[70]

Laymen regard ecclesiastical persons like a mirror, and when
they see clean living and celibacy grow weak, they disdain
to submit themselves...and dare to break what
our law and the church command them
Synodal Constitutions of Toledo, 1480 ⁽¹⁾

In Spain, momentum to train a reformed clergy had gathered steadily since the reign of the Catholic Monarchs. In 1527 Spanish prelates met in Valladolid at Charles V's behest to debate the problems facing the universal church and to vote on Erasmus of Rotterdam's orthodoxy. One anonymous memorial generated by the meeting pinned the cause of all of Christianity's ills directly on the moral bankruptcy of the clergy. [71] To prescribe a remedy, one first had to find the origin of the disease: "priests [who] are trained from childhood in sloth and vice." The cure, the author suggested, lay in education, by creating diocesan colleges where from a young age priests would be schooled in the duties of their vocation. The memorial even suggested that such colleges could be funded by taking the rent from two canonries and préstamos as they fell vacant. Gradually the parish livings would be filled by men trained in the seminaries.⁽²⁾ This idea was taken by Juan de Avila, Bernal Díaz de Luco, and Pedro Guerrero to the Council of Trent, where, at the twenty-third session, the prelates approved an article providing for the establishment of diocesan seminaries. The decree imparted canonical force to the idea that a reformed clergy was not possible without rigorous training in special schools designed to instill saintly virtues, good doctrine, and Catholic militancy in those seeking to become priests. Once prepared for its pastoral mission, the secular clergy could participate in reordering the religious life of the mass of people.

Soon after Trent, bishops in Cuenca began to apply the new reforms to their clergy. As it turned out, the amount of success possible was in large measure shaped by the complex nature of Cuenca's clergy. Far from being a cohesive group that could be treated uniformly, the secular clergy was rent by sharp divisions. The coalition that surfaced between the canons and parish clergy at the 1566 synod was an ephemeral union brought about by unusual circumstances. In reality, reform meant different things to different segments of the clergy, so separate policies were needed to deal with each group. Consequently, any study of the clergy's reform must begin by describing the general structure of the entire priesthood while still remaining sensitive to the differences between groups of priests and, above all, their function relative to the parish.⁽³⁾

The first thing that post-Tridentine bishops in Cuenca wanted to know about their clergy was how many of them there were and what their means of support was. This was no easy project to undertake because many of the clergy were nonresident, but still drew on the diocese's resources. Although several bishops conducted partial surveys of the diocese, the most accurate head count was carried out in 1591 by Philip II's officials, who arrived at the figure of 1,405 secular clergy, 773 religious and 479 nuns.⁽⁴⁾ The clergy were distributed unevenly [73]
Table 3.1. Cuenca's Secular Clergy, 1579-1583

throughout the bishopric, with the well-populated southern and western districts disproportionately attracting the highest percentage of priests (see map 2).

Between 1579 to 1583, bishops Rodrigo de Castro and Gómez Zapata compiled the best descriptions of Cuenca's resident and absentee clergy, including information concerning the priests' duties and their income from benefices. The bishops' survey, which excluded the two hundred or so clergy in the city of Cuenca, counted 1,043 clerics who lived under widely differing financial circumstances (see table 3.1). Half of Cuenca's clergy lived without the aid of a benefice. The other half, many of whom did not reside where they held their benefice, enjoyed stipends as meager as five ducats a year or as fat as twenty-five hundred ducats -- five hundred times the value of a single chaplaincy. A lucky minority held titles to more than one benefice, which compounded the differences in wealth between priests (see table 3.2). One begins to see in the vastly disparate incomes of Cuenca's priests the most basic cause of both the clergy's division and their corruption: the unequal allocation of benefices and pastoral duties between a select few who sometimes [74]
Table 3.2. Annual Income of Seveal Cathedral Dignitaries, ca. 1580

prayed and became rich, the great mass of poorly paid priests who administered sacraments, and those who did nothing at all.

The sharpest split in the diocesan clergy was between the tiny fraction of priests who belonged to the chapters at Cuenca and Belmonte and those who served or lived in the parishes. Because the cathedral at Cuenca and the collegiate church in Belmonte were the first and second most important churches in the diocese, their priests thought of themselves as the natural leaders of the entire clergy. The two chapters were composed of more than forty canons and dignitaries whose purpose was to lead the cult in their respective churches. The chapters drew their income independently of the bishop from half of the parishes in the diocese and observed their own customs, laws, and hierarchy. In Cuenca, in 1580 there were thirteen dignities including the dean, archdeacon, archdeacon of Huete, chanter, and maestrescuela, and twenty-six simple canonries, four of which -- the canon theologian, canon penitentiary, canon lector, and canon magister -- by law were open to competition. Many of the dignitaries possessed one of the canonries, and two canonries were reserved for the Inquisition, thus reducing the total number of individuals serving the church to about thirty-three.⁽⁵⁾ Each canon was obligated to recite canonical hours in his church and to participate in conventual mass and in all of the church's extraordinary ceremonies. They also were supposed to accompany the bishop when he said mass in the cathedral, and when the see fell vacant, the chapter was responsible [75] for the administration of the diocese. While not members of the chapters, numerous prebendaries called racioneros, half-rationers, coadjutors, and chaplains also served the cathedral and collegiate churches.⁽⁶⁾

Throughout the sixteenth century, as an institution the chapter of Cuenca appeared untouched by the changes that were taking place in the wider world of the church. One simple barometer of the chapter's commitment to its duties was individuals' residence in Cuenca and attendance at the semiweekly meetings of the cabildo, for which they were paid. In the years sampled, the majority of the dignitaries attended the cabildo's meetings not at all or only once in the course of the year. Some resided at the royal court, others in Rome. Participation was higher among the canons, almost all of whom lived in Cuenca and attended meetings on a fairly regular basis. Still, few consented (or were trusted?) to manage the cathedral's vast array of financial, social and religious interests. One observes, year after year, the same handful of men accepting commissions to audit accounts, inspect the vestiary, write letters to the cathedral's lawyers in Rome and at court, or talk to city hall, the parish clergy, or the bishop.⁽⁷⁾

Under the domination of the most powerful and wealthy families in the bishopric, the exclusive cathedral chapter guarded its membership jealously. In the sixteenth century, the marquis of Cañete and the count of Priego usually were represented by one or more relatives, who occupied the chapter dignities in the opulent style expected of the titled nobility. Don Francisco de Mendoza, dean of the chapter, maintained a household of twenty which cost him the large sum of 9,250 ducats over a twenty-seven month period. When Don Francisco died in 1588, he had debts totaling over 3,158 ducats, and he left unpaid retainers who had served him for more than fifteen years.⁽⁸⁾ The obituary of Don Pedro de Mendoza, brother of the marquis of Cañete, viceroy of Peru, sang the praises of a powerful nobleman, not those of a pious leader of the diocesan clergy. In actual fact, Mendoza possessed the volatile temperament of a nobleman: one morning in 1571 while he was still lying in bed, Mendoza boxed another canon for failing to deliver a promised vote.⁽⁹⁾

Most seats in the chapter were filled by members of the bishopric's untitled noble families. Their hold over the canonries was so secure that the social composition of the chapter at Cuenca changed little during the sixteenth century. For example, in 1606, over half of the canons bore the same family names that appeared in a 1566 listing of the chapter's members.⁽¹⁰⁾ Outsiders who gained entry to the chapter in Cuenca were [76] relatively few and owed their appointments to episcopal favoritism or, more rarely,to their own talent and good fortune. In 1567 and 1568, Bishop Fresneda obtained canonries for his nephews Antonio and Francisco del Prado, and it probably was no coincidence that Sebastián de Covarrubias, who joined the chapter in 1579, was a nephew of Diego de Covarrubias, who was bishop briefly in 1578.⁽¹¹⁾ In the seventeenth century, however, the provincial nobility's control over the chapter weakened, and men from other dioceses took for themselves the wealth that had once belonged exclusively to conquenses.⁽¹²⁾

Offsetting the nepotism and low aptitude that characterized most appointments to the cathedral (one Mendoza became a canon at age twelve!), the four canonries of office provided an opportunity for university-educated churchmen to enter the chapter. Two of the canonries, the magister and theologian (known in Spain as the canónigo doctoral) were established by Pope Sixtus IV in the late fifteenth century; the canons lector and penitentiary, although of medieval origin, were not normalized until Trent.⁽¹³⁾ Unlike the other canons, these special canons were expected to reside in the city.⁽¹⁴⁾ Announcements of the competitions were sent out to the universities and cathedrals of Castile, and two to twelve applications would be returned by recent university graduates, professors, or qualified parish priests. The majority of candidates, however, already held a canonry of office at a less prestigious cathedral and were seeking to advance their career: from Cuenca, many went on to become bishops around Castile.⁽¹⁵⁾

The surviving papers from the 1546 competition for canon magister, which attracted six contestants, allow one to gain an idea of how the contests were conducted. Two of the applicants were disqualified because their applications were late. The remaining four, Dr. Juan de Ortega, a priest from Cuenca, Maestro Gonzalo Matthia, Dr. Alonso Ramírez de Vergara and Maestro Pero Díez, a canon from Zamora, each had to deliver a sermon, a lesson, and a scholastic disputation. So that their knowledge would be tested fairly, the themes for these public acts were chosen by a child, who randomly opened the Bible and Peter Lombard's Sentences three times for each portion of the competition; the candidate could then pick his topics from the resulting choices. The candidates were given two days to prepare the sermon, eight days for the lesson, and one for the disputation. Copies of the disputation had to be delivered to the bishop, the chapter, and the other contestants. Normally, after all of the candidates had delivered their speeches, the chapter would vote for the winner by ballot, but in this competition, [77] Bishop Ramírez Fuenleal claimed the choice was his and appointed Alonso Ramírez de Vergara. Predictably, this led to an outcry from the chapter, and the appointment was held up for three years while the chapter appealed and the losing candidates jockeyed for position by attempting to disqualify one another.⁽¹⁶⁾ Eventually, Ramírez de Vergara won his seat and in the years that followed vindicated the bishop's choice.

Along with Juan Fernández de Heredia, Ramírez de Vergara was one of the few canons in Cuenca who won the praise of contemporaries for their piety. After coming to Cuenca, Ramírez de Vergara worked closely with the Inquisition of Cuenca as a theologian; in one case, he tried vainly for several months to convert the heretical madman, Bartolomé Sánchez, whose obstinacy eventually brought Ramírez to tears.⁽¹⁷⁾ Philip II offered Ramírez promotions to Oviedo, Cuenca, Sigüenza, and the Suprema, all of which he turned down. Instead of high ecclesiastical office, Ramírez preferred to assist the Jesuit order, helping to found the college in Cuenca and naming the college in Alcalá de Henares as an heir to his estate.⁽¹⁸⁾

More revered for his saintly ways was Juan Fernández de Heredia, who served the church for half a century and died in 1557. Heredia founded Saint Peter's convent in Cuenca, spent his income on dowries for poor orphans and other charities, and was devoted to the cult of the saints. In 1556, so that their cult could be better observed, he endowed twenty saints' days for a total of 215 ducats. After his death, he became the only canon from Cuenca in the sixteenth century to be granted the title "blessed" (bienaventurado).⁽¹⁹⁾

Although Pedro de Marquina never won public praise for his contributions to the church's cause, he serves well as an example of a hardworking, noble cleric who displayed both the virtues and the weaknesses of the hidalgo class. Prior to arriving in Cuenca, Marquina distinguished himself in the service of Charles V and Ignatius Loyola, a fellow Basque.⁽²⁰⁾ No one could fault Marquina for a lack of generosity or noblesse oblige, as he spent most of his energy and his estate on educational projects. Together with Canons Pedro del Pozo and Vergara, in 1554, Marquina founded the first Jesuit college in the diocese. In his will, dated 30 July 1566, Marquina declared that he had fulfilled nearly all of the conditions of the foundation. Using the privilege granted to him by the general of the order, Francisco de Borja, he asked to be laid to rest in the college's chapel, where besides himself, four others of his choosing could be interred. Despite a scrape with the Holy Office on [78] charges of alumbradismo, Marquina named his in-law Inquisitor Madriz, another inquisitor, and two favorite nephews as recipients of this honor. Among Marquina's other legacies was the foundation of a school in his native town of Mondragón, which was to teach Christian doctrine in Spanish and Basque, as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Marquina was also generous to his relatives, friends, and servants, some of whom he said he loved as his own brothers.⁽²¹⁾

In his testament, however, Marquina revealed weaknesses as well. Like many of his class, he was jealous of his family's honor, and in the entailed estate that he established, he excluded from succession the descendants of any relative who had been found guilty of heresy or treason. Furthermore, Marquina charged his descendants to "preserve the purity that God gave them, because it has been seen how from impure generation and descent there comes great harm to one's soul, honor, and estate." Therefore, he required his heirs to marry either noblewomen or Old Christians whose families were entirely free of any wrongdoing or bad blood going back on all sides for four generations. In this, Marquina was far less generous than his friend Loyola, who did not require purity of blood for entry into the Jesuit order. And like so many clerics, Marquina broke his vows of celibacy, though unlike his friend Morzillo [see below], he would not let a breath of scandal touch him. In his will, in which he gave hundreds of ducats to loyal servants, Marquina begged God's forgiveness for not being able to give to his "natural," Marina, more than a headdress and fifty reals, presumably because a larger gift would attract comment.

Clearly, unless one had ambitions for ecclesiastical advancement or was driven by a scrupulous conscience, life as a canon in Cuenca was not demanding. By most accounts, Cuenca's canons were interested in almost anything besides serving the cathedral and providing an example for their fellow priests and the laity. Of those who actually resided in Cuenca, several found an outlet in literature and wrote to entertain themselves. Antonio Barba once explained apologetically to Jerónimo Zurita, the famous historian of Aragon, that he studied privately because Cuenca's isolation and his desire to employ his time in some honest exercise drove him in that direction.⁽²²⁾ Some canons even prided themselves on their humanist learning. One member of the chapter, Alonso de Polo, wrote enthusiastically to Bishop Diego de Ramírez (1518-37), "You have in your chapter of Cuenca so many Nestors, nay, as many Platos and Catos as I have ever seen in one place together!"⁽²³⁾ In all likelihood, Cuenca was not the Parnassus that Polo imagined it to be, [79] but it is true that certain of Cuenca's canons, such as Gonzalo Muñoz and Antonio Barba dabbled in subjects such as genealogy, local history, and hagiography, topics that were popular with educated members of the lower nobility.⁽²⁴⁾ Yet, very few records come to light of Cuenca's canons having written works of devotion or canon law for the diocese and themselves.⁽²⁵⁾ Their interests ran to secular topics rather than ecclesiastical ones.

While some canons kept themselves busy with "honest exercise," as Barba put it, others found less constructive ways to occupy their time. Outsiders who dealt with the chapter had little praise for its moral standards or political dealings. In 1587 an exasperated papal nuncio judged Cuenca's chapter harshly. While the see was vacant, the chapter split in an especially acrimonious dispute over the administration of the diocese that led to reciprocal excommunications, imprisonments, and lawsuits. In the midst of these arguments, the nuncio wrote home, "Certainly they merit a worthy punishment, not only for this [dispute] but also because I understand that they lead bad lives, and with regard to celibacy, they are the most scandalous in Spain," and recommended a papal visitation of the chapter.⁽²⁶⁾ The cabildo countered the nuncio's accusations by writing him, "You treat us worse than heretics; just because business does not turn out as you like, without our being to blame, you call us rebels and cursed, and label us treacherous."⁽²⁷⁾

Other scattered reports tend to back up the nuncio's portrayal of the chapter as a violent, willful, and secularized body. Not only did the chapter fight with the bishop and nuncio but the canons bickered continually among themselves, actually coming to blows at times, suing one another, and denouncing each other to the Inquisition on the slightest pretext. In 1545 the chapter ordered Don Alonso Carrillo and Don Francisco de Mendoza to drop their argument and become friends and fined them a total of eleven ducats. Two months later they had to be ordered to make friends again. Canon Arboleda had so many enemies in the chapter that he had permission to be absent from choir and to go armed. Eventually Arboleda used his sword in an argument with his long-standing enemy Canon García and narrowly missed him. The two sued.⁽²⁸⁾ Other canons preferred the Inquisition over their swords. More than ten years after Pedro de Marquina's death, Francisco de Morzillo denounced him to the Inquisition for some comments the canon had once made. The same Morzillo denounced one of the cathedral's chaplains because the priest had grumbled about the inconvenience the Inquisition's autos de fe (which were often held inside the cathedral church) [80] caused him. Canon González del Castillo was under investigation for seventeen years due to the malicious accusations of canon Márquez del Prado. The case was finally dropped when González became bishop of Calahorra.⁽²⁹⁾ Several canons had illegitimate children (or were so themselves illegitimate); in 1568 Francisco de Heredia went so far as to try to have his illegitimate son succeed in his canonry.⁽³⁰⁾ Bishop Castro sent to Philip II a highly critical report of Dr. Morzillo, who was the canon lector, in which he accused him of concubinage, unduly favoring an illegitimate daughter, and neglecting his duties in the cathedral. Apparently, Morzillo did not care what people thought of him after he was dead; in his will, he took pains to set up his housekeeper handsomely for the rest of her life.⁽³¹⁾

This was the chapter that the bishops of Cuenca would have to reform. Three bishops in succession -- Vadillo, Pacheco, and Pimentel -- tried unsuccessfully to compel the canons at least to serve in the cathedral by prohibiting the use of coadjutors, who said mass in the canons' place. The canons' power and tenacity of purpose was such that throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they were able to resist any attempts at reform by burying their opponents, the bishops of Cuenca, in a maze of litigation.⁽³²⁾ Perhaps with time, the canons lost some of their aristocratic obsession with honor, which underlay many disputes, and gained more appreciation for their priestly calling. The record on this account is silent, however, and it may well be that the canons preserved their privileged position in the clergy without ever conceding to reform.

Ultimately, the reformation of the cathedral chapter was of secondary importance in the church's overall Tridentine program. Below the special world of the cathedral canon were the priests who had to be molded to the Tridentine ideal. Reform of these clergymen was crucial to the church because the success of its popular religious program rested on their shoulders. Yet, the parish clergy themselves were not an amorphous mass that could be treated uniformly. If the course reform took in the parishes is to be understood, the local clergy first must be described from two points of view. The amount of pastoral responsibility exercised by priests divided them into groups that became more or less vital to the reformation of local religious life. What position a priest held in his community in turn depended in large part on his social class. In order [81] to understand why certain kinds of priests chronically failed to lead a life in Christ, it is necessary to know something of the social origins of the parish clergy.

The parish clergy belonged to a small world that in many respects was a microcosm of the wider structure of the church. Every parish that was larger than perhaps one hundred households supported a variety of priests, who observed their own hierarchy and had their own special interests. At the head of the parish stood the cura who administered the spiritual affairs of the parish in his own right and collected the parish tithes. Because of his key position, the cura became the subject of the most concerted efforts at reform. After Trent, the cura was supposed to win his post by competition and personally serve the benefice. Held for life, the curato was the highest-paying post in the parish. With his superior wealth, control over the tithes, and the spiritual power to anathematize disobedient parishioners or even conjure nature itself, the cura's potential authority and leadership were great indeed. In practice, however, absenteeism, low educational standards, and the corruption of morals among the curas had diminished their spiritual authority. Parishioners often disregarded the curas' excommunications and even took public issue with their theology.⁽³³⁾

Nearly all of Cuenca's curas hired subalterns to aid them in the work of the parish. In a rural parish, which might include several hamlets clustered about a village, the cura invariably took on one assistant or more, tenientes de cura, as they were called, who lived in the outlying hamlets. The assistant performed many of the parish services, such as baptism and confession, or delivered sermons but could only do so following annual episcopal examinations and licensing. Although assistants were known to serve the same parish for years on end, they were no more than the curas' employees. Because the assistants often were the only priests charged with the care of a community, diocesan officials kept close watch over them.

Every parish that was larger than a village also supported a certain number of resident and absentee priests who were not tied to specific duties in the parish. Some benefices, such as the beneficio simple, préstamo, and prestamera, did not require personal service, and their titulars were free to reside wherever they wished. Parishioners never saw these priests, whom they supported, and sometimes even the parish cura forgot their correct names.⁽³⁴⁾ If the community was wealthy, there were also a few privately endowed chapels in the local church which paid a miserable living. Those men who had not secured a benefice or pastoral [82] job were known as simple priests. These were sons of local families who lived off of their patrimony and by saying an occasional memorial mass for the dead. Some of them took positions as coadjutors of the simple benefices, while others worked for the ubiquitous confraternities, shrines, or hospitals to make ends meet. Although these men were subject to the cura's authority in the parish, they did not work directly for him and were a constant source of trouble. Their sense of vocation was low, and contemporaries complained that there were far too many of them. Finally, every large community had its share of tonsured students preparing for the priesthood and clerics who had taken only minor orders.

The parish clergy should not be seen solely in the context of its pastoral functions and ecclesiastical hierarchy. As in the wider society, there was a close correlation between the position a priest occupied and his social class. Between 1565 and 1595, only 5 percent of the diocesan clergy were noble, yet they claimed 15 percent of the diocese's prebends. Over half of these men held titles to benefices that did not require personal service; the impression one is left with is that hidalgos entered the ranks of Cuenca's parish clergy primarily to take advantage of attractive, but not burdensome, benefices.⁽³⁵⁾ Ironically, pluralism, as long as it did not involve benefices requiring cure of souls, was not outlawed in Spain after Trent; this was a concession to Philip II, who benefited politically from the rights of patronage. The unfortunate consequence was that nothing discouraged noble clerics from amassing as many of these tax-exempt benefices as possible.

The number of hidalgos who actually assumed pastoral responsibilities in the bishopric was minute and was confined to the parish livings, some of which paid handsomely and offered a degree of prestige. From 1565 to 1595, only eighteen hidalgos, who perhaps had been attracted by exceptionally high-paying parish livings, such as the one in San Clemente, which paid 1,000 to 1,500 ducats annually, took positions as curas. For a long time, a nephew of the Valdés brothers, Don Fernando de Valdés, held the living in San Clemente. Another hidalgo cura was Don Miguel de Enríquez, brother of a city councillor in Cuenca. Both men, particularly Enríquez, were disliked by their parishioners. On the other hand, Dr. Don Bernardino de Mendoza, from Cuenca, seems to have been dedicated to his parish of Aliaguilla, and Lcdo. Don Pedro Ruiz de Alarcón, who won his post by competition, was "most virtuous and exemplary and diligent."⁽³⁶⁾

The pattern of social bias in appointments continued below the ranks of the nobility (see table 3.3). In a sample of forty priests interviewed [83]
Table 3.3. Social Stratification among Forty Members of the Lower Clergy, 1550-1600

by the Inquisition on a variety of charges, those who came from the rentier class usually held the most prestigious parish position, the curate or commissariat. These men also were well-connected to the church through older clerical relatives. Although sons of labradores, the backbone of rural society, occasionally won a parish living, most held an assistantship or no position at all. None of the sons of professionals and few of the artisans' sons participated in the parish hierarchy of curas and assistants. The behavior of the sons of professionals is the most curious; judging by the group's life histories, not one displayed any interest in pursuing an active clerical profession, nor had their relatives before them. Perhaps these men and their families viewed this sort of life as a cleric, free from taxes and work, as a form of ersatz nobility. Surprisingly, despite the ban on conversos' entering the priesthood, one quarter of the priests, from all social groups save the labradores, admitted to Jewish ancestry.⁽³⁷⁾ This suggests that efforts to prevent the social assimilation of conversos simply were not effective below the highest ranks of society. Finally, one group should be noted for its absence: the truly poor were excluded from the secular clergy. The patrimony requirement rendered it nearly impossible for a jornalero (day laborer) to place his son in the secular clergy. Even if he could afford to educate the child well enough, no day laborer could dream of acquiring an estate large enough to satisfy the diocesan requirement of twenty ducats' rent a year.

With the provincial nobility and sons of wealthy families shunning the lower priesthood, except to fill benefices free of responsibilities, the [84] priesthood lacked the social prestige that would attract well-motivated recruits from the respectable strata of Castilian society. Instead, the hidalgos set an example of self-serving interest that other priests, shut out from the patronage system, could not fail to notice or envy. Other men, such as the sons of the professional men above, were content to take advantage of their clerical status without ever contributing to the life of the parish. From the beginning, by not confronting the system of ecclesiastical patronage and privilege -- indeed, to do so would have required a revolution -- Spanish reformers built their efforts to create a new clergy on an fragile social base. Through education one might hope to change the values and improve the competency of those who took holy orders, provided their motives for entering the clergy were reasonably sincere. However, as long as the priesthood was looked upon as a refuge from the burdens of civilian status, nothing could protect the clergy from the worst forms of opportunism.

If the key to a reformed clergy was thought to be better training, the age-old methods that served to prepare young men for the priesthood clearly had failed. Before Trent, the education offered in Cuenca to ordinands did little to encourage the formation of a strong pastoral vocation in those seeking to become priests. Schooling was scarce, expensive, and not uniformly directed to the needs of ordinands. Given the deficiencies inherent in the training received, complaints about the ignorance and lack of vocation among pre-Tridentine priests could not surprise observers of the diocese.⁽³⁸⁾

To enter the lowest order of the priesthood, a young man only had to be literate in Spanish and know the church's basic prayers. In Cuenca, the statements given by the priests and laymen who were born before 1550 indicate that even such elementary preparation was not always easy to obtain. Although according to diocesan law the sacristans in every village were supposed to teach children how to read and write and recite their prayers, few actually did so. Children learned their first letters as best they could from a friendly neighbor or an itinerant schoolmaster. Although most children did manage to learn how to read and write in their villages, some of the older priests interviewed by the Inquisition recalled having to travel to a nearby town or Cuenca itself in order to learn such basic skills.⁽³⁹⁾

[85] In order to advance in the priesthood, an ordinand needed to learn the diocesan liturgy and to acquire a reading knowledge of Latin. Generally, knowledge of the liturgy was gained during a period of apprenticeship at a local church, while Latin was learned in one of the diocese's few grammar schools or at the university. Before 1555, learning Latin posed real difficulties for students in Cuenca, especially for those who came from the country. In the entire diocese there were only two established grammar schools, one in Cuenca and the other in Huete. Both were founded early in the sixteenth century. A canon from Toledo, the conquense Juan Pérez de Cabrera, brother of the marquis of Moya, established the Colegio de Santa Catalina in the city of Cuenca in 1517. This school, which enjoyed the support of the city government and the cathedral, soon gained a reputation for training the local clergy that would be difficult to dispel in years to come.⁽⁴⁰⁾ The second school in Huete was founded at approximately the same time as Santa Catalina and taught Latin and logic.⁽⁴¹⁾

In spite of the existence of these two schools, most students applied to individual Latin masters in Cuenca or near their hometowns. In the city of Cuenca between 1534 and 1546 at least three independent school masters worked to supply the educational needs of the city and its hinterland.⁽⁴²⁾ Notwithstanding its patronage of the Colegio de Santa Catalina, the city of Cuenca felt some responsibility to keep the masters in business. In 1534, Juan de Santa Cruz, teacher of "reading, writing, arithmetic, Latin, the vernacular and other letters," asked the city to help him pay his rent because it had always subsidized school masters' lodgings.⁽⁴³⁾

Outside Cuenca and Huete, masters worked only where a town was large enough to support such specialized learning. As a result, certain areas of the diocese were more educationally advantaged than others. In La Mancha, which had many fair-sized and wealthy towns of five hundred to a thousand or more households, teachers worked intermittently in El Castillo de Garci Muñoz, San Clemente, Belmonte, La Mota del Cuervo, Villaescusa de Haro, Villanueva de la Jara, and Iniesta.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Some towns, such as San Clemente, contracted with a schoolmaster to teach in the town for several years.⁽⁴⁵⁾ In other cases, masters chose a locality and offered classes to those who could pay for them. Teachers avoided La Alcarria, which was densely populated but where towns on the average were smaller. Students from that region had to travel to Huete or Alcalá de Henares to learn Latin.⁽⁴⁶⁾ Similarly, students from [86] the sparsely populated Serranía were forced to study in Cuenca for lack of any local opportunity.⁽⁴⁷⁾

Judging by the forty case histories of the priests interrogated by the Inquisition of Cuenca, the pre-Tridentine education of Cuenca's priests was essentially the same as that given to laymen of comparable social status. Those priests who came from wealthy families were sent off at an early age to the house of a relative or local nobleman, where as pages they learned social graces as well as their first letters. Only one entered the service of an ecclesiastic, an uncle who was a canon in Cuenca.⁽⁴⁸⁾ The rest lived with laymen. One example is Pedro Luis de Alarcón, who at the age of ten left his home in Uclés for nearby Almonacid de Zurita to live in a nobleman's home. At fifteen, accompanied by a manservant, Pedro went to the University of Salamanca, where he paid more attention to student necromancers than to his lectures in rhetoric and returned home a failure after one year.⁽⁴⁹⁾ Francisco de Vega, son of a lawyer at the Chancillería de Valladolid, served in the household of Bishop Pedro de Castro and traveled with the royal court to Flanders and England, where he witnessed Philip II's marriage to Mary Tudor. But Vega's training as a courtier did him little good as cura of the town of Albaladejo. His parishioners found him arrogant and his opinions unconventional; because of their complaints to the Inquisition, Vega would be investigated no less than three times by the tribunal.⁽⁵⁰⁾ Priests from more modest social origins followed the pattern set by children of shop keepers, artisans, and local professionals: they stayed at home for as much of their education as possible. Only when they had exhausted the possibilities of their hometown did they leave their families to study Latin. Compared with the children of local notables, they began their formal education at a later age, between twelve and seventeen. Several attended the Colegio de Santa Catalina in Cuenca.⁽⁵¹⁾

Nowhere in the interviews with priests about their education is there any suggestion that before attending the university, which a few did, they had prepared for the priesthood in any way other than to learn Latin under the conditions mentioned above. One wonders how priests learned to compose sermons, keep parish records, and guide their parishioners in confession. By the sixteenth century in Cuenca, at least the printing press had become a source of temporary relief. Indifferently prepared priests could manage to get by with books designed just for their needs. Father Pozo, for example, a confessor who was born in 1512 and had only studied Latin grammar, owned Martín de Azpilcueta's standard manual on confession.⁽⁵²⁾ García de Arriba, who had [87] studied some canon law at mid-century and served as an assistant priest, collected in his lifetime several law texts, commentaries on the Evangelists, and books of sermons.⁽⁵³⁾

Undoubtedly, printed books were an unexpected boon, but in the end they were an expediency, if they were used at all by pre-Tridentine priests. The diocese needed a coordinated program, not stopgap measures. The solution came unexpectedly from two quarters: special colleges and the Castilian universities.

At mid-century, owing to the Jesuits, the educational opportunities for priests in Cuenca began to improve rapidly. The Jesuits found the diocese an open field for their special blend of missionary and educational labor. Often with local encouragement, between 1554 and 1620 the society founded no less than five colleges in the bishopric, a number equalled only in two areas of traditional missionary work, the Basque country and Andalusia. As a result, secondary education, or gramática, as it was called, became more available, generally was of better quality, and was more adaptable to the needs of future priests. In 1584, moreover, inspired by the Jesuit model, Bishop Gómez Zapata founded a conciliar seminary in Cuenca exclusively dedicated to preparing young men for the parish priesthood.

The first Jesuit college was established in 1554 in the city of Cuenca with the encouragement of canons Pedro del Pozo, Ramírez de Vergara, and Pedro de Marquina. Two years before, in 1552, Canon Vergara had invited two Jesuits to the city to give the Spiritual Exercises there. They reaped "a notable spiritual harvest" of confessions and exercises, from among the inhabitants, including a son of the count of Priego.⁽⁵⁴⁾ Originally intended as a summer residence for students from the society's college in Alcalá de Henares, the school's early years were hard ones, and the institution survived on charity.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Despite its financial troubles, Pedro de Falces wrote to Loyola that the Jesuits were rapidly gaining the city's favor and attracting students from the town.⁽⁵⁶⁾ In 1559 the college won permission to open a secondary school, and by 1562 the college had its own building and the support of the city council. In that year, the city petitioned the new bishop of Cuenca, Bernardo de Fresneda, to favor the institution.⁽⁵⁷⁾

At the same time that the college in Cuenca was getting under way, the marquis of Villena, Don Diego Pacheco, was arranging to bring the [88] Jesuits to Belmonte; he promised the school 1,500 ducats annually from the town's wealthy parish living. The college, founded in 1558, soon received support from the town council of Belmonte, which transferred the town's Latin chair to the college and gave it 16,000 maravedis in rent.⁽⁵⁸⁾ In 1567, at the invitation of Don Juan Pacheco de Silva and his wife, Doña Jerónima de Mendoza, lords of Villarejo de Fuentes, the Jesuits opened a third college and their principal house in the small town.⁽⁵⁹⁾ The fourth college, in Huete, was an offshoot of the Belmonte school and opened in 1570. Like the other colleges, Huete was aided locally by an interested city council and from the very first enjoyed its own building and endowment.⁽⁶⁰⁾ The fifth and last college was founded in 1613 in the large town of San Clemente. There, too, the town council aided in the establishment of the school, in this case by diverting to the school the funds set aside for a Latin teacher's salary.⁽⁶¹⁾

The Jesuit colleges contributed directly to improving the preparation of Cuenca's future priests. Students were subjected to strict moral supervision, as well as high academic standards. The rector of the college in Belmonte, Pedro Sevillano, reported in 1560 that the students there took communion at least once a month, if not more frequently. They faithfully obeyed the college's rules with good results; the students no longer peppered their speech with foul language, and they prayed and examined their consciences often. Some took on extra spiritual exercises, which Sevillano claimed improved their studies and encouraged their desire to enter the Company. As for their studies, the curriculum included subjects that were solely or primarily for the benefit of those intending to enter the priesthood or who were already part of it. In Belmonte, the fathers offered a special Lenten course for parish priests that taught them how to respond to the confessions that they soon would be hearing at Easter. In 1560 thirty priests from the collegiate church attended those classes. As the course was a normal aspect of the Jesuit curriculum, the other colleges probably provided the service to the clergy in their neighborhoods as well.⁽⁶²⁾ The college in San Clemente founded an endowed chair for teaching the art of hearing confessions so that priests would not have to enter the universities of Salamanca or Alcalá to learn the skill. San Clemente also maintained two chairs in scholastic theology.⁽⁶³⁾

Unfortunately, the matriculation records of the five colleges have disappeared so that it is impossible to ascertain the schools' enrollment or estimate how many Jesuit-trained students eventually may have entered the parish clergy. Surviving references to enrollment figures hint [89] at the importance of the Jesuit colleges to the training of Cuenca's clergy. As early as 1560, the college in Belmonte boasted an enrollment of seventy. One year later, the enrollment was up to ninety-seven, and in 1569 it stood at four hundred. Reporting to Philip II ten years later, local officials wrote that the school enrolled six hundred students or more and had four lecturers. The officials praised the school, writing "It has its convictorio, as they call it, where the children of hidalgos and wealthy and noble people are brought up, teaching in it virtue and letters with care. They come from all over the region on account of the school's fame."⁽⁶⁴⁾ Interviews with seven parish priests born in Cuenca after 1538 reveal that four of them attended the Jesuit colleges in Cuenca and Huete.⁽⁶⁵⁾ The Jesuit training stood at least one of these men in good stead. Jerónimo Gómez, who had planned to enter the society but became the cura of his hometown after his mother was widowed, had an excellent preparation for the position. In 1582, he owned text books on scholastic theology by Domingo de Soto and Thomas Aquinas, Pius V's Tridentine catechism, the text of the Council of Trent, and St. Augustine's spiritual exercises. Many years later, Gómez had the distinction of witnessing the 1602 synodal constitutions.⁽⁶⁶⁾ Because of the Jesuits' reputation for success and the lack of suitable alternatives to their colleges, it is very probable that like Jerónimo Gómez, many of Cuenca's post-Tridentine clergy were steeped in the ratio studiorum, the order's hallmark.

The Jesuits were the first to establish new schools in Cuenca; soon, however, others followed their example.⁽⁶⁷⁾ The Council of Trent's recommendation concerning seminaries was taken seriously in Spain, where many of the schools were set up within a generation of the council's closure.⁽⁶⁸⁾ One of these was Cuenca's Seminario de San Julián, founded in 1584.

In the first bloom of the post-Tridentine period, the 1566 and 1574 diocesan synods discussed the possibility of founding a seminary in the city of Cuenca, a project that interested the city council as well. In September 1566 the city fathers discussed the Tridentine decree concerning seminaries and resolved to bring the matter to Fresneda's attention, since it was important to the welfare of the city.⁽⁶⁹⁾ The city council repeated its interest in 1574, but nothing was done until Gómez Zapata became bishop of Cuenca in 1582. Within days of his arrival [90] in the city in May, 1583, the new bishop proposed starting a school and set a date for discussion with the cathedral canons. Over the next six months, in consultation with the chapter, Zapata determined that the new school would house twenty-four seminarians and six servants and teach the choir boys as well. A deputation from the chapter inspected the building belonging to the Colegio de Santa Catalina and recommended it as the site for the new seminary.⁽⁷⁰⁾ The school began operating sometime after 1584. Rivalry developed between the two schools, which Bishop Vadillo attempted to quell by incorporating the two, but the quarrels continued. Santa Catalina ejected the seminarians, who remained without the proper living arrangements so vital to the ideal of the seminary until 1628, when Bishop Pimentel gave them their own building.⁽⁷¹⁾

While the Seminario de San Julián's influence would not be felt until the seventeenth century, the pedagogical ideals of the school are worth examining. The statutes of 1628, the school's first written charter, provided for sixteen scholarship seminarians and eight paying students.⁽⁷²⁾ Although the small size of the school was typical, its goals and curriculum differed somewhat from those of other schools for clergy. Rather than concentrate on the intellectual preparation of mature students, the founders of the seminary decided to recruit boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen, when they were most malleable, and instill in them the ideals and attitudes of a reformed clergy. The course of study was shorter, just four years, and consisted of classes in Latin, choir, and liturgy. The founders forwent the complete Tridentine program because of the young age of the seminarians and Cuenca's proximity to the University of Alcalá, where students could easily improve their knowledge of rhetoric, theology, and canon law.⁽⁷³⁾

The school's approach to training the future priests was straightforward: the boys were cut off entirely from the outside world and then drilled in the values and habits of an entirely different one. The school's tactics were quite similar to those in place at other seminaries. Seminarians were confined to the schoolgrounds, where the rector, appointed by the bishop, commanded their every waking moment. The training continued even while the seminarians took their meals. As they ate, students listened to readings from Fr. Luis de Granada, Alonso de Villega's Lives of the Saints, and other religious texts that were valued for their good doctrine and inspirational stories.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Distractions from the outside world were kept to a minimum. Seminarians could only leave the school in pairs and on specific errands, and even then they were [91] expected to follow strict rules of conduct. To complete the students' isolation, they were not allowed vacations, and visits by relatives were discouraged.⁽⁷⁵⁾

Such severe measures had ample justification. Without strict supervision, ordinands easily succumbed to the temptations of the profane world. The story of Pedro Martínez, who at age twenty-seven decided in 1588 to leave his small village to study at the rival Colegio de Santa Catalina, illustrates how easily ordinands could stray from the right path. Martínez's aim was to learn Latin in order to take major orders. At Santa Catalina, Pedro dressed soberly and kept his tonsure well-shaven, but he was allowed the freedom of the city. Before long he was being sued for matrimony by the parents of a young lady.⁽⁷⁶⁾ As much to blame for Pedro's shortcomings as an ordinand was the school itself. Santa Catalina, by accepting older students (all of Pedro's friends at Santa Catalina were in their twenties) and allowing them the traditional freedoms of student life, could not instill in them the values of the new priesthood. Instead, Santa Catalina inadvertently perpetuated the conditions that favored a secularized clergy. It was partly for this reason that Bishop Vadillo placed Santa Catalina under the supervision of the rector of San Julián.

After 1550, public interest, as well as the efforts of the Jesuit order and the bishop of Cuenca, combined to improve local educational opportunities in the diocese. By 1610 there were seven schools primarily dedicated to the training of young men for the clergy, whereas before 1550 there had been at best two such schools. These new schools raised the quality of education in the diocese. Even those priests who decided to quit their studies after a few years' training at one of the colleges or seminaries still entered the clergy better prepared than had been their counterparts of fifty years before. Yet, by mid-sixteenth century, young men were not content to study only gramática; something drew them in ever increasing numbers to the universities of Spain.

The Council of Trent had avoided recommending higher learning for parish priests; instead they were only required to possess the sixteenth-century equivalent of a secondary education. It was assumed that priests would acquire this education in the new seminaries or Jesuit colleges. The Tridentine fathers' vision, however, did not reflect the views of Spain's ecclesiastical leaders, who over the course of the sixteenth [92] century came to take a more demanding stand on clerical education.

Starting with the reign of the Catholic monarchs, in ecclesiastical as well as civil appointments preference was given to candidates having a university degree.⁽⁷⁷⁾ However, in the late fifteenth century, most degrees were awarded in law, and Thomist scholastics held tight control over the chairs of theology. In 1508, dissatisfied with the predominance of the lawyers, Cardinal Cisneros founded the University of Alcalá de Henares for the express purpose of educating priests in the new humanist learning and Biblical studies.⁽⁷⁸⁾ The experiment was a resounding success, and even though Christian humanism was later discredited, the university continued to grow. Thus, after Trent it was only natural for some Spanish ecclesiastics to believe that the universities could perform the function of the seminaries, which, at any rate, would take years to get underway.⁽⁷⁹⁾ Others came to the conclusion that a secondary education simply was inadequate training for the priesthood. This bias becomes apparent in the comments Cuenca's diocesan inspectors made concerning the parish clergy's preparation. Inspectors expressed disapproval of priests who had "only" studied Latin grammar, while they singled out for praise priests with university degrees, who were wise, learned, knew casos de conciencia, and could preach well.⁽⁸⁰⁾ The crux of the matter was that a university education had become so highly valued that few who lacked noble birth or a powerful patron could afford not to invest towards a degree.

Bishop Rodrigo de Castro was one of those prelates who was convinced of the salutary benefits of education. As bishop of Cuenca, he took more than an ordinary interest in uncovering the educational, professional and personal qualifications of his clergy. Between 1579 and 1583, his inspectors general crisscrossed the diocese collecting information on each priest's education, character, age, and parish duties. These visitation records provide a snapshot of Cuenca's secular clergy at a time when the Tridentine movement was first taking effect in the diocese.

Castro discovered that Cuenca's clergy had embraced wholeheartedly the Castilian preference for university training. Table 3.4 demonstrates the remarkable change that had occurred over three generations. Nearly fifty years before, Bishop Ramírez had every right to complain of his clergy's ignorance. Only one quarter of the priests ordained before 1563 had won a higher degree. In contrast, among the priests [93]
Table 3.4. Education of Cuenca's Secular Clergy, 1569-1589
 

born after 1539 and therefore educated and ordained during the Tridentine period, the proportion of priests entering Cuenca's clergy with university degrees had nearly doubled, to 45 percent, while the proportion of those who had only studied Latin had declined to one-third.⁽⁸¹⁾

Such aggregate figures, however, tell nothing about the changes taking place within the priesthood. When the parish clergy are considered according to their pastoral function, a striking picture emerges (see table 3.5). Two points become clear. First, the most highly educated clergy tended to fill the positions of most responsibility, both before and after the Council of Trent. One half of the parish curas born before 1540 held university degrees, a proportion far higher than prevailed among the older clergy in general. The same held true for the assistant priests, who, although not nearly as well educated as the curas, were in turn superior to the simple priests.

Second, in a matter of generations a dramatic change for the better had taken place in the degree of learning achieved by the younger parish clergy. The improvement was in direct proportion to the pastoral responsibility a priest exercised, but all parish priests, even the lowly simple priests, joined in the trend. The percentage of curas holding university degrees increased sharply, from 53 percent of those born before 1540 to 87 percent of those born after. In addition, more curas earned the licentiate, a degree that required at least six years of study.⁽⁸²⁾ Although the curas' assistants were not nearly as well-educated, more
[94]
 

of these men were also investing in university study. Educational levels improved even among the simple priests; the percentage of simple priests with university degrees rose from 16 percent to 27 percent.

A university degree by itself, of course, could not ensure that a priest was any better able to perform his duties than one who had taken orders after a few years' study with the Jesuits. One objective of the Catholic Reformation was to make the parish clergy responsible for preaching and confessing, burdens long undertaken by mendicant friars. A bachelor's degree in the arts, with its three years of logic and philosophy, was not necessarily the best preparation for these pastoral duties. To be a good preacher, one had to know theology and the Scriptures. To be an expert confessor, one had to be immersed in the intricacies of canon law.

Over the course of the sixteenth century, priests' preferences for certain academic subjects in fact changed to match better the requirements of their position. Prior to Trent, those curas who had attended the university generally had studied canon law. However, since 1545, diocesan inspectors had constantly urged the curas to preach on Sundays and holidays. The Council of Trent confirmed the inspectors' exhortations and showed a marked preference for theological training. In a dramatic reversal, the men who became parish curas after 1563 were now trained in the Tridentine favorite, theology, despite the fact that theology was one of the more difficult degrees offered by Spanish universities (see table 3.6). One indication that the bishops were exercising [96] a deliberate preference for theologians comes from the results of the open competitions that were held for curates after 1567. Of the winners with university degrees, two thirds had majored in theology. By contrast, slightly fewer than half of the priests who held their curate by resignation had taken degrees in theology.⁽⁸³⁾ Assistants, who were not canonically required to preach, for their part did not reflect the pressure to learn theology. Instead, the men who became assistants became better versed in canon law or theology, while fewer men with "generalist" backgrounds in the arts found jobs as assistants.

After Trent, the conquense clergy's educational qualifications improved significantly. Far from being an ignorant group of men, segments of the parish clergy attained high levels of sophistication; some men even boasted of having studied with famous masters such as Domingo de Soto and Francisco de Vitoria. What is just as important, however, the divisions of function and class that characterized the parish clergy carried over into learning as well. Parish curas and their assistants became both quantitatively and qualitatively better educated by spending more years at the university and investing more study in canon law and theology. However, priests who were not actively employed in parish duties rarely were distinguished by their learning.

While higher academic standards were important, they could not be the sole objective of reform. Learning was part of a means to an end, which was to train committed priests. Thus, Cuenca's bishops were not content merely to inquire about their clergy's formal schooling. Inspectors also attempted to evaluate how well the parish clergy fulfilled the professional and personal requirements of their sacerdotal role.

In the Tridentine scheme, the parish and its priests were to be transformed into the spiritual axis of the laity's religious life by taking over the part traditionally played by monasteries and friars. Educating the clergy was not enough to achieve this end. A good university education might motivate priests, but its primary purpose was to ensure that priests gave laymen orthodox interpretations of doctrine and wise counsel in confession. To make the parish the center of the laity's religious life, the clergy had to earn parishioners' confidence. They would have to reside in the parishes, however remote or small, adopt higher standards of professional competence, and follow Christ's example to the best of their ability.

[97] Before Trent, absenteeism was a chronic problem in parishes both in the city of Cuenca and in rural areas. Curas did not reside in their parishes and appointed assistants to take their places, many of whom were less than ideal substitutes. The chief cause of nonresidence was that parish livings were awarded to high church officials who had no intention of fulfilling the obligations attached to the benefices. Other curas, less exalted in rank, simply preferred the capital to the village. An appreciation of the problem of absenteeism may be gained by looking at appointments to livings in thirteen parishes from 1488 to 1559. During this period, the thirteen livings changed hands at least twenty-nine times. The majority of the new appointments were given to canons, administrators, and even bishops, some of whom made their homes as far away as Rome. Only six out of the twenty-nine new appointees chose to reside in the parish that supported their benefice.

Beginning in the 1550s, residence began to improve in the thirteen parishes. As the old canons died, the benefices were awarded to local priests, who chose to reside near their living.⁽⁸⁴⁾ No record survives that suggests what measures were taken to enforce residence, but regardless of their age, curas all over the diocese began to reside. By the time of the diocese's first Tridentine episcopal visitation in 1569, veteran curas who harked back to the 1530s became as punctual in their residence as younger curas who were to take up their first post in the 1560s. After visiting two-thirds of the diocese, the inspector general cited only fifteen curas for absenteeism, five of whom were on official leave.⁽⁸⁵⁾ The overall figure for nonresidence among curas from 1565 to 1595 stood at 10 percent.

With a well-educated clergy in place, how well did the priests perform their duties and live up to the new standards? Diocesan inspectors gathered information by asking for sworn depositions from other priests and village elders. This information can be supplemented by that gathered from other sources, primarily the Inquisition and the episcopal curia. The evaluations must be treated with care, because they only provide a suggestive appraisal of the priests' conduct. Parishioners could remain positive about their priests even when the clerics recently had been under investigation in Cuenca for one reason or another. It was the extreme cases -- the priests who were either excellent pastors or wretched clerics -- that commanded attention. The majority of priests fell somewhere in between and rarely elicited any comment beyond the laconic "serves" or "nothing against" from inspectors. Trends, rather than absolute figures, are the indicators.

[98] Because of their many responsibilities, parish curas were examined most critically by inspectors. Both in the execution of their duties and in their relations with parishioners, curas generally received favorable marks. The behavior of younger curas ordained after Trent differed markedly from than their older colleagues (see table 3.7). For example, the younger curas' superior education resulted in a better grasp of Catholic doctrine. Compared with their older colleagues, more young curas were preaching on a regular basis, and fewer committed doctrinal errors in their sermons. Some, such as Gonzálo López, who preached to the satisfaction of his parishioners, won praise for their sermons.⁽⁸⁶⁾ Moreover, the younger curas administered sacraments and diocesan ritual properly. In their personal conduct, younger curas also won higher approval ratings from their parishioners. Nearly half were noted for their virtuous conduct and pious ways (recogimiento). Finally, despite their youth, the curas ordained after Trent were reported to be more celibate than the older curas, and in their lifetimes, they were less likely to be accused of concubinage or solicitation in the confessional.

The vicar of Huélamo, Lcdo. Francisco de Salzedo, may serve as an example of the good pastor, although out of humility, he probably would object to the honor. Salzedo received his living at age twenty-four and served his native town in the mountains north of Cuenca for forty-four years, from 1561 to 1605. By chance, two of his letters to a disobedient parishioner, a letter to the Inquisition, and his holograph testament have been preserved. Although the documents were written over the period of thirty-three years, Salzedo was consistent throughout. In one of his two letters to Agustín Cava, a rich herdsman who refused to go to confession, Salzedo wrote carefully

All too well I suspect that my present letter will not be received by Your Grace with the same heart-felt charity with which its author sends it, because the world does not gladly suffer the plain, unvarnished truth. But, as God is in Heaven and He knows the hearts of men, let Him witness that what I should say in this letter springs forth from the fountain of Christian love and from the zeal of my office, and not from the dark springs of human passion. I will remain consoled by having done before His Divine Majesty what I owe to His honor, to my profession as a priest, and for the well-being of the souls to whom, although unworthy, I commend myself.⁽⁸⁷⁾

[100] Despite the literary, pious style, Salzedo meant what he said. He did care deeply about his parishioners, and he felt almost overwhelmed by the trust of souls for which he was responsible. If he could not account for them, he continued to Cava, he, Salzedo, would face the punishment of hell. Thirty years later, writing his own testament, Salzedo displayed the same traits of modesty, conscientiousness, and profound piety. He requested first that he be buried in utter simplicity, in the same style as a poor man. After giving money to various charities he noted, "Considering that I owe many reals and I fear there will not be enough in my estate to repay them, I do not leave any masses for my soul, since, as I have said before, it is not right to pay for them out of another's goods." After requesting that his brother take care of the masses, he continued,"If anything is left over, spend it on masses, for surely I forgot to say [some] in so many years of being cura." And a final epitaph:

I have been the parish priest of the said town for the space of more than forty-four years, and in this time I will have benefited from the church's property. With that, as much as to square things as to show my gratitude, I should have liked to leave [the church] enriched with some things if the Lord had given me the means, but I have not been able to by my own weak efforts. ⁽⁸⁸⁾

Most parishes were too large to be administered by the cura alone, even one as conscientious as Salzedo. As integral members of the parish, hired assistant priests ideally would also participate in the reform of the clergy. This, however, does not seem to have occurred, except in that the assistants achieved a higher level of education. Inspectors found that the assistants were professionally competent to administer sacraments and teach doctrine without provoking criticism, but no more than that. Few assistants, whether ordained before or after 1563, were known for their preaching or learning. Moreover, the younger assistants did not feel the same pressure as had the younger curas to become model priests (see table 3.8). Those who had been ordained after Trent actually were faulted more than their older counterparts for breaking their vows of celibacy and for gambling. At some time in their careers, one-fifth of the younger assistants would face legal charges stemming from their immoral conduct. One such priest was Lcdo. Miguel de Orenes, a priest and comisario [101]
Table 3.8. Assistant Priests' Effectiveness, by Year of Birth
 

in Huerta. In 1579 the bishop's prosecutor accused him of celebrating mass carelessly, preaching and confessing without license (contrary to the inspector's orders), giving sermons that provoked whispering and laughter, hindering divine offices, not celebrating mass according to the Roman rite ("he says it's enough what he does"), selling cloth at high prices like a merchant, and, finally, voting in the town council!⁽⁸⁹⁾ Besides exacting a minimum of competence, the bishopric had not been able to improve the quality of those who served in the cura's stead.⁽⁹⁰⁾

Reform would be meaningless if it did not reach the clergy who lived in the villages and small towns where most of the diocese's population lived. This was not as difficult a project as it would seem to be at first glance. In sixteenth-century Castile, urban-rural dichotomies were far less pronounced than they were in northern Europe. Every large village, often incorporated legally as a town (villa), boasted families of quality who sent their sons to the university or to the court, and unlike the case today, many of the children eventually returned to their ancestral homes.⁽⁹¹⁾ Few large centers of population were entirely urban, and most communities of just a few thousand inhabitants, considered hamlets today, took on an urban atmosphere. Only those places that were inaccessible by mule were genuinely isolated.

These characteristics of rural society meant that the bishops of Cuenca could implement some reforms in the countryside far more easily than might be imagined. An elite cadre of well-educated curas was created from local clergy without the necessity of resorting to priests from the city of Cuenca and outside of the diocese. One-fifth of parish curas served the livings in their home towns, and one-quarter worked in parishes less than thirty kilometers from their homes. Only 16 percent of curas were not natives of the diocese itself. Moreover, the majority of assistant priests came from the community in which they worked. The parish clergy's local origins were an advantage in that parishioners could scarcely regard them as outsiders bent on imposing alien customs and ideas on their communities. On the other hand, the clergy's intimate ties to their communities meant that it would be harder to attain the Tridentine ideal of priests unattached to the pleasures and intrigues of the secular life.

In more isolated regions of Spain and in other countries, the rural clergy often were criticized for their ignorance and poor conduct. However, in Cuenca the parish priests who lived in small villages were not those who committed the faults that so outraged contemporary writers. Priests who served in the diocese's small communities were as well educated as those who lived in the larger towns. The percentage of curas and assistants who had studied gramática or had taken a university degree were nearly the same throughout the diocese. A rich living in a village, open to competition, could attract many well-qualified candidates, whereas bishops worried about how to fill poorly endowed benefices, wherever they were located. Similarly, location had little bearing [103] on how inspectors evaluated clerics' moral conduct. Priests comported themselves as well or as badly in the country as they did in the city. Contemporaries were closer to the mark when they cited lack of vocation and ignorance, rather than geographical location, as the root of corruption among the clergy (see Appendix 3).

Since the days of the Catholic Monarchs, reformers had demanded from the clergy three things above all others: learning, virtue, and residency. With varying degrees of success, the reform had met these demands. While the cathedral chapter remained the least affected by reform, the four canons of office, through their preaching and theological expertise, helped to offset the worst faults of the provincial canons. In the parishes, priests brought up during the Tridentine era were consistently better educated than their predecessors. And among those for whom residency was required, chronic absenteeism had disappeared. Priests who broke their vows of celibacy now stood a good chance of being caught; in fact, in their lifetimes, one out of ten priests in the district would be noted or prosecuted for concubinage or solicitation. What was most important, however, bishops had broken the legacy of neglect in the parishes, which were now led by well-educated curas, who in some measure represented the ideals of a church determined not to lose one more soul to heresy or incompetence. At mid-century, the two most urgent tasks facing the curas and their assistants were the immediate indoctrination of their parishioners and the enforcement of the precept of annual confession. There was no time to lose.

1. Epigraph: J. Sánchez Herrero, Concilios provinciales y Sínodos toledanos de los siglos XIV y XV, 307.

2. AGS, P.R., leg. 22, exp. 79, fols. 1r-v.

3. A good survey of the secular clergy is A. Domínguez Ortiz, Las clases privilegiadas en el Antiguo Régimen, 215-71; see also his longer, but lesser-known work, La sociedad española del siglo XVII, vol. 2, El estatamento eclesiástico.

4. DHEE, 2: 690.

5. In 1576 the smaller collegiate church had four dignities, six canonries, four rationers, four half-rationers, and eight chaplains (Zarco Cuevas, Relaciones de pueblos del obispado de Cuenca, 182).

6. BNM, ms. 13071, "Compulsa de instrumentos...," fol. 47r. For a description of these canonries and other aspects of a Spanish cathedral chapter, see J .R. López Arévalo, Un cabildo catedral de la vieja Castilla; and J. Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa, 28-35.

7. ACC, Actas, 1545, 1550, 1555, 1560, 1565, 1571, 1580, 1590.

8. ADC, C.E., leg. 777, exp. 886 (1594). The annual income of some Spanish bishoprics did not even equal the amount Mendoza spent on his household.

9. A. Herrera García, "Los anales eclesiásticos de Cuenca," 351; RAH, Salazr y Castro, A 69. The affronted canon sued Mendoza for the insult. In 1595 Don Pedro spent 10,000 ducats on the festivities honoring Cuenca's patron saint, San Julián (see Nalle, "A Saint for All Seasons").

10. BL, IB, 1322 K. 13, no. 25 (r-v); ADC, C.E., leg. 12, exp. 63, fol. 36r. For a list of the principal families of Cuenca and their histories, see Mártir Rizo, Historia de... Cuenca, 208-99, or López, Memorías históricas de Cuenca y su obispado, 2: 221-62.

11. Fresneda's appointments were recorded by his secretary Ochoa in ADC, L-150, fols. 69r and 94r. Francisco remained in Cuenca for nearly forty years, became prior of the chapter, and drew up his will in 1605 (AHPC P-726, fols. 572r-79r). Fresneda appointed a third nephew, Bernardo del Prado, to a benefice in 1569 (ADC, L-150, fol. 128v). Diego de Covarrubias was provided to Cuenca in 1577, but died before he could actually take possession of the see (Mártir Rizo, Historia de...Cuenca, 194). For biographical information on Sebastián, see A. González Palencia, Miscelánea conquense, 1st ser. (Cuenca, 1929), 31-132; and idem,"Datos biográficos del licenciado Sebastián de Covarrubias y Horozco," BRAE, 12 (1925): 39-72, 217-45, 376-96, 498-514.

12. ACC, Sec., Serie de Personal, Catálogo; the years examined were 1502-1650. In the sixteenth century, familial relationships were commonly included in the record, and one finds the same family dominating a seat in the chapter for several generations. During the seventeenth century, blood ties between canons become much more difficult to establish.

13. López Arévalo, Un cabildo catedral de la vieja Castilla, 100-104. The lector was responsible for teaching, the canon magister preached, the theologian served as the chapter's legal expert, and the pentitentiary was supposed to be available for confession in the cathedral. The actual date of foundation for these offices seems to have varied among cathedrals.

14. "Statute concerning the residence of canons by competition. 1612. As they are very learned persons of great example and virtue...they cannot be absent from the city or the church for more than a month except on Cathedral business" (ACC, "Estatutos de la Santa Iglesia de Cuenca," fol. 202). Other canons were allowed four months' absence every year.

15. Canons Magisters Pedro Guerrero and Juan Méndez were elevated archbishop of Granada in 1546 and 1578, respectively; Canon Lector Martín de Garnica became bishop of Osma in 1594; and Canon Theologian Alonso Márquez del Prado was made bishop of Tortosa in 1612. Canon González del Castillo, provided to Calahorra in 1612, according to Bishop Pacheco, "truly reformed the clergy in his bishopric both in their customs and in not allowing unqualified priests to administer sacraments." The priests hated him for it, and in 1621 González unsuccessfully asked for a transfer, which was not granted (AHN Consejos Suprimidos [consultas de oficio] Libro 15221, letters dated 13 Dec. 1621 and 23 Feb. 1622). Calahorra had a reputation as a difficult diocese (Domínguez Ortiz, Las clases privilegiadas en el Antiguo Régimen, 252).

16. ACC, Procesos de nombramiento de Canónigos de Oficio, P-16, exp. 667; and Sec., Cartas de Roma, leg. 49, exp. 2 (29 Apr. And 1 May 1549). The chapter tried to enlist the aid of the powerful cardinal of Coria, brother of the marquis of Cañete, in preventing Vergara's appointment. In 1549, the chapter asked the new bishop, Muñoz, to favor its various lawsuits, but Muñoz told them "it wouldn't bother him if they sued" (ibid., 1 May 1549).

17. ADC, Inq., leg. 196, exp. 2216.

18. G. González Dávila, Teatro eclesiástico..., 1: 448; AHPC, P-239, fols. 365r-370r (1566). Vergara was described eighty years after his death as "a very saintly, and very learned man" (C. Granados de los Ríos, Historia de Nvestra Señora de los Remedios de la Fuensanta, 97).

19. ACC, Dotaciones de Fiestas y Aniversarios, 1543-1718; González Dávila, Teatro eclesiástico..., 1: 448.

20. M. Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 182, n. 30. Marquina had been in charge of coded correspondence at the Spanish embassy in Rome under ambassador Juan de Vega (AHPC, P-247, fol. 305r). Bataillon speculated that a certain Marquina, who had been a page with Juan de Valdés at the duke of Escalona's palace, was in fact Pedro de Marquina. The testimony of Marquina's fellow canon and erstwhile friend, Dr. Morzillo, leaves no doubt that these two are the same person (ADC, Inq. L-326, fol. 75v).

21. AHPC, P-247, fols. 298r-306r; 308r-11r.

22. J. Andrés de Uztárroz, Progressos de la historia en el Reyno de Aragon..., 451.

23. Olmedo, Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa, 162.

24. Gonzalo Muñoz, who arrived in Cuenca in the 1550s, was a graduate of Sigüenza and the Colegio Mayor de Oviedo. According to Antonio Barba, Muñoz "professes greatly to these things [and] wrote a book in praise of Sr. Luis Carrillo de Albornoz [a conquense lord]." Barba thought the book was half lies (Andrés de Uztarroz, Progressos de la historia en el Reyno de Aragon, 141-42). Antonio Barba became the archpriest of Cuenca and founded a chapel dedicated to San Julián. As secretary to Cardinal Quiñones, he translated from Latin Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda's treatise, De como el estado de la milicia no es ageno de la Religión Christiana (Seville, 1541). Barba was a friend of the royal chroniclers Ambrosio de Morales and Jerónimo Zurita and corresponded with the latter about a treatise he was writing on the Spanish royal succession (Andrés de Uztarroz, Progressos de la historia en el Reyno de Aragon, 126-27, and 449). The one exception to this mediocrity was Sebastián de Covarrubias (1539-1613), who excelled in classical languages and wrote the famous dictionary, Tesoro de la lengua castellana (Madrid, 1611).

25. Valenzuela wrote treatises on law, war, San Julián, and Spanish antiquities (Nicolás Antonio, Bibliotheca nova hispana, 1: 655).

26. ASV, S.S., Spagna, scat. 19, fol. 244v, letter to Cardinal Rusticucci, 13 June 1587. The chapter could not shake its bad reputation for womanizing, which prejudiced its cases in Rome, first in 1534 (see Chapter 2) and again in 1550, when Juan del Pozo wrote to the chapter that Cardinals Santiago and Pacheco were blaming the chapter in its current lawsuit "because they have heard of their adulteries and ravishings of women" (ACC, Sec., Cartas de Roma, leg. 49, exp. 2, no. 24, [9 Sept. 1550]).

27. RAH, Jesuitas, 9/2633, fol. 195v.

28. ACC, Actas, 1545, fols. 20r, 27r, 48, and 53. Writing from Rome, Juan del Pozo warned the chapter "not to let the bishop use this as an occasion to make your affairs look ugly, because although they are slight, put all together they give the chapter a bad name [!]" (ACC, Sec., Cartas de Roma, leg. 49, exp. 2, no. 18 [14 Jan. 1550]).

29. ADC, L-326, fos. 74v-5r); ADC, Inq. leg. 268, exp. 3677, and leg. 332, exp. 4736.)

30. ADC, L-150, fol. 101r.

31. AGS, P.R., leg. 137; AHPC, P-370, fols. 243r-49v (1585). Morzillo was generous all around, but to María de Buendía, who served as his housekeeper for twenty-three years, he gave six houses and an annuity of thirty ducats. On an earlier occasion, he gave a dowry of two hundred ducats to her daughter. Moreover, for one year after his death, María and her grandchildren could continue to live in his house, all expenses paid, and no one was to question her accounting.

32. The canons published several memorials explaining their side of the lawsuits. Luis de Castilla wrote one in 1606 entitled, "Información de coronados de la Santa Iglesia de Cuenca...el pleito más importante que tienen" (C. Sanz y Díaz, Reseña cronológica de algunos documentos..., no. 1052).

33. In 1583 the villagers of Uña testified against their cura, Lcdo. Pedro de Frías, that they did not like his sermons, which caused them to leave mass grumbling (ADC, Inq., leg. 298, exp. 4248). W. Christian reported the same tendency in Local Religion, 166-67.

34. A "doctor canon in Salamanca" was cura of Villar del Horno in 1569, and a "knight in Cuenca" held a chapel at Belmonte (ADC, C.E., leg. 1, exp. 1, fols. 33r and 7v.

35. Excluding the canons, no more than thirty-three resident hidalgo priests have been identified; all the rest lived away from their benefices. About 3 percent of Cuenca's total population were hidalgos in 1591 (AGS, Dir. Genl. Tesoro, leg. 1301).

36. D. Torrente Pérez, Documentos para la historia de San Clemente, 1: 407-10; ADC, Inq. leg. 284, exp. 3961; ADC, L-204, fol. 154r; L-203, fol. 54v; L-204, fol. 15v.

37. The presence of conversos among the group is not explained by the nature of the trials, only two of which involved accusations of Judaism. Rather, priests offered the information for the first time when they gave their genealogies.

38. For a summary of primary and secondary Spanish education, see R. L. Kagan, Students and Society in Early Modern Spain, 5-61.

39. See Nalle, "Literacy and Culture in Early Modern Castile." García de Arriba, born in Altarejos in 1522, was taught how to read and write by the parish sacristan (ADC, Inq., leg. 326, exp. 4679). At age fifteen, in 1543, Miguel García left home to study in Cuenca (ibid, leg. 217, exp. 2651). For his schooling, Pedro Luis de Alarcón was sent away from home at ten. At age fourteen or fifteen, he began his Latin studies (ibid, leg. 205, exp. 2340A).

40. López, Memorias históricas de Cuenca y su obispado, 2:17. Pérez's foundation superseded the cathedral Latin master, who served the prebendaries. In 1485 the chapter contracted to pay Bllr. Johan de Uclés 3,000 maravedis a year to teach Latin (ACC, Actas, fol. 18r). In 1554 the master of Santa Catalina petitioned the city of Cuenca for a raise, which suggests that the city was responsible at least in part for the administration of the college (AMC, leg. 1495, exp. 28).

41. Sanz Díaz, Reseña, no. 1033.

42. These masters were: (1) 1534, Juan de Santa Cruz (AMC, leg. 1499, exp. 23); (2) ca. 1535, Sebastián de la Cueva, Latin master (ADC, Inq. leg. 326, exp. 4679); (3) ca. 1540, Lcdo. Porter, Latin master (ibid., leg. 252, exp. 3412); and (4) ca. 1545-50, Sancho Muñoz, schoolmaster (ibid., leg. 268, exp. 3676).

43. AMC, leg. 1499, exp. 23.

44. Outside of Cuenca, fifteenth-century centers for Latin were El Castillo de Garci Muñoz (Olmedo, Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa, 7); San Clemente (Torrente Pérez, Documentos para la historia de San Clemente, 1: 209); and probably Belmonte, on account of the collegiate church. In the sixteenth century, Bllr. Ballestero, "a very good preceptor," worked in Belmonte in the 1540s (Torrente Pérez, Documentos para la historia de San Clemente, 2: 313). Maestro Lucas Sánchez taught in La Mota del Cuervo circa 1545 (ADC, Inq., leg. 292, exp. 4129). A certain Tebar worked in Villaescusa del Haro, where his son was born in 1555 (ibid., leg. 289, exp. 4056). Circa 1535-45, Latin was also taught in Villanueva de la Jara and Iniesta (ibid., leg. 187, exp. 2127 and leg. 227, exp. 2856).

45. Torrente Pérez, Documentos para la historia de San Clemente, 1: 313-14.

46. In the 1530s, Huete had two Latin preceptors, Lcdo. Gallego and Bllr. Santa Cruz (ADC, Inq., leg. 287, exp. 4010). The priest Cristobal de Alcazar, born in 1510 in Alcocer (now part of the province of Guadalajara), traveled to Alcalá de Henares to learn Latin. Bllr. Pedro Fraile, born in the same year at Villarejo de Fuentes (mid-way between Huete and Belmonte), also studied Latin in Alcalá before entering the university there (ibid., leg. 201, exp. 2259).

47. For example, Miguel García was born in 1538 in the remote town of Tragacete. Although Tragacete was the only town of any size in the northern Serranía, García had to be sent to Cuenca to study Latin (ADC, Inq., leg. 217, exp. 2651). Diego de Valdecañas, born in Mariana in 1496, learned his first letters in Cuenca and Latin in Alcalá (ibid., leg. 206, exp. 2359).

48. This was Miguel de Tendillo, who entered his uncle's household at age twelve (ADC, Inq., leg. 299, exp. 4282).

49. ADC, Inq., leg. 205, exp. 2340A.

50. ADC, Inq. leg. 240, exp. 3120; leg. 264, exp. 3616; leg. 706B, exp. 587. In 1580, the diocesan inspector found that Vega had received permission not to reside in Albaladejo "por bono pacis" (ADC, L-203, fol. 35r).

51. Miguel García, García de Arriba, and Maestro Miguel Ramírez (ADC, Inq., leg. 252, exp. 3412) were all students of Bllr. Tamayo.

52. Pozo's copy of Azpilcueta was in Spanish (ibid., Inq., leg. 295, exp. 4206).

53. ADC, Inq., leg. 326, exp. 4679.

54. LQ, 2: 15 (2 Sept. 1552).

55. R. García Villoslada, Manual de la historia de la Compañía de Jesus, 99; LQ, 3: 86.

56. LQ, 3: 573, 756; 4: 116-19.

57. LQ, 6: 236; AMC, leg. 837, exp. 1, fol. 103v.

58. LQ, 6: 262; L. Andujar Ortega, Una gloria conquense: beato Juan del Castillo (Tarancón, 1980), 13-15. In 1582, the school was endowed by Doña Francisca Ponce de León, a cousin of Fray Luis de León, also of Belmonte.

59. A. Astraín, Historia de la Compañía de Jesús, 2: 407. In 1569, the inspector general of the diocese saw the college and reported that the Jesuits (whom he called teatinos, after the popular usage), were teaching boys and were preaching and confessing successfully in the area (ADC, C.E., leg. 1, exp. 1, "Villarejo de Fuentes").

60. J.J. Amor Calzas, Curiosidades históricas de la ciudad de Huete, 68-69. The school began by teaching reading and writing, and added Latin after two years. Amor cites as his source, B. de Alcázar, Chrono-historia de la Compañía de Jesús en la Provincia de Toledo (1710).

61. Torrente Pérez, Documentos para la historia de San Clemente, 2: 290-93, 296.

62. LQ, 6: 560; M. Fernández Conde, España y los seminarios tridentinos, 23.

63. Torrente Pérez, Documentos para la historia de San Clemente, 1: 396.

64. LQ, 6:560; 7:131; Andujar Ortega, Una gloria conquense, 13-15; Zarco Cuevas, Relaciones de pueblos del obispado de Cuenca, 182.

65. ADC, Inq., leg. 304, exp. 4399; leg. 351, exp. 4995; leg. 353, exp. 5020. This last, Luis de Aguilera, entered the college in Cuenca at age eight, the youngest of any of the forty priests to begin their studies.

66. Ibid., Inq., leg. 292, exp. 4123; Pacheco, CS (1603), fol. 163v. Gómez was tried and penanced for fornication and scandal, but the scrape with the Inquisition did not seem to affect his career.

67. In addition to the seminary and the colleges, there were also the school at the Dominican monastery in Carboneras, which taught theology as early as 1560 (ADC, Inq., leg. 252, exp. 3412). Porreño wrote in 1622 that the friars taught arts and theology and that many illustrious men had studied there ("Declaración del mapa del obispado," BNM, ms. 12961, fol. 32). Early in the seventeenth century, a citizen of Cañete founded a seminary in the town thatfunctioned throughout the century (M. Romero Saiz, La enseñanza y la formación clerical en Cuenca y Provincia durante los siglos XVI y XVII [Cuenca, 1991], 82-135).

68. For an introduction, see F. Martín Hernández, Los seminarios españoles; and idem, La formación clerical en los colegios universitarios españoles.

69. AMC, leg. 253, fol. 159r (3 Sept. 1566), and leg. 256, exp. 1, fol. 51v (13 May 1574).

70. ACC, Actas, 1583, fols. 73r-77v; 105r-106v; 139v-140r. Zapata did quite a bit of politicking to get the chapter moving on the foundation.

71. Martín Hernández, Los seminarios españoles, 48-49; ADC, L-216, fol. 15v.

72. E. Pimentel, Constitvciones del Collegio Seminario de Señor San Iulián (1628), fols. 1r, 10v. For comparison, see F. Martín Hernández, Un seminario español pretridentino: el Real Colegio Eclesiástico de San Cecilio de Granada (1492-1842) (Valladolid, 1960); and M. Vico Monteoliva, Los colegios de estudios valencianos postridentinos.

73. Pimentel, Constitvciones del Collegio Seminario de Señor San Iulián, fols. 10v, 20v.

74. Ibid., fol. 15v. At the Real Colegio Eclesiástico de San Cecilio in Granada, silence was maintained at all times, including at meals.

75. Ibid., fols. 35v, 32r.

76. ADC, C.E., leg. 766A, exp. 669. Pedro had not advanced so far in the priesthood that he could not marry, but he refused. The girl's relatives demanded a large dowry to compensate for her dishonor, but the episcopal court found in Pedro's favor.

77. On the growth of Spanish universities and careerism in the sixteenth century, see Kagan, Students and Society in Early Modern Spain.

78. Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 10-11.

79. Fernández Conde, España y los seminarios tridentinos, 28-30.

80. For example, Antonio de Cazeobarba, cura of La Osa de Belmonte, was a doctor in canon law and "very learned, well liked, virtuous and charitable" (ADC, L-202, fol. 105v). On the other hand, Pedro Hernández, cura of El Almarcha, who had six children by two women, was "incompetent. He knows nothing but Latin and is a fair priest" (ADC, L-203, fol. 34).

81. There is no Spanish study with which to compare the conquense clergy, but it would seem that writers have far underestimated the level of education among the secular clergy in central Castile during the latter half of the sixteenth century.

82. At Salamanca, a bachelor's degree in the arts required three years in logic and natural and moral philosophy. A bachelor's in canon law required six years of study and ten public lectures. The licentiate in arts required three more years of study, while the licentiate in canon law required five more years. The licentiate in theology required a bachelor's in the arts, and four years Scripture and Sentences (Olmedo, Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa, 20).

83. On the study of theology in Spanish universities, see V. Beltrán de Heredia, Miscelánea , vol. 4; on matriculations in theology versus canon law, see Kagan, Students and Society in Early Modern Spain, 213-15.

84. The numbers of curas residing in the thirteen parishes between 1541-45 and 1571-75 were as follows: in 1541-45, 0; in 1546-50, 0; in 1551-55, 2; in 1556-60, 4; in 1561-65, 7; in 1566-70, 10; and in 1571-75, 13 (ADC, P-149, P-224, P-278, P-357, P-673, P-1047, P-1719, P-1791, P-1835, P-1970, P-2143).

85. ADC, C.E., leg. 1, exp. 1, fols. 39v-40r.

86. ADC, L-202, fol. 130v. López, who had a doctorate in theology from Sigüenza, had won his living in Minaya by competition. The inspector found him to be virtuous, spiritual (recogido), and conscientious.

87. ADC, Inq., leg. 303, exp. 4362.

88. AHPC, P-398, fols. 369r-74r.

89. ADC, Inq., leg. 276, exp. 3797.

90. It is difficult to compare these findings with other studies. Conquense clergy, particularly those who administered sacraments, appear to better educated than those in Lyon (P. T. Hoffman, Church and Community in the Diocese of Lyon, 50-52). Inspectors in a 1574 visitation of the diocese of Rieti (Naples) did not ask about priests' education, but they did evaluate priests' performance in the same manner as conquense visitors had, using virtually the same shorthand of fifteen key adjectives ("learned," "apt," "ignorant,"