Father Álvarez not only gave to the hospital all he possessed, but declared it the heir of his share of the estate left by his parents, with the only condition that his brother and two sisters in Spain should enjoy its income during their lives.[1]
The order of Carmelites, represented by eleven of its members with their prelate, arrived in the city of Mexico on the 17th of October, 1585,[2] and were given by the viceroy, January 18, 1586, the charge of the hermita de San Sebastian, which till then the Franciscans had held. On the 25th in a solemn procession and with the attendance of the archbishop the host was conveyed thence from the Franciscan convent. This was the first foundation of the order that became in later times so highly honored by the people of Mexico. Without loss of time the new-comers devoted themselves to their duties of instructing, consoling, and improving the natives.
Their province was constituted in 1588 under the
- ↑ In so doing he formally renounced all legal clauses favoring him, declaring that his poverty was of his own seeking: 'Yo tengo votada la dicha pobreza, que me he donado al dicho Hospital. Y assi no tengo necessidad de propriedad, ni usufructu de bienes.' This great philanthropist died in Mexico, August 12, 1584, aged 70. Id., 75-6, 179. Arce, Juan Dias de, Libro de vida del proximo evangelico, el Vener. Padre Bernardino Álvarez, Mex., 1762, 12mo, 464 pp., 4 leaves and 2 cuts, gives a full account of the life and works of the venerable Father Bernardino Alvarez, founder of the order of Charity and hospitalers in Mexico, under the advocacy of Saint Hyppolytus, and of the progress made by the order, as well as of the objects of its institution. The author held the highest offices in the archdiocese of Mexico, and earlier in that of the Isla Española. Like all works of the kind written in the early days by ecclesiastics it is exceedingly prolix, but at the same time exhaustive of its subject. See also Morelli, Fasti Novi Orbis, 295, 337; Vetancvrt, Trat. Mex., 39-40; Diario Mex., vi. 422-3.
- ↑ Granados, Tardes, 340, says 1586. The founders of the order in Mexico were: Priests, Juan de la Madre de Dios, the prior; Pedro de los Apóstoles, Pedro de San Hilarion, Ignacio de Jesus, and Francisco de Bautista; choristers, José de Jesús Maria, Juan de Jesús Maria, and Hilarion de Jesús; lay brothers, Arsenio de San Ildefonso, Gabriel de la Madre de Dios, and Anastasio de la Madre de Dios. Vetancvrt, Trat. Mex., 36; Medina, Chrón. San Diego, 10; Navarrete, Rel. Pereg., iii. 62. Ponce, Rel., in Col. Doc. Inéd., lvii. 141, says they were distributed between Mexico and Puebla. Turon, Hist. Gen., vi. 199-200. Philip II. in his cédula of June 9, 1585, directed the viceroy to permit this order to preach in the Philippines, New Mexico, or anywhere else that its superiors desired, and to aid its members in every possible way, so that they could make their labors useful. Ramirez, Not. Mex., in Monum. Dom. Esp., MS., 338.
