Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/709

Rh upon to accept, and took possession in 1562. His efforts to secure the prerogatives of his office, hitherto enjoyed to a great extent by friars, caused a rupture, and the provincial, Diego de Landa, departed in hot haste to lay his complaints before the court. The result was unfavorable to Toral, who, after vainly seeking to resign, retired to the convent at Mexico, where he died in April 1571.

The prelacy was then conferred on Landa, partly because of his influential connection, and partly because of his long and zealous services in Yucatan. He came out in 1573, and his despotic and meddlesome disposition soon led him into fresh complications with the civil authorities, his Franciscan co-laborers being on the other hand allowed a liberty that degenerated into abuse. His rule was short, however, for he died suddenly in April 1579, leaving a high reputation for benevolence and piety among his contemporaries, which to us appears ineffaceably stained by an imprudent severity toward idolaters, and by his reckless destruction of aboriginal documents and relics. He was the Zumárraga of the peninsula. His successor, Gregorio Montalvo, bishop elect of Nicaragua, was a Dominican, which in itself augured well for needed reforms; but the Franciscans hampered him on every side, as might be expected from the hostility prevailing between the two orders. In 1587 he was promoted to the see of Cuzco, where he died six years later. The Franciscan Juan Izquierdo