Challenges and Controversies
It would be naive to think that everything was a bed of roses for Juan de Páez as steward of the Cathedral, given that the handling of a lot of money was involved. Shortly after he was appointed, Don Juan Serrato y Cañas became a member of the Ecclesiastic Town Council and prebendary of the tithe incomes. The prebendary made up the tithe court or “haceduría,” usually one or two priests appointed by the Council. Their job was to supervise “the collection and distribution of the tithe and to that end they arranged the contracts with the tenants, they checked the generous accounts [as well as] those of the administrators and the tenants.”[35] We suppose that the relation between the steward and the prebendary did not go entirely well, perhaps because there were disagreements respecting the matter of tithe administration. We infer the above from the protest by Father Serrato before the other members of the Ecclesiastic Town Council on September 18th, 1657: he complained that Juan de Páez had not given them the 10,000-pesos deposit that he had offered to occupy the position of steward.
It is curious that after said protest, the matter was not dealt with again or at least it was not recorded on the Ecclesiastic Town Council’s minutes anymore; nor did Juan Serrato drop the complaint. Such silence may be due to a possible settlement outside the Council. What is certain is the fact that besides the 10,000 pesos, on being appointed steward, Páez promised to pay the prebendaries their salaries on time, whether there was money in the box for this purpose or not.
It seems that the new steward complied with these payments promptly, and the council members lost interest in demanding Páez’s payment of the 10,000 pesos, even acting in complicity with him in view of Father Serrato’s complaint. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Páez turned a blind eye when the members of the Council were late in paying their own debts to the three-key box.[36]
In spite of such complicity, in 1662 Páez was asked to account for the money belonging for Cathedral’s construction concerning incomes and expenditures for such an enterprise. He reported what he had done from June of 1654 to August of 1662, receiving the Council’s approval. It seems that from this moment on, the Council members’ trust in their steward would increase even more.
As for the 10,000 pesos, it is most certain that he never gave them any of it, although after twenty years of service as steward, the Ecclesiastic Town Council declared that in regards to the Cathedral factory expenses, they were indebted to the steward because he had covered them with his own funds.[37] Furthermore, the Council made Páez as steward repair the Church’s estate at his own expense; in theory, once the repairs were done, the Council was to authorize payment of what Páez had paid out, but it is likely that reimbursements were not made all the time.
What seemed clear is that that Páez-Church relationship remained stable; after fighting Serrato’s complaints and the 1662 rendering of accounts, Páez requested in 1667 to be paid a salary for his almost thirteen years of service as a steward, confident that the state of ecclesiastical finances could afford an amount of about 300 pesos a year. Records show that he was paid this amount, or that at least they reached an agreement, since we found a 1669 order to pay Páez’s salary for the years 1667 and 1668, suggesting that the previous years had been settled, and Páez was on track to keep the payments current.[38]
This economic solvency coincided with the order from the Guadalajara Real Audiencia in 1666, in accord with the Council of the Indies’ 1657 resolution, to put the secular clergy in control of tithes collected by the religious orders, in addition banning the latter from future collections. Furthermore, the religious orders were forced to give up what they had collected since the year 1657.[39]
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[35] PEREZ PUENTE, Leticia, “Dos períodos de conflict en torno a la administración del diezmo en el Arzobispado de México: 1653-1663 y 1664-1680,” in Estudios de Historia Novohispana, no. 25 (June-December 2001), p. 22.
[36] ACEG op cit. [sobre la protesta de Juan Serrato y Cañas:] f. 84r.-84v; [sobre el pago de salarios:] f. 41r; [sobre deudas de los señores capitulares:] ff. 49v.-50r.
[37] Ibid; f. 178r.-178v.
[38] Ibid; ff. 135r. y 147v.-148r.
[39] Ibid; f. 128r.
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