104 CHAPTER 5 STATE, CHURCH, AND SOCIETY
to the Indies in the early years. But after mid-
century, their number increased, and the bishops
increasingly sought to create new parishes staffed
by seculars. These seculars were intended to re-
place the regulars in the spiritual direction of con-
verts. The friars resisted by every means at their
disposal, but they fought a losing battle.
Another source of division within the church
was rivalry between American-born and penin-
sular clergy for control of the higher positions,
especially in the orders. Threatened with loss of
those positions in provincial elections by the grow-
ing creole majority in the seventeenth century,
the peninsulars sought and obtained decrees that
mandated alternation of offi ces between themselves
and creoles.
THE MORAL DECLINE OF THE CLERGY AND
THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
To the factors that contributed to the decline of the
intellectual and spiritual infl uence of the orders
one must add the gradual loss of a sense of mission
and of morale among the regular clergy. Apostolic
fervor inevitably declined as the work of conver-
sion in the central areas of the empire approached
completion; many of the later arrivals among the
clergy preferred a life of ease and profi t to one of
austerity and service. By the last decades of the six-
teenth century, complaints against the excessive
number of monasteries and their wealth became
more frequent. The principal sources of this wealth
were legacies and other gifts from rich donors: for
a rich man not to provide for the church in his will
was a matter of scandal. A common procedure used
to endow churches, convents, or other religious in-
stitutions was to assume a mortgage (censo) on the
landowner’s estate for a fi xed amount on which he
or she agreed to pay the benefi ciary an annual in-
terest of 5 percent. This method of expressing piety
was so widely used that in New Spain “at the end
of the eighteenth century it was said that there was
no hacienda which was not burdened with one or
more censos.” Another procedure, which served
both the donor’s piety and family interest, was es-
tablishing a chantry to celebrate in perpetuity me-
morial masses for his or her soul. By designating
a family member as chaplain, the donor ensured
that control of the income from the endowment
would remain in the family. These procedures,
which continually drained money from the income
of estates, writes Mexican historian Enrique Flores-
cano, “helped to destabilize the already precarious
haciendas and ranches... leaving the religious
institutions, in effect, as the real landowners and
benefi ciaries of rural income.”
The resources the church acquired became
inalienable in the form of mortmain, or perpetual
ownership. When invested in land and mortgages,
this wealth brought in more wealth. The enormous
economic power of the church gave it a marked
advantage over competitors and enabled it to take
advantage of weaker lay property owners, espe-
cially in times of recession. The last important
order to arrive in Spanish America, the Society of
Jesus (1572), was also the most fortunate in the
number of rich benefactors and the most effi cient
in running its numerous enterprises, which were
largely used to support its excellent system of cole-
gios(secondary schools) and its missions.
Inevitably, this concern with the accumula-
tion of material wealth weakened the ties between
the clergy and the humble masses whose spiritual
life they were supposed to direct. As early as the
1570s, complaints about the excessive ecclesias-
tical fees and clerical exploitation of native labor
were voiced. A viceroy of New Spain, the Marqués
de Monteclaros, assured King Philip III in 1607
that indigenous peoples suffered the heaviest op-
pression at the hands of the friars and that one
native paid more tribute to his parish priest than
twenty paid to His Majesty. Hand in hand with a
growing materialism went an increasing laxity of
morals. Concubinage became so common among
the clergy of the later colonial period that it seems
to have attracted little offi cial notice or rebuke. By
the last decades of the colonial period, the morals
of the clergy had declined to a condition that the
Mexican historian Lucas Alamán, himself a leader
of the clerical party in the period of independence,
could only describe as scandalous. From this
charge one must in general exclude the Jesuits,
noted for their high moral standards and strict dis-
cipline; of course, men of excellent character and