The dominican province of Saint-Vincent

This province of the order of Saint Dominique de Guzmán was officially established on 17 May 1551. It encompassed Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, the highlands of Guatemala and the Mexican State of Chiapas

Saint Vincent Ferrer, Dominican convent church of San Cristobal de Las Casas

Here is the act of creation of the province, as told by its historian Antonio de Remesal; he sets its limits and names its two leaders, Tomás de la Torre and Pedro de Angulo:

“Here is what happened in the Indies during that year among the fathers from the Order of Saint Dominique who lived there: everything went well for them. And since all this was for the service of Our Lord and to the benefit of the Order, the Order itself took good care of them. And in fact, during the General Chapter meeting in the convent of San Esteban de Salamanca the day before Pentecost on May 17, 1551, the most reverend friar Francisco Romeo, originally from Castellón in Lombardy, being the General of the Order, our province became fully autonomous and independent from any other in America. And it is written in the Acts of the Chapter, under the title Acceptaciones:

“Item acceptamus nostras novas Provintias Indiarum, videlicet, Sanctae Crucis, etc. and further : Aliam Provintiam ibidem de novo erigimus a Tequantepeq inclusive, usque ad oppidum de Nata hispnorum per littus antarcticum. Item a littore arctico ad oppidum de Guazacalco inclusive, ita quod contineat quaturor episcopates, videlicet, de Chiapa, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, et appelletur Provintia Sancti Vicnti de Chiapa; quam cum aliis recipimus, cum omnibus gratis et privilegiis quibus Provintia Sancti Jacobi potitur. Necnon et aliae Provintiae Nostri Ordinis. Dantes sibi pro hac prima vice in Provintialem per cuatuor annos, Fratrem Thoman de Turre. Et in terra Verae Pacis mandamus construe conventum sub nomine Beati Dominici Patris Nostri, cui pro prima vice praeficimus in Priorem, fratrem Patrum de Angulo

“(We accept our new provinces of the Indies, namely: Santa Cruz, etc. and further : we establish on this territory another new Province, fixing its limits as follows: on the littoral of Antarctica (south littoral, on the Pacific), from Tehuantepec to the town of Nata of the Spaniards, whereas on the Arctic littoral (north littoral, on the Gulf of Mexico), it will spread up to the town of Guazacualco inclusive, in order to encompass four bishoprics, namely : Chiapa, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras. It will be named Province of San Vicente de Chiapa… We appoint as first Provincial, for a duration of four years, friar Tomás de la Torre. And we give the order to build a convent in the name of Our Father Saint Dominique in the land of Vera Paz, the first prior of which will be friar Pedro de Angulo)

“This way, our Province took its rank in the Order. Since none of our priests was in the Chapter to deal with this matter, his lordship don friar Bartolomé de Las Casas who was present, became the lawyer, as the father of all Indies and of our province in particular, and the province can be considered as his daughter, since he himself brought twice the priests who founded it.”

(Antonio de Remesal, Historía general de las Indias occidentales y particular de la gobernación de Chiapa y Guatemala, book 9, chapter 6, translated by Chantal Burns)

Dominican emblem at the top of the cathedral of Cobán, Verapaz

In the vast areas of the province, one hundred Dominican friars were responsible for evangelizing and tend to several millions Indians.

In the mind of the Dominicans, Las Casas included, the Indians were “good savages” who needed protection from the influence of the Spaniards. To this effect, royal ordinances recommended regrouping the indigenous people in “pueblos de Indios” under the tutelage of the priests. Therefore the Dominicans took time to build in their province a network of convents and churches, giving first place to the Visible Church, maybe to the disadvantage of real conversions.

The Dominican province of San Vicente

(Milagros Ciudad Suárez, Los Dominicos, un grupo de poder en Chiapas y Guatemala, siglos XVI y XVII, Escuela de Estudios Hispanoaméricanos de Sevilla, Editorial Deimos, Sevilla, 1996)

Antonio de Remesal gives a detail of the supervision of Indian regions by the Dominicans :

List of Dominican convents established by Antonio de Remesal (1617)

“The present state of the province today, thanks to God’s mercy, is very prosperous, on the spiritual plane as well as on the temporal plane, and the government of the Indians is at its best, as always. The villages under the responsibility of each convent or sub-priory are the following:

In El Salvador

“The convent of El Salvador: It administers the villages of Chontales, Xilovasco, Guacotetec, Cecontepeq, Apaztepeq, Yztepeq, Cuxutepeq, San Pedro, San Martín, Perulapa, Perulapilla, Tonacatepeq, Cuzcatlán. In that house, there are seven priests.

“The convent of Zonzonate. It administers the villages of Tacuscalco, the Mexican district, Nauiscalco, Santo Domingo. It has seven fathers who are priests.

At the entrance of the convent church of San Cristobal de Las Casas, a noticeboard for the 800th anniversary of the creation of the Dominican Order

In Chiapas

“The convent of Santo Domingo de Ciudad Real [San Cristobal de Las Casas]. It administers the Mexican Indians who live in the valley and the sites of Teopixca, Amatenago, Aguatenango, Uiztlan, Teultepeq, Tenexapa, Chamula, Mixtontiq, San Pedro and San Pablo, Santa Catalina, San Andrés, Yztacoztote, Santiago Uustlán, Santa, Marta, Tenezacatán, Cinacantlán, Yztapa, San Luca, San Dionisio, Totolapa; this convent has eleven priests and three lay friars.

“The convent of Chiapa. It administers the villages of Tustla, Suchiapa, Pachutla, Acala, Chiapilla, Ostuta. It has eight priests and three lay friars.

“The convent of Comitlán. It administers the villages of Zapalutla, Conetla, Aquezpala, Yzquitenango, Coapa, Utatlán, Chicomocelo, Yayaguitla, Comalap. It has five fathers who are priests.

“The convent of Texpatlán in the Zoques area. It administers the villages of Cachula, Copaynala, Chichoacintepeq, Ozumacintla, Coapilla, Ocotepeq, Tapalapa, Pantepeq, Comistahuacán, Tapilula and Zuatlán, Solis, Aneán, Comeapa, Xitolepeq, San Pablo, La Madalena, Mixapa, Zayula, Santa Catalina, Yztacomitlán, Sunuapa, Manaché. It has nine priests and a lay friar.

“The convent of Copanabastla. It administers the villages of Zozocoltenango, Zoyatitlán, San Bernabé, Pinula, Zacualpa, Comitlán, Yztapa, Chalechitlán, Zitalá, Tecoluta. It has four fathers who are priests.

“The convent of Ocosingo, in the Celdales area. It administers the villages of Ocotitán, Xuxiucapa, Chilostuta, Yasalun, Xitalhá, Quitepeq, Ocotenango, Tenango. It has six fathers who are priests.

The dominican convent of Tecpatán, Chiapas, virtual model

Tecpatán was the center of Dominican activity in the Zoque Country. The ensemble, church and convento, is renaissance-style with marked medieval influence, and was probably completed during the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

In Guatemala

“Santo Domingo de Guatemala, Chimaltenango, San Martín, San Sebastián, San Lorenzo, San Luis, San Rafael, Xocotenango, Zumpango, San Bartolomé Cauqué, San Lucas, Santiago, Petapa, Sant Inés Pinula, Mixco, Chichoy, San Pedro, Escuintla, Managua y Macagua, Las Milpas Altas, San Mateo, San Miguel, La Madalena, Santo Tomás, Las Milpas Bajas, San Gaspar, San Pedro, San Andrés and Santa Ana, Santa Cruz, San Juan Gascón and the area of Santo Domingo.

“The sacatepeques, among which San Pedro, S. Juan and Santo Domingo, Rabinal, Cubulco. Santo Domingo de Guatemala has thirty-three priests in the convent proper, eleven friars in the house of novices and eight lay friars to preach to the Indians.

“The convent of Santo Domingo de Cobán. It administers the villages of Cahabón, San Agustín, San Pedro, San Juan, San Andrés, San Cristóbal, Santa Cruz, Tatique, Tamahu, Tucur and the villages of Manché, that is,. eight villages as I said before and there would be more if we baptized those that we just discovered in 1606. This convent has six fathers who are priests and a lay friar.

Tucurú church

“The convent of Zacapula. It administers the villages of Zacualpa, Santa Maria, San Andrés, San Bartolomé, S. Tomás, Santa Cruz, San Pedro, San Juan Cachul, Cozal, San Juan Cunén, San Miguel: this convent has eight fathers who are priests.

“The convent of Ozocotlán has two fathers who are priests.

“These last ones included in addition to those of the other convents, there are a total of eighty-six fathers, eleven friars of the choir and sixteen lay friars.”

(Antonio de Remesal, Historía general de las Indias occidentales y particular de la gobernación de Chiapa y Guatemala, book 11, chapter 24, translated by Chantal Burns)

Oxolotán, Tabasco, July 2022, The name of the city in front of the former Dominican convent

The architecture of the Dominican convents

The churches look best when seen from the outside : they have an very large façade in the shape of an altarpiece, covered with stucco, very ornate and pierced with openings at the top (espadañas) where the bells are to be set up (the present spires have been added later). The Dominican emblem, the ornate black and white cross is sometimes carved on this façade. In the back, the nave is lower and more modest. All these churches have been established in the XVI^th century and rebuilt in the XVII^th and XVIII^th centuries.

Tuxtla Gutiérrez (Chiapas) in the XVIIth century, the parish church and its atrium (Archivo Histórico de la Diocesis de San Cristóbal de las Casas)

The St. Mark's Cathedral is the seat of the Archdiocese of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

The patronage of San Marcos, patron saint of Tuxtla, dates from 1560, year in which the Dominican friar Antonio de Pamplona of the convent in Tecpatán constructed the first Catholic church for the population of the Zoque Indians Tusta and dedicated it to San Marcos Evangelista.

The building was formerly the church of the Dominican convent, and has been remodeled several times. In 1914, the temple was destroyed by Venustiano Carranza ‘s revolutionary army and rebuilt later by the priest Joaquín Palacios. The façade of the present building was completed in 1965 when Pope Paul VI created the Diocese of Tuxtla.

The cathedral of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, today

The churches open on an atrium enclosed by walls or high fences where people gather for processions, as is the tradition with the Mayas.

"The predominant type of church in Chiapas is no more than a simple box-like rectangular hall behind a seemingly freestanding monumental façade. The single-aisled nave is invariably covered with a simple pitched roof with exposed rafters or a rudimentary artesonado. The space of the interior is rarely interrupted except by a wooden gallery just inside the door, the upper choir, and near the opposite end, by a chancel arch, arco toral, spanning the nave and thus forming a monumental entrance to the presbytery. This, then, is the typical plan of the pueblo-de-indio church. […] Roofs of wood and tile are the preferred type, a form harking back to mudéjar antecedents in Spain. In fact, except for the roofing of some presbyteries and transepts, vaulted construction is almost the exception rather than the rule in Chiapas. […]

The nave and the arco toral of the church of Ocosingo (Chiapas)

"The main front of all the churches in Chiapas is treated as a freestanding frontispiece very frequently conceived as an element independent of the nave to which it was not necessarily integrated structurally. It functioned as a gigantic backdrop or theatrical stage setting, a dramatic and psychological boundary between the secular activities in the open air in the atrio in front and the religious activities in the church interior. […] Façade treated as retablos with applied architectural orders and other architectonic decoration are extremely rare in Chiapas, in contrast to Guatemala where the retable-façade is the most diagnostic characteristic of the antigueño style. […]

Teopisca (Chiapas), its main front and its lower nave behind

"The church building is normally raised above atrio level, even if only one or two steps. The plaza-church was an imposing concrete reality as well as an abstract symbol, well understood by the neo-Christians who had been accustomed in the time of their paganism to congregate at their own religious ceremonial centers."

(Sidney David Markman, Architecture and urbanization in colonial Chiapas, Mexico, The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1984)

Dominican architects in Chiapas

"Judging by some of the discrepancies in both plan and construction, it is apparent that there was a great scarcity of skilled workmen in sixteenth-century Chiapas, a condition which was not remedied to any notable degree during the rest of the colonial period. Remesal mentions about five friars who were craftsmen: Fray Melchor de los Reyes, Fray Pedro de la Cruz, Fray Diego de León, Fray Alonso de Villalba, and Fray Vicente de Santa María.

"He describes Fray Melchor de los Reyes as “lego indigente, arquitecto …” who died at the age of forty-six in 1579, but he does not say which buildings Fray Melchor was responsible for. Fray Pedro de la Cruz designed and built the first caracol stair in Chiapas in 1562 in the church in Chamula and also the fountain in Zinacantlán. The splendid brick fountain in Chiapa de Corzo was built by Fray Diego de León in 1562. Judging by the innovative design oh this building, he must have been an experienced and talented craftsman, for he created a unique structure in which Gothic and Renaissance elements are blended by means of mudéjar construction techniques.

"The fourth craftsman mentioned by Remesal is one Fray Alonso de Villalva, whom he credits with finishing the church of the Zoques. He does not specify if he means the church at Tecpatán, the parish seat, of that region. Fray Alonso had come from Spain in 1544, probably as a member of the contingent headed by Bartolomé de las Casas, and worked in Chiapas for about eighteen and one-half years till he died ca. 1562. Remesal gives a short biographical note of a fifth craftsman, Fray Vicente de Santa María, who died in Ciudad Real in 1565. Fray Vicente was a cantero, that is, a stone mason and / or possibly a quarryman who worked all over the Dominican province and whom Remesal credits with having taught the friars how to built."

(Sidney David Markman, Architecture and urbanization in colonial Chiapas, Mexico, The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1984, chapter XIII, Materials and methods of construction)

The fountain built by Fray Diego de León at Chiapa de Corzo

2024 "Friars and Mayas"

http://moines.mayas.free.fr/

moines.mayas@free.fr

Previous Next

Français

Español

Chalchuapa (El Salvador), colonial church Santiago Apóstol

Comitán (Chiapas), Dating from 1556, the church of the convent Santo Domingo de Guzmán is unique for its severity, the octagonal choir window being the only decoration on its facade. The Mudejar-style arcading of the bell tower was only recently discovered under its stucco surface

Zacualpa (Guatemala), church of the Holy Spirit. In 1981-1982, during the civil war, a military detachment installed itself in the church and convent. This place was converted into a torture center. Nine massacres were perpetrated. 99 % of the victims were Indian Maya K’iche’.

Rabinal (Guatemala): San Pablo. This colonial Baroque church was built from 1572. Rabinal was severely affected by the internal war of Guatemala. Many people were taken from Rabinal and the surrounding villages by the Army and Civilian Militia and never seen again. The Rabinal Achi is performed every year on Saint Paul's Day on 25 january

San Juan Chamelco (Guatemala): The colonial church Saint John the Baptist may have been the first built in Alta Verapaz. The Hapsburg eagle is engraved atop the church’s facade. Mass is still held here in both Spanish and Q’eqchi’.

Ocosingo (Chiapas), The Dominican convent of San Jacinto, founded in 1564 by Fray Pedro de Laurencio. Ocosingo was one of the primary targets of the Zapatista army on its New Year’s Day uprising in 1994. Since that time, the Mexican army has remained, establishing a massive military base just outside of town.