Book: A Vanished Arcadia,

C >> Cunninghame Graham >> A Vanished Arcadia,




--
* `Oraculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia' (Amsterdam, en casa
de Juan Blau, 1659).
--

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 Arecaya, 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 Arecaya,
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.




Chapter V

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 sechement',* 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.

--
* Charlevoix.
--

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 a 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.'* 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.

--
* Exod. 32:27.
--

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* of `yerba mate',
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 arroba is about twenty-five pounds weight.
--

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 `Pe\re Lozano,
retroussant sa robe le poursuivit en criant a\ pleine te^te,
et s'exprimant en des termes peu seans a\ sa profession.'*
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.

--
* Charlevoix.
--

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* 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'etat';
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.

--
* Camalote is a species of water-lily which forms a thick covering
on stagnant rivers and lakes in Paraguay and in the Argentine Republic.
--

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 Guaycurus 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 Guaycurus,
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.

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