Alonso de Montúfar
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Alonso de Montúfar y Bravo de Lagunas,
Early life
Montúfar was born in 1489 in Loja, Granada, in the region of Andalusia, just after the reconquest of the town from the Muslims. Following the chronicler Gil González Dávila, some authors give the year 1498 as Montúfar's year of birth, however, González Dávila contradicts himself, stating that Montúfar was 80 years old when he—erroneously—stated that the archbishop had died in 1569. Apart from this, there is another interesting note concerning Montúfar's date of birth; when his good friend and assistant, Friar Bartolomé de Ledesma, O.P., in a eulogy of the archbishop, writes that Montúfar had accepted the archbishopric in 1551, though he was over sixty years old. This note, together with the other evidence, indicates that Montúfar was born as early as 1489 or at least around that date.
Dominican friar
Montúfar entered the
In 1524 Montúfar returned to his own college, Santa Cruz la Real, in Granada after seven years in Seville, and continued his education. In 1530, the
Coming back to Spain in 1538, Montúfar was named prior of Santo Domingo el Real in Almería and from 1541 he was prior for two years in Santo Domingo in Murcia. By 1546, however, he was back in his old monastery in Granada, where he was appointed prior.
Apart from the appointments within the Dominican Order, Montúfar served for a long time as a theological consultant of the tribunals of the Inquisition in Granada, Murcia, Toledo and Seville.
Archbishop of Mexico
After the death of the first
The Church in the Philippines
In the mid-1560s, Montúfar sent a
Provincial Councils
After his arrival, Montúfar saw the convening of a
In 1546, the
The First Provincial Council of Mexico, 1555
On June 29, 1555, on the
The final decrees of the first Mexican Council consist of 93 chapters. Most of these chapters dealt with instruction in
The Second Provincial Council of Mexico, 1565
The second Mexican Council was inaugurated on August 15, 1565, the
The acts of the second Council consist of 28 chapters, most of them clarifications on the decrees of the first Council. In a concluding note, the bishops stated that they wished to reaffirm the decisions of the first Council of Mexico and that the new Council should be seen as a complement of and not as a substitute for it.
Mission and Church Policy
In letters written shortly after his arrival in Mexico, Montúfar presented a very gloomy picture of the state of the Church in
Even if Montúfar sometimes admitted that the
According to the Archbishop, these doctrinas should be placed under the jurisdiction of the bishop, establishing legally binding links between the bishop and the clerics. To administer sacraments in a given location, all priests involved in the Indian ministry would need a license. In this way, Montúfar would be able to replace friars with secular clerics. According to Montúfar, the Indians learned the doctrine of the church as if they were parrots, without understanding its contents. With such a deficient knowledge of the basis of the Christian doctrine and infrequent contact with the sacraments of the Church, Montúfar doubted whether many of the Indians souls would be saved.
Montúfar thought that the friars occupied areas of the
According to Montúfar, this lack of priests could not be solved unless the Indians contributed to the economy of the diocesan Church through the payment of general
On their part the friars also argued that they were entitled to build and remove churches and friaries without license from the Archbishop, as they were beyond his jurisdiction. They wanted "straw-bishops" with little more than honorary powers, who could ordain the priests necessary for the ministry and bless ornaments and churches. Thus, the friars did not accept the appointment of secular clerics by the bishop in areas they already administered. In general, the friars doubted the zeal and aptitude of the secular clerics and thought that the clerics were either too greedy or too uneducated to be entrusted with the sensitive Indian ministry.
If the Archbishop did manage to introduce his ideal view of the church, the mendicants thought that there was no future for the church in New Spain. The friars particularly opposed the introduction of separate Indian tithes, as that would have devastating effects on the already poor and tax-burdened Indians. If the Indians were forced to pay tithes, the friars thought that they would despise the Church and its ministers and think that they were driven by greed and not by love for their souls. In addition, the Indians were already contributing to the subsistence of the clergy through the payment of tribute to the Crown or an encomendero. The introduction of secular clerics would also be very expensive, since the clerics often had to support large numbers of relatives. Apart from this, the friars argued that the imposition of
Montúfar and the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe
One of the first sources of the
According to this document a cult of the
The conflict between the Archbishop and the Franciscan Minister Provincial on the cult at Tepeyac began in early September 1556. On Sunday September 6, Montúfar preached in the cathedral about a text from the
The following Tuesday, September 8, on the feast day of the Nativity of Mary, the Franciscan Minister Provincial, Francisco de Bustamante, preached on the Virgin in the Chapel of San José de los Naturales, commonly called the Indians' chapel, the original shrine built to honor the Virgin. By the end of his sermon, the Provincial had dealt with the new cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac and some of the witnesses noted that the Provincial then had become very angry and that his face turned red. In opposition to the Archbishop, he affirmed that the Indians were very much devoted to the Virgin. In fact, their devotion was so great, that they thought that the Virgin was a goddess, instead of the Mother of God. Bustamante said that Archbishop Montúfar was totally mistaken in approving the cult, which would have devastating effects on the indigenous population. The friar asserted that the position of the Archbishop threatened to uproot the fragile Christianity of the indigenous population.
Bustamante also thought that the alleged thaumaturgic effect of the picture was a hoax and questioned how a picture "painted yesterday by an Indian could perform miracles." Only one of the witnesses, Alonso Sánchez de Cisneros, stated that he knew the name of this indigenous artist: Marcos. Though nothing more than his Christian name was rendered, it has often been assumed that this Marcos was an indigenous painter called Marcos de Aquino, who had been trained by the Franciscans in Tlatelolco. According to the testimony of Juan de Salazar, Bustamante continued, stating that he:
did not know what effect the said devotion had, because it would contradict what he and other members of religious orders with much sweat had been preaching to the natives of this country. Because it would be to convince them that this image of Our Lady of Guadalupe performed miracles and if some lame, blind or crippled Indians went there with the intention [to get cured] and they turned back without being cured, or getting even worse because of the walk, they would make jokes about it/her [the cult/the Virgin] and it would thus be better to take away this devotion, because of the scandal of the natives.[3]
The Provincial urged that the purported miracles be thoroughly investigated before they were made public. If the miracles were found to be groundless, Bustamante thought that the inventor ought to be severely punished. According to the Archbishop's witnesses, Bustamante's harsh criticism of the popular devotion had caused "scandal and murmuring" among the listeners and other people. One of the witnesses even stated that he had become so indignant by the Provincial's words that he had left the church during the sermon.
At least from the mid-1550s onwards, the ermita of the Virgin of Guadalupe at Tepeyac became an important site for pilgrimages. Both Spanish colonists and Indians from the city of Mexico and its environs went there to pay devotion to Our Lady, to do penitence and to be cured from illnesses that afflicted them. Just as in the case of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura, the Virgin of Tepeyac was celebrated specifically on the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady in September. At that time, the Archbishop and the cathedral chapter took part in a solemn procession to Tepeyac. This procession is a clear testimony of the importance of the cult towards the end of Montúfar's archiepiscopacy.
Montúfar's last years and death
From the latter part of the year 1570, the Archbishop, aged 81, hardly left his bed, due to severe illness. Being unable to fulfil any work, he appointed his longtime friend and assistant, Ledesma, as the
While Bishop, Montúfar was the principal consecrator of Pedro de Ayala, Bishop of Guadalajara (1562); Bernardo de Albuquerque, Bishop of Antequera, Oaxaca (1562); and Jerónimo de Corella, Bishop of Comayagua (1563).[4]
Sources
- Magnus Lundberg, Unification and Conflict: The Church Politics of Alonso de Montúfar OP, Archbishop of Mexico, 1554-1572. Uppsala: Swedish Institute of Mission Research 2002. [See also fulltext version online [2]
References
- ^ "History: The Church before it became a Cathedral". Manila Metropolitan Cathedral-Basilica. Retrieved 2 December 2012.
- ^ The text of this document [1] Archived 2008-08-28 at the Wayback Machine (in Spanish)
- ^ Información 1891:12
- ^ Catholic Hierarchy: "Archbishop Alfonso de Montufar, O.P." retrieved January 18, 2016