CHAPTER XXI

especially cloisters, suffer in the means of their livelihood, who live upon what is daily given for the masses they say, and in a cloister where thirty or forty priests say mass, so many pieces of eight [dollars] do daily come in, therefore this censure is inflicted upon the whole Church, that the party offending or scandalizing, for whose sake this curse is laid upon all, is bound to satisfy all priests and cloisters, which, in the way aforesaid, suffer, and to allow them so much out of his means as they might have daily got by selling away their masses for so many dollars for their daily livelihood. To this would the archbishop have brought Don Pedro, to have emptied out his purse, nearly a thousand dollars daily, toward the maintenance of about a thousand priests, so many there may be in Mexico, who from the altar sell away their bread god [sacrament] to satisfy with bread and food their hungry stomachs. And secondly, by the people suffering in their spiritual comfort, and in their communion of prayers and worship, thought to make Don Pedro odious to the people. Don Pedro, perceiving the spiteful intent of the archbishop, and hearing the outcries of the people against him, and their cries for the use of their churches, secretly retired to the palace of the Virey, begging his favor and protection, for whose sake he suffered.