Guatemala - Colonial Catholic Church
The Roman Catholic clergy was one of the most powerful groups in the colonial structure and was at least as important as the secular officialdom. The first priests arrived with the conquerors and began the task of converting the Indians. Many became the Indians' protectors against the brutality and avarice of the encomenderos and continually fought for fair treatment of the native population.
Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican priest, became the symbol of these missionaries. He first brought the plight of the Indian to the attention of Europe and the Spanish king through a book called A Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. This book and the influence which the priest had with King Philip were the reasons behind the New Laws of 1542 which abolished the encomiendas and made the Indians vassals of the Crown. These laws, however, had little practical effect, and the colonists continued their exploitive practices.
Shortly after the conquest, Las Casas arrived in the Kingdom of Guatemala as Bishop of Chiapas, and in 1537 reached an understanding with the Government officials. They promised to keep military force out of the territory of the Rabinal, the only major Indian nation which the Spaniards had not yet defeated. In return, Las Casas promised to convert the Indians to Christianity and to a peaceful way of life. Five years later, this conversion was accomplished, and the Crown changed the name of the area to Verapaz, or "the true peace."
Although Las Casas is better known. the contribution of the first bishop of Guatemala, Francisco Marroquín. was also considerable. Father Francisco Marroquin arrived in 1534 and became the first bishop of the Kingdom of Guatemala. He divided the area among the three dominant orders, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Mercedarians, granting each group one or more of the six provinces. These groups were later joined by the Jesuits who became the largest and wealthiest order in the New World. The orders became masters of huge tracts of land and large numbers of Indians, and their missions have often been described as autonomous kingdoms. The orders were self-sufficient and became increasingly wealthy, since they were exempt from taxes and received large incomes from their agricultural and industrial projects.
Marroquín was responsible for establishing the first schools in the colony, which were run by Dominicans. He founded schools not only for educating Indian and Spanish children but also for training priests. The local Indian languages were taught, as was theology. In 1548 the crown authorized the establishment of an institution of higher learning in the colony, which was actually established in 1556 at the Dominican monastery. The Jesuits began their own college in 1615. A full -scale university, the University of San Carlos, was authorized in 1680 and founded in 1681. Marroquín had left money and land in his will for the founding of the university. though it was not established until long after his death in 1563. It was given the same rank as the universities of Mexico and of San Marcos in Peru and offered courses in philosophy, theology, law, and medicine. Over the whole of the colonial period, it granted 2,415 degrees. including 206 doctorates.
Only those of pure Spanish blood who attested their devout Catholicism were allowed entry into the university. The university contributed to an active intellectual life in the colony and toward the end of the colonial period showed that it was open to new intellectual currents in philosophy, medicine, and the experimental sciences. For example. the university prevented a smallpox epidemic in 1804 by the large-scale vaccination of the inhabitants of Guatemala City, only six years after the vaccine process was discovered in England.
The dominant religious orders in the early colony were the Dominicans, Franciscans. and Mercedarians, although the Jesuits and Augustinians later became active. The orders did great work in founding schools. hospitals. orphanages, and asylums, and many religious carried on the work of Las Casas and Marroquín in attempting to protect the Indians from the depredations of the settlers. At the same time, the religious orders did well by doing good, accumulating substantial land holdings as a result of being beneficiaries in the wills of the faithful and by acquiring the fruits of the labor of Indians who worked the tax exempt church lands. As the colonial era progressed, the church became characterized less by the self-sacrificing good works of the early missionaries and more by the desire to protect and maintain the property given to it.
The monarchy under Philip II had assumed the so-called royal patronage, which gave the monarch control over the appointment of bishops, and the church certainly inculcated loyalty to the crown along with religious faith. Nevertheless, the exemption of lands held by religious orders from taxation became a grievance to the colonial government as those lands grew in extent; in addition, friction arose over the right of the clergy to be tried only in their own courts. In 1717 the crown decreed that no new monasteries or convents could be created in the Americas. In 1767 the monarch ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from the New World and confiscated the property of the order, which was considerable.
The clergy did not confine its efforts to the Indians. Catholic churches were built in every Spanish town, where they were usually the largest and most beautiful buildings. The orders were in charge of education and established and operated the only schools in Guatemala. The first university, named the University of San Carlos, was founded in Antigua in 1676. The teachers were Dominicans, Jesuits, and Franciscans. In addition, the clergy built hospitals and supported the arts, such as painting, architecture, and literature.
As the Church became wealthier and more entrenched in the social and political framework of the colony, it also became more conservative. The ardent missionaries of the conquest were replaced for the most part by men who favored the status quo and a minimum of social upheaval. The Indians were still protected, but the Church began to agree with the colonists and considered forced labor necessary for the preservation of the colony.
Most of the native population was nominally converted to Catholicism, but their religion contained a strong indigenous flavor. The Mayan calendar was kept, and ancient religious agricultural festivals were still observed. In effect, the Indians practiced a highly syncretic faith.
The church had been successful in converting the Indians partly because it allowed the assimilation of some of the older Indian gods into the ranks of Christian saints. identifying them with saints who shared similar attributes or whose feast days coincided with the celebration of the traditional god. There thus developed a syncretic folk Catholicism, deeply believed in but of dubious orthodoxy, focusing on prayer and hopes of miraculous intervention but weak in its moral guidance of behavior.
The Inquisition functioned in Guatemala until 1813, over 240 years. At first, investigations concentrated on Portuguese Jews, bigamists. and monks who had fallen away from the true faith. Subsequently, the focus of interest changed, and during the eighteenth century, while continuing to investigate cases of polygamy and secret Judaism. the inquisitors also became involved in investigating crimes against the state, witchcraft, blasphemy, and sacrilege. The offenses most frequently investigated, however, were of priests using the confessional to solicit sexual favors. The Inquisition also prohibited the importation into Guatemala or the publication of a vast number of books, not only novels and anticlerical tracts but also many histories, such as books dealing with ancient Greece, and even texts on economics.
Unorthodox thinking was risky in colonial Guatemala. The Inquisition came to Central America in 1572 to begin its terrible work among the non-Indian population. In 1573 it claimed its first victims; six men were imprisoned and one, a Frenchman, was burned at the stake as a heretic.
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