Chapter V (1)

Renewal of the feud between the Bishop and Don Gregorio—Wholesale excommunications in Asuncion—Cardenas in 1644 formulates his celebrated charges against the Jesuits—The Governor, after long negotiations and much display of force, ultimately succeeds in driving out the Bishop—For three years Cardenas is in desperate straits—In 1648 Don Gregorio is suddenly dismissed, Cardenas elects himself Governor, and for a short time becomes supreme in Asuncion—The Jesuits are forced to leave the town and to flee to Corrientes—A new Governor is appointed in Asuncion—He defeats Cardenas on the field of battle—The latter is deprived of his power, and dies soon after as Bishop of La Paz

The Governor, like a prudent soldier, was biding his time. The Bishop, not yet strong enough to walk alone, dared not break openly with the Jesuits. Don Pedro Cardenas still following up his evil courses, poor Don Gregorio Hinostrosa, accustomed all his life to deal with ‘officers and gentlemen’, thought fit to bring this under his uncle’s notice. The Bishop spoke to his nephew in a paternal fashion, enjoining certain penances upon him, and amongst others that he was to kiss the earth. Although Don Pedro Cardenas was not a man accustomed to lavish kisses on things inanimate, he complied, but, though complying, still pursued his vicious course.

Quite in the manner of King Charles (of pious memory), the Governor determined to arrest the recalcitrant with his own hand. Armed to the teeth, and with a band of musketeers accompanying him, he appeared before the convent of St. Francis, where Father Cardenas had taken refuge, and, dragging him from his bed, haled him incontinently to the river’s bank, and left him gagged and bound, a prey to flies and sun, for two whole days, dressed in his drawers and shirt. On the third day he was embarked in a canoe for Corrientes, with a small quantity of jerked beef for all provision, and a woman’s cloak wrapped round his shoulders to shield him from the cold. Not quite the guise in which a clergyman would care to appear before the eyes of his superiors, even in Paraguay. Naturally, the Bishop, having nothing else to do, got out his excommunication in his usual style, but no man marked him.

Meantime Asuncion was in confusion, the Bishop and the Governor keeping no measure with the other man of sin. One tried to obtain possession of the other’s person to throw him into prison; the other strove to animate the preachers in the various churches to consign his rival’s soul to hell. In the deserted streets drums thundered, whilst in the air bells jangled, and the quiet, sleepy town was rent in twain by the dissensions of the opposing powers. The churches closed their doors, and the consolations of religion were withdrawn from those who wanted them.

To add to the confusion, Don Pedro Cardenas escaped from Corrientes, and, having taken to himself a companion—one Francisco Sanchez de Carreras—raged through the city like a devil unchained. In his extremity, the poor Bishop went to the Jesuits for advice, informing them he could not stand the scandals that were taking place, and that he intended to leave the city after launching an interdict of excommunication upon all. Placed in the position of declaring openly either for Bishop or for Governor, the Jesuits refused an answer, knowing that anything they said would be brought up against them. All their advice to him was, ‘to trust in God, to persevere in his good efforts, to resign himself to divine will, which will, as the Bishop knew full well, worked sometimes in a mysterious fashion for the welfare of the soul.’ The Bishop answered this advice ‘_fort sèchement_’,[120] taking it for a reproach, and as a sort of thing not to be tolerated amongst professionals—as if one lawyer, having gone to another for his advice upon a private matter, had received for answer a lecture on conveyancing or a short treatise upon Roman Law.

Still, the occasion called for something to be done; so, calling an Indian servant, he stripped to the waist, and, to the horror and amazement of the public, appeared with naked feet and shoulders, dressed in a sack and armed with a heavy scourge. At the first blow he gave himself some canons of the Cathedral begged him to desist; but he, after prayer, replied that he intended, so to speak, to act as his own Pascal lamb, and wipe out the affront done to St. Francis in his unworthy blood.

A naked Bishop in a sack is almost sure to attract some observation even in Paraguay. Religious women not unfrequently have been attracted by such a spectacle, and so it proved on this occasion. Although the Jesuits and the saner portion of the population blamed the Bishop’s action, he made himself a host of partisans amongst the women of all classes, who followed him as they have often followed other thaumaturgists in times present and gone by.

His friend Don Melchior Maldonado, hearing what had passed, wrote to reprove him for his inconsiderate zeal. In his epistle he observed that, though some of the Apostles had scourged themselves, it was not their habit to appear half naked before a crowd of women; that our Lord Himself had not of His own accord taken off His garments for the scourger; that saints who scourged themselves had, as a general rule, chosen a private place for their self-discipline. This was quite reasonable, but the advice was little to the taste of the recipient, who hated criticism when levelled at himself.

If crosses make a saint, about this time Don Bernardino had his full share of them. News came from Itatines, where the two Jesuits had been marooned, that both of them were ill. Cardenas, who, we may remember, was _homme à visions_, called in the rector of the Jesuit college to inform him that the Company of Jesus had a new martyr in their ranks. Though martyrs (even to-day) enter the ranks of General Loyola’s army pretty frequently, it still seemed strange that the Bishop should know of this particular recruit before the rector. Pressed for an explanation, he replied that a pious person who was vouchsafed communication with the Lord in prayer had seen Father Domenecchi in heaven shining in glory and with a halo round his head.

Nothing could be more satisfactory. All the essentials of a well-attested miracle had been complied with. A man was dead, another man had seen the dead man in an ecstasy of prayer, and, to make all complete, refused to testify himself, sending the Bishop as a sort of pious phonograph. No true believer in such a case could doubt, and all went well till it appeared a man from Itatines, charged with a message to the Jesuit college, had passed the night before he gave his message at the Bishop’s house. In Holy Writ we read the wicked man shall have no rest; if this is so, it is as it should be, though generally the good seem just as troubled in their lives as the most erring of their brethren. He who would be a saint must be a-doing, year in, year out, just like a common workman, and Cardenas was no exception to the rule.

The pseudo-miracle not having been quite a success, he turned to other fields, and summoned all the inhabitants of Paraguay to attend at the Cathedral upon a certain day. The Governor, thinking there was a revolution likely to break out, fixed a review of all the troops for the same date. A Jesuit priest waited upon the Bishop to persuade him that the crowds which would assemble might break the peace. The Bishop reassured him, and sent him to the Governor to say that his intention was to preach to the people and explain to them the faith; further, that he intended on that day to raise his excommunication and be reconciled: only he asked him to allow the troops to attend and hear his sermon. The crowd was great; the Bishop mounted the pulpit, and, extending his forefinger in the attitude of malediction so dear to Bishops, straight began to preach. For a time all went well. The Governor, presumably, was waiting for the circulation of the hat—that awful mystery which makes all sects kin—when to his horror Cardenas began to enumerate all his offences: he was anathema, was excommunicated, a disbeliever, and had endeavoured to cast down that which the Lord Himself had set on high. The Bishop then informed the crowd that God was angry with the Governor, talked about Moses, and dwelt with unction on the fact that the great lawgiver had been swift to slay.

In a peroration which, no doubt, went home to all, he called upon his hearers, under penalty of a heavy fine and his displeasure, to seize the Governor, adding that if there was resistance ‘he should kill his brother, his friend, or his nearest relative.’[121] After these words he seized a banner from the hands of the astonished officer who stood nearest to him, and stood forth, like another Phineas, surrounded by his clergy, all of whom had arms beneath their cloaks.

A most dramatic scene, and probably almost successful, had but the Bishop only reckoned with two things: Firstly, he had forgotten that the Governor was an old Indian fighter, and ready for surprises; and, secondly, he had not taken into account the usual apathy of the common people when their leaders fight. Dumbly and quite unmoved the people stood, staring like armadillos at a snake, and made no sign. Then word was brought that the Governor had left the church and was assembling a force of arquebusiers.

Surrounded only by clergymen, Don Bernardino had to yield, and yielded like a Levite, with a subterfuge. He sent a priest to beg the magistrates to come to the Cathedral and reason with him. After a consultation this was done, and Cardenas consented to abate his fury and exhale his wrath. He said that Holy Writ itself gave leave to recur to force in self-defence (but did not quote the text), and that the Governor had meditated a like enterprise against himself; moreover, that, he being an excommunicated man, it became lawful for God’s vicegerent to lay hold on him.

After the scene was over, and the Bishop was escorted back to his palace by the magistrates, a second letter came from Tucuman making plain his conduct to him after the manner of a friend. The rector of the Jesuits also thought fit to remonstrate, and say that Cardenas had gone too far in attempting to assume the temporal power. This sufficed to further strain the relations between the Bishop and the Jesuits.

As, even in Asuncion in 1643, it was unusual that the Governor should remain for ever under the ban of Holy Mother Church, arbiters were chosen to discuss the matter, and provide means whereby the Bishop could conveniently climb down. The arbiters absolved the Governor on the condition that he paid a fine of four thousand arrobas[122] of _yerba maté_, which in money amounted to eight thousand crowns. Quite naturally, the Bishop refused to abide by the decision, replaced his adversary under the ban, and recommenced to preach against him with considerable force.

The higgling of the market not having proved effectual in the adjustment of the sum to be paid by the Governor, a priest, one Juan Lozano, who had been condemned to imprisonment by his superiors for his loose life, and who had taken refuge with the Bishop, hit on a stroke of veritable genius. At a conference which took place between the Bishop and several notables of the place, including the rector of the Jesuits, Lozano gave it as his opinion that, if the Governor refused to pay, a general interdict should be proclaimed. The rector of the Jesuits retired indignantly, and ‘Père Lozano, retroussant sa robe le poursuivit en criant à pleine tête, et s’exprimant en des termes peu seans à sa profession.’[123] By this time Asuncion must have been like a madhouse, for no one seems to have been astonished, or even to have thought his conduct singular. The Bishop, always ready to take the worst advice, got ready for his task, and on Easter Eve embarked upon the river, leaving his Vicar-General under orders to proclaim the general ban. This was done, and the edict so contrived as to catch the luckless Governor in every church. The practical effect was to close all the churches, for to whatever church the Governor went the priest refused to celebrate the Mass. Several other persons were mentioned in the ban, which was posted up below a crucifix in the choir of the Cathedral. As Don Bernardino had omitted to state the particular offences for which they were condemned, the general confusion became intense, and no one attended Mass, so that the churches were deserted. After a little some of the churches opened in a clandestine manner, others remained closed, and the followers of the Bishop and the Governor alternately assembled in a rabble, and threw stones at all the churches, dispensing their favours quite impartially. The various religious Orders, not to be behindhand, also took sides, the Jesuits giving as their opinion that the Governor, not having a war upon his back, was really excommunicated; the Dominicans holding that the Bishop, in the general interest, ought to absolve him. He, armed with the opinion of the latter Order, marched to the dwelling of the Bishop’s Vicar-General, and, having nailed up both doors and windows, sent a trumpeter to tell him he should not leave his house till absolution had been granted. Still nothing came of it, and then the Governor did what he should have done at first: he sent a statement of the whole proceedings to the high court at Charcas. This high court (Audiencia) was situated right in the middle of what is now Bolivia, miles away from Lima, half a world from Paraguay, at least two thousand miles from Buenos Ayres, and separated from Chile by the whole Cordillera of the Andes. Even to-day the journey from Paraguay often exceeds a month.

The Bishop, not to be outdone, also prepared a statement, in which he accused his adversary of all the crimes that he could think of, and confirmed his statement with an oath. The chapter, thinking things were in an impossible condition, besought that the fine laid on the excommunicated folk should be raised or lessened, as it appeared to them there was not money in the town to satisfy it. Cardenas refused, and thus four months elapsed. Soon after this arrived one Father Truxillo, of the Order of St. Francis, who came from Tucuman as Vice-Provincial. Cardenas, thinking, as they were both Franciscans, that Truxillo must needs be favourable to his cause, made him his Vicar-General, with power to bind and to unloose—that is, to free the excommunicated folk from all their disabilities if, on examination, it seemed good to him. Truxillo, who was quite unbiassed as to matters in Asuncion, looked into everything, and declared the Governor and everybody ought to be absolved. He further gave it as his opinion that, the affair having gone to the high court at Charcas, he could do nothing but give an interim decree. Don Bernardino heard the news at Itati, an Indian village a few miles outside Asuncion. From thence he went to a somewhat larger village called Yaguaron, and shut himself up in a convent, after declaring everyone (except the superior clergy) under the severest censure of the Church if they should dare approach. Not a bad place for prayer and meditation is Yaguaron. A score or two of little houses, built of straw and wood and thatched with palm-leaves, straggle on the hillside above the shores of a great camalote-covered[124] lake. Parrots scream noisily amongst the trees, and red macaws hover like hawks over the little patches of maize and mandioca planted amongst the palms. Round every house is set a grove of orange-trees, mingled with lemons, sweet limes, and guayabas. Inside the houses all is so clean that you could eat from any floor with less repulsion than from the plates at a first-class hotel. A place where life slips on as listless and luxuriant as the growth of a banana, and where at evening time, when the women of the place go to fetch water in a long line with earthen jars balanced upon their heads, the golden age seems less improbable even than in Theocritus. To Yaguaron the higher clergy flocked to intercede for the good people of Asuncion, all except Father Truxillo, who, knowing something of his Bishop, did not go. That he was wise, events proved shortly. Two canons—Diego Ponce de Leon and Fernando Sanchez—he imprisoned in their rooms, calling them traitors to their Bishop and their Church. Deputations came from the capital to beg for their release, but all in vain. The Bishop answered them that he had set his mind to purge his diocese of traitors; and the two canons remained in prison. After a detention which lasted forty days, they escaped and fled to Corrientes, which must have looked upon Asuncion as a vast madhouse. Truxillo, who seems to have been a man not quite so absolutely devoid of sense as the other clergy, endeavoured to organize a religious _coup d’état_; but, most unfortunately, a letter he had written to some of the saner clergy fell into the Bishop’s hands. Excommunications now positively rained upon the land. The Governor, the Jesuits, the Dominicans, each had their turn; but, curiously enough, the poorer people still stood firm to Cardenas, thinking, no doubt, a man who treated all the richer sort so harshly must do something for the poor. Nothing, however, was further from the thoughts of Cardenas, who thought the whole world circled round himself. The Bishop’s nephew having returned to Corrientes and his former naughty life, Don Bernardino, casting about for another secretary, came on one Francisco Nieto, an apostate from the Order of St. Francis, and living openly with an Indian woman, by whom he had a son. Him the Bishop made his chaplain, then his confessor; and poor Nieto found himself obliged to send his Indian wife away in spite of all his protests and his wish to live obscurely as he had been living before his elevation to the post of secretary. A veritable beachcomber Father Francisco Nieto seems to have been, and the type of many a European in Paraguay, who asks no better than to forget the tedium of our modern life and pass his days in a little palm-thatched hut lost in a clearing of a wood or near some lake.

So in Asuncion things went from bad to worse. Such trade as then existed was at a standstill, and bands of starving people swarmed in the streets, whilst the incursions of the savage Indians daily became more frequent. In fact, Asuncion was but a type of what the world would be under the domination of any of the sects without the counterpoise of any civil power. The Governor, seeing the misery on every side, determined, like an honest man, to pocket up his pride and reconcile himself with Cardenas at any price. So, setting forth with all his staff, he came to Yaguaron. There, like a penitent, he had to bear a reprimand before the assembled village and engage to pay a fine before the rancorous churchman would relieve him from the ban. The weakness of the Governor had the effect that might have been expected, and heavy fines were laid on all and sundry who had in any manner displeased the Bishop or leaned to the other side in the course of the dispute.

Right in the middle of the struggle between the clerical and lay authorities, a band of over three hundred Guaycurús appeared before the town. Unluckily, all the chief officers of the garrison were excommunicated, and thus incapable of doing anything to defend the place. Foolish as Cardenas most indubitably was, his folly did not carry him so far as to leave the capital of his diocese quite undefended. Still, he would not give way first, and only at the moment when the Indians seemed prepared to attack the town, at the entreaty of a ‘pious virgin’, he raised the excommunication on the Governor and his officers for fifteen days. The Governor, instead of, like a sensible man, seizing the Bishop and giving him to the _cacique_ of the Guaycurús, led out his troops and drove the Indians off. That very night he found himself once more under the censure of the Church, and the conflict with his opponent more bitter than at first. The Viceroy of Peru, the Marquis of Mancera, indignant at the weakness of the Governor, wrote sharply to him, reprimanding him and telling him at once to assert himself and force the Bishop to confine himself to matters spiritual. On the Governor’s attempt to reassert himself, the answer was a general interdict laying the entire capital under the Church’s ban. On this, he marched to Yaguaron with all his troops, resolved to take the Bishop prisoner; but he, seeing the troops approach, went out at once, fell on the Governor’s neck, and straightway absolved him.

After the absolution came a banquet, which must have been a little constrained, one might imagine, and even less amusing than the regulation dinner-party of the London season, where one sits between two half-naked and perspiring women eating half-raw meat and drinking fiery wines with the thermometer at eighty in the shade. Thus disembarrassed from the Governor, Don Bernardino turned his attention to the Jesuits, and signified to them that he intended to take the education of the young out of their hands. This was a mortal affront to the Jesuits, as they have always understood that men, just as the other animals, can only learn whilst young. Hard upon this new step, Cardenas issued an edict forbidding them to preach or hear confessions. As for the Governor, the Bishop did not fear him, and the poorer people of Asuncion had always inclined to the Bishop’s party, either through terror of the Church’s ban or from their natural instinct that the Bishop was against the Government.

But Cardenas saw clearly that, to deal as he wished with the Jesuits, he must entirely gain the Governor’s confidence. This he tried to do by sending to him one Father Lopez, Provincial of the Dominicans. This Lopez was an able and apparently quite honest man, for he told the Governor that the wish of Cardenas was to expel the Jesuits from Paraguay, and from their missions, warning him at the same time not to allow himself to be made use of by the Bishop in his design. From that moment the two adversaries seemed to have changed characters, and Don Gregorio became as cautious as a churchman, whereas the Bishop seemed to lose all his diplomacy.

To all the protestations of friendship which were addressed to him, the Governor answered so adroitly that the Bishop fell into the trap, and thought he had secured a partner to help him in the expulsion of the Jesuits. Finally, at Yaguaron, during a sermon, he formulated his celebrated charges against the Jesuits, which, set on foot by him in 1644, eventually caused the expulsion of the whole Order from America, and, though refuted a thousand times, still linger in the writing of all those who treat the question down to the present day. The charges were seven in number, and so ingeniously contrived that royal, national, and domestic indignation were all aroused by them. The first was that the Jesuits prevented the Indians from paying[125] their annual taxes to the crown. Secondly, that the Jesuits kept back the tithes from Bishops and Archbishops.[126] Thirdly, he said the Jesuits had rich mines in their possession, and that the product of these mines was all sent out of the country to the general fund at Rome. This the Jesuits disproved on several occasions, but, as often happens in such cases, proof was of no avail against the folly of mankind, to whom it seemed incredible that the Jesuits should bury themselves in deserts to preach to savages, unless there was some countervailing advantage to be gained. Even the fact that at the expulsion of the Company of Jesus from America no treasure at all was found at any of their colleges or missions did not dispel the conviction that they owned rich mines. The fourth charge was that the Jesuits were not particular about the secrets of the confessional, and that they used the information thus acquired for their own selfish ends. Further, that Father Ruiz de Montoya had acquired from the King, under a misapprehension, a royal edict,[127] giving the territory of the missions to the Jesuits, thus taking the fruits of their conquest from the Spanish colonists. Fifthly, that the Jesuits entered Paraguay possessed but of the clothes upon their backs, that they had made themselves into the sovereign rulers of a great territory, but that he was going to expel them, as the Venetians had expelled them from Venetia.[128] Sixthly, that even the Portuguese of San Paulo de Piritinanga had expelled them.[129] His last assertion was that he himself, together with the Bishop of Tucuman and others, had secret orders from the King to expel the Jesuits from their dioceses, but that the other Bishops lacked the courage which he (Cardenas) was then about to show. He wound up all by saying that, once the Jesuits were gone, the King would once again enjoy his rights, the Church be once again restored to freedom, and, lastly, that there would be plenty of Indians for the settlers to enslave. Quite possibly enough, the public, ever generous to a fault with other people’s goods, cared little for the rights of a King who lived ten thousand miles away; and as for the Church, it seems most probable they failed to see the peril that she ran. But when the Bishop spoke of enslaving the Indians, they saw the Jesuits must go, for from the conquest the Jesuits had stood between the settlers and their prey. All things considered, Don Bernardino made a remarkable discourse that Sunday morning in the palm-thatched village by the lake, for the echo of it still resounds in the religious world against the Jesuits.

Like other men after a notable pronouncement, it is most probable that Cardenas was unaware of the full import of his words. Perhaps he thought (as speakers will) that all the best portions of his sermon had been left unsaid. Be that as it may, he shortly turned his thoughts to other matters of more direct importance to himself. In judging of his life, it should not be forgotten that, by his sermon at Yaguaron, he placed himself upon the side of those who wanted to enslave the Indians. Perhaps he did not know this, and certainly his popularity amongst the Indians outside the missions was enormous. His next adventure was to try and eject the Jesuits from a farm they had, called San Isidro. The Governor having forbidden him to do so, he armed an army of his partisans to expel the Jesuits from their college in the capital.

Outside Asuncion the Lieutenant-Governor, Don Francisco Florez, met the Bishop’s secretary, Father Nieto, who informed him of the enterprise, exhorting him to enlist the sympathies of the Governor in so good a cause. Florez, a better diplomatist than his commanding officer, seemed to approve, and naturally deceived poor Father Nieto, who, like most hypocrites, became an easy prey to his own tactics when used against himself.

Florez informed the Governor at once, and he sent to the Jesuits, and put them on their guard. Next day he met the Bishop, and told him that his enterprise could not succeed, as the Jesuits were under arms. No doubt he learned these artifices in his campaigns against the Indians of Arauco, or it may have been that, like others who have had to strive with churchmen, he learned to beat them with their own controversial arms. The Bishop fell completely into the snare, and, thinking the Governor was a fast friend, confided all his plans to him for the expulsion of the Jesuits and the conquest of the mission territory. Just then Captain Don Pedro Diaz del Valle came from La Plata, and gave Don Bernardino a new decision of the High Court of Charcas, telling him to live in peace with all men, and govern his diocese with zeal. He certainly was zealous to an extraordinary degree, if not judicious. Therefore, the very mention of the word ‘zeal’ must have been peculiarly offensive to such a zealous man. The letter went on to say that all the fines he had exacted were illegal, and commanded him to give back the _yerba_ which he had extorted from his involuntary penitents, and in the future live on better terms with all around him. To all of this he paid no notice, as was to be expected, but, to avoid returning the _yerba_, sent a letter to his officers to have it burned. This letter, which he denied, was subsequently produced against him in the High Court at Charcas.

Seeing the Governor was bent on frustrating or on deceiving him, he tried to get from Don Sebastian Leon, who held an office under the Governor, an edict of the Emperor Charles V., which he had heard was in the archives, and which provided that, in case a Governor should die or be deposed, the notables of the place had power to appoint an interim Governor to fill his place. If such a paper ever existed, it must have been a very early document given by Charles V. at the foundation of the colony, for nothing was more opposed to the traditions of Spanish policy throughout America. Don Sebastian Leon having informed the Governor, the latter saw that things were coming to a crisis, and that either he or the Bishop would have to leave the place. Not being sure of all his troops, and the Bishop having the populace upon his side, he sent to the Jesuit missions for six hundred Indians. Thus the supremacy of the royal government fell to be supported by men but just emerging from a semi-nomad life, who owed the tincture of civilization they possessed to the calumniated Jesuits.

On many occasions armies of Indians from the Jesuit missions rendered important services to the crown of Spain: not only against the Portuguese, but against English corsairs, and in rebellions, as in the case of Cardenas; or as when, in the year 1680, Philip V. wrote to the Governor of Buenos Ayres to garrison the port with a contingent of Indians from the Jesuit reductions; in 1681, when the French attacked the port with a squadron of four-and-twenty ships; and at the first siege of the Colonia, in 1678, when three thousand Indians marched to the attack, accompanied by their Jesuit pastors, but under the command of Spanish officers.[130]

An army from the Jesuit missions consisted almost entirely of cavalry. It marched much like a South American army of twenty years ago was wont to march. In front was driven the _caballada_, consisting of the spare horses; then came the vanguard, composed of the best mounted soldiers, under their _caciques_. Then followed the wives and women of the soldiers, driving the baggage-mules, and lastly some herdsmen drove a troop of cattle for the men to eat. When Jesuits accompanied the army, they did not enter into action, but were most intrepid in succouring the wounded under fire, as Funes, in his ‘Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc.,[131] relates when speaking of their conduct at the siege of the Colonia in 1703. For arms they carried lances, slings, _chuzos_ (broad-pointed spears), lazos, and bolas, and had amongst them certain very long English guns with rests to fire from, not very heavy, and of a good range. Each day the accompanying Jesuits said Mass, and each town carried its particular banner before the troop. They generally camped, if possible, in the open plain, both to avoid surprises and for convenience in guarding the cattle and the _caballada_. In all the territories of South America no such quiet and well-behaved soldiery was to be found; for in Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala, the passage of an army was similar to the passing of a swarm of locusts in its effect.

Don Bernardino, on his side, was occupied in animating the populace against the Jesuits with all the fervour of an Apostle. Naturally, he first commenced by launching his usual sentence of excommunication against them, and having done so returned again to Yaguaron. This village, like other Paraguayan villages, many of which in times gone by have been the scenes of stirring episodes, retains to-day but little to distinguish it. Nature has proved too powerful in the long-run for men to fight against. On every side the woods seem ready to overwhelm the place. Grass grows between the wooden steps of the neglected church; seibos, lapachos, espinillos de olor, all bound together with lianas, encroach to the verges of the little clearings in which grows mandioca, looking like a field of sticks. All day the parrots scream, and toucans and picaflores dart about; at evening the monkeys howl in chorus; at night the jaguar prowls about, and giant bats fasten upon the incautious sleeper, or, fixing themselves upon a horse, leave him exhausted in the morning with the loss of blood.

When Cardenas used the place as a sort of Avignon from which to safely utter his anathemas, it must have worn a different aspect. No doubt processions and ceremonies were continual, with carrying about the saints in public, a custom which the Paraguayans irreverently refer to as ‘sacando á luz los bultos’.[132] Messengers (_chasquis_), no doubt, came and went perpetually, as is the custom in countries such as Paraguay, where news is valuable and horseflesh cheap. Thereto flocked, to a moral certainty, all the broken soldiers who swarmed in countries like Peru and Paraguay, with Indian _caciques_ looking out for work to do when white men quarrelled and throats were to be cut. Priests went and came, friars and missionaries; and Cardenas most certainly, who loved effect, gave all his emerald ring to kiss, and made those promises which leaders of revolt lavish on everyone in times of difficulty.

When the Indian contingent arrived, the Governor marched upon Yaguaron, although the air was positively lurid with excommunications. The Bishop, rushing to the church, was intercepted by the Governor, who seized his arm and tried to stop him. Cardenas struggled with him, and declared him excommunicated for laying his hand upon the anointed of the Lord. But, most unfortunately, there was no Fitz-Urse at hand to rid the Governor of so turbulent a priest. A mulatto[133] woman rushed to the Bishop’s aid, together with some priests. This gave him time to gain the altar and seize the Host, which he exposed at once to the public gaze, and for the moment all present fell upon their knees. Turning to the Governor, he asked what he wanted with armed men in a church. The Governor replied he had come to banish him from Paraguay, by order of the Viceroy, for having infringed upon the temporal power. Cardenas, taken aback, replied he would obey, and, turning to the people, took them all for witnesses. The Governor, no doubt thinking he was dealing with an honest Araucan chief, retired. The Bishop immediately denounced the Governor in a furious sermon, after which he left the church, carrying the Host in full procession, accompanied by the choir singing the ‘Pange Lingua’, followed by a band of Indian women with their hair dishevelled, and carrying green branches in their hands. He then returned to the church, and from the pulpit denounced the Governor, who, standing at the door surrounded by a group of arquebusiers blowing their matches, answered him furiously.

The honours, so to speak, being thus equally divided, it remained for one side or the other to negotiate. Cardenas, knowing himself much abler in negotiations than his adversary, proposed a conference, in which he bore himself so skilfully that he made the Governor consent to dismiss his Indians, and allow him six days to make his preparations for the road. This settled, at dead of night he set out for the capital. Arrived there, he showed himself in public in his green hat, having upon his breast a little box of glass in which he bore the Host. A band of priests escorted him, all with arms concealed beneath their cloaks, in the true spirit of the Church militant. The bells were rung, and every effort strained to raise a tumult, but all in vain. He had to throw himself for refuge into the convent of the Franciscans.

At once he set about to fortify the place to stand a siege. In several places he constructed embrasures for guns, and pierced the walls for musketry. But, thinking that his best defence lay in the folly of the people—as public men always have done, and do—he sent to the Cathedral for a statue of the Blessed Virgin, and another of San Blas, and placed them at the gate. Then, remembering that calumny was a most serviceable weapon, he put about the town a report that the Indians from the missions had pillaged Yaguaron, and that they even then were marching on the place. Again recurring to the edict of Charles V., which he pretended to have found, he issued a proclamation that, as the present Governor was excommunicated, and therefore could not govern, the office being vacant, he intended to nominate another in his stead. His subsequent behaviour shows most clearly that he wished to nominate himself.

Again both sides sent off a relation of their doings to the High Court of Charcas. Don Bernardino wrote in his that the Jesuits had offered the Governor thirty thousand crowns, and placed a thousand men at his command, if he would expel the Bishop from the country, under the belief that he (Don Bernardino) knew of their hidden mines in the mission territory. His witnesses were students and priests, and one of these proving recalcitrant, the Bishop had him heavily chained, and then suspended outside the convent of the Franciscans.

This drastic treatment had the desired effect, as torture always has with reasonable men, and the poor witness signed, but afterwards protested, thus giving a good example in himself of the truth of the Spanish saying, ‘Protest and pay’.[134]

By this time the patience and long-suffering of the Governor were quite exhausted. He therefore sent to the Bishop to say a ship was ready to take him down the river, and at the same time reminded him of his promise at Yaguaron to obey the order of the Viceroy of Peru. He sent the message by the royal notary, Gomez de Coyeso, who accordingly repaired to the convent of San Francisco. At the door a priest appeared, armed with a javelin, who three times tried to wound the notary, on which the Governor stationed a band of fifty soldiers at the convent gate, in spite of the presence of the statues of the Blessed Virgin and San Blas. Then, having published an edict that the Bishop was deposed, he proceeded to elect another in his stead.

One of the canons, Don Cristobal Sanchez, who had governed the diocese during the interregnum before the advent of Don Bernardino, still lived in retirement near the town. The Governor approached him with the request that he would once more take the interim charge until the King should send another Bishop to replace Cardenas. Sanchez consented, on the understanding that the Governor would guarantee his personal safety. This being done, Sanchez was taken to the Jesuit college as the securest place.

So it fell out that everything concurred to strengthen the hatred of the Bishop to the Jesuits. To the Jesuit college came the Governor and all the notables, and, having taken Sanchez in procession through the streets, they placed him on the Bishop’s throne in the Cathedral, and invested him with all the power that he had held before the coming of Don Bernardino Cardenas. The proclamation set forth by the Governor alluded to the informality of the consecration of Don Bernardino, and to his actions during his time of power.

At last the Bishop saw that he must go. So, after launching a supreme anathema, and after having expressed his great unwillingness to tarry longer in a city where half the population had incurred the censure of the Church, and marked with a cross those churches where he permitted Mass to be celebrated, he went on board the ship. Before embarking, he drew a silver bell from underneath his cloak, and to the sound of it he solemnly proclaimed the town accursed. The bells of the Franciscan convent and the Bishop’s palace, according to his orders, all tolled loudly. This caused so much confusion that, in order to appease the tumult, the authorities ordered the bells of all the churches in the town to ring.

Entering the vessel, Don Bernardino sat himself upon the poop on a low stool, with all the clergy who were faithful to him grouped about the deck. With him he had the sacred wafer in a glass box, and not far off a group of sailors on the forecastle lounged about smoking and drinking _maté_ whilst they played at cards. Someone reminded him it was not fitting that God’s Body should thus be seen so near to sailors, and therefore the Bishop, according to the custom of the Church in cases of accident or desecration, consumed the offended wafer, and peace descended on the ship.

Thus, in 1644, he took his first departure from the place where for the last two years he had brought certainly rather a sword than peace. His friends assured the public that, at the moment he stepped on board the ship, stars were seen to fall from heaven towards the church of St. Luke, and passed from thence to the episcopal palace and disappeared; that at the same time a slight shock of earthquake had been experienced; that stones had danced about, and several hills had trembled. The sun, quite naturally, had appeared blood-red; trouble and desolation had entered every heart, and animals had prophesied woe and destruction, predicting ruin and misfortune to the town till the good Bishop should return once more.

The events of the past two years in Paraguay had not been favourable to the conversion of the Indians. Not only in the missions, where the neophytes had seen themselves obliged to furnish troops against their Bishop, but in the territory of Paraguay itself, the Indians had not had a good example of how Christians carry out the duties of their faith. As a general rule, the Indian (unlike the negro) cares little for dogma, but places his belief entirely in good works. Perhaps on this account the Jesuits, also believers in good works, have had the most success amongst them. Be that as it may, the Jesuits, after the departure of the Bishop, found that many of their recent converts had fallen away and gone back to the woods.

Whilst Jesuits in Paraguay were seeking to convert the Indians, and whilst the Governor, no doubt, was thanking his stars for the absence of his rival, in Rome the question of the Bishop’s consecration filled all minds. From May 9, 1645, to October 2 of the same year no less than four congregations of the Propaganda had been held about the case. The Pope himself was present at one of them. Nothing was arrived at till 1658, when finally the consecration was declared in order, but not until Don Bernardino was appointed to another see.

Just about this time (1644-45) a rumour was set on foot that the Jesuits had discovered mines near their reductions on the Paraná. These rumours were always set about when there was nothing else by means of which to attack the Jesuits. An Indian by the name of Buenaventura, who had been a servant in a convent in Buenos Ayres, on this occasion was the instrument used by their enemies. For a short time everyone believed him, and excitement was intense; but, most unluckily, Buenaventura happened at the zenith of his notoriety to run away with a married woman, and, being pursued, was brought to Buenos Ayres, and then in public incontinently whipped. In any other country Buenaventura after his public whipping would have been discredited, but a letter arrived from the Bishop of Paraguay, telling the Governor of Buenos Ayres that the mines really existed. At that time a new Governor, one Don Jacinto de Lara, had just arrived. Being new to America and its ways, he started out himself to try the question, and with fifty soldiers, taking Buenaventura as his guide, went to the missions. As might have been expected, on the journey Buenaventura disappeared, this time alone. ‘Cette fuite lui donna beaucoup à penser,’ says Charlevoix. But having gone so far, the Governor determined to try the question thoroughly.

Father Diaz Taño, one of the best and hardest-working missionaries who ever entered Paraguay, besought the Governor to satisfy himself and search their territory for gold and silver, and requested him to call upon the Bishop for confirmation of the statements he had made. This he did, and then, accompanied by his soldiers, began his search. He gave out that the first man to find a mine should be at once promoted to be captain and have a large reward. After several days’ march, and having found no mines, letters were brought him from the Governor of Paraguay and from the Bishop. The first informed him that he had heard rumours of mines, but nothing certain. The second declined to specify the mines, which thus were destined to remain for ever, so to speak, _in partibus_. But he gave advice, and good advice is better than any mine, whether of silver or of gold. He told the Governor to start by turning out the Jesuits, and he would find the profits of their expulsion just as valuable as mines.

Whether this also made the Governor pensive I do not know, but, luckily, the Jesuits, who were concerned in exposing the imposture, had come on Buenaventura, and brought him ironed to the Governor. He, after having tried to make him confess his imposture without success, condemned him to be hung. The Jesuits, with their accustomed humanity (or ingenuity), begged for his life. This was accorded to them, and once again Buenaventura received a good sound whipping for his pains.

Thus ended the journey of Don Jacinto, without profit to himself, except so far as the experience gained. No doubt he saw and marked the Jesuit towns, the churches built of massive timber or of stone, and the contented air of Indians and priests, which always struck all travellers in those times. He saw the countless herds of cattle, the cultivated fields; enjoyed, no doubt for the first time since arriving in South America, the sense of perfect safety, at that time to be experienced alone in Misiones. But in despite of his exposure of the imposture, the rumour as to the existence of the mines never died out, and lingers even to-day, in spite of geological research in Paraguay.

Whilst this was going on in Misiones, in the remote and recently-converted district of the Itatines, in the north of Paraguay, the example set by the Bishop had borne its fruit. The Indians became unmanageable. One of the chiefs broke into open rebellion, and wounded a Jesuit father called Arenas at the very altar-steps. Soon the general corruption of manners became almost universal throughout the district. This, I fancy, must be taken to mean that the Indians reverted to polygamy, for the Jesuits always had trouble in this matter, being unable to persuade the Indians of the advantage of monogamy.

But most fortuitously, just as the general corruption gained all hearts, a tiger rushed into the town, and, after killing fourteen people and some horses, disappeared again into the woods.

The Jesuits, ever ready to take advantage of events like these, called on the Indians to see in the visitation of the tiger the wrath of Heaven, and to leave their wicked ways.

The Indians, always as willing to submit as to revolt, submitted, and the good fathers ‘prirent le parti de faire un coup d’autorité, qui leur réussit,’ as Charlevoix relates.

They decoyed the chief, his nephew, and son, into another district, where they seized and shipped them off two hundred leagues to a remote reduction across the Uruguay. The Spaniards used to say of Ferdinand VII., when he had committed any great barbarity, ‘He is quite a King’ (‘Es mucho Rey’), and the Indians of the Itatines esteemed the Jesuits for their ‘coup d’autorité’ in the same manner as the Spaniards their King.

His usual luck attended Cardenas in his exile in Corrientes. This town formed part of the diocese of Buenos Ayres, which happened to be vacant at the time. He therefore took upon himself to act just as he had acted in Paraguay—appointed officers of justice, held ordinations, and instituted a campaign against the Jesuits of the town.

Whilst he was thus occupied in his favourite pastime of usurping other people’s functions, two citations were sent him to appear before the High Court of Charcas. He disregarded them, and sent a statement of his case by the hands of his nephew to the Bishop of Tucuman. In the letter he set forth all his complaints against the Governor of Paraguay, calling him a violator of the Church, a heretic, and generally applying to him all those terms in which a thwarted churchman usually exhales his rage. Mixed up with this was a detailed accusation of the Jesuits, to whose account he laid all his misfortunes whilst in Paraguay. Lastly, he called upon the Bishop of Tucuman to summon a provincial council to condemn the monstrous heresies which he attributed to the Jesuits, reminding him that the Council of Trent had recommended the holding of frequent provincial councils, and stating his opinion that, unless a council were called at once, the Bishop would incur a mortal sin.

The answer Cardenas received from Tucuman was most ironically couched in the best style that his long-suffering friend was able to command. After addressing Cardenas as ‘your illustrious lordship’, he proceeded to demolish all his statements in such a manner as to argue that he had had much practice with refractory priests in his own diocese. He told him that the Jesuits were the only Order in Paraguay that really worked amongst the Indians. He reminded him that from that Order the ‘second Paul’, _i.e._, St. Francis Xavier, had himself issued. He asked him whether, as a churchman, he thought the yearly sum of twelve thousand crowns given by the King out of the treasury of Buenos Ayres towards the Jesuits’ work was better saved, or that the thousands of Indians whom the Jesuits had converted should be lost to God. And as to heresy, he said he was no judge, leaving such matters to the Pope; but that no one accused the Jesuits of corruption in their morals, or of any of the greater crimes to which the great fragility of human nature renders us liable. He reminded him the Jesuits had made no accusation on their part, but always spoke of him with moderation and respect. And as to a provincial council, he said that it was impossible, for the following good cause: The Bishop of Misque[135] was too infirm to travel; the Bishop of La Paz was lately dead, and the see still vacant; the Bishop of Buenos Ayres only just arrived, and too much occupied to leave his diocese. Therefore, the only Bishops available were himself and Cardenas, and that they never would agree.

‘Moreover,’ he remarked, ‘what is it that your illustrious lordship wishes me to do?

‘To advise a Bishop?

‘God has only given me the charge of my own sheep. Your lordship knows as well as I do how a Bishop should comport himself.’

He finished with a quotation, saying that a Bishop’s state was not to lie ‘in splendore vestium, sed morum; non ad iram, sed ut omnimodum patientium.’

What Cardenas replied is not set down in any history which has come under my observation, but what he must have thought is easy to divine.

The Governor of Paraguay, not content with having put his case before the Supreme Court of Charcas, sent also to the Council General of the Indies in Seville, detailing all the vagaries of the Bishop. The Jesuits also empowered an officer to represent them there.

During these preparations, and whilst everyone was off his guard, the Guaycurús endeavoured to surprise the capital, and would have done so had not some regiments of Guaranís arrived in time from the mission territory. This should have been an object-lesson to those who always tried to show the Jesuits in the light of enemies to the authority of the King of Spain. Nothing, however, proved of the least avail, and though on several occasions the Spanish power in Paraguay was only saved by the exertions of the Jesuits and their Indians, the calumnies of Cardenas had taken too deep root to be dispelled.