After "The Year Eighty": The Demise of Franciscan Power in Spanish New Mexico (review)

Textbook discussions of the Spanish Conquest glibly refer to the partnership of cross and sword in subjugating vast geographical territories and diverse native peoples. The present work adeptly disentangles these two arms of Spanish colonization and examines the frequently contentious relationship between religious and secular authorities on the northern frontier. The book covers the period from Don Diego de Vargas's reconquest of New Mexico through the beginnings of secularization in the late eighteenth century. Norris tracks the changing relationship between civil authorities and their Franciscan counterparts in northern and central New Mexico. Relying on documents from New Mexican and Mexican archives, he chronicles individual relationships as well as larger institutional relationships while illustrating the decline of Franciscan authority.

Norris contends that New Mexico's typical Franciscan from 1692-1776 was: "most likely to be a criollo from an urban area of central Mexico. This friar probably came from a family of moderate means. . . . Though he arrived in New Mexico at a mature age, his background, training, and previous service in the Order did not prepare him well for work in an isolated, frontier mission environment" (p. 27). By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the typical friar appears to have been less morally inspiring than his counterpart of the early eighteenth century. The book cites numerous contemporary accounts bewailing the lives of vice led by the friars of the Custody of St. Paul. While Norris is plainly sympathetic to the many hardships under which New Mexico's friars labored, the "demise" that his subtitle refers to is clearly not exclusively a decline in power or actual numbers but also the demise of the friars' moral authority.

However, it is not the character of the Franciscans that is the central focus of the work but rather the gradual erosion of Franciscan political authority from a highpoint prior to the Pueblo Revolt. While the crown's shifting priorities in the eighteenth century were essential to the Franciscans' demise, Norris argues that the 1680 Revolt had already begun to transform the role of the Franciscans, whose fear of further rebellion fostered dependence on civil-military authority. The unreliable, sporadic financial support of the crown, the crown's emphasis on the frontier's military security, and the frequent relocation of friars to different missions further weakened Franciscan authority. Norris chronologically plows through each governorship, spending more time on those administrations where the documents are richest. Ultimately, the erosion of Franciscan authority is evidenced not only by the Franciscans' interactions with civil authorities but also by the friars' subsiding resistance to the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Durango. By the early nineteenth century, the Franciscans are so without authority--political or otherwise--that many key sources from the period essentially ignore these increasingly isolated figures.

Norris discusses the Franciscans largely in their missionizing role, not touching on the friars' relationships to the culturally Spanish people of New Mexico. With the exception of references to some friars' unauthorized and extended forays into Santa Fe, there is little to suggest that the Franciscans were in fact actively engaged with the Spanish-speaking population, let alone ministering to their spiritual needs. These interactions and indeed the role of the relatively small population of españoles in the battles between governor and custos seem worthy of some attention. Given the accelerated numerical decline of the Franciscans in the early nineteenth century, the present study could have completed the story of the Franciscans in New Mexico by expanding its timeline through this last half century of Franciscan presence.

This is a highly readable and succinct piece of scholarship, with helpful summaries at the end of each chapter. The work fills an important gap in our understanding of the changing civil-Franciscan relationship on the northern frontier...