A Vanished Arcadia: Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607-1767

by R. B. Cunninghame Graham

Nor was the Bishop more successful with his clergy. Some of them laughed at his pretensions to be a saint, and called him an ambitious schemer. Again, amongst the laity, many did not quite understand his habit of celebrating two Masses every day. He answered that he never celebrated without releasing a soul from purgatory, and that there had been saints who celebrated nine Masses every day, and, moreover, that he was Pope in his own diocese. This cut the ground from under the feet of his detractors, for in a town of the calibre of Asuncion the people looked on a service in a church as a welcome means of getting through the day, and had he celebrated a dozen masses they would but have been more delighted with their new Bishop.

Under the pretext that there were not enough priests to serve the churches, he, by degrees, took several parishes into his own hands, and went from church to church to celebrate his Mass in each, whilst not forgetting to draw the various stipends for his work. But, not content with this, he began to ordain young men who knew no Latin, and even criminals, setting forth the view that ordination was a sort of second baptism, which purged all crimes—a most convenient theory, and one which is not half enough insisted on in these degenerate days.

The position of Asuncion gave him an opportunity of an almost unique kind to show his talents in another sphere. Across the river Paraguay, there about one mile broad, extends the country called the Chaco, a vast domain of swamp and forest, inhabited in those days, as at present, by tribes of wandering Indians. From the city walls, whilst listening to the church-bells, one can see the smoke of Indian encampments across the river only a mile away.

Of all the Indian tribes in the time of Cardenas, the most ferocious were the Guaycurús. The Jesuits had laboured almost in vain amongst them. Missions had been founded, and all gone well for months, and even years, when on a sudden, and without reason, the Guaycurús had burned the houses, killed the priests, and gone back to the wilds. From Santa Fé up to the province of Matto Grosso they kept the frontier in a turmoil, crossing the river and feeding like locusts on the settlements in Paraguay.

Not long before his arrival the Guaycurús had intimated their intention of holding a conference with Don Gregorio Hinostrosa. Don Bernardino thought the chance too good to lose, and at once declared that, as a Bishop, it was his place to carry on negotiations with the barbarians. Dressed in his robes and with an escort furnished by the Governor, he met the chiefs—who no doubt looked on him as a new kind of medicine-man—preached to them through an interpreter, curiously being without the gift of tongues, but notwithstanding that a reasonable number of them were baptized. On his return, he wrote to the King that by his efforts he had appeased the most ferocious Indians within his Majesty’s domains.

Within a week the Guaycurús surprised and burned a settlement a little higher up the stream. Not content with this Caligulesque apostolate to the Guaycurús, the Bishop longed for serious occupation, and caused it to be rumoured about the city that he did nothing except by the direct authority of the Holy Ghost, an allegation hard to confute, and if allowed, likely to lead to difficulties even in Paraguay.

Some years before the advent of Don Bernardino the Dominicans had built a convent in Asuncion. As they had no license to build, they were in the position of religious squatters on the domain of God. The citizens had applied to the Audiencia of Charcas, the supreme court on all such matters in South America, situated, with true Spanish unpracticality, in one of the most secluded districts of the continent. The Audiencia had refused the license, but had taken the matter ad advisandum for ten years. To take a matter into consideration for ten years, even in Spain or South America, where the law’s delay is generally more mortal than in any other country, was as good as giving a permission. So the Dominicans construed it, and no one dreamed of now molesting them.

One day the Bishop, dressed in his robes, proceeded from his palace to the convent, informing the Governor that he wanted him to meet him there. Entering the convent church, he took the sacrament from off the altar and stripped the church of all its ornaments, setting a gang of workmen to demolish both the convent and the church. When the work was over, he went to a neighbouring church, and then and there, without confession, celebrated Mass, remarking to the faithful that there was no need for him to make confession, as he was satisfied of the condition of his conscience. Some murmured; but the greater portion of the people, always ready to take a saint at his own valuation, were delighted with his act. Doubts must have crossed his mind, as shortly afterwards he wrote to Don Melchior Maldonado, Bishop of Tucuman, for his opinion. That Bishop answered rather tartly that his zeal appeared to him to savour more of the zeal of Elias than of Jesus Christ, and that in a country where churches were so few it seemed imprudent to pull down rather than to build. ‘However,’ he added, ‘my light is not so brilliant as the light your lordship is illumined by.’

When once a man is well convinced that all he does comes from the Holy Ghost, there is but little that he cannot do with satisfaction to himself. Self-murderers, according to the custom of those times, were not allowed admission into holy ground, as if the fact of having found their life unbearable debarred them from the right to be considered men. Such a man a few years previously had been buried at a cross-road. It now occurred to Cardenas to have a special revelation on the subject; and, curiously enough, this special revelation was on the side of common-sense. ‘This body,’ said the Bishop, ‘is that of a Christian, and I feel pretty sure his soul is now in bliss.’ He gave no reason for his opinion, as is the way of most religious folk, but, as he had special means of communication with heaven, most people were contented. Incontinently he had the corpse dug up and buried in the church of the Incarnation, himself performing all the funeral rites.

Although a miracle or two would have shocked nobody, still, in the matter of the suicide he had gone too far for the simple people of the place. They murmured, and for a moment the Bishop’s prestige was in jeopardy; but in the nick of time his Bulls arrived, brought by his nephew, Pedro de Cardenas, who, like himself, was a Franciscan friar. This saved him, and gave the people something new to think of, though at the same time he incurred a new anxiety.