The complaints against Peralta accumulated until the Suprema was compelled to formulate a process against him in which the sumaria contained thirty-two charges, not only of arbitrary cruelty but of prostitution of his office for illicit gain (Medina, p. 216); but this, as we have seen, did not prevent his promotion to the archiepiscopate of La Plata.
[414] Obregon, p. 391.
[415] Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, Lib. III, cap. 99 (Col. de Docum., T. LXV, p. 365).
[416] Lorenzana, Concilios provin. de Mexico, pp. 18, 33.
[417] Ibidem, p. 82.
[418] Recop. de las Indias, Lib. I, Tit. xix, ley 17; Lib. VI, Tit. i, ley 35.—Solorzani de Indiar. Gubern., Lib. III, cap. xxiv, n. 27, 30.
This fresh papal grant was evidently called for by the action of the Council of Trent, in 1563 (Sess. XXIV, De Reform., cap. 6) which admitted that bishops had only power to absolve for secret heresy, while even this was denied them by the bulls In Cœna Domini of Pius V and his successors.
[419] Bancroft, History of Mexico, III, 747, 750.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, Lib. II, cap. 1; Lib. III, cap. 8 (Col. de Doc., Tom. LXIV, 7, 386).
[420] The Dominican Thomas Gage when, about the year 1630, he was serving as a missionary priest at Mixco in Guatemala, discovered, after considerable trouble, an idol in a cave, secretly worshipped by the leading Indians of the vicinage. After relating his adventures in the search, he proceeds “I writ to the President of Guatemala informing him of what I had don and to the Bishop (as an Inquisitor to whom such cases of Idolatry did belong) to be informed of him what course I should take with the Indians, who were but in part as yet discovered unto me and those only by the relation of one Indian. From both I received great thanks for my pains in searching the mountains and finding the Idol and for my zeal in burning of it. And as touching the Indian Idolators their counsel unto me was that I should further enquire after the rest and discover as many as I could and endeavor to convert them to the knowledge of the true God by fair and sweet means, showing pity unto them for their great blindness and promising them upon their repentance pardon from the Inquisition, which considering them to be but new plants useth not such rigor with them, which it useth with Spaniards if they fall into such horrible sins.”—Gage’s New Survey of the West Indies, pp. 397-8 (London, 1677).
For a considerable time the Indians seem to have escaped persecution, but at length the bishops—or at least some of them—formed Inquisitions for them and conducted these in inquisitorial fashion. In 1690 the Bishop of Oaxaca, having discovered organized idolatry in eleven pueblos of the Sierra de Xuquil, held an auto in which the culprits were reconciled and penanced, twenty-six of the principal ones being condemned to perpetual prison, for which he constructed an appropriate building. Possibly the fact that persecution was unprofitable may explain the infrequency of these proceedings. The first Indian auto in the city of Mexico seems to have been held December 23, 1731, which was followed occasionally by others—bigamy, superstitions and idolatry being the common offences. In 1769 the Archbishop of Mexico published an Edict of Faith requiring denunciations of Indian practices to his Tribunal de Fe. This excited the indignation of the Inquisitors who vainly demanded its suppression and then appealed to the Suprema, probably with no better success.—Medina, pp. 371-8.