Читать книгу The History of Texas - Robert A. Calvert - Страница 39

In the Far North, Catholicism remained the sole religion, disseminated by missionaries belonging to ecclesiastical orders (regular clergy) who labored both for the Crown and the Church in the tradition of the patronato real. The king provided the clergymen with government subsidies; the priests reimbursed the monarch by guarding the frontier line and ministering to the un‐Christianized Indian flocks, whom the king wanted brought into “civilized life.” In such an accord, the king retained title to the plots of land upon which the friars (also known as fathers, or padres) built their missions. The Church, in turn, owned the mission compounds, which comprised the structures the friars erected, the surrounding gardens, the mission pasturelands and livestock, and the campo santo (holy burial ground). In the mission compound, the friars introduced the Indians to Christianity and instructed them in “acceptable” behavior, using the Indians’ own language at first before gradually switching to Spanish. The friars held their charges to a rigid routine that included daily mass, the recitation of prayer and the rosary, as well as lessons on the mysteries of the holy faith. The friars also forced the Indians into assisting with the maintenance of the mission: men worked the fields or tended to the livestock, while women spun cotton or wool and made clothes. The friars often used corporal punishment–involving the lash, torture, or other abusive practices–to enforce religious and temporal responsibilities. Once the so‐called neophytes had been deculturized and converted into faithful subjects (and, incidentally, tax‐paying citizens), the state‐subsidized missionaries left for new grounds, turning responsibilities for the preservation of the faith over to parish priests (secular clergy). Figure 2.1 shows the frontier institutions in Texas.

Figure 2.1 Frontier institutions in Texas.

For the gente de razón (literally translated as “the people of reason” but meaning members of Spanish colonial society), the missions also served as surrogate agencies that administered religious rites, the friars tending to the people at baptism, marriage, and death. These responsibilities were actually carried out primarily by diocesan priests appointed to Texas from the interior of New Spain. To them fell the duty of ministering to the civilian faithful, especially toward the late eighteenth century as the Church reassigned Franciscans elsewhere due to a diminishing commitment to Indian conversion. By the waning decades of the 1700s, most of the Spanish population centers in Texas (i.e., San Antonio, Goliad, and the Laredo area) had a priest (or priests) tending to the spiritual needs of the pobladores. Devotion to Catholicism thus persisted throughout the settlements, as witnessed in popular and private expressions. Colonists organized community and religious fiestas during specific holy days (such as on December 12, the day of the Virgen de Guadalupe), and engaged in individual worship: reciting home prayer, erecting family altars, and observing the Lenten season.

A range of religious expression existed among the pobladores. Whereas some Tejanos displayed fidelity and piety, many others practiced a type of popular religiosity, as did other villagers living on the frontier, where the institutional church did not exert much influence. These nominal Catholics slighted the more restrictive tenets of their faith and violated certain of its scriptures, as evidenced by the government’s enactment of laws designed to curtail blasphemous behavior. In the town of Nacogdoches, for example, authorities arrested a citizen in 1805 for publicly criticizing the Church by placing “indecorous” posters on trees. Notwithstanding such irreverence, throughout the colonial era missionaries sought to minister to families, soldiers, and government representatives.