Introduction
In keeping with the constitutional liberties conferred to the Oratorians by Pope Paul IV in 1612, Mexico City’s first Oratorian community developed as a combination of cultural
influences from Mexico, Spain and Rome. This chapter provides an overview of those
foundational features as a basis for understanding what it meant to be Oratorian judging from their first corporate identity in Mexico City: a confraternity called the Venerable Union. First, I begin by outlining their governing constitutions’ description of an initial mission, their goals, and election procedures. These dimensions of the confraternity illustrate the initial, public purpose for creating an Oratorian community as well as the strategy conceived for guiding and
reproducing it over time. Next, I consider the governing officials highlighted in the constitutions that provided personal structuring labor to the institutional aims and activities of the Venerable Union. The best, most complete information revolves around the Prefect, but several other official positions provided important institutional shaping of the Venerable Union. Finally, I close the chapter with more elaborate biographical portraits of four of the thirty-three “founding fathers” of the Venerable Union. Each biography provides a representative conceit of character traits commonly important to many more members of the Oratorian community. Founding father Antonio Calderón Benavides exemplifies the important relationships formed between Mexico City’s printing businesses and families and the elite writers who used the press as a means for
creating their public images and consolidating institutional power.64 Thomas López de Erenchun’s controversial career as an Inquisitor during the growth of the Holy Office’s power in the 1640s demonstrates the diverse ways that Inquisition work simultaneously established culturally inscribed identities and hierarchies of power. Alonso Alberto y Velasco’s life course represents the Oratorians’ extensive work to authenticate local apparitions and miraculous events through the legal culture of Rome, and highlights an alternate set of roles Oratorians played in the Inquisition when compared with Calderón Benavides and López de Erenchun. Finally, Diego Castillo Márquez’s dedication to developing Oratorian ritual and musical traditions in Mexico City illustrates the innovative techniques the Venerable Union employed to resonate with the urban public. The Oratorians’ life courses additionally provide a guiding thread of narrative through the major touchstones of the Oratorians' community identity.
Governing Constitutions
On the same day of the first recorded Oratorian meeting in Mexico City, May 2nd, 1659, acting secretary Gregorio Martín de Guijo presented the Archdiocese’s Provisor and Vicar General Alonso Ortíz y Oráa with a petition requesting permission for the Venerable Union’s rights to assemble as a confraternity. Ortíz y Oráa procured authorization from the Archbishop, and six days later the Venerable Union held its first elections and composed a temporary set of institutional rules and constitutions “while the formal foundation of the Vallicellian Institute is
64 See Magdalena Chocano Mena, La fortaleza docta: elite letrada y dominación social en México colonial, siglos XVI-XVII, (Barcelona: Ediciones Bellaterra, 2000), and “Capital mercantil y sermones barrocos: textos y contextos en la Nueva España del siglo XVII” in Muchas hispanoaméricas: antropología, história y enfoques culturales en los estudios
being verified.”65 The constitutions’ opening chapter profiles the early community of the Venerable Union in terms of numbers and means of admission. It begins with a supplication to the current Archbishop of Mexico, Mateo Zaga de Bugueiro, for permission to aggregate and designate him as the community’s protector, and to endorse the foundation and erection of the Venerable Union as an Oratorian community in Mexico City. All received members must hold the rank of presbyter, being licensed to deliver mass, and make a formal declaration of intent to aggregate through the Secretary. All candidates were to undergo a fifteen-day period of informal examination and interview, wherein they learned of the activities and responsibilities of
membership, and the governing council learned something of the character and spirit (ánima) of the hopeful. After fifteen days, if the candidate’s intentions remained and a majority of the council voted in his favor, the Secretary would give notice and enter him into the organization’s membership rolls.
Elections
By the end of 1659, the Venerable Union had received approval to expand its
membership to a maximum of 120 aggregates, and it was from this larger pool of members that the core of governing officers were elected on a triennial basis. The constitutions describe the election processes in elaborate detail. Elections were regularly scheduled on the feast day of Philip Neri, the 26th of May, and all members of the Venerable Union were supposed to be present. The governing council convened the meeting by asking everyone (excepting themselves) to be seated without attention to rank, for “perfection is known from being humble.”66 The
65 Ávila Blancas, Bio-bibliografía, 289. The term “Instituto Vallicelliano” refers to the original Congregation of the Oratory, founded in Rome in the church of Santa Maria Vallicella.
council then led the attending mass of brothers in a series of litanies, hymns, and supplications for divinely endowed understanding in the present election.
Three or four days prior to the feast day, the governing council of the Venerable Union would meet privately to select the nominees for their prime leader, the Prefect, and appoint the remaining governing council to serve the subsequent triennial cycle. Consulting the secretary’s current list of members, they selected twelve candidates for Prefect, as well as the second, third and fourth-place consultants, a treasurer, sacristan, master of ceremonies, and two or more visitors. The current prefect took a new place within the community as first consultant, and all the other individual positions could potentially comprise re-elected officials if they remained optimal choices. In contrast, the body of consultants had to change every three years in an effort to include as many Union members as possible in positions of community governance.
At the beginning of the official elections, and in the physical presence of all the
candidates, the governing council narrowed its list of twelve candidates to three by “laying eyes upon the most useful and tasteful, humble and obedient candidates who counted forty years of age or more,” evoking what must have occasionally been a dramatic scene of silent visual engagement.67 Once the selection was made, the secretary announced the three candidates aloud by name, and distributed three strips of paper (cedulitas) to each attending member with each candidate’s name on one side, and his own sign (rúbrica) on the other. Before voting
commenced, the current Prefect selected two Union members from the body of voters to serve as assistants during the election. Each member would then approach a sealed urn to deposit his choice, placing the other two slips in an open urn, two by two, led by the Prefect and his
67 Ibid.
ministers, and ended with the votes of the secretary and master of ceremonies symbolically sealing the electoral body.
Prefects
The outcomes of the elections were recorded in several surviving documents, and
illustrate many of the connections between leaders of the Venerable Union and the power groups of viceregal Mexico City. [Figure 2.1] Prefects were charged first and foremost with performing the personal character necessary to fully embody their conscious experience of the role as leader of the Oratorian community, focusing on how to best engage their subordinates with orders and advice to correct their behavior (tratar, corregir, y amonestar), while maintaining foresight that at the end of his term he would set the role aside to be subject to the community’s hierarchical order alongside the rest of his fellow members once more.68
The constitutions mandated that Prefects approach leadership as a sensory experience, that they feel for the evil in others and seek to correct it “as merits the priestly Estate”. Such corrective encounters between Brother and Prefect were termed “consejos evangélicos”, signifying the importance of clerical self-fashioning to Oratorian Catholicism. They were primarily to be conducted privately, through one-on-one counsel, and framed as a shared experience of the favors of “Our Lord” Jesus. Prefects were encouraged to imagine their understanding of submitting to God’s will as raking a plow across their own hearts. In practice, submission involved the Prefect comparing his sense of human morality to Philip Neri’s will through a process of consultation, although the constitutions do not clarify the means of consultation.
68 Ibid, 299.
The Prefect’s first order of business was choosing his consultants, secretary and treasurer, then symbolizing his own submission to the Archbishop through a reverent kiss of his hand. The second day of office, he would convene the governing council to conduct his inaugural act of new admissions for hopeful members of the Venerable Union. Otherwise, he oversaw monthly council meetings to discuss new admissions and any other pressing business of the moment. The Prefect’s leadership role also came into play in the event of a Brother’s death. He gave a formal order to the current treasurer to pay for funeral services, including burial of the body and arrangement for an appropriate schedule of masses delivered on behalf of the soul of the deceased. He was also responsible for verifying the availability of sufficient funds well before Neri’s annual feast day celebrations to ensure a solemn, appropriate ceremony, explicitly
excluding fireworks and other “exterior things.”69 In addition to the annual feast day, the Prefect oversaw appointments for conducting ministry and outreach events in Mexico City. He selected hospitals for the Venerable Union to visit and gifts to give their administrators and infirm patients. He appointed confessors, preachers and leaders of spiritual exercises (pláticas) to represent the community through assigned tasks, and in some cases empowered those
representatives to name assistants and collaborators appropriate to their duties. In every case, the Prefect also reserved the power to dismiss unsatisfactory appointees, and create new positions as needed. The constitutions advise the Prefect to encourage his appointees to avoid the conduct of any such spiritual practices that could be construed as memorably aberrant or outside decorum (“que puedan ser notados”), elaborating that the community should not, for example, introduce
69 Ibid, 300.
new ceremonies beyond those endorsed by the Roman Ceremonial.70 Elsewhere, they advise flexibility in the Prefect’s mediation of conflict or disagreement, and decision-making regarding whether or not to conduct Oratorian spiritual exercises among registered members only, or in gatherings open to the broader urban community. Both hypothetical situations suggest variations in practice, and contradict the rigid ideal images of Oratorian leadership, and return to the enduring theme of highly localized interpretations of Oratorian identity.
Governing Officials
The succession of office holders for the other positions within the Venerable Union’s governing council is less thoroughly documented. Still, scattered data from Julián Gutiérrez Dávila’s chronicle and other sources provide some information about the Oratorians who managed community governance. We know that the Venerable Union’s founder, Antonio
Calderón Benavides, served as the first treasurer beginning in 1659.71 In the Oratorian chronicle, Gutiérrez Dávila notes that Roque Hernández held the position in 1667, and by 1673 an
inventory of the Oratorians’ sacristy mentions Gerónimo Abril as the current treasurer.72
Gregorio Martín de Guijo served as the secretary for the Venerable Union’s inaugural meeting, but António Calderón Benavides took the role during the first triennial election in 1662 and held the position until his death in 1668.73 The 1673 inventory mentioned above also names
Gerónimo de Valladolid as secretary in that year. By 1695, Joseph Montaño had taken over the
70 On the revision of the Roman Breviary, and the prominence of Oratorians in the process, see Simon Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy, chapter 2.
71 Ávila Blancas, Bio-bibliografía, 3.
72 Gutiérrez Dávila, Memorias históricas, I: 54, Genaro García Ms. 66, f. 125v. 73 Gutiérrez Dávila, Memorias históricas, I: 53, 78.
position, but in March of 1696 Gutiérrez Dávila notes that Salvador Rodríguez de la Fuente also worked as the Venerable Union’s “second secretary”.74
The Consultants included the greatest number and most diverse representation of the Venerable Union, and changed most frequently over the course of the seventeenth century. The original constitutions record Jacinto de la Serna, Mateo Ruiz del Portillo and Alonso García de Ledesma as the first era of consultants.75 In 1662, the Venerable Union commissioned a printed memorial of the sermon delivered to celebrate their first triennial election on Neri’s feast day. The Prefect, Tomás López de Erenchun and his four consultants Miguel de Barcena Valmaceda, Matías de Santillán, Juan Yañez Dávila, and Diego Juárez Araujo, all signed the publication.76 For subsequent years, Gutiérrez Dávila’s biographies of members of the Venerable Union often include mention of the triennial terms of office members served as consultants: Matías de
Santillán from 1665-1668, José Márquez de los Rios for six years between 1662 and 1677, Diego Calderón Guillén de Benavides from 1680-1683 and 1686-1689, Martín de la Llana from 1680- 1683, and José de Lombeyda as an interim consultant after López de Erenchun’s death in 1664, for example.77 By 1671, the Venerable Union had also added the position of Rector to the governing council, as attested by other biographical vignettes.78 The 1659 constitutions also
74 Ibid, III: 104, 147.
75 Ávila Blancas, Bio-bibliografía, 3.
76 Matías de Santillán, Sermón en la solemne fiesta, que...celebró...la sagrada Unión de Sacerdotes Seculares... (México: La Viuda de Bernardo Calderón, 1662), np6.
77 Gutiérrez Dávila, Memorias históricas, I: 67, 83, 88, 110, II: 171. 78 Ibid, I: 79, 110, III: 26, 104.
provide idealized guidelines for the governing council’s responsibilities that help to understand the roles they played in Oratorian culture.
In addition to the leadership of the Prefect, and alongside the less formalized positions of Confessors, Preachers and the like appointed according to the Prefect’s discretion, the earliest constitutions also map a range of roles and responsibilities delegated to an elected host of Consultants, a Secretary, a Treasurer, a Master of Ceremonies, a Sacristan, and appointed Visitors. Consultants primarily assisted the Prefect in all of his ceremonial functions, including the regular and occasional meetings of the Venerable Union’s governing council (juntas). Their ranks included an internal hierarchy, ranking from first to fourth in order according to their seniority within the organization. During meetings, Consultants were to provide advice to the Prefect when asked, each giving his opinion in order without embellishment, and remain modest and quiet in the event that the Prefect’s resulting decision contradicted their opinion. In the case of the Prefect’s death, the elder Consultant would assume the position of Prefect in interim, leading the Venerable Union until the next triennial election.79
Like the Prefect and Consultants, the elected Secretary attended all regular meetings of the Venerable Union’s governing council as a voting member, but the Secretary also held the responsibility of maintaining institutional records. The original constitutions (recorded by the first elected secretary Gregorio Martín de Guijo) mandate that the secretary maintain and bind into books the meeting minutes from general meetings, and ledgers recording the sequence and dates of aggregation for the members of the Venerable Union. Additionally, the Secretary guarded and maintained all manner of other records and correspondence for the Oratorian
community under lock and key in a corporate archive, including the books of past secretaries, the official correspondence of the Prefect and Consultants, records of the Prefect’s appointments to deliver sermons and spiritual conversations in the church, as well as the accounts of the treasurer and sacristan.80
Financing the construction of the Venerable Union and continued production of its spiritual services required both regular and irregular deposits of money, and it was the Treasurer’s responsibility to oversee the collection and maintenance of all such funds. The constitutions stipulate particular management of funds collected for funerary services for fellow members of the Venerable Union,81 for the maintenance and ornamentation of the Oratorians’ devotional altars and sacristy, and for the hospitals, infirm clerics, laity and prisoners visited by the Venerable Union during its urban pilgrimages. In addition to the practical, day-to-day
management of institutional funds, the Treasurer was also responsible for maintaining two bound books of records separately accounting for the regular collection of membership dues in the form of alms, and those alms received from devoted non-members. Both books, as mentioned above,
80 Ibid, 304. In addition to the ledger of burials maintained by the Oratorians today in the Casa Profesa in Mexico City and cited by Ávila Blancas throughout Bio-bibliografía, other fragments of the Oratorian secretary’s archive remain preserved in scattered collections in Mexico and the United States. Other copies of the members of the Venerable Union and the burials conducted during the seventeenth and early eighteenth century form part of the Genaro García Manuscripts at the University of Texas-Austin, and other loose papers pertaining to the Oratorians can be found in AGN-M, Templos y Conventos, Vol. 2467, and AGN-M, Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 1346, Exp. 1.
81 The collection of alms for funerary services and their conduct are explored in more depth in Chapter three.
were to be reviewed and archived by the Secretary, and reported in an annual summary to the current Prefect and Consultants.82
Brief mention of the Oratorian Master of Ceremonies marks him primarily as the steward of the community altar. There he would attend and oversee all spiritual practices conducted by the Venerable Union, manage its associated candlesticks and censer, and organize and coordinate the converging schedules of masses to be delivered at the Oratorian chapel.83 Ideally equipped with a current, revised edition of the Roman Breviary, the Master of Ceremonies was responsible for conforming locally practiced ritual to the universal codes of conduct espoused by the Pope.84 All of the objects associated with Catholic ritual and devotion, including the altar’s candlesticks and censer, ultimately came under the authority of the Oratorian Sacristan. Like the Treasurer and Secretary, the Sacristan maintained a bound inventory accounting for all of the devotional objects deposited there, wherever they are used in practice. The Sacristan was charged with the cleaning and maintenance of the altars, chapels and their adorning objects, and with making certain that none of the objects were taken from or loaned by the Oratorians without the Prefect’s consent. The Sacristan’s records were to be counter-signed by the Oratorian Secretary, and could be reviewed by the Prefect at any time.85