User:Aravoir/Twelve Apostles of Mexico

Areas of Evangelization
The first evangelization began in 1500 on Santo Domingo, where the Franciscan mission was officially established.[1]

The Twelve Apostles of New Spain arrived at Mexico in 1524

Mission Churches (Conventos)
The Franciscan Twelve similarly initiated the sociopolitical tool of the "Mission church", which accordingly benefitted both the Roman Catholic Church and Spanish Crown (often inextricably linked in early Spanish-American relations).[1] This began after Pope Paul III's Sublimis Deus decree in 1537 that native persons were not "savages" and instead human beings with souls and possessing the intellectual capability of understanding - and thus adopting the beliefs of - Christianity; this ended the mass subjection of native populations to enslavement, though not eliminating this practice in entirety.[2][3]

Thus, religious orders sent their piety to New Spain in droves particularly between the years of 1523 to 1580.[4] Among these religious orders were such orders as the Dominicans, the Franciscans, Augustinians, and the Jesuits.[3] These orders were employed to convert the native inhabitants and thus expand the hold of Christianity.[5] To do so, friars built mission churches (conventos in Spanish) in indigenous communities.[3] These churches acted as the home base of the religious militia consisting of these orders' friars, and served to not only empower the Church through acting as bases of conversion, but also facilitated the colonization of New Spain without the use of a standing army.[4]

Historiographical Impact
The Franciscan Twelve arriving in New Spain meant the beginning of a sweeping wave of evangelization that would come to encompass a large swath of indigenous city-states.[6] The Franciscan Twelve also thus galvanized a new era of missionary work.[7] Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, a 16th century historian, remarked of this phenomenon that "...these lands are flooded with friars; but none are greying, all being less than thirty years old. I pray to God that they are capable of serving Him."[8]

Accordingly, this new wave of missionaries further established the Roman Catholic Church as a figurehead within New Spain and indigenous livelihood.[7] Accordingly, the system of patronato real (royal patronage) allowed for the unprecedented privilege of the Spanish Crown in Church affairs in exchange for Spain's funding of missionary ventures abroad.[9] Through this system, the Spanish Crown and Roman Catholic Church grew in tandem economically, geographically, and politically.

Borgia Steck, Rev. Francis (March 1955). "The Three Battalions in the Spiritual Conquest of Mexico". Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. 66: 3–18 – via JSTOR.

Gueno, Michael P. (2010). "Among the Pueblos: The Religious Lives of Franciscan Missionaries, Pueblo Revolutionaries, and the Colony of Nuevo Mexico, 1539-1722". Florida State University Graduate Press: 1–444.

Lockhart, James (1976). "The Franciscan Reply". Letters and People of the Spanish Indies: Sixteenth Century: 218–247 – via Cambridge University Press.

Christensen, Mark. "Missionizing Mexico: Ecclesiastics, Natives, and the Spread of Christianity". A Companion to the Early Modern Catholic Global Missions: 17–40.

Kauffmann, Leisa (2010). "The Indian Church and the Age of the Spirit: Joachimist Millenialism and fray Toribio de Motolinía's Historia de los indios de la Nueva España" (PDF). A Contra Corriente. 7: 119–136.

Fitzgerald, Joshua J. (2012). "Deconstructing Conventual Franciscan Schools: Sixteenth-Century Architecture, Decoration, and Nahua Educational Spaces".