The fast, the meat and the feast day (Quito, 1668): how the church's universal disciplinary law was bent to the diet and the working day of an Andean parish, and where it was bent the other way
Paul III had freed the Indians of the Indies from most of the obligatory fast. A bishop of Quito tells his parish priests to lean toward dispensing rather than refusing, and that saying a man is an Indian is by itself much alleged for the dispensation - grounding it in a description of the ordinary Lenten diet and working day of his parishioners. The same treatise then authorises the priest to set the whole doctrina to work after Mass on a feast day, building his own lodging.
Why this wins its question: Accounts of the church in Spanish America describe what indigenous parishioners were required to do; almost none describe what they were excused, or on what evidence. This object is the excusing rule as a parish priest received it, from a volume almost never quoted in English: Paul III's reduction of the obligatory fast to the Fridays of Lent, Holy Saturday and the vigil of Christmas; the instruction to lean toward dispensing rather than refusing even where the ground is doubtful; and the remarkable presumption that saying a man is an Indian is by itself much alleged for the dispensation. It carries with it a piece of social description that no statute could give - the Lenten meal of toasted or boiled maize with herbs, bread as good fortune, four gourds of chicha, rising between two lights into the frost half-naked and barefoot, sleeping on the ground under one thin blanket - written by a bishop of Quito to argue that the fast should be lifted. And it refuses the flattering half of the story: the very next session of the same treatise lets the priest set his whole doctrina to work after Mass on a feast day, on his own house as well as the church, with an arithmetic that divides the labour among enough people to make it small.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The question has a session of its own in the manual written for the parish clergy of the Indies. Libro I, tratado VII, sesion III of the Itinerario para parochos de indios asks "Que causas serán bastantes para que el Cura dispense con los Indios, dandoles licencia para no ayunar, y comer carne?", in a treatise on what a parish priest may dispense to his parishioners.
The instruction to the priest is to lean toward granting rather than refusing, on authority. Citing Reginaldo with Navarro and Azor, the session opens by advising "que el Parocho se incline mas a dispensar con piedad, que a negarla con escrupulos", and prints the Latin: "Prælatum non debere in hac parte scrupulosum esse, nec rem in subditi conscientiam rejicere, sed jejunium relaxare petenti, quantumvis causa relaxandi dubia sit." The prelate is not to be scrupulous, nor to throw the matter back on the subject's conscience, and is to relax the fast for the asker even where the ground for relaxing it is doubtful.
That general doctrine is then said to apply more to Indians than to Spaniards, and the reason given is material. "Esta doctrina general tiene mas lugar en los Indios, que en los Españoles, porque su pobreza, su trabajo, desnudez, y hambre es tanta, que con lo que un Indio come en quatro dias, no se atreviera a ayunar ninguno de nosotros un dia, y si ayunara, fuera muy buena mortificacion." A bishop is telling his clergy that what an Indian eats in four days is less than a Spaniard would dare to fast on for one.
A papal concession is cited as the ground of the whole arrangement, and its terms are given. Paul III, "informado de la pobreza, y trabajo de los Indios, les concediò, que no tengan obligacion de ayunar por precepto, sino solo los Viernes de Quaresma, y el Sabado Santo, y la vigilia de Navidad, y que en los dichos dias puedan comer qualesquiera manjares de los que son concedidos a los que toman la Bula de la Santa Cruzada." The obligatory fast is reduced to three occasions, with the dietary latitude of the Cruzada on those. The bull is quoted here without a name or a date and was not seen in a papal register.
From that concession the manual draws a presumption, and it is the sharpest sentence in the session. The priest is to look on them with the same piety "y no escrupulizar mucho en buscar causas evidentes, pues solo en dezir, que es Indio, tiene de su parte para la dispensacion mucho alegado." Being an Indian is not merely a ground that may be pleaded; it is described as already much pleaded, shifting the burden away from the parishioner asking.
Two prior suppositions narrow how often a dispensation is even needed, on the general principle that human precepts do not bind at the cost of life or health. Where the cause is manifest and clear, "como en un enfermo, ò en un sano que no tiene que comer, no es necessaria dispensacion alguna, porque los preceptos humanos no obligan con peligro de la vida, ò de la salud"; and where it is doubted and prudently feared that fasting or abstaining will do grave harm, "tambien pueden ayunar, y comer carne sin dispensacion." Experience is admitted in place of a physician where none is to be had.
The description of the ordinary Lenten diet and working day that follows is the reason the passage is worth reading outside canon law. "Su comida ordinaria es en Quaresma maiz tostado, ò cocido con algunas yervas; el que alcança pan, se tiene por dichoso, y quatro mates de chicha, con que se acabò la fiesta; el trabajo es levantarse entre dos luzes, recogiendo el frio de la escarcha en unos cuerpos medio desnudos, y descalços, y luego reparando rayos de fuego que despide el Sol; el sueño es en el suelo duro, y para el abrigo una, ò dos mantas delgadas, que no tiene poca dicha el que alcança media fraçada vieja."
The conclusion drawn from that description is that the parishioners are already living the penance the law would impose. They "passan una vida muy parecida a los Paulos, y Antonios del Yermo, a los Anacoretas famosos de la vida Eremitica, pues a esta aspereza añadirles sola una comida al dia, quien dudarà, que es debilitarlos mucho"; the priest is therefore to be merciful in dispensing, "atendiendo mucho a los años, y vigor que tienen, en la riqueza, ò pobreza que padecen". A comparison with the desert fathers is being used to argue that a rule of penance should be lifted, not imposed.
The faculty is described as a real relaxation of the law rather than a finding of fact, and is extended down to the priest's deputy. "La dispensacion del Parocho, no es solamente declaracion del impedimento que tiene para no ayunar el dispensado, sino que es relaxacion de la ley con potestad que tiene para ello, concedida tacitamente por el Pontifice, el qual sabiendo, que los Parochos dispensan, no lo contradice, mas antes callando otorga." The preceding session extends the same power to the coadjutor on Juan Sanchez's words, "Quam dispensationem poterit impertiri Parochus, aut ejus vices gerens vulgò (Teniente de Cura) non habenti Bullam" - explicitly for the parishioner who has no Cruzada bull.
Two practical rules complete the session, and both work in the parishioner's favour. Those who eat meat by dispensation are not thereby bound to fast, "porque la abstinencia de la carne es de essencia del ayuno, y assi implica ayunar comiendola"; and a priest still in doubt after weighing the applicant's qualities "podrà para mayor seguridad comutarle el ayuno en otra obra de virtud". A priest who judges in good faith that there is sufficient cause and dispenses "no peca, y es valida la dispensacion".
The very next session bends the same body of law in the opposite direction, and this object prints it beside the first because it is the same priest, the same parish and the same page opening. Sesion IV asks "Si podrà el Cura en dia de fiesta despues de aver oido Missa, ocupar los Indios de la Doctrina en hazer adoues, ò algun quarto de casa, ò cubrir la Iglesia?" The obligation being relaxed here is the parishioners' rest, and the beneficiary is the church and the priest.
The answer is that he may, and it extends past church repairs to the priest's own lodging. Where necessity presses, leaving such works undone "no es pecado hazerles que trabajen despues de aver oido Missa"; and "en quanto a levantar algun quarto para vivienda del Cura, ò desherbar alguna chacara sembrada para la Iglesia, tambien puede hazerlos trabajar despues de aver oido Missa". Three reasons are given: that leaving it to ordinary workmen delays it, that it inconveniences those workmen who then miss their own fields, and a labour-arithmetic argument - when a whole doctrina turns out on a Sunday, the work looks great "pero esso mucho repartido entre tantos, le cabe a muy poco de trabajo a cada uno, y esto no es pecado, antes es licito".
The doctrinal cover for that is the pious-work exception, cited to Machado on a decree of Gregory IX: working on feast days "en provecho de algun pobre, ò otra obra pia, no es pecado." The two sessions read together are the honest shape of this material - a rule of universal church discipline is relaxed for indigenous parishioners where the ground is their poverty and hunger, and relaxed against them where the ground is the fabric of the church and the priest's house. The manual makes both moves in the same register, without noticing any tension; the observation that they point opposite ways is this entry's.
The limits of this entry. It is read from pages 143 to 146 of a commercial Lyon reprint of 1678, located from the volume's own analytic index; page 143 was opened only to fix the session boundary. The running heads in this gathering lag by one session, page 145 reading "Sess. II." while carrying sesion III, whose heading stands on page 144. This is a manual of obligations in conscience: direct evidence of what a bishop of Quito instructed his clergy to hold, and no evidence of how many dispensations were given or refused, or of how often a doctrina was set to work on a Sunday. The concession of Paul III is quoted without a bull name or date and was not seen in a register; the decree of Gregory IX was likewise not seen. The description of diet and labour in claims c7 and c8 is one bishop's, written to support an argument, and is uncorroborated here.