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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Whatever history may record about his personal life, there is no denying that Pope Alexander VI was among the most efficient and far-sighted of the Church’s long list of vicars. Perhaps nowhere is this fact more obvious than in the pontiff’s concern and zeal for the missions. In a decree addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, issued at Rome on May 4, 1493, the pope stated, in part:
We order you in virtue of holy obedience (for as you promise, so we do not doubt you will do, in your noble dedication and royal magnanimity) that you dispatch to the designated mainlands and islands virtuous and God-fearing men endowed with training, experience, and skill, to instruct the natives and inhabitants before mentioned and to imbue them with the same Christian faith and sound morals, using all speed in the premises.
With this and subsequent papal mandates, the Spanish monarchs inaugurated the Christianization and colonization of the New World.
The author gratefully acknowledges the critical observations of the distinguished Jesuit historian, Father Ernest J. Burrus, of Saint Louis University.
1 Alexander VI to Ferdinand and Isabella, Rome, May 4, 1493. Reproduced in Eugene Shiels, W. S. J., King and Church (Chicago, 1961), p. 81.Google Scholar
2 Bolton, Herbert Eugene, “The Black Robes of New Spain,” Catholic Historical Review, XXI (October, 1935), 257.Google Scholar
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8 Mariano Cuevas gives the distinction of an earlier arrival to Marcos Ruiz de Rojas and Melchior Díaz de Alarcón in 1529. Cf. “The Missions of Lower California,” Mid-America, XVI (October, 1933), 73.
9 Dunne, Peter Masten S. J., Black Robes in Lower California (Berkeley, 1952), p. 29.Google Scholar
10 According to the annals, the first Jesuit to visit Baja California was Father Roque de Vega, chaplain for Captain Francisco de Ortega’s twelve man expeditionary force of 1636. However, in his forthcoming volume, Apocryphal Western Americana, Father Ernest J. Burrus states that the third report of Ortega, in which Roque de Vega figures, “is either entirely or in great part a forgery.”
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20 Clinch, Bryan James, “Christian Work in the Barren Peninsula,” Month, XVII (December, 1872), 456.Google Scholar
21 Perhaps the author is referring here to Pedro Porter Casante?
22 Dunne, “Salvatierras Legacy …,” p. 32.
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25 The doctrina consisted of the Sign of the Cross, Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed; Acts of Faith, Hope and Charity; the Confiteor, Ten Commandments, Six Precepts, Seven Sacraments, the Necessary Points of Faith, and the Four Last Things. Neophytes were required to know the doctrina before being baptized.
26 V. g. “Alabado sea el Santísimo Sacramento del Altar! Bendita sea la Limpia y Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora María Santisima sin mancha de pecado original!“
27 Atole was a mush or gruel made from corn flour.
28 Pozole was corn cooked with bits of meat.
29 Father Jacob Baegert, S. J., as quoted in Ursula Schaefer, op. cit., p. 158.
30 The Our Father, for example, offered untold difficulties since the Baja California Indians lacked nine of the words needed to properly express that simple oration.
31 Bolton, “The Black Robes …,” p. 280.
32 Salvatierra had established a foundation at San Juan Londo in March of 1699 on the site of Atondo’s San Isidro but it remained chiefly a visita.
33 Geiger, Maynard J. O. F. M., The Life and Times of Fray Junipero Serra (Washington, 1959), I, 198.Google Scholar
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35 Cf. Dunne, Peter Masten S. J., “Report on Mission Santa Rosalia,” Mid-America, XXXIII (January, 1951), 43-55.Google Scholar
36 Quoted in Dunne, Black Robes …, p. 126.
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38 Cf. Bayle, Constantino S. J., Misión de la Baja California (Madrid, 1946), p. 202.Google Scholar
39 Cf. Bolton, Herbert Eugene, Rim of Christendom (New York, 1960), pp. 97-99Google Scholar. Another influencing factor in the refusal was the privilege of exempt religious to be visited only by the local ordinary, not his delegate.
40 José Echeverría to Marqués de Villapuente, Baja California, February 10, 1730. Quoted in Dunne, “Salvatierras Legacy …,” p. 50.
41 Bolton, “The Black Robes …,” pp. 278–279.
42 Krmpotic, M.D., Life and Works of the Reverend Ferdinand Konscak, S. J. (Boston, 1923), p. 4 Google Scholar. For an account of the incident, cf. Wilbur, Marguerite Eyer’s translation of The Indian Uprising in Lower California, 1734–1737 by Taraval, Sigismundo S. J., (Los Angeles, 1931).Google Scholar
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46 A major plague had broken out in the peninsula in 1708 and carried off half the Indian population.
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