From Mexico the flood of Spanish cruelty and immorality spread itself like a stream of lava over the whole of South America. The chivalry of the soldiery soon degenerated, and the self-denial and lofty motives, darkened though they were by bigotry and cruelty in some cases, which had distinguished the priests, were lost. Inglorious ease and luxurious indolence now superseded that love of adventure and unconquerable daring which distinguished Cortez and Pizarro, and their comrades: no trace of the old heroic character remained save the grinding oppression and reckless selfishness which usually accompany ambition.
An illustration of the loose manners which prevailed in Mexico among the clergy is to be found in the voyages of Thomas Page, a Dominican monk, who visited Mexico with some of his order on their road to the western coast of America and to Asia as missionaries.
From this work, published in 1677, we learn that the writer and his companions visited the prior of Vera Cruz on their journey, and, after a sumptuous dinner, adjourned, by invitation, to his cell. They found it richly tapestried and adorned with feathers of the birds of Michoacou; the walls were hung with various pictures of merit; rich rugs of silk covered the tables; porcelain of China filled the cupboards and sideboards, and there were vases and bowls containing preserved fruits and sweetmeats. “My companions,” says he, “were scandalized by such an exhibition. The holy friar talked to us of his ancestry, of his good parts, of the influence he had with the Father Provincial, of the love the principal ladies of the place bore him, of his beautiful voice and skill in music. He took his guitar and sang us a sonnet in praise of a certain lady.” Afterward, speaking of the Franciscans of Jalapa, Thomas Page says: “Their lives are so free and immodest that it might be suspected with reason that they had renounced only that which they could not obtain.” After witnessing a gambling scene in a convent, he concludes that “the cause of so many Friars and Jesuits passing from Spain to regions so distant was libertinage rather than love of preaching the Gospel.”
The same writer subsequently passes from portraiture to more general delineation, and thus depicts the body of the clergy: “It seems that all wickedness is allowable, so that the churches and clergy flourish. Nay, while the purse is open to lasciviousness, if it be also open to enrich the temple walls and roof, it is better than any holy water.... In their lifetime the Mexicans strive to excel one another in their gifts to the cloisters of nuns and friars.”
“Among the benefactors was one, Alonzo Cuellar, so rich that he was reported to have a closet in his house laid with bars of gold instead of bricks. This man built a nunnery for Franciscan nuns, which cost him thirty thousand ducats, and left to it two thousand dollars yearly. And yet his life was so scandalous that commonly in the night, with two servants, he would go round the city visiting scandalous persons, and at every house letting fall a bead and tying a knot, that when he came home in the morning, he might number, by his beads, the uncivil stations he had visited that night.
“Great alms and liberality toward religious houses are coupled with great and scandalous wickedness. They wallow in the bed of riches and wealth, and make their alms the coverlet to conceal their loose and lascivious lives....
“I will not speak much of the lives of the friars and nuns of this city, but only that they enjoy there 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, and destruction.
“It is ordinary for the friars to visit their devoted nuns, and to spend whole days with them, hearing their music and feeding on their sweetmeats. 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.”
We need no addition to these deep shadows from the dark pencil of so vigorous a limner as worthy Thomas Page, to delineate character nearly two hundred years ago, but we can scarcely believe it equally applicable to the present day. The reign of oppression in Mexico, it is to be hoped, is approaching its end, and recent events have shown that the population is alive to some of those truths which were long ago patent to all the world except those most intimately concerned.
Of modern Mexican society, an accomplished female writer, who had the best opportunities of judging, says: