The History of Puerto Rico / From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation

by R. A. Van Middeldyk

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE REGULAR AND SECULAR CLERGY

In Catholic countries the monastic orders constitute the regular clergy. The secular clergy is not bound by monastic rules. Both classes exercise their functions independently, the former under the authority of their respective superiors or generals, the latter under the bishops.

When, after the return of Columbus from his first voyage, the existence of a new world was demonstrated and preparations for occupying it were made, the Pope, to assure the Christianization of the inhabitants, gave to the monks of all orders who wished to go the privilege, pertaining till then to the secular clergy exclusively, of administering parishes and collecting tithes without subjection to the authority of the bishops.

The Dominicans and the Franciscans availed themselves of this privilege at once. There was rivalry for power and influence between these two orders from the time of their first installation, and they carried their quarrels with them to America, where their differences of opinion regarding the enslaving and treatment of the Indians embittered them still more. The Dominicans secured a footing in Santo Domingo and in Puerto Rico almost to the exclusion of their rivals, notwithstanding the king's recommendation to Ceron in 1511 to build a monastery for Franciscans, whose doctrines he considered "salutary."

[Illustration: San Francisco Church, San Juan; the oldest church in the city.]

Puerto Rico was scantily provided with priests till the year 1518, when the treasurer, Haro, wrote to Cardinal Cisneros: "There are no priests in the granges as has been commanded; only one in Capárra, and one in San German. The island is badly served. Send us a goodly number of priests or permission to pay them out of the produce of the tithes."

The "goodly number of priests" was duly provided. Immediately after the transfer of the capital to its present site in 1521, the Dominicans began the construction of a convent, which was nearly completed in 1529, when there were 25 friars in it. They had acquired great influence over Bishop Manso, and obtained many privileges and immunities from him. Bishop Bastidas, Manso's successor, was less favorably disposed toward them, and demanded payment of tithes of the produce of their agricultural establishments. He reported to the king in 1548: "There is a Dominican monastery here large enough for a city of 2,000 inhabitants,[79] and there are many friars in it. They possess farms, cattle, negroes, Indians, and are building horse-power sugar-mills; meanwhile, I know that they are asking your Majesty for alms to finish their church … It were better to oblige them to sell their estates and live in poverty as prescribed by the rules of their order."

The Franciscans came to Puerto Rico in 1534, but founded no convent till 1585, when one of their order, Nicolas Ramos, was appointed to the see of San Juan. Then they established themselves in "la Aguáda," and named the settlement San Francisco de Asis. Two years later it was destroyed by the Caribs, and five of the brothers martyrized. No attempt at reconstruction of the convent was made. The order abandoned the island and did not return till 1642, when they obtained the Pope's license to establish themselves in the capital. Like the Dominicans, they soon acquired considerable wealth.

The privilege of administering parishes and collecting tithes, which was the principal source of monastic revenues, was canceled by royal schedule June 13, 1757. The monks continued in the full enjoyment of their property till 1835, when all the property of the regular clergy throughout the Peninsula and the colonies was expropriated by the Government. In this island the convents were appropriated only after long and tedious judicial proceedings, in which the Government demonstrated that the transfer was necessary for the public good. Then the convents were used—that of the Dominicans as Audiencia hall, that of the Franciscans as artillery barracks. The intendancy took charge of the administration of the estate of the two communities, the mortmain was canceled, and the transfer duly legalized. A promised indemnity to the two brotherhoods was never paid, but in 1897 a sum of 5,000 pesos annually was added to the insular budget, to be paid to the clergy as compensation for the expropriated estate of the Dominicans in San German. Succeeding political events prevented the payment of this also. The last representatives in this island of the two dispossessed orders died in San Juan about the year 1865.

Bishop Monserrate made an effort to reestablish the order of Franciscans in 1875-'76. Only three brothers came to the island and they, not liking the aspect of affairs, went to South America.

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The first head of the secular clergy in Puerto Rico was nominated in 1511. The Catholic princes besought Pope Julius II to make it a bishopric, and recommended as its first prelate Alonzo Manso, canon of Salamanca, doctor in theology, a man held in high esteem at court. His Holiness granted the request, and designated the whole of the island as the diocese, with the principal settlement in it as the see.

The subsequent conquests on the mainland kept adding vast territories to this diocese till, toward the end of the eighteenth century, it included the whole region extending from the upper Orinoco to the Amazon, and from Guiana to the plains of Bogotá. Manso's successors repeatedly represented to the king the absolute impossibility of attending to the spiritual wants of "the lambs that were continually added to the flock." They requested that the see might be transferred to the mainland or that the diocese might be divided in two or more. This was done in 1791, when the diocese of Guiana was created, and Puerto Rico with the island of Vieyques remained as the original one.

The bishop came to San Juan in 1513, and at once began to dispose all that was necessary to give splendor and good government to the first episcopal seat in America. Unfortunately, he arrived at a time when dissension, strife, and immorality were rampant; and when it became known that he was authorized to collect his tithes in specie, the opposition of the quarrelsome and insubordinate inhabitants became so violent that the prelate could not exercise his functions, and was forced to return to the Peninsula in 1515. He came back in 1519, invested with the powers of a Provincial Inquisitor, which he exercised till 1539, when he died and was buried in the cathedral, where a monument with an alabaster effigy marked his tomb till 1625, when it was destroyed by the Hollanders.

Rodrigo Bastidas, a native of Santo Domingo, was Manso's successor. He was appointed Bishop of Coro in Venezuela in 1532, but solicited and obtained the see of Puerto Rico in 1542. He was a man of great capacity, virtuous and benevolent. He advised the suppression of the Inquisition, asked the Government for facilities to educate the youth and advance the agricultural interests of his diocese, and commenced the construction of the cathedral. He died in Santo Domingo in 1561, very old and very rich.

Friar Diego de Salamanca, of the order of Augustines, succeeded Bastidas. He continued the construction of the cathedral, but soon returned to the metropolis, leaving the diocese to the care of the Vicar-General, Santa Olaya, till 1585, when the Franciscan friar Nicolas Bamos was appointed to the see. He was the last Bishop of Puerto Rico who united the functions of inquisitor with those of the episcopate, and a zealous burner of heretics. After him the see remained vacant for fourteen years; since then, to the end of the eighteenth century there were 39 consecrated prelates, 9 of whom renounced, or for some other reason did not take possession. The most distinguished among the remaining 30 were: Bernardo Balbuena, poet and author, 1623-'27; Friar Manuel Gimenez Perez, pious, active, and philanthropist, 1770-'84; and Juan Alejo Arismendi, who, according to the Latin inscription on his tomb, was an amiable, religious, upright, zealous, compassionate, learned, decorous, active, leading, benevolent, paternal man. Of the rest little more is known than their names and the dates of their assumption of office and demise.

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The year 1842 was, for the secular clergy, one of anxiety for the safety of their long and assiduously accumulated wealth. The members to the number of 17 individuals, including the bishop, drew annual stipends from the insular treasury to the amount of 36,888 pesos, besides which they possessed and still possess a capital of over one and a half millions of pesos, represented by: 1. Vacant chaplaincies. 2. Investments under the head Ecclesiastical Chapter. 3. Idem for account of the Carmelite Sisterhood. 4. Legacies to saints for the purpose of celebrating masses and processions in all the parishes of the island. 5. Pious donations. 6. Fraternities and religious associations for the worship of some special saint. 7. Revenues from an institution known by the name of Third Orders. 8. Capital invested by the founders of the Hospital of the Conception, the income of which is mostly consumed by the nuns of that order. And 9. The ecclesiastical revenues of different kinds in San German.

All this was put in jeopardy by the following decree:

"Doña Isabel II, by the grace of God and the Constitution of the
Spanish Monarchy, Queen of Spain, and during her minority Baldomero
Espartero, Duke of 'la Victoria' and Morella, Regent of the kingdom,
to all who these presents may see and understand, makes known that the
Cortes have decreed, and we have sanctioned, as follows:

"ARTICLE I. All properties of the secular clergy of whatever class; rights or shares of whatever origin or denomination they may be, or for whatever application or purpose they may have been given, bought, or acquired, are national properties.

"ART. II. The properties, rights, and shares corresponding in any manner to ecclesiastical unions or fraternities, are also national properties.

"ART. III. All estates, rights, and shares of the cathedral, collegiate and parochial clergy and ecclesiastical unions and fraternities referred to in the preceding articles, are hereby declared for sale."

* * * * * The 15 articles that follow specify the properties in detail, the manner of sale, the disposition of the products, administration of rents, etc.

The law was not carried into effect. Espartero, very popular at first, by adopting the principles of the progressist party, forfeited the support of the conservatives—that is, of the clerical party, and the man is not born yet who can successfully introduce into Spain a radical reform of the nature of the one he sanctioned with his signature September 2, 1841. From that moment his overthrow was certain. Narvaez headed the revolution against him, his own officers and men abandoned him, and on July 30, 1843, he wrote his farewell manifesto to the nation on board a British ship of war.