Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/695

Rh regular organization. While he steadily opposed the encroachments of the regular orders, he was not blind to the shortcomings of the secular clergy and the abuses which prevailed in his see. In his administration he ever sought the advice of men prominent for their excellence and sound judgment. In the Franciscan lay brother Pedro de Gante he reposed great confidence, and with open candor acknowledged him as his trustworthy guide, being wont to say that Gante and not himself was the true archbishop of Mexico. Another of his advisers was his old friend and companion, Father Bartolomé de Ledesma. Named assistant in the administration of the archdiocese, Ledesma shared largely in its duties during the last twelve years of Montúfar’s episcopate. In the same year that Montúfar died Pedro de Moya y Contreras had been made coadjutor of the archbishop, with the right of succession.

Toward the close of Montúfar’s rule the tribunal of the inquisition was formally established in New Spain. During the earlier years of the conquest there existed representatives only of the institution, the first of whom was the Franciscan missionary Valencia. When the Dominicans arrived, superiors of their order acted as agents of that court, and still later inquisitors, rightly so called, were officially appointed. By a decree of the inquisition general of Spain, dated the 27th of June 1535, the ecclesiastical court was empowered to exercise jurisdiction and inflict punishment in all cases where heresy was concerned, but it was rarely deemed necessary to display imposing severity. In 1558, however, Robert Tomson, an