Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/731

Rh the payment of tithes; they quarrelled with the Franciscan vice-comisario so that the civil authorities had to interfere, and they bore themselves haughtily toward prelates and authorities.

While female superiors and their chapters thus contended for jurisdiction, the nuns and novices under their charge were rigidly protected against the contamination of the world, encouraged in the suppression of worldly inclinations by uncompromising codes, and relentlessly punished in case of transgression. Having renounced the devil and all his works, and the pleasures and innocent pastimes of life, they fasted, and prayed, and worked, having all things in common, even to their clothing, and laboring for their reward in heaven.

Although the friars as a body were not men of such sanctity as their calling required, it was by their labors that the gospel was carried into remote and ever more remote regions. Whenever it was required to bring a savage tribe into the fold, it was the regular and not the secular orders that braved the dangers, endured the hardships, and performed the preliminary work. The missions undertaken by them extended to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and fardistant California; and from the banks of the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean. But before they reached those regions the spiritual conquest of a vast territory had to be undertaken, and during the seventeenth century numerous missions were established in various outlying localities. The importance of these