"Among these great benefactors to the churches of that city, I should wrong my history if I should forget one that lived in my time, called Alonzo Cuellar, who was reported to have a closet in his house laid with bars of gold instead of brick; though indeed it was not so, but only reported for his abundant riches and store of bars of gold, which he had in one chest, standing in a closet distant from another, where he had a chest full of wedges of silver. This man alone built a nunnery for Franciscan nuns, which stood him in above 30,000 ducats, and left unto it, for the maintenance of the nuns, 2000 ducats yearly, with obligation of some masses to be said in the church every year for his soul after his decease. And yet this man's life was so scandalous, that commonly, in the night, with two servants, he would go round the city visiting such scandalous persons, whose attire before hath been described, carrying his beads in his hands, and at every house letting fall a bead, and tying a false knot, that when he came home in the morning, toward break of the day, he might number by his beads the uncivil stations he had walked and visited that night.
"Great alms and liberality toward religious houses in that city commonly are coupled with great and scandalous wickedness. They wallow in the bed of riches and wealth, and make their alms the coverlet to cover their loose and lascivious lives. From hence are the churches so fairly built and adorned. There are not above fifty churches and chapels, cloisters and nunneries, and parish churches in the city; but those that are there are the fairest that ever my eyes beheld, the roofs and beams being, in many of them, all daubed with gold, and many altars with sundry marble pillars, and others with Brazil-wood stays standing one above another, with tabernacles for several saints, richly wrought with golden colors, so that twenty thousand ducats is a common price of many of them. These cause admiration in the common sort of people, and admiration brings on daily adoration in them to those glorious spectacles and images of saints; so Satan shows Christ all the glory of the kingdoms to entice him to admiration, and then he said, 'All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me' (Matthew, iv. 8, 9). The devil will give all the world to be adored.
"Besides these beautiful buildings, the inward riches belonging to the altars are infinite in price and value, such as copes, canopies, hangings, altar-cloths, candlesticks, jewels belonging to the saints, and crowns of gold and silver, and tabernacles of gold and crystal to carry about their sacrament [the Saviour of the world in the form of a wafer] in procession, all of which would mount to the worth of a reasonable mine of silver, and would be a rich prey for any nation that could make better use of wealth and riches. I will not speak much of the lives of the friars and nuns of this city, but only that they there enjoy more liberty than in Europe—where they have too much—and that surely the scandals committed by them do cry up to Heaven for vengeance, judgment, destruction.
"It is ordinary for the friars to visit their devoted nuns, and to spend whole days with them, hearing their music, feeding on their sweetmeats; and for this purpose they have many chambers, which they call loquatories, to talk in, with wooden bars between the nuns and them; and in these chambers are tables for the friars to dine at, and while they dine the nuns recreate them with their voices. Gentlemen and citizens give their daughters to be brought up in these nunneries, where they are taught to make all sorts of conserves and preserves, all sorts of music, which is so exquisite in that city that I dare be bold to say that the people are drawn to churches more for the delight of the music than for any delight in the service of God. More, they teach these young children to act like players; and, to entice the people to the churches, they make these children act short dialogues in their choirs, richly attiring them with men and women's apparel, especially upon Midsummer's day and the eight days before their Christmas, which is so gallantly performed that many factious strifes and single combats have been, and some were in my time, for defending which of these nunneries most excelled in music and in the training up of children."
Such is a picture drawn by a candid writer of one of the most devout Catholic cities in the world, where licentiousness and papacy went hand in hand until they reached that extreme point of corruption, that, as in the case of Sodom, God overthrew the city by a judgment from heaven; not by fire and brimstone, but by a water-spout, which, in the space of the five years that it lay upon the town three feet deep, loosened the foundations of all buildings and impoverished the inhabitants. And when at length the earth opened and swallowed up these waters, the city had to be rebuilt. The misery and distress that this flood inflicted upon the lower orders of the inhabitants was great in the extreme.
It was on Sunday morning that the cause of the moral superiority of the American miners over those of Mexico was visible. Then the noise and bustle about my residence was hushed. The most immoral seemed to be overawed by a sense of respect for the religious opinions of others; and when the sound of a ship-bell, hung on the limb of a tree, was heard, all except the baser sort repaired to the shade of an oak, so large and venerable that it might have shielded the whole household of Abraham while engaged in family worship. A portable seraphine gave forth a familiar tune, in which all joined in singing with a zest which is only realized by those whom it carries back in recollection to distant home. Then the voice of the preacher was heard invoking the blessing of God upon the assembled worshipers, and his pardon of their offenses; and then followed his exhortation to seek from God the pardon of their many sins; and as he, with heartfelt earnestness, "reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come," many a stern-visaged miner trembled for his condition, and went away a better and a more honest man—ten thousand times more improved than if he had presented a crown of gold to the Virgin Mary.
We are now prepared to enter the valley of Mexico, and examine the objects that there present themselves.
CHAPTER XIV.
First Sight of the Valley of Mexico.—A Venice in a mountain Valley.—An Emperor waiting his Murderers.—Cortéz mowing down unarmed Indians.—A new kind of Piety.—Capture of an Emperor.—Torturing an Emperor to Death.—The Children paying the Penalty of their Fathers' Crimes.—The Aztecs and other Indians.—The Difference is in the Historians.—The Superstitions of the Indians.—The Valley of Mexico.—An American Survey of the Valley.—A topographical View.—The Ponds Chalco, Xochimulco, and Tezcuco were never Lakes.