Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/769

 REDUCTIONS

689

REDUCTIONS

forty colonies (Guevara, "Hist, dc la Couquista del Paraguay, Rio de La Plata y Tucuman", Buenos Aires, 1882; Gay, " Historia da Republica Jesuitica do Paraguay", Rio de Janeiro, 1863; Monner-Sans, "Pinceladas Historicas", Buenos Aires, 1S92J. The natives, subdued by force of arms or submitting voluntarily, were brought under the yoke of the Spanish encomienda system which in its more severe application made them yaiuicotMs, or slaves, in its milder form milayas, or serfs, to the conquisladores and the white colonists (Gay, op. cit., 45). The Spanish kings sought to better the lot of the natives by wise and humane decrees for their protection, but the difficulty of exercising control over them, and the un- reliability, weakness, or selfishness of many of the officials permitted the abuse of this system to flourish (Monner-Sans, loc. cit., 43 sq.). This system re- sulted in frequent uprisings of the subjugated race, and an implacable hatred of the foreigners on the part- of the numerous tribes stUl retaining their free- dom, who withdrew further and further into the al- most inaccessible steppes and forests in the interior, harassed the colonies, still in their youth, with in- roads, and frequently laid them waste. It was not until the Reductions were founded that conditions were essentially improved in this respect also.

The kings of Spain having the conversion of the native peoples sincerely at heart, missionaries ac- companied even the earliest expeditions to La Plata, and churches and parishes were founded in the new colony as soon as possible. Here, as elsewhere, the first pioneers of the Faith were sons of St. Francis (Marc, de Civezza, "Storia universale delle Mission! Fran- ciscane", Prato, 1891, VIII, ii, 2). Besides them we find Dominicans, Mereedarians, and, to conjecture from the oldest lists of bishops (Gams, " Series Episco- porum Eecl.Catholicae", Ratisbon, 1873), also Augus- tinians and Hieronymites. The immense territory was divided into three dioceses: Paraguay (see at Asun- cion), established in 1.547; Tucuman (see at Santi- ago del Estero, later at C6rdoba), 1.570; Buenos Aires (see at Buenos Aires), 1582. But as late as 1559 the clergy in the colony numbered in all only twenty secu- lar and regular priests (Gay, op. cit., 48). When the first Bishop of Tucuman, Don Francisco de Victoria, O.P., took charge of his diocese in 1581, he found in the entire diocese ordy five secular and a few regular priests, not one of whom could speak the language of the Indians. In 1586 the first Jesuits came to Tucuman at his request, and in 1587, at the request of the Bishop of Asuncion, Don Alonao Guerra, O.S.F., also to Paraguay. In view of the fame ac- quired in Europe for the young order, still in its first ardour, by Francis Xavier in Eastern India, Anchieta in Brazil, and others, it was hoped the Society would prove a great aid, as well towards improving the re- ligious eonditioiLs in general, as towards pacifying and converting the numerous wild tribes. The col- leges, seminaries, residences, and houses for spiritual retreats founded after 1593 in rapid succession at Santiago del Estero, Asuncion, Cordoba (a university since 1621), Buenos Aires, Corrientes, Tarija, Salta, San Miguel de Tucuman, Santa F6, La Rioja, and elsewhere served to attain the first purpose; while the second purpose was fulfilled by the ministry among the Indians in the encomiendas, and by travel- ling missionaries who went out among the tribes still at liberty and covered the vast territory in all directions, very much as St. Francis Solanus did at about the same period. These mission excursions reflected honour upon the heroism of the missionaries, but achieved no lasting results. Therefore the general of the order, Aquaviva, insisted on the concentration of effort and the founding of central points in the most advan- tageous localities, after the fashion of similar efforts in Brazil (Handelmann, "Gesch. v. Bra.silien", Berlin, 1860, 78 s(|.). The first superior of the province of XII.— 4,i

Paraguay, founded in 1606 (which numbered a( ita foundation seven Jesuits, but in 1613 no less than one hundred and thirteen). Feather Diego de Torrea BoUo, was commissioned to put these ideas into practice.

II. FoDNDATioN OF THE REDUCTIONS. — They did not, as has been asserted, owe their origin to a pre- viously-outlined idea of a state after the pattern of Campanella's "Sun State" ("Stimmen aus Maria- Laach", XXV, 1883, 4.39 sq.), which should form the reahsation of the longing of the Jesuits for power; on the contrary, they grew in the most natural manner out of the efforts to obviate the three principal diffi- culties in the way of the conversion of the heathen resulting from the prevailing eiicomienda system, namely: the oppression of the natives by force, the consequent aversion to the religion of the oppressors, and the bad example of the colonists. The new watch- word was: liberty for the Indians, emancipation from the serviiium personale, and the gathering and isolat- ing of the natives won over by the conquista espiritual in separate mission colonies or "reductions" managed independently by the missionaries. The plan pro- voked a storm of animosity against the Jesuits among the colonists, which led to repeated expulsions of the members of the order from their colonies. Even a part of the clergy, looking on the encomienda system as a righteous institution, and who themselves lived upon its fruits, opposed the Jesuits. [This opposition is quite apparent in Civezza's treatise, which, how- ever, can lay but Httle claim to being historically exact (loc. cit., 135 sqq.)]. The Jesuits, however, had a powerful ally in Philip III of Spain, who very ener- getically espoused the cause of the oppressed Indians, and who not only sanctioned the plans of the Jesuits, but furthered them very effectively by a number of royal decrees and appropriations from the public treasury, and placed them on a firm legal basis. The Cedula Real (Royal Ordinance) of IS Dec, 1606, given at Valladolid, commanded the governor, Her- nandarias de Saavedra, that, "even if he could con- quer the Indians on the Parani by force of arms he must not do so, but must gain them over solely through the sermons and instructions of the religious who had been sent for that purpose. "

The Cedula Real of 30 Jan., 1607 provided that the Indians who were converted and became Christiana could not be made serfs, and should be exempt from taxation for a period of ten years. The so-called Cedula magna of 6 March, 1609, declared briefly that "the Indian should be as free as the Spaniard" (Monner-Sans, op. cit., 22 sq.). With these royal decrees (which were followed by a long list of others) as a basis, the Jesuits began, in ex-plicit understanding with the highest ecclesiastical and civil authorities, who had been commanded by the Government to ren- der efficient aid, to found Reductions, first of all, in the distant north-eastern Province of Guayra (ap- proximately the present Brazilian Province of Parand), where, in 1609, the Loreto Reduction was founded on the Rio Parandpanema, which was fol- lowed in 1611 by the Reduction S. Ignacio Miri, and between then and 1630 by eleven others, altogether numbering about 10,000 Christians. The Indiana hastened in entire bands to these places of refuge, where they found protection and safety from the robbers who harassed them. All ecclesiastical and civil decrees notwithstanding, the traffic in slaves had experienced an astounding development among the mixed population of the captaincies of Sao Vicente and Santo Amaro (in the present Province of Sao Paulo, Brazil) composed of adventurers and free- booters from all nations. Well-organized troops of man-hunters, the so-called Mamelucos, had in a short time depopulated the plateau of Sao Paulo, and from 1618 onwards threatened also the Reductions, to which the startled Indians hastened from all sides.