The Americas

The exact date on which the first Franciscan friars arrived in Cuba remains unknown, but it was certainly during an early phase of the conquest.¹ Regardless of the exact moment in which the friars disembarked on the island, it is important to note that it marked the beginning of a long history, a history almost condemned to obscurity and from time to time the object of harsh criticism and impassioned indulgence, and more often recorded through partial constructions than through investigation and reasoning. Perhaps because of the complexity of its peculiarities and/or for certain socio-political determining factors that will not be analyzed at this time, Cuba has been one of the marginalized territories of the American ecclesiastical historiography. Nevertheless, in recent years, interest in ecclesiastical themes has grown incrementally among some scholars who, striving to fill the voids, have opened new lines of research and venture to investigate the older documents of the archive.² [End Page 673]

Through the study of a specific period of Franciscan presence on the island, we can identify some of the elements that intervened in the complex process of the promotion and breach of relations between the religious orders and Cuban colonial society. The events that overwhelmed the order of Saint Francis toward the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries reveal the most hidden aspects of everyday life in the convents and are surprising in their indiscreet revelations and inflammatory and metaphorical commentary. These commentaries decipher the feelings, nested in individuals, which overwhelmed and divided the religious community and revealed its contradictions toward the end of the century, mocking the walls of the cloisters and rendering them more permeable each time.

From the beginning, the laws of the Papacy favored the regular clergy, especially the Franciscan order. In the 1535, 1539, and 1544 Briefs of Paul III, religious orders were charged with opening a road independent of the secular ecclesiastical hierarchy in the campaign of evangelization. From that time, and through the colonial period, the procedure for the recruitment for and organization of the American missions remained practically unchanged. According to the established plan, the leaders of the order requested the recruitment from the crown and, once this was approved, appointed the friars. For his part the King, by virtue of the authority granted him by the royal patronage, took charge of determining the quantity and distribution of the missionaries, also holding the right to exclude those he did not consider worthy.³

In 1609, the chapter of the Franciscan order, held in Toledo, created the custodia of Santa Elena which included the convents of Cuba and missions of Florida. Prior to this date, the convents of Santiago de Cuba (1531) and Bayamo (1582) were under the jurisdiction of the province of Santo Domingo and the convent of Havana (1576)—after being run directly by the Comisario General de las Indias were incorporated into the Yucatan and later the Santo Evangelio de México. Three years later, during the chapter meeting in Rome, the custodia of Santa Elena was elevated to the category of province. After [End Page 674] 1763, the Floridian territories passed to English hands and the province of Santa Elena was left with no other convents save for those on the island.⁴

With its leadership located at the convent of the Purísima Concepción de La Habana beginning in 1612, the Franciscan order extended its conventual network in Cuba and encouraged the incorporation of young Creoles into its cloisters. The Franciscans grew in number, surpassing the remainder of the religious orders established on the island, and exploded in the nineteenth century with a total of nine foundations: one convent and one hospice in Havana and seven houses in Guanabacoa, Villa Clara, Trinidad, Sacti Spíritus, Puerto Príncipe, Bayamo, and Santiago de Cuba. Despite the enthusiasm that affected the conventual network of the order of Saint Francis during the second half of the eighteenth century, there were numerous problems that disturbed the tranquility of the Franciscan cloisters of the island, at least according to the peninsular ecclesiastical hierarchy.

The Counsel of the Indies summarized the situation of the province of Santa Elena when Father Fr. Félix González, named Comisario Visitador of Franciscan Friars of Havana in 1786, arrived on the island:

. . . found the province in the most deplorable state of relaxation. The prelates are content with honors and temporal conveniences, they live and permit the subjects to live in a pernicious licentiousness, without attending choir, without prayer, study, nor refectory, and with the portería (porter's door) open at all hours: some possessed goods; and others, through the charity of the Holy Sacrifice, maintain concubines.⁵

Criticisms such as these continued to appear during the colonial period but never before the second half of the 1700s. The monarchy created a truly integral project that proposed to eliminate the "state of relaxation" in which the overseas religious provinces were found. The result of the royal tendency and secular spirit that marked the eighteenth century, the Spanish monarchs of the epoch wagered on the introduction of deep reforms to the Church and although the impetus of the Crown reached its peak in 1767—when Carlos III ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and the Spanish empire—before and after this date they dictated measures oriented [End Page 675] toward one concrete objective: the return of religious communities to the original way of life under which they had been founded.⁶ But everything seems to indicate that it was precisely because of the issuance of the Royal Cédula of 21 July 1769—known as the Tomo Regio⁷ —that the Crown increased its efforts to correct the conduct of friars in America and, in this pledge, Cuba was no exception.

One of the main figures of Enlightened Despotism, the Count of Campomanes—to whom a fundamental role in the Bourbon Reforms is attributed—justified the need to reform the Church in America, alleging that the

major difference in the Indies [was] that in countries so remote, the bond of the purely observed religion is the strongest tie to maintaining subordination of the people; therefore, being that secular as well as regular clergy have more influence over the masses, the government should be very vigilant at all times to maintain the clergy in fixed observance and healthy principles of obedience and love to Your Majesty in order to instruct and establish this way of thinking and working in the regular clergy, both local and peninsular.⁸

Although the crown did not have "indigenous pagan subjects" in Cuba, it is certain that the alliance of regular clergy and Creole society acted as a solvent factor from the rigorous control Enlightened Despotism intended to exercise; much more had the clergy not been especially devoted to "fixed observance" as Campomanes presented—at least the ecclesiastical authorities who fought in favor of reform declared it as such at the time. The Crown and royal officials supervising the Church were notified that the lack of discipline [End Page 676] in convents was one of the main problems the reform should aim to correct. The "bad" needed to be addressed and consequently it was: there was a need to fortify everything that was found to be "relaxed" in the American Church; a need to reeducate the Creole clergy so they could in turn influence the population in favor of the fidelity the monarchy required of its subjects. In order to achieve this it was necessary to purge the religious orders, diminishing the influence of the portion of regular clergy that was farthest from "integrity" and least prepared to carry out the plan conceived by the Bourbon reformists.

The measures dictated by the crown were aimed not only at the Franciscan convents. According to documentation examined in the Archivo General de Indias, the reform project in Cuba applied to both male and female religious orders, though the majority of the royal orders were dictated specifically in correspondence with the peculiarities of the same.⁹ In the case of the Franciscan order, increasing the number of peninsular friars in the island cloisters seemed the fastest solution. A complete ignorance of actual island conditions led the creators of the "moralization" project at the Franciscan province of Santa Elena to implement methods and regulations that were the equivalent of a straightjacket.

It is difficult to determine exactly how many of the reports sent to the metropolis referred to the "state of relaxation" in which the Franciscan clergy in Cuba was found. Documentation relating the behavior of the lower-ranking friars on the island is diverse. Some friars attempted to defend themselves against the accusations made against them, while other individuals—the majority of them generally peninsular, ecclesiastical authorities—insisted that the conduct of the friars did not correspond with the demands [End Page 677] of the rule. The tone used in some dissertations to describe the conduct of the Franciscan clergy in Cuba was usually impassioned and intentionally exaggerated. It is possible to suspect that strict observance of the rule did not shine with notable intensity in the Franciscan convents on the island—at least during these years. "Relaxation" and "lack of discipline" aside, other interests intervened in the proposals of those emphasizing the need to "moralize" the Franciscan province of Santa Elena.

Time and again, peninsular Franciscans wrote the metropolitan authorities from the island, complaining of the progressive debilitation the European faction faced with insufficient shipment of missionaries from Spain and the hoarding of positions of honor for the Creole faction. According to the alternativa—enacted by the papacy and ratified by the Crown—every three years, the Creole and European friars should take turns performing the most important charges of the Franciscan community. In Cuba, the alternativa was object of innumerable conflicts between Spanish and Creole friars during the eighteenth century. Although precise facts regarding the number of friars that inhabited the Cuban convents during this period do not appear in the consulted documentation, nor does information regarding the distribution of these friars according to their place of origin (those born and raised in Cuba and those that originated from the peninsula), the sequence of events indicates that by this time, the Creole number was higher than that of the European.

On 4 June 1788, Father Félix González directed Fr. Francisco Xavier of the Concepción Caparrós¹⁰ to carry out a trip to the court in order to request a mission of 18 or 20 Franciscan friars "who have the virtue and capability to allow them to keep the jobs they are given. . . ."¹¹ A short time later, Father Caparrós explained the major difficulties that made the "moralization" of the province of Santa Elena impossible:

These Creole friars, to whom the provincialate and prelacy of Havana now pass, do not want to live communally while among the Europeans you will not find those who embrace it. [End Page 678]

The definitors and guardians, who should elect successors, all are opponents of the Padre Reformador: this infers that the one that represents does so by the ignorance of skillful subjects, for the active voice as for the passive, the royal resolution cannot have effect: for this reason the Reformador has always clamored for a creation independent of votes, in which the Provincial, definitors and guardians are named from among the most recommended; and insist on the same although it may be necessary to entreat the corresponding faculties from the Holy See.

Regarding the shortage of suitable friars, I say that this difficulty will be conquered knowing that those of Spain observe the rule in America, because of the horror they feel at passing to those colonies is mainly that they do not wish to expose themselves to living without observance, and they will be unable to remedy their will.¹²

The solution proposed by the then Comisario Colectador was to send peninsular friars to help neutralize Creole friars, in order that the reform move ahead in the Franciscan convents of the island. In order for this strategy to be successful, it was advisable to consider the proposal of the Father Comisario Visitador and for the crown to fill the charges of the Franciscan province of Santa Elena with those friars that considered themselves suitable to carry out the reform, impeding the meeting of the chapter. This way, the number of friars in favor of reform would increase and the main charges of the Franciscan community in Cuba would fall back to the peninsular faction, to the detriment of the Creole friars.

A Royal Order dated 21 December 1788, gave responsibilities to the visitador that under normal circumstances corresponded to the Comisario Provincial, such as calling and presiding over the chapter meeting in which the election filling the main charges of the province of Santa Elena would take place. Likewise, the Royal Order emphasized that elections in favor of any friar who opposed reform should not be confirmed.¹³ The chapter of the province of Santa Elena met on 27 June 1789, under the surveillance of the governor of Havana.¹⁴ With 14 votes, the Creole Fr. Antonio del Pino was elected Provincial. But, in disagreement with the result, the Comisario Visitador declared the vote invalid due to the fact that a reform opponent had [End Page 679] won: he excluded 15 friars from the room and the charges remained reserved solely for those friars who supported reform.

Naturally, the methods of Fr. Félix González were not well received in the convent of Havana, described by some friars as coercive. In letter to the King, Father Antonio del Pino summarized that the main objective of the Comisario Visitador of the province of Santa Elena and of the people who supported him consisted of

. . . rising under the command of the province; putting subjects of devotion in the prelacies, and jobs of the order, and preparing the next three years of the provincialato for Father Félix and the Europeans.

This has been the central point of where it has gone and where they have gone to stop all of its lines, more to execute a project so ambitious that it is necessary, above all else, to remove from the middle many of the chapters that could serve as a hindrance, substituting in their place others who follow with the experience [hope] of some reward. . . .¹⁵

After a long period of lawsuits in which the friars explained their respective positions regarding the legitimacy of the second election, and after many deliberations, the Crown agreed with the Comisario General de Indias, Fr. Manuel María Trujillo, that the best action for the progress of reform in the province of Santa Elena was to name peninsular friars for the charges of Provincial and two definitors; likewise, the charges of custos and the two other definitors would be designated for Creole friars. However, the Bull requested in Rome and emitted by Pope Pius IV limited the participation of Creole friars in the direction of the province of Santa Elena to just two definitors.¹⁶ In spite of the fact that the Comisario General declared to the Crown his nonconformity in this respect, the royal power determined—in order to avoid a new procedure—that all would be solved according to what was literally set out in the Bull.¹⁷

Misfortunes of a Mission to Cuba

In September 1788, Father Francisco Xavier de la Concepción Caparrós arrived in Spain. The King authorized recruitment as it was the only alternative [End Page 680] to carrying out a reform that would address the state of inobservance in which the convents of the island existed.¹⁸ In spite of the relative speed with which it started, recruitment went through a slow and stormy process for which bureaucratic obstacles were not the only ones responsible.

According to a report by Eugenio de Llaguno, at that time the Minister of Gracia y Justicia, the Crown stipulated the increase of 72 individuals (fifty priests, twelve lay brothers, and ten postulants) in 1794 for the mission to Santa Elena with the objective of establishing a Colegio de Propaganda Fide, two or three houses of strict observance and absolute communal living in all of the Franciscan communities of the island. For this purpose it was advisable "to put several models of exemplary living in all of the convents to restrain and stimulate the relaxed clergy."¹⁹

A decree sent on 25 March 1793, by Fr. Pablo de Moya, Comisario General of the Indies for the Franciscan order, in favor of Father Caparrós, specified the requirements that should have governed the selection of religious personnel destined for Cuba:

. . . that the subjects you admit to the mission would be the most suitable, free from any bad marks in their methods; that they would have studied three years of Philosophy, and at the least two of Scholastic Theology, and that they would be already ordained priests. And in present circumstances, they could be useful in the effort to erect the colegio and the house ofstrict observance.²⁰

But at the time, the Spanish Franciscan provinces were not going through their best moment in terms of organization, discipline, and the training of the friars and they were struggling, according to Father Caparrós, ". . . with the great multitude of exceptions, adjustments, privileges, dispensations, and pensions that result from human frailty. They were making the religion like a worldly train, much more than a cloister, since the substantial and fundamental parts that make up religious life were forgotten and because the friars were supposed to go in front of the others as an example. . . ."²¹ From this [End Page 681] way of looking at things, we can deduce the reality that the peninsular Franciscan provinces was not favorable to strictly adhering to the requirements set by the Comisario General of the Indies to carry out recruitment. Father Caparrós would later describe the manner in which it was reflected in the overseas religious provinces:

. . . here it began that the preferred people saw the missions for the provinces of America in the miserable state in which they are found, without having friars of recommendation who want to go to them. This makes the missions of youth more inconsiderate of the rules and more relaxed, many of the people going there or most of them are looking for liberty (it should be understood that I speak of the missions for the provinces in order that the colegios go to good friars). This is the cause, and no other, and any other cause you can think of comes from this one. And this one is also the cause of the relaxation of those provinces. But how could this have been any other way since they came from Spain such a long time ago, and those that came were the most lukewarm and the least intelligent? . . .²²

There were many things that made the recruitment of friars to integrate into the missions destined for America difficult. The Comisarios Colectadores' arguments to convince friars to languish in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the heroic portrait of the conquest and ideal praise of the work of the evangelization overseas was fading before the diffusion of unfortunate experiences of not just a few missionaries with the dangers of the sea and encounters with death at the hands of pirates and corsairs.²³

The image of the location receiving the Mission that they tried to create also significantly influenced the process of recruitment. Havana, a port city, was the temporary destination of travelers and merchants, and its inhabitants were famous for flaunting an excessive way of life, which resulted in a predilection for scandalous conduct. Cuba did not consist of an especially attractive territory for friars predisposed to following instructions by the letter of the law. Rather it was the idyllic means for those friars that, lacking a religious vocation, endeavored to evade the restrictions of an austere, walled existence.

The lists of the friars that made up the mission destined for the province of Santa Elena, came to corroborate the ineffectiveness of the patente of 25 [End Page 682] March 1793, in the process of recruitment. On 27 November 1795, in the Hospice of the Port of Santa María, 31 friars (fourteen priests, eleven postulants, and six choristers without orders) were waiting to travel to the Franciscan convents of Cuba. With respect to the training of said friars, the attached data explain that five priests had not studied and only nine friars—four priests and five choristers without orders—had had only one year of Theology. It turned out that not one fulfilled all of the necessary requirements.²⁴ Another similar account dated 13 February 1797, included a total of 30 friars. Five were priests and three needed dispensation from the required studies, and another lacked a year in Theology. There were fifteen choristers without orders, and three had not finished their studies, as well as five lay brothers and five postulants. In short, only one of the friars had all of the requirements clearly expressed by the Comisario Generalof the Indies.²⁵

The Hospice of the Port of Santa María, the place in which the recruited missionaries waited for their departure overseas, offers us a faithful portrait of the universe of contradictions in which the friars were immersed. There, the latent problems inside each friar and within each group that formed around a conflict that emerged exacerbated by different customs, the friction of living together, and the impetuous face-offs between the regular authorities and their subjects that were almost always caused by the imposition of measures that controlled the daily lives of the assembled friars.

The mission organized to travel to Cuba at the end of the eighteenth century went through very difficult situations during their stay in the Hospice of the Port of Santa María that almost condemned the mission to disintegration. Added to the stumbling blocks to incorporating the friars into the different Spanish provinces, was the stubbornness of Father Fr. Mariano Ulagar who was designated by the Crown to consummate the reform of the Franciscan province of Santa Elena and ratified in the position—not willingly—by the Comisario General of the Indies.²⁶ To start, Father Ulagar tried to impose several changes in the way of life that had traditionally reigned in the Hospice of the Port of Santa María that he noted on 5 February 1796: "it seems [End Page 683] a free republic. Some pray with the community, others don't. Some go out without restraints, others are contained by the ColectadorFathers."²⁷

Father Ulagar's manner of proceeding and his persistence in censuring the way of life of the friars in the hospice were not only rejected by the majority of the recruited friars, but set the spirits of the friars from the convent of Havana (where they had to live once they arrived on the island) against him as well. Meanwhile, the relationship between the members of the regular hierarchy deteriorated, and even Provincial Ulagar and the Comisario General of the Indies, Fr. Pablo de Moya did not agree. With all the constant threats to abandon the mission from nonconforming friars, and the reforming Provincial's (Ulagar) repeated petitions for the Crown to admit its renunciation, the situation became unbearable.

Replaced for a short time as president of the Mission by Father Fr. Fermín Olondórriz, Father Ulagar explained the changes he had introduced by the force of his will in the Hospice of the Port of Santa María and he expressed his displeasure with their reversibility:

. . . When I presided, they read at the table, afterwards they didn't. Before, we had mental and oral prayers all together, although several of the rebellious friars were absent, but now they are in divided choirs and they do not have mental prayers in the choir. Before, we were in the habit of having discipline on the days that the general law commands, afterwards not. Before, the friars did not leave the Hospice without permission because the Royal Cédula commanded it; afterwards they left without permission and frequently. In short, before, our aim was edification, and now it is not. Those that agree with my way of thinking still don't go out without permission, nor do they use silk caps for their heads, nor do they believe that three hours is a short time to be out, nor leave the house every day, nor sell their habit or tunic for money, nor spew stupid words from their mouths, nor have they threatened another friar with a sword. But I have heard all of this (and more, though I don't believe it) about some of those opposed to me, although it's not true of everyone. . . .²⁸

In one of his letters, Father Olondórriz refuted the criticisms of Father Ulagar explaining that the friars in the Hospice

. . . celebrate, and hear Mass every day, and sang their prayers in two choirs. (. . .) They also pray the Crown of María Santísima as a community. They go [End Page 684] to common refectory, where before and after their meal they give the proper thanks. This is the way that we have seen the other recruited friars practice, besides, I intend to add prayer, which I would have already done but for the confusion that has been going on. This method seems reasonable to me, recognizing that they are pilgrims and passersby. They go for walks two by two in the afternoon, and I tell them not to go into the city. I see this outing not only as convenient, but also for the inexcusable uncomfortability in which two, three, and in some four, find themselves living in one small cell. . . .²⁹

We are able to form a more or less clear idea of how the friars lived in the Hospice of the Port of Santa María. Many years before the tradition of communal living had been dropped in the majority of the Franciscan convents of the peninsula and it was normal that the friars resisted the imposition of a strict observance that they had not professed.

The changes that affected the way of life of the friars in the Hospice of the Port of Santa Maríaentailed quantitative difficulties, even if they were attempting the qualitative betterment of the mission destined for the province of Santa Elena. That was because the difficulties were obscured in the delay to recruit friars and the frequent desertion of those who had been recruited. A discouraged Father Antonio Lezaun, the successor to Father Caparrós as Comisario Colectador for the province of Santa Elena, wrote in 1797:

Desiring to take useful friars to America to reform the province of Santa Elena of Havana, I traveled through the provinces with my postulant and the simple relief of a beast, not without effort, and exposed to the rigor of inclement winter weather. I took the exact report and endeavored to recruit only those friars whose conduct would result in good reports. I presented the list of thirty friars, which His Majesty (May God guide him) deigned appropriate and permitted. But when I began to send the patentes, I found myself made fun of because I had retracted fourteen friars of the Choir.

And this is not the worst. After having arrived in Port of Santa María with the remaining friars, and another one that was substituted, I found that most of them detested observing the way of life that the attached Exorto prescribed (which they read in the Provinces so that they could not allege ignorance). . . .³⁰

In addition to the voluntary desertion of many friars, there were other circumstances that harmed the stability of the mission. One of which was the [End Page 685] case of the expulsions due to the indiscipline of some friars and the death of others due to an epidemic that struck the Hospice in the first few years of the nineteenth century. Of thirty friars that Fr. Antonio Lezaun had presented to the King for the corresponding approval by 1800, 29 had to be substituted: 17 retracted, seven were separated for bad conduct, four died in the epidemic, and one abandoned the mission to become a soldier.³¹

The Royal Hospice of the Port of Santa María, more than the mere place of concentration of friars, evolved into the reactive nucleus where all those contradictions converged. Worsened by the irritability that normally is provoke by the temporal prolongation of a situation that one thought would be short, and the anxiety induced by the insecurities of an uncertain future, these things were part of the baggage of the friars that embarked for America.

The Seed of the Decline

At the same time that in Spain the recruitment for the mission was complicated, in Cuba the Franciscan order ran the imminent risk of a significant part of the friars integrated into the convents renouncing their vows. The establishment of common living entailed the friars doing the majority of daily activities together (e.g., stopping the friars from leaving the convent alone) and this resulted in the extreme restriction of contact between the friars and the outside world. For the Franciscans of the island, it was difficult to accept a way of life different from the one to which they were accustomed. The rigid adherence to the law had been weakened by age-old traditions, that although they had their origins in the peninsula, had been adjusted to the most representative characteristics of the insular colonial society through the progressive entry of Creoles into the order and through daily contact with the outside world.

On the other hand, the economic situation of the Franciscan cloisters constituted an insurmountable obstacle for reform in the province of Santa Elena. Devoid of goods because of the law, the order of Saint Francis could only receive the alms of the faithful, the annual interest of 5% of the deposits founded for them, and for burials in the interior of their churches. Therefore, their income was irregular and based on the instability of payments that was reflected in the daily lives of the friars. On many occasions they committed [End Page 686] the crime of smuggling or turned to gambling, which challenged the constitution of their religion and colonial law.

The bad conduct of some friars resulted in one of the gravest problems that ostensibly affected the Franciscan order on the island, but it was not the only anxiety that concerned the Franciscan clergy. At the head of 26 friars—16 of the chorus, six lay brothers, and four postulants—Father Provincial Fr. Mariano Ulagar set sail from Cádiz on 8 October 1796, but the possession of the mission by the English delayed their arrival in Havana until 3 June 1797.³² Regardless, the first effects of reform in Cuba came—at least in theory—before the arrival of those who would become its protagonists. The Comisario General of the Indies, Fr. Pablo de Moya, noted about the matter:

. . . According to the reports of Father Comisario Provincial Fr. Juan de Dios Rencurrel through February of 1797, twenty-seven friars became secular priests, and eight more that had Briefs, and they were the ones next in line to secularize with others following their example with the same requests. This process accelerated even more because the news that arrived in Havana about the ruggedness of temperament and the rigid projects of the Provincial Reformador Ulagar. Even after he arrived, consistent with his warnings, others became seculars, and three novices of the chorus that had taken orders, left and abandoned their vocation.³³

According to the information included in the dossier concerning the processes initiated on the island between 1798 and 1800, of 38 friars that expressed their desire to be secularized priests, 19 were Franciscans. The arguments that they presented in order to get permission of leave the cloister ranged from their own lack of vocation, to sicknesses attributed to the wool habits, to the urgency of needing to go to the aid of their families. In this sense, a Franciscan from the convent in Havana, Fr. Francisco Isaguirre's justification of the need to secularize is interesting:

. . . he entered into the religion at very tender age due to the persuasions and requests of his parents that went to such an extreme that they forced him to take Holy Orders. He only did it to please them, without any vocation and with grave damage to his soul. Because of this, he has never followed the rules of the institution, and has lived with the continual agitation of his spirit knowing that it is because of a whim of his parents that he is going to lose his eternal salvation. He cannot stand living in a cloister. . . .³⁴ [End Page 687]

However, some declarations are much more explicit. They come to suggest that—more than a real motivation—the lack of vocation was considered the best argument to ensure that an application would be accepted. So it was on a lack of vocation that many friars based their request. The most frequently cited motive in these declarations was the friars' disagreement with the methods intended to reform the Province and the conflicts that resulted from them. So, in this way Fr. Josef López, a Franciscan lay brother, son of the province of Santa Elena, explained:

. . . he entered the religion without spirit, nor vocation, and no professed knowledge of the Fundamental Laws and Constitutions of the Order. His deficiencies have caused him to never observe his Institute, to be repentant and exuberant in the state that he professes, and is in the danger of condemnation. In these circumstances, and in those in which it would be morally impossible to observe a rule that is greater than his ability, considering the circumstances in which the province finds itself, and that they are trying to reform, the institute is making him comply in its enthusiasm. Common living has never been observed nor has anyone been obliged to have the knowledge that they do today.³⁵

Other friars, even if they were less exegetical in their declarations, they took more risks in expounding on their arguments. Fr. Domingo Sáenz affirmed,

. . . that the terrible persecution that he suffered from his superiors made his spirit so restless that he was afraid of incurring the most criminal of excesses. And lacking the foundational hope that they would stop, he thought that at some point he would not be able to stand the embarrassment they subjected him to. . . .³⁶

The lack of vocation injured the religious orders in general, a debit balance of the need and/or the imposition of a family, that in many cases—disregarding their personal aptitudes and preferences—determined the individual's entry into the cloister. It is not an element to underestimate in the analysis of the motivations that unleashed an avalanche of requests from friars to secularize in Cuba. However, at the end of the eighteenth century, particular circumstances enticed them to divert their attention to other sources of stimulation.

On one hand, the Crown's measures had created an environment of tension and nonconformity among the friars and, consequently, many friars chose to [End Page 688] abandon the cloister. On the other hand, in a period in which the island was submerged in a process that transformed the society into one that was completely proslavery and pro-plantation, the religious enthusiasm of the population suffered an evident diminution. This seriously compromised the income of the Franciscan convents that was fundamentally guaranteed by alms and people's census payments. Even more, throughout this period, belonging to the secular clergy presented those who were trying to continue in their ecclesiastic career with a better option. Remember that with the creation of the Diocese of Havana (1788-1789), new opportunities became available to occupy positions in the parishes or in the cabildo of the new cathedral.

Petitions for secularization, pointed conflicts, and the resulting transfers of friars to other convents were some of the most notable results of the reform of the Franciscan province of Santa Elena. At the same time, the reform measures under the direction of Father Ulagar tried to surpass the Crown's initial project, resulting in increased the friction between the Creole and Peninsular friars.

Carrying out the royal ruling, a patente was dispatched on 24 November 1794 by the Comisario General of the Franciscan order in the Indies, Fr. Pablo de Moya, to the Comisario Colectador of the province of Santa Elena, Fr. Francisco Xavier de la Concepción Caparrós, that had stipulated the creation of the Hospice of San Isidro of Havana in the Colegio de Propaganda Fide, and the establishment of a convent of strict observance in the convent of Guanabacoa and in another two where it seemed appropriate.³⁷ But once on the island, Father Ulagar requested that the Crown take more drastic measures and confer on him the full authority to act in the province. This authority would allow him repeal the right of the friars to appeal to other secular or ecclesiastical authorities for the resolution of any conflict, and give him unlimited license to found colegios and convents. The aforementioned requests were in response to a very concrete objective of the Provincial Reformador: to ensure that freedom of action would be detrimental to the intervention of the Comisario General of the Indies in affairs concerning the reform of the province of Santa Elena.

Based on the recommendations of the junta formed for the analysis of the case, the King did not grant the Provincial permission to found convents and colegios, but he did concur in depriving the friars the possibility of appealing to any secular or ecclesiastical tribunal, as well as depriving these tribunals [End Page 689] of the ability to concern themselves with cases of correction and reform.³⁸ On the other hand, the ruling of the Crown included the delivery of the Hospice of San Isidro's building to the Colegio de Propaganda. An infantry battalion had inhabited it since the English occupation of the city in 1762, and the colegio had to share the space. However, the delay of the military authorities in abandoning the place and the inability of the province to provide the colegiales with what they needed, ended the project in frustration. Father Félix González, credited with founding the Colegio de Propaganda Fide by Father Ulagar, renounced his position after a short while and moved to the convent of Havana with the friars that came with him.³⁹

According to the same order, they had to eliminate the Franciscan convents from the Island that had less than six friars of the Mass. Perhaps in an act of good sense, the Crown did not insist on the application of this measure bearing in mind the timely alert from the Comisario Generalof the Indies about the disorder that this measure could have caused:

By being reduced as they have, the convents have had in their respective situations a fair cause in their establishment. The principal interest is of the neighborhood that wants it and requests it. Depending on its extension, with three, four, or five friars it obtains the spiritual consolation that the religion inspires in them. They have ministers that in the pulpit and confession instruct them in the obligations of Christianity and serve them the Sacraments. With more ease and without postponing their labors, they can fulfill the precepts of Nuestra Madre Santa Iglesia. With these priests they will have many other Masses that they can attend at the hour that best accommodates them. They can benefit from the consult and direction of their consciences in their doubts and youth will take advantage of education that will leave it well formed for the use of the State. The major and minor convents don't have financial bases or possessions that could damage the public. The devotion of the faithful to stubbornness is that which with their voluntary alms support the friars and found pious works whose observance is performed by the prelates and the community of these convents. If these are eliminated there won't be anyone to fulfill these obligations and complete these pious works, and the Founders will lack their votes.⁴⁰

In his eagerness to curb the intentions of the Provincial Reformador, the Comisario General of the Indies also relied on the respect of the principle of [End Page 690] an alternative that governed the election of positions in the Franciscan community of the island, but did not have important results. In spite of his perseverance, Fr. Pablo de Moya was also unsuccessful in preventing the Crown from consenting to the proposal of the Reformador that would allow only those friars that were from the province of Burgos to reside in the convent of Havana. The lack of foresight of the Crown not only led to the increase of repudiation of the Creole friars toward Father Ulagar, but also increased the frictions between him and the friars that came from other Spanish provinces who also felt affected.

Alarmed by the harmful consequences that would result from the exclusion of the Creole Franciscans from the right to stay in the principal house of the order on the island, the Comisario Generalof the Indies warned the Council:

. . . The Creole Friars have familial relationships in the city, and others that they have acquired because of their conduct in grade and in example, that excite the will and devotion of the faithful for the provision of alms, the only financial base of the Franciscan religion. And one can already see how probable the resentment is for which this decadent suffrage is necessary.

No young Creole will choose to take Holy Orders, nor will his parents consent to it if he is not able to have a respectable career, which he would acquire while performing the functions in the principal convent and in a populous city. Also, the competition of the teacher friars stimulates and instructs through the repeated functions of literary knowledge. The Friars in their needs always require the aid of their house that the religion cannot always grant them, even supposing the common life; and no one who was witness to this distress would seek to join the cloister. Even without this prohibition, three Creole novices that had taken Holy Orders abandoned them and went out of the cloister in a pernicious example because the Provincial Reformador threatened them with being sent into strict observance and not observing, that it was the rule that they wanted to profess. . . .⁴¹

Following the contours of the reserved correspondence, we find signs of aggression in certain forms of expression of the unwillingness of the friars to comply with the rules designed by the Provincial Reformador. According to Father Ulagar, the constant threats determined the reclusion of the supporters of reform in the convent of Guanabacoa and prevented the visit of the Provincial to the other Franciscan houses on the Island. One friar opposed to the reform, probably a Creole, revealed his nonconformity in a poem: [End Page 691]

Ulagar.
Is above questioning,
may the Prelacy be null,
that is suddenly, or by mediation,
of whatever Sovereignty,
acquired through Religion.
The Royal disposition, therefore,
sent on the fourth of May,
was, without a doubt, pretense,
to Caparrós: good trial,
for a reformation!
Do not be blind in your passion,
you are a Prelate in name only
with pain, and by compulsion,
and to further astonish you,
vulnerable to excommunication.⁴²

Writing anonymously, this friar criticized Father Ulagar and succinctly questioned the legitimacy of the crown's right to approve personnel to cover the administration of the American Church. This is a valuable detail that denotes a more or less developed consciousness regarding the problems of the clergy on the island and their context in the framework of colonial relations.

Aggravated by Father Ulagar's stubbornness in imposing the changes he thought necessary, the internal conflicts of the order transcended the plane of relations between the Franciscans and Creole society; the friars that most enthusiastically opposed the reformador explained the uproar that was caused in detail:

It seems that the Provincial Reformador has not tried anything other than to excite gossip among the public, deprive the father who cares for his son, the brother who consoles the afflictions of his brother, and the public of the teaching he received in the cloisters of San Francisco, and of the spiritual consolations he found a few times in the four penitenciarios that by the constitution should belong to the cloisters, and others in the consultations that they made with their directors. It seems (I repeat) that the Padre Provincial has taken the flaming sword of his orders into his hands, to destroy the seeds of the convent all at once, because with the displeasure of the faithful comes an end to alms, thus making common monastic life an impossibility and still, in the method we observe, alms continue to be the point of support from which we garner our subsistence. I do not know how far the ideas of Father Provincial Reformador [End Page 692] will extend with us closing the portería against the Apostolic franchises. Without knowing, Provincial Reformador wants us to become absolutely useless to the public: he does not have lectores that instruct, nor when he had them were they able to teach; nor has he completed the municipal constitution of naming four penitenciarios in order to aid the cloister, and although he had marked them, it did not work because when the seculars could not find a place to enter they went to other convents.⁴³

Obviously, reform found opponents outside of convent as well, to the extent that an alteration of the functional structure of the order of Saint Francis in Cuba was proposed. Alleging that education of the faithful was one of the ends for which the Franciscan convent was built, the Cabildo de Guanabacoa complained in 1797 that the friars had rendered the school useless.⁴⁴

Among the functions the friars assumed, they laid the more solid bases of the relation between religious orders and Creole society. Though these occupations paved the way for bad conduct among the friars, so much so that they favored contact between the friars and the world outside of the cloister, they constituted the main motivation for the enlargement of the Franciscan conventual network throughout the island. Whether the incapacity of the colonial administration and/or the inertia of tradition converted the convents into something more than places dedicated to prayer, the strict observance was inapplicable. Without the activities that the lower-ranking friars developed, including spiritual aid to the population, education, charity and funeral services, presence of the Franciscan order on the island would not make sense.

In spite of the insistence of Father Ulagar and the decisions of the crown, the project conceived for the reform of the Franciscan province of Santa Elena did not fully materialize. The hospice of San Isidro at the Colegio de Propaganda Fide was not built, nor did the residence at the convent of Havana become reserved exclusively for the friars arriving from the province of Burgos and the seclusion of the reformador in the convent of Guanabacoa clipped his ability to control the other convents on the island. In 1799, Father Ulagar recognized that significant changes had not been made:

In the convent of Havana (I fear the same for the others) they have not wanted to obey in closing the portería (. . .) and if they do not close the porterias, it cannot be avoided that the friars will have slaves and they bring the daily [End Page 693] wages they earn; with the daily wages the friars will have money, having money would make them owners, and as such they cannot be true friars. I do not say that all have slaves, but I am certain that some do although they deny it or renounce it bitterly. If they do not close the porterias, the kitchen and refectory at the convent of Havana will not be in accordance with our laws, and there is such disorder that I have been assured that the material of the plates alone, removed by the kitchen and refectory workers, resulted in a large loss (. . .) the workers walk about the convent and cells disturbing the religiousness and silence, therefore it is not easy to keep the religiousness mandated according to our laws. The convent of Havana has not obeyed my order to have conventual mass, nor prayer, nor in going out with a companion, nor in leaving their surplus in the refectory for the poor.⁴⁵

Improvement of the behavior of the friars was not a solid enough argument for Creole society to support reform that went against the activity of the Franciscan convents on the island. Firstly, opinions varied broadly regarding the conduct of the friars: what ecclesiastical authorities and civilians in agreement with reform presented as an object of urgent repression, a common individual would see as normal behavior, completely separate from the acts of someone labeled immoral or relaxed. So, for almost the whole of the society, there was no reason that justified such a drastic correction. Secondly, because no infrastructure existed that was capable of supplying the services that the friars performed in those spaces reserved for them without large misfortunes. And thirdly, because tradition was a major influence on Cuban colonial society.

The intervention of regulars in activities beyond the exercise of worship and the strict observance of the rule, on the one hand, did worsen the image of the clergy before those people who worried most about the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline, scandalizing the bishops and politicians. On the other hand, they reinforced the identities of the friars of that society, the result of an interaction in which they shared both virtues and defects. Very few—which is not to say no one—could adjust to the idea that the doors of the convents would remain closed with lock and key when tradition had permitted the entry of seculars and exit of friars, favoring open communication between friars and the public. Analyzed in this way, reform signified more than the introduction of changes in the conventual way of life but also a breaking of the implicit pact between the Franciscan order and its social environment, breaking of the commitment that legitimized the very existence of the convents in Cuba. [End Page 694]

Undermined by the situation of the Franciscan Spanish provinces and the difficulties of strict observance, the bases that supported the crown's "moralization" project in the Franciscan province of Santa Elena were anemic. Cuba was an infertile land for reform, in the same way that the observance of communal living and desertion of functions historically performed by friars were incompatible with the economic capacity of the convents and the nature of the relations between the order and insular society. Nevertheless, it would be naive to view the reform as the frivolous setting of a succession of conflicts that did not have a greater significance in the subsequent history of the Franciscan order in Cuba. Frustration does not become futile if we analyze the reform from a later perspective.

The reform promoted by the crown at the end of the eighteenth century was proposed to stimulate the sending of peninsular friars, the building of convents of strict observance, the founding of Colegios de Propaganda Fide, and the strict following of communal living, with the objective of uprooting the supposed state of "relaxation" that reigned in the Franciscan province of Santa Elena. But far from improving the situation of the Franciscan order on the island, the pretenses of reform took shape in fierce fights and requests by friars for permission to renounce their vows and leave the cloister—induced by the condemnation of the friars—and temporary breach of the commitment made with Creole society. More than a simple prediction of the impact the religious orders would subsequently suffer by the offensive of Spanish liberalism, the project of reform to moralize the Franciscan province of Santa Elena embarrassed the traditional pillars of the Franciscan presence in the largest island of the Antilles.

Adorned by the most extensive conventual network on the Island and a large religious community, the order of Saint Francis wore a disguise of sturdiness on the threshold of the nineteenth century. But from the moment they began to diminish the actions of Creole clergy in the internal organization of the Franciscan convents—granting exclusive prominence to Spanish friars—they were justly wounded while stripping the province of those elements identified as Creole; the crown sowed the harmful seed of decline in the bowels of the province of Santa Elena.