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INTRODUCTION

The "Directorio para Confesores" as a Religious Document

Stafford Poole

The 1585 "Directorio para confesores" of the Third Mexican Provincial Council is a source without equal for the religious, social, and economic history of New Spain. It contains a summary of attitudes and details about the practicalities of sixteenth-century life in the provinces that are not easily found elsewhere, with the added value of combining all these in one place. The document offers insight into the Catholic Church's moral judgments on many aspects of life as lived in the colony. Furthermore, as an important, if frustrated, attempt to help the oppressed indigenous peoples of New Spain, the Directorio is one of the most important documents of the early colonial period.

Between 1571 and 1585 the Catholic Reformation, or Counter-Reformation — the response of the Roman Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation — arrived in New Spain with full force. The Council of Trent, which clarified the church's teachings in response to Protestantism, the doctrines of which it condemned, had closed in 1563 after eighteen years of sporadic meetings. Two years later the Second Mexican Provincial Council had met to declare its acceptance of the Tridentine reforms (the decrees put forth by the Council of Trent). These decrees covered topics ranging from the sacraments to salvation and interpretation of scripture. The provincial council was unable, however, to do much beyond stating its acceptance of the reforms; it was not until 1571 that the Catholic Reformation's real impact began to be felt in New Spain. The Spanish crown, which had quickly accepted the decrees of Trent, found that the overall goals of the Catholic Reformation paralleled its own policies, and so it lent its active support. At the same time the church was undertaking reform, the crown inaugurated its own reform in the civil arena of colonial life.

The guiding force behind these civil and religious reform movements was Juan de Ovando (1515–75). A relatively unknown figure in Spanish history, Ovando was a dedicated agent of governmental efficiency and reform. A devout regalist, he was also a cleric with a strong sense of Tridentine and reformist zeal. He began to emerge as a force in governmental circles around 1567 to 1568, and from that time until his premature death in 1575 he worked to implement a grand design of ecclesiastical and governmental reorganization in Spain's New World possessions, particularly during his presidency of the Council of the Indies (1571–75).

So it was that, in the years between 1571 and 1575, the Inquisition was established in New Spain, the Jesuits arrived to begin their educational work there, the "Ordenanza del patronazgo real" (a document very much in the spirit of the Catholic Reformation) was issued, the alcabala or general sales tax was introduced, there were renewed efforts to curb the independence of the religious orders, and Pedro Moya de Contreras became the archbishop of Mexico, the first diocesan priest to hold that office. In subsequent years the reform efforts would be continued by the work of the Third Provincial Council of Lima (1582) and the Third Mexican Provincial Council (1585).

The Council of Trent had decreed the holding of local councils throughout the universal church. As a means of spreading its reforms, the Spanish dominions, where the precedent for such councils was strong, followed suit with a rapidity that was unusual in the sixteenth century. In New Spain there were four councils in the colonial period, but the third, the Third Mexican Provincial Council of 1585, was the most important. This council brought the Catholic Reformation to New Spain and restructured the church there along Tridentine lines. The decrees of the third council remained the law of the church for most of Mexico until 1896 and all of Guatemala and the Philippines until 1918. These reforms' impact on Mexican life and thought has not yet been adequately studied.

One way in which the bishops of the third council sought to influence the religious life of the people of New Spain was through the confessional. On October 16, 1585, the bishops and their secretary, Juan de Salcedo, put their signatures to the "Directorio para confesores," a document that they hoped would revitalize the religious lives of their flocks and extirpate the most glaring abuses, especially those connected with poor treatment of the native peoples. The Directorio was more than just a confessional manual; it was a compendium of moral and sacramental theology, canon law, and pastoral practice.

The development of the sacrament of penance, or confession, was a long and complex affair. Directories offering guidance for confessors have a long history. In the later Middle Ages, especially after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which mandated confession once a year for those in serious sin, there was an increased emphasis on personal rather than public penance. The sacrament of penance by the time of the thirteenth century thus took the shape of laypersons privately confessing their sins to priests. From this there arose the Summae confessariorum and Summae de casibus, handbooks created to guide confessors through the new method of confession. These handbooks usually explained canon law and offered solutions to various cases of conscience. Today these summae provide fascinating glimpses into the social history of their times; the cases of conscience explored in the handbooks dramatize the problems and perplexities that arose from ordinary life. These manuals also reflect the moral trends and values of their age: "Sixteenth-century Spanish authors catalogued the sins according to the Decalogue [the Ten Commandments], the seven deadly sins, the five senses, the fourteen works of mercy, and the seven sacraments." These manuals reached a high degree of popularity in sixteenth-century Spain.

With the Council of Trent and the Catholic Reformation, there was a distinct shift of emphasis in moral theology and confessional practice. One reason for this was that the council had encouraged frequent participation in Holy Communion, which often required a preparatory confession. In the sixteenth century it was not assumed that every priest was automatically capable of being a confessor. The office was restricted to those of proven knowledge and virtue. However, with the renewed emphasis on confession that came with the Catholic Reformation, questions of moral theology were directed more and more toward the confessional. In the later Middle Ages the model of confession as a tribunal, in which the confessor was the judge and the penitent was the accused, or self-accused, became more common. The Council of Trent, which dealt with the matter of sacramental confession at great length in session 14, chapters 1–10, wholeheartedly embraced this concept. The act of personal confession became increasingly a matter of law. As one scholar pointed out, "It was typical that morals were not dealt with in the light of the Sermon on the Mount but that the Decalogue was expounded first, then the sacraments, the latter almost exclusively from the point of view of a new set of duties." Moralists tended to emphasize and analyze the external act of sin more than the dispositions of the sinner. Hence, as Bernard Häring has said, "Questions of static, legal norms inevitably came to the fore." It was also inevitable that moral theology should become strongly involved with civil law and that one of the goals of the newly founded seminary system was to train good confessors.

The Jesuits played a major role in these developments. They embodied the spirit of Trent, and under their influence moral theology was directed more and more toward confessional practice. The confessional, together with the parish mission, became one of the key means for securing a general improvement of morals and religious life. In the Jesuit system the first rank was occupied by the priest who had the ministry of confessions. Prior to this time confession was limited to certain set times of the year or special occasions: Lent, marriage, and grave illness. These in turn created a need for practical solutions or cases of conscience. The chief concern was what the penitent should confess and how the moral questions should be decided by the confessor. So true was this that in the later sixteenth century the term casos de conciencia became synonymous with moral theology. The casos, or casuistry, were a means of teaching the confessor how to apply general moral principles to concrete human circumstances: "The basic impulse behind casuistry was the desire to clarify complicated moral issues, to sort out claims of seemingly conflicting moral obligations, and to bring moral absolutes down from the high heavens of abstraction to the more lowly human reality of 'times, places, and circumstances.'" In practice, however, casuistry could also degenerate into a glib way of providing pat answers to difficult problems.

The need for training in confessional practice led to the updating of the concept of the Summae confessariorum and their adaptation to the newer practices. The first updated handbook on confessional practice was probably the Jesuit Juan Alfonso de Polanco's Directorium Breve published at Louvain in 1554 and reprinted at Liège in 1591. Archbishop Moya de Contreras had close relations with the Jesuits, whom he greatly admired and whom he tried to involve deeply in the religious life of his archdiocese. He had studied theology under one of them, Pedro de Ortigosa, and had made the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius.

When Moya de Contreras became archbishop of Mexico in 1574 and began discreetly and diplomatically to reform his clergy, one of the first steps he took was to have regular classes in casos de conciencia held in his palace. The instructor was Ortigosa, who had also been Moya's theology tutor. Moya, who had studied canon law, not theology, at Salamanca, attended these lectures. It was only natural that the Jesuit and Counter Reformation approaches to confessional practice should become predominant during the years from 1571 to 1585.

The Directorio reflects the newer approach to confessional practice. Little is known about how it was composed or who did the actual writing. It seems probable that the Jesuits Juan de la Plaza and Pedro de Ortigosa and the diocesan priest Juan de Salcedo (secretary of the council) played major roles. Ortigosa and Salcedo were responsible for the translation from the original Spanish to Latin. It is clear from the letter written by the bishops to Philip II (October 16, 1585) that they hoped that it would have an effect, especially against local opposition, that the conciliar decrees would not. "For ecclesiastical jurisdiction is so downtrodden in this realm that we have had to turn to the mighty hand of the king ... and to remit these matters to the Directorio that this Holy Synod has ordered published." The bishops knew well that in the regalistic atmosphere of sixteenth-century New Spain (a regalism that most of them shared), many of their pronouncements would be ignored or challenged. Already there had been serious and desperate efforts to suppress the work of the council. It was the forlorn hope of the bishops that through the confessional they would be able to reach the consciences of the Spaniards, especially in regard to the question of justice for the Indians. The Directorio was to be the supreme means of implementing the Third Mexican Council.

The original, Spanish autograph manuscript of the Directorio has not survived. There are, however, five existing copies, four in Spanish and one in Latin. In all of them the system of marginal notes citing sources and references was added after the close of the council. The same is also true of the section taken from the revision of the Laws of Toro (1505), which are given in fragmentary form in an appendix. This revision was included long after the close of the council (1766). At that time an authentic copy was in the library of the Colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo in Puebla de los Angeles, New Spain.

The first copy, which consists of 189 folios, is in the archives of the archdiocese of Mexico. According to Carrillo Cáceres, this version, which still existed in the nineteenth century, is now lost, though it is preserved in a microfilm copy. The heading reads "Directorio del Santo Concilio Prov.al Mexicano celebrado este año de 1585." The final folio carries the names but not the signatures of the bishops of the council and their secretary, Juan de Salcedo. The hand is of the same scribe throughout, although from folio 29 onward it becomes more florid. There are numerous corrections and additions, some of them in a different hand, increasing in number toward the end of the manuscript. There are definite signs that the manuscript was written hurriedly and with a certain carelessness. Most of these corrections are of simple scribal errors, but others, such as that on folio 6v, are substantial alterations of the text, even to the point of totally changing answers to questions. Carrillo Cáceres is of the opinion that attempts were made to update the language of the Directorio from that of the sixteenth century to that of the eighteenth century.

The conclusion seems inescapable that this is not the original manuscript of the Directorio. The hand appears to be that of the early seventeenth century rather than of the period of the Third Council. The signatures of the bishops have been written by the scribe, not the bishops themselves. The reference to the "new recopilación" (i.e., the 1767 Laws of Toro) in the last part and some of the corrections point to additions made to the original at a later date. One can hazard a guess that the original was recopied with expansions and corrections around the year 1622 in preparation either for printing or for a proposed fourth council (which was not held until the following century).

The second copy is in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, manuscript 7196, consisting of 327 folios, dated at Madrid, November 23, 1599. The text is essentially the same as that of Mexico, though without the marginal citations of authorities. Martínez Ferrer believes that it may have been a copy brought to Spain in 1586 by Archbishop Moya de Contreras when he returned to seek royal and papal approbation of the Mexican Council. It is also possible that it was sent to Spain or copied there in anticipation of publication. This manuscript is especially valuable since it is the only copy of the original of the Directorio.

A third manuscript is in the archive of the metropolitan cathedral of Burgo de Osma, Spain. It seems likely that it was brought there, together with other papers from the archdiocesan archive of Mexico, by Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, bishop of Puebla from 1639 to 1655, and later bishop of Burgo de Osma. It seems to be a draft or at least an incomplete copy. It is far shorter than the Mexican manuscript, and some pages have been left blank after the title page.

There is a fourth copy in the public library of Toledo, Spain, dated 1766, which is identical to that in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid.

The Latin translation is now in the archive of the Congregation of the Clergy, which holds materials that were formerly in the archive of the Congregation of the Council.

In any attempt to arrive at an authentic text of the Directorio, only three of the manuscripts mentioned are of value: those in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, the capitular archive of Mexico, and Biblioteca Pública of Toledo (now known as the Biblioteca Pública Castilla–La Mancha). The latter manuscript has been published by the Colegio de Michoacán. It should be noted that all the versions share some common characteristics. They are verbose, repetitious, and not well organized. For example, the sections on states of life and various forms of contracts interfere with the considerations of the qualities of a good confessor. Some copies are rather crude, and it seems clear that the various scribes were ignorant of Latin.

In dealing with those near death, the Directorio insists on the drawing up of wills. This is emphasized enough to cause some wonderment. Apparently it was seen as a moral as well as legal obligation. Similarly, among the good works recommended is that of visiting prisoners, "to release from jails the poor who are in them because of debts and to provide food for those who are prisoners and have no way of providing for themselves."

The Directorio reflects a patriarchal and highly stratified society. Every person had his or her station from birth and could not expect to rise above it. The principal outlets for men were the clergy and law; the letrados came from different social classes and could rise to positions of importance in government. For women, on the other hand, the only choices were marriage or the convent. The portrait of women in the Directorio is relatively brief and condescending. They are pictured as weak creatures, given to superstition, and a source of temptation to men.

(Continues…)

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