Whether the Indians could be priests: the argument for admission in the standard treatise on the government of the Indies
Royal cédulas forbade ordaining Indians. The crown's own leading jurist printed, in the chapter of the Política Indiana that colonial courts used, that he could find no law excluding them from the priesthood or from any ecclesiastical dignity, and no right on which the contrary practice could rest. The counter-opinion is named on the same pages, and so is his own limit: he would not admit plebeian or tributary Indians to the Military Orders, only the descendants of Incas and Moctezumas.
Why this wins its question: Ask whether indigenous Americans could be Catholic priests and the answer that wins today is a flat "no, they were barred", usually sourced to an encyclopaedia summary of the 1555 Mexican council, with no indication that anyone in the period argued otherwise. That answer is half of a record. This object goes to the chapter the colonial courts actually used - Política Indiana II.xxix, §§23 to 34 - and prints the other half from the page: the cédulas admitted to exist, the ten-year neophyte clock used against them, the conclusion that no law excludes the Indians from the priesthood or from any ecclesiastical dignity, Pérez de Lara's contrary opinion named and quoted, an Inquisition councillor cited for the equity of favouring the descendants of Indians and of Africans, and the author's own admission that no case had ever been litigated because nobody had tried. It also prints the limit he set - he would not admit plebeian, tributary or formerly enslaved men to the Military Orders, only the descendants of Incas and Moctezumas - which is the part a defensive account would cut and the part that makes the rest credible.
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 was put as a printed head in the standard treatise on the government of the Indies, which is the first thing worth establishing, because summaries of the subject usually report the prohibition without reporting that it was argued. 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 among the heads of its printed sumario stand "Pueden ser Sacerdotes, y n. 24", "Y Beneficiados, Canonigos, &c. y n. 26. 27", "Opinion contraria de Lara", "La de Escobar", "Christiano Viejo, qual sea?" and "En los Estatutos de Nobleza, quienes entran?".
The author's own answer concedes the prohibition before arguing against it, and the concession is the reason the passage can be trusted. "Y si à estos los hallára Yo idóneos, y de entera capacidad, y decencia", he writes at §23, "no dudara de admitirlos à el Sacerdocio: porque, aunque ay muchas Cedulas, que prohiben el ordenarlos, y no solo à ellos, sino à los Mestizos, de que despues hare Capitulo à parte; esso se pudo, y debió practicar, recien descubiertos, y convertidos, quando el ser Barbaros, y Neophitos les pudo ser para esto de algun embarazo, por lo que en sus semejantes aconseja San Pablo." The bar is admitted to exist and to have been justified once; the argument is that its ground has expired, not that it was never there.
The 1736 editor adds, in an asterisked marginal note at the same paragraph, an argument that the compiled code already assumed the capacity. Francisco Ramiro de Valenzuela writes that "En la L.4. tit.7. lib.1. Recop. se supone, que los Indios pueden ser admitidos al Sacerdocio: pues se encarga à los Obispos, que no ordenen à Mestizos, y defectuosos, lo qual se entiende de Mestizos ilegitimos: porque en la ley 7. del mismo titulo, se manda, que ordenen à los Mestizos de legitimo matrimonio, y estos Mestizos son de padre Español, è India, ò al contrario." This is an argument from what the law omits to forbid rather than from what it grants, it is a later hand than Solórzano's, and neither law was opened in its own printing for this entry; the confidence is set accordingly.
The legal category the bar rested on was neophyte status, and the passage attacks it with a clock. At §24 Solórzano writes that although for what is favourable to them the Indians are still judged neophytes and enjoy the privileges of that condition, "verdaderamente no lo son los mas de ellos, y mucho menos sus descendientes: pues segun la comun, y verdadera opinion basta, que hayan passado 10. años despues del Bautismo, para que no sean tenidos por Neophitos", citing Covarrubias, Torquemada, Navarro and Toledo as reported and followed by Antonio Riciulo and Fr. Juan Zapata. The same status that had earned them protective privileges was the status being used to keep them out of orders, and he says so in one paragraph.
The conclusion is stated at its widest, and it is worth quoting whole because it is the sentence that goes missing from popular accounts. From that reckoning, Solórzano reports at §25, Zapata draws "como por conclusion infalible, que los Indios ya de antiguo convertidos, aunque desciendan de padres, y abuelos, que fueron Infieles, deben ser admitidos al Sacerdocio, y à todos los Beneficios, y Dignidades Eclesiasticas, cargos, y oficios publicos, en que no quiere Dios, ni el Derecho regularmente, que haya excepcion, ò acepcion de personas, y que no halla ley, que los excluya de ellos, y mucho menos, que los comprehenda en los Estatutos de las Iglesias, Ordenes, ò Colegios, que excluyen de su ingresso Judios, y Moros, y los que de ellos descendieren por qualesquier via."
He then adopts that conclusion as his own and gives the interpretive rule it rests on. "La qual doctrina tengo Yo por certissima", he writes at §26, "porque estos Estatutos se deben interpretar, y practicar estrechamente, y solo en los casos, y personas, de que hablan, y con particular atencion à las causas, en que se fundan, que son el alma, y razon, que los vivifica, y sustenta, y si falta, ò cessa, cessa tambien su disposicion". The argument is not that the purity-of-blood statutes were wrong but that they were written about Jews and Moors and cannot be stretched to people they do not name - a lawyer's argument, made by a serving crown minister, and the narrower for it.
A historical argument is added at §27, and it cuts against the honour culture it is addressed to. Neither in books nor in histories, he writes, "jamás hallamos, que la descendencia de Gentiles, ò Infieles, que no hayan sido Judios, ò Moros, y que voluntariamente recibieron la Fè de Christo, haya sido notada, ni tenida por manchada, y excepcionada. Pues antes los que oy blasonan mas del explendor, y gloria de sus Naturales, traen su origen de ellos, y se precian de esto", for which he cites Juan de Arce and Otálora on such statutes and Antonio Riciulo on the specific case of neophytes. The Spanish nobility's own genealogies are being turned into an argument for indigenous eligibility.
The contrary opinion is named, attributed and treated with respect, which is why this object states it as its own claim rather than burying it. Pérez de Lara - "Varon digno en lo demás de ser alabado, y seguido" - after disputing the matter on both sides, concludes at Solórzano's §28 "que en nuestra España tiene recibido la practica, que ni Indios, ni Negros, ni los que de ellos descienden, se admitan, donde ay tales Estatutos, pues no se puede verificar, que sean Christianos viejos". That was a real position held by a serious jurist, and on Solórzano's own account it was the received practice in Spain.
The answer given to it contains the most revealing sentence in the passage, and it is revealing against the corpus's own subject. "Pero Yo no alcanzo, en què derecho se puede haver fundado esta practica", Solórzano writes at §29, "ni he sabido de casos algunos particulares, que en contrario juicio se hayan ofrecido, y litigado, que son, los que pudieran introducirla: y si ni Indios, ni Negros han sido admitidos, será como dice Riciulo, porque nunca lo han intentado, ò donde huviere Estatutos, que generalmente excluyan todos los Infieles, y sus descendientes." The reason he can find no litigation is that nobody had tried. A doctrine argued in print for the eligibility of indigenous men to the priesthood coexisted with the near-total absence of indigenous men presenting themselves for it, and the treatise records both facts on one page.
The ally he claims held office in the institution most associated with blood purity, which is a fact about the argument's provenance worth keeping. In that opinion, Solórzano writes at §30, there also agrees with him "el docto, y grave Varon D. Juan de Escobar del Corro, que oy es Meritissimo Consejero de la Suprema, y General Inquisicion", who in his erudite and copious treatise on the purity of blood required by these statutes goes "ponderando, y satisfaciendo una por una todas las razones de Perez de Lara, y concluye la equidad grande, que ay, para que los descendientes de Indios, y Etiopes sean favorecidos". A councillor of the Suprema is cited as the authority for favouring the descendants of Indians and of Africans against the purity statutes.
The argument is then extended to descendants, and a specific and severe test is refused by name. At §31 Solórzano turns to the children of ancient and noble Spaniards who married Indian, mestiza or mulata women in those provinces, and reasons that if the statutes do not in rigour comprehend converted Indians themselves, "menos comprehenderàn à sus descendientes". He adds that neither may there be applied "la doctrina de Simancas, y Calderon, que requiere, à lo menos docientos años de conversion en los ascendientes de aquel, que quiere probar, que es Cristiano Viejo, y ser tenido, y admitido por tal: porque hablan de los que descienden de Judios, ò Moros, que corren por otras reglas, y razones particulares".
The limit the same author sets on his own argument is the cost of this passage and belongs in any honest account of it. Where a statute required not only purity of blood but nobility, as those of the Military Orders do, "entonces Yo no admitiria Indios, ni Negros Pleveyos, y tributarios, y mas si huviessen sido Esclavos, ni los descendientes de ellos: porque no se puede decir, que en estos se hálla la Nobleza, que piden". He would admit those who proved nobility in themselves or their forebears, "por ser de los Reyes, ò Caciques antiguos de aquellas tierras, como si dixessemos, de Incas, ò Motezumas, ò de otros, que en ellas, à su modo, fueron tenidos, y reputados por Nobles", and notes that the Council of Orders had already done so in some cases. The doctrine opens the priesthood by argument and keeps the Military Orders closed to commoners and to the formerly enslaved, in the same paragraph.
That aristocratic limit carries with it a comparative principle that is unusual for its date and is stated as a working rule of the Council of Orders. Although in those provinces positive acts of nobility such as Castile's cannot be found or proved, Solórzano writes at §33, "cada uno à su modo tiene sus reglas, y costumbres: con que la suele medir, y diferenciar", citing Tiraquelo; "y de estas debémos valernos, y contentarnos, quando los de otros Reynos desean ser admitidos à las Insignes Cavallerias, y Comunidades de el nuestro, como el mismo Consejo de Ordenes lo practica, y observa, en el quilatar, y pesar la Nobleza de los Franceses, Italianos, Alemanes, Venecianos, Genoveses, y otros Estrangeros". Andean and Mexican rank is to be weighed by the same procedure the Orders already used for foreign nobility.
What these pages establish and what they do not should be separated plainly, because the gap between them is the whole subject. They establish that by the middle of the seventeenth century the eligibility of indigenous men for the priesthood, for benefices, canonries and ecclesiastical dignities was argued in print, in Spanish, in the standard manual of colonial government, by a judge of the Audiencia of Lima and minister of the Council of the Indies, with a councillor of the Inquisition cited on the same side and a named jurist on the other. They establish nothing whatever about practice: not one ordination, diocesan list, episcopal dispensation or Council of Orders proceeding was opened for this entry, the cédulas that prohibited ordination are known only as Solórzano reports them, and the treatise's own §29 says he knew of no litigated case either way. The corpus's entry on the Colegio de San Nicolás Obispo carries, from a different and hostile-to-itself witness, the contrary datum about what actually happened in Michoacán; a reader who wants the practice rather than the doctrine should go there.