User:Kaitlynknoll/sandbox


 * Section addition to Bourbon Reforms **

The Catholic Church

The Catholic Church played a major role in the Bourbon Reforms, specifically in the vice royalties. A vice royalty is basically a territory governed by a viceroy, a ruler exercising authority in a colony on behalf of a sovereign. The Catholic Church was the most widely regarded church among the vice royalties of Spanish America, and the new colonies brought forth an opportunity to spread Catholicism.

The Catholic Church came about as a religious and political entity in the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteen and sixteenth centuries. From here, missionaries who possessed the banner of Christ came to the Americas for a fresh, new environment for Christianity to thrive. There was a clear alliance between the Church and the Crown in Spanish America. Ecclesiastical institutions were allotted some freedom from the Crown. The fuero eclesiástico, or clerical immunity, granted clergy members immunity from the royal courts. According to this fuero, any civil crime or criminal offense will be heard in from of the ecclesiastical instead of the royal or local court. This privilege was then extended to all clerics, nuns, priests, monks, and friars. This fuero extended to the land owned by the individuals and institutions which means the Spanish Crown could not exercise justice physically nor collect taxes.

Missionizing in maroon societies in Spanish America became essential for the nature of politics of African resistance in the Iberian Atlantic world. The Maroons were Africans who escaped slavery in America and then mixed with the indigenous people. In the sixteenth century, missionizing native peoples was seen as a moral conquest. It was used as a tool of pacification among Africans who escaped slavery and made their home in Spanish America. In Ecuador, Santo Domingo, Mexico, and Panama, imprinting and “pacifying” maroon societies was very dependent on the spread of Spanish Catholicism. Pacification is an attempt to create or maintain peace through agreements and diplomacy. Christianization often conflicted with the relationships the maroons created with Catholic clerics and created tensions. Spanish cultural hegemony functioned to imprint religious submission. Maroons, as well as other Africans, rapidly learned that Catholicism was necessary for political legitimation. However, bringing Christianity to light did not interrupt the development of localized practices that observed religious traditions of Africans and indigenous Americans. Maroon communities on the coast of colonial Ecuador learned how Christianization became a tool for Afro-Amerindian rebels seeking legitimation in Spain’s empire and within the African [diasporic]] world. "While an Afro-Christian diasporic identity may have been in its formative stage during the sixteenth century, transfers of knowledge between the old world and the new were readily apparent in European interactions with maroons on the Esmeraldas coast. This case study of the maroons of colonial Ecuador will allow us to see in three acts, or phases, how clerical intervention and the discourse of Christian conversion shaped colonization over time: ultimately yielding a modus vivendi between rebel African slaves and Spanish colonial authorities." (Bryant, O'Toole, Vinson, 2012: 96-97).

The reforms caused many religious tensions as well as social tensions. One of the most major modifications in the Bourbon Reforms was the expulsion of the Jesuits. The Society of Jesus, the members being the Jesuits, had become one of the most powerful organizations in the colonies at the time and had a distinct amount of power until the Bourbon Reforms. In 1767, Charles III of Spain ordered the expulsion of 2,200 Jesuits to be removed from the vice royalties. Of the 2,200 that were exiled, 678 were from Mexico (New Spain) with 75% of the Jesuits from Mexico being Mexican-born. The expulsion of the Jesuits which was frowned upon among many colonists. Many historians believe that the Bourbon Reforms would bring forth self-confidence for American-born Spaniards. The expulsion of the Jesuits confronted the liberal ideology of the nineteenth century and conservative positions of the time. The expulsion represented aspects of liberal ideology as a need to break away from colonial past, progress and civilization as attainable objectives, education as a neutral term of religious instruction, and the seperation of the Catholic Church and state. These factors played a major role in the modernization of Spanish America. Spanish soldiers went to Mexico and rounded up the Jesuits to be exiled to Italy. The Jesuits were then placed on Spanish warships and sent to the Italian port of Civitavecchia. Upon arrival, Pope Clement XIII refused to let the prisoners set foot on papal territory. The warships then went to the island of Corsica, but due to a rebellion on shore, it took a while to let the Jesuits onto the island. Bernardo Tanucci, adviser to Charles III, did not welcome the Jesuits into Naples and the Jesuits were threatened with death if they crossed the border of the papal states back to Naples. Historian Charles Gibson stated that the expulsion of the Jesuits was a "sudden and devastating move" by the Spanish Crown to assert royal control.

Emphasis on the dominant role of the state in ecclesiastical reform sometimes made the church seem defensive and resistant to change and modern ideas. Many nuns of the eighteenth century were resistant and even rebelled to the thought the church and state joining together. Many priests and nuns in the ecclesiastical community were hesitant to joining forces with the state because they feared the state would gain too much power and try to alter the preexisting ideals and beliefs of the Catholic Church. With the formation of Spanish America, the Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown formed an alliance that lasted for centuries both in the Iberian Peninsula and Spanish America.