BO O K R E V IE W S 47

them with those printed in the Ius Pontificium de Propaganda Fide (7 vols.
Rome, 1888-1897).
M i c h a e l B. M c C l o s k e y
Washington, D. C.

La Santa Sede y la emancipación mexicana. By Luis M e d i n a A s c e n s i o .

(Guadaljara, Mexico: Imprenta “ Gráfica.” 1946. Pp. xx, 223.)
On September 16, 1810, the Mexican forces for freedom issued the call
to arms. It was the Grito de Dolores. This battle-cry summoned all
Mexican patriots to aid Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in bringing liberty
to the land. For fourteen years the struggle for emancipation went for­
ward, until at last the victors erected the facade of independent national
life. President Guadalupe Victoria took office as the head of “ one of the
equal nations of the world.” The meager battle story of this revolution
need never detain the Mexican historian. His task is to show how his
people shook off the habiliments of provincials and adopted the sovereign
character.
Now the most striking colonial fact about New Spain had been its entire
dependence on the Spanish court in things religious. For 300 years
Madrid acted as the control tower of the Church in Latin America. The
enormous power of the patronato real, originally granted to Isabella and
Ferdinand by Sixtus IV, Alexander VI, and Julius II, gave to the crown
the fateful opportunity to rule or ruin. It put the king in command of
every appointment, of the conduct of the clergy, their budget and all their
works. In time he took the supervision of their correspondence with Rome
as it (necessarily) passed through Madrid—the abuse euphoniously dubbed
the pase regio.
This artery through Madrid, vital if narrow, was severed after 1810
by the general revolt of the colonies. The sequel constituted the main prob­
lem in making the new republics, a problem quite as much social and eco­
nomic as it was political. The severance had actually been the fundamental
objective of separation. The colonist had had enough of the patronato real.
When in the exercise of this power the crown suppressed and “amortized”
the obras pías, and turned out a large religious order for reasons retained
cautiously within the “real pecho” and put down consequent clamor and
risings by use of the army newly-quartered in America, and finally laid
the anti-clerical constitution of Cadiz upon the unwilling because relig­
iously loyal Americans, subjection boiled over and independence followed.
Medina Ascensio takes the reader through the crisis that arose from
this severance. Anyone who knows the Church understands how vital a
break it was. And the politicos of Mexico—men often of a distinctly
climbing sort or even cool to religious obligation—at once set themselves
48 BOOK R E V IE W S

to right the ship. In Congress so radical a person as Negrete spoke in

these terms: “ We must first meet the exigencies which gave the primary
cause to the revolution, the righting of the ecclesiastical arrangements
decreed by the Spanish Cortes.”
The nub of the question was the hierarchy in Mexico. It dissolved, with
the break from Madrid. And as Madrid refused to appoint new candidates
pleasing to the populace—proprietary bishops, or bishops in their own
right and not by suffrance—and as Rome could not break its agreement
with Madrid on the choice of candidates, the rebuilding of the hierarchy
was at a stalemate. The difficulty at Rome was well put by a contemporary
ecclesiastic, Father Julian Perdriel, who in 1816 argued before the Argen­
tine Congress:
No ocurrirán nuestros gobiernos a su Santidad, hasta que, reconocida
generalmente la independencia política de nuestras provincias, no sea peli­
groso al Beatísimo Padre el mezclarse en nuestras diferencias.
What efforts were made in Mexico to reconstitute the hierarchy, and
the success thereof, form the story of the present volume. Of the ten
bishops, only one remained in 1827. The rest had died or returned to loyal
Spanish territory. Some through fealty to Spain felt it treason to abet
the rebel cause by remaining. Others saw themselves frustrated in re­
ligious powers by the severance at Madrid, and refused to continue to
rule without communication with Rome and its approved Spanish vicar.
In neighboring countries, it is true, bishops here and there remained on
the spot, as did the unhappy Lué y Riega in Buenos Aires, but in most
places the experience of Mexico was repeated. It is thus a typical case,
and its study helps to establish a synthesis of what followed those days
in social dislocation. For the bishops were the natural and de facto
leaders of the people.
At first the Mexican clergy and statesmen appealed for aid to the Arch­
bishop of Baltimore, John Carroll. They urged him to delegate to them
the necessary powers to carry on, in ordinations, confirmations, dispensa­
tions, appointments. Twice he was approached. On both occasions he
withdrew from a situation in which he recognized nothing but confusion
and matter far beyond his prerogatives.
Then the government in Mexico addressed itself directly to Rome. This
story has been told before, but never so fully nor with such command of the
documentation. Dr. Medina Ascensio saw the profound importance of his
research, and he went directly to the font, to Roman and other European
depositories, for his materials. This first-hand study enabled him to correct
several erroneous views, one of them, formerly held by this reviewer, to the
point that Pope Leo X II had not written the Etsi Jam Diu that caused
such consternation in Mexico when it appeared there in 1825. (Bishop
Pérez read it to his clergy with amazement and anger, and worked earnestly
 B O O K R E V IE W S 49

to have its message reversed.) It will be recalled that this bull eulogized
King Ferdinand VII as the protector of virtue and liberty, and called upon
the bishops to bring back their American subjects to his allegiance. The
bull did come from Rome, and though its effect was brief, it was, indeed,
disheartening to the loyal Catholics of Latin America.
The work closes with the papal act that settled the whole episcopal
problem. In 1831, Gregory X V I decided to override any fear of Spain
and the previously denounced patronato real, and to consecrate proprietary
bishops. Shortly thereafter Rome recognized the independence of the Latin
American countries.
During the development of affairs that led to this solution, a number
of human factors emerged strongly at variance with the cause of freedom
for religion, for which the revolution—as was said above—-had largely
been fought. First among these were the reborn regalists; their program,
to make the State one with, and thus over, the Church, in accord with
their idea of a “sovereignty” that embraces every power within the state.
In this group were all too many ecclesiastics, ambitious for reform or
promotion, devoid of episcopal control, fond of their new ideas on the state
of pure nature and the social contract. They were the makers of the system
which succeeded the temporary settlement signified by the consecration
of Vásquez in 1831. Allied with them, though lacking in a hypercritical
profession of religion, were the members of the freshly-formed lodges, who
had come to substitute nature for the God of nature in their worship and
in their moral code. Then there was the adventurer who would so often
capture the presidency during his mercurial career. This combination soon
did away with the peaceful settlement, and brought in a new patronato
so far below its parent as the new politician was overshadowed by his
professional forebear.
One who studies a monograph of this kind realizes that it opens the way
to a larger field, namely, the manifold effect of the independence move­
ments in as far as they reflect the effort to cast off the patronato. To Rómulo
Carbia this was the proto-question for every serious student of Latin
America. What did the twenty year interim do to the clergy, in inde­
pendence of spirit, in discipline, in physical and mental preparedness for
the priestly function? What did it do to government, which from this
time on would often use religion as the base of revenue for civic purposes
and as the great political football in campaigns and administrative strategy ?
What did it do to encourage the positivist in Latin America? Medina
Ascensio has not furnished us with answers to these problems. He has
paved the road to their investigation.
W. E u g e n e S h i e l s
Xavier University
' Cincinnati