Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (26 June 1600 – 1 October 1659) was a Spanish politician, administrator, and Catholic clergyman in 17th century Spain and a viceroy of Mexico.
Palafox was the Bishop of Puebla (1640−1655), and the interim Archbishop of Mexico (1640−1642). He also held political office, from 10 June 1642 to 23 November 1642 as the Viceroy of New Spain. He lost a high-profile struggle with the Jesuits in New Spain, resulting in a recall to Spain, to the Diocese of Osma in Old Castile. Although a case was opened for his beatification shortly after he died in 1659, he was not designated "Blessed" until 2011.
Early life Born in Navarre, Spain, Don Juan Palafox y Mendoza was the natural son of Jaime de Palafox, the Marquis of Ariaza, of the Aragonese nobility.D.A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State 1492-1867. New York: Cambridge University Press 1991, p. 229, 237. His mother became a Carmelite nun. He was taken in by a family of millers who gave him the name "Juan" and raised him for ten years, after which his father recognized him, and had him educated at Alcalá and Salamanca.Brading 1991, p. 237
In 1626 he was a deputy of the nobility in the Cortes de Monzón, and later a prosecutor at the Council of War and a member of the Council of the Indies, the chief administrative body for administration of the overseas territories of the Spanish Empire.
Ecclesiastical career Palafox was ordained in 1629, and became the chaplain and almoner of Maria of Austria, Holy Roman Empress, the sister of King Philip IV of Spain. He accompanied her on her various trips around Europe.
In 1639 based on Philip IV's nomination, Pope Urban VIII appointed him, Bishop of Puebla de los Ángeles and "visitador general" of Mexico. Puebla de los Ángeles was the second largest city in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (viceroyal México) then, and is the present day City of Puebla. He was consecrated Bishop in Madrid on 27 December 1639.Ott, Michael. "Juan de Palafox y Mendoza." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911
He left for America and arrived in Veracruz on 24 June 1640. He was in the company of the new Viceroy of New Spain, Diego López Pacheco, 7th Duke of Escalona, whom he had gotten to know during the voyage. That same ship brought an Irishman, William Lamport, known in New Spain as Don Guillén de Lombardo y Guzmán, who played a role in political turmoil during the 1640s. Palafox was also named Visitador (royal inspector, representative of the king), to investigate the two previous viceroys. His retinue further included the Aragonese painter Pedro García Ferrer and the Flemish painter Diego de Borgraf.Fernando E Rodríguez-Miaja, Diego de Borgraf: un destello en la noche de los tiempos: obra pictórica. Universidad Iberoamericana (Golfo-Centro). Puebla Patronato Editorial para la Cultura, Arte e Historia de Puebla 2001
He served as Bishop of Puebla from 1640 to 1655, and as interim archbishop of Mexico from May 1642 to 1643.
Jesuits controversy and recall He was embroiled in a major controversy with the Jesuits over ecclesiastical jurisdiction that eventually cost him his post as Bishop of Puebla de los Ángeles. The Spanish crown was moving to displace mendicant orders from their populous and lucrative doctrinas in central Mexico, and replace them with parishes staffed by secular (diocesan) clergy with benefices rather than mendicants. He was largely successful in doing so in Puebla.
He then targeted the Jesuits as another entity that did not respect ecclesiastical jurisdiction by paying tithes, essentially a 10% tax on agricultural production, to the Church hierarchy. In the 1640s when he took on the Jesuits, Palafox pointed out that the Jesuit order was a hugely wealthy landowner in New Spain. Jesuits claimed that the income from their haciendas went exclusively toward support of their educational institutions (colegios) and their missionary work on the colonial frontiers.Brading 1991, p. 242 On principle, Palafox asserted that it was the spiritual duty of all to pay the tithe, which the Jesuits steadfastly refused to do. The tithe transferred wealth from the countryside's landed estates to cities and towns, supporting the cathedral chapter, parish priests, and charitable institutions.
Obviously, as a powerful bishop, Palafox would have been interested in increasing the revenue from Jesuit tithes, but also in asserting episcopal authority over that order. In 1647, the diocese of Puebla ordered all Jesuits to produce licenses from the diocese to preach and hear confession, something that was required under canon law and empowered bishops. The Jesuits asserted they needed no such licenses, that they could exercise such powers without special permission of a bishop. Palafox wrote that if this were true, that the bishop had no power in his own diocese and he would be separated from his own flock by "an alien authority".Brading 1991, pp. 243-44 citing Palafox ObrasXII, Madrid 1762, 23-47.
The Jesuits found an ally against Palafox in the new viceroy, García Sarmiento de Sotomayor, 2nd Count of Salvatierra. Salvatierra sought to arrest Palafox. In 1647, rather than be arrested, which might have produced an uprising in Puebla against the viceroy's abuse of authority, Palafox fled to the mountains outside the city. The move was calculated to show the crown that the situation in New Spain was grave, that the viceroy and the Jesuits were challenging the rightful place of episcopal authority. In that he failed and was ultimately humiliated by being recalled to Spain.
Palafox laid formal complaints against the Jesuits at Rome. The pope, however, refused to approve his censures, and all he could obtain was a brief from Pope Innocent X (on 14 May 1648), commanding the Jesuits to respect the episcopal jurisdiction. On 20 May 1655, Palafox and the Jesuits signed an accord, but disagreements continued. In the same year the Jesuits succeeded in securing his transfer to the see of Osma in Old Castile. Although Palafox's ecclesiastical career went into eclipse, his writings against the Jesuits were subsequently published in France and in the eighteenth century, his writings were used to strengthen the case for regalist authority resulting in the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and Spanish territories in 1767.Brading 1991, p. 250
Some of Palafox's influential anti-Jesuit writings deal with the Chinese Rites controversy. Palafox had jurisdiction as a bishop on certain Asian missions, but - according to Costa Rican scholar Ricardo Martínez Esquivel - the main reason he declared the Jesuit's tolerance for traditional ancestor worship practices among Chinese converts to Christianity as heretic was "his personal conflict" with the Jesuits.José Antonio Cervera - Ricardo Martínez Esquivel, "Puebla de Los Ángeles entre China y Europa. Palafox en las controversias de los ritos chinos", Historia Mexicana 58,1 (2018): 245–284.
Viceregal legacy Palafox founded the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, the first public library in the Americas, on 5 September 1646, donating his own collection of 5,000 books to the College of San Juan to start the collection. It was the first public library in the Americas. He also founded the Dominican Convent of Santa Inés, the Colleges of San Pedro and San Pablo, and the girls school Purísima Concepción. He amended the by-laws of the seminary of San Juan. When Palafox arrived in Puebla he carried with him a real cédula dated January 19, 1640 that ordered the long-delayed completion of the cathedral. To finance the resumed construction, Palafox increased the tithes, which exacerbated his poor relations with the Jesuits. The cathedral was dedicated 18 April 1649.
As bishop, Palafox y Mendoza distinguished himself by his efforts to protect the Native Americans, forbidding any methods of conversion other than persuasion. Despite being well disposed toward the indigenous, he showed no interest in their history, which others of that era used to bolster notions of a long and distinguished history that predated the Spanish conquest, nor did he attribute anything spiritually special about the New World.Brading 1991, p. 251Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Virtues of the Indian/Virtudes del Indio, translated by Nancy H. Fee. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield 2009.
While bishop, Palafox was the principal consecrator of Francisco Diego Díaz de Quintanilla y de Hevía y Valdés (1640), Bishop of Durango; Fernando Montero Espinosa (1640), Bishop of Nueva Segovia; Diego de Guevara y Estrada (1642), Archbishop of Santo Domingo; Marcos de Torres y Rueda (1645), Bishop of Yucatán; Juan de Mañozca y Zamora (1645), Archbishop of México; and Diego López de la Vega (1650), Bishop of Badajoz.Catholic Hierarchy: "Bishop Bl. Juan de Palafox y Mendoza" retrieved 10 January 2015
Palafox was an enthusiastic patron of the arts, and it was during his tenure in Puebla that the city became the musical center of New Spain. Composers such as Juan Gutierrez de Padilla, maestro di capilla of the cathedral under Palafox and the most famous seventeenth century composer in Mexico, brought the latest European music styles to the New World. Palafox also strongly believed in education in general.
Political career As visitador general, Bishop Palafox had powers to inspect practices in the viceroyalty, but the viceroy himself was protected from the inspector-general's inquiries, thus undermining his ability to pursue effective reform.Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo, Politics and Reform in Spain and Viceregal Mexico: The Life and Thought of Juan de Palafox 1600-1659. Oxford: Clarendon Press 2004, p. 56 Palafox's general mission was "to increase efficiency in government, strengthen royal authority, maximize the extraction of resources, and improve the administration of the viceroyalty", especially toward increasing the revenues for the crown.Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo 2004, p.53. Blocked from effective reform, Palafox broke with Viceroy Diego López Pacheco Cabrera y Bobadilla in 1642, accusing the viceroy of being in league with Portugal, then at war with Spain to restore its independence following the Iberian Union; the viceroy was a cousin of the Duke of Braganza, since acclaimed king as John IV of Portugal. One scholar has characterized the suspicion of the viceroy's conspiring with rebels as being based on "slender evidence".Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo 2004, p. 129. Bishop Palafox claimed to have orders from the Crown, although he did not show them. He arrived secretly in the capital, and in the middle of the night of 9/10 June, he met with the Audiencia (high court) and laid out his suspicions. He then ordered that the viceregal palace be surrounded by guards. The following morning Viceroy López Pacheco was informed that he was under arrest and that the bishop had been named archbishop of Mexico and viceroy of New Spain. His possessions were confiscated and he was held for some time before being allowed to return to Spain. In Spain he was acquitted of the charges against him.