The church functioned in America, as in Spain, it had a hierarchy that attended to its episcopal and religious component . The diocesan hierarchy, bishops and archbishops, was appointed according to the procedures regulated by the Board of Trustees. In this way, the Council of the Indies presented the king with a list of candidates and the monarch selected one, who was presented to the Pope for his appointment and the Supreme Pontiff, in a symbolic measure, granted him the position on a personal and lifetime basis.
ExpansionoftheclergyinAmerica
The ecclesiastical dioceses began to be established in America from 1508, when it was decided to create the bishoprics of Santo Domingo and Concepción, in Hispaniola and San Juan de Puerto Rico. Most of the 42 bishoprics created in America during the colonial period it was parallel to the conquest. Indeed, during the first half of the 16th century, 22 bishoprics were founded, 52%, while in the second half only 9 were created, 21%, and the pace slowed down in the following centuries:5 in the 17th century and 6 in the eighteenth century. This means that in the sixteenth century the American diocesan scheme had practically been completed. Initially, all the dioceses were integrated into the metropolitan province of Seville, but soon it was decided to separate the American Church to avoid the control of Rome. The problems posed by the distance and the time required to solve any question made evident, in the 16th century, the need to establish archbishoprics. Thus, in 1504, the archdiocese of Yaguata was created. , then Santo Domingo, which controlled the Caribbean and the coast of Tierra Firme, and on which the suffragan dioceses of Magua and Baynúa depended. Subsequently, new archiepiscopal and episcopal seats were created in centers of political importance, such as Mexico, whose jurisdiction ranged from Guatemala to California; or Lima from Nicaragua to Cuzco.
As the process of conquest and colonization advanced, the previous schemes became obsolete and soon the limits of the archbishopric of Lima were extended to include Chile and Upper Peru and the archbishopric of Santa Fe de Bogotá was created, which controlled the territory. between Nicaragua and Quito.
At the end of the 16th century there were four archdioceses (Santo Domingo, México, Santa Fe de Bogotá, and Lima) with 26 bishoprics. The bishoprics of Santiago de Cuba, San Juan de Puerto Rico and Coro depended on Santo Domingo; from Mexico, Guadalajara, Valladolid, Puebla, Antioquia, Chiapas, Mérida, Verapaz, Comayagua, Guatemala and León; from Santa Fe de Bogotá, Cartagena and Popayan; and from Lima, Panama, Quito, Trujillo, Cuzco, Arequipa, La Plata, Asunción, Santiago del Estero, Santiago de Chile and La Imperial. In the seventeenth century there were some changes:La Plata became an archbishopric and came to control the bishoprics of La Paz, Mizque, Córdoba and Buenos Aires. The offices of Durango, subordinate to Mexico, were also created; that of Caracas, instead of Coro and dependent on Santo Domingo; that of Santa Marta, from Santa Fe de Bogotá; and Huamanga, from Lima.
Organization in the clergy in America
In the first decades of the 16th century, the scarcity of representatives of the secular clergy to direct the parishes and doctrines made it necessary to resort quite frequently to members of religious orders. This caused frequent conflicts of authority:to whom did the religious who worked as parish priests or doctrineros owe obedience, to the bishops or to their hierarchical superiors, basically the provincials of the orders? That is why it can be affirmed that the secular clergy answered directly to the king, who was the one who had appointed him, while the regulars had their commitments with the priors of each order. The shortage of religious personnel was not only felt at the lower levels of the hierarchy, but also at the highest, to the point that 142 of the 214 bishops appointed in the 16th century belonged to some order. There were also jurisdictional conflicts between bishops and provincials on the one hand, and lay authorities on the other. The latter, in use of the patronage rights ceded by the monarch, believed they were justified in interfering in the work of the ecclesiastical authorities.
Jurisdictional, obedience, competence, administrative or doctrinal problems were constant. To try to solve them, the diocesan councils were created. , which functioned as consultative and advisory bodies for the bishops. Their size depended on the importance of the diocese to which they were attached, but their members tended to represent conflicting interests, which often made it difficult to make decisions or reach consensual agreements. Above we find the diocesan synods and councils, more focused on issues (such as the evangelization of the natives), disciplinary or pastoral. The provincial councils (meeting of the bishops of an archdiocese presided over by the archbishop) began to be held to comply with the provisions established in the Council of Trent . Initially it was carried out by the archbishoprics of Mexico and Lima, although there were some in other minor dioceses. Its main objective was to seek the evangelization of the Indians and attend to local works. As the initial provisions established that the councils should meet every three years, Philip II asked the Vatican, given the enormous distances and communication difficulties in the colonies, that in America the term be extended to five years. Later, this period would be extended to seven (1584) and twelve years (1610). However, the most common was that the deadlines were not met, as happened in Mexico, where Archbishop Montúfar convened the first two, held in 1555 and 1565. Between 1551 and 1629, 11 provincial councils were held, while in the following century and a half none were performed. Synods, a bishop's meeting with the clergy of his diocese, dealt with the disciplinary or pastoral matters of the bishopric.
Three different types of ecclesiastical establishments were created in the dioceses:parishes, doctrines and missions , although the latter did not report directly to the bishops. Parishes they were preferably established in cities with a significant white population and a parish priest used to be placed at their head, who was replaced by a member of the regular clergy when there were no representatives of the secular clergy to fill the vacancies. The doctrines, like the encomiendas, were rural parishes constituted in the territories where the sedentary indigenous groups were found and their heads used to be in the most important settlement of a region. It was common to resort to the authority of the cacique so that the indigenous communities would lend their collaboration in the construction of the church and the support of the priest, who was known by the name of doctrinero. Doctrines and encomiendas used to be related to each other, since every encomienda had to have its doctrine to ensure the evangelization of the indigenous people in charge of an encomendero. As the encomenderos did not bother to religiously instruct the Indians nor were they usually trained to do so, they had to hire the priests and pay their salaries with the income from the taxes paid by the community. As in the parishes, the doctrineros, especially during the period of the conquest, used to be regular, since the religious orders generally accepted that their members be linked as doctrineros to the encomiendas. The missions used to be a minority and peripheral element in the colonial world and were located in regions not directly controlled by the colonial authorities where indigenous rebellions were frequent, endangering the physical integrity of the missionaries.
Evangelization of the clergy in America
The shortage of priests in parishes and doctrines led to promoting indigenous vocations from an early date, although it was a difficult goal to achieve. It was thought that the Indian priests, especially if they belonged to the indigenous nobility, could have a better impact on their fellow citizens, especially if they spoke their own language and managed their own codes. The creation of the Tlatelolco school, close to Mexico, did not meet expectations by recruiting few sons of caciques with a religious vocation. Some rules that had to be observed, such as the vow of chastity, seemed strange to the indigenous students. Faced with this reality, the first Mexican council restricted the access of the Indians to the seminaries. Due to numerous complaints about the functioning of the doctrineros, in the second half of the 16th century it was forbidden to appoint priests who did not know the language of the indigenous people they were going to evangelize to that position. The possibility was even raised that they carry out an exam before taking possession of the position in question. Given the accumulation of protests raised to superiority and the lack of material to deepen the study of languages that often had neither vocabularies nor grammars, the demand was limited to a series of so-called general languages because their use was more widespread among the natives of the different regions. Such was the case of nahuatl, quechua aymara, chibeha and maya . The need to have works for the study of indigenous languages and books in these languages to develop evangelization (grammars, catechisms and confessionals), boosted the presence and development of printing in America. This policy of dissemination and support for indigenous languages was abandoned in the second quarter of the 17th century, when the Crown clearly opted for the use of Spanish to the detriment of local languages.