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About this time (1639) the third invasion of the Mamelucos took place,
and Father Alfaro, who had been left in charge of the missions
on the Uruguay and Parana, was shot by a Mameluco with a crossbow,
and fell dead from his horse. The Governor of Paraguay, on hearing of it,
marched with an army, and, having killed two or three hundred
of the Mamelucos, took the rest prisoners, and carried them
back to Asuncion. There, to the disgust of all the Jesuit historians,
he menaced them with the wrath of Heaven and let them go.
The feelings of a churchman, when his own privilege is thus usurped,
may be compared to those of a strict game-preserver who sees
his coverts poached. It is not so much the damage that is done
as the personal insult and the humiliation which he suffers in his pride.

In this year, too, the Indians of the missions rendered
their first armed service to the State which afterwards so often
drew on them in its necessity and treated them so ill.

The Governor of Buenos Ayres, Don Pedro Estevan Davila,
was setting out upon an expedition against a tribe of Indians
who had taken refuge in the islands of the Lake Ybera.
Eighty of the Indians were sent, and, being well led and armed,
contributed considerably towards success. Next year a second contingent
was required by the Governor of Tucuman, and duly sent to his assistance.
History seems to repeat itself, and foolish soldiers and others
never to gain experience; for the Governor (Padre del Techo
in his `Historia Paraquaiae' tells us), having made war in Flanders,
could never be dissuaded that the same system was not suitable
for warfare in America. Accordingly, he set out in good order,
but neglected to send out scouts, and consequently fell into
the middle of the Calchaquis strongly entrenched within a marsh,
attacked them with a rush, lost heavily, and had to retire to Tucuman.
But all this time Father Montoya and Diaz Tano were striving
in Rome and at Madrid with the Pope and with the King.

Urban VIII., at that time God's vicegerent for the Christian portion
of the world, received Diaz Tano kindly, listened to all he had to say
with interest, promised him his help, and gave him a Papal letter
menacing the Mamelucos with the wrath of God. From Rome Father Tano
went to Madrid, and thence to Lisbon, whence he sailed armed with
the protection of the Pope and accompanied by a fresh band of zealous priests.
Arrived in Rio de Janeiro, he published the Papal letter, and fixed it
on the doors of the Jesuit College and on those of their church. He seems
on this occasion to have been wanting in the chief Jesuit virtue, prudence,
or at the least he seems to have mistaken the character of the people
amongst whom he was. Most of the colonists having relations
with the Mamelucos were indignant, and a mob broke in the doors
both of the college and of the church. The riot grew so serious
that the Governor convoked a council, and cited Father Tano to appear.
He came and spoke, and in the eyes of the chief people of the place
made out his case; but the multitude, caring not much for reason
(and nothing for philanthropy), became more furious, but was appeased at last
by a petition being sent in protest to the Pope.

But if these things passed in Rio de Janeiro (which Del Techo refers to
as `oppido sanctorum'), what was the fury of the people in San Paulo,
the very centre of the Mamelucos, when the Vicar-General published the brief
by order of Don Pedro Albornoz! The people rose immediately,
and menaced the Vicar-General with instant death unless he instantly
withdrew the brief. This he refused to do, although forced on his knees
and with a naked sword held at his throat. His courage quieted them,
and they drew up an appeal which they tried hard to make him sign,
but he again refused. The mob, having demanded the brief,
was told it was in the college of the Jesuits. Thither they went post-haste,
and were met upon the steps by the Superior, dressed in canonicals and holding
the holy wafer in his hand. He spoke, and most of them fell prostrate
on the ground before the Body of our Lord. Others stood upright,
and said that, whilst they adored the Holy Sacrament with their whole souls,
they would not suffer that their slaves, who were their chiefest property,
should be set free. An atheist (or some kind of Protestant) cried out
to fire upon the priest, but he had no support. The Superior then gave them
a copy of the brief, and they returned to the Vicar-General
to ask for absolution for any censure of the Church they might have incurred;
but he for the third time was obdurate, and let them welter in their sin.

The news of the revolution which liberated Portugal from Spain
having just reached the town, the Jesuits had to retreat from it,
leaving the inhabitants enraged against them and more determined than before
to push their forays into Paraguay. But the time was past
for their incursions, for Father Ruiz Montoya had prospered at Madrid,
and secured even more than he had hoped for when he started on his quest.
On arriving at Madrid, which he did after a prosperous journey of four months,
he waited on the King (Philip IV.), and laid before him and commissaries
chosen from the Indies and Castile the following points:

1. That the law of 1611, which provided that no Indians, unless taken
in a just war, should be reduced to slavery, should be put into effect.

2. That the Pope should be approached to confirm the briefs
of Paul III. and Clement VIII., which contained the same provisions.

3. That those who did not conform to these instructions
should be handed over to the Inquisition to be judged.

4. That the Indians who had been enslaved by the Paulistas
should be at once set free and the aggressors punished.

The King after deliberation granted every point, and, further,
regulated the tribute which the Indians were to pay.* All this was easy
to enact, but, like most other laws, not quite so easy to put into effect.
Moreover, as the revolution which separated Portugal from Spain
had just occurred, all Spanish thunder against the Mamelucos
was of but small account. Montoya then pressed the demand
for license to use firearms in self-defence against the Mamelucos.
The King after deliberation granted this last point, and from that time
the incursions of the Mamelucos ceased in Paraguay and generally
throughout the mission territory. Then also there was set on foot
that Jesuit militia which rendered such good service to the crown,
but was the cause of so much murmuring, as it protected the mission Indians
both from the Paulistas and from the inroads of the Spanish colonists.

--
* This seems to prove the malice of those who set about
that the Indians of the missions paid no taxes to the Crown.
--

Father Montoya never returned to Paraguay, where he had fought so long
and done so much for the poor Indians. Apparently it was not written
that he should see the results of all his efforts, for, having embarked
at Seville for Peru, he was detained at Lima on business of the Order.
From thence he went to Tucuman, and, having returned to Lima,
died aged seventy. The Viceroy and the chief members of the Audiencia
(with whom he had struggled all his life) accompanied his body to the grave,
and it is said that several miracles showed forth the glory
he enjoyed in heaven.

That may be so, and if they happened (as they well may have done,
for, after all, a miracle* really exists for those who credit it),
if Heaven has honoured him, 'tis more than man has done:
for even in Paraguay his name is not remembered, though it remains enshrined
in the neglected pages of many a dusty Latin or a Spanish book.

--
* Vieyra, the great Portuguese Jesuit, said that all miracles
were possible to God, but yet that he had never heard that our Lord
had ever cured anyone of folly.
--

But all the time that Fathers Montoya and Diaz Tano were in Europe
a serious danger to the Jesuits was growing up. At the discovery
of the New World, the Franciscans had been the first of all the Orders
to go out. Some had accompanied Columbus, some were with Cortes in Mexico.
Almagro and Pizarro's hosts had their Franciscan chaplains.
In his commentaries, Alvar Nunez relates how he met some of the Order
in Brazil. Lastly, the first of all the saints of the New World
was a Franciscan.

In 1638 the Franciscans in the province of Jujuy* disputed with the Jesuits
the right to certain missions, accusing them, as Padre del Techo says,
`of putting their sickle into their ripening corn.'**
What could be more annoying if it were true? As if a Wesleyan mission
in the Paumotus Group should, after having shed its Bibles and its blankets
like dry leaves, suddenly find an emissary from Babylon itself
arrive and mark the sheep!

--
* Now a province of the Argentine Republic.
** `Historia Paraquariae', book xii., cap. xii.
--

But from Jujuy the dissensions spread to Paraguay, where the Franciscans
had several missions extending from Yuti to Cazapa, thus being
almost within touch of the Jesuit Gospellers in Santa Maria,
upon the eastern bank of the Tebicuari, which bounds their territory.
These jealousies might have gone smouldering on, and never burst out
into fire, had not the appointment of a Franciscan to the see of Paraguay
caused the flames to flare out fiercely.

Had a firebrand been wanted to stir up strife, none better
could have been found than Don Bernardino de Cardenas, who was just then
appointed to the bishopric of Paraguay.




Chapter IV

Don Bernardino de Cardenas, Bishop of Paraguay -- His labours
as apostolic missionary -- His ambitions and cunning --
Pretensions to saintliness -- His attempts to acquire supreme power --
Quarrels between Cardenas and Don Gregorio, the temporal Governor



Don Bernardino de Cardenas first saw the light in the town of La Plata,*
capital of the province of Charcas in Bolivia, or, as it was then called,
Alta Peru. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it would appear
to have been in the early years of the seventeenth century. At an early age
he entered the Franciscan Order.

--
* La Plata was sometimes called Chuquisaca, and is to-day known as Sucre.
--

As the Franciscans had had the honour of having furnished to the calendar
the first saint canonized in the New World, it seems to have been
the dream of Cardenas from his earliest youth to emulate him.
In this desire he seems to have acted in good faith,
and all his life the dream of saintship haunted him.
Charlevoix* says `he made a rather superficial study of theology,
and then engaged in preaching, in which, with memory, assurance, and facility,
he found it easy to succeed in a country where brilliant gifts
are more esteemed than solid learning.' Certainly a preacher
without assurance, memory, and facility would scarcely have succeeded
in any country; and in what country in the world is brilliancy
not far esteemed above the deepest scholarship? Besides, `he was
a man of visions (`homme a\ visions') and revelations, which he
took good care to publish.' Visions are generally, in the case of saints,
confined to the soul's eye, and revelation to the inward ear;
if, therefore, the recipient of them does not make them known,
they run the risk of being lost. In a word, according to Charlevoix,**
he was `one of the most complete and dangerous ecstatics that ever lived.'
`His first successes' (whether as preacher or ecstatic are not specified)
caused his superiors to name him guardian of their college of La Plata.
They soon repented of their choice. No sooner was he named Superior
than he sought to qualify himself for saintship by a sort of royal road.
Saints are of several classes, and, in looking through the calendars,
it strikes one how different seem to have been the methods by which
they severally attained their goal.

--
* `Histoire du Paraguay', vol. i., book ix., p. 478.
** Charlevoix, vol. i., book xi. Dean Funes, in his
`Ensayo de la Historia Civil de Paraguay, Buenos Ayres y Tucuman',
vol. ii., book iii., p. 10 (Buenos Ayres, 1816), says of him:
`Se adquirio/ muy en breve una reputacion mas brillante que solida.'
--

Prince Juan Manuel, in the preface to his `Fifty Pleasant Stories
of Patronio', says that, `amongst the many strange things our Lord God made,
He thought good to make one marvellous in special -- that is, that,
of the numberless men who are on earth, not one entirely resembles any other
in his face.' He might have said the same of saints and of their ways.
One, like St. Francis of Assisi, treats his father (as it seems to me)
but scurvily, and yet to every other created man and all the animals he is
a brother. The saint of Avila founds convents, mingles with men of business,
and has visions in the intervals of her journeying through Spain upon an ass.
Again, another preaches to the Indians or the Japanese,
gives up his substance, begs his bread from door to door,
and leaves the devil's advocate scarcely a quillet or a quiddity against him.
Lastly, you find against the names of some merely the docket
`virgin' or `martyr', as their case or sex may serve.

Don Bernardino adopted none of these methods of procedure.
Carrying a heavy cross, with ashes on his head and shoulders bared,
followed by all his priests, he sallied out one day to discipline himself
in public. This plan did not succeed with all the world,
for his superiors ordered him to remain inside his convent gates.
There he remained, and, as his Life informs us, profited by his retreat
to study Holy Scriptures, and to such good effect that,
the next time he preached, he charmed his hearers by his eloquence.
Soon after this the Archbishop of La Plata held a provincial council,
with the object of reforming the morals of the Indians in his diocese.
Cardenas, being a fluent speaker, was chosen for the post
of Apostolic Missionary. From this time dates the beginning of his fame.

In those days all the Indians of the Charcas, and generally of all Peru,
were sunk in misery, but little removed from slaves, and their religion
was a mixture of Christianity and paganism -- just the kind of folk
a fluent preacher of the style of Cardenas could work upon.
All through the province he made his apostolic progress,
preaching, converting, and confessing, everywhere preceded by his fame
as seer of visions, miracle-worker, and recipient of celestial light.
He took his way, dressed like a pilgrim, on foot, carrying a wooden cross,
and followed by a multitude of Indians from town to town.

Religion in America (Catholic or Protestant) has always tended to revert
to the original Eastern form, from which, no doubt, it sprung. The influence
of the vast plains and forests, and the great distances to travel,
have introduced the system of camp meetings amongst the Protestants,
whereas the Catholics have often held a sort of ambulatory mission,
the people of one village following the preacher to the next, and so on,
in the same fashion as in Palestine the people seem to have followed
John the Baptist.

Soon the news was spread about that the Indians who followed Cardenas had
told him of rich mines, on the condition that he would not divulge the secret
to the Spaniards. At that time the search for mines was carried
almost to madness in Peru. Even to-day, in almost every mining town,
a mysterious, poverty-stricken man sometimes approaches you
with great precaution, and, drawing from his pocket an object
wrapped in greasy paper, declares with oaths that it is `rosicler'
(red silver ore), and that he knows where there are tons and tons of it.
In Mexico the curious class of miners known as `gambusinos'
rove through the valleys of the Sierra Madre armed with pick and pan,
passing their lives in hunting mines, as pigs hunt truffles.
If they come upon a mine, they never try to work it, but sell the secret
for a trifling sum, and, drinking out the money, start on again to find
the mines worked by the Aztecs, till an Apache bullet or arrow stops them,
their El Dorado still ahead, or they are found beside their pick and shovel
dead of thirst.

Neither in Mexico nor in Peru do things grow less in telling,
and we may well suppose the stories of the mines the Indians told to Cardenas
became colossal; for at last the Alcalde of Cochabamba wrote on the subject
to the Count of Salvatierra, the Viceroy of Peru.

As Charlevoix says, `it seemed as if it all worked to the advantage
of the holy missionary, who, not content with saving souls, did not forget
the interests of his native land.' In the middle of his triumphs,
being recalled to Lima, no one doubted that it was in order
to confer with the Viceroy about the supposititious mines. Others, again,
imagined that a mitre was destined for the successful evangelist,
and therefore many, even quite poor people, pressed forward to offer funds
to help him on his way. With quite apostolic assurance,
he took all that was offered to him, being certain, as some think,
that, the mines being real, he could some day repay with usury
all he had borrowed, or, as others said, being indifferent
about the matter, and trusting to repay in that better country
where no usury exists and where no gold corrupts.

The Viceroy, being a man of little faith, sent to investigate
the supposititious mines, but found them non-existent.

The superiors of Cardenas, as judicious as the higher officers
of the Franciscan Order often proved themselves throughout America,
informed him that he had given offence to many by his
public scourgings and processions carrying a cross, and, most of all,
that in his sermons propositions had escaped him of a nature
likely to bring him under the censure of the Holy Office.
A convent in Lima was assigned to him as a retreat and place of meditation
on the virtues of submission and obedience.

As we may well believe, no man who felt he had the stuff within himself
to make a saint ever cared much for obedience or submission, except in others;
so in his convent, instead of meditating on his faults, he passed his time
in writing a memorial to the Council of the Indies, setting forth his views
on the way in which to spread the gospel amongst the Indians.
Nothing was better calculated to win him favour. Every Indian baptized
was so much yearly gain to the Spanish Government.

Conversion and taxation always went hand-in-hand, and therefore
Indians who, unbaptized, brought nothing to the treasury,
having received the Gospel truths, were taxed so much a head
to show them that from thenceforth they were Christians.
Thus, we find that in the Paraguayan missions each Indian paid
a dollar every year as a sort of poll-tax, and most of the disputes
between the Viceroys of Paraguay and the Jesuits arose from
the number of the Indians taxable. The Viceroys always alleged
that the population of the missions never increased, on account of the Jesuits
returning false numbers to avoid the tax.

Cardenas specially inculcated, in his memorial to the Council of the Indies,
that it was not expedient to place the Indians under the regular clergy,
a theory of which he himself was destined to become a great antagonist.
Promotion, as we know, cometh neither from the east nor from the west;
so it fell out that during his retreat, through the influence of his friend
Don Juan de Solorzano, a celebrated lawyer, who had heard him preach
when Governor of Guancavelico, he found himself named Bishop of Asuncion
del Paraguay. This piece of luck opened the doors of his convent to him,
and he repaired at once to Potosi to wait the arrival of the Papal Bull
authorizing him to take possession of his bishopric. There he appeared
in the habit of his Order, a little wooden cross upon his breast,
and a green hat upon his head, a costume which, if not quite fitting
to his new dignity, was at least suited to the Indian taste.

His biographer informs us that, without a word to anyone,
he began to preach and hear confessions. Being absolutely without resources,
he was reduced to distribute indulgences and little objects of piety,
and at the end of every sermon to send his green hat round the audience.
His talent for preaching stood him in good stead, and after every sermon
gifts were showered upon him, and a crowd accompanied him home.

The priest of Potosi being just dead, Don Bernardino took his place
without permission, and set himself up in the double character
of parish priest and Bishop to hold a visitation throughout the diocese.

Some people took this conduct as evidence of his saint-like humility
in condescending, though a Bishop, to officiate as a mere priest.
The Archbishop had a different opinion, but, as Don Bernardino
had a great following, he thought it best to dissemble his resentment.
Cardenas himself, by his imprudence, furnished the Archbishop with an excuse
to get him out of the bishopric.

A rich Indian, whom Cardenas confessed upon his death-bed, left him
ten thousand crowns. Not content with that, he influenced one Diego Vargas
to change his will and leave him money. On this the Archbishop wrote to him,
requesting that he would go and govern his own see. He had to go,
but left the town, which he had entered without a farthing,
with a long train of mules carrying his money, plate, and furniture.
Why he did not instantly go to Asuncion is not quite clear,
for in America it was the custom, owing to the great distance from Rome,
that Bishops, on receipt of the royal order of appointment,
got themselves chosen by the chapter of their diocese to govern provisionally.
Instead of doing that, he went to Tucuman, and thence to Salta,
where he arrived in 1641.

In Salta, his first visit was to the Jesuit college, where he laid his case
before the Jesuit fathers, and showed them several letters,
one from the Cardinal Antonio Barberini dated in 1638,
and another from the King without a date, naming him Bishop of Asuncion.
On the strength of these two letters he asked the Jesuits
if he could get himself consecrated without the Papal Bulls.
Charlevoix alleges that they dared not refuse to answer
in the way he wished. Why this was so is not so easy to make out,
as, even with his green hat and wooden cross, he could not at that time
have been a formidable personage. Their written opinion
he sent at once to the rector of the Jesuit college at Cordova,
asking for his opinion and that of the doctors of the university.
The answer reached him in Santiago del Estero, and was unfavourable.
On reading the letter, Cardenas fell into a most unsaint-like fury,
and tore it up without communicating it to anyone, not even
to the Bishop of Tucuman, Don Melchior Maldonado. This was not strange,
as he had counted on this Bishop to consecrate him.

Notwithstanding what was at stake, he went on in the diocese of Tucuman
just as he had done in that of Charcas, preaching, confessing,
and celebrating Mass. Don Melchior Maldonado, a quiet man of no pretensions,
wrote him a letter in which he said: `You came into my diocese
like a St. Bernard; such is the reputation you have for holiness and preaching
that my people pay me no respect, and only look on me as a man
of common virtue and mediocre talents. Although I hope I am not jealous,
still, I must remind you that you act as if you were St. Paul.'

A Bishop of common virtue and of mediocre talents is, of course,
a Bishop lost, and one can well conceive that poor Don Melchior Maldonado
was placed in an unpleasant position during the stay of Cardenas
in his diocese. Such were Don Bernardino's powers of persuasion
that at last the Bishop consecrated him. The ceremony was hardly over,
when a letter arrived from the Rector of the University of Cordova
advising Bishop Maldonado against the consecration. Unluckily for Paraguay,
it was too late to undo the action, and Cardenas was now in a position
to take possession of his see. Poor Melchior Maldonado, Bishop of Tucuman,
had, as it happened, laid hands a little hastily upon the candidate.
The Council of Trent pronounced upon the case, and found
`that the consecration of the Bishop of Paraguay had been a valid one
as touching the sacrament (ordination), and the impression of the character,
but that it had been void as regards the power of discharging the functions
attaching to the dignity, and that the Bishop and his consecrator
had need of absolution, which the same holy congregation thinks
ought to be accorded with the good pleasure of the Pope.'
As the same holy congregation had previously declared
the taking possession of the diocese by Cardenas had been illegal,
it is difficult for ordinary minds to grasp their real opinion of the case.

Finding that he had failed with the University of Cordova,
Don Bernardino took his way to Santa Fe, from whence he wrote
an insulting letter to the poor rector. The letter was conceived
in such outrageous terms that the Bishop of Tucuman wrote in expostulation,
saying he expected to see something extraordinary happen in Paraguay
if he gave way to such excess of passion.

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