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BROTHERHOODS FOUNDED.
135

mitted that the judgment take effect, and the archbishop and cathedral chapters invested with the requisite authority. Nevertheless execution was delayed for years, owing to the difficulties which arose as to the valuation of property, and several times new orders, reaffirming previous cédulas, were issued in Spain. In Puebla the Jesuits contrived to delay payment till 1673, when after fruitless appeals to the audiencia, and after being placed under excommunication, they finally submitted. After that no other difficulties arose till 1732, when investigation showed that frauds had been committed by the society in their statements of the revenue derived from their property.[1]

Notwithstanding the many disputes in which the society had become involved, the ranks of their partisans continually increased, and new establishments gave evidence of the sympathy which the order enjoyed. Licenses having been obtained in Spain for the founding of a novitiate at Mexico in support of that of Tepotzotlan, donations of money were made for this purpose in 1626, and in 1642 it was completed and dedicated to Santa Ana. Subsequent discussions with one of the founders caused its abandonment, till 1672,[2] when Andrés de Tapia y Carbajal, a very wealthy man and one friendly to the order, endowed the establishment with sufficient means for the maintenance of twenty novices and the necessary fathers and lay-brothers. On the 19th of November the society took possession of it, changing the name to that of San Andrés.

Several brotherhoods were also founded by the order, that of the Immaculate Conception being the most prominent, and including ecclesiastics, laymen,

  1. Details on this subject are contained in a number of memorials and pamphlets, forming a collection under the title Diezmos de Indias. Some of the documents are of Jesuit origin; others have been written by the secular church and their partisans. Those numbered from one to five have been consulted in this chapter; the rest bear exclusively on later disputes.
  2. Lazcano, Vida del P. Oviedo, 56-7, says it was in 1676.