{
  "id": "pena-montenegro-itinerario-para-parochos-de-indios",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Alonso de la Peña Montenegro, Itinerario para parochos de indios",
  "summary": "The working manual of the parish clergy of Spanish America, written by the bishop of Quito and reprinted commercially in Lyon in 1678. It tells a priest who cannot speak his parishioners' language that he is in mortal sin and holds no valid title; it reprints the determinations of the archbishop of Lima binding conquistadors and their heirs to restore what the conquests took; and it makes bribed judges liable to the Indians for everything a corregidor owed them.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "americas",
    "peru",
    "quito",
    "colonial-institutions",
    "colonial-law",
    "human-rights",
    "language",
    "books",
    "seventeenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "exencion-de-los-indios-del-santo-oficio"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "bayles-y-borracheras-de-los-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "encomienda"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "solorzano-politica-indiana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "new-laws-of-1542"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "school-of-salamanca"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "veracruz-speculum-coniugiorum"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ximenez-historias-del-origen-de-los-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "tercero-catecismo-de-lima-1583"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "concilio-provincial-mexicano-iii-1585"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "acosta-de-procuranda-indorum-salute-1588"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juan-ramirez-obispo-de-guatemala"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "casa-de-las-amparadas-de-lima"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "personas-miserables-in-the-law-of-the-indies"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "constituciones-sinodales-de-guamanga-1672"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "constituciones-sinodales-de-lima-1613-1636"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "interpretes-de-las-audiencias-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "testamentos-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "preguntas-del-cacique-nicaragua"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What is the Itinerario para parochos de indios?",
    "Were Spanish American priests required to learn indigenous languages?",
    "Did Spanish moral theology require conquistadors to make restitution?",
    "What did colonial confessors' manuals say about encomenderos and tribute?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The title page of the copy read here reads \"ITINERARIO PARA PAROCHOS DE INDIOS, EN QUE SE TRATAN LAS MATERIAS mas particulares, tocantes a ellos, para su buena Administracion: COMPUESTO POR EL ILUSTRISSIMO, Y REVERENDISSIMO SEÑOR DOCTOR DON ALONSO DE LA PEÑA MONTENEGRO, OBISPO DEL OBISPADO DE SAN FRANCISCO del Quito, del Consejo de su Magestad, Colegial que fue del Colegio mayor de la Universidad de Santiago\", described as \"NUEVA EDICION PURGADA DE MUCHOS YERROS\" and printed \"EN LEON DE FRANCIA, A COSTA DE JOAN-ANT. HUGUETAN, y Compañia. M.DC.LXXVIII. CON LICENCIA.\" No date for an earlier printing appears anywhere in the front matter opened here, so none is asserted in this object.",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The dedication identifies the author's standing at both ends of the Atlantic. It is addressed to Gaspar de Bracamonte y Guzman, Conde de Peñaranda, \"Presidente de Indias, del Consejo de Estado, y Guerra\", and the author writes that he was received as a colegial of the college commonly called el Viejo de San Bartolome in the year 1632, and now finds himself bishop of the holy church of Quito, whose diocese has its seat under the Council over which the dedicatee presides.",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "That the edition read here was produced in Lyon at the cost of the Huguetan house — a commercial publisher of the Latin book trade, not a Spanish official press — is evidence that a manual written for Andean parish priests had a market in Europe. It is evidence of demand and nothing more: the volume itself says nothing about the size of the printing or where the copies went.",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.7
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The language requirement is stated as a matter of sin and of valid title, not of good practice. A cleric who \"no pone diligencia en saber la lengua suficientemente, ni tiene proposito eficaz de irla deprendiendo con cuydado, no esta en buena conciencia, ni se puede absolver, porque esta en estado de pecado mortal\"; if he applies diligence and cannot learn it through incapacity, he does not sin, but he cannot remain — he is \"obligado a dexar la Doctrina\", because he cannot hold the benefice long on that title, \"ni colacion valida, sino nula\".",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The bishop then names the abuse the rule was written against, and the passage is a rebuke to his own clergy rather than a defence of them. Many, he writes, had been ten and twelve years in doctrinas and were as much strangers as when they came from Spain — \"tan chapetones, como quando vinieron de España, sin lengua, ni cuydado de aprenderla\" — and were drawing the fruits of their benefices \"sin tener derecho a llevarlos, por ser nulo el titulo, y nula la colacion\". The stipend, on his account, was money they had no right to.",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "On the conquests the manual takes a conditional position and attributes it. All conquests made by conquistadors \"sin licencia de su Magestad, y sin que concurran las condiciones puestas en el Prologo de este tratado\" are unjust and subject to restitution, as will be seen in the determinations that follow, \"fechas por el señor Arçobispo de Lima con acuerdo de tantos hombres doctos\". The counterpoint is in the same sentence and should not be read past: the test is conditional, so a conquest satisfying the stated conditions is not condemned by this text.",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The determinations themselves are printed in the manual and are severe. All conquistadors are bound to restore every damage, robbery and death done in the conquests; restitution must be made at once, \"aunque sea en daño de su estado por ser avidos por medio tan ilicito, como es hurto, y rapiña\", and those liable cannot be absolved until they restore. Where the injured cannot be identified or are dead, what is owed is to be given by way of the poor and spent on things \"que sean en beneficio de la Republica de los Indios, que principalmente fueron damnificados\", with the judgement of the bishop of the diocese. The goods of the conquistadors, \"por ser tan injustamente avidos\", admit no other composition than this.",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The obligation was made hereditary and calculable. Sons, heirs and successors of such conquistadors \"estan obligados a restituir todo lo que heredaron de los dichos Conquistadores\", and the text works the arithmetic: if the conquistador owed twenty thousand pesos and the heir received ten thousand, he is bound to restore ten thousand; if he inherited a farm worth five thousand and the estate owed fifty thousand, the heir is not liable for the fifty thousand, on the maxim that the fruit follows the thing, and the estate's yield follows its possessor.",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "A separate session asks in which cases encomenderos are bound to restore to the Indians commended to them, and answers first that they are bound every time they have taken more tribute than the assessment allowed. The manual cites the Politica indiana of Solorzano for a worked case: a deceased encomendero named Hernando de Vega, against whom suit was brought over tribute taken above the tasas; the excess being proved, his children were ordered to pay it, and all their estates were sold to satisfy the judgement.",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The liability is extended to the officials who let the abuse stand. Judges who ought to have made corregidores restore, and who were bribed and passed them as good judges, \"estan obligados a restituir a los Indios todo aquello que los Corregidores devian restituir\". The manual quotes Fray Geronimo Moreno for the language: the name of traitors fits such unjust judges of the assessments fully, since having been chosen for the discharge of the royal conscience they take interest and bribes, approve injustices and conceal wrongs, making themselves the snares \"y redes de Satanas, para tropiezo de los flacos y miserables Indios\". The same page extends the duty to the escribano, to the encomendero and to the assessment of the judge's and the notary's own fees.",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "What this document is, and is not, needs saying. It is a manual of obligations in conscience, addressed to confessors: it is direct evidence of what the Spanish American church told priests, judges, encomenderos and their heirs they were bound to do, and it is not evidence that any of it was done. The single instance of enforcement in the pages read here is reported at second hand from another author's book. The manual is also, throughout, an instrument of government over a subject population, and the linguistic rule it enforces is a rule about making catechesis effective.",
      "sources": [
        "pena-montenegro-itinerario-1678"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "English-language coverage of the moral debate over the conquest stops at the famous set pieces — Las Casas, Vitoria, Valladolid — and treats them as a sixteenth-century argument that ended. The Itinerario is the evidence that the argument was still being handed to working parish priests a century later as a checklist of obligations, and it is almost never quoted in English. This object opens the Lyon 1678 sheets and takes four passages verbatim: the rule making a priest who neglects his parishioners' language guilty of mortal sin and his title null; the bishop's rebuke to clergy who spent twelve years in a doctrina without learning it and drew stipends they had no right to; the determinations of the archbishop of Lima binding conquistadors and their heirs to restitution, with the arithmetic worked out; and the ruling that a bribed judge owes the Indians everything the corregidore owed them. The counterpoint is quoted from the same pages: the test applied to the conquests is conditional, not absolute.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-09",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/pena-montenegro-itinerario-para-parochos-de-indios",
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  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Alonso de la Peña Montenegro, Itinerario para parochos de indios",
    "description": "The working manual of the parish clergy of Spanish America, written by the bishop of Quito and reprinted commercially in Lyon in 1678. It tells a priest who cannot speak his parishioners' language that he is in mortal sin and holds no valid title; it reprints the determinations of the archbishop of Lima binding conquistadors and their heirs to restore what the conquests took; and it makes bribed judges liable to the Indians for everything a corregidor owed them.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/pena-montenegro-itinerario-para-parochos-de-indios",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-09",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Itinerario para parochos de indios, en que se tratan las materias mas particulares, tocantes a ellos, para su buena administracion",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=gbVRAAAAcAAJ&pg=PP7"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Alonso de la Peña Montenegro, Itinerario para parochos de indios"
  }
}