Mexico, German Jesuits in
Founded in 1572, the Jesuit Province in Mexico faced a perennial crisis in finding missionaries. Spain could not (or would not, as the Mexican province complained) supply enough missionaries to compensate, and the sharp lack of creoles interested in joining the Society of Jesus exacerbated the situation.
The natural solution—to recruit non-Spanish Jesuits—was long resisted at the highest level. Already in 1518 the crown attempted to regulate even nonmissionary immigration to the colonies by insisting on purity of ideology and blood. Missionaries from territories belonging to the Spanish crown enjoyed a special priority, while subjects of collateral or allied dynasties, especially the Austrian line of the House of Habsburg, were less frequently accepted. The first “foreign” Jesuit to go to Mexico was the Sicilian Vicente Lanochi in 1574.Resistance also appeared in the German lands. On January 3, 1562, the Jesuit general declared that no German Jesuit could go into the missions because each one was needed in Germany. The first German Jesuit to serve as a missionary overseas appears to have been Peter de Gouveia from Edister, who was made coadjutor of the village of San Bernabe in Brazil sometime before 1598.
Around 1603, Diego de Torres Bollo won permission to include twenty Italians in his expedition, causing quite a stir in Germany and a flourishing of indipetae (letters written to Rome by hopeful aspiring missionaries). In 1615—1616 forty- nine letters to the general came from the Ingolstadt College alone. On January 23, 1616, news reached Germany that the Jesuit general Vitelleschi, motivated by the procurators’ difficulty in finding sufficient recruits from Spain, decided to authorize the first contingents of German missionaries, including four from the college at Ingolstadt, for America. Ingolstadt went wild. One Johann Irling wrote a letter to Vitelleschi, remarking that “almost nobody thinks about studying anymore, the usual works stand paralyzed” (Duhr 1907-1928, II: 2, 596).
Indeed, the professors “ought to resign themselves to silence until the inflamed spirit falls calm by itself” (Huonder 1899, 12-13). Still, the old feelings endured: When he heard of the first missionaries’ departure, Jakob Rehm, the rector of the Ingolstadt College, was said to have exclaimed, “But why do they travel to the distant parts of the world? The time is near, when we in Germany ourselves will have an Indies, where the number of all the workers now in the province will not suffice” (Hattler 1881, 184).The prime agents behind the recruitment were the procurators. The American provinces regularly sent provincial procurators to Europe. For example, Diego de Torres Bollo, from the Paraguay Province, traveled through Germany, Italy, Poland, and Flanders looking for recruits (who would initially be prevented from going overseas by the Council of Indies). In 1574 Philip II (and his successor in 1603) prohibited the orders from sending recruiters to Spain. The Jesuits circumvented this decision by using the procurator and vice procurator sent by each province for the General Congregation to press the crown and the general for each new missionary expedition. Not all procurators worked for an expedition, but every expedition was achieved in this way.
The written word proved crucial in recruitment efforts. The first German edition of letters written each year by Jesuit missionaries was published at Munich in 1571, Sendschreiben und warhaffte Zeytun- gen, Von Aussgang un Verweiterung des C.hristenthum.s bey den Hayden in der neuen Welt Auch von Vervolgung und Heiliskeit der Geistlichen Apostolischen Vorsteher (Despatchs and True News about the Rise and Expansion of Christendom among the Heathens in the New World, also about the Persecution and Salvation of the Chief Apostolic Priests). The 1620 German edition of Auβ America (From America), a similar collection of letters, also had the intention of supporting the Madrid mission procurator’s work against the crown’s growing mistrust.
Thus, the editor excluded a particularly detailed ethnographical description, presumably to avoid leaking details about Spaniards’ distrust of foreigners—which could entail interrogation and imprisonment. The editor pessimistically predicted an increasingly illiberal royal policy toward German Jesuits in the Americas. Such predictions proved correct. In the middle of the seventeenth century the rise of new sea powers and Spain’s defeat at the hands of France intensified the xenophobic atmosphere. In the mid-1640s a large number (up to eighty-five) of foreign Jesuits had been gathered in Seville to embark for the missions. However, some of the German Jesuits had arrived dressed in secular garb, which they had worn through Protestant lands, among Protestant soldiers, and on the Protestant ships that had brought them to Cadiz. Intended to avoid trouble, this strategic subterfuge alarmed Seville’s royal officials, who took the Jesuits to be an expeditionary force for some enemy’s conquest of the New World. They immediately prohibited further passage and deported the Germans.The continued need for missionaries forced a second royal cedula (December 10, 1664) to renew permission to subjects of the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs. The non-Iberians among these, however, were limited to a quarter of the total number of missionaries and were required to be chosen by the general of the order and to spend a year in the Province of Toledo, where their behavior and character could be observed. On November 29, 1664, General Gian Paolo Oliva sent a memo to the German and Belgian provinces announcing the decree and requesting suitable candidates. Around 1670 the German Assistancy had 6,601 members, well more than the Spanish (2,040) and Italian (2,937) assistancies combined (Plattner 1960, 17), and the German provinces could afford to be more generous with missionaries.
Many German Jesuits adopted new names, often as a strategy to thwart Spanish immigration controls.
Thus, before boarding his ship, Karl Boranga, a native of Vienna, had to announce himself as Juan Bautista Perez, “a native of Ca- latayud, that is, naturalized in Bilbilis in Aragon” (Welt-Bott. Augsburg and Vienne. 1728-1761. Nr. 2. [Vol. 1, p. 4]) and Augustin Strohbach from Iglau appeared as Carolus Calvanese de Calva, native of Milan—then a Spanish-Habsburg possession. Perhaps the Spanish mission procurator recommended this deception. Some explained the change as an attempt to sweeten harsh German sounds for Spanish ears. Spanish confusion and frustration over German political geography also contributed to the German Jesuits’ identity changes. For all their worries, the immigration authorities could not or would not sort out German geography. In 1691 Anton Sepp von Reinegg (1655-1733) wrote that the Spanish officials didn’t distinguish between different Germanies: “Being a Bavarian, Swabian, Swiss, Palatinate, etc., is just the same as if they were Tyrolese, or even Viennese,” for no one pays attention to this in Spain; it suffices that “we’re sent to the Indies, from the Upper German Province, and are not French, which is the only nation excluded and hated in Spain” (Sepp 1752, V, 681). Even in the 1690s the papacy felt it necessary to send letters to Spain recommending Austrian missionaries.Even at its zenith the German Jesuit presence in the capital remained quite modest: In 1696, only 2 of the 152 Jesuits in Mexico City were German, and they were both lay brothers. However, the newer missions in the north held sizable German cohorts: 4 of the 11 Jesuits in the Mission St. Francis Xavier in Sonora (Gilg, Kappus, Kino, and Januske), 2 of the 7 in the Tarahumara Mission of St. Joachim and St. Anna (Neumann and Verdier), and 3 of the 5 in the Mission of Guadalupe (Haller, Eymer, and Hostinsky). Once in the missions, Germans held a disproportionately high number of offices, despite official opposing sanctions and unofficial prejudice.
In America, German missionaries complained about having to learn Spanish, “for the Spaniards,” Kall explained in 1687, “like the ancient Romans are firmly convinced that their language and their dominion should be advanced together in the world” (Welt-Bott.
Augsburg and Vienne. 1728-1761. Nr. 52. [vol. 1, p.73]). Certainly adopting Spanish had obvious advantages. Kall further observed that, while using Latin did not facilitate integration into the New World, using Spanish created immediate friendship. However, a 1737 report by Segesser mentioned a disadvantage:Indigenous people distrusted Spanish speakers.
With the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, all foreign missionaries, especially those subjects of Austria, Bohemia, and the other states of the Holy Roman Empire, were forbidden to travel to the colonies. The royal confessors often argued against this policy. For example, Juan Martinez de Ripalda, procurator for the Indies in Madrid, recommended (on March 22, 1702) eight German missionaries on the grounds that their superiors and rectors were Spanish, the Germans would be separated, and they had reputations for piety. Citing the law and the missionaries’ unproven loyalty to the Spanish crown, the authorities denied his request. In 1711 four Bavarians and a Swiss were forbidden permission. These restrictions would soon be lifted; Austrian missionaries resumed travel to the colonies in the 1720s.
The early eighteenth century generally saw decreasing tolerance. Although the absolute number of German Jesuits increased during the first half of the century, in 1734 a royal cedula reestablished the quota at one quarter. The reigning absolute centralism of the age felt little sympathy for the international society. In 1760 Charles III ended all traffic of foreign missionaries into the colonies; in 1767 the society was suppressed in Spanish territory.
Luke Clossey
See also Kino, Eusebius Franciscus; Mexico
References and Further Reading
Bettray, Johannes. “Osterreichische Missionare in Lateinamerika.” Zeitschrift fur Lateinamerika 8 (1976): 54-67.
Duhr, Bernhard. Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Lander Deutscher Zunge. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1907-1928.
Hattler, Franz.
Der ehrwuridge Pater Jakob Rem aus der Gesellschaft Jesu und seine Marienconferenz. Regensburg: Manz, 1881.Hausberger, Bernd. Jesuiten aus Mitteleuropa im kolonialen Mexiko: Eine Bio- Bibliographie. Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur der Iberischen und Iberoamerikanischen Lander 2. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1995.
Huonder, Anton. Deutsche Jesuitenmissionare des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts: Ein Beitrag zur Missionsgeschichte und zur deutschen Biographie. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder’sche Verlagshandlung, 1899.
Lazaro de Aspurz, P. La aportacion extranjera a las misiones espanolas del Patronato Regio. Madrid: Consejo de la Hispanidad, 1946.
Plattner, Felix Alfred. Deutsche Meister des Barock in Sudamerika im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Freiburg: Herder, I960.
Sepp, Anton. An Account Of a Voyage from Spain to Paraquaria, Perform’d by the Reverend Fathers, Anthony Sepp and Anthony Behme [translation of Reissbeschreibung (Nuremburg:1697)] (London: J. Walthoe [etc.] 1752).
Sierra, Vincente D. Los Jesuitas Germanos en la conquista espiritual de Hispano-America. Institucion Cultural Argentino-Germana, no. 15. Buenos Aires, 1944.
Treutlein, Theodore Edward. “Non-Spanish Jesuits in Spain’s American Colonies.” In Greater America: Essays in Honor of H. E. Bolton. Berkeley: University of California, 1945, pp. 219-242.