Note 29 — JESUIT MISSIONS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

In each of our villages there is a “Congregation of the Blessed Virgin,” which enjoys many indulgences and favors; its members display great fervor, attend regularly, and perform many exercises of devotion and charity, especially on Saturdays. The women of the congregation sweep the church very early, adorn the images, place roses and other flowers on the altars, and carry about pans of coals with perfumes. The minister recites the litany before the image, and the members of the congregation say the responses; and afterwards he makes an address to them; or a book of devotion, or the rules, or the indulgences, are read aloud; or the list of saints for the month is announced, according to their proper place on the calendar. There are some persons who frequent the sacraments during the year, confessing and receiving communion on the most solemn days of the year, especially on the feast-days of the Virgin, and before a marriage is solemnized; and it is a custom often practiced among the Indians to confess and receive communion on one’s saint’s day. In the afternoon those who have received communion go to the church for a short season of prayer. When the women approach the time of childbirth, they confess and receive communion, and remain in the village. Thus an Indian hardly ever dies without the sacraments, except by some sudden fatal accident; for at the instance of the ministers the people are instructed to summon the father as soon as any one becomes dangerously ill. Many Indians hear mass every day; recite the rosary in concert in their houses, on the streets, and while they are sailing; say the litanies, and sing with most delightful harmony the Salve, the praises of God and of His mother resounding in every direction. They offer to the Church the first-fruits of their products; and carry the images, the shrouds, and other things to bless the seed-sowing. After childbirth, they offer the infants to the Virgin on Saturday, and receive the benediction. They order masses to be said for the souls in purgatory, and present candles and other offerings to the Virgin and the saints. They furnish light at mass with lighted tapers, give food to the poor on Holy Thursday, and make other contributions according to their means. They make pilgrimages to the most notable sanctuaries, and offer their vows there; they read spiritual books, and practice other devotions. When they bring the little angels [i.e., their infants] for burial, they dress and adorn the bodies neatly with birds’ wings, palm-leaves, wreaths, flowers, and lights, even when the parents are very poor; for the rest of the people aid them, so that they may bring the dead with the decency and solemnity which the ritual requires. The burials of adults are attended by all the people, all clothed in mourning from the headman to the constable; and even though the dead person be from some other village, or some wretched unknown creature who died there, the body is escorted by the people of the village and the singers, in very charitable and edifying fashion. Those who are most eminent in all this are the members of the congregation, by whose zeal and pious customs the Christian religion is preserved and promoted in these islands. They are the select of the select, like the soldiers of Gideon; and may be called the religious among the Indians. The functions of Holy Week, the principal feast-days, and the processions are carried out with great solemnity and pomp. In their houses the people erect little altars, which they adorn with various prints and images; on their arms they depict crosses, and almost all wear rosaries about their necks; when the blessed sacrament is exposed, they escort it, and take their turn in assisting in the church with many lights. In the processions of Holy Week there are many bloody flagellations [disciplinas de sangre], and other most severe penances. In Lent there are, on three days, the Miserere and scourging; but this has fallen into disuse, and in various places is little more than a ceremony. In every village there is a musical choir, of both instruments and voices, by means of which the festival and solemn days, and divine worship, are at least decently celebrated; and in some places there are excellent instruments and voices. Moreover, all these singers understand harmony [solfa], a thing which has not its like in all Christendom. Every Saturday and Sunday, prime is sung in the choir. The Lenten stations and services, those for the dead, and others during the year, cause devotion and tender feelings through the skill and good order with which they are conducted. The Indians use holy water in their houses, and show great devotion to the holy cross, which they set up in their houses, on the roads, and in their grain-fields. The adornment of the churches—reredos, images, furnishings of silver, lamps, ornaments—the multitude of lights, and the magnificence of the edifices, are so extraordinary that no one would believe that in this remote corner of the world religion could exist with such splendor, or Christianity be so well established,29 or divine worship conducted with such magnificence. The zeal of the ministers has secured these results, by their activity, piety, and kind treatment of the natives; but no little is accomplished by the sharp spur,30 managed with discretion, qui parcit virgæ, odit filium. The harvest in this field is like that which the parable represents; there is the greatest and the least, just as it is throughout the universe. There is fertile ground and sterile; there are untilled and stony tracts; some land is productive, and some is full of bramble-patches. But what soil is free from darnel and tares?31 Where are lilies found without having nettles near them? In what garden do the roses, magnificent and fragrant, surpass [the other flowers], without the thorns that surround them? He who is always declaiming, in either a gloomy or a careless spirit, against the faith and Christian spirit of the Indians, shows great ignorance of the world, if not levity or malice. If he would but reflect that not many years ago this was a land overgrown with the thorns and brambles of ignorance, unbelief, and barbarism, he would give a thousand thanks to the Lord at the sight of so much fruit obtained for heaven; and still more [thankful would he be] if he cast his glance on Japon, India, and Africa, and on Grecia, Inglaterra, Dinamarca, and other kingdoms where the Christian religion was [once] so flourishing, but which today are an abyss of follies and errors—the cause, alas! being their ignorance or their perverseness.... Whoever will read the Instructions of St. Francis Xavier for the missionaries of India and also this account of their allotted tasks [esta distribución], will plainly see that their labors are the punctual execution of those instructions. What greater praise [than this] can be given them? To this should be added the standing of the ministers. Those who are ministering in the native villages are the men who have been masters of theology, and famous preachers, and officials of the order, and even provincials; and other members who, on account of their abilities, have merited repeated applause. The same is true in the other religious orders; as a result, there is not in all the Indias a field of Christian labor that is better cultivated; and I may add that there is no Christian church in the world that has ministers with higher qualifications, or more who have received academic degrees. And some of them there are who, rejecting the comforts of Europe, remain contented in the poverty here.