amidst difficulties and hardships. Much of the trouble arose from the conduct of the whites, including the troops of the presidio, whose captain could not control them.[1]
The moral condition of the province seems to have been satisfactory to the general of the order in 1747, as he so expressed himself to the provincial in Mexico, who in his turn made it known to his subjects, in his letter enjoining the strictest discipline, in order that the general's words should be sustained.[2] The question of payment of tithes by the society on its estates had been for several years a cause of contention between it and the archbishop, in which the real audiencia sided with the latter. In December, 1734, the jueces hacedores of the archdiocese passed a decree, wherein, after noticing the decrease in the amount paid by the managers of the haciendas owned by the society in New Spain and the Philippines, the collection was provided of the full tithes due for that year by the aforesaid estates. The judges also published censuras against their managers and several other members of the society, even though it had an appeal pending before the audiencia. The provincial refused to accede to the demand, and pretended to pay little or no heed to the censuras.[3] However, in Oc-
- ↑ The troops were made up of bad men who countenanced the Indians in their idolatrous and other evil practices, to gain their good-will, and thereby get them to work on their farms, and to show them where the good mines were. Alegre, Hist. Comp. Jesus, iii. 238-9. It is said that in the Nayarit missions, whilst the Jesuits had them the Indians were confessed only in articulo mortis, frequently through an interpreter. Maséres, Informe, in Pinart, Col. Doc. Mex., 209.
- ↑ 'Y que si ay, como en comunidad de hombres, sv mal necessario, se corrigen, y se dan las penitencias.' Papeles de Jesuitas, MS., no. 43, 1-11.
- ↑ It was claimed that the censuras had no value whatever in foro conscientiæ; that they had no power over members of the order of Jesus, because it was not subject to the authority decreeing them, but directly to that of the holy see; that as they were null and void in foro interno et externo, they imposed no obligation of asking for or accepting absolution ad huc ad cautelam. It was also alleged that a royal order of October 4, 1705, pursuant to a papal bull of October 10, 1704, had forbidden the ordinaries of Mexico, Central America, and the Philippines from issuing excommunications against mem-
Christianity, and in 1713 declined to listen to the Franciscan friar Antonio Margil, and even struck his face with a fox. Arlegui, Chrón. Zac., 173.
