In July 1807 the ecclesiastical cabildo of Caracas approved a proposal for which present day historians can be distinctly grateful. By a unanimous vote of its members the cabildo authorized the reorganization of its official Acta and the preparation of an index of their contents. The project entailed the reading of 15,000 pages of manuscript material, some of which were almost illegible because of fading, corrosion, and the calligraphic idiosyncrasies of colonial scribes. This project the cabildo entrusted to its secretary, Juan Joseph Guzmán.
Guzmán proved to be a conscientious, effective worker. Within eighteen months he had completed the major portion of his task: the reorganization of the archives and the compilation of a hefty volume of 554 folio pages which listed in orderly chronological fashion—according to year, month, and day—all recorded meetings of the cabildo, from September 3, 1580 to December 31, 1808, together with a summary of the proceedings for each entry. It is these summaries which give his Compendio cronológico its permanent worth. No longer will scholars have to plough through scores of musty tomes in order to ascertain their contents. By consulting Guzmán’s index they can readily determine whether or not the original Actas contain the information they are seeking.
The value of such a research guide is self-evident. But the Compendio cronológico is more than a record of ecclesiastical activity and growth. Its pages contain numerous references to the economic, social, and cultural life of the colony: the price of negro slaves; the troublesome rise in the cost of living (as reflected in the salaries of cathedral assistants and the interest rate on mortgages); the care of the sick; military defense against foreign aggression and piratical attack; cofradías of Indians, Negroes, and half-castes; the collection of tithes; the price of food, clothing, construction materials, and other basic necessities; the exportation of hides and cocoa; Indian tribute; budgets and accounts; university education; colonial artisans—and many other subjects. These should be of special interest to social historians, and their variety demonstrates once again how the life of the Church in colonial times impinged upon practically every phase of human concern.
A few lacunae appear in the Compendio cronológico. For example, there are no Acta records for the first half century following the establishment of the diocese of Coro in 1531. The gaps are filled to some extent by the two volumes of documents which the Venezuelan National Academy of History published in 1965. These volumes resulted from three years’ search in the Vatican Archives and the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, and they constitute an important addition to the corpus of published sources for the history of the Church in colonial Venezuela.
In this latter collection there are 155 documents in all, arranged according to centuries. Three refer to the sixteenth century, 38 to the seventeenth, 78 to the eighteenth, and 36 to the period between 1800 and 1818. The majority deal with internal church affairs; ecclesiastical appointments and promotions; clerical discipline and reform; the transfer of administrative headquarters from Coro to Caracas; the delineation of diocesan boundaries ; mission activities; the controversy over the conditional ordination of certain mulattoes by Bishop González de Acuña; objections to incorporating the province of Cumaná and the island of Margarita into the diocese of Caracas; statistics on the amount and distribution of tithes; and so forth. But as in the Compendio cronológico there are also documents that treat of more secular themes. Of particular interest in this regard are the letters and reports concerning the care of the Indians, the granting of university degrees, the elimination of smuggling and contraband trade, the introduction of “dangerous” books into the colony, and public reaction to the independence movement. It is clear from a perusal of these records that the fortunes of the Church in this part of the Spanish empire were seldom serene, often uncertain, and invariably hard.
The editors are to be complimented upon the excellent indices which are a feature of these two volumes. Each item is identified as to date and source and is accompanied by a précis of its contents which researchers will find especially helpful. The extensive introductory essay on “La Iglesia Factor de Patria” by Guillermo Figuera is an additional asset.
