Causes that have diminished the Religios.—The Provincials and Superiors of Convents.—The perfect Organization.—The Monks.—San Franciscans.—Dominicans.—Carmelites.—The well-reputed Orders.—The Jesuits.—The Nuns.—How Novices are procured.—Contrasted with a Quaker Prison.—The poor deluded Nun.—A good old Quaker Woman not a Saint.—Protestantism felt in Mexico.
THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS.
The monkish orders of Mexico have remained unchanged from the time of their first establishment. We have seen that they have fallen off immensely in numbers, but have increased immensely in efficiency, by the termination of those internal controversies between the Spanish-born and Creoles, and by enfranchisement from state control. Not only are they now all native-born, but the Meztizos seem to be the predominant race in the priesthood. The priesthood is not now so inviting an employment as it was before the suppression of the Inquisition. Miracles have ceased to be a profitable speculation, while the revenue once paid to the monks has been followed by ill-suppressed contempt. The employment once monopolized by the Spaniards being now thrown open to general competition, there is less willingness to submit to the despotism which ever reigns in religious houses than there was in the times of the vice-kings. Hard fare, cruel treatment, and public contempt have diminished the candidates for monastic orders, until the old proverb—"He that can not do better, let him turn monk"—is not unknown at Mexico. With the increase of liberty the number of nuns has diminished, as violence can no longer be used in getting a girl into a convent. For all these reasons the number of the religios has rapidly diminished, while the wealth and efficiency of the Church has increased.
Having spoken of the bishops, the lords spiritual of Mexico, and the controlling influence they exercise over a feeble government, we come next to the second class of spiritual masters of the country—the heads of orders, the provincials, and the heads of religious houses. These two classes of dignitaries are usually elected for their known severity of discipline, either by the procurement of the bishop, or through fanaticism of the monks or nuns, who, having voluntarily made themselves convicts and prisoners for life, now undertake to add to their self-afflicted mortification by choosing for their head a superior the most hateful of their number. The novice is taught that the greatest favor with Heaven is to be obtained by implicit obedience under most trying circumstances, and the more cruel the despotism they unmurmuringly submit to, the greater will be the accumulation of good works. But cursed to the lowest depths of Purgatory is that recluse who dares to murmur even in his inmost thoughts; and if he so far forgets his duty as to murmur aloud, then all the powers of the Church are brought to crush his insubordination.
We have thus followed spiritual despotism through its various stages, from the Pope to the bishops; from the bishops to the provincials of religious orders; and then down to superiors of a community of half a dozen monks or nuns, by whom immorality is pardonable, but who regard disobedience or insubordination in the slightest particular "like the sin of witchcraft and idolatry." Such is the perfect organization of the papacy in all its parts, which, acting as one great secret, political, social, and religious association, labors continually to concentrate the riches of the nations at Rome as a common centre.
There is a peculiar feature in the Catholic Church in Mexico unknown in other Catholic countries: it is the preponderance of the regular clergy (monks) over the secular clergy. This is owing to Cortéz, who wrote to the Emperor Charles V. to send him regulars, for the conversion of the Indians, instead of seculars, assigning as a reason for this request "that the latter display extravagant luxury, leave great wealth to their natural children, and give great scandal to the newly-converted Indians." Hence more than one half of the Mexican clergy are monks, and wear the cowl; for at the time of the census of 1793, as we have seen, there were in the city of Mexico 1646 monks, besides lay brothers, against 550 secular priests, while in the fifteen convents for nuns there were 923 of these female monks.
CHARACTER OF THE DIFFERENT ORDERS.
The reader has already become quite familiar with the Franciscan fathers and their vows of poverty and self-mortification, and their skill at playing for gold ounces. They have pretty well maintained that reputation since the time of Friar Thomas Gage. But there are some honorable exceptions to this rule, though few and far between. We have already noticed how they were favored by Cortéz, and the result has been that they are the richest fraternity in the republic. These holy men of the Angelic Order of Saint Francis have lately discovered a new source of wealth in renting their large central court to a Frenchman, who occupies it with the best garden of plants in Mexico; and as the convent occupies nearly a whole square in the central part of the city, they have pierced the convent walls, and rented out shops upon the business streets, while the soldiers of Santa Anna occupy the vacant cloisters of the convent. In this "happy family," with all the immense wealth of the establishment, the donados, and those monks who are so poor as to have no friends, find but a miserable subsistence.
Of the Dominicans I have already spoken in connection with the Inquisition. In their yard is the flag-stone which was used by them in offering human sacrifice before the Revolution. There it is kept as a relic and symbol of the power once enjoyed by the Church. There is yet a lingering hope that there may be restored to these brethren the power of roasting alive human beings. In speaking of depravity of morals, it is hard to say which of the fraternities has reached the lowest level, though common consent concedes the palm to the Dominicans.
The name of the Carmelites carries us back to the time of the Crusades; but they are better known in Mexico as the former proprietors of the Desierto, which Thomas Gage so touchingly describes. Their habitual practice of self-denial and mortification, in appearance, while rioting on the luxuries that devotees lavished upon them, has not been forgotten. These holy brothers had a hand in the Inquisition as well as the Dominicans. They were a set of scamps set to watch the purity of other men's lives, while they themselves lived a life of habitual profligacy. The ruins of their old convent, the Desierto, is still one of the most attractive spots about the city. As the traveler wanders among its ruined walls, he will find in the subterraneous cells ring-bolts fastened in the walls, where poor prisoners for their faith endured something more than self-mortification.
The monks of Santiago, San Augustin, and the Capuchins have all fine convents, and are rich; but the monks of Saint James are the most inveterate beggars.
The monks of San Fernando enjoy an enviable reputation compared with the spotted sheep I have just been considering. They are late comers, and have not learned all the ways of wickedness of the older orders. Next come the "Brethren of the Profession," of whom it is pleasant to speak, after saying so many hard things of their neighbors. They stand so high as men of character and learning, that I am tempted to tell their story on hearsay, for want of better authority. They were once Jesuits, but when the royal cebula of Carlos III. came for their expulsion, these fathers had sustained so good a character for charity and usefulness that they were allowed to return, on condition of renouncing the name and peculiarities of that order. I am inclined to believe this strange story to be substantially true, for clearly they are of the Jesuits, and yet they are not Jesuits. The reputation which they enjoyed in 1767 they still retain, and not only command the respect of all classes of society in Mexico, but their chapel is the fashionable church of the city, where genteel people resort to say their prayers.
"The Brethren of the Holy Places of Jerusalem"—the Hieronomite monks, are not numerous, and are known in the markets as lenders of money, with the interest of which they support themselves and "the poor saints of Jerusalem;" that is, a portion of those lazy, greasy, fighting Latin monks at Jerusalem, that have been one of the causes of the present war in Europe.
"The Hospitalers of Saint John" (Juanos) are better known for their exploits in the time of the Crusaders than for any thing they have done in Mexico.
It would be a thrice-told tale to repeat the story of the Jesuits; the world knows that too well already. The details of their proceedings in Mexico till the time of their expulsion have been too often written by their enemies. Their great prosperity and their great wealth made them the envy of the other orders, as corrupt and depraved as themselves, but not so dangerous, because they had reached that point at which depravity ceases to contaminate. Dirty, greasy monks could not endure an order that wore the garb of gentlemen, and were in favor with the aristocracy, while they themselves were despised.
This envy was all-powerful with them, and led, for a time, to the laying aside of their own private bickerings, and uniting in the crusade against the common enemy, the Jesuits, and acting in harmony with the political power.
NUNNERIES.
The Church has always made much of the nuns. It has ever been the custom of the priesthood to endeavor to throw a veil of romance over the very unromantic way of life followed by females who have shut themselves up for life in a place hardly equal to a second-class state-prison. Woman has an important place which God has assigned her in the world; but when she separates herself from the family circle, and elbows her way to the rostrum, where, with a semi-masculine attire, and with a voice not intended for oratory, she harangues a tittering crowd upon the rights of women to perform the duties of men; or goes to the opposite extreme, and shuts herself up within high stone walls to avoid the society of the other sex, she equally sins against her own nature, and not only brings misery upon herself, but inflicts upon society the evils of a pernicious example, and furnishes a theme for all kinds of scandal.
Proud families who have portionless daughters; relatives who desire to get rid of heirs to coveted estates; convents in want of funds and endowments, or a pretty victim for the public entertainment on taking the veil; friends who have unmarriageable women on their hands; and romantic young misses, ambitious of playing the queen for a day at the cost of being a prisoner for life, have all contributed to populate the fifteen nunneries of the city of Mexico. In the flourishing times of the Inquisition, this business of inveigling choice victims into convents was more profitable, for then murmuring could be crushed into silence, and parents dreaded to oppose the wretched pimps of superstition who came to inveigle their daughters into convents.
NUNNERIES AND PRISONS.
The Quaker prison of Philadelphia is a paradise compared with such a place as this. If the reader has ever placed his eye at the keeper's eye-hole in that prison, he must have seen in many a cell a cheerful face, and the appearance of as much comfort as is compatible with an imprisoned condition; for ministering angels have been there—mothers in Israel, who have torn themselves from their domestic duties for a little time to minister consolation to the very criminals in prison; and, now that the prison-door has separated the poor wretch forever from society, whose laws have been outraged, she, by her kindness and teaching, has led the convict to look to Heaven with a hope of forgiveness, and daily to pray for those he has injured, while he reads in the holy book which she gave him, that a repenting thief accompanied the Son of God to Paradise.
Let us turn from such an unpoetical scene as this, which that cheerful prison presents, to the convent of Santa Teresa, the most celebrated of all the ten or fifteen nunneries now in operation about the city of Mexico. In a cold, damp, comfortless cell, kneeling upon the pavement, we may see a delicate woman mechanically repeating her daily-imposed penance of Latin prayers, before the image of a favorite saint and a basin of holy water. This self-regulating, automaton praying machine, as she counts off the number of allotted prayers by the number of beads upon her rosary, beats into her bosom the sharp edge of an iron cross that rests within her shirt of sacking-cloth, until, nature and her task exhausted, she throws herself down upon a wooden bed, so ingeniously arranged as to make sleep intolerable. This poor victim of self-inflicted daily torture, half crazed from insufficient food, and sleep, and clothing, has endured all this misery to accumulate a stock of good works for the use of less meritorious sinners, besides the amount necessary to carry herself to heaven; for penance, and not repentance, is this poor pagan's password for salvation.
The old Quakeress is not a fashionable saint, for she never dreamed of this huxter business in spiritual affairs. Out of the overflowing goodness of her heart, she had tried to lighten the miseries of life in her own humble and quiet way, and found her happiness in seeing all about her made comfortable. The money that others expended in buying masses for the repose of their own souls and those of their relatives after death, she expended in ministering to soul and body in this world, leaving to God above the affairs of departed spirits, to deal with them according to His mercy. She never presumed to add to the torments of this life, or undertook to lighten the torments of the departed. Her duties lay all in this world, and when her labors were ended, she quietly lay down in death, leaving her future condition to God. She never would pierce her bosom with an iron cross, though it had often been pierced by the trials of life. She has seen enough of real poverty and mortification, but never dreamed of such a thing as poverty and mortification self-imposed, by wearing upon her flesh a garment of sacking-cloth, or the ingenious invention of a bed so contrived as to deprive herself of wholesome sleep. Images and holy water occupy no place in her creed, though soap and water are almost too prominent. She did her good deeds from a sense of duty which she owed to her kind, and from the pleasure that it gave her to relieve misery while discharging the ordinary duties of life, and never dreamed of the sweet odor her good works left behind her—an odor which followed her to heaven—an odor more acceptable to the Almighty than all the endowments she might have left to pay for masses for the repose of her soul.
SELF-CASTIGATION.
There is so much that is monotonous in talking over the details of affairs of the different orders of these female monks, from the Sister of Guadalupe to the Sisterhood of Mercy, that it is as well to consider them as one, as divers households of single women, who, to win extraordinary favor of God, had separated themselves from their families, and devoted their lives, some to repeating prayers and acts of self-mortification, some to attending at the hospitals on the sick or the blind, the idiotic, the deformed, the deaf and the dumb, others to educating young ladies according to their peculiar notions of education, others again consecrating themselves to pauperism, and living upon charity; and when the daily supply of alms has failed, these self-made poor sisters collect together, and there wait and pray, and ring their bell, until some benevolent individual shall chance to hear the well-known signal, and come and relieve them.
Such is the system of religion of all countries which bear the Christian name, but where freedom does not exist, and where liberty can not thrive. There is a trifling difference in its phases as exhibited in the Greek and the Latin Churches, but the difference is too slight for us outsiders to notice. In Mexico it exists in its most unadulterated state, less contaminated than elsewhere with Protestantism or other foreign substances.
PENANCES.
The old farce of self-castigation is here still enacted, as it has been for three hundred years, but in the dark, of course; and blood, or some substitute for it, is heard to fall upon the floor by the few selected witnesses; but a party of boys, report says, being somewhat skeptical about the quality of this blood, concealed themselves in the church, and when the pious farce began, took so active a part in the sport upon the naked backs of the fathers, as to inflict bodily injury, and break up the bloody entertainment. Still Protestantism has been felt in Mexico, if not embraced, and the common people look back to the happy time when the soldiers of their Protestant conquerors made money plenty among them, and when even-handed justice was dealt out alike to rich and poor, high and low. Though the foreigners laughed at the fables of the priests and ridiculed the monks, they yet were honest in their dealings with the people instead of taking by violence. As there are no people so besotted that they do not admire courage and honesty, so the Paisano looks upon the heretic as a man of a superior race to himself.