As well as being not given to wine, it is essential that a Bishop shall know how to keep his own counsel—as Lorenzo Gracian expresses it,[119] ‘not to lie, but not for that to speak out always the whole truth.’ Everyone who knew the Bishop and his hasty temper was astonished at his behaviour to the Jesuits. No one imagined he had forgotten the attitude the rector of the University of Cordova had assumed towards his consecration, and still the Bishop seemed to show more favour to the Jesuits in Asuncion than to the members of the other religious communities. Perhaps he felt the want of partisans amongst the educated classes, for his quarrel with the Governor had lost him many friends. Certainly in Asuncion it was of great importance that the Jesuits should not declare against him openly.
He praised them fulsomely both in the pulpit and in conversation, went in procession to their church, and treated them in public with marked consideration. As a contemporaneous Jesuit has left a record, they were not his dupes, but still endeavoured to live up to the praises he dispensed to them. He went so far as in a letter to the King, Philip IV., to say that the Jesuits only in all Paraguay were really fitted to have the care of Indians, and he advised the King to transfer the Indians who were under other religious bodies, as well as those under the secular clergy, to the care and guidance of that Order. No doubt in this the Bishop was right, even if not sincere. One of the qualifications the Jesuits had for the care of Indians was that the Indians did not look on them as Spaniards.
As in the same way that in Matabeleland, perhaps, a German, Frenchman, or Italian is less hateful to the natives than an Englishman, so in Paraguay the Indians liked the Jesuits better than the other Orders, for there were many foreigners amongst their ranks. The Jesuits soon comprehended that the Bishop wished to make them odious to the public by overpraise. To set to work in such a manner almost requires an early training in a seminary, and that such tactics should have been put in force against such skilled diplomatists as were the Jesuits argues no ordinary capacity for diplomatic work in Cardenas. With him, however, the Spanish proverb, ‘Betwixt the word and deed the space is great’, had little application. The vicar of a place called Arecayá, close to Asuncion, had fallen into disgrace; the Bishop removed him from his parish, and asked the rector of the Jesuit college to send a priest to take his place. The answer he received was politic, and to the effect that there was no Jesuit who could be spared, and even if there was it ill-befitted any Jesuit to infringe upon the duties of the secular clergy; but that, if Cardenas intended to found a new reduction with all the privileges that the King had always given to that kind of establishment, the rector himself would ask permission from his Provincial to undertake the work. A splendid answer, and one which proved that the man who gave it was a man wasted in Paraguay, and that his place by rights was Rome or, at the least, some court.
Don Bernardino, who in matters such as these was quite as cunning as the rector, thanked him, and said he did not want a saint, but a priest to take the duty of another priest for a short time. The rector, seeing his diplomacy had failed, told Father Mansilla, who was at Itatines, to transfer himself to Arecayá, and, writing to the Bishop, told him that he had no doubt Mansilla would do all that was fitting in the case. The Bishop, who had gained his point and saw no further use for diplomacy, said: ‘Of that I am quite sure, and if he does not I shall excommunicate him, and lay the district of the Itatines under an interdict.’ Nothing appeared to give Don Bernardino such unmitigated pleasure as an excommunication; on the slightest protest he was ready, so that during his episcopate someone or other in Asuncion must have always been under the ban of Holy Mother Church. The rector felt instinctively that Don Bernardino had not done with him. This was the case, for soon another order came to send two Jesuits to undertake the guidance of a mission near Villa Rica. As at the time the Jesuits had no missions near Villa Rica, the order was most unpleasant to him. Firstly, the two who went—Fathers Gomez and Domenecchi—had to leave their missions and undertake a lengthy journey in the wilds. On reaching Villa Rica, they found not only that the inhabitants looked on them with great disfavour as interlopers, but that the Indians, whom they were sent to guide, were under the encomienda system, thus forcing them to wink at that which they disapproved. The resolution that they took did them great honour; it was to leave the town of Villa Rica and live out in the forests with the Indians.
The Jesuits of the college at Asuncion felt the situation keenly. People began to murmur at them for their invasion of the spiritual domains of others, and the rector, in despair, sent to the Bishop, and begged him not to praise them in his sermons. Nothing cost Cardenas so little as to promise, so he promised not to mention them again, and next time that he preached he spent an hour in telling of the wonders that the Jesuits had done in saving souls, not only amongst Catholics, but also amongst the infidels and Turks. The tactics of the Bishop were so marked that at last a rumour reached Don Melchior Maldonado, the Bishop of Tucuman, of whom Don Bernardino always stood in dread. His letter somehow became public, and as in it he spoke most warmly of the Jesuits, and praised the rector, the public turned again upon their side. Just at this time, however, the sleeping feud between the Bishop and the Governor broke out anew with so much fury that attention was directed from the Jesuits for the time being; but on them the situation still was hung, and both sides made advances to them for support.
Chapter V
Renewal of the feud between the Bishop and Don Gregorio—Wholesale excommunications in Asuncion—Cardenas in 1644 formulates his celebrated charges against the Jesuits—The Governor, after long negotiations and much display of force, ultimately succeeds in driving out the Bishop—For three years Cardenas is in desperate straits—In 1648 Don Gregorio is suddenly dismissed, Cardenas elects himself Governor, and for a short time becomes supreme in Asuncion—The Jesuits are forced to leave the town and to flee to Corrientes—A new Governor is appointed in Asuncion—He defeats Cardenas on the field of battle—The latter is deprived of his power, and dies soon after as Bishop of La Paz
The Governor, like a prudent soldier, was biding his time. The Bishop, not yet strong enough to walk alone, dared not break openly with the Jesuits. Don Pedro Cardenas still following up his evil courses, poor Don Gregorio Hinostrosa, accustomed all his life to deal with ‘officers and gentlemen’, thought fit to bring this under his uncle’s notice. The Bishop spoke to his nephew in a paternal fashion, enjoining certain penances upon him, and amongst others that he was to kiss the earth. Although Don Pedro Cardenas was not a man accustomed to lavish kisses on things inanimate, he complied, but, though complying, still pursued his vicious course.
Quite in the manner of King Charles (of pious memory), the Governor determined to arrest the recalcitrant with his own hand. Armed to the teeth, and with a band of musketeers accompanying him, he appeared before the convent of St. Francis, where Father Cardenas had taken refuge, and, dragging him from his bed, haled him incontinently to the river’s bank, and left him gagged and bound, a prey to flies and sun, for two whole days, dressed in his drawers and shirt. On the third day he was embarked in a canoe for Corrientes, with a small quantity of jerked beef for all provision, and a woman’s cloak wrapped round his shoulders to shield him from the cold. Not quite the guise in which a clergyman would care to appear before the eyes of his superiors, even in Paraguay. Naturally, the Bishop, having nothing else to do, got out his excommunication in his usual style, but no man marked him.
Meantime Asuncion was in confusion, the Bishop and the Governor keeping no measure with the other man of sin. One tried to obtain possession of the other’s person to throw him into prison; the other strove to animate the preachers in the various churches to consign his rival’s soul to hell. In the deserted streets drums thundered, whilst in the air bells jangled, and the quiet, sleepy town was rent in twain by the dissensions of the opposing powers. The churches closed their doors, and the consolations of religion were withdrawn from those who wanted them.