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Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies Jesuits in Spanish America before the Suppression Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies Editor Robert A. Maryks (Independent Scholar) Editorial Board Ariane Boltanski (Université Rennes 2) Carlos Eire (Yale University) Alison Fleming (Winston-Salem State University) Paul Grendler (University of Toronto, emeritus) Stephen Schloesser, S.J. (Loyola University Chicago) Volumes published in this series are listed at brill.com/rpjss Jesuits in Spanish America before the Suppression Organization and Demographic and Quantitative Perspectives By Robert H. Jackson Volumes published in this series are listed at brill.com/rpjss LEIDEN | BOSTON This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. This publication is also available in Open Access at www.brill.com/rpjs thanks to generous support from the following institutions: – College of the Holy Cross, Worcester (MA) – Le Moyne College, Syracuse (NY) – Santa Clara University (CA) – Saint Louis University (MO) – Ateneo de Manila University (Philippines) – Georgia Southern University (GA) This paperback book edition is simultaneously published as issue 2.4 (2021) of Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies, DOI:10.1163/25897454-12340008. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021932487 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISBN 978-90-04-46033-1 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-04-46034-8 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Robert H. Jackson. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Jesuits in Spanish America before the Suppression Organization and Demographic and Quantitative Perspectives 1 Robert H. Jackson Abstract 1 Keywords 1 1 Introduction 1 2 The Jesuit Organization and Recordkeeping in Spanish America 4 2.1 Conclusions 16 3 Good Times, Bad Times: The Urban Role of the Jesuits 16 3.1 Conclusions 24 4 The Missions among the Guaraní 27 4.1 Mission Demographic Patterns 39 4.2 The Treaty of Madrid and the Guaraní Diaspora 49 4.3 Conclusions 53 5 The Jesuit Missions of Sinaloa and Sonora 55 5.1 Conclusions 68 6 Jesuit Missions among Non-sedentary Indigenous Populations 68 6.1 Non-sedentary Peoples in Paraquaria 70 6.2 The Baja California Missions 80 6.3 Conclusions 86 7 The Jesuit Expulsion from Spanish America in 1767 86 7.1 Conclusions 96 8 Conclusion 96 Bibliography 102 Jesuits in Spanish America before the Suppression Organization and Demographic and Quantitative Perspectives Robert H. Jackson Independent scholar [email protected] Abstract From the late sixteenth century until their expulsion in 1767, members of the Society of Jesus played an important role in the urban life of Spanish America and as administra- tors of frontier missions. This study examines the organization of the Society of Jesus in Spanish America in large provinces, as well as the different urban institutions such as colegios and frontier missions. It outlines the spiritual and educational activities in cities. The Jesuits supported the royal initiative to evangelize indigenous populations on the frontiers, and particularly the outcomes that did not always conform to expec- tations. One reason for this was the effects of diseases such as smallpox on the indig- enous populations. Finally, it examines the 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish territories. Some died before leaving the Americas or at sea. The majority reached Spain and were later shipped to exile in the Papal States. Keywords Society of Jesus – education – misión popular – colegios – frontier missions – Guaraní – Sonora-Sinaloa – Chaco – Baja California – expulsion 1 Introduction The 1759 publication of the novel Candide, ou l’optimisme (Candide, or opti- mism) by Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet [1694–1778]) provided contempo- rary literate Europeans with what was one of their few views of the activities of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Spanish America. The novel also created the notion that the missions established among the Guaraní in the Río de la Plata © Robert H. Jackson, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004460348_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. 2 Jackson region of South America functioned as a type of socialist republic based on the belief that the Jesuits controlled production on the missions and distrib- uted food to the Guaraní.1 However, the reality of Jesuit activities in Spanish America was quite different. The Guaraní mission residents worked their own subsistence plots to produce for their own needs and provided labor for com- munal projects; the Jesuits did not use communal production to feed and clothe them. Candide was published at a time of dramatic change for the Society of Jesus—after coming under attack from reformist monarchs, the Jesuits were eventually expelled from Portugal in 1759, France in 1764, and Spain in 1767, a process that culminated in the pope’s suppression of the order in 1773. However, forty years later, in 1814, the pope restored the order, and it continues to exist today. The sitting pope, Francis I (r.2013–), is a Jesuit originally from Argentina. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Jesuit superiors general sent missionaries to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Jesuits found their way to Huronia in the French colony in Canada, the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, Goa and other Portuguese outposts in India, the Ming dynasty court in China, and Japan, where they baptized thousands until the government initiated an anti-Christian persecution that ultimately resulted in the expulsion of most Europeans and a policy of isolation that lasted for several centuries. The first act of persecution was the 1597 crucifixion in Nagasaki of Japanese Christians and a handful of foreign missionaries, a total of twenty-six men including three Japanese Jesuits. One was the Franciscan Felipe de Jesús (1572–97), who was a native of Mexico City. Forty years later, the Jesuits established a mission in the Guaraní village of Caaró (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), which they named Los Santos Mártires del Japón to commemorate the Nagasaki martyrs. The Jesuits also came to the Spanish territories in the Americas. They arrived in Lima in the viceroyalty of Peru in 1568 and the viceroyalty of Nueva España four years later in 1572. Jesuits also died in Spanish America, and Gonzalo de Tapia (1561–94) was one of the first to be martyred in Mexico. In 1590, he established a mission named San Luis de la Paz in what today is southern Guanajuato as part of a 1 See, for example, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, A Vanished Arcadia: Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607–1767 (London: William Heinemann, 1901); William Henry Koebel and Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, In Jesuit Land: The Jesuit Missions of Paraguay (London: S. Paul, 1912); Philip Caraman, The Lost Paradise: The Jesuit Republic in South America (New York: Seabury Press, 1976); Walter Nonneman, “On the Economics of the Socialist Theocracy of the Jesuits in Paraguay (1609–1767),” in The Political Economy of Theocracy, ed. Ronald Wintrobe and Mario Ferrero (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 119–42. Jesuits in Spanish America before the Suppression 3 Figure 1 An attack by hostile natives on San Joaquín de Omaguas mission larger strategy to use the missions to try to pacify the groups collectively known as Chichimecas after decades of a failed military campaign of pacification. In 1594, Tapia’s superiors sent him to the new missions in northern Sinaloa, where he had a shaman flogged as part of the Jesuit strategy of challenging the authority of traditional religious leaders and publicly humiliating them. However, the leaders of the traditional faction had him killed.2 A modern statue at the site of San Luis de la Paz commemorates his life and martyrdom. There were also instances of collective resistance to Jesuit missions and the Spanish colonial regime they represented. There were uprisings on missions as well as attacks by hostile indigenous groups. A contemporary illustration, for example, documents an attack on the San Joaquín de Omaguas mission located in the Amazon River Basin (see fig. 1). This study outlines Jesuit activities in the Spanish territories in the Americas from the sixteenth century up to the point of their expulsion in 1767, and par- ticularly their missionary activities on the fringes of Spanish American terri- tory. Section 2 discusses the Jesuit administrative and economic organization in Spanish America and the system of recordkeeping. The Jesuits left an exten- sive corpus of written documents that are useful for reconstructing their activ- ities in Spanish America. This record includes letters as well as reports written 2 Robert H. Jackson, A Visual Catalog of Spanish Frontier Missions, 16th to 19th Centuries (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), 62, 282. 4 Jackson for their superiors within the order and royal officials. Section 3 outlines the urban institutions and the economic system that financed their activities.
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