Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/718

698 sale of the real estate of the church, but that all its invested funds, of every kind, should be forwarded to Spain and deposited in a caja de consolidacion de vales reales. The resistance of the proprietors was so strong, however, that between May 1805 and June 1806, the caja de consolidacion had received from the sequestrated estates only 1,200,000 pesos.

Aside from the income obtained from real estate and investments, the revenues of the church were derived from various sources, as the primicias or first fruits, payable to the parish priests, a tax claimed to have existed from the earliest days; fees for masses, marriages, and burials, which yielded largely in most of the dioceses; and last, though by no means least, the tithes. The king of Spain possessed under the bull of Pope Alexander VI. issued in 1501, the exclusive right of collecting the tithes in America, subject to the sole condition of providing for the religious instruction of the natives.