Spanish missions in the Americas
The Spanish missions in the Americas were Catholic missions established by the Spanish Empire during the 16th to 19th centuries in the period of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Many hundreds of missions, durable and ephemeral, created by numerous Catholic religious orders were scattered throughout the entirety of the Spanish colonies, which extended southward from the United States and Mexico to Argentina and Chile.
The relationship between Spanish colonization and the Canonicalization of the Americas is inextricable. The conversion of the Indigenous people of the Americas was viewed as crucial for colonization. The missions created by members of the Catholic orders were often located on the outermost borders of the colonies. The missions facilitated the expansion of the Spanish empire through the religious conversion of the indigenous peoples occupying those areas. While the Spanish Crown dominated the political, economic, and social realms of the Americas and people indigenous to the region, the Catholic Church dominated the religious and spiritual realm. In some regions, missionaries attempted to create settlements of indigenous people ruled by the Catholic missionaries and beholden to the Crown but independent of secular colonial authorities.
Missionaries usually followed a strategy of creating reductions to concentrate indigenous people into Spanish-style settlements in which they were instructed in Christianity and Spanish customs. In general and over centuries, the reductions succeeded in achieving the widespread adoption by indigenous people of Christianity and Spanish customs. Spanish authorities and missionaries forced the indigenous people to live in the reductions. Resistance to and revolts against the missionaries were frequent. The missionaries helped, with varying success, to protect indigenous people from slave raiders and Spanish colonists wishing to exploit indigenous labor. However, the concentration of the indigenous people into reductions facilitated the spread of Old World diseases such as smallpox. Epidemics were frequent and often reduced the mission population by more than one-half.
History
Patronato Real
The Patronato Real, or Royal Patronage, was a series of papal bulls constructed in the 15th and early 16th Century that set the secular relationship between the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church, effectively pronouncing the Spanish King’s control over the Church in the Americas. It clarified the Crown’s responsibility to promote the conversion of the indigenous Americans to Catholicism, as well as total authority over the Church, educational, and charitable institutions. It authorized the Crown’s control over the Church’s tithe income, the tax levied on agricultural production and livestock, and the sustenance of the ecclesiastical hierarchies, physical facilities, and activities. It provided the Crown with the right to approve or veto Papal dispatches to the Americas, to ensure their adherence to the Patronato Real. It determined the founding of churches, convents, hospitals, and schools, as well as the appointment and payment of secular clergy.It is clear that the Patronato Real provided the Spanish Crown with an unprecedented level of authority over the Catholic Church. It demonstrates the intricate relationship the political expansion of the colonies had with Catholicism. The expansion of Catholic missions around the Americas afforded the Crown an increasing income from the levied taxes and control over tithe income. That economic interest—along with the Crown’s control over the Church’s educational and charitable institutions, which directly interacted with and deeply influenced a large swath of the indigenous populations they were colonizing—provided an argument for the Crown’s interest in incorporating the Catholic Church into their colonization of the Americas.
Franciscans
missionaries were the first to arrive in New Spain, in 1523, following the Cortes expeditions in Mexico, and soon after began establishing missions across the continents. The Franciscan missionaries were split evenly and sent to Mexico, Texcoco, and Tlaxcala. In addition to their primary goal of spreading Christianity, the missionaries studied the native languages, taught children to read and write, and taught adults trades such as carpentry and ceramics.Pedro de Gante was a Flemish Franciscan missionary who desired assimilation of Native American communities to further educational discourse amongst indigenous communities. He was so influential in his work, he became known as "The first teacher of the Americas". Originally, Peeter Van der Moere, Pedro de Gante, came to New Spain, in 1523 also known as Mexico. A missionary, Pedro de Gante, wanted to spread the Christian faith to his native brothers and sisters. During this time, the mentality of the Spanish people proscribed empowering the indigenous people with knowledge, because they believed that would motivate them to retaliate against the Spanish rulers. Nevertheless, Pedro de Gante saw the ritualistic practices of the indigenous, which traditionally involved human sacrifices, and as a missionary, saw the need for a change in faith. He decided the best approach was to adapt to their way of life. He learned their language and participated in their conversations and games. Despite having a stutter, he was a successful translator of Nahuatl and Spanish. Additionally, Pedro de Gante was a big advocate of education of the youth, where he established schools throughout Mexico to cater to the indigenous communities. His influence spanned so wide, others like him followed by example. Of the future missionaries to come to America, at least three of his compatriots came.
By 1532, approximately 5,000 native children were educated by the Franciscan missionaries in newly built monasteries spread throughout central Mexico. Many of these children resided in cities such as Cholula, Tlalmanalco, Texcoco, Huejotzingo, Tepeaca, Cuautitlán, Tula, Cuernavaca, Coyoacán, Tlaxcala and Acapistla. Pedro De Gante was recorded to have the largest class of approximately 600 natives in Mexico City. The first missionaries to arrive in the New World were Franciscan friars from the observant faction, which believed in a strict and limited practice of religion. Because the friars believed teaching and practicing can only be done through "meditation and contemplation," Franciscans were not able to convert as many people as quickly as the Spanish wanted. This caused strain between colonial governments and Franciscan friars, which eventually led to several friars fleeing to present day western Mexico and the dissolution of Franciscan parishes. Other issues also contributed to the dissolution of Franciscan parishes, including the vow of poverty and accusations from colonial governments. However, Spanish missions often used money from the King to fund missions. Having friars taking money was controversial within the church. In addition, the colonial government claimed missionaries were mistreating indigenous people working on the missions. On the other hand, the Franciscan missionaries claimed that the Spanish government enslaved and mistreated indigenous people. Present day efforts are to show where Franciscan missionaries protected the indigenous people from Spanish cruelties and supported empowering the native peoples.
Jesuits
The Jesuits had a wide-spread impact from their arrival in the New World about 1570 until their expulsion in 1767. The Jesuits, especially in the southeastern part of South America, followed a widespread Spanish practice of creating settlements called "reductions" to concentrate the widespread native populations in order to better rule, Christianize, exploit their labor, and protect the native populace. The Jesuit Reductions were socialist societies in which each family had a house and field, and individuals were clothed and fed in return for work. Additionally, the communities included schools, churches, and hospitals, and native leaders and governing councils overseen by two Jesuit missionaries in each reduction. Like the Franciscans, the Jesuit missionaries learned the local languages and trained the adults in European methods of construction, manufacturing, and, to a certain extent, agriculture. By 1732, there were thirty villages populated by approximately 140,000 Indians located from Northern Mexico down to Paraguay. Spanish settlers were prohibited from living or working in reductions. This led to a strained relationship between Jesuit missionaries and the Spanish because in surrounding Spanish settlements people were not guaranteed food, shelter, and clothing.Another major Jesuit effort was that of Eusebio Kino S.J., in the region then known as the Pimería Alta – modern-day Sonora in Mexico and southern Arizona in the United States.
Dominicans
The Dominicans were centralized in the Caribbean and Mexico and, despite a much smaller representation in the Americas, had one of the most notable histories of native rights activism. Bartolomé de las Casas was the first Dominican bishop in Mexico and played a pivotal role in dismantling the practice of "encomenderos", with the establishment of the New Laws in 1542. These laws were intended to prevent the exploitation and mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas by the encomenderos, by strictly limiting their power and dominion over groups of natives.Parish expansion
To promote conversions, the Catholic Missionaries in the Americas received Royal approval to create provinces, or parishes. These parishes echoed the structures of European towns—created with the explicit intention of converting the indigenous peoples who constructed and lived in them. These territories were separate from the jurisdictions of the Crown, with separate laws and structures. The papacy sent multiple religious orders to set up towns in areas along the borderlands to prevent a single order from becoming too powerful. First the Franciscans set up parishes, then the Dominicans, Augustinians, and Jesuits followed. These orders are discussed in more detail previously in this article.To begin the process of constructing a new parish, the priests entered an indigenous village and first converted the leaders and nobles, called caciques. These conversions were often public. Once the caciques were converted, the clergy collaborated with the elites to construct a chapel, often atop the destroyed temple for the indigenous spirituality. This chapel played a role in bringing the rest of the people of the town to the Church. The Franciscans in particular wanted an indigenous priesthood, and built schools to teach indigenous elite about humanistic studies.
The clergy were most interested in converting the souls of the indigenous, by any means possible. Therefore, in many instances, the clergy used indigenous religions to gain trust and legitimacy. In fact, many members of the clergy learned indigenous languages so they could be more accessible and understandable to those wanted to convert. They even selected indigenous languages to be used as lingua franca in areas that had linguistic diversity. In New Spain, which is modern-day Mexico and Central America, the friars taught Nahuatl to indigenous Americans who had not spoken it prior, as a way of establishing a common language. They translated hymns, prayers, and religious texts into Nahuatl to make Catholicism more widely spread and understood. The clergy in Peru used Quechua and Aymara in similar ways.
Early into the existence of the community, the European clergy formed a cofradía, which is a lay brotherhood meant to raise funds to construct and support the parish church, provide aid to the poor, aged, or infirmed and to widows and orphans, and to organize religious processions and festivals for Catholic holidays. That said, the creation of the parish also depended on the labor of the recently converted indigenous people to build schools, offices, houses, and other infrastructure for economic production. This need for labor led to conflict with the encomenderos, who were charged by the Crown with the exclusive task of exploiting indigenous labor.