— * The name of this river seems to have passed through the machine of some medieval typewriter, for it is like no name in any language, and Montoya knew Guarani well, having written much in that language. —



Chapter III

Spain and Portugal in South America — Enmity between Brazilians and Argentines — Expulsion of Jesuits from Paraguay — Struggles with the natives — Father Mendoza killed — Death of Father Montoya



In the province of Guayra the Spaniards who had looked with disfavour on the Jesuits, and had enslaved the Indians when they were able, were in sore straits. The Mamelucos, finding no more Indians to enslave, fell on the two towns of Villa Rica and Ciudad Real, destroyed them utterly, and forced the inhabitants to flee for refuge into Paraguay. Thus Guayra went the way of Matto Grosso and several other provinces of Spain, and became Portuguese. Strangely enough, most of these losses happened when Spain and Portugal were joined under one crown. At home the Spaniards and the Portuguese, however much they detested one another, were forced to keep the peace. In America they were always at war, which ended invariably to the detriment of Spain.* The strife begun by the Papal Bull of 1493, in which Pope Alexander VI. divided the territories discovered and to be discovered between Portugal and Spain, went on, till bit by bit Spain was stripped of the provinces of Matto Grosso, Rio Grande, and Guayra, and found herself drawn into the numerous disputes about the Colonia del Sacramento, which cost so much blood to both contending Powers. Perhaps the most curious and interesting incident of the long struggle was the Three Years' War, which began in 1750, after the marriage of Ferdinand VI. of Spain with Dona Barbara of Portugal. By the treaty entered into at this marriage, seven of the most flourishing of the missions situated on the left bank of the Uruguay were ceded to Portugal in exchange for La Colonia del Sacramento on the river Plate. The towns resisted change of sovereignty, as Portugal to them was typified by the Paulistas, their most inveterate enemies. The Marquis de Valdelirios in his curious despatches touches much upon this war, but perhaps the best account is to be found in the curious memoir of the Irish Jesuit Father, Tadeo Hennis,** who was the backbone of the resisting Guaranis.

— * Even so late as the year 1777, in which the last treaty of boundaries was signed at San Ildefonso, Portugal was the gainer, though not so greatly as by the former treaties of 1681 and 1750. ** 'Efemerides o Diario de la Guerra de los Guaranies', por P. Tadeo Hennis. This journal has, I think, never been published in its entirety, but portions of it are to be found in the collection of documents, Bulls, despatches, etc., published at Madrid in 1768 under the title of 'Causa Jesuitica de Portugal'. The author of this book calls Hennis a German, but his name, Thadeus Ennis (as it is often spelt), and his love of fighting look un-Germanic. Portions of the diary are also to be found in the work of Bernardo Ibanez de Echegarray, entitled 'Histoire du Paraguay sous les Je/suites' (Amsterdam, 1780). Either the original or an old manuscript copy exists in the archives of Simancas, where I have seen, but unfortunately did not examine, it. A portion of the work is also included in the 'Coleccion de Angelis' (Buenos Ayres, 1836). —

The ancient enmity of the two nations has been continued in their descendants, the Brazilians and the Argentines and Uruguayans, and little by little Brazil is absorbing all the northern portion of the Republic of Uruguay. After the retreat under Montoya down the Parana, the Jesuit missions, especially in Paraguay and what is now the province of Corrientes, for some time enjoyed a period of peace and of repose, and the strange policy of the Jesuits was developed, and township after township arose amongst the Guaranis (1630-31). But there was still no rest for Ruiz Montoya, who was of those who rest but in the grave. In 1632, at the instance of the Governor and magistrates of the township of Jerez, Montoya sent Fathers Jean Ranconier and Mansilla to the north of Paraguay to found a mission amongst the Itatines, a forest-dwelling tribe. Their territory was marshy and the climate bad, and woods of indiarubber-trees covered all the land. Fathers del Techo and Charlevoix both speak of the 'rebounding balls' with which they played, which, thrown upon the ground, start up again as if they were filled with air. This is, perhaps, one of the first times that indiarubber is mentioned, though in some places Jean de Lery* seems to indicate he was acquainted with its use.

— * 'Histoire d'un Voyage faict en la Terre du Bre/sil'. —

The Jesuits found that to make progress was not easy with these Indians, who willingly enough listened to their preaching, but refused to alter their social habits, to which the Jesuits ascribe the fact that even then their numbers were diminishing. Like most of the Indians of America, they were polygamists, which custom in their race operates differently to polygamy amongst the negroes: for whereas they seem to increase and thrive, the Indians even at the conquest often tended to become extinct. When a headman amongst the Itatines died, a number of his followers jumped down precipices to accompany him upon his journey to a better world. This custom and polygamy gave much trouble to the Jesuits, but their most admirable patience and knowledge of mankind helped them to overcome them by degrees. All was about to flourish in the mission, when one Acosta, a Brazilian priest, appeared. Perhaps he was in league with the Paulistas, or perhaps was jealous of the Jesuits, for he tried hard to lead a number of the Indians to San Paulo to show them (as he said) how they should follow the true law of God.*

— * The way of the neophyte even to-day is hard, so many priests of different jarring sects disputing for his soul as hotly as if it were a preference stock which they had private intimation was just about to rise. —

The Itatines, either suspecting that Acosta's true law was false, or tired of his preaching, rose and killed him; but the effect was bad, and there grew up amongst those infidels a coldness even towards the Jesuits themselves. Had it not been for two miraculous events which happened opportunely, as such things should happen if they are to be turned to good account, much harm might have been done. A chief, having cursed a priest, was seized at once with a malignant ulcer in the throat, which shortly killed him. The Itatines did not apparently think anything of the influence of the unhealthy climate in which they lived, and set the occurrence down to the act of God.

But more was still to come. Another chief having so far forgotten himself as to jeer at a priest, a thunderbolt fell so close to him that he was knocked senseless, and lay as dead. These two events confirmed the Jesuits' power, and things began to flourish in their four new missions. But the Great Power, so careful of the individual effort of His priests, seems to have been most unaccountably remiss of their success considered as a whole. In the same year (1632) the Mamelucos appeared and ruined all the four missions, so that the efforts of the Jesuits and the miracles were lost.

In 1633 the first skirmish took place between the Bishop of Paraguay and the Jesuits. This skirmish little by little grew into a war, kept up for more than a hundred years, and ended finally in the expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay. The Governor, Don Luis de Cespedes, having called upon the Indians of the Jesuit missions for personal service, a proceeding quite against both the King's orders and the Papal Bulls, the Bishop thought the moment opportune to press for tithes. This, too, was equally forbidden both by a Bull and by an order of the Council of the Indies. Padre Romero went to Asuncion and displayed his Bulls and his orders of the Council, and the Governor withdrew his claims. The Bishop, after some opposition, withdrew likewise, and the Provincial of the Order arrived at Asuncion, bringing with him an order from the King signifying that the Indians of the reductions were to be left entirely to the Jesuits. So for the present the Jesuits scored a victory, though in the future it was to cost them dear. But the Governor of Paraguay having returned apparently to his design of exacting personal service from the Indians of the missions, the Provincial checkmated him with a royal order from Philip IV. The order was addressed to the Viceroy of Peru, the fourth Count of Chinchon. The missive, dated at Madrid in 1633, condemned in the strongest terms all personal service (that is, forced labour) amongst the Indians, not only of the Jesuit missions, but of Peru and Mexico. With a touching confidence in his own powers, and absolute right Divine, the well-meaning King added to his orders a paragraph commanding all to be done as he had ordered within six months. Strange to find Philip IV., whom Velasquez has immortalized and shown us as he sat upon his horse ineffable, so far away from the Museo del Prado, where alone he ever seems really to have lived. But foolish Governors and Bishops were not the Jesuits' worst enemies in Paraguay. In 1634 the Provincial, Father Boroa, was shipwrecked in a voyage up the Uruguay, and only saved by the devotion of his neophytes.

Sometimes the cruel treatment of the natives by the Spanish settlers was avenged upon the Jesuits. This was the case with a band of Guapalaches, who, coming on Father Espinosa in a wood, attacked and massacred him and all his Indians, and, having cut his body into pieces, left it for the wild beasts to eat. Upon another occasion Father Mendoza fell into an ambuscade, from which he might have escaped had not his horse sunk in a miry stream. Long he defended himself with an Indian shield, but at length was stretched upon the ground and left for dead. During the night he revived, and dragged himself up to some rocks; but the Indians in the morning, following up his trail, came on him praying in a loud voice. They told him that he served a blind God, or at best a powerless God, as He did nothing to defend His servant; then, after torturing him cruelly, they despatched him, and, taking out his heart, said: 'Let us see if his soul will take the road to heaven.' These savages do not seem to have been genuinely interested in finding out what became of the soul after the dissolution of the body, for they sat down and made a hearty meal of two young Indians who accompanied the unlucky priest. But they had heard their victim say that when he baptized them it purified their souls, and the last words of Father Mendoza had been to recommend his soul to God. I often wonder if the Christians of to-day, their creed so firmly fixed by the martyrdoms of simple folk, who held their faith without perhaps much reasoning on it, know what they owe to men like Father Christopher Mendoza, slain by the Indians in the Paraguayan woods. Your ancient martyr, fallen out of fashion and forgotten by the Christians of to-day, should have his homage done to him, if only by the chance writer, who in his studies for some subject of no interest to the general world comes on his trail of blood; for martyrdom, no matter how obscure, forgotten by the people of the faith for which the martyr suffered, is a slur not only on the faithful, but on the faith itself. In 1636 occurred the second invasion of the Paulistas, which induced Father Montoya, accompanied by Father Diaz Tano, to go to Europe to seek protection for the Indians both from the King of Spain and from the Pope.

The Mamelucos burst into the province of Tape,* and, as the mission of Jesus-Maria (one of the few left undestroyed at the former invasion) was most exposed, Father Romero asked permission of the Governor of the River Plate** to make some trenches to defend the place. The Governor consented, but the storm burst on the mission before the defences were in a fit state to defend. The mission priests Antonio Bernal and Juan Cardenas were in the front ranks encouraging the Indians, and both were badly wounded. Fathers Mola and Romero went about ministering to the wounded, but escaped themselves. At last, the Mamelucos having set fire to the church, capitulation became inevitable, and the chief part of the Indians were led away in chains. The same fate would have overtaken the mission of San Cristobal, where father Romero had retreated with some fugitives from Jesus-Maria, had not the people and their priest retreated hastily upon the mission of Santa Ana. But even there they were not long in safety, and had to undertake another perilous journey down the river Iguai. Here a party of passing Mamelucos fell into an ambuscade, and were hewn in pieces, presumably before the Lord. The Mamelucos pushed their advance so far that Father Montoya had given orders that all the missions of that province should be burned. The inhabitants, who trusted him quite blindly, were just about to begin to burn their houses, when an order from the Provincial stopped them from doing so till he himself appeared upon the scene. He arrived, and, gathering up the scattered Indians as far as he was able, left them for safety in some of the missions which had not been destroyed, and set off himself to ask for help from the Governor of Paraguay.

— * This province was sometimes called Guayra, and sometimes La Provincia de Vera, Vera being the family name of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Its position, etc., may be determined by reference to the curious volume of maps published at Madrid by Don Francisco Javier Brabo in 1872. ** That a mission could be so undefended as to need trenches, that a Jesuit should ask leave to make such elementary defences, even in the face of imminent danger, seems to prove that the Jesuits at least in 1636 had no intention of defying the sovereign power, as was so often alleged against them. —

Finding no help either from him or from the Governor of the River Plate, he went to Corrientes, and was received almost with contumely. Then, desperate, he equipped an army of the mission Indians, and advanced to fight the Mamelucos; but they had retreated into Brazil, and were beyond his reach. Seeing that nothing was to be hoped from the Spanish Governors, he sent a box of papers in a ship going to Portugal, and laid his case before the Council of the Indies. Montoya and Charlevoix relate that the box was thrown into the sea near Lisbon by some enemy of the Jesuits, but providentially was washed up by the tide, and, being found miraculously, was taken to the King of Spain. Whether this happened as it is written, who shall say? But, in distress, when have good men (before the time of the encyclopaedists) been without a miracle to sustain their cause? In the next year (1637) Father Montoya and Tano started upon their mission to Europe, and a new field was opened to Montoya in which to show his talents on the Indians' behalf.

Whilst Father Montoya was in Spain, the Provincial appointed Father Alfaro to take his place. He fell on troublous times, for the Mamelucos were preparing to attack the three remaining missions in the province of Guayra.* As they were not defensible, it was agreed to evacuate them, and to retreat into the provinces upon the Uruguay. When they were just about to start from Santa Teresa, where the inhabitants of the other missions had been collected, the Mamelucos appeared just before Christmas. The Indians were driven off as slaves, and the Mamelucos, with their usual sense of humour, attended Mass as penitents on Christmas Day, with candles in their hands, and listened to the sermon in an edifying way. The priest reproached them for their cruelty, and they, after listening devoutly, gave him the liberty of two choir boys, and quietly left the church.

— * San Joaquin, Santa Teresa, Santa Ana. —

At length the Jesuits, rendered desperate by the perils to which the mission Indians were exposed, armed several bands of Indians and attacked the Mamelucos. But, as was to be expected, the half-armed Indians were always worsted by the well-armed and disciplined Paulista bands, and then the Jesuits took the supreme resolve to evacuate Guayra entirely, and place the Indians in safety between the rivers Parana and Uruguay.

Formed into three great companies, the Indians started on their second exodus. Although the difficulties were less than in the voyage down the Parana, still, to march several thousand Indians just emerged from savagery, accompanied by their women and children, and charged with all their possessions, through a wild country, where they were exposed to the attack of a well-armed enemy upon the way, was not an easy task. Father Christobal Arenas formed them into three divisions, leading the first himself; but the Provincial seems to have done most of the organizing, for Charlevoix says that 'to his courage, prudence, and inalterable kindness,' the success was due.*

— * 'Histoire du Paraguay', liv. ix., p. 446. —

Courage and prudence and inalterable kindness are the three virtues which have most moved the world; perhaps the last has been most efficacious, and one would hope that in the future it would be the only one of the whole three required.

Twelve thousand Indians, not counting women and children, were thus led into a territory* between the rivers Uruguay and Parana, rich, fertile, and, as the distance between the rivers is not above some five-and-twenty miles, defended in some measure, and easily rendered almost impregnable.

— * This territory is now the Argentine province of Misiones. —

No one can see the heart of man, and, even if God sees it, He never tells us what is there, so that we are obliged to judge of actions as we find them, and leave the search for motives to omniscients. On the face of it, the Jesuits, both those who led the Indians down the Parana and those who headed them in this migration to the Mesopotamia between the Uruguay and Parana, were not impelled by thought of gain; and if a Jesuit must of necessity have some dark scheme behind the smallest action of his life, these men concealed it so deep down within their souls that all the researches of their keenest enemies have not been able to throw light on it. But, even settled in their new homes, the Indians were defenceless against the Mamelucos, as it was a state maxim of the Spanish court that the Indians should never be allowed the use of guns. This was a wise enough precaution, without doubt, for the Indians of the Encomiendas, who lived amongst the Spaniards and owed them personal services; but arms for the Indians of the missions were a necessity of life. Therefore, before he started for Madrid, the Provincial impressed upon Montoya to approach the Council of the Indies and the King, and represent to them that it was impossible to guarantee the existence of the reductions against the Mamelucos unless the Indians were allowed to provide themselves with arms. So Father Montoya, though he was charged to press for various reforms, was most especially impressed upon this point. He was to tell the King that the Indians were not to be allowed to keep their arms themselves, but that they would be kept by the Jesuits, and served out to the Indians in case of an attack; then, that the arms would not cost a penny to the treasury, but be all paid out of the alms collected for the purpose by the Company; lastly, and this was a true stroke of Jesuit policy, that, to instruct the Indians how to shoot, they would bring from Chile certain Jesuits who in the world had served as soldiers. One sees them brought from the frontiers of Araucania, and from the outposts of the trans-Andean towns, half sacristan, half sergeant, instant in prayer, and yet with a look about them like a serious bull terrier — a fitting kind of priest for a frontier town, and such as could alone be found amongst the Jesuits.

About this time (1639) the third invasion of the Mamelucos took place, and Father Alfaro, who had been left in charge of the missions on the Uruguay and Parana, was shot by a Mameluco with a crossbow, and fell dead from his horse. The Governor of Paraguay, on hearing of it, marched with an army, and, having killed two or three hundred of the Mamelucos, took the rest prisoners, and carried them back to Asuncion. There, to the disgust of all the Jesuit historians, he menaced them with the wrath of Heaven and let them go. The feelings of a churchman, when his own privilege is thus usurped, may be compared to those of a strict game-preserver who sees his coverts poached. It is not so much the damage that is done as the personal insult and the humiliation which he suffers in his pride.

In this year, too, the Indians of the missions rendered their first armed service to the State which afterwards so often drew on them in its necessity and treated them so ill.

The Governor of Buenos Ayres, Don Pedro Estevan Davila, was setting out upon an expedition against a tribe of Indians who had taken refuge in the islands of the Lake Ybera. Eighty of the Indians were sent, and, being well led and armed, contributed considerably towards success. Next year a second contingent was required by the Governor of Tucuman, and duly sent to his assistance. History seems to repeat itself, and foolish soldiers and others never to gain experience; for the Governor (Padre del Techo in his 'Historia Paraquaiae' tells us), having made war in Flanders, could never be dissuaded that the same system was not suitable for warfare in America. Accordingly, he set out in good order, but neglected to send out scouts, and consequently fell into the middle of the Calchaquis strongly entrenched within a marsh, attacked them with a rush, lost heavily, and had to retire to Tucuman. But all this time Father Montoya and Diaz Tano were striving in Rome and at Madrid with the Pope and with the King.

Urban VIII., at that time God's vicegerent for the Christian portion of the world, received Diaz Tano kindly, listened to all he had to say with interest, promised him his help, and gave him a Papal letter menacing the Mamelucos with the wrath of God. From Rome Father Tano went to Madrid, and thence to Lisbon, whence he sailed armed with the protection of the Pope and accompanied by a fresh band of zealous priests. Arrived in Rio de Janeiro, he published the Papal letter, and fixed it on the doors of the Jesuit College and on those of their church. He seems on this occasion to have been wanting in the chief Jesuit virtue, prudence, or at the least he seems to have mistaken the character of the people amongst whom he was. Most of the colonists having relations with the Mamelucos were indignant, and a mob broke in the doors both of the college and of the church. The riot grew so serious that the Governor convoked a council, and cited Father Tano to appear. He came and spoke, and in the eyes of the chief people of the place made out his case; but the multitude, caring not much for reason (and nothing for philanthropy), became more furious, but was appeased at last by a petition being sent in protest to the Pope.

But if these things passed in Rio de Janeiro (which Del Techo refers to as 'oppido sanctorum'), what was the fury of the people in San Paulo, the very centre of the Mamelucos, when the Vicar-General published the brief by order of Don Pedro Albornoz! The people rose immediately, and menaced the Vicar-General with instant death unless he instantly withdrew the brief. This he refused to do, although forced on his knees and with a naked sword held at his throat. His courage quieted them, and they drew up an appeal which they tried hard to make him sign, but he again refused. The mob, having demanded the brief, was told it was in the college of the Jesuits. Thither they went post-haste, and were met upon the steps by the Superior, dressed in canonicals and holding the holy wafer in his hand. He spoke, and most of them fell prostrate on the ground before the Body of our Lord. Others stood upright, and said that, whilst they adored the Holy Sacrament with their whole souls, they would not suffer that their slaves, who were their chiefest property, should be set free. An atheist (or some kind of Protestant) cried out to fire upon the priest, but he had no support. The Superior then gave them a copy of the brief, and they returned to the Vicar-General to ask for absolution for any censure of the Church they might have incurred; but he for the third time was obdurate, and let them welter in their sin.

The news of the revolution which liberated Portugal from Spain having just reached the town, the Jesuits had to retreat from it, leaving the inhabitants enraged against them and more determined than before to push their forays into Paraguay. But the time was past for their incursions, for Father Ruiz Montoya had prospered at Madrid, and secured even more than he had hoped for when he started on his quest. On arriving at Madrid, which he did after a prosperous journey of four months, he waited on the King (Philip IV.), and laid before him and commissaries chosen from the Indies and Castile the following points:

1. That the law of 1611, which provided that no Indians, unless taken in a just war, should be reduced to slavery, should be put into effect.

2. That the Pope should be approached to confirm the briefs of Paul III. and Clement VIII., which contained the same provisions.

3. That those who did not conform to these instructions should be handed over to the Inquisition to be judged.

4. That the Indians who had been enslaved by the Paulistas should be at once set free and the aggressors punished.

The King after deliberation granted every point, and, further, regulated the tribute which the Indians were to pay.* All this was easy to enact, but, like most other laws, not quite so easy to put into effect. Moreover, as the revolution which separated Portugal from Spain had just occurred, all Spanish thunder against the Mamelucos was of but small account. Montoya then pressed the demand for license to use firearms in self-defence against the Mamelucos. The King after deliberation granted this last point, and from that time the incursions of the Mamelucos ceased in Paraguay and generally throughout the mission territory. Then also there was set on foot that Jesuit militia which rendered such good service to the crown, but was the cause of so much murmuring, as it protected the mission Indians both from the Paulistas and from the inroads of the Spanish colonists.

— * This seems to prove the malice of those who set about that the Indians of the missions paid no taxes to the Crown. —

Father Montoya never returned to Paraguay, where he had fought so long and done so much for the poor Indians. Apparently it was not written that he should see the results of all his efforts, for, having embarked at Seville for Peru, he was detained at Lima on business of the Order. From thence he went to Tucuman, and, having returned to Lima, died aged seventy. The Viceroy and the chief members of the Audiencia (with whom he had struggled all his life) accompanied his body to the grave, and it is said that several miracles showed forth the glory he enjoyed in heaven.

That may be so, and if they happened (as they well may have done, for, after all, a miracle* really exists for those who credit it), if Heaven has honoured him, 'tis more than man has done: for even in Paraguay his name is not remembered, though it remains enshrined in the neglected pages of many a dusty Latin or a Spanish book.

— * Vieyra, the great Portuguese Jesuit, said that all miracles were possible to God, but yet that he had never heard that our Lord had ever cured anyone of folly. —

But all the time that Fathers Montoya and Diaz Tano were in Europe a serious danger to the Jesuits was growing up. At the discovery of the New World, the Franciscans had been the first of all the Orders to go out. Some had accompanied Columbus, some were with Cortes in Mexico. Almagro and Pizarro's hosts had their Franciscan chaplains. In his commentaries, Alvar Nunez relates how he met some of the Order in Brazil. Lastly, the first of all the saints of the New World was a Franciscan.

In 1638 the Franciscans in the province of Jujuy* disputed with the Jesuits the right to certain missions, accusing them, as Padre del Techo says, 'of putting their sickle into their ripening corn.'** What could be more annoying if it were true? As if a Wesleyan mission in the Paumotus Group should, after having shed its Bibles and its blankets like dry leaves, suddenly find an emissary from Babylon itself arrive and mark the sheep!

— * Now a province of the Argentine Republic. ** 'Historia Paraquariae', book xii., cap. xii. —

But from Jujuy the dissensions spread to Paraguay, where the Franciscans had several missions extending from Yuti to Cazapa, thus being almost within touch of the Jesuit Gospellers in Santa Maria, upon the eastern bank of the Tebicuari, which bounds their territory. These jealousies might have gone smouldering on, and never burst out into fire, had not the appointment of a Franciscan to the see of Paraguay caused the flames to flare out fiercely.

Had a firebrand been wanted to stir up strife, none better could have been found than Don Bernardino de Cardenas, who was just then appointed to the bishopric of Paraguay.



Chapter IV

Don Bernardino de Cardenas, Bishop of Paraguay — His labours as apostolic missionary — His ambitions and cunning — Pretensions to saintliness — His attempts to acquire supreme power — Quarrels between Cardenas and Don Gregorio, the temporal Governor



Don Bernardino de Cardenas first saw the light in the town of La Plata,* capital of the province of Charcas in Bolivia, or, as it was then called, Alta Peru. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it would appear to have been in the early years of the seventeenth century. At an early age he entered the Franciscan Order.

— * La Plata was sometimes called Chuquisaca, and is to-day known as Sucre. —

As the Franciscans had had the honour of having furnished to the calendar the first saint canonized in the New World, it seems to have been the dream of Cardenas from his earliest youth to emulate him. In this desire he seems to have acted in good faith, and all his life the dream of saintship haunted him. Charlevoix* says 'he made a rather superficial study of theology, and then engaged in preaching, in which, with memory, assurance, and facility, he found it easy to succeed in a country where brilliant gifts are more esteemed than solid learning.' Certainly a preacher without assurance, memory, and facility would scarcely have succeeded in any country; and in what country in the world is brilliancy not far esteemed above the deepest scholarship? Besides, 'he was a man of visions ('homme a visions') and revelations, which he took good care to publish.' Visions are generally, in the case of saints, confined to the soul's eye, and revelation to the inward ear; if, therefore, the recipient of them does not make them known, they run the risk of being lost. In a word, according to Charlevoix,** he was 'one of the most complete and dangerous ecstatics that ever lived.' 'His first successes' (whether as preacher or ecstatic are not specified) caused his superiors to name him guardian of their college of La Plata. They soon repented of their choice. No sooner was he named Superior than he sought to qualify himself for saintship by a sort of royal road. Saints are of several classes, and, in looking through the calendars, it strikes one how different seem to have been the methods by which they severally attained their goal.

— * 'Histoire du Paraguay', vol. i., book ix., p. 478. ** Charlevoix, vol. i., book xi. Dean Funes, in his 'Ensayo de la Historia Civil de Paraguay, Buenos Ayres y Tucuman', vol. ii., book iii., p. 10 (Buenos Ayres, 1816), says of him: 'Se adquirio/ muy en breve una reputacion mas brillante que solida.' —

Prince Juan Manuel, in the preface to his 'Fifty Pleasant Stories of Patronio', says that, 'amongst the many strange things our Lord God made, He thought good to make one marvellous in special — that is, that, of the numberless men who are on earth, not one entirely resembles any other in his face.' He might have said the same of saints and of their ways. One, like St. Francis of Assisi, treats his father (as it seems to me) but scurvily, and yet to every other created man and all the animals he is a brother. The saint of Avila founds convents, mingles with men of business, and has visions in the intervals of her journeying through Spain upon an ass. Again, another preaches to the Indians or the Japanese, gives up his substance, begs his bread from door to door, and leaves the devil's advocate scarcely a quillet or a quiddity against him. Lastly, you find against the names of some merely the docket 'virgin' or 'martyr', as their case or sex may serve.

Don Bernardino adopted none of these methods of procedure. Carrying a heavy cross, with ashes on his head and shoulders bared, followed by all his priests, he sallied out one day to discipline himself in public. This plan did not succeed with all the world, for his superiors ordered him to remain inside his convent gates. There he remained, and, as his Life informs us, profited by his retreat to study Holy Scriptures, and to such good effect that, the next time he preached, he charmed his hearers by his eloquence. Soon after this the Archbishop of La Plata held a provincial council, with the object of reforming the morals of the Indians in his diocese. Cardenas, being a fluent speaker, was chosen for the post of Apostolic Missionary. From this time dates the beginning of his fame.

In those days all the Indians of the Charcas, and generally of all Peru, were sunk in misery, but little removed from slaves, and their religion was a mixture of Christianity and paganism — just the kind of folk a fluent preacher of the style of Cardenas could work upon. All through the province he made his apostolic progress, preaching, converting, and confessing, everywhere preceded by his fame as seer of visions, miracle-worker, and recipient of celestial light. He took his way, dressed like a pilgrim, on foot, carrying a wooden cross, and followed by a multitude of Indians from town to town.

Religion in America (Catholic or Protestant) has always tended to revert to the original Eastern form, from which, no doubt, it sprung. The influence of the vast plains and forests, and the great distances to travel, have introduced the system of camp meetings amongst the Protestants, whereas the Catholics have often held a sort of ambulatory mission, the people of one village following the preacher to the next, and so on, in the same fashion as in Palestine the people seem to have followed John the Baptist.

Soon the news was spread about that the Indians who followed Cardenas had told him of rich mines, on the condition that he would not divulge the secret to the Spaniards. At that time the search for mines was carried almost to madness in Peru. Even to-day, in almost every mining town, a mysterious, poverty-stricken man sometimes approaches you with great precaution, and, drawing from his pocket an object wrapped in greasy paper, declares with oaths that it is 'rosicler' (red silver ore), and that he knows where there are tons and tons of it. In Mexico the curious class of miners known as 'gambusinos' rove through the valleys of the Sierra Madre armed with pick and pan, passing their lives in hunting mines, as pigs hunt truffles. If they come upon a mine, they never try to work it, but sell the secret for a trifling sum, and, drinking out the money, start on again to find the mines worked by the Aztecs, till an Apache bullet or arrow stops them, their El Dorado still ahead, or they are found beside their pick and shovel dead of thirst.

Neither in Mexico nor in Peru do things grow less in telling, and we may well suppose the stories of the mines the Indians told to Cardenas became colossal; for at last the Alcalde of Cochabamba wrote on the subject to the Count of Salvatierra, the Viceroy of Peru.

As Charlevoix says, 'it seemed as if it all worked to the advantage of the holy missionary, who, not content with saving souls, did not forget the interests of his native land.' In the middle of his triumphs, being recalled to Lima, no one doubted that it was in order to confer with the Viceroy about the supposititious mines. Others, again, imagined that a mitre was destined for the successful evangelist, and therefore many, even quite poor people, pressed forward to offer funds to help him on his way. With quite apostolic assurance, he took all that was offered to him, being certain, as some think, that, the mines being real, he could some day repay with usury all he had borrowed, or, as others said, being indifferent about the matter, and trusting to repay in that better country where no usury exists and where no gold corrupts.

The Viceroy, being a man of little faith, sent to investigate the supposititious mines, but found them non-existent.

The superiors of Cardenas, as judicious as the higher officers of the Franciscan Order often proved themselves throughout America, informed him that he had given offence to many by his public scourgings and processions carrying a cross, and, most of all, that in his sermons propositions had escaped him of a nature likely to bring him under the censure of the Holy Office. A convent in Lima was assigned to him as a retreat and place of meditation on the virtues of submission and obedience.

As we may well believe, no man who felt he had the stuff within himself to make a saint ever cared much for obedience or submission, except in others; so in his convent, instead of meditating on his faults, he passed his time in writing a memorial to the Council of the Indies, setting forth his views on the way in which to spread the gospel amongst the Indians. Nothing was better calculated to win him favour. Every Indian baptized was so much yearly gain to the Spanish Government.

Conversion and taxation always went hand-in-hand, and therefore Indians who, unbaptized, brought nothing to the treasury, having received the Gospel truths, were taxed so much a head to show them that from thenceforth they were Christians. Thus, we find that in the Paraguayan missions each Indian paid a dollar every year as a sort of poll-tax, and most of the disputes between the Viceroys of Paraguay and the Jesuits arose from the number of the Indians taxable. The Viceroys always alleged that the population of the missions never increased, on account of the Jesuits returning false numbers to avoid the tax.

Cardenas specially inculcated, in his memorial to the Council of the Indies, that it was not expedient to place the Indians under the regular clergy, a theory of which he himself was destined to become a great antagonist. Promotion, as we know, cometh neither from the east nor from the west; so it fell out that during his retreat, through the influence of his friend Don Juan de Solorzano, a celebrated lawyer, who had heard him preach when Governor of Guancavelico, he found himself named Bishop of Asuncion del Paraguay. This piece of luck opened the doors of his convent to him, and he repaired at once to Potosi to wait the arrival of the Papal Bull authorizing him to take possession of his bishopric. There he appeared in the habit of his Order, a little wooden cross upon his breast, and a green hat upon his head, a costume which, if not quite fitting to his new dignity, was at least suited to the Indian taste.

His biographer informs us that, without a word to anyone, he began to preach and hear confessions. Being absolutely without resources, he was reduced to distribute indulgences and little objects of piety, and at the end of every sermon to send his green hat round the audience. His talent for preaching stood him in good stead, and after every sermon gifts were showered upon him, and a crowd accompanied him home.

The priest of Potosi being just dead, Don Bernardino took his place without permission, and set himself up in the double character of parish priest and Bishop to hold a visitation throughout the diocese.

Some people took this conduct as evidence of his saint-like humility in condescending, though a Bishop, to officiate as a mere priest. The Archbishop had a different opinion, but, as Don Bernardino had a great following, he thought it best to dissemble his resentment. Cardenas himself, by his imprudence, furnished the Archbishop with an excuse to get him out of the bishopric.

A rich Indian, whom Cardenas confessed upon his death-bed, left him ten thousand crowns. Not content with that, he influenced one Diego Vargas to change his will and leave him money. On this the Archbishop wrote to him, requesting that he would go and govern his own see. He had to go, but left the town, which he had entered without a farthing, with a long train of mules carrying his money, plate, and furniture. Why he did not instantly go to Asuncion is not quite clear, for in America it was the custom, owing to the great distance from Rome, that Bishops, on receipt of the royal order of appointment, got themselves chosen by the chapter of their diocese to govern provisionally. Instead of doing that, he went to Tucuman, and thence to Salta, where he arrived in 1641.

In Salta, his first visit was to the Jesuit college, where he laid his case before the Jesuit fathers, and showed them several letters, one from the Cardinal Antonio Barberini dated in 1638, and another from the King without a date, naming him Bishop of Asuncion. On the strength of these two letters he asked the Jesuits if he could get himself consecrated without the Papal Bulls. Charlevoix alleges that they dared not refuse to answer in the way he wished. Why this was so is not so easy to make out, as, even with his green hat and wooden cross, he could not at that time have been a formidable personage. Their written opinion he sent at once to the rector of the Jesuit college at Cordova, asking for his opinion and that of the doctors of the university. The answer reached him in Santiago del Estero, and was unfavourable. On reading the letter, Cardenas fell into a most unsaint-like fury, and tore it up without communicating it to anyone, not even to the Bishop of Tucuman, Don Melchior Maldonado. This was not strange, as he had counted on this Bishop to consecrate him.

Notwithstanding what was at stake, he went on in the diocese of Tucuman just as he had done in that of Charcas, preaching, confessing, and celebrating Mass. Don Melchior Maldonado, a quiet man of no pretensions, wrote him a letter in which he said: 'You came into my diocese like a St. Bernard; such is the reputation you have for holiness and preaching that my people pay me no respect, and only look on me as a man of common virtue and mediocre talents. Although I hope I am not jealous, still, I must remind you that you act as if you were St. Paul.'

A Bishop of common virtue and of mediocre talents is, of course, a Bishop lost, and one can well conceive that poor Don Melchior Maldonado was placed in an unpleasant position during the stay of Cardenas in his diocese. Such were Don Bernardino's powers of persuasion that at last the Bishop consecrated him. The ceremony was hardly over, when a letter arrived from the Rector of the University of Cordova advising Bishop Maldonado against the consecration. Unluckily for Paraguay, it was too late to undo the action, and Cardenas was now in a position to take possession of his see. Poor Melchior Maldonado, Bishop of Tucuman, had, as it happened, laid hands a little hastily upon the candidate. The Council of Trent pronounced upon the case, and found 'that the consecration of the Bishop of Paraguay had been a valid one as touching the sacrament (ordination), and the impression of the character, but that it had been void as regards the power of discharging the functions attaching to the dignity, and that the Bishop and his consecrator had need of absolution, which the same holy congregation thinks ought to be accorded with the good pleasure of the Pope.' As the same holy congregation had previously declared the taking possession of the diocese by Cardenas had been illegal, it is difficult for ordinary minds to grasp their real opinion of the case.

Finding that he had failed with the University of Cordova, Don Bernardino took his way to Santa Fe, from whence he wrote an insulting letter to the poor rector. The letter was conceived in such outrageous terms that the Bishop of Tucuman wrote in expostulation, saying he expected to see something extraordinary happen in Paraguay if he gave way to such excess of passion.

Don Bernardino's usual luck attended him in Santa Fe. This town then formed part of the diocese of Buenos Ayres, though situated about four hundred miles from the metropolis. It happened that the see of Buenos Ayres was vacant, and the chapter of the cathedral invited Cardenas to visit that portion of the diocese through which he had to pass. Cardenas was, of course, delighted to show his talents for preaching, as he had done before in Charcas and in Potosi. When he arrived at Corrientes the enthusiasm for his holiness and talents was extraordinary. In Corrientes, Don Bernardino seems to have felt, for the first time, his calling and election really sure. At the time he landed (1642) the land was sunk in ignorance and superstition. Even to-day in Corrientes (the city of the seven currents), situated just at the junction of the rivers Parana and Paraguay, close to the celebrated missions of the Jesuits, the inhabitants, living in a country almost tropical, are half Indians in type.

What Corrientes looked like in Don Bernardino's time is matter of conjecture. Perhaps it was not greatly different from some remote Spanish-American frontier towns some five-and-twenty years ago, save for the groups of Spanish soldiery, with their steel morions, trunk hose and heavy arquebuses lounging about, and in the matter of the scarcity of horses in the streets. No doubt the self-same listless air hung over everything, and in the place of the modern blue and white barred flags with a rising sun or cap of liberty stuck like a trade-mark in the corner, the blood and orange Spanish colours with the quarterings of castles and of lions flapped heavily against the flagstaff of the fort. The Indian women dressed all in white, their hair cut square across the forehead and hanging down their backs, sat with their baskets of fruit and flowers in the market-place. The town, as now, built chiefly of adobes, with a few wooden huts dotted about, was semi-oriental in design. On every church were cupolas after the eastern fashion, flat roofs on every house, and everything shone dazzling white against the dark, metallic-looking foliage of the trees. The streets, as now, were sandy water-courses, crossed here and there with traverses of rough-hewn stone to break the force of the water in the season of the rains.

At night the fireflies glistened amongst the heavy leaves of the mamayes and the orange-trees, whilst from the Chaco rose the mysterious voices of the desert night, and from the outskirts of the town the wailing Indian Jarabis and Cielitos sung in a high falsetto key to the tinkling of a cracked guitar, but broken now and then by the sharp warning cry 'Alerta centinela!' of the soldiers on the walls. Could one have landed there, one would have felt much as a sailor feels, dropped on the beach of Eromango or on some yet unbemissionaried island of the Paumotus Group.

Embarking from Corrientes up the river Paraguay, the Bishop met two vessels sent from Asuncion to do him honour. When night approached he put in practice one of the manoeuvres which in Peru had stood him in good stead. On every side a swarm of launches and canoes accompanied the ship to see the Bishop, whom already many believed a saint. He asked them all to retire a little from his ship. All did so but the guard of honour sent from Asuncion. Towards the middle of the night the sound of scourging wakened them. It was their Bishop trying to prepare himself for the duties that awaited him. Every succeeding night the same thing happened. During the day he celebrated Mass pontifically upon the deck. Voyages upon the river Paraguay before the days of steamers took a considerable time, especially as every night the custom was to anchor or to make fast the vessel to a tree. Soon the rumour reached Asuncion that a second St. Thomas was on his way to visit them. St. Thomas, as is said, once visited Paraguay, and a cave in the vicinity of a town called Paraguari, where he once lived, exists to-day to prove the passage of the saint.

Fate seemed determined that the Bishop should always meet the Jesuits, no matter where he went.

Becoming weary of the slow progress of the ships, he disembarked four leagues below Asuncion, at a farm belonging to the Company. He managed to dissemble his resentment so perfectly that no one knew he had a grudge against them. Arrived at the capital, he went at once to the church of San Blas, then to the Cathedral, where he celebrated Mass and preached, his mitre on his head. After service he dismissed the people to their homes to dine, saying, however, that he himself was nourished by an invisible food and by a beverage which men could not perceive. 'My food' (he said) 'is but to do the work and will of Him who sent me.' Therefore he remained in prayer and meditation until vespers, and that office finished, he retired to the palace accompanied by a shouting crowd.

In his position his conduct was most adroit, for, as his Bulls had not arrived, he must have known he had no legal status, and that, in default of that, he had to conquer public sympathy. The chapter never doubted that Don Bernardino would place himself entirely in their hands as his Bulls had not arrived. He, however, seems to have thought that the act of celebrating Mass pontifically in the Cathedral had put him in possession of his powers. So he named one Cristobal Sanchez as his Vicar-General. Two of the members of the chapter, Don Diego Ponce de Leon and Don Fernando Sanchez, remonstrated, but a considerable portion of the chapter sided with Cardenas. The stronger party left the Cathedral and celebrated Mass in the church belonging to the Jesuits, thus giving Cardenas a second cause of offence against the Company.

The Bishop, not being secure of his position, had recourse to every art* to catch the public eye: fasting and scourging, prayers before the altar, two Masses every day, barefoot processions — himself the central figure, carrying a cross — each had their turn. Along the deep red roads between the orange-gardens which lead from Asuncion towards the Recoleta and the Campo Grande, he used to take his way accompanied by Indians crowned with flowers, giving his benediction as he passed, to turn away (according to himself) the plague and to insure a fertile harvest. Not being content with the opportunities which life afforded, he instituted an evening service in a church in order to prepare for death.

— * But besides putting into execution all his histrionic talents, he had the adroitness to address himself to those feelings of self-interest which he knew were perhaps more powerful than those of admiration and respect for his own saintly proceedings in his new diocese. Cretineau Joly, in his 'Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus', vol. iii., p. 333 (Paris, 1845), tells us that Cardenas 'parle aux Espagnols, il s'addresse a leurs intere^ts, il re/veille les vieux levain de discorde . . . et il accuse les missionnaires d'e^tre seuls les apo^tres de la liberte/ des Indiens.' —

Soon, as was to be expected in such a country, this service proved the occasion of much scandal, and, instead of showing people how to leave the world, became the means of introducing many into life in a clandestine way. The rector of the Jesuit college thought it his duty to inform the Bishop; but he, like all good men, thought nothing bad could spring from anything that he himself originated. No doubt he put it down to malice, as good people will when worldlings put the finger on the weak spot of a religious institution; but anyhow, regardless of the scandals, he continued his nocturnal rites.

The Governor of Paraguay at that time was one Gregorio de Hinostrosa, an officer born in Chile, an honest, pious, wooden-headed man, and much beloved by the inhabitants of Paraguay. On his arrival Don Bernardino tried to conciliate him. Unluckily, a friendship with the Bishop was impossible without a blind submission to his will. In the beginning all was flattery; when Don Gregorio attended Mass, the Bishop used to meet him at the church door. Not to be outdone, the Governor returned the Bishop's politeness in a similar way, but went so far in his complaisance that Don Bernardino ceased to respect him. Soon there arose bickerings and jealousies, and at length they hated one another fervently.

Nor was the Bishop more successful with his clergy. Some of them laughed at his pretensions to be a saint, and called him an ambitious schemer. Again, amongst the laity, many did not quite understand his habit of celebrating two Masses every day. He answered that he never celebrated without releasing a soul from purgatory, and that there had been saints who celebrated nine Masses every day, and, moreover, that he was Pope in his own diocese. This cut the ground from under the feet of his detractors, for in a town of the calibre of Asuncion the people looked on a service in a church as a welcome means of getting through the day, and had he celebrated a dozen masses they would but have been more delighted with their new Bishop.

Under the pretext that there were not enough priests to serve the churches, he, by degrees, took several parishes into his own hands, and went from church to church to celebrate his Mass in each, whilst not forgetting to draw the various stipends for his work. But, not content with this, he began to ordain young men who knew no Latin, and even criminals, setting forth the view that ordination was a sort of second baptism, which purged all crimes — a most convenient theory, and one which is not half enough insisted on in these degenerate days.

The position of Asuncion gave him an opportunity of an almost unique kind to show his talents in another sphere. Across the river Paraguay, there about one mile broad, extends the country called the Chaco, a vast domain of swamp and forest, inhabited in those days, as at present, by tribes of wandering Indians. From the city walls, whilst listening to the church-bells, one can see the smoke of Indian encampments across the river only a mile away.

Of all the Indian tribes in the time of Cardenas, the most ferocious were the Guaycurus. The Jesuits had laboured almost in vain amongst them. Missions had been founded, and all gone well for months, and even years, when on a sudden, and without reason, the Guaycurus had burned the houses, killed the priests, and gone back to the wilds. From Santa Fe up to the province of Matto Grosso they kept the frontier in a turmoil, crossing the river and feeding like locusts on the settlements in Paraguay.

Not long before his arrival the Guaycurus had intimated their intention of holding a conference with Don Gregorio Hinostrosa. Don Bernardino thought the chance too good to lose, and at once declared that, as a Bishop, it was his place to carry on negotiations with the barbarians. Dressed in his robes and with an escort furnished by the Governor, he met the chiefs — who no doubt looked on him as a new kind of medicine-man — preached to them through an interpreter, curiously being without the gift of tongues, but notwithstanding that a reasonable number of them were baptized. On his return, he wrote to the King that by his efforts he had appeased the most ferocious Indians within his Majesty's domains.

Within a week the Guaycurus surprised and burned a settlement a little higher up the stream. Not content with this Caligulesque apostolate to the Guaycurus, the Bishop longed for serious occupation, and caused it to be rumoured about the city that he did nothing except by the direct authority of the Holy Ghost, an allegation hard to confute, and if allowed, likely to lead to difficulties even in Paraguay.

Some years before the advent of Don Bernardino the Dominicans had built a convent in Asuncion. As they had no license to build, they were in the position of religious squatters on the domain of God. The citizens had applied to the Audiencia of Charcas, the supreme court on all such matters in South America, situated, with true Spanish unpracticality, in one of the most secluded districts of the continent. The Audiencia had refused the license, but had taken the matter 'ad advisandum' for ten years. To take a matter into consideration for ten years, even in Spain or South America, where the law's delay is generally more mortal than in any other country, was as good as giving a permission. So the Dominicans construed it, and no one dreamed of now molesting them.

One day the Bishop, dressed in his robes, proceeded from his palace to the convent, informing the Governor that he wanted him to meet him there. Entering the convent church, he took the sacrament from off the altar and stripped the church of all its ornaments, setting a gang of workmen to demolish both the convent and the church. When the work was over, he went to a neighbouring church, and then and there, without confession, celebrated Mass, remarking to the faithful that there was no need for him to make confession, as he was satisfied of the condition of his conscience. Some murmured; but the greater portion of the people, always ready to take a saint at his own valuation, were delighted with his act. Doubts must have crossed his mind, as shortly afterwards he wrote to Don Melchior Maldonado, Bishop of Tucuman, for his opinion. That Bishop answered rather tartly that his zeal appeared to him to savour more of the zeal of Elias than of Jesus Christ, and that in a country where churches were so few it seemed imprudent to pull down rather than to build. 'However,' he added, 'my light is not so brilliant as the light your lordship is illumined by.'

When once a man is well convinced that all he does comes from the Holy Ghost, there is but little that he cannot do with satisfaction to himself. Self-murderers, according to the custom of those times, were not allowed admission into holy ground, as if the fact of having found their life unbearable debarred them from the right to be considered men. Such a man a few years previously had been buried at a cross-road. It now occurred to Cardenas to have a special revelation on the subject; and, curiously enough, this special revelation was on the side of common-sense. 'This body,' said the Bishop, 'is that of a Christian, and I feel pretty sure his soul is now in bliss.' He gave no reason for his opinion, as is the way of most religious folk, but, as he had special means of communication with heaven, most people were contented. Incontinently he had the corpse dug up and buried in the church of the Incarnation, himself performing all the funeral rites.

Although a miracle or two would have shocked nobody, still, in the matter of the suicide he had gone too far for the simple people of the place. They murmured, and for a moment the Bishop's prestige was in jeopardy; but in the nick of time his Bulls arrived, brought by his nephew, Pedro de Cardenas, who, like himself, was a Franciscan friar. This saved him, and gave the people something new to think of, though at the same time he incurred a new anxiety.

In the Bulls there was a passage to the effect that, if at his consecration any irregularity had been incurred, he was liable to suspension from all his functions. This the Jesuit who translated the documents into Spanish for the purpose of publication drew his attention to. However, Cardenas was not a man to be intimidated by so small a matter, but read the translation to the people in the Cathedral, and intimated to them that the Pope had given him unlimited power in Paraguay, both in matters spiritual and temporal.

Though Don Gregorio, the Governor, was present at the ceremony, he made no protest at the assumption of temporal power by Cardenas. He had remarked it, though, and secretly determined to show him that his pretensions were unfounded. His nephew, Don Pedro de Cardenas, furnished the occasion. This young man had been despatched to Spain to get the Bulls. Upon the voyage he seems to have conducted himself with scant propriety. On his return, when passing Corrientes, he took on board a lady whom Charlevoix, quite in the spirit of the author of the Book of Proverbs, describes as 'une jeune femme bien faite'. Having some qualms of conscience, he put on a secular dress, and on nearing Asuncion put his religious habit over it. In such a climate this double costume must have been inconvenient, and why he should have worn one dress above the other does not appear. His uncle, in his delight at the forthcoming of the Bulls, most probably paid little attention to his appearance. He lodged him in the palace, and assigned him a prebendary which was vacant. Where the 'jeune femme bien faite' was lodged is not set down, and the people of Asuncion no doubt looked leniently on such affairs, as does society to-day in England. After his usual fashion, the Bishop set all down to calumny.

About this time the Governor had put in prison one Ambrosio Morales, a sub-official of the Inquisition, who had had a quarrel with an officer. Cardenas, being informed of this, could not lose so good a chance of exercising the power he arrogated in temporal affairs. Holding a monstrance in his hands, he went to the prison and asked for the prisoner, placing the monstrance on a table at the prison gate. The rector of the Jesuit college came and expostulated with him, saying that it was not fitting to expose the body of Jesus Christ in such a place, and that it was not decent that the Bishop himself should stay there. Considering his position, and the times in which he lived, it seems the rector was judicious in his expostulation. Cardenas replied that he would stay there till the prisoner was released. The rector, knowing him to be as obstinate as a male mule, went and begged the Governor to let Morales out. This he did at once, and then the Bishop, cross in hand, returned in triumph to the palace with the rescued Inquisitor following amongst his train. The people, whose lives were dull, snatched at the opportunity for some amusement, and said that it was good luck the Governor and Bishop were not always of one mind, for that their agreement had caused the demolition of a church and convent, and their quarrel the setting of a prisoner free.

This little triumph emboldened the Bishop to go further. He admitted Morales into minor orders, gave him the tonsure, and thus, having placed him above the temporal power, enabled him to brave the Governor openly. The Bishop's nephew, taking the Governor's kindness for weakness, broke publicly into insulting terms about him. The Governor's brother, Father Hinostrosa, pressed him to vindicate his dignity, but he refused, saying he wanted peace at any price. This policy the Bishop did not understand, for all concessions he set down as weakness, and they encouraged him to fresh exactions and more violence.

Dining with the Governor, the Bishop chanced to see upon the table a fine pair of silver candlesticks. To see and to desire with Cardenas was to ask, and so he intimated to the Governor his wish to have them. The Governor, thinking, perhaps, to wipe out the remembrance of the difficulty about Morales, sent them to the palace with his compliments. The Bishop took the present, and, turning to the man who brought them, said, 'I should now be quite content if I only had the silver ewer and flagon which I noticed in your master's house.' The Governor, we may suppose, on hearing this made what the Spaniards call 'la risa del conejo'; but sent the plate and a message, saying all his house contained was at the Bishop's service. Don Bernardino, who, though he may have been a saint, as his friends proclaimed, was certainly far from a gentleman, sent for the flagon and the ewer, which he received at once, together with a friendly message from the Governor.

But even this free-will offering brought no quiet, for a new quarrel soon arose between the Bishop and the unlucky wielder of the temporal power. The Society of the Holy Sacrament enjoyed an 'encomienda' at or near Asuncion. The Bishop, no doubt thinking he was most fitted to indoctrinate the Indians, endeavoured to persuade the Governor to get the Society of the Holy Sacrament to make their Indians over to himself. The Governor, who knew his fellow-countrymen, flatly refused, and upon this Don Bernardino fell into a fury, and reproached him with such bitterness that Don Gregorio, too, overstepped the bounds of prudence, and threw the conduct of his nephew with the 'jeune femme bien faite' into the Bishop's teeth.

Hell has been said to have no fury equal to a woman scorned, but a Bishop thwarted makes a very tolerable show. Don Bernardino was one of those who think an insult to themselves carries with it a challenge to God, an outrage on religion, and generally conceive the honour of Heaven is attacked by any contradiction of themselves. To animadvert upon the actions of a Bishop's nephew is as bad as heresy — far worse than simony — and the man who does it cannot but be a heretic at heart. So, at least, Don Bernardino thought; for, with candle, bell, and book, and what was requisite, he excommunicated the poor Governor, and declared him incompetent to bear the royal standard in a religious festival which was shortly to take place. Excommunication was at least as serious then as bankruptcy is now, though in Spanish America it did not carry with it such direful consequences as in European States.

Not wishing to use force, the Governor yielded the point, and did not trouble the procession. His moderate conduct gained him many partisans, and put many people against the Cardenas. The nephew, Pedro de Cardenas, thought it a good occasion to insult the Governor in public; so one day in the street he followed him, casting reflections on his mother and his female relatives. Don Gregorio, who was a man of tried courage, having served for years against the Indians of Arauco, the bravest race of all the Indians of America, controlled his temper, and, turning to the young Franciscan, said, 'Go with God, my father; but do not try me any more.' It was not to be expected that in those times and such a place a man like Don Gregorio de Hinostrosa, who had passed his life upon the frontiers, and who held supreme authority, would quietly submit to such a public insult; so one night he appeared at the Bishop's palace, accompanied by soldiers, to arrest Don Pedro. Out came Cardenas, and excommunicated the Governor and all his soldiers on the spot, and Don Pedro pointed a pistol at his head. He, seeing himself obliged either to make a public scandal or retire, being for peace at any price, retired, and the triumphant Bishop published his edict of excommunication, which he extended with a fine of fifty crowns to every soldier who had been present at the scene. On reflection, thinking, perhaps, it was unwise to excommunicate so many soldiers, who might be needed to repel an Indian attack, he sent and told the Governor he was ready to absolve him upon easy terms. The Governor, who had made light of the first excommunication, was rather staggered when he found the second posted at the Cathedral door. And now a comedy ensued; for Don Gregorio went to the Bishop, and on his knees asked for forgiveness. He, taken unawares, also knelt down, and, when the Governor kissed his hand, wished to return the compliment, and would have done so had the rector of the Jesuit college not prevented him.

As Charlevoix says, 'to see them on their knees, no one could have imagined which one it was who asked the other's grace.' The Bishop granted absolution to the Governor; but the soldiers' action had been flat sacrilege at least, for every one of them was forced to pay the fine.

Two excommunications in a week were almost, one would think, enough to satisfy a Pope; but having nominated one Diego Hernandez, a Portuguese, to the post of Alguacil Mayor of the Inquisition, and given him the right to wear a sword in virtue of his office, the Governor, meeting the man in the street wearing a sword against his regulations, made him a prisoner. At once Don Bernardino launched another excommunication. But this time he had gone too far; the Governor laughed at his thunder, and condemned the prisoner to be hanged. At his wits' end, the Bishop sent a servant to the man, and told him to fear nothing, for that, if he suffered death, he was a martyr, and that he himself would preach his funeral sermon. The Governor, who was perhaps a humorist, laughed at the message, which, he said, was not consoling, and then himself let Hernandez out of prison under heavy bail. The excommunication was then taken off, and peace once more reigned in Asuncion.

As well as being not given to wine, it is essential that a Bishop shall know how to keep his own counsel — as Lorenzo Gracian expresses it,* 'not to lie, but not for that to speak out always the whole truth.' Everyone who knew the Bishop and his hasty temper was astonished at his behaviour to the Jesuits. No one imagined he had forgotten the attitude the rector of the University of Cordova had assumed towards his consecration, and still the Bishop seemed to show more favour to the Jesuits in Asuncion than to the members of the other religious communities. Perhaps he felt the want of partisans amongst the educated classes, for his quarrel with the Governor had lost him many friends. Certainly in Asuncion it was of great importance that the Jesuits should not declare against him openly.

— * 'Oraculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia' (Amsterdam, en casa de Juan Blau, 1659). —

He praised them fulsomely both in the pulpit and in conversation, went in procession to their church, and treated them in public with marked consideration. As a contemporaneous Jesuit has left a record, they were not his dupes, but still endeavoured to live up to the praises he dispensed to them. He went so far as in a letter to the King, Philip IV., to say that the Jesuits only in all Paraguay were really fitted to have the care of Indians, and he advised the King to transfer the Indians who were under other religious bodies, as well as those under the secular clergy, to the care and guidance of that Order. No doubt in this the Bishop was right, even if not sincere. One of the qualifications the Jesuits had for the care of Indians was that the Indians did not look on them as Spaniards.

As in the same way that in Matabeleland, perhaps, a German, Frenchman, or Italian is less hateful to the natives than an Englishman, so in Paraguay the Indians liked the Jesuits better than the other Orders, for there were many foreigners amongst their ranks. The Jesuits soon comprehended that the Bishop wished to make them odious to the public by overpraise. To set to work in such a manner almost requires an early training in a seminary, and that such tactics should have been put in force against such skilled diplomatists as were the Jesuits argues no ordinary capacity for diplomatic work in Cardenas. With him, however, the Spanish proverb, 'Betwixt the word and deed the space is great', had little application. The vicar of a place called Arecaya, close to Asuncion, had fallen into disgrace; the Bishop removed him from his parish, and asked the rector of the Jesuit college to send a priest to take his place. The answer he received was politic, and to the effect that there was no Jesuit who could be spared, and even if there was it ill-befitted any Jesuit to infringe upon the duties of the secular clergy; but that, if Cardenas intended to found a new reduction with all the privileges that the King had always given to that kind of establishment, the rector himself would ask permission from his Provincial to undertake the work. A splendid answer, and one which proved that the man who gave it was a man wasted in Paraguay, and that his place by rights was Rome or, at the least, some court.

Don Bernardino, who in matters such as these was quite as cunning as the rector, thanked him, and said he did not want a saint, but a priest to take the duty of another priest for a short time. The rector, seeing his diplomacy had failed, told Father Mansilla, who was at Itatines, to transfer himself to Arecaya, and, writing to the Bishop, told him that he had no doubt Mansilla would do all that was fitting in the case. The Bishop, who had gained his point and saw no further use for diplomacy, said: 'Of that I am quite sure, and if he does not I shall excommunicate him, and lay the district of the Itatines under an interdict.' Nothing appeared to give Don Bernardino such unmitigated pleasure as an excommunication; on the slightest protest he was ready, so that during his episcopate someone or other in Asuncion must have always been under the ban of Holy Mother Church. The rector felt instinctively that Don Bernardino had not done with him. This was the case, for soon another order came to send two Jesuits to undertake the guidance of a mission near Villa Rica. As at the time the Jesuits had no missions near Villa Rica, the order was most unpleasant to him. Firstly, the two who went — Fathers Gomez and Domenecchi — had to leave their missions and undertake a lengthy journey in the wilds. On reaching Villa Rica, they found not only that the inhabitants looked on them with great disfavour as interlopers, but that the Indians, whom they were sent to guide, were under the 'encomienda' system, thus forcing them to wink at that which they disapproved. The resolution that they took did them great honour; it was to leave the town of Villa Rica and live out in the forests with the Indians.

The Jesuits of the college at Asuncion felt the situation keenly. People began to murmur at them for their invasion of the spiritual domains of others, and the rector, in despair, sent to the Bishop, and begged him not to praise them in his sermons. Nothing cost Cardenas so little as to promise, so he promised not to mention them again, and next time that he preached he spent an hour in telling of the wonders that the Jesuits had done in saving souls, not only amongst Catholics, but also amongst the infidels and Turks. The tactics of the Bishop were so marked that at last a rumour reached Don Melchior Maldonado, the Bishop of Tucuman, of whom Don Bernardino always stood in dread. His letter somehow became public, and as in it he spoke most warmly of the Jesuits, and praised the rector, the public turned again upon their side. Just at this time, however, the sleeping feud between the Bishop and the Governor broke out anew with so much fury that attention was directed from the Jesuits for the time being; but on them the situation still was hung, and both sides made advances to them for support.



Chapter V

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 sechement',* 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.

— * Charlevoix. —

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 a 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.'* 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.

— * Exod. 32:27. —

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* of 'yerba mate', 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 arroba is about twenty-five pounds weight. —

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 'Pe e Lozano, retroussant sa robe le poursuivit en criant a pleine te^te, et s'exprimant en des termes peu seans a sa profession.'* 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.

— * Charlevoix. —

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* 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'etat'; 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.

— * Camalote is a species of water-lily which forms a thick covering on stagnant rivers and lakes in Paraguay and in the Argentine Republic. —

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 Guaycurus 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 Guaycurus, 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*1* their annual taxes to the crown. Secondly, that the Jesuits kept back the tithes from Bishops and Archbishops.*2* 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,*3* 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.*4* Sixthly, that even the Portuguese of San Paulo de Piritinanga had expelled them.*5* 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.