Renewal of the feud between the Bishop and Don Gregorio—Wholesale
excommunications in Asuncion—Cardenas in 1644 formulates his celebrated
charges against the Jesuits—The Governor, after long negotiations and
much display of force, ultimately succeeds in driving out the
Bishop—For three years Cardenas is in desperate straits—In 1648 Don
Gregorio is suddenly dismissed, Cardenas elects himself Governor, and
for a short time becomes supreme in Asuncion—The Jesuits are forced to
leave the town and to flee to Corrientes—A new Governor is appointed in
Asuncion—He defeats Cardenas on the field of battle—The latter is
deprived of his power, and dies soon after as Bishop of La Paz
The Governor, like a prudent soldier, was biding his time. The Bishop,
not yet strong enough to walk alone, dared not break openly with the
Jesuits. Don Pedro Cardenas still following up his evil courses, poor
Don Gregorio Hinostrosa, accustomed all his life to deal with ‘officers
and gentlemen’, thought fit to bring this under his uncle’s notice. The
Bishop spoke to his nephew in a paternal fashion, enjoining certain
penances upon him, and amongst others that he was to kiss the earth.
Although Don Pedro Cardenas was not a man accustomed to lavish kisses
on things inanimate, he complied, but, though complying, still pursued
his vicious course.
Quite in the manner of King Charles (of pious memory), the Governor
determined to arrest the recalcitrant with his own hand. Armed to the
teeth, and with a band of musketeers accompanying him, he appeared
before the convent of St. Francis, where Father Cardenas had taken
refuge, and, dragging him from his bed, haled him incontinently to the
river’s bank, and left him gagged and bound, a prey to flies and sun,
for two whole days, dressed in his drawers and shirt. On the third day
he was embarked in a canoe for Corrientes, with a small quantity of
jerked beef for all provision, and a woman’s cloak wrapped round his
shoulders to shield him from the cold. Not quite the guise in which a
clergyman would care to appear before the eyes of his superiors, even
in Paraguay. Naturally, the Bishop, having nothing else to do, got out
his excommunication in his usual style, but no man marked him.
Meantime Asuncion was in confusion, the Bishop and the Governor keeping
no measure with the other man of sin. One tried to obtain possession of
the other’s person to throw him into prison; the other strove to
animate the preachers in the various churches to consign his rival’s
soul to hell. In the deserted streets drums thundered, whilst in the
air bells jangled, and the quiet, sleepy town was rent in twain by the
dissensions of the opposing powers. The churches closed their doors,
and the consolations of religion were withdrawn from those who wanted
them.
To add to the confusion, Don Pedro Cardenas escaped from Corrientes,
and, having taken to himself a companion—one Francisco Sanchez de
Carreras—raged through the city like a devil unchained. In his
extremity, the poor Bishop went to the Jesuits for advice, informing
them he could not stand the scandals that were taking place, and that
he intended to leave the city after launching an interdict of
excommunication upon all. Placed in the position of declaring openly
either for Bishop or for Governor, the Jesuits refused an answer,
knowing that anything they said would be brought up against them. All
their advice to him was, ‘to trust in God, to persevere in his good
efforts, to resign himself to divine will, which will, as the Bishop
knew full well, worked sometimes in a mysterious fashion for the
welfare of the soul.’ The Bishop answered this advice ‘_fort
sèchement_’,[120] taking it for a reproach, and as a sort of thing not
to be tolerated amongst professionals—as if one lawyer, having gone to
another for his advice upon a private matter, had received for answer a
lecture on conveyancing or a short treatise upon Roman Law.
Still, the occasion called for something to be done; so, calling an
Indian servant, he stripped to the waist, and, to the horror and
amazement of the public, appeared with naked feet and shoulders,
dressed in a sack and armed with a heavy scourge. At the first blow he
gave himself some canons of the Cathedral begged him to desist; but he,
after prayer, replied that he intended, so to speak, to act as his own
Pascal lamb, and wipe out the affront done to St. Francis in his
unworthy blood.
A naked Bishop in a sack is almost sure to attract some observation
even in Paraguay. Religious women not unfrequently have been attracted
by such a spectacle, and so it proved on this occasion. Although the
Jesuits and the saner portion of the population blamed the Bishop’s
action, he made himself a host of partisans amongst the women of all
classes, who followed him as they have often followed other
thaumaturgists in times present and gone by.
His friend Don Melchior Maldonado, hearing what had passed, wrote to
reprove him for his inconsiderate zeal. In his epistle he observed
that, though some of the Apostles had scourged themselves, it was not
their habit to appear half naked before a crowd of women; that our Lord
Himself had not of His own accord taken off His garments for the
scourger; that saints who scourged themselves had, as a general rule,
chosen a private place for their self-discipline. This was quite
reasonable, but the advice was little to the taste of the recipient,
who hated criticism when levelled at himself.
If crosses make a saint, about this time Don Bernardino had his full
share of them. News came from Itatines, where the two Jesuits had been
marooned, that both of them were ill. Cardenas, who, we may remember,
was _homme à visions_, called in the rector of the Jesuit college to
inform him that the Company of Jesus had a new martyr in their ranks.
Though martyrs (even to-day) enter the ranks of General Loyola’s army
pretty frequently, it still seemed strange that the Bishop should know
of this particular recruit before the rector. Pressed for an
explanation, he replied that a pious person who was vouchsafed
communication with the Lord in prayer had seen Father Domenecchi in
heaven shining in glory and with a halo round his head.
Nothing could be more satisfactory. All the essentials of a
well-attested miracle had been complied with. A man was dead, another
man had seen the dead man in an ecstasy of prayer, and, to make all
complete, refused to testify himself, sending the Bishop as a sort of
pious phonograph. No true believer in such a case could doubt, and all
went well till it appeared a man from Itatines, charged with a message
to the Jesuit college, had passed the night before he gave his message
at the Bishop’s house. In Holy Writ we read the wicked man shall have
no rest; if this is so, it is as it should be, though generally the
good seem just as troubled in their lives as the most erring of their
brethren. He who would be a saint must be a-doing, year in, year out,
just like a common workman, and Cardenas was no exception to the rule.
The pseudo-miracle not having been quite a success, he turned to other
fields, and summoned all the inhabitants of Paraguay to attend at the
Cathedral upon a certain day. The Governor, thinking there was a
revolution likely to break out, fixed a review of all the troops for
the same date. A Jesuit priest waited upon the Bishop to persuade him
that the crowds which would assemble might break the peace. The Bishop
reassured him, and sent him to the Governor to say that his intention
was to preach to the people and explain to them the faith; further,
that he intended on that day to raise his excommunication and be
reconciled: only he asked him to allow the troops to attend and hear
his sermon. The crowd was great; the Bishop mounted the pulpit, and,
extending his forefinger in the attitude of malediction so dear to
Bishops, straight began to preach. For a time all went well. The
Governor, presumably, was waiting for the circulation of the hat—that
awful mystery which makes all sects kin—when to his horror Cardenas
began to enumerate all his offences: he was anathema, was
excommunicated, a disbeliever, and had endeavoured to cast down that
which the Lord Himself had set on high. The Bishop then informed the
crowd that God was angry with the Governor, talked about Moses, and
dwelt with unction on the fact that the great lawgiver had been swift
to slay.
In a peroration which, no doubt, went home to all, he called upon his
hearers, under penalty of a heavy fine and his displeasure, to seize
the Governor, adding that if there was resistance ‘he should kill his
brother, his friend, or his nearest relative.’[121] After these words
he seized a banner from the hands of the astonished officer who stood
nearest to him, and stood forth, like another Phineas, surrounded by
his clergy, all of whom had arms beneath their cloaks.
A most dramatic scene, and probably almost successful, had but the
Bishop only reckoned with two things: Firstly, he had forgotten that
the Governor was an old Indian fighter, and ready for surprises; and,
secondly, he had not taken into account the usual apathy of the common
people when their leaders fight. Dumbly and quite unmoved the people
stood, staring like armadillos at a snake, and made no sign. Then word
was brought that the Governor had left the church and was assembling a
force of arquebusiers.
Surrounded only by clergymen, Don Bernardino had to yield, and yielded
like a Levite, with a subterfuge. He sent a priest to beg the
magistrates to come to the Cathedral and reason with him. After a
consultation this was done, and Cardenas consented to abate his fury
and exhale his wrath. He said that Holy Writ itself gave leave to recur
to force in self-defence (but did not quote the text), and that the
Governor had meditated a like enterprise against himself; moreover,
that, he being an excommunicated man, it became lawful for God’s
vicegerent to lay hold on him.
After the scene was over, and the Bishop was escorted back to his
palace by the magistrates, a second letter came from Tucuman making
plain his conduct to him after the manner of a friend. The rector of
the Jesuits also thought fit to remonstrate, and say that Cardenas had
gone too far in attempting to assume the temporal power. This sufficed
to further strain the relations between the Bishop and the Jesuits.
As, even in Asuncion in 1643, it was unusual that the Governor should
remain for ever under the ban of Holy Mother Church, arbiters were
chosen to discuss the matter, and provide means whereby the Bishop
could conveniently climb down. The arbiters absolved the Governor on
the condition that he paid a fine of four thousand arrobas[122] of
_yerba maté_, which in money amounted to eight thousand crowns. Quite
naturally, the Bishop refused to abide by the decision, replaced his
adversary under the ban, and recommenced to preach against him with
considerable force.
The higgling of the market not having proved effectual in the
adjustment of the sum to be paid by the Governor, a priest, one Juan
Lozano, who had been condemned to imprisonment by his superiors for his
loose life, and who had taken refuge with the Bishop, hit on a stroke
of veritable genius. At a conference which took place between the
Bishop and several notables of the place, including the rector of the
Jesuits, Lozano gave it as his opinion that, if the Governor refused to
pay, a general interdict should be proclaimed. The rector of the
Jesuits retired indignantly, and ‘Père Lozano, retroussant sa robe le
poursuivit en criant à pleine tête, et s’exprimant en des termes peu
seans à sa profession.’[123] By this time Asuncion must have been like
a madhouse, for no one seems to have been astonished, or even to have
thought his conduct singular. The Bishop, always ready to take the
worst advice, got ready for his task, and on Easter Eve embarked upon
the river, leaving his Vicar-General under orders to proclaim the
general ban. This was done, and the edict so contrived as to catch the
luckless Governor in every church. The practical effect was to close
all the churches, for to whatever church the Governor went the priest
refused to celebrate the Mass. Several other persons were mentioned in
the ban, which was posted up below a crucifix in the choir of the
Cathedral. As Don Bernardino had omitted to state the particular
offences for which they were condemned, the general confusion became
intense, and no one attended Mass, so that the churches were deserted.
After a little some of the churches opened in a clandestine manner,
others remained closed, and the followers of the Bishop and the
Governor alternately assembled in a rabble, and threw stones at all the
churches, dispensing their favours quite impartially. The various
religious Orders, not to be behindhand, also took sides, the Jesuits
giving as their opinion that the Governor, not having a war upon his
back, was really excommunicated; the Dominicans holding that the
Bishop, in the general interest, ought to absolve him. He, armed with
the opinion of the latter Order, marched to the dwelling of the
Bishop’s Vicar-General, and, having nailed up both doors and windows,
sent a trumpeter to tell him he should not leave his house till
absolution had been granted. Still nothing came of it, and then the
Governor did what he should have done at first: he sent a statement of
the whole proceedings to the high court at Charcas. This high court
(Audiencia) was situated right in the middle of what is now Bolivia,
miles away from Lima, half a world from Paraguay, at least two thousand
miles from Buenos Ayres, and separated from Chile by the whole
Cordillera of the Andes. Even to-day the journey from Paraguay often
exceeds a month.
The Bishop, not to be outdone, also prepared a statement, in which he
accused his adversary of all the crimes that he could think of, and
confirmed his statement with an oath. The chapter, thinking things were
in an impossible condition, besought that the fine laid on the
excommunicated folk should be raised or lessened, as it appeared to
them there was not money in the town to satisfy it. Cardenas refused,
and thus four months elapsed. Soon after this arrived one Father
Truxillo, of the Order of St. Francis, who came from Tucuman as
Vice-Provincial. Cardenas, thinking, as they were both Franciscans,
that Truxillo must needs be favourable to his cause, made him his
Vicar-General, with power to bind and to unloose—that is, to free the
excommunicated folk from all their disabilities if, on examination, it
seemed good to him. Truxillo, who was quite unbiassed as to matters in
Asuncion, looked into everything, and declared the Governor and
everybody ought to be absolved. He further gave it as his opinion that,
the affair having gone to the high court at Charcas, he could do
nothing but give an interim decree. Don Bernardino heard the news at
Itati, an Indian village a few miles outside Asuncion. From thence he
went to a somewhat larger village called Yaguaron, and shut himself up
in a convent, after declaring everyone (except the superior clergy)
under the severest censure of the Church if they should dare approach.
Not a bad place for prayer and meditation is Yaguaron. A score or two
of little houses, built of straw and wood and thatched with
palm-leaves, straggle on the hillside above the shores of a great
camalote-covered[124] lake. Parrots scream noisily amongst the trees,
and red macaws hover like hawks over the little patches of maize and
mandioca planted amongst the palms. Round every house is set a grove of
orange-trees, mingled with lemons, sweet limes, and guayabas. Inside
the houses all is so clean that you could eat from any floor with less
repulsion than from the plates at a first-class hotel. A place where
life slips on as listless and luxuriant as the growth of a banana, and
where at evening time, when the women of the place go to fetch water in
a long line with earthen jars balanced upon their heads, the golden age
seems less improbable even than in Theocritus. To Yaguaron the higher
clergy flocked to intercede for the good people of Asuncion, all except
Father Truxillo, who, knowing something of his Bishop, did not go. That
he was wise, events proved shortly. Two canons—Diego Ponce de Leon and
Fernando Sanchez—he imprisoned in their rooms, calling them traitors to
their Bishop and their Church. Deputations came from the capital to beg
for their release, but all in vain. The Bishop answered them that he
had set his mind to purge his diocese of traitors; and the two canons
remained in prison. After a detention which lasted forty days, they
escaped and fled to Corrientes, which must have looked upon Asuncion as
a vast madhouse. Truxillo, who seems to have been a man not quite so
absolutely devoid of sense as the other clergy, endeavoured to organize
a religious _coup d’état_; but, most unfortunately, a letter he had
written to some of the saner clergy fell into the Bishop’s hands.
Excommunications now positively rained upon the land. The Governor, the
Jesuits, the Dominicans, each had their turn; but, curiously enough,
the poorer people still stood firm to Cardenas, thinking, no doubt, a
man who treated all the richer sort so harshly must do something for
the poor. Nothing, however, was further from the thoughts of Cardenas,
who thought the whole world circled round himself. The Bishop’s nephew
having returned to Corrientes and his former naughty life, Don
Bernardino, casting about for another secretary, came on one Francisco
Nieto, an apostate from the Order of St. Francis, and living openly
with an Indian woman, by whom he had a son. Him the Bishop made his
chaplain, then his confessor; and poor Nieto found himself obliged to
send his Indian wife away in spite of all his protests and his wish to
live obscurely as he had been living before his elevation to the post
of secretary. A veritable beachcomber Father Francisco Nieto seems to
have been, and the type of many a European in Paraguay, who asks no
better than to forget the tedium of our modern life and pass his days
in a little palm-thatched hut lost in a clearing of a wood or near some
lake.
So in Asuncion things went from bad to worse. Such trade as then
existed was at a standstill, and bands of starving people swarmed in
the streets, whilst the incursions of the savage Indians daily became
more frequent. In fact, Asuncion was but a type of what the world would
be under the domination of any of the sects without the counterpoise of
any civil power. The Governor, seeing the misery on every side,
determined, like an honest man, to pocket up his pride and reconcile
himself with Cardenas at any price. So, setting forth with all his
staff, he came to Yaguaron. There, like a penitent, he had to bear a
reprimand before the assembled village and engage to pay a fine before
the rancorous churchman would relieve him from the ban. The weakness of
the Governor had the effect that might have been expected, and heavy
fines were laid on all and sundry who had in any manner displeased the
Bishop or leaned to the other side in the course of the dispute.
Right in the middle of the struggle between the clerical and lay
authorities, a band of over three hundred Guaycurús appeared before the
town. Unluckily, all the chief officers of the garrison were
excommunicated, and thus incapable of doing anything to defend the
place. Foolish as Cardenas most indubitably was, his folly did not
carry him so far as to leave the capital of his diocese quite
undefended. Still, he would not give way first, and only at the moment
when the Indians seemed prepared to attack the town, at the entreaty of
a ‘pious virgin’, he raised the excommunication on the Governor and his
officers for fifteen days. The Governor, instead of, like a sensible
man, seizing the Bishop and giving him to the _cacique_ of the
Guaycurús, led out his troops and drove the Indians off. That very
night he found himself once more under the censure of the Church, and
the conflict with his opponent more bitter than at first. The Viceroy
of Peru, the Marquis of Mancera, indignant at the weakness of the
Governor, wrote sharply to him, reprimanding him and telling him at
once to assert himself and force the Bishop to confine himself to
matters spiritual. On the Governor’s attempt to reassert himself, the
answer was a general interdict laying the entire capital under the
Church’s ban. On this, he marched to Yaguaron with all his troops,
resolved to take the Bishop prisoner; but he, seeing the troops
approach, went out at once, fell on the Governor’s neck, and
straightway absolved him.
After the absolution came a banquet, which must have been a little
constrained, one might imagine, and even less amusing than the
regulation dinner-party of the London season, where one sits between
two half-naked and perspiring women eating half-raw meat and drinking
fiery wines with the thermometer at eighty in the shade. Thus
disembarrassed from the Governor, Don Bernardino turned his attention
to the Jesuits, and signified to them that he intended to take the
education of the young out of their hands. This was a mortal affront to
the Jesuits, as they have always understood that men, just as the other
animals, can only learn whilst young. Hard upon this new step, Cardenas
issued an edict forbidding them to preach or hear confessions. As for
the Governor, the Bishop did not fear him, and the poorer people of
Asuncion had always inclined to the Bishop’s party, either through
terror of the Church’s ban or from their natural instinct that the
Bishop was against the Government.
But Cardenas saw clearly that, to deal as he wished with the Jesuits,
he must entirely gain the Governor’s confidence. This he tried to do by
sending to him one Father Lopez, Provincial of the Dominicans. This
Lopez was an able and apparently quite honest man, for he told the
Governor that the wish of Cardenas was to expel the Jesuits from
Paraguay, and from their missions, warning him at the same time not to
allow himself to be made use of by the Bishop in his design. From that
moment the two adversaries seemed to have changed characters, and Don
Gregorio became as cautious as a churchman, whereas the Bishop seemed
to lose all his diplomacy.
To all the protestations of friendship which were addressed to him, the
Governor answered so adroitly that the Bishop fell into the trap, and
thought he had secured a partner to help him in the expulsion of the
Jesuits. Finally, at Yaguaron, during a sermon, he formulated his
celebrated charges against the Jesuits, which, set on foot by him in
1644, eventually caused the expulsion of the whole Order from America,
and, though refuted a thousand times, still linger in the writing of
all those who treat the question down to the present day. The charges
were seven in number, and so ingeniously contrived that royal,
national, and domestic indignation were all aroused by them. The first
was that the Jesuits prevented the Indians from paying[125] their
annual taxes to the crown. Secondly, that the Jesuits kept back the
tithes from Bishops and Archbishops.[126] Thirdly, he said the Jesuits
had rich mines in their possession, and that the product of these mines
was all sent out of the country to the general fund at Rome. This the
Jesuits disproved on several occasions, but, as often happens in such
cases, proof was of no avail against the folly of mankind, to whom it
seemed incredible that the Jesuits should bury themselves in deserts to
preach to savages, unless there was some countervailing advantage to be
gained. Even the fact that at the expulsion of the Company of Jesus
from America no treasure at all was found at any of their colleges or
missions did not dispel the conviction that they owned rich mines. The
fourth charge was that the Jesuits were not particular about the
secrets of the confessional, and that they used the information thus
acquired for their own selfish ends. Further, that Father Ruiz de
Montoya had acquired from the King, under a misapprehension, a royal
edict,[127] giving the territory of the missions to the Jesuits, thus
taking the fruits of their conquest from the Spanish colonists.
Fifthly, that the Jesuits entered Paraguay possessed but of the clothes
upon their backs, that they had made themselves into the sovereign
rulers of a great territory, but that he was going to expel them, as
the Venetians had expelled them from Venetia.[128] Sixthly, that even
the Portuguese of San Paulo de Piritinanga had expelled them.[129] His
last assertion was that he himself, together with the Bishop of Tucuman
and others, had secret orders from the King to expel the Jesuits from
their dioceses, but that the other Bishops lacked the courage which he
(Cardenas) was then about to show. He wound up all by saying that, once
the Jesuits were gone, the King would once again enjoy his rights, the
Church be once again restored to freedom, and, lastly, that there would
be plenty of Indians for the settlers to enslave. Quite possibly
enough, the public, ever generous to a fault with other people’s goods,
cared little for the rights of a King who lived ten thousand miles
away; and as for the Church, it seems most probable they failed to see
the peril that she ran. But when the Bishop spoke of enslaving the
Indians, they saw the Jesuits must go, for from the conquest the
Jesuits had stood between the settlers and their prey. All things
considered, Don Bernardino made a remarkable discourse that Sunday
morning in the palm-thatched village by the lake, for the echo of it
still resounds in the religious world against the Jesuits.
Like other men after a notable pronouncement, it is most probable that
Cardenas was unaware of the full import of his words. Perhaps he
thought (as speakers will) that all the best portions of his sermon had
been left unsaid. Be that as it may, he shortly turned his thoughts to
other matters of more direct importance to himself. In judging of his
life, it should not be forgotten that, by his sermon at Yaguaron, he
placed himself upon the side of those who wanted to enslave the
Indians. Perhaps he did not know this, and certainly his popularity
amongst the Indians outside the missions was enormous. His next
adventure was to try and eject the Jesuits from a farm they had, called
San Isidro. The Governor having forbidden him to do so, he armed an
army of his partisans to expel the Jesuits from their college in the
capital.
Outside Asuncion the Lieutenant-Governor, Don Francisco Florez, met the
Bishop’s secretary, Father Nieto, who informed him of the enterprise,
exhorting him to enlist the sympathies of the Governor in so good a
cause. Florez, a better diplomatist than his commanding officer, seemed
to approve, and naturally deceived poor Father Nieto, who, like most
hypocrites, became an easy prey to his own tactics when used against
himself.
Florez informed the Governor at once, and he sent to the Jesuits, and
put them on their guard. Next day he met the Bishop, and told him that
his enterprise could not succeed, as the Jesuits were under arms. No
doubt he learned these artifices in his campaigns against the Indians
of Arauco, or it may have been that, like others who have had to strive
with churchmen, he learned to beat them with their own controversial
arms. The Bishop fell completely into the snare, and, thinking the
Governor was a fast friend, confided all his plans to him for the
expulsion of the Jesuits and the conquest of the mission territory.
Just then Captain Don Pedro Diaz del Valle came from La Plata, and gave
Don Bernardino a new decision of the High Court of Charcas, telling him
to live in peace with all men, and govern his diocese with zeal. He
certainly was zealous to an extraordinary degree, if not judicious.
Therefore, the very mention of the word ‘zeal’ must have been
peculiarly offensive to such a zealous man. The letter went on to say
that all the fines he had exacted were illegal, and commanded him to
give back the _yerba_ which he had extorted from his involuntary
penitents, and in the future live on better terms with all around him.
To all of this he paid no notice, as was to be expected, but, to avoid
returning the _yerba_, sent a letter to his officers to have it burned.
This letter, which he denied, was subsequently produced against him in
the High Court at Charcas.
Seeing the Governor was bent on frustrating or on deceiving him, he
tried to get from Don Sebastian Leon, who held an office under the
Governor, an edict of the Emperor Charles V., which he had heard was in
the archives, and which provided that, in case a Governor should die or
be deposed, the notables of the place had power to appoint an interim
Governor to fill his place. If such a paper ever existed, it must have
been a very early document given by Charles V. at the foundation of the
colony, for nothing was more opposed to the traditions of Spanish
policy throughout America. Don Sebastian Leon having informed the
Governor, the latter saw that things were coming to a crisis, and that
either he or the Bishop would have to leave the place. Not being sure
of all his troops, and the Bishop having the populace upon his side, he
sent to the Jesuit missions for six hundred Indians. Thus the supremacy
of the royal government fell to be supported by men but just emerging
from a semi-nomad life, who owed the tincture of civilization they
possessed to the calumniated Jesuits.
On many occasions armies of Indians from the Jesuit missions rendered
important services to the crown of Spain: not only against the
Portuguese, but against English corsairs, and in rebellions, as in the
case of Cardenas; or as when, in the year 1680, Philip V. wrote to the
Governor of Buenos Ayres to garrison the port with a contingent of
Indians from the Jesuit reductions; in 1681, when the French attacked
the port with a squadron of four-and-twenty ships; and at the first
siege of the Colonia, in 1678, when three thousand Indians marched to
the attack, accompanied by their Jesuit pastors, but under the command
of Spanish officers.[130]
An army from the Jesuit missions consisted almost entirely of cavalry.
It marched much like a South American army of twenty years ago was wont
to march. In front was driven the _caballada_, consisting of the spare
horses; then came the vanguard, composed of the best mounted soldiers,
under their _caciques_. Then followed the wives and women of the
soldiers, driving the baggage-mules, and lastly some herdsmen drove a
troop of cattle for the men to eat. When Jesuits accompanied the army,
they did not enter into action, but were most intrepid in succouring
the wounded under fire, as Funes, in his ‘Historia Civil del Paraguay’,
etc.,[131] relates when speaking of their conduct at the siege of the
Colonia in 1703. For arms they carried lances, slings, _chuzos_
(broad-pointed spears), lazos, and bolas, and had amongst them certain
very long English guns with rests to fire from, not very heavy, and of
a good range. Each day the accompanying Jesuits said Mass, and each
town carried its particular banner before the troop. They generally
camped, if possible, in the open plain, both to avoid surprises and for
convenience in guarding the cattle and the _caballada_. In all the
territories of South America no such quiet and well-behaved soldiery
was to be found; for in Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala, the passage
of an army was similar to the passing of a swarm of locusts in its
effect.
Don Bernardino, on his side, was occupied in animating the populace
against the Jesuits with all the fervour of an Apostle. Naturally, he
first commenced by launching his usual sentence of excommunication
against them, and having done so returned again to Yaguaron. This
village, like other Paraguayan villages, many of which in times gone by
have been the scenes of stirring episodes, retains to-day but little to
distinguish it. Nature has proved too powerful in the long-run for men
to fight against. On every side the woods seem ready to overwhelm the
place. Grass grows between the wooden steps of the neglected church;
seibos, lapachos, espinillos de olor, all bound together with lianas,
encroach to the verges of the little clearings in which grows mandioca,
looking like a field of sticks. All day the parrots scream, and toucans
and picaflores dart about; at evening the monkeys howl in chorus; at
night the jaguar prowls about, and giant bats fasten upon the
incautious sleeper, or, fixing themselves upon a horse, leave him
exhausted in the morning with the loss of blood.
When Cardenas used the place as a sort of Avignon from which to safely
utter his anathemas, it must have worn a different aspect. No doubt
processions and ceremonies were continual, with carrying about the
saints in public, a custom which the Paraguayans irreverently refer to
as ‘sacando á luz los bultos’.[132] Messengers (_chasquis_), no doubt,
came and went perpetually, as is the custom in countries such as
Paraguay, where news is valuable and horseflesh cheap. Thereto flocked,
to a moral certainty, all the broken soldiers who swarmed in countries
like Peru and Paraguay, with Indian _caciques_ looking out for work to
do when white men quarrelled and throats were to be cut. Priests went
and came, friars and missionaries; and Cardenas most certainly, who
loved effect, gave all his emerald ring to kiss, and made those
promises which leaders of revolt lavish on everyone in times of
difficulty.
When the Indian contingent arrived, the Governor marched upon Yaguaron,
although the air was positively lurid with excommunications. The
Bishop, rushing to the church, was intercepted by the Governor, who
seized his arm and tried to stop him. Cardenas struggled with him, and
declared him excommunicated for laying his hand upon the anointed of
the Lord. But, most unfortunately, there was no Fitz-Urse at hand to
rid the Governor of so turbulent a priest. A mulatto[133] woman rushed
to the Bishop’s aid, together with some priests. This gave him time to
gain the altar and seize the Host, which he exposed at once to the
public gaze, and for the moment all present fell upon their knees.
Turning to the Governor, he asked what he wanted with armed men in a
church. The Governor replied he had come to banish him from Paraguay,
by order of the Viceroy, for having infringed upon the temporal power.
Cardenas, taken aback, replied he would obey, and, turning to the
people, took them all for witnesses. The Governor, no doubt thinking he
was dealing with an honest Araucan chief, retired. The Bishop
immediately denounced the Governor in a furious sermon, after which he
left the church, carrying the Host in full procession, accompanied by
the choir singing the ‘Pange Lingua’, followed by a band of Indian
women with their hair dishevelled, and carrying green branches in their
hands. He then returned to the church, and from the pulpit denounced
the Governor, who, standing at the door surrounded by a group of
arquebusiers blowing their matches, answered him furiously.
The honours, so to speak, being thus equally divided, it remained for
one side or the other to negotiate. Cardenas, knowing himself much
abler in negotiations than his adversary, proposed a conference, in
which he bore himself so skilfully that he made the Governor consent to
dismiss his Indians, and allow him six days to make his preparations
for the road. This settled, at dead of night he set out for the
capital. Arrived there, he showed himself in public in his green hat,
having upon his breast a little box of glass in which he bore the Host.
A band of priests escorted him, all with arms concealed beneath their
cloaks, in the true spirit of the Church militant. The bells were rung,
and every effort strained to raise a tumult, but all in vain. He had to
throw himself for refuge into the convent of the Franciscans.
At once he set about to fortify the place to stand a siege. In several
places he constructed embrasures for guns, and pierced the walls for
musketry. But, thinking that his best defence lay in the folly of the
people—as public men always have done, and do—he sent to the Cathedral
for a statue of the Blessed Virgin, and another of San Blas, and placed
them at the gate. Then, remembering that calumny was a most serviceable
weapon, he put about the town a report that the Indians from the
missions had pillaged Yaguaron, and that they even then were marching
on the place. Again recurring to the edict of Charles V., which he
pretended to have found, he issued a proclamation that, as the present
Governor was excommunicated, and therefore could not govern, the office
being vacant, he intended to nominate another in his stead. His
subsequent behaviour shows most clearly that he wished to nominate
himself.
Again both sides sent off a relation of their doings to the High Court
of Charcas. Don Bernardino wrote in his that the Jesuits had offered
the Governor thirty thousand crowns, and placed a thousand men at his
command, if he would expel the Bishop from the country, under the
belief that he (Don Bernardino) knew of their hidden mines in the
mission territory. His witnesses were students and priests, and one of
these proving recalcitrant, the Bishop had him heavily chained, and
then suspended outside the convent of the Franciscans.
This drastic treatment had the desired effect, as torture always has
with reasonable men, and the poor witness signed, but afterwards
protested, thus giving a good example in himself of the truth of the
Spanish saying, ‘Protest and pay’.[134]
By this time the patience and long-suffering of the Governor were quite
exhausted. He therefore sent to the Bishop to say a ship was ready to
take him down the river, and at the same time reminded him of his
promise at Yaguaron to obey the order of the Viceroy of Peru. He sent
the message by the royal notary, Gomez de Coyeso, who accordingly
repaired to the convent of San Francisco. At the door a priest
appeared, armed with a javelin, who three times tried to wound the
notary, on which the Governor stationed a band of fifty soldiers at the
convent gate, in spite of the presence of the statues of the Blessed
Virgin and San Blas. Then, having published an edict that the Bishop
was deposed, he proceeded to elect another in his stead.
One of the canons, Don Cristobal Sanchez, who had governed the diocese
during the interregnum before the advent of Don Bernardino, still lived
in retirement near the town. The Governor approached him with the
request that he would once more take the interim charge until the King
should send another Bishop to replace Cardenas. Sanchez consented, on
the understanding that the Governor would guarantee his personal
safety. This being done, Sanchez was taken to the Jesuit college as the
securest place.
So it fell out that everything concurred to strengthen the hatred of
the Bishop to the Jesuits. To the Jesuit college came the Governor and
all the notables, and, having taken Sanchez in procession through the
streets, they placed him on the Bishop’s throne in the Cathedral, and
invested him with all the power that he had held before the coming of
Don Bernardino Cardenas. The proclamation set forth by the Governor
alluded to the informality of the consecration of Don Bernardino, and
to his actions during his time of power.
At last the Bishop saw that he must go. So, after launching a supreme
anathema, and after having expressed his great unwillingness to tarry
longer in a city where half the population had incurred the censure of
the Church, and marked with a cross those churches where he permitted
Mass to be celebrated, he went on board the ship. Before embarking, he
drew a silver bell from underneath his cloak, and to the sound of it he
solemnly proclaimed the town accursed. The bells of the Franciscan
convent and the Bishop’s palace, according to his orders, all tolled
loudly. This caused so much confusion that, in order to appease the
tumult, the authorities ordered the bells of all the churches in the
town to ring.
Entering the vessel, Don Bernardino sat himself upon the poop on a low
stool, with all the clergy who were faithful to him grouped about the
deck. With him he had the sacred wafer in a glass box, and not far off
a group of sailors on the forecastle lounged about smoking and drinking
_maté_ whilst they played at cards. Someone reminded him it was not
fitting that God’s Body should thus be seen so near to sailors, and
therefore the Bishop, according to the custom of the Church in cases of
accident or desecration, consumed the offended wafer, and peace
descended on the ship.
Thus, in 1644, he took his first departure from the place where for the
last two years he had brought certainly rather a sword than peace. His
friends assured the public that, at the moment he stepped on board the
ship, stars were seen to fall from heaven towards the church of St.
Luke, and passed from thence to the episcopal palace and disappeared;
that at the same time a slight shock of earthquake had been
experienced; that stones had danced about, and several hills had
trembled. The sun, quite naturally, had appeared blood-red; trouble and
desolation had entered every heart, and animals had prophesied woe and
destruction, predicting ruin and misfortune to the town till the good
Bishop should return once more.
The events of the past two years in Paraguay had not been favourable to
the conversion of the Indians. Not only in the missions, where the
neophytes had seen themselves obliged to furnish troops against their
Bishop, but in the territory of Paraguay itself, the Indians had not
had a good example of how Christians carry out the duties of their
faith. As a general rule, the Indian (unlike the negro) cares little
for dogma, but places his belief entirely in good works. Perhaps on
this account the Jesuits, also believers in good works, have had the
most success amongst them. Be that as it may, the Jesuits, after the
departure of the Bishop, found that many of their recent converts had
fallen away and gone back to the woods.
Whilst Jesuits in Paraguay were seeking to convert the Indians, and
whilst the Governor, no doubt, was thanking his stars for the absence
of his rival, in Rome the question of the Bishop’s consecration filled
all minds. From May 9, 1645, to October 2 of the same year no less than
four congregations of the Propaganda had been held about the case. The
Pope himself was present at one of them. Nothing was arrived at till
1658, when finally the consecration was declared in order, but not
until Don Bernardino was appointed to another see.
Just about this time (1644-45) a rumour was set on foot that the
Jesuits had discovered mines near their reductions on the Paraná. These
rumours were always set about when there was nothing else by means of
which to attack the Jesuits. An Indian by the name of Buenaventura, who
had been a servant in a convent in Buenos Ayres, on this occasion was
the instrument used by their enemies. For a short time everyone
believed him, and excitement was intense; but, most unluckily,
Buenaventura happened at the zenith of his notoriety to run away with a
married woman, and, being pursued, was brought to Buenos Ayres, and
then in public incontinently whipped. In any other country Buenaventura
after his public whipping would have been discredited, but a letter
arrived from the Bishop of Paraguay, telling the Governor of Buenos
Ayres that the mines really existed. At that time a new Governor, one
Don Jacinto de Lara, had just arrived. Being new to America and its
ways, he started out himself to try the question, and with fifty
soldiers, taking Buenaventura as his guide, went to the missions. As
might have been expected, on the journey Buenaventura disappeared, this
time alone. ‘Cette fuite lui donna beaucoup à penser,’ says Charlevoix.
But having gone so far, the Governor determined to try the question
thoroughly.
Father Diaz Taño, one of the best and hardest-working missionaries who
ever entered Paraguay, besought the Governor to satisfy himself and
search their territory for gold and silver, and requested him to call
upon the Bishop for confirmation of the statements he had made. This he
did, and then, accompanied by his soldiers, began his search. He gave
out that the first man to find a mine should be at once promoted to be
captain and have a large reward. After several days’ march, and having
found no mines, letters were brought him from the Governor of Paraguay
and from the Bishop. The first informed him that he had heard rumours
of mines, but nothing certain. The second declined to specify the
mines, which thus were destined to remain for ever, so to speak, _in
partibus_. But he gave advice, and good advice is better than any mine,
whether of silver or of gold. He told the Governor to start by turning
out the Jesuits, and he would find the profits of their expulsion just
as valuable as mines.
Whether this also made the Governor pensive I do not know, but,
luckily, the Jesuits, who were concerned in exposing the imposture, had
come on Buenaventura, and brought him ironed to the Governor. He, after
having tried to make him confess his imposture without success,
condemned him to be hung. The Jesuits, with their accustomed humanity
(or ingenuity), begged for his life. This was accorded to them, and
once again Buenaventura received a good sound whipping for his pains.
Thus ended the journey of Don Jacinto, without profit to himself,
except so far as the experience gained. No doubt he saw and marked the
Jesuit towns, the churches built of massive timber or of stone, and the
contented air of Indians and priests, which always struck all
travellers in those times. He saw the countless herds of cattle, the
cultivated fields; enjoyed, no doubt for the first time since arriving
in South America, the sense of perfect safety, at that time to be
experienced alone in Misiones. But in despite of his exposure of the
imposture, the rumour as to the existence of the mines never died out,
and lingers even to-day, in spite of geological research in Paraguay.
Whilst this was going on in Misiones, in the remote and
recently-converted district of the Itatines, in the north of Paraguay,
the example set by the Bishop had borne its fruit. The Indians became
unmanageable. One of the chiefs broke into open rebellion, and wounded
a Jesuit father called Arenas at the very altar-steps. Soon the general
corruption of manners became almost universal throughout the district.
This, I fancy, must be taken to mean that the Indians reverted to
polygamy, for the Jesuits always had trouble in this matter, being
unable to persuade the Indians of the advantage of monogamy.
But most fortuitously, just as the general corruption gained all
hearts, a tiger rushed into the town, and, after killing fourteen
people and some horses, disappeared again into the woods.
The Jesuits, ever ready to take advantage of events like these, called
on the Indians to see in the visitation of the tiger the wrath of
Heaven, and to leave their wicked ways.
The Indians, always as willing to submit as to revolt, submitted, and
the good fathers ‘prirent le parti de faire un coup d’autorité, qui
leur réussit,’ as Charlevoix relates.
They decoyed the chief, his nephew, and son, into another district,
where they seized and shipped them off two hundred leagues to a remote
reduction across the Uruguay. The Spaniards used to say of Ferdinand
VII., when he had committed any great barbarity, ‘He is quite a King’
(‘Es mucho Rey’), and the Indians of the Itatines esteemed the Jesuits
for their ‘coup d’autorité’ in the same manner as the Spaniards their
King.
His usual luck attended Cardenas in his exile in Corrientes. This town
formed part of the diocese of Buenos Ayres, which happened to be vacant
at the time. He therefore took upon himself to act just as he had acted
in Paraguay—appointed officers of justice, held ordinations, and
instituted a campaign against the Jesuits of the town.
Whilst he was thus occupied in his favourite pastime of usurping other
people’s functions, two citations were sent him to appear before the
High Court of Charcas. He disregarded them, and sent a statement of his
case by the hands of his nephew to the Bishop of Tucuman. In the letter
he set forth all his complaints against the Governor of Paraguay,
calling him a violator of the Church, a heretic, and generally applying
to him all those terms in which a thwarted churchman usually exhales
his rage. Mixed up with this was a detailed accusation of the Jesuits,
to whose account he laid all his misfortunes whilst in Paraguay.
Lastly, he called upon the Bishop of Tucuman to summon a provincial
council to condemn the monstrous heresies which he attributed to the
Jesuits, reminding him that the Council of Trent had recommended the
holding of frequent provincial councils, and stating his opinion that,
unless a council were called at once, the Bishop would incur a mortal
sin.
The answer Cardenas received from Tucuman was most ironically couched
in the best style that his long-suffering friend was able to command.
After addressing Cardenas as ‘your illustrious lordship’, he proceeded
to demolish all his statements in such a manner as to argue that he had
had much practice with refractory priests in his own diocese. He told
him that the Jesuits were the only Order in Paraguay that really worked
amongst the Indians. He reminded him that from that Order the ‘second
Paul’, _i.e._, St. Francis Xavier, had himself issued. He asked him
whether, as a churchman, he thought the yearly sum of twelve thousand
crowns given by the King out of the treasury of Buenos Ayres towards
the Jesuits’ work was better saved, or that the thousands of Indians
whom the Jesuits had converted should be lost to God. And as to heresy,
he said he was no judge, leaving such matters to the Pope; but that no
one accused the Jesuits of corruption in their morals, or of any of the
greater crimes to which the great fragility of human nature renders us
liable. He reminded him the Jesuits had made no accusation on their
part, but always spoke of him with moderation and respect. And as to a
provincial council, he said that it was impossible, for the following
good cause: The Bishop of Misque[135] was too infirm to travel; the
Bishop of La Paz was lately dead, and the see still vacant; the Bishop
of Buenos Ayres only just arrived, and too much occupied to leave his
diocese. Therefore, the only Bishops available were himself and
Cardenas, and that they never would agree.
‘Moreover,’ he remarked, ‘what is it that your illustrious lordship
wishes me to do?
‘To advise a Bishop?
‘God has only given me the charge of my own sheep. Your lordship knows
as well as I do how a Bishop should comport himself.’
He finished with a quotation, saying that a Bishop’s state was not to
lie ‘in splendore vestium, sed morum; non ad iram, sed ut omnimodum
patientium.’
What Cardenas replied is not set down in any history which has come
under my observation, but what he must have thought is easy to divine.
The Governor of Paraguay, not content with having put his case before
the Supreme Court of Charcas, sent also to the Council General of the
Indies in Seville, detailing all the vagaries of the Bishop. The
Jesuits also empowered an officer to represent them there.
During these preparations, and whilst everyone was off his guard, the
Guaycurús endeavoured to surprise the capital, and would have done so
had not some regiments of Guaranís arrived in time from the mission
territory. This should have been an object-lesson to those who always
tried to show the Jesuits in the light of enemies to the authority of
the King of Spain. Nothing, however, proved of the least avail, and
though on several occasions the Spanish power in Paraguay was only
saved by the exertions of the Jesuits and their Indians, the calumnies
of Cardenas had taken too deep root to be dispelled.
Meanwhile, in Corrientes, Cardenas schemed night and day to return to
Paraguay. In his own city of La Plata naturally he had some friends,
and these did all they could to get him reinstated. In spite of all
their efforts, an order came from Charcas for him to leave the city
under pain of banishment.[136] Anyone but Cardenas would have been
disconcerted; he, though, pretended, as in the order he was still
styled Bishop of Paraguay, that before leaving for Charcas, to present
himself before the court, he had to go to Asuncion to name a
Vicar-General, and towards the end of 1646 he embarked upon the river
for Paraguay.
The Governor was on the alert, and sent a vessel with orders to turn
him back, which order was carried out in spite of his remonstrances,
and he returned to Corrientes in a miserable state.
Then came another citation to appear at Charcas, and an intimation that
he was appointed Bishop of Popayán. As Popayán (in New Granada) was at
least three thousand miles from Asuncion, his joy at the appointment
must have been extreme.
His fortunes now seemed desperate; as he said himself in a letter to
the King, ‘at an advanced age he could not undertake so great a
journey’; and on every side his enemies seemed to have got the upper
hand.
In 1648 a change came over everything. Don Gregorio Hinestrosa was
removed from Paraguay, and a new Governor, Don Diego Escobar de Osorio,
appointed in his place. Immediately the news reached Cardenas he set
out for Paraguay. Arriving at Asuncion, his friends all met him and
took him in procession to the Cathedral. His first thought was to renew
his persecution of the Jesuits. Most unfortunately for them, Don Juan
de Palafox, Bishop of Puebla de los Angeles in Mexico, who had himself
in Mexico had many quarrels with the Jesuits, wrote begging Cardenas
and all the Bishops of South America to join against them.
This Palafox was afterwards beatified, and even in his lifetime enjoyed
the reputation of a saint, so that his letter greatly strengthened
Cardenas. Notwithstanding this, Palafox in subsequent works of his
during the time that he was Bishop of Osma (in Spain) said many things
in praise of the work done by the Jesuits in Paraguay.
The new Governor, himself a member of the Supreme Court of Charcas, had
never been before in Paraguay, and therefore resolved to treat the
Bishop (as Don Gregorio had done) with every respect due to his
station. The Bishop wanted nothing better, and saw at once he had
another fool to deal with. Therefore he made no secret of his intention
of not complying with the citation of the court at Charcas, and set
himself at once to preach against the Jesuits, and stir up popular
resentment against them. Unluckily, proof was wanting of the crimes he
alleged they had committed, so he resorted to the device of getting a
petition signed by all and sundry, asking for the expulsion of the
Order from Paraguay. Like all petitions, it was largely signed by women
and by children and by those who had never thought before about the
matter, but liked the opportunity to write their names after the names
of others, as sheep go through a gap or members give their votes (out
of mere sympathy) in the high court of Parliament.
This device having taken too much time, blank documents were passed
about for all to write upon whatever they imagined to the disadvantage
of the Jesuits. By an untoward chance, a bundle of these, sent to the
agent of the Bishop in Spain, was taken on the voyage by an English
corsair. The worthy pirate (no doubt a Protestant) was, if we can
believe the Jesuits, extremely scandalized at the bad faith of those
who used such means of wreaking their malevolence.
So all seemed once again to smile upon Don Bernardino, who no doubt
resumed his flagellations, his midnight services, and his saying of two
Masses, and once again became the idol of the people of Asuncion.
But in the north, in the wild district of Caaguayu, hard by the
mountains of Mbaracayá, close to the great _yerbales_,[137] the Jesuits
had formed two towns amongst the Indians. These two towns were destined
to be the outposts of the country against the incursions of the wild
Indians from the Chaco.
The Bishop prevailed upon the Governor to let him turn out the Jesuits
and replace them by priests of another Order. This being done, the
Indians all deserted, leaving the district quite uninhabited.
The court at Charcas, hearing of this folly, sent an order to the
Governor to send the Jesuits back. A year was passed in ceaseless
searching of the woods and deserts for the Indians, but only half of
the population could ever be persuaded to return, and Father Mansilla,
the ex-missionary, died of the hardships that he underwent.
From that date down to the time of Dr. Francia (_circa_ 1812-35), the
district remained a desert. Francia used it as a penal settlement, and
to-day, save for a few wild, wandering Indians, known as Caaguas, and a
sparse population of _yerba_-gatherers, it still remains almost
unpopulated.
Meanwhile, the general indignation against the Jesuits seemed to infect
all classes of the population. Certainly, the citizens of Asuncion had
good and sufficient causes of complaint against the Jesuits. On several
occasions the efforts of the Jesuits and their Indians alone had saved
the capital from the wild Indians, and benefits are hard to bear, if
only from their rarity.
Popular hatred, to the full as idiotic as is popular applause, fell
chiefly upon Father Diaz Taño—he who had saved ten thousand Indians for
the King of Spain in his celebrated retreat before the Mamelucos down
the Paraná—and he was frequently insulted in the streets. Father
Antonio Manquiano, a quiet and learned man, was almost murdered in open
day by a furious fanatic, who fell upon him with the openly expressed
intent ‘to eat his heart’.
This was the moment Cardenas pitched on to declare the entire Order of
the Jesuits excommunicated. As he had been a year away from the scene
of his former exploits, people were not so used to excommunications,
and therefore took them seriously.
At this eventful juncture the Governor, Don Diego, died so suddenly
that suspicions of his having been poisoned were aroused. Scarce was he
dead than all the population assembled at the palace to elect an
interim successor. This was a most important thing, as to communicate
with Spain took, at the very shortest time, about eight months. By
acclamation the choice fell on the Bishop, who thus found himself head
of the spiritual and the temporal power at once.
The election was absolutely illegal, as the Spanish law provided that,
if a Governor of Paraguay should chance to die, the nomination of an
interim successor should rest first with the Viceroy of Peru, and
failing him with the High Court of Charcas.
Cardenas based his election on the pretended edict of the Emperor
Charles V., but, if he had a copy of the edict, never produced it. As
usual, ‘good men daring not, and wise men caring not’, but only fools
and schemers taking part in the election, no serious opposition to his
usurpation was encountered.
Cardenas never doubted for a moment that the function of a Governor was
to govern, and he began at once to do so with a will.
Xarque, a Spanish writer, gives the following curious description of
how he set about to get the people on his side to expel the
Jesuits:[138]
Preaching one day in the Cathedral, after the consecration he turned
towards the people, and, showing the holy wafer, said, ‘Do you believe,
my brethren, that Jesus Christ is here?’ All, being true believers,
answered as one man that such was their belief. In the same way as at a
scientific lecture, when the lecturer holds up some substance, and
says, ‘You all know well that calcium tungstate or barium hydrocyanide
has this or the other property,’ the hearers nod assent like sheep,
being afraid to contradict so glib a statement from so eminent a man.
Then said Cardenas, ‘Believe as firmly that I have an order from the
King to expel the Jesuits.’ The people all believed, and Cardenas
forgot to tell them that by the expulsion of the Jesuits twenty
thousand Indians would pass into his power, whom he could then
distribute amongst his friends as slaves, as he proposed to divide the
Indians of the missions amongst the Paraguayan notables to win them to
his side.
Being at the head of everything in Asuncion, Cardenas no longer
hesitated, but ordered an officer, Don Juan de Vallejo Villasanti, with
a troop of soldiers to march to the college of the Jesuits. This he
did, and finding the gates all barred, he burst them open, and,
entering the college, signified to the rector an order from the
Governor (duly countersigned by the Bishop) to leave the city with all
his priests, and to evacuate all the missions on the Paraná. The rector
answered that the Jesuits had a permission from Philip II., renewed by
his successors, to found a college, and Father Taño exhibited the
documents. Villasanti, who had but little love for documents, snatched
the parchments from his hand, and the soldiers forced the Jesuits in a
body to the port like sheep. There they were tied and thrown into
canoes almost without provisions, and sent off down the river to
Corrientes, the certain haven of the party in Paraguay which has got
the worst of an election or a revolution, and wishes to gain time.
Arrived in Corrientes, Don Manuel Cabral, a pious officer, received
them in his house, and, curiously enough, the population welcomed the
Jesuits with enthusiasm, and pressed them earnestly to build a college
in the town.
Their college at Asuncion was treated like a town taken by storm:
pulpit and font, confessionals and doors, all were torn down and burnt,
and, with a view of justifying what was done, the Bishop’s partisans
spread a report that, as the Jesuits were heretics, their temple was
unclean.
The population, more artistic in its instincts than the Bishop, refused
to allow the altar, which had been brought from Spain, to be destroyed.
Besides the altar, there were also statues of San Ignacio and San
Francisco Xavier. These the Bishop wished to turn into St. Peter and
St. Paul. With this design he gave them to an Indian carpenter to work
upon. The poor man did his best, but only managed to turn out two
monstrous blocks, which looked like nothing human.
A statue of the Blessed Virgin which had the eyes turned up to heaven
the Bishop wished to alter, and replace the head by another with the
eyes turned down to earth, as being more befitting to the statue’s sex.
The people, less mad or superstitious than the Bishop, refused to allow
it, and the image, too, was placed in the Cathedral.
In 1649 the expulsion of an Order so powerful as were the Jesuits
caused some commotion through the world at large. Miracles happened
opportunely to strengthen waning faith. A fire placed round their
church, though it destroyed, refused to blacken; and ropes fixed to the
tower of the church, although attached to windlasses, refused to pull
it down, so that the tower and church, though gutted, still remained
almost intact, and, on the Jesuits’ return, were easily repaired, and
served as a monument of victory.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a mitre, as poor Cardenas found out.
His popularity suffered some decrease by the lack of treasure found in
the Jesuits’ college, for he had always dangled millions in prospective
before the people’s eyes to engage them on his side, and, most
unluckily, he had no millions to bestow. So, to make all things right,
he sent Fray Diego Villalon[139] to Madrid to represent his interests.
The Jesuits upon their side were not inactive. By virtue of a brief of
Gregory XIII. they had the privilege of appointing an official called a
judge conservator in cases where their honour or their possessions were
attacked. Therefore Father Alfonso de Ojeda was sent to Charcas to
arrange about the case. At Charcas they found that Cardenas had been
before them, and had instituted proceedings against their Order in the
High Court. Father Pedro Nolasco, Superior of the Order of Mercy, was
appointed judge conservator. He at once summoned the Bishop to appear
before him, and arranged to try the case and hear the evidence.
Cardenas having refused to appear, sentence went by default against
him. The High Court, being convinced that the pretended edict of the
Emperor Charles V. did not exist, appointed Don Andres Garabito de Leon
to be interim Captain-General of Paraguay, and gave him power, if
necessary, to restore order by force of arms. The court then issued a
decree summoning Cardenas to appear at once at Charcas and give his
reasons why he had had himself made Governor and had expulsed the
Jesuits from Paraguay. It then communicated with the Marquis of
Mancera, Viceroy of Peru, who quite concurred in its decision as to
Cardenas.
Apparently upon the principle which prevails amongst Mohammedans of
always appointing, first an officer, and then a caliph to that officer
to do the work, the High Court of Charcas also appointed a commander to
proceed to Paraguay, pending the time that Don Andres should feel
inclined to start himself. As the caliph’s name was Sebastian de Leon,
it is not improbable that he was a relation of the first-appointed man.
Don Sebastian de Leon seems to have been in Paraguay already, for both
Charlevoix and Xarque agree that he and his brothers, after the
expulsion of the Jesuits by Cardenas, had retired to an estate some
distance from Asuncion. At the estate the news of his appointment
reached him, and must have placed him in a most difficult position as
to what to do.
On several occasions in the various rebellions which occurred in South
America during the Spanish rule, men were appointed to quell
rebellions, pacify countries, and restore order, and all without an
army or any forces being placed at their command. This was the case
with the celebrated La Gasca, who was sent from Spain to put down the
rebellion of Gonzalo Pizarro, and succeeded in so doing, though he left
Spain without a single soldier in his train. In this connection it is
to be remembered that none of the rebellions in Spanish America from
the days of Charles I. (_i.e._, the Emperor Charles V.) to those of
Charles III. were for the object of separation from the metropolis, but
merely risings against Governors sent out from Spain. It seems that
both in Peru and Paraguay the very name of the imperial power was able
to draw hundreds of men to the standard of whatever officer held a
commission from Madrid, such as that held by Garabito de Leon or by La
Gasca on the Paraná.
At first Don Sebastian did not show himself in Asuncion, but sent out
messengers on every side to summon soldiers, requisition horses, and
collect provisions. He also sent to Corrientes to tell the Jesuits he
was ready to reinstate them in their possessions.
Don Bernardino meanwhile was preparing for the great adventure of his
life. He seems to have believed most firmly that no power on earth had
any right to remove him from the governorship of Paraguay. In a letter
which he addressed to Don Juan Romero de la Cruz[140] he says he is on
the point of distinguishing himself by heroic exploits and great
victories; that he had on his side justice and force (a most uncommon
combination); that the entire capital was favourable to him; and that
he was resolved neither to readmit the Jesuits nor to recognise Don
Sebastian de Leon as Governor.
Asuncion was once again convulsed, and all was preparation for the holy
war. The Bishop had given out that angels were to help him, and this so
reassured his soldiers that they provided themselves with cords to bind
the Indians in the army of Don Sebastian Leon, thinking they would fall
an easy prey to them. This matter of the cords explains, perhaps, why
the population of Asuncion was almost unanimous in favour of the
Bishop.
In the army of Don Sebastian, as well as the militia of the province,
marched three thousand Indians from the Jesuit reductions on the
Paraná. The Spaniards of the capital were all determined not to kill
any of them, but keep them alive for slaves, and hence the cords with
which they armed themselves.
The sacred generalissimo led out his army from Asuncion in person,
celebrating Mass himself, and then heading his troops like many another
Spanish ecclesiastic has done before and after him, and continued doing
even to the latest Carlist war.
The armies met not far from Luqué, in a little plain known as the Campo
Grande. An open plain with sandy soil, which gave the horses a good
footing, with several little stagnant pools in the centre where the
wounded men could drink and wash their wounds, with a most convenient
forest on all sides for the deserters and the cowards to hide in, made
a good battlefield. The village of Luqué, grouped round its church, and
with a little plaza in the middle in which sat Paraguayan women selling
mandioca, chipa,[141] and rapadura,[142] with sacks of maize and of
mani,[143] stood on the summit of a little hill. Upon the plain the
earth is red, and looks as if a battle had been fought upon it and much
blood spilt. In all directions run little paths, worn deep by the feet
of mules and horses, and in which the rider has to lift his feet as if
he were going through a stream. To Asuncion there leads one of the
deep-sunk roads planted with orange and paraiso[144] trees, constructed
thus (as Barco de la Centenera tells us in his ‘Argentina’) so as to be
defensible against the Indians after the country was first conquered by
the Spaniards.
On the Bishop’s side hardly a soldier but thought himself an emissary
of God, or doubted of the victory for a moment in his heart. Angels
themselves had promised victory to their leader, who, to make all
things safe, had issued a proclamation punishing surrender with the
pain of death; so they stood quietly in array of battle waiting to be
attacked.
Upon his side, Don Sebastian Leon, seeing the attitude of the enemy,
immediately ordered an advance, and charged himself, with all his
cavalry, upon the Bishop’s men. They, with the firmness that fanatics
so often show, stood firmly in their ranks, thinking themselves
invulnerable. Their valour proved but momentary, for at the second
charge they broke their ranks and fled. Flight turned to rout, and Don
Sebastian having commanded that they should not be pursued, they still
fled on, no man pursuing them.
The Governor then entered the capital without resistance. On the plaza
he stopped, and having gathered up the wounded without respect of
party, he sent them to the hospital. Then, having seen to the safety of
the town, he rode to the Cathedral to give thanks to God for having
preserved him from the dangers of the fight. Dressed in his robes and
seated on his throne was Cardenas. Don Sebastian entered the church,
dismounted, and kissed his hand respectfully, like a true Spaniard, and
asked him ceremoniously to deign to give him the baton of the civil
power. Cardenas answered not a word, but handed him the baton, and then
retired, accompanied by all his priests.
The victory did not terminate the work of Don Sebastian. After a
reasonable interval, and before witnesses, he cited the Bishop to
appear before the court of Charcas. The Bishop promised to obey,
thinking he had another Don Gregorio Hinostrosa to deal with, but quite
determined never to comply, acting according to the custom of Governors
in South America, who, when an order reached them from Madrid, either
absurd or quite impossible to execute, solemnly answered, ‘I obey, but
I do not comply,’[145] saving by the phrase the honour of their
sovereigns and themselves. Upon their side the Jesuits pressed the
judge conservator, Father Nolasco, to issue his sentence, and free them
from the charges under which they lay. This he did, and gave as his
opinion they were quite innocent of all that Cardenas had laid to their
account.
As in a palace,[146] things go slow in Spain, and it was not till 1654
that a royal decision confirmed the judgment of Nolasco, and freed the
Jesuits from all the charges raised against them.
Order restored, Cardenas deprived of his usurped authority, and the
Jesuits reinstated, the temporary commission of Sebastian Leon was at
an end. Therefore he retired again to plant his mandioca under his own
guayaba-tree. Yet feeling ran so high that he was hardly safe from the
vengeance of the partisans of Cardenas, so that he found himself once
more obliged to summon the militia of the province, and lead them to a
perfunctory campaign against the Payaguás. These Indians the earlier
historians of the conquest, Barco de la Centenera and Rui Diaz de
Guzman, describe as river-pirates, almost living in canoes, and dashing
out on any passing Spanish vessel that they thought weak enough. The
Jesuits Montoya and Dobrizhoffer tell us that they went naked, painted
in many colours, with a hawk’s or parrot’s wing passed through the
cartilage of their left ear, and that they were, of all the Indians of
Paraguay, the most indomitable. A few, when I knew Paraguay some twenty
years ago, hung round Asuncion, squalid and miserable, passing their
time in fishing in canoes, and as attached to their own mode of life as
when the first discoverers called them ‘sweet-water pirates’ and the
‘most pestilent of all the Indians on the river Paraguay.’ The Payaguás
chastised, Don Sebastian, upon one pretext or another, did not disband
his troops, keeping them always by him, and thus making the position of
the Bishop quite untenable, till by degrees his followers fell away and
left him almost deserted and his party all dissolved. Seeing the game
was up, the Bishop, after having named one Don Adrian Cornejo as his
suffragan, took his departure (1650) for Charcas to appear before the
court. For eight tumultuous years he had kept his bishopric in a
perpetual turmoil, having been the evil genius of the land.
What sort of man he really was is hard to-day to judge, for Xarque,
Villalon, Charlevoix, and Dean Funes,[147] who chronicle his doings,
were all, on one side or the other, partisans. The Jesuits condemn him
as a spoliator, the Franciscans hold him up as one who fought
throughout his life for the honour of the founder of their rule.
Tracts, books, and pamphlets for and against him have been written in
numbers, and in the history of the times in Paraguay his name bulks
large. One thing is certain—that the Indians loved and revered him, and
followed him up to the end. Even in Charcas, where he lived for years
upon a pension of two thousand crowns allowed him by the King whilst
his case dragged its weary course to Rome, Madrid, back to Peru, and
then to Rome again, the Indians, when he appeared in public, greeted
him with flowers. He may have been a saint: so many men are saints, and
the world knows them not. He may have been a schemer; but he made
nothing by his schemes except the barren honour of his consecration to
the see of Paraguay. A preacher certainly he was, able and willing to
draw crowds, after the fashion of all those who have the gift of words.
Headstrong and obstinate, through a long life he hated vigorously,
thinking all those who differed from him were accursed of God. A
strenuous member of the Church militant on earth, he was at least a
personality, and those who read the history of his time must reckon
with, and take sides for or against, him after the fashion of the men
with whom he passed his life, who to a man revered him as a saint, or
looked upon him as a devil sent to plague mankind.
Arrived in Charcas, he soon fell on evil times, although at first he
made some partisans. Still looking back to Paraguay, he passed his time
in drawing out petitions to the King; then, one by one, all his friends
fell from him, except some faithful Indians, who considered him a
saint. His dreams of saintship were not fulfilled, for his name never
figured in the calendar. Years did not tame nor yet did hope ever
completely leave him; for in old books I find him always protesting,
ever complaining, and still striving, till, in 1665, Philip IV. in pity
made him Bishop of Santa Cruz. A sentence from the registers of the
Consistory at Rome informs us that, as Bishop of La Paz, in his own
province of the Charcas, he left off troubling, and rested from his
agitated life.