The reduced feast calendar of the Indians, and whether Spaniards could make them work on the days they were not bound to keep
A papal brief cut the Indians' days of obligation to about a dozen. That relief immediately became a labour question - if they need not keep the other feasts, may they be compelled to work them, so the mines yield more? The standard treatise on the government of the Indies records the question as one the author saw disputed many times, reports the answer that they may not be compelled, and states plainly that viceroys and governors were the ones asking.
Why this wins its question: The reduced feast calendar granted to the Indians of the Americas is usually mentioned, where it is mentioned at all, as a piece of missionary accommodation - fewer obligations for new converts - and stops there. What gets left out is what the reduction was immediately used for. This object goes to Política Indiana II.xxix, §§7 to 22, and prints the sequence from the page: the sacrament withheld by prelates who thought their parishioners incapable and a cédula required to compel it, the twelve-odd days of obligation listed by name, the question the author says he saw disputed many times of whether Spaniards could then compel work on all the other days, the answer that voluntary hire is lawful and compulsion is not, the confessors' advice that a priest may let the privilege quietly lapse, and the author's own statement that it was viceroys and governors who kept asking, "para que sea mayor la saca de metales de las minas". It also keeps, in one claim, the protective conclusion and the slur about idleness that Solórzano rests it on.
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 chapter that carries all of this is headed as a chapter about privileges, and the heading is worth reproducing because the word "miserables" in it is a legal category and not an insult. Libro II, capítulo XXIX of Juan de Solórzano Pereira's Política Indiana is headed "DE LOS PRIVILEGIOS, Y GRACIAS, que à los Indios por miserables, y recien convertidos les están concedidas en las causas, y materias espirituales", and its printed sumario runs from "Son favorecidos los Indios en las causas espirituales" through "Fiestas, que guardan", "Si podrán ser apremiados à trabajar los dias, que no guardan" and "Y si ay necesidad, se debe trabajar en las minas". The reduced obligation and the labour question are printed as consecutive heads of one summary.
The calendar itself is given, and it is short. At §11 Solórzano finds the Indians privileged in the observance of feasts "por otra Bula, ò Breve de Paulo IV. que dispone, guarden solamente los Domingos, dia de Navidad, Resurreccion, y Pentecostés, Circuncission, Epiphanía, Ascension, Corpus-Christi, Natividad, Encarnacion, Purificacion, Assumpcion de Nuestra Señora, y de los Apostoles S. Pedro, y S. Pablo". He adds at §12 that the same calendar is inserted in the Lima and Mexican councils and commented on by Fr. Juan Fochér, who concluded that of the Easters named only the first days are of obligation for the Indians. The bull is known here only as this book reports it; it was not opened in its own printing.
Behind the spiritual privileges lies a refusal that the treatise states without softening it, and it is the ugliest fact in the chapter. The briefs were sought, Solórzano writes at §7, perhaps because in most provinces of the Indies the Eucharist "no se solia dar, ni administrar [...] à los Indios, porque su Prelado, y Cura no los tenian por capaces de èl: contra los quales declaman, y disputan bien el Padre Acosta, y otros, y assi fue necessario, que se despachasse Cedula, que ordenó, que se les administrasse à todos, los que estuviessen capaces". A royal order was required to make the clergy of the Indies give communion to their own parishioners.
The remedy is traced through crown and council in the next paragraphs. By another cédula of 16 April 1604, §8 reports, it is generally ordered that the Viaticum be given to all of them in danger of death and that the sacrament be kept in their churches for the purpose "con la decencia, y veneracion, que fuere possible". Those cédulas, §9 continues, appear to have been taken from the Third Council of Lima, and the Second Council had ordered it earlier in Castilian: that the curas not fail to give the sacrament at the times determined by the Church "à los Indios, que haviendolos bien examinado, hallaren, tener noticia, y desseo de la Comunion", and that the Viaticum not be denied to Indians who are dying, the sacrament being carried to their lodging if they cannot be brought to the church. The examination requirement is part of the same rule and is reported here with it.
The question this object is named for is put by the author as something he repeatedly watched being argued, which is a different kind of evidence from a doctrine stated in the abstract. "De donde muchas veces vì poner en question, y disputa", he writes at §13, "si supuesto, que este privilegio se concedió en favor de los Indios, podrán los Españoles obligarles, y compelerles, à que contra su voluntad trabajen en los ministerios, para que se les suele repartir, en las demás Fiestas del año, si ellos tambien dixessen, que tambien las quieren guardar?" The relief granted in Rome had turned, in the provinces, into an argument about how many more days a repartimiento could claim.
The answer reported is a refusal, and its structure matters: voluntary labour yes, compulsion no. Fr. Juan Fochér resolves, at §14, that if the Indians should then wish to work voluntarily, hiring out their labour "à quien mejor se las pagare, lo podrán hacer, como sea en partes, donde no resulte escandalo, de vér, que trabajan en dias, que se guardan, y celebran por festivos; pero no podrán ser apremiados à ello por los Españoles, aunque la Fiesta sea solo de guardar para ellos, y no para los Indios, hora sean, ò no, de los que para semejantes trabajos se les reparten". The 1736 editor marks the corresponding law of the Recopilación beside it. The privilege is held to be theirs to use and not the employer's to spend.
The councils of the American church are cited on the same side, and in the direction of protecting attendance rather than compelling it. At §15 Solórzano reports Fr. Juan Bautista following the same resolution with express words of the Mexican Council of 1585, conforming to the Third of Lima of 1583 in its chapter IX, and many cédulas declaring the same, "mandando juntamente à los Governadores Ecclesiasticos, y Seglares, que por ningun modo consientan, que los Indios dexen de oir Missa en las Fiestas de su observancia". The obligation that remained was protected against employers by order to the civil governors as well as the ecclesiastical.
A counter-current runs in the same passage and this entry prints it rather than passing over it, because it shows the privilege being managed downward. At §16 the Licenciado Fernando Zurita is reported holding that curas are obliged to inform their parishioners of the privilege if they are ignorant of it - unless the priest knows that, being aware of it, they have not wished to use it for many years and have settled into keeping the same feasts as the Spaniards, in which case telling them would be the wrong. At §17 the same author adds that a cura will not be very culpable in failing to disclose the privilege at all, even without knowing it renounced, if he is going with the intention "de ir poco à poco encaminando, y reduciendo à los Indios, à que se conformen con la observancia del Derecho Comun". A protective exemption is here treated as something a parish priest may quietly let lapse.
The motive behind the whole dispute is named by the author himself, and naming it is what makes the passage evidence rather than edification. "Todo lo qual he querido notar tan especialmente", he writes at §18, "por ser ordinario dessear saber los Virreyes, y Governadores, si les serà licito hacer trabajar à los Indios en las dichas Fiestas, para que sea mayor la saca de metales de las minas, ò la cosecha de los sembrados, que uno, y otro mira à la mayor grossedad, y abundancia del Reyno", adding that such public benefit is sometimes held to license work on feriated days on the doctrine of Lucas de Peña and Renato Copino. The men putting the question were the crown's own senior officers, and the object of it was silver.
Solórzano's own position is stated against that pressure, in the first person and as a long-held view. "Pero siempre fuì de parecer", he writes at §19, "que por necessarios, que parezcan, y favorables, que sean estos intentos, es mucho mas precisa, y digna de ser reputada, y observada la guarda de las Fiestas". At §21, speaking expressly of the extraction and refining of metals, he holds that its increase "no debe preponderar à la observacion de las Fiestas", citing Georgius Agricola for the same judgement and limiting it to sudden and pressing cases - the ruin of a mine, the need to command the water, or another emergency in which delay would cause grave damage. A crown minister is on record preferring the rest day to the yield of Potosí, with the mining literature of his own century cited for it.
The analogy he reaches for is concrete and shows how such exceptions were actually built. The good example, he writes at §21, is the one Pope Alexander III gives of that fishery "que llaman Alecia, ò Abalecia, que la podemos comparar à la de los Atunes": because those fish appeared on the coast only rarely, the pope permitted the inhabitants who lived by the trade to take the chance the weather offered even on a feast day, "como de lo que se pescare se dé alguna parte à pobres, è Iglesias". The exception is granted to the people who work the fishery, and it is priced - part of the catch to the poor and to the churches. That is the shape the mining exception is being measured against.
The sentence that follows carries a protective conclusion resting on a demeaning premise, and this entry keeps the two together because separating them would misrepresent the page. Nothing, Solórzano writes, will we incline the Indians to more easily than the observance of the feasts, "assi por su natural inclinacion al descanso, como porque eran observantissimos de las que à su modo tenian, y observaban en su infidelidad, como largamente lo refiere Fr. Juan de Torquemada". The second half is an observation of pre-conquest religious practice offered as evidence of religious seriousness; the first half is a slur about idleness, and it sits in the same clause, supporting the same conclusion. The reading that the two pull against each other is this entry's, not the author's, who prints them as mutually reinforcing.
The chapter closes the privilege with a default rule that limits it, and the limit belongs in the record. "En lo que no se hallaren privilegiados", §22 states, "hora sean en causas temporales, hora Espirituales, se ha de estar, y passar por las Reglas del Derecho Comun, que se guarda entre los demás Christianos", citing Menochio and others. Outside the enumerated concessions the Indians stood under ordinary law like everyone else; the privileges were a schedule of exceptions and not a separate legal condition.
What this entry cannot show should be stated, because a treatise is not a timesheet. Nothing read here records a single day worked or not worked, a single repartimiento refused on a feast day, or any penalty imposed on an employer who compelled one; the bull of Paul IV, the brief of Paul V, the concession of Pius IV, the schedule of 1578, the cédula of 16 April 1604 and the canons of the Lima and Mexican councils are all known only as this book prints them, none having been opened in its own printing. The author is a judge of the Audiencia of Lima and a minister of the Council of the Indies writing about the law he administered. What the passage does establish is that the compulsion was wanted, that it was wanted by viceroys and governors for the sake of the mines, that it was asked as a legal question, and that the answer printed in the standard manual of colonial government was no.