Origins of the Penitente Movement

By 1833, bodily penance practiced in lay brotherhoods of Hispano Catholics attracted criticism from the Church in New Mexico and resulted in the pejorative name penitentes.[8] Historically, however, within the traditional framework of Hispanic Catholicism, the penitentes had precedents for their religious practices, including flagellation.

Penitente rites were derived from Catholic services already common in colonial New Mexico. Prayers and rosaries said before altars comprised an important part of Hispano religious observances, and processions of Catholics and penitentes alike were announced by bell, drum, and rifle in Hispano villages. In particular, penitentes used via crucis processions to dramatize the Passion, portrayed in every Catholic church by the fourteen Stations of the Cross. Penitentes also maintained Catholic Lenten practices by holding tenebrae services, the tinieblas rites mentioned above, and by flagellation.

These parallels between Catholic and penitente religious observances caused Edmonson to theorize that "the autonomous movement originated within the Church."[9] Variations, however, between the two religious traditions led Edmonson to discover "an important thread of religious independence and even apostasy in New Mexican history."[10] Edmonson's study of 1950 has established the persistence of penitente activity in Hispano culture.

Three and a half centuries earlier, in 1598, Spanish settlers made a courageous thrust into the inhospitable environment of New Mexico. Through the 17th and 18th centuries, Spanish settlement along the upper Rio Grande was a tenuous thread unraveled from a stronger fabric in Mexico. Aridity and extremes in temperatures marked New Mexico's climate. Arable land was scarce and could be extended back from streams only by careful upkeep of the irrigation ditches. Plateaus rose from 1500 to more than 2500 meters in altitude. Building timbers were hard to obtain without roads or navigable rivers.

Finally, distance itself was a challenge, sometimes insurmountable for the supply caravans from Mexico. Outfitted over a thousand miles to the south of Santa Fe, the Mexican caravans brought presidio and mission supplies, but few goods for the common settler. By the end of the 18th century, Spanish authorities thought of the northern colonies (provincias internas) primarily as missionary fields and military buffer zones.[11]

Cultural traditions and an insecure environment caused Spanish colonists to turn to religion for comfort. Again, however, a supply problem arose. Individual ranchos were too scattered for clerical visits, and even settlements that were grouped for greater security, poblaciones or plazas, became visitas on little more than an annual basis, sharing two dozen Franciscan clergy with missions assigned to Indian pueblos and Spanish villages. Before 1800, a shortage of friars prompted the Bishop in Durango to send secular clergy into the Franciscan enclave of New Mexico. In 1821 the Mexican Revolution formalized secularization with a new constitution. In brief, the traditional religious patterns of the Hispanos were threatened. They needed reinforcement if they were to survive.

By 1850, other conditions in New Mexico endangered the status quo of the Spanish-speaking residents. With the growing dominance of Anglo-Americans in the commercial, military, political, and social matters of Santa Fe, Hispanos recognized the threat of Anglo culture to their own traditional way of life. This cultural challenge turned many Hispanos back in upon themselves for physical and social security and for spiritual comfort. By the second quarter of the 19th century, penitentes were common in Hispano villages such as Abiquiú.[12] The immediate origins of penitentism were clearly present in early 19th-century New Mexico.

Despite this evidence, historians of the Spanish Southwest have suggested geographically and culturally remote sources for the penitentes. Dorothy Woodward has pointed out similarities between New Mexican penitentes and Spanish brotherhoods (cofradías) of laymen.[13] Cofradías were not full church orders like the Franciscan Third Order, but they did conduct Lenten processions with flagellation.

Somewhat nearer in miles but culturally more distant from Hispano penitente experience was mortification practiced by Indians in New Spain. In the 16th century, Spanish chroniclers reported incidents ranging from sanguinary ceremonies of central Mexican tribes to whippings witnessed in the northern provinces of Sonora and New Mexico. While of peripheral interest to this study, these activities of American Indians had no direct bearing on Hispano cultural needs in early 19th-century New Mexico.

It is more significant that Hispanos already knew a lay religious institution that very easily could have served as a model for the penitente brotherhood—the Third Order of St. Francis. Established in 13th-century Italy and carried to Spain by the Gray Friars, the Order is recorded in contemporary histories of New Mexico before 1700. Materials in the archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe also document the presence of the Franciscan Third Order in New Mexico and suggest to me its influence on penitente activity.[14]

In March 1776, Fray Domínguez, an ecclesiastic visitor, recorded Lenten "exercises" of the Third Order under the supervision of the resident priest at Santa Cruz and, two weeks later, in April, Domínguez visited Abiquiú, where he commended the Franciscan friar, Fray Sebastian Angel Fernández, for "feasts of Our Lady, rosary with the father in church. Fridays of Lent, Via Crucis with the father, and later, after dark, discipline attended by those who came voluntarily."[15] Domínguez, however, described the priest as "not at all obedient to rule"[16] when Father Fernández, acting in an independent manner, proceeded to build missions at Picuris and Sandia without authorization. But in 1777, he again praised Fray Fernández for special Via Crucis devotions and "scourging by the resident missionary and some of the faithful."[17] Domínguez thus documented flagellant practices and tinieblas services at Abiquiú and his approval, as an official Church representative, of these activities.

Father Chavez, O.F.M., protests the theory of penitente origins in the Third Order of St. Francis and counters with the idea that "penitentism" was imported directly from Mexico in the early 1800s.[18] I note, however, that the bishops seated in Santa Fe after 1848 recognized the strength of this lay socio-religious movement and tried to deal with it in terms of the Order. At a synod in 1888, Archbishop Salpointe pleaded for penitentes "to return" to the Third Order. Some degree of direct influence of the Third Order on "penitentism" seems fairly certain.