932 Revieius of Books printed, and the volume is therefore a welcome addition to the available material on the period. All ranks of the clergy are represented, over thirty documents com- ing from the parish curates. Almost without exception the documents exhibit the hostility of their authors, whether higher or lower clergy, toward the revolution then in progress. Remarkable among them is an emphatic pledge of loyalty to the Spanish government taken on October 27, 1810, by 289 ecclesiastics of the archbishopric of Puebla in a body. However, we should hardly be justified in accepting merely on the basis of this small collection of selected documents the editor's prefa- tory assertion that the lower clergy, " with rare exceptions ", bitterly opposed the revolution. Viewed in the abstract, it would be strange if such leaders as Hidalgo, Morelos, Matamoros, Cos, Mercado, and Salazar had not a considerable following in their own class. Nor, if space were available, would it be difficult to present from documentary evidence strong indications that they had such a following. It must be remembered, too, that there were curate and friar insurgent leaders besides these more notable ones. From a careful examination of the Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de la Giierra de Independen- cia, de 1808 a 1821, edited by J. E. Hernandez y Davalos, it may be seen that, within the period in question, the " loyal " clergy noted and deprecated the presence of numerous brethren among the Independents. In these documents the clergy are reported as bearing arms, encourag- ing the insurgents, burning edicts directed against Hidalgo, and taking part in the revolutionary local governments. A number of ecclesiastics were imprisoned in the Franciscan convent at Queretaro for complicity in the revolution; when Hidalgo's cause was waning, not a few clergy took advantage of the pardon offered by the viceroy ; among the handful of men captured and taken to Chihuahua with Hidalgo were ten clergy ; and in the list of suspects gathered from Hidalgo's examination there Sakedo included a number of others. And thus the citation of such indications might be extended to some length. (See Hernandez y Dava- los, I. 12, 48, 74, 75, 98, 100, 105, 106, 108, 109, III, 114, 198, 200, 216, 227, 236, 344, 346, 348, 379, 382; II. 65, 68, 70, 76, 77, 92, 93, 94, 127, 128; III. 232, 234, 235, 258, 403, 410.) Yet, although it seems too strong to say that the insurgent curate was a rare exception, it is probably true that a large majority of the lower clergy opposed the revolution in this first stage. Seiior Garcia's volume, therefore, will be a valuable corrective to the somewhat preva- lent idea that the lower, as distinguished from the higher, clergy, were quite uniformly supporters of the cause. Incidentally, the documents throw light upon numerous other phases of the revolution besides the part played in it by the clergy. The brief editorial notes are confined mainly to geographical data. Letters from Port Royal Written at the Time of the Civil War. Edited by Edith Ware Pearson. (Boston, W. B. Clarke Company,
Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/942
This page needs to be proofread.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/American_Historical_Review%2C_Volume_12.djvu/page942-1024px-American_Historical_Review%2C_Volume_12.djvu.jpg)