that the archbishop was clearly in the wrong. Fortified by this opinion the viceroy now retaliated on his antagonist by a decree condemning him to pay a fine of ten thousand ducados, to confiscation of his temporal property, and to banishment. The marquis finally sent the alguazil mayor, Luis de Tobar Godinez, to execute the decree and compel the archbishop to revoke his sentence. The viceroy had notified the archbishop three several times of his decree, but on none of these occasions had the audiencia taken part in the action as according to law they

asserts that this man was kept in prison for two days and a night, after which, at midnight, he was hurried away to the fortress, where he still remained (19th February 1624), notwithstanding the fact that meanwhile several vessels had sailed thence for Spain. It is not at all probable that the archbishop would allow the man, about whose arrest he made such trouble, to remain in durance for more than a month after the downfall of the viceroy.

This celebrated bull is of great antiquity, and received its name from the fact that it was read publicly in the presence of the pope on Maundythursday, by a cardinal-deacon, accompanied by several other prelates. It contains a general excommunication of all heretics, and of those guilty of contumacy and disobedience to the holy see. One of its 34 paragraphs provides that laymen who venture to pass judgment on ecclesiastical judges and cite them to appear before their tribunals shall incur the censure specified in the bull. On this paragraph the archbishop probably based his action.

28 Their answer was that they had not studied the point. Cavo, Tres Siglos, i. 270. It indicates what their purpose was. At this time, as at any other previous to the breaking-out of the riot, the audiencia might have calmed the rising storm had its members chosen. Peace-making, however, was far from their intention.

In defense of the decision of this assemblage Father Burguillos, already mentioned, published a memorial, which was printed, addressed to the visitador Carrillo. The memorial is contained in 28 octavo pages of close print, and is a learned production. The Franciscan, citing a host of canonical authorities, denies the authority of any prelate to excommunicate in such a case. Memorial, in Tumultos de Mex., 67-80.