Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/186

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158
PROVINCIAL COUNCILS.

displayed in providing against the necessities of the times, as of the collection of the decrees that were promulgated. That they served as a fundamental help to the council which was afterwards celebrated by Santo Toribio, appears by a comparison between the decrees of each of the councils.

On the demise of Loaysa, he was succeeded by Don Toribio Alfonso De Mogrovejo, who had no sooner reached Lima than he assembled a council, which entered on its deliberations in the month of August 1582, at which time Don Martin Enriquez was viceroy of Peru. The bishops of Cusco, of Santiago de Chile, of la Imperial (after the destruction of that city, he was translated to la Concepcion), of Tucuman, and of la Plata, were present at this council, which was conducted with much harmony and tranquillity, and with a profound knowledge of the subjects that were there treated and ordained. Its proceedings were terminated at the close of the following year, with the same concord and union of sentiment as at the commencement. This council may be considered as having established the code of the ecclesiastical discipline of Peru, and, indeed, of all Spanish South America. It enjoined, that each of the individuals enrolled in the different parishes, whether Indian or Spaniard, should have in his possession a copy of its acts, on penalty of a fine of a hundred crowns, and the dread of the greater excommunication.

Besides the decrees, the above council published a catechism of the christian doctrines, in the Spanish and Indian tongues, in dialogues written in a clear and perspicuous style, and consequently well adapted to the comprehension of the people. It likewise published a smaller catechism in questions and an-

swers;