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spanish america  Clergy  Karen Melvin Divine intermediaries, arbiters of justice, fire-­and-­brimstone preachers, score-­ settlers, compassionate allies, and greedy careerists—clergy filled a multiplicity of roles and brought to mind a rangeofopinions in the Spanish Americas, just as Gretchen Starr-­ Lebeau makes clear they did in Spain. Indeed , the history of the clergy on both sides of the Atlantic has much in common, particularly during the Baroque, a period that lasted from the late sixteenth through the mid-­ eighteenth century. Clergy on both sides of the Atlantic were at the apex of their size and power. Patterns in the compositions of urban versus rural as well as diocesan versus regularclergy were similar, and theyengaged in comparable pastoral works. At the same time, the significantlydifferent circumstances and clientele in the Americas offered a distinct set of challenges for American clergy. During the first decades of Spanish colonization, the majority of clergy were Europeans who had come to the Americas as part of a grand project to bring the land’s native populations into the Catholic fold. Most clergy were members of mendicant orders (especially Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Mercedarians) while diocesan structures remained weak and staffed by insufficient numbers of clergy. As the Americas developed stronger colonial institutions and their own systems of governance, as a bifurcated society of Indians and Spaniards gave way to a more racially complex society with larger creole and mestizo populations, as cities grew, and as European culture including Catholicism established deeper roots, the Church came to balance these early missionary programs with more conventional pastoral duties similar to what priests were doing in Europe. Scholars have often portrayed this transition in terms of a shift from a mendicant Church to a post-­ Tridentine Church based on new orders like Jesuits and especially secular clergy.1 Trent did champion secular clergy and parochial hierarchies at the expense of other branches of the Church, and Jesuits quickly established themselves as a powerful force in the Spanish Americas.The result was not a replacement of mendicants, however, so much as a rebalancing of these branches of the Church, the three largest and most influential during the Baroque period. Along with increasing numbers of Jesuits and secular clergy, numbers of mendicants grew exponentially. For example, in the Franciscans’ Mexico Province, the number of friars grew from 225 in 1569 to 556 in 1682 and 840 in 1730. As in Spain, the Baroque was a time of expansion for all branches of the Spanish American clergy. The source of these increases was not, however, European priests who made the journey to the Americas: figures show that their numbers dipped during the mid-­ colonial period. According to one calculation, more than 5,000 members of regular orders arrived in the sixteenth and again in the eighteenth century, while only 3,800 came in the seventeenth.2 Instead, growth originated from newly founded seminaries and novitiates that allowed men already living in the Americas to enter religious life. For instance , Guatemala was something of a colonial backwater, but even there the three majororders—Franciscans, Dominicans , and Mercedarians—were each operating novitiates by the 1570s, and the diocese opened its seminary in 1597. The primary beneficiaries of these new career opportunities were not Indians or people of mixed race but creoles. Long-­ standing Spanish concerns with limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) acquired new meanings in the Americas , where Indian or African blood could prevent or limit a man’s career as a priest. While colonial law eventually allowed Indians and mestizos to enter the priesthood, social realities made their place in the Church ambiguous: either few became priests or few priests were willing to admit to such a background. Baroque clergy were predominantly American and of at least nominally Spanish descent. The transformation from an early missionary Church staffed by Europeans to a creole Church was met with resistance from some Europeans, who believed creoles to be ill suited to the demands of the priesthood. One particularly vocal detractor of creoles was the peninsular Franciscan Jerónimo de Mendieta, who considered them infected by the same vices as Indians, including inclinations to drunkenness and disobedience, and sought to cap their numbers. Although efforts to limit the numbers of creoles proved ineffective and creole clergy held positions of power across regular and secular branches of the Church, Europeans retained a level of influence disproportionate to their smaller numbers. Nearly all bishops in the Spanish Americas came over from Spain, and manyorders followed...

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