Mexican Society and the Franciscan Order in a Period of Transition, 1749-1859

Abstract

Four years before the suppression of male religious orders in Mexico (1859) the Minister of Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Ezequiel Montes, asked the provincials to inform him on the number of friars, their activities and their monasteries' properties (December 22, 1855). The data, which began arriving to the Minister in January 1856, provides some of the most complete information on the nineteenth century Franciscans in Mexico. Comparing this data with what is available for the end of eighteenth century we can draw the following comparative table. A quick glance at these figures reveals the great deterioration through which the order had gone in a period of seventy years. From 1786 and 1856 the Franciscans had lost three fifths of their members, two fifths of their monasteries and four fifths of their missions. It can be pointed out as a counterweight that, during the same period, two colleges of Propaganda Fide were founded: Orizaba in 1799, and Zapopan in 1812.l But it also should be noted that during the same time a province disappeared, Yucatan.2 The general conclusion, then, is that in no other period of their presence in Mexico, had the Franciscan

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