In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Bishop Martínez Compañón’s Practical Utopia in Enlightenment Peru *
  • Emily Berquist (bio)

"Bishops, because they are bishops, cannot stop being vassals of their kings, and functionaries of their states. Nor are they exempt from practicing with all those around them, especially with their diocesans, works of mercy, physically as well as spiritually.

I gave [the miners] as proof of this truth one of the soliloquies of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in which he said: "You are a man, you are a citizen of the world." 1 —Bishop Martínez Compañón recounting his experiences with the Hualgayoc miner's guild in a letter to Viceroy Teodoro de Croix of Peru, May 1786.

On February 25th, 1778, King Charles III of Spain selected a young Lima Cathedral canon named Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón 2 to become the next Bishop of Trujillo, Peru. The promotion was a gesture of faith in the young man's ability to serve as an agent of the Bourbon [End Page 377] reforms in Spanish America. With it, Martínez Compañón joined a select group of prelates who functioned as an elite cadre of ecclesiastical and administrative reformers. In addition to fulfilling their duties as religious leaders, these canons, bishops, and archbishops were deeply engaged with matters of political economy and state administration. 3 They were men of God, but as Martínez Compañón himself wrote to Viceroy Croix in 1786, they were also servants of the king and of the state. As powerful men in influential positions with financial backing, the Enlightened prelates in central areas of the Hispanic world were well equipped to gather the funds, political clout, and public consent necessary to promote their agendas.

Martínez Compañón, however, faced a greater challenge when attempting to remake his Northern Peruvian bishopric of Trujillo into the orderly, industrious province the Bourbons envisioned. The area had been identified as an economic trouble spot as early as 1763, when former Corregidor Miguel Feyjoo published a report that praised the natural resources of the region but decried its current state, concluding that "it seems that the same appreciable advantages for human happiness have turned into ruin and desolation." 4 Along with economic difficulty and population loss, intellectual and cultural life in the bishopric was also lacking. Its main city (also Trujillo) would not have its own university until the Independence period, and it seems to have had none of the tertulias , periodicals, or research efforts that would have developed in an intellectually vibrant community. 5 Trujillo was far from an ideal new home for a cosmopolitan young man who promoted a progressive Bourbon agenda. Faced with so many challenges, how would [End Page 378] the Bishop remake the Indians, castas, and mestizos of Trujillo into the church-going, coat-wearing, and profit-producing plebeians the Bourbon administration so desired?

Like the reformers who molded the Enlightenment culture of improvement in Spain, Lima, and throughout the Hispanic kingdoms, 6 Martínez Compañón focused on promoting the common good through political economy [End Page 379] initiatives specifically designed for his bishopric. In addition to improving life for the people of Trujillo, these reforms would benefit the Spanish crown through increasing royal revenues. At the same time, the Bishop also engaged in a massive natural history effort that resulted in nine volumes of watercolor images commissioned from local artisans 7 and a large collection of natural and manmade objects from Trujillo. 8 In so doing, he compiled botanical studies noting local plants that might serve as valuable substitutes for expensive imports. His ethnographic investigations highlighted the industrious [End Page 380] nature of Trujillo's people. Through joining political economy with natural history for the benefit of Trujillo, the Bishop fostered a comprehensive "science of empire" that detailed a utopian vision of how the eighteenth-century culture of improvement would best be brought to his bishopric.

In designing a blueprint for an orderly and improved Trujillo, Martínez Compañón participated in a long-standing tradition of idealistic proposals on the behalf of Spanish America and its people. Like Vasco de Quiroga, a sixteenth-century Bishop of Mexico who founded the communal Indian villages...

pdf

Share