Book: A Vanished Arcadia,

C >> Cunninghame Graham >> A Vanished Arcadia,




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*1*
their annual taxes to the crown. Secondly, that the Jesuits kept back
the tithes from Bishops and Archbishops.*2* 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,*3* 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.*4*
Sixthly, that even the Portuguese of San Paulo de Piritinanga
had expelled them.*5* 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.

--
*1* This was untrue, as the Jesuit missions were not at that time (1644)
apportioned into parishes under the authority of the Jesuits,
and such tribute as then was customary was all collected
by government officials.
*2* This was also untrue, as the tithes were never regulated in Paraguay
till 1649.
*3* This accusation was quite untrue, for the edict referred to
was not obtained under misapprehension, but after a complete
exposition of all the facts. Moreover, it was subsequently
renewed on several occasions by the Spanish Kings.
*4* The Venetians did not expel the Jesuits, they left Venetia
of their own accord.
*5* Fathers Montoya and Tano went respectively to Rome and to Madrid
to lay the sorrows of the Indians before the King and Pope.
Having obtained the edict from the King that Cardenas referred to,
and a brief from the Pope (Urban VIII.) forbidding slavery,
they had the hardihood to appear within the city of San Paulo
and affix both edicts to the church door. As was to be expected,
the Paulistas immediately expelled them from their territories,
and hence the semi-truth of the sixth charge made by Bishop Cardenas.
--

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.*

--
* Funes, `Historia Civil del Paraguay, Buenos-Ayres, y Tucuman'.
--

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.,*
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.

--
* The testimony of Funes is as follows: `A/ juicio de testigo ocular
no es ma/s admirable la sangre fria de sus capellanes'
(`Historia Civil del Paraguay', book iii., cap. viii.).
--

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 a/ luz los bultos'.* 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.

--
* Literally, `taking out the blocks to air'. The effigies
are made of hard and heavy wood, and I remember once
in Concepcion de Paraguay assisting on a sweltering day
to carry a Madonna weighing about five hundredweight.
--

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* 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 proverb says in Paraguay, `No se fia de mula ni mulata'.
--

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'.*

--
* `Pagar y apelar'.
--

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 `mate' 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 Parana. 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 a\ penser,'
says Charlevoix. But having gone so far, the Governor determined
to try the question thoroughly.

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