Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/715

Rh self-denial. Hardly less pious and benevolent was

the third bishop, the Dominican Bartolomé de Ledesma, who ruled from 1581 to 1604, and left a distinguished name as a writer and patron of education. When the first bishop took possession the diocese was exceedingly poor, with friars alone for ministers, but toward the close of Ledesma's rule there were forty well supplied parishes in charge of the secular clergy, distributed among several hundred villages and four Spanish towns, the latter being Antequera, now quite a populous place, San Ildefonso, among the Zapotecs, Santiago de Nejapa, and Espiritu Santo, in Goazacoalco.

One of the most favored dioceses was Puebla, which extended over Huexotzinco, Tlascala, Puebla, and Vera Cruz districts, with over a thousand native settlements, about two hundred of them designated as towns, and divided into more than eighty parishes, half in charge of convents, of which nineteen were Franciscan, twelve Dominican, nine Augustinian, and one Carmelite. The native tributaries numbered more than two hundred thousand, not counting Tlascala, whose people paid but a nominal tax. Of the Spanish towns Puebla had about five hundred settlers, and Vera Cruz three hundred, while a considerable