Don Bernardino de Cardenas, Bishop of Paraguay—His labours as apostolic
missionary—His ambitions and cunning—Pretensions to saintliness—His
attempts to acquire supreme power—Quarrels between Cardenas and Don
Gregorio, the temporal Governor
Don Bernardino de Cardenas first saw the light in the town of La
Plata,[115] capital of the province of Charcas in Bolivia, or, as it
was then called, Alta Peru. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it
would appear to have been in the early years of the seventeenth
century. At an early age he entered the Franciscan Order.
As the Franciscans had had the honour of having furnished to the
calendar the first saint canonized in the New World, it seems to have
been the dream of Cardenas from his earliest youth to emulate him. In
this desire he seems to have acted in good faith, and all his life the
dream of saintship haunted him. Charlevoix[116] says ‘he made a rather
superficial study of theology, and then engaged in preaching, in which,
with memory, assurance, and facility, he found it easy to succeed in a
country where brilliant gifts are more esteemed than solid learning.’
Certainly a preacher without assurance, memory, and facility would
scarcely have succeeded in any country; and in what country in the
world is brilliancy not far esteemed above the deepest scholarship?
Besides, ‘he was a man of visions (_homme à visions_) and revelations,
which he took good care to publish.’ Visions are generally, in the case
of saints, confined to the soul’s eye, and revelation to the inward
ear; if, therefore, the recipient of them does not make them known,
they run the risk of being lost. In a word, according to
Charlevoix,[117] he was ‘one of the most complete and dangerous
ecstatics that ever lived.’ ‘His first successes’ (whether as preacher
or ecstatic are not specified) caused his superiors to name him
guardian of their college of La Plata. They soon repented of their
choice. No sooner was he named Superior than he sought to qualify
himself for saintship by a sort of royal road. Saints are of several
classes, and, in looking through the calendars, it strikes one how
different seem to have been the methods by which they severally
attained their goal.
Prince Juan Manuel, in the preface to his ‘Fifty Pleasant Stories of
Patronio’, says that, ‘amongst the many strange things our Lord God
made, He thought good to make one marvellous in special—that is, that,
of the numberless men who are on earth, not one entirely resembles any
other in his face.’ He might have said the same of saints and of their
ways. One, like St. Francis of Assisi, treats his father (as it seems
to me) but scurvily, and yet to every other created man and all the
animals he is a brother. The saint of Avila founds convents, mingles
with men of business, and has visions in the intervals of her
journeying through Spain upon an ass. Again, another preaches to the
Indians or the Japanese, gives up his substance, begs his bread from
door to door, and leaves the devil’s advocate scarcely a quillet or a
quiddity against him. Lastly, you find against the names of some merely
the docket ‘virgin’ or ‘martyr’, as their case or sex may serve.
Don Bernardino adopted none of these methods of procedure. Carrying a
heavy cross, with ashes on his head and shoulders bared, followed by
all his priests, he sallied out one day to discipline himself in
public. This plan did not succeed with all the world, for his superiors
ordered him to remain inside his convent gates. There he remained, and,
as his Life informs us, profited by his retreat to study Holy
Scriptures, and to such good effect that, the next time he preached, he
charmed his hearers by his eloquence. Soon after this the Archbishop of
La Plata held a provincial council, with the object of reforming the
morals of the Indians in his diocese. Cardenas, being a fluent speaker,
was chosen for the post of Apostolic Missionary. From this time dates
the beginning of his fame.
In those days all the Indians of the Charcas, and generally of all
Peru, were sunk in misery, but little removed from slaves, and their
religion was a mixture of Christianity and paganism—just the kind of
folk a fluent preacher of the style of Cardenas could work upon. All
through the province he made his apostolic progress, preaching,
converting, and confessing, everywhere preceded by his fame as seer of
visions, miracle-worker, and recipient of celestial light. He took his
way, dressed like a pilgrim, on foot, carrying a wooden cross, and
followed by a multitude of Indians from town to town.
Religion in America (Catholic or Protestant) has always tended to
revert to the original Eastern form, from which, no doubt, it sprung.
The influence of the vast plains and forests, and the great distances
to travel, have introduced the system of camp meetings amongst the
Protestants, whereas the Catholics have often held a sort of ambulatory
mission, the people of one village following the preacher to the next,
and so on, in the same fashion as in Palestine the people seem to have
followed John the Baptist.
Soon the news was spread about that the Indians who followed Cardenas
had told him of rich mines, on the condition that he would not divulge
the secret to the Spaniards. At that time the search for mines was
carried almost to madness in Peru. Even to-day, in almost every mining
town, a mysterious, poverty-stricken man sometimes approaches you with
great precaution, and, drawing from his pocket an object wrapped in
greasy paper, declares with oaths that it is _rosicler_ (red silver
ore), and that he knows where there are tons and tons of it. In Mexico
the curious class of miners known as _gambusinos_ rove through the
valleys of the Sierra Madre armed with pick and pan, passing their
lives in hunting mines, as pigs hunt truffles. If they come upon a
mine, they never try to work it, but sell the secret for a trifling
sum, and, drinking out the money, start on again to find the mines
worked by the Aztecs, till an Apache bullet or arrow stops them, their
El Dorado still ahead, or they are found beside their pick and shovel
dead of thirst.
Neither in Mexico nor in Peru do things grow less in telling, and we
may well suppose the stories of the mines the Indians told to Cardenas
became colossal; for at last the Alcalde of Cochabamba wrote on the
subject to the Count of Salvatierra, the Viceroy of Peru.
As Charlevoix says, ‘it seemed as if it all worked to the advantage of
the holy missionary, who, not content with saving souls, did not forget
the interests of his native land.’ In the middle of his triumphs, being
recalled to Lima, no one doubted that it was in order to confer with
the Viceroy about the supposititious mines. Others, again, imagined
that a mitre was destined for the successful evangelist, and therefore
many, even quite poor people, pressed forward to offer funds to help
him on his way. With quite apostolic assurance, he took all that was
offered to him, being certain, as some think, that, the mines being
real, he could some day repay with usury all he had borrowed, or, as
others said, being indifferent about the matter, and trusting to repay
in that better country where no usury exists and where no gold
corrupts.
The Viceroy, being a man of little faith, sent to investigate the
supposititious mines, but found them non-existent.
The superiors of Cardenas, as judicious as the higher officers of the
Franciscan Order often proved themselves throughout America, informed
him that he had given offence to many by his public scourgings and
processions carrying a cross, and, most of all, that in his sermons
propositions had escaped him of a nature likely to bring him under the
censure of the Holy Office. A convent in Lima was assigned to him as a
retreat and place of meditation on the virtues of submission and
obedience.
As we may well believe, no man who felt he had the stuff within himself
to make a saint ever cared much for obedience or submission, except in
others; so in his convent, instead of meditating on his faults, he
passed his time in writing a memorial to the Council of the Indies,
setting forth his views on the way in which to spread the gospel
amongst the Indians. Nothing was better calculated to win him favour.
Every Indian baptized was so much yearly gain to the Spanish
Government.
Conversion and taxation always went hand-in-hand, and therefore Indians
who, unbaptized, brought nothing to the treasury, having received the
Gospel truths, were taxed so much a head to show them that from
thenceforth they were Christians. Thus, we find that in the Paraguayan
missions each Indian paid a dollar every year as a sort of poll-tax,
and most of the disputes between the Viceroys of Paraguay and the
Jesuits arose from the number of the Indians taxable. The Viceroys
always alleged that the population of the missions never increased, on
account of the Jesuits returning false numbers to avoid the tax.
Cardenas specially inculcated, in his memorial to the Council of the
Indies, that it was not expedient to place the Indians under the
regular clergy, a theory of which he himself was destined to become a
great antagonist. Promotion, as we know, cometh neither from the east
nor from the west; so it fell out that during his retreat, through the
influence of his friend Don Juan de Solorzano, a celebrated lawyer, who
had heard him preach when Governor of Guancavelico, he found himself
named Bishop of Asuncion del Paraguay. This piece of luck opened the
doors of his convent to him, and he repaired at once to Potosi to wait
the arrival of the Papal Bull authorizing him to take possession of his
bishopric. There he appeared in the habit of his Order, a little wooden
cross upon his breast, and a green hat upon his head, a costume which,
if not quite fitting to his new dignity, was at least suited to the
Indian taste.
His biographer informs us that, without a word to anyone, he began to
preach and hear confessions. Being absolutely without resources, he was
reduced to distribute indulgences and little objects of piety, and at
the end of every sermon to send his green hat round the audience. His
talent for preaching stood him in good stead, and after every sermon
gifts were showered upon him, and a crowd accompanied him home.
The priest of Potosi being just dead, Don Bernardino took his place
without permission, and set himself up in the double character of
parish priest and Bishop to hold a visitation throughout the diocese.
Some people took this conduct as evidence of his saint-like humility in
condescending, though a Bishop, to officiate as a mere priest. The
Archbishop had a different opinion, but, as Don Bernardino had a great
following, he thought it best to dissemble his resentment. Cardenas
himself, by his imprudence, furnished the Archbishop with an excuse to
get him out of the bishopric.
A rich Indian, whom Cardenas confessed upon his death-bed, left him ten
thousand crowns. Not content with that, he influenced one Diego Vargas
to change his will and leave him money. On this the Archbishop wrote to
him, requesting that he would go and govern his own see. He had to go,
but left the town, which he had entered without a farthing, with a long
train of mules carrying his money, plate, and furniture. Why he did not
instantly go to Asuncion is not quite clear, for in America it was the
custom, owing to the great distance from Rome, that Bishops, on receipt
of the royal order of appointment, got themselves chosen by the chapter
of their diocese to govern provisionally. Instead of doing that, he
went to Tucuman, and thence to Salta, where he arrived in 1641.
In Salta, his first visit was to the Jesuit college, where he laid his
case before the Jesuit fathers, and showed them several letters, one
from the Cardinal Antonio Barberini dated in 1638, and another from the
King without a date, naming him Bishop of Asuncion. On the strength of
these two letters he asked the Jesuits if he could get himself
consecrated without the Papal Bulls. Charlevoix alleges that they dared
not refuse to answer in the way he wished. Why this was so is not so
easy to make out, as, even with his green hat and wooden cross, he
could not at that time have been a formidable personage. Their written
opinion he sent at once to the rector of the Jesuit college at Cordova,
asking for his opinion and that of the doctors of the university. The
answer reached him in Santiago del Estero, and was unfavourable. On
reading the letter, Cardenas fell into a most unsaint-like fury, and
tore it up without communicating it to anyone, not even to the Bishop
of Tucuman, Don Melchior Maldonado. This was not strange, as he had
counted on this Bishop to consecrate him.
Notwithstanding what was at stake, he went on in the diocese of Tucuman
just as he had done in that of Charcas, preaching, confessing, and
celebrating Mass. Don Melchior Maldonado, a quiet man of no
pretensions, wrote him a letter in which he said: ‘You came into my
diocese like a St. Bernard; such is the reputation you have for
holiness and preaching that my people pay me no respect, and only look
on me as a man of common virtue and mediocre talents. Although I hope I
am not jealous, still, I must remind you that you act as if you were
St. Paul.’
A Bishop of common virtue and of mediocre talents is, of course, a
Bishop lost, and one can well conceive that poor Don Melchior Maldonado
was placed in an unpleasant position during the stay of Cardenas in his
diocese. Such were Don Bernardino’s powers of persuasion that at last
the Bishop consecrated him. The ceremony was hardly over, when a letter
arrived from the Rector of the University of Cordova advising Bishop
Maldonado against the consecration. Unluckily for Paraguay, it was too
late to undo the action, and Cardenas was now in a position to take
possession of his see. Poor Melchior Maldonado, Bishop of Tucuman, had,
as it happened, laid hands a little hastily upon the candidate. The
Council of Trent pronounced upon the case, and found ‘that the
consecration of the Bishop of Paraguay had been a valid one as touching
the sacrament (ordination), and the impression of the character, but
that it had been void as regards the power of discharging the functions
attaching to the dignity, and that the Bishop and his consecrator had
need of absolution, which the same holy congregation thinks ought to be
accorded with the good pleasure of the Pope.’ As the same holy
congregation had previously declared the taking possession of the
diocese by Cardenas had been illegal, it is difficult for ordinary
minds to grasp their real opinion of the case.
Finding that he had failed with the University of Cordova, Don
Bernardino took his way to Santa Fé, from whence he wrote an insulting
letter to the poor rector. The letter was conceived in such outrageous
terms that the Bishop of Tucuman wrote in expostulation, saying he
expected to see something extraordinary happen in Paraguay if he gave
way to such excess of passion.
Don Bernardino’s usual luck attended him in Santa Fé. This town then
formed part of the diocese of Buenos Ayres, though situated about four
hundred miles from the metropolis. It happened that the see of Buenos
Ayres was vacant, and the chapter of the cathedral invited Cardenas to
visit that portion of the diocese through which he had to pass.
Cardenas was, of course, delighted to show his talents for preaching,
as he had done before in Charcas and in Potosi. When he arrived at
Corrientes the enthusiasm for his holiness and talents was
extraordinary. In Corrientes, Don Bernardino seems to have felt, for
the first time, his calling and election really sure. At the time he
landed (1642) the land was sunk in ignorance and superstition. Even
to-day in Corrientes (the city of the seven currents), situated just at
the junction of the rivers Paraná and Paraguay, close to the celebrated
missions of the Jesuits, the inhabitants, living in a country almost
tropical, are half Indians in type.
What Corrientes looked like in Don Bernardino’s time is matter of
conjecture. Perhaps it was not greatly different from some remote
Spanish-American frontier towns some five-and-twenty years ago, save
for the groups of Spanish soldiery, with their steel morions, trunk
hose and heavy arquebuses lounging about, and in the matter of the
scarcity of horses in the streets. No doubt the self-same listless air
hung over everything, and in the place of the modern blue and white
barred flags with a rising sun or cap of liberty stuck like a
trade-mark in the corner, the blood and orange Spanish colours with the
quarterings of castles and of lions flapped heavily against the
flagstaff of the fort. The Indian women dressed all in white, their
hair cut square across the forehead and hanging down their backs, sat
with their baskets of fruit and flowers in the market-place. The town,
as now, built chiefly of adobes, with a few wooden huts dotted about,
was semi-oriental in design. On every church were cupolas after the
eastern fashion, flat roofs on every house, and everything shone
dazzling white against the dark, metallic-looking foliage of the trees.
The streets, as now, were sandy water-courses, crossed here and there
with traverses of rough-hewn stone to break the force of the water in
the season of the rains.
At night the fireflies glistened amongst the heavy leaves of the
mamayes and the orange-trees, whilst from the Chaco rose the mysterious
voices of the desert night, and from the outskirts of the town the
wailing Indian Jarabis and Cielitos sung in a high falsetto key to the
tinkling of a cracked guitar, but broken now and then by the sharp
warning cry ‘Alerta centinela!’ of the soldiers on the walls. Could one
have landed there, one would have felt much as a sailor feels, dropped
on the beach of Eromango or on some yet unbemissionaried island of the
Paumotus Group.
Embarking from Corrientes up the river Paraguay, the Bishop met two
vessels sent from Asuncion to do him honour. When night approached he
put in practice one of the manœuvres which in Peru had stood him in
good stead. On every side a swarm of launches and canoes accompanied
the ship to see the Bishop, whom already many believed a saint. He
asked them all to retire a little from his ship. All did so but the
guard of honour sent from Asuncion. Towards the middle of the night the
sound of scourging wakened them. It was their Bishop trying to prepare
himself for the duties that awaited him. Every succeeding night the
same thing happened. During the day he celebrated Mass pontifically
upon the deck. Voyages upon the river Paraguay before the days of
steamers took a considerable time, especially as every night the custom
was to anchor or to make fast the vessel to a tree. Soon the rumour
reached Asuncion that a second St. Thomas was on his way to visit them.
St. Thomas, as is said, once visited Paraguay, and a cave in the
vicinity of a town called Paraguari, where he once lived, exists to-day
to prove the passage of the saint.
Fate seemed determined that the Bishop should always meet the Jesuits,
no matter where he went.
Becoming weary of the slow progress of the ships, he disembarked four
leagues below Asuncion, at a farm belonging to the Company. He managed
to dissemble his resentment so perfectly that no one knew he had a
grudge against them. Arrived at the capital, he went at once to the
church of San Blas, then to the Cathedral, where he celebrated Mass and
preached, his mitre on his head. After service he dismissed the people
to their homes to dine, saying, however, that he himself was nourished
by an invisible food and by a beverage which men could not perceive.
‘My food’ (he said) ‘is but to do the work and will of Him who sent
me.’ Therefore he remained in prayer and meditation until vespers, and
that office finished, he retired to the palace accompanied by a
shouting crowd.
In his position his conduct was most adroit, for, as his Bulls had not
arrived, he must have known he had no legal status, and that, in
default of that, he had to conquer public sympathy. The chapter never
doubted that Don Bernardino would place himself entirely in their hands
as his Bulls had not arrived. He, however, seems to have thought that
the act of celebrating Mass pontifically in the Cathedral had put him
in possession of his powers. So he named one Cristobal Sanchez as his
Vicar-General. Two of the members of the chapter, Don Diego Ponce de
Leon and Don Fernando Sanchez, remonstrated, but a considerable portion
of the chapter sided with Cardenas. The stronger party left the
Cathedral and celebrated Mass in the church belonging to the Jesuits,
thus giving Cardenas a second cause of offence against the Company.
The Bishop, not being secure of his position, had recourse to every
art[118] to catch the public eye: fasting and scourging, prayers before
the altar, two Masses every day, barefoot processions—himself the
central figure, carrying a cross—each had their turn. Along the deep
red roads between the orange-gardens which lead from Asuncion towards
the Recoleta and the Campo Grande, he used to take his way accompanied
by Indians crowned with flowers, giving his benediction as he passed,
to turn away (according to himself) the plague and to insure a fertile
harvest. Not being content with the opportunities which life afforded,
he instituted an evening service in a church in order to prepare for
death.
Soon, as was to be expected in such a country, this service proved the
occasion of much scandal, and, instead of showing people how to leave
the world, became the means of introducing many into life in a
clandestine way. The rector of the Jesuit college thought it his duty
to inform the Bishop; but he, like all good men, thought nothing bad
could spring from anything that he himself originated. No doubt he put
it down to malice, as good people will when worldlings put the finger
on the weak spot of a religious institution; but anyhow, regardless of
the scandals, he continued his nocturnal rites.
The Governor of Paraguay at that time was one Gregorio de Hinostrosa,
an officer born in Chile, an honest, pious, wooden-headed man, and much
beloved by the inhabitants of Paraguay. On his arrival Don Bernardino
tried to conciliate him. Unluckily, a friendship with the Bishop was
impossible without a blind submission to his will. In the beginning all
was flattery; when Don Gregorio attended Mass, the Bishop used to meet
him at the church door. Not to be outdone, the Governor returned the
Bishop’s politeness in a similar way, but went so far in his
complaisance that Don Bernardino ceased to respect him. Soon there
arose bickerings and jealousies, and at length they hated one another
fervently.
Nor was the Bishop more successful with his clergy. Some of them
laughed at his pretensions to be a saint, and called him an ambitious
schemer. Again, amongst the laity, many did not quite understand his
habit of celebrating two Masses every day. He answered that he never
celebrated without releasing a soul from purgatory, and that there had
been saints who celebrated nine Masses every day, and, moreover, that
he was Pope in his own diocese. This cut the ground from under the feet
of his detractors, for in a town of the calibre of Asuncion the people
looked on a service in a church as a welcome means of getting through
the day, and had he celebrated a dozen masses they would but have been
more delighted with their new Bishop.
Under the pretext that there were not enough priests to serve the
churches, he, by degrees, took several parishes into his own hands, and
went from church to church to celebrate his Mass in each, whilst not
forgetting to draw the various stipends for his work. But, not content
with this, he began to ordain young men who knew no Latin, and even
criminals, setting forth the view that ordination was a sort of second
baptism, which purged all crimes—a most convenient theory, and one
which is not half enough insisted on in these degenerate days.
The position of Asuncion gave him an opportunity of an almost unique
kind to show his talents in another sphere. Across the river Paraguay,
there about one mile broad, extends the country called the Chaco, a
vast domain of swamp and forest, inhabited in those days, as at
present, by tribes of wandering Indians. From the city walls, whilst
listening to the church-bells, one can see the smoke of Indian
encampments across the river only a mile away.
Of all the Indian tribes in the time of Cardenas, the most ferocious
were the Guaycurús. The Jesuits had laboured almost in vain amongst
them. Missions had been founded, and all gone well for months, and even
years, when on a sudden, and without reason, the Guaycurús had burned
the houses, killed the priests, and gone back to the wilds. From Santa
Fé up to the province of Matto Grosso they kept the frontier in a
turmoil, crossing the river and feeding like locusts on the settlements
in Paraguay.
Not long before his arrival the Guaycurús had intimated their intention
of holding a conference with Don Gregorio Hinostrosa. Don Bernardino
thought the chance too good to lose, and at once declared that, as a
Bishop, it was his place to carry on negotiations with the barbarians.
Dressed in his robes and with an escort furnished by the Governor, he
met the chiefs—who no doubt looked on him as a new kind of
medicine-man—preached to them through an interpreter, curiously being
without the gift of tongues, but notwithstanding that a reasonable
number of them were baptized. On his return, he wrote to the King that
by his efforts he had appeased the most ferocious Indians within his
Majesty’s domains.
Within a week the Guaycurús surprised and burned a settlement a little
higher up the stream. Not content with this Caligulesque apostolate to
the Guaycurús, the Bishop longed for serious occupation, and caused it
to be rumoured about the city that he did nothing except by the direct
authority of the Holy Ghost, an allegation hard to confute, and if
allowed, likely to lead to difficulties even in Paraguay.
Some years before the advent of Don Bernardino the Dominicans had built
a convent in Asuncion. As they had no license to build, they were in
the position of religious squatters on the domain of God. The citizens
had applied to the Audiencia of Charcas, the supreme court on all such
matters in South America, situated, with true Spanish unpracticality,
in one of the most secluded districts of the continent. The Audiencia
had refused the license, but had taken the matter _ad advisandum_ for
ten years. To take a matter into consideration for ten years, even in
Spain or South America, where the law’s delay is generally more mortal
than in any other country, was as good as giving a permission. So the
Dominicans construed it, and no one dreamed of now molesting them.
One day the Bishop, dressed in his robes, proceeded from his palace to
the convent, informing the Governor that he wanted him to meet him
there. Entering the convent church, he took the sacrament from off the
altar and stripped the church of all its ornaments, setting a gang of
workmen to demolish both the convent and the church. When the work was
over, he went to a neighbouring church, and then and there, without
confession, celebrated Mass, remarking to the faithful that there was
no need for him to make confession, as he was satisfied of the
condition of his conscience. Some murmured; but the greater portion of
the people, always ready to take a saint at his own valuation, were
delighted with his act. Doubts must have crossed his mind, as shortly
afterwards he wrote to Don Melchior Maldonado, Bishop of Tucuman, for
his opinion. That Bishop answered rather tartly that his zeal appeared
to him to savour more of the zeal of Elias than of Jesus Christ, and
that in a country where churches were so few it seemed imprudent to
pull down rather than to build. ‘However,’ he added, ‘my light is not
so brilliant as the light your lordship is illumined by.’
When once a man is well convinced that all he does comes from the Holy
Ghost, there is but little that he cannot do with satisfaction to
himself. Self-murderers, according to the custom of those times, were
not allowed admission into holy ground, as if the fact of having found
their life unbearable debarred them from the right to be considered
men. Such a man a few years previously had been buried at a cross-road.
It now occurred to Cardenas to have a special revelation on the
subject; and, curiously enough, this special revelation was on the side
of common-sense. ‘This body,’ said the Bishop, ‘is that of a Christian,
and I feel pretty sure his soul is now in bliss.’ He gave no reason for
his opinion, as is the way of most religious folk, but, as he had
special means of communication with heaven, most people were contented.
Incontinently he had the corpse dug up and buried in the church of the
Incarnation, himself performing all the funeral rites.
Although a miracle or two would have shocked nobody, still, in the
matter of the suicide he had gone too far for the simple people of the
place. They murmured, and for a moment the Bishop’s prestige was in
jeopardy; but in the nick of time his Bulls arrived, brought by his
nephew, Pedro de Cardenas, who, like himself, was a Franciscan friar.
This saved him, and gave the people something new to think of, though
at the same time he incurred a new anxiety.
In the Bulls there was a passage to the effect that, if at his
consecration any irregularity had been incurred, he was liable to
suspension from all his functions. This the Jesuit who translated the
documents into Spanish for the purpose of publication drew his
attention to. However, Cardenas was not a man to be intimidated by so
small a matter, but read the translation to the people in the
Cathedral, and intimated to them that the Pope had given him unlimited
power in Paraguay, both in matters spiritual and temporal.
Though Don Gregorio, the Governor, was present at the ceremony, he made
no protest at the assumption of temporal power by Cardenas. He had
remarked it, though, and secretly determined to show him that his
pretensions were unfounded. His nephew, Don Pedro de Cardenas,
furnished the occasion. This young man had been despatched to Spain to
get the Bulls. Upon the voyage he seems to have conducted himself with
scant propriety. On his return, when passing Corrientes, he took on
board a lady whom Charlevoix, quite in the spirit of the author of the
Book of Proverbs, describes as ‘une jeune femme bien faite’. Having
some qualms of conscience, he put on a secular dress, and on nearing
Asuncion put his religious habit over it. In such a climate this double
costume must have been inconvenient, and why he should have worn one
dress above the other does not appear. His uncle, in his delight at the
forthcoming of the Bulls, most probably paid little attention to his
appearance. He lodged him in the palace, and assigned him a prebendary
which was vacant. Where the ‘jeune femme bien faite’ was lodged is not
set down, and the people of Asuncion no doubt looked leniently on such
affairs, as does society to-day in England. After his usual fashion,
the Bishop set all down to calumny.
About this time the Governor had put in prison one Ambrosio Morales, a
sub-official of the Inquisition, who had had a quarrel with an officer.
Cardenas, being informed of this, could not lose so good a chance of
exercising the power he arrogated in temporal affairs. Holding a
monstrance in his hands, he went to the prison and asked for the
prisoner, placing the monstrance on a table at the prison gate. The
rector of the Jesuit college came and expostulated with him, saying
that it was not fitting to expose the body of Jesus Christ in such a
place, and that it was not decent that the Bishop himself should stay
there. Considering his position, and the times in which he lived, it
seems the rector was judicious in his expostulation. Cardenas replied
that he would stay there till the prisoner was released. The rector,
knowing him to be as obstinate as a male mule, went and begged the
Governor to let Morales out. This he did at once, and then the Bishop,
cross in hand, returned in triumph to the palace with the rescued
Inquisitor following amongst his train. The people, whose lives were
dull, snatched at the opportunity for some amusement, and said that it
was good luck the Governor and Bishop were not always of one mind, for
that their agreement had caused the demolition of a church and convent,
and their quarrel the setting of a prisoner free.
This little triumph emboldened the Bishop to go further. He admitted
Morales into minor orders, gave him the tonsure, and thus, having
placed him above the temporal power, enabled him to brave the Governor
openly. The Bishop’s nephew, taking the Governor’s kindness for
weakness, broke publicly into insulting terms about him. The Governor’s
brother, Father Hinostrosa, pressed him to vindicate his dignity, but
he refused, saying he wanted peace at any price. This policy the Bishop
did not understand, for all concessions he set down as weakness, and
they encouraged him to fresh exactions and more violence.
Dining with the Governor, the Bishop chanced to see upon the table a
fine pair of silver candlesticks. To see and to desire with Cardenas
was to ask, and so he intimated to the Governor his wish to have them.
The Governor, thinking, perhaps, to wipe out the remembrance of the
difficulty about Morales, sent them to the palace with his compliments.
The Bishop took the present, and, turning to the man who brought them,
said, ‘I should now be quite content if I only had the silver ewer and
flagon which I noticed in your master’s house.’ The Governor, we may
suppose, on hearing this made what the Spaniards call ‘la risa del
conejo’; but sent the plate and a message, saying all his house
contained was at the Bishop’s service. Don Bernardino, who, though he
may have been a saint, as his friends proclaimed, was certainly far
from a gentleman, sent for the flagon and the ewer, which he received
at once, together with a friendly message from the Governor.
But even this free-will offering brought no quiet, for a new quarrel
soon arose between the Bishop and the unlucky wielder of the temporal
power. The Society of the Holy Sacrament enjoyed an _encomienda_ at or
near Asuncion. The Bishop, no doubt thinking he was most fitted to
indoctrinate the Indians, endeavoured to persuade the Governor to get
the Society of the Holy Sacrament to make their Indians over to
himself. The Governor, who knew his fellow-countrymen, flatly refused,
and upon this Don Bernardino fell into a fury, and reproached him with
such bitterness that Don Gregorio, too, overstepped the bounds of
prudence, and threw the conduct of his nephew with the ‘jeune femme
bien faite’ into the Bishop’s teeth.
Hell has been said to have no fury equal to a woman scorned, but a
Bishop thwarted makes a very tolerable show. Don Bernardino was one of
those who think an insult to themselves carries with it a challenge to
God, an outrage on religion, and generally conceive the honour of
Heaven is attacked by any contradiction of themselves. To animadvert
upon the actions of a Bishop’s nephew is as bad as heresy—far worse
than simony—and the man who does it cannot but be a heretic at heart.
So, at least, Don Bernardino thought; for, with candle, bell, and book,
and what was requisite, he excommunicated the poor Governor, and
declared him incompetent to bear the royal standard in a religious
festival which was shortly to take place. Excommunication was at least
as serious then as bankruptcy is now, though in Spanish America it did
not carry with it such direful consequences as in European States.
Not wishing to use force, the Governor yielded the point, and did not
trouble the procession. His moderate conduct gained him many partisans,
and put many people against the Cardenas. The nephew, Pedro de
Cardenas, thought it a good occasion to insult the Governor in public;
so one day in the street he followed him, casting reflections on his
mother and his female relatives. Don Gregorio, who was a man of tried
courage, having served for years against the Indians of Arauco, the
bravest race of all the Indians of America, controlled his temper, and,
turning to the young Franciscan, said, ‘Go with God, my father; but do
not try me any more.’ It was not to be expected that in those times and
such a place a man like Don Gregorio de Hinostrosa, who had passed his
life upon the frontiers, and who held supreme authority, would quietly
submit to such a public insult; so one night he appeared at the
Bishop’s palace, accompanied by soldiers, to arrest Don Pedro. Out came
Cardenas, and excommunicated the Governor and all his soldiers on the
spot, and Don Pedro pointed a pistol at his head. He, seeing himself
obliged either to make a public scandal or retire, being for peace at
any price, retired, and the triumphant Bishop published his edict of
excommunication, which he extended with a fine of fifty crowns to every
soldier who had been present at the scene. On reflection, thinking,
perhaps, it was unwise to excommunicate so many soldiers, who might be
needed to repel an Indian attack, he sent and told the Governor he was
ready to absolve him upon easy terms. The Governor, who had made light
of the first excommunication, was rather staggered when he found the
second posted at the Cathedral door. And now a comedy ensued; for Don
Gregorio went to the Bishop, and on his knees asked for forgiveness.
He, taken unawares, also knelt down, and, when the Governor kissed his
hand, wished to return the compliment, and would have done so had the
rector of the Jesuit college not prevented him.
As Charlevoix says, ‘to see them on their knees, no one could have
imagined which one it was who asked the other’s grace.’ The Bishop
granted absolution to the Governor; but the soldiers’ action had been
flat sacrilege at least, for every one of them was forced to pay the
fine.
Two excommunications in a week were almost, one would think, enough to
satisfy a Pope; but having nominated one Diego Hernandez, a Portuguese,
to the post of Alguacil Mayor of the Inquisition, and given him the
right to wear a sword in virtue of his office, the Governor, meeting
the man in the street wearing a sword against his regulations, made him
a prisoner. At once Don Bernardino launched another excommunication.
But this time he had gone too far; the Governor laughed at his thunder,
and condemned the prisoner to be hanged. At his wits’ end, the Bishop
sent a servant to the man, and told him to fear nothing, for that, if
he suffered death, he was a martyr, and that he himself would preach
his funeral sermon. The Governor, who was perhaps a humorist, laughed
at the message, which, he said, was not consoling, and then himself let
Hernandez out of prison under heavy bail. The excommunication was then
taken off, and peace once more reigned in Asuncion.
As well as being not given to wine, it is essential that a Bishop shall
know how to keep his own counsel—as Lorenzo Gracian expresses it,[119]
‘not to lie, but not for that to speak out always the whole truth.’
Everyone who knew the Bishop and his hasty temper was astonished at his
behaviour to the Jesuits. No one imagined he had forgotten the attitude
the rector of the University of Cordova had assumed towards his
consecration, and still the Bishop seemed to show more favour to the
Jesuits in Asuncion than to the members of the other religious
communities. Perhaps he felt the want of partisans amongst the educated
classes, for his quarrel with the Governor had lost him many friends.
Certainly in Asuncion it was of great importance that the Jesuits
should not declare against him openly.
He praised them fulsomely both in the pulpit and in conversation, went
in procession to their church, and treated them in public with marked
consideration. As a contemporaneous Jesuit has left a record, they were
not his dupes, but still endeavoured to live up to the praises he
dispensed to them. He went so far as in a letter to the King, Philip
IV., to say that the Jesuits only in all Paraguay were really fitted to
have the care of Indians, and he advised the King to transfer the
Indians who were under other religious bodies, as well as those under
the secular clergy, to the care and guidance of that Order. No doubt in
this the Bishop was right, even if not sincere. One of the
qualifications the Jesuits had for the care of Indians was that the
Indians did not look on them as Spaniards.
As in the same way that in Matabeleland, perhaps, a German, Frenchman,
or Italian is less hateful to the natives than an Englishman, so in
Paraguay the Indians liked the Jesuits better than the other Orders,
for there were many foreigners amongst their ranks. The Jesuits soon
comprehended that the Bishop wished to make them odious to the public
by overpraise. To set to work in such a manner almost requires an early
training in a seminary, and that such tactics should have been put in
force against such skilled diplomatists as were the Jesuits argues no
ordinary capacity for diplomatic work in Cardenas. With him, however,
the Spanish proverb, ‘Betwixt the word and deed the space is great’,
had little application. The vicar of a place called Arecayá, close to
Asuncion, had fallen into disgrace; the Bishop removed him from his
parish, and asked the rector of the Jesuit college to send a priest to
take his place. The answer he received was politic, and to the effect
that there was no Jesuit who could be spared, and even if there was it
ill-befitted any Jesuit to infringe upon the duties of the secular
clergy; but that, if Cardenas intended to found a new reduction with
all the privileges that the King had always given to that kind of
establishment, the rector himself would ask permission from his
Provincial to undertake the work. A splendid answer, and one which
proved that the man who gave it was a man wasted in Paraguay, and that
his place by rights was Rome or, at the least, some court.
Don Bernardino, who in matters such as these was quite as cunning as
the rector, thanked him, and said he did not want a saint, but a priest
to take the duty of another priest for a short time. The rector, seeing
his diplomacy had failed, told Father Mansilla, who was at Itatines, to
transfer himself to Arecayá, and, writing to the Bishop, told him that
he had no doubt Mansilla would do all that was fitting in the case. The
Bishop, who had gained his point and saw no further use for diplomacy,
said: ‘Of that I am quite sure, and if he does not I shall
excommunicate him, and lay the district of the Itatines under an
interdict.’ Nothing appeared to give Don Bernardino such unmitigated
pleasure as an excommunication; on the slightest protest he was ready,
so that during his episcopate someone or other in Asuncion must have
always been under the ban of Holy Mother Church. The rector felt
instinctively that Don Bernardino had not done with him. This was the
case, for soon another order came to send two Jesuits to undertake the
guidance of a mission near Villa Rica. As at the time the Jesuits had
no missions near Villa Rica, the order was most unpleasant to him.
Firstly, the two who went—Fathers Gomez and Domenecchi—had to leave
their missions and undertake a lengthy journey in the wilds. On
reaching Villa Rica, they found not only that the inhabitants looked on
them with great disfavour as interlopers, but that the Indians, whom
they were sent to guide, were under the _encomienda_ system, thus
forcing them to wink at that which they disapproved. The resolution
that they took did them great honour; it was to leave the town of Villa
Rica and live out in the forests with the Indians.
The Jesuits of the college at Asuncion felt the situation keenly.
People began to murmur at them for their invasion of the spiritual
domains of others, and the rector, in despair, sent to the Bishop, and
begged him not to praise them in his sermons. Nothing cost Cardenas so
little as to promise, so he promised not to mention them again, and
next time that he preached he spent an hour in telling of the wonders
that the Jesuits had done in saving souls, not only amongst Catholics,
but also amongst the infidels and Turks. The tactics of the Bishop were
so marked that at last a rumour reached Don Melchior Maldonado, the
Bishop of Tucuman, of whom Don Bernardino always stood in dread. His
letter somehow became public, and as in it he spoke most warmly of the
Jesuits, and praised the rector, the public turned again upon their
side. Just at this time, however, the sleeping feud between the Bishop
and the Governor broke out anew with so much fury that attention was
directed from the Jesuits for the time being; but on them the situation
still was hung, and both sides made advances to them for support.