Between 1645 and 1662 Blas de Toledo Grimaldo and his wife Antonia del Valle took eight new-born children to be baptized in the parish church of Taxco, in the modern state of Guerrero. These were not the first offspring of Blas who had five older children (possibly of Antonia – the records do not tell us whether Antonia was their mother, or perhaps their mother was a previous wife of Blas).
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| Taxco: general view 1993 |
If you are wondering why I am introducing you to this couple who have probably been unknown to history until now, I came across them in the course of my new project. Taxco is 178 km, a 2.5-hour drive on modern roads from Mexico City. In the 1530s it became a boom town when Luis de Castilla, a Spaniard descended by an illegitimate line from Spanish monarchs, claimed the first rich seam of silver to be exploited in Mexico by the Spanish colonizers. Taxco is also noted for having one of the finest Churriguresque (a Mexican variant of Baroque) churches in all of Mexico. Today, Taxco survives principally as a town where tourists stroll its cobbled streets, admire the church, and buy silver jewelry and other handcrafts. The weeks I spent in Taxco in the 1970s were calm and peaceful and I was able, with the help of a municipal police officer to clear the room in which municipal papers from the 19th and 20th-centuries and earlier were stored. I stayed in an inexpensive local hotel owned by a man who enjoyed telling me about his town’s history. But in the 16th and 17th centuries, Taxco was a disorderly boomtown. Royal officials announced regulations to control the mining economy and collect taxes, only to find that they were comprehensively ignored. Another set of officials, of the Inquisition, sought out closet Jews, “Lutherans” (the general term for protestants) and other heretics.
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| The churriguresque façade of Santa Prisca |
In the course of research for my last book, I discovered that the voluminous parish archive of the Parish of Santa Prisca and San Sebastián is now online. So far, I have sampled four sets of records: books of cofradías (religious brotherhoods), of baptisms, of marriages and of funerals. The first book of cofradías begins in 1602 with the paperwork concerning the foundation and operations of the Cofradía de la Sangre (Brotherhood of the Blood – of Christ that is). Baptisms start next in 1621. The first book of burials, incorrectly labelled because it records marriages, begins in 1643; but real records of funerals don’t get going until 1681.
The Cofradía de la Sangre was the third such brotherhood in Taxco (the Cofradía del Santo Entierro – Holy Burial – and de Jesuxisto – Jesus Christ) preceded it. The initial members (cofrades) of the new cofradía totalled 93 individuals, including a good cross-section of the who was who in Taxco: the Alcalde Mayor, the senior royal official in town, and his wife, several mine owners, a merchant or two, the guardian of the monastery of San Bernardino. The principal activity of the cofradía was a procession which included a re-enactment of the Crucifixion, during which members carried the “ynsignias de misterio” (symbols of the mystery) of the Passion: e.g. dice, the bloody tunic of Christ, the lance and the sponge. A petition of 1617 tells us that at least some cofrades considered the carrying of the insignias such a burden that they tried to avoid the duty without providing an acceptable excuse. The archbishop of Mexico ordered that anybody guilty of this behaviour should be denied the sacraments. The mayordomo, the senior official of the cofradía, was responsible for the care of the insiginias and the costs of the procession, an honour which could be expensive. In December 1647 the accounts of the mayordomo Pedro de Ocampo, a member of a family of mine owners, showed an excess of expenses over income of more than 20 pesos. But in 1636 Lorenço Vazquez had been obliged to contribute three times that sum: 59 pesos, 6 tomines and 6 granos.
The priests of Taxco were not particularly good at orderly record-keeping. They managed pretty well the essential basics of a baptism – the name of the child, the father (if known) and the mother (ditto), almost always the godfather and/or godmother. Various other details were added according to taste or clerical whim – was the child legitimate? Was the mother the legitimate wife of the father? Where did the parents or godparents live? Occasionally, the records would identify a mother, or the godmother, as the wife or daughter of a named Spaniard, presumably because he was considered distinguished. Sometimes the priest could be downright sloppy: for example, the baptism of Lusia, daughter of Alonso and Juana Maria, her godfather Diego Rodrigues, was struck out with the note “not valid”. A second entry recorded the correct details of the baptism: the child was Catalina (not Lusia), her parents the same Alonso and Juana Maria (now classified as Indians), but the godfather was Diego de Merlo (not Rodrigues).
One curious phrase that crops up in baptisms of some twins is a note that the children were born “de un solo bientre” (of a single womb, as opposed to two children fathered by the same man with different women I suppose). Cosas de curas (priestly ways of thinking) as a Mexican colleague explained this curious phrase to me.
Every few years the archbishop of Mexico dispatched an inspector to check the books and to threaten punishment if errors or bad practices were not rectified. In 1632 Jacinto de la Serna, Inspector General of the Archdiocese of Mexico, found that the first five folios of the book of baptisms of Indians was missing and that some entries were not signed. The priests of Taxco were ordered to correct these errors in future on pain of being deprived of the sacraments.
One element to which the priests seem generally to have paid reasonably close attention was race. The church of colonial Mexico (like the civil administration), divided its flocks into racial categories: Indians, Spaniards, Mestizos, Mulattoes, Blacks, Chinos (not just Chinese but any Asian person), and very occasionally a Morisco (of Moorish descent). This was in part because the different racial categories had different obligations and rights. For instance, Indians could not be prosecuted by the Inquisition because they were held to lack the capacity to commit heresy. They could be obliged to provide tribute, labour and services to Spaniards, but could not be enslaved (unless they actively rebelled), or obliged to pay sales tax. Spaniards (including conversos – lapsed Jews) could be punished (including execution) by the Inquisition for heresy. They paid sales tax, and some were entitled to privileges such as Indians’ labour or tribute. Mestizos had similar rights and obligations, except for access to Indigenous labour. Blacks, Mulattoes and Chinos could be enslaved or free, and were subject to the Inquisition.
The church liked to keep track of them all to promote church attendance and to collect the all-important fees that priests charged. So priests were under orders from the Mexican archbishops to keep separate books for Indians and for Spaniards and the rest, although the distinctions were not enforced with absolute rigour, probably because in many cases the priest could not tell the difference with any certitude: occasionally the priest noted the supposed racial category of a child, but in a few cases of children of unknown parentage added the proviso “al pareser mulato” (apparently Mulatto), “al parser mestizo” and so on. Certainly, one comes across occasional errors of classification, such as baptisms of a child of Spaniards recorded in the book of Indians, and vice versa. Mestizos, Mulattoes and Blacks were generally recorded in the book of Spaniards, although they are sometimes found in the book of Indians.
One surprisingly large group of baptized children was those known as “son/daughter of the church” or “child of unknown parents”, children abandoned at birth. Some entries record where the child was “expuesto” (exposed or abandoned). In 1675 little Joseph was abandoned at the doors of the mine owner Joseph de Landa. A little later the merchant Melchor de Lira found another Joseph on his doorstep, and a year later young Domingo was deposited in the same place. Not all were left at the homes of well-to-do Spaniards: in 1676 Juan Magdaleno, an Indian of the neighbourhood of Tlaxcotecas, found Juan outside, and in 1677 Luisa Juana, also an Indian, discovered Antonio at her door. The following year Diego was left at the home of Diego Salazar, a Mulatto slave living in the metal processing plant of San Juan del Monte. The percentages of abandoned children were quite high: rarely less than 30%, often more than 40% or even 50%. It was not uncommon for the percentage of children abandoned by Spanish parents to be higher than of those abandoned by Indians.
This group of children could sometimes be the subject of surprising errors. On 5 September 1674 Juan was baptised as a “child of unknown parents”, only for the entry to be corrected after sworn testimony was given to the priest Bartolome de Pineda who added a note that Juan was, in fact, the son of Pedro Ocampo de la Torre and Ysabela de Castrejon. The records do not disclose how this error occurred: the godparents were related to the parents (Miguel de Ocampo de la Torre and Catalina de Castrejon) so they would surely not have allowed a priest to baptize Juan as of unknown parentage). Perhaps the priest wrote the entry later and the parental details slipped his mind. Curiously, the same error had already occurred in 1573 when Pedro was baptized as a child of unknown parents, but then turned out to be the son of an Ocampo and a Castrejon (the first names are hard to decipher) and his godfather Domingo de Ocampo.
In some cases, children received an emergency baptism “por nesesidad” (out of necessity). These were known as baptisms “sub conditione”, a conditional baptism. Such was the case of little Juana in 1672, baptized by fray Miguel de Ojea de Ortega, of the Monastery of San Bernardino with holy water because she was in danger of death. Fortunately, Juana survived to receive the holy oils of full baptism in the parish church. At about 8pm on Friday New Year’s Day 1666 the priest Francisco de Agundez administered baptismal water to little Baltassar, who had been born “cassi aogado” (literally, almost drowned). Fortunately, Baltassar also lived to receive the rest of the sacrament on 9 January. On 26 May 1670, Joseph received an emergency baptism from Diego Rodrigues de Merlo, a “persona capas” (capable person: presumably a baptized Catholic but not a priest). Joseph lived, but his mother Doña Juana de Merlo, wife of Don Joseph de Quiñones Motesuma, died in childbirth. Don Joseph was probably an Indigenous Mexican noble of the Moctezuma family of Chilapa, Guerrero, who had been related to Aztec royalty well before the Conquest of Mexico.
As you might imagine, more than five centuries of storage in an ancient building in spaces that were by no means atmospherically controlled or free of insects caused some damage to the record books, especially the early and latter pages, but in general they are in pretty good condition. The biggest difficulty is orthography and handwriting. The spelling distinctions that you learn in school Spanish classes were not established in the 17th century, especially in the case of names. Thus, letters v and b were used without distinction (the surname Villalobos might be written Billalobos; Salazar might be Salasar, Salaçar or Zalazar). Letters s, c, ç and z can all represent an s sound. Abbreviations were frequently used: e.g. Juo=Juan or Juana; Dgo=Diego. There are no accents except for the tilde, as in ñ, and punctuation was minimal. The final syllable of one word might be separated from the preceding syllables and run on into the next word. Upper and lower cases were a matter of whim. And handwriting varies from clear and careful to rushed and untidy.
Nevertheless, I am getting to grips with the people of 17th-century Taxco. I came across Blas de Toledo Grimaldo, his wife Antonia del Valle, and their family in all the books I have looked at so far. Blas’s brother Bartolome was a founder member of the Cofradía de la Sangre, and must have been a miner since he maintained housing for a labour gang. It was common for at least one member of a prominent family to enter the priesthood: thus Blas’s brother, Josephe de Toledo, was a parish priest who carried out baptisms and other sacraments in Taxco. In all, Blas had at least 14 children, eight of whom were baptized between 1645 and 1662. His son Francisco de Toledo Grimaldo was an adult by 1640, for he joined his father in the procession of the cofradía: he carried the bloody tunic while Blas was one of a group of men who were present in the “patio” (I think that means the judgement of Christ by Pontius Pilate). One son, Antonio, baptized in 1650 may have died in childhood, since another Antonio was baptized in 1652.Between 1662 and 1680 Blas and Antonia were presented with 21 grandchildren by four daughters.
So far, I have identified five other probable relatives of Blas, including Ysabel de Toledo Grimaldo, the deceased wife of Agustin Guadras who remarried Maria Roman, a ceremony at which Blas was a witness. Perhaps Ysabel was Blas’s sister. The wider Toledo family totalled more than 40 individuals, excluding daughters- and sons- in-law, parents-in-law and so on. Since the Spaniards of Taxco numbered in the hundreds, this made the Toledo Grimaldos a large element of the town’s Spanish population. The numerous household of Blas and Antonia alone, must have been costly to run, so they were no doubt well-to-do. Blas owned at least nine slaves, Mulattos or Blacks. Agustin Moreno (father of three children), Agustin (one child), Jasinto (one child), Jasinto, de la Cruz (two children) and his wife Teresa de la Cruz, and Maria Moreno were classed as Mulattoes. The Black slaves were Magdalena Maria (one child), Bartolome Gutierres Nagera (two children) and Antonio Quadra (one child). Blas also employed a minimum of three domestic servants. All this suggests that he was wealthy (slaves were expensive – they could cost the equivalent of the annual salary of a priest or royal official). There were three routes to wealth in Taxco: mining, trading as a merchant supplying the mining industry, or securing a post as a royal official who could use his influence to enrich himself. Priests could also be involved in mining-related activities as well as their church duties, and could pocket fees for the sacraments and other (sometimes illegal) practices. The number of slaves owned by Blas suggest that he, like his brother Bartolome, was a mine-owner.
I hope that I have not bored you with this story of some of history’s minor players. History so often records important figures, heroes and villains, but snatches of lives of people who left no greater mark than mentions in church records, seem to me to provide intriguing glimpses of the lives and misfortunes of those of whom we otherwise would have known nothing.
I last visited Taxco in 1993 for a conference on regional history (when I took the photos shown here). The online archive saves me the expense of travelling to Taxco again. Also, alas, Taxco suffers from the lack of personal security that plagues all of Guerrero nowadays, so I will certainly never return to that beautiful church.
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