Any consideration of the conflict between Church and state in postindependence Mexico must begin with the formal issue of Patronato, the traditional royal right of presentation to ecclesiastical offices. With the removal of the crown, did this right revert to the Church as the “canonists” maintained, or did it pass to the newly independent state, as argued by the “regalists”? This meticulously investigated monograph is an objective and detailed chronological account of the controversy, leading at several points into broader questions of Church and state. After fifteen years of elaborate debate and varying practice, the issue subsided after 1835. The government began to exercise the Patronato, in accordance with the moderate law of 1831, presenting to the Pope for confirmation one of the three episcopal candidates nominated by a cathedral chapter. The controversy reappeared in 1850, stimulated by the postwar national debate and by a new papal defensiveness following the 1848 upheaval in Italy. With the onset of the Reforma, the Patronato, which assumed the union of Church and state, gave way to separatism, as specified in the Constitution of 1857 and even more clearly in the law of July 12, 1859.
Costeloe relates the patronage controversy to the broader questions of ecclesiastical wealth and temporal power. Post-independence regalists, especially the radicals, were quick to build upon colonial precedents and assume for the state broad powers of regulation and reform. Though the reformers were a small minority of the “literate oligarchy” before 1857, and especially before 1833, their views gained ground in an atmosphere of increasing secularism, as Costeloe shows in his suggestive concluding chapter. One specific contribution of the book is the demonstration that the national anticlericalism of 1833 drew on the reform programs of Jalisco and Zacatecas in the mid-twenties.
Despite its many strengths, the book falls short of being a definitive study of the patronage debate because it does not delve sufficiently into the European sources of the Mexican controversy. Costeloe stresses at the outset that the contenders were well versed in European regalist thought; yet, except for a few passing references, he does not pursue the implications of this fact. For instance, one particular defect of the study might have been corrected with greater attention to European sources and context. Costeloe does not define the concept of separation, even though it was favored by an important minority in 1833 and won out over the Patronato by 1857. Separation of Church and state in Mexico was probably inspired by the French Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790, both a radical extension of and a break from traditional regalism.
At several points this valuable monograph suggests the beginnings of a magnum opus on Church and state in Mexico from 1821-1867, a book that Costeloe is uniquely equipped to write.
