Guide to the Archicofradía del Santísimo Sacramento y Caridad Records 1555-1858


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Table of Contents

• Descriptive Summary
• Information on Use
• Access
• Digital Images
• Citation
• Historical Note
• Scope Note
• Related Resources
• Subject Headings
• INVENTORY

Descriptive Summary

Information on Use

Access

The collection is open for research.

Digital Images

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Citation

When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Archicofradía del Santísimo Sacramento. Records, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

Historical Note

Confraternities are associations formed for the purpose of promoting and enriching public worship in the Catholic Church. For laymen they provide an organized structure for the expression of individual piety, devotion, and service. The Confraternity of the Most Blessed Sacrament arose in the sixteenth century for the special purpose of emphasizing and enhancing the Eucharist, particularly as a reaction to and a refutation of Protestant sacramental doctrine and practice. The confraternity movement quickly spread to all parts of the Catholic world, even to the remote parishes in America.

Archconfraternities differ from confraternities only in that they possess higher dignity, and may be empowered to affiliate other confraternities---that is, they may communicate their own privileges to affiliated confraternities. But this affiliation confers no powers of direction or jurisdiction on the archconfraternity, for each confraternity, created almost always by local initiative and not from the outside, remains an autonomous entity under the jurisdiction of the local bishop. It is claimed by José Maria Marroqui, La Ciudad de Mexico, 2d ed. (Mexico City, 1969 reprint), III, 432, that the Mexican society, authorized by the papal bull of 30 November 1539, was an archconfraternity from the very beginning. This would have been unusual; but the claim is not sustained by the authors of the documents in this collection, who never used the term "archcofradia" until after 1670---before that date it was always "cofradia."

By the terms of canon law the confraternity created in Mexico City in 1539, from its very foundation, was affiliated with the Archconfraternity of the Most Blessed Sacrament in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, and entitled to hold and enjoy all privileges and indulgences conferred by papal favor on the Roman archconfraternity. The canonical characteristics of affiliation (discussed in Edwin Quinn, Archconfraternities, Archsoldalities, and Primary Unions [Washington, D.C., 1952]) may be abstruse but are important, nonetheless, for understanding some of these papers. The Mexican confraternity not only claimed affiliation with Minerva, but also with the Lateran basilica of St. John the Baptist, the pope's own church as bishop of Rome, with all the powers of indulgence communicated thereby.

This was because the Mexican confraternity supported and supervised the female orphanage and school, known formally as the Colegio de Santa Maria de la Caridad (informally as the Colegio de las Doncellas, or de las Ninas), which orphanage was affiliated with the Lateran. The confraternity even changed its name to "Cofradia del Santisimo Sacramento y de Santa Maria de la Caridad" in order to emphasize its assumption of the prerogatives conferred on the Colegio by the Lateran affiliation.

Marroqui states that the papacy recognized the change of name, confirmed the affiliation with the Lateran, and even limited the Jurisdiction over the confraternity wielded by the local ordinary (the archbishop of Mexico). These papers prove that the confraternity's claims were opposed in Mexico, in Madrid, and perhaps even in Rome. Box 1, folder 14 contains documents dealing with a representative sent to Rome by the confraternity, in 1682, to secure explicit papal support. The confraternity had to defend its claims and privileges repeatedly, and had frequent resort to Madrid and Rome for papal bulls and briefs, and royal decrees and letters, reconfirming old legal instruments of privilege.

In the disputes over privilege, two issues concerned the officials of the crown. First they wanted to know whether privileges of the confraternity deriving from affiliation with Roman bodies violated the royal patronato (the crown's control over all ecclesiastical patronage in the Americas, which was loosely construed as a right to control most Church activities in the New World). Secondly the officials were concerned that the confraternity's money-gathering activities, through the sale of indulgences, detracted from and diminished the revenue from the government's own sales of indulgences, which took place under the direction of the Council of Cruzada. The confraternity seems usually to have won the support of the Cruzada and of the Council of the Indies in Madrid, and to have obtained strong backing in Rome---so that the impression left by the papers is that the confraternity, until the nineteenth century, successfully maintained its high privileges.

The Mexican archconfraternity had seven officers, chosen every 2 July for a term of one year: a rector, four diputados, and two mayordomos. The seven officers meeting together constituted the mesa (board) or capitulo (chapter) of the confraternity, who were assisted by a salaried permanent secretary. Relations between the confraternity and the canons attached to the Mexican cathedral were so close that (according to Marroqui) canons were often elected diputados. A partial list of names of officers could be drawn up from these papers, but unfortunately there is no list of members, and very little information about the internal organization, procedures, and actual work of the confraternity.

The chief importance of these materials, particularly those from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (which constitute the greater proportion), lies in the information they convey about the fiscal operations of the confraternity. As a corporate body the confraternity had the right to acquire, possess, and dispose of property, and the right to sue and be sued in the courts. More significantly, the confraternity, like other Mexican and Spanish religious societies, functioned as a money-lending agency, as a kind of colonial bank. As the recipient of many cash bequests and gifts, the confraternity accumulated liquid reserves that could be best employed if loaned out at interest.

Loans issued by the confraternity were usually secured by real property and were therefore mortgages. These mortgages were either permanent, with no right to repay the capital (meaning that interest had to be paid indefinitely), or redeemable, in which case the capital could be repaid and interest terminated. The papers seem to indicate that few borrowers could afford to repay the principal. Annual interest was always set at 5 percent.

In the typical transaction, a hacienda in the country or a house in the capital was mortgaged. Interest was paid to the confraternity for decades and for generations. The confraternity collected legal papers that established the ownership of real estate, set forth the terms of mortgages, and papers that recorded all the vicissitudes that befell real property by reason of death, disputed inheritance, transfer by sale, bankruptcy, suits for the recovery of debt, and so forth. The liability to the confraternity, carried as a permanent encumbrance on property, devolved upon all the successive owners of the estate, and the confraternity was usually a party to all litigation involving the estate.

The confraternity was dissolved and its properties confiscated by the anti-clerical reform laws of 1861.

Scope Note

The papers contain detailed information about the legal and fiscal affairs of the haciendas of Tlapanaloya (Tequixquiac?), Jalapaxco (Chalchicomula), Tepechichilco (Zempoala), and the ingenio of Tuxpango (Orizaba); many other haciendas and properties are mentioned cursorily. The confraternity papers are related to similar papers, also concerning haciendas and mortgages, in the Puebla, Mexico, Hospicia Records. The precise nature of the connection between the Puebla Papers and the confraternity records is not clear, but the documents in Box 1, folder 31 record a formal request by the confraternity for the transfer from Puebla to Mexico of papers relating to litigation involving the estate of the Torija family. Possibly other papers from Puebla eventually came into the hands of the confraternity. Religious organizations in Puebla were involved in the same fiscal activities as the confraternity, and it is possible that Puebla institutions and the Mexican confraternity occasionally held different mortgages on the same properties. The latest item in the confraternity collection is dated 1858.

Related Resources

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Puebla, Mexico, Hospicio Records

Subject Headings

• Archicofradía del Santísimo Sacramento y Caridad (Mexico City, Mexico)
• Catholic Church -- Societies, etc
• Confraternities

INVENTORY