92 <$eograpbical "Rotes on flDejico. 



RELIGION. 



All Mexicans are born in the Catholic Church, that being the pre- 

 vailing religion of the country ; but there is no connection between 

 Church and State, and the Constitution guarantees the free exercise of 

 all religions. 



While Mexico was a colony of Spain and for many years afterwards, 

 the catholic religion was the only one allowed in the country, and 

 anybody professing any other would expose himself to great hardships 

 if he avowed that he was a dissenter, especially while the Inquisition 

 was in existence. 



The clergy became one of the principal pillars of the Spanish dom- 

 ination in Mexico. In the early part of the present century the Church 

 was flourishing, and it was the high-water mark of clerical pros- 

 perity. The humble Mexican priests did the hard laborious work, 

 while the Spanish-born ecclesiastics filled the great bishoprics and 

 other great posts and lived at their ease, and the great convents in 

 their most lucrative positions of control were practically in Spanish 

 hands. 



Huge convents occupied a considerable part of the site of the 

 City of Mexico, Puebla, Morelia, Guadalajara, Quere'taro, and other 

 cities. The incomes of the convents were derived from endowments, 

 amounting to a large sum. To support the high ecclesiastics, great 

 sums were derived from tithes. The archbishop of Mexico had an 

 income of $130,000 a year; the bishops of Puebla, $110,000; of 

 Michoacan, $100,000 ; and of Guadalajara, $90,000. Meantime, the 

 parish priests, who bore the brunt of Christian work among the masses, 

 were living on very moderate sums. The Church erected in Mexico 

 buildings which are remarkable for their dimensions and taste. 1 



1 Mr. Charles Dudley Warner in the Editor's Study of Harper's Illustrated 

 Monthly Magazine for July, 1897, speaks in the following way of the church edifices 

 in Mexico : 



" Somebody of authority, by the way, ought to explain why Mexico has so many 

 church edifices that go to the heart of the lover of beauty, and why the United States 

 has so few that are interesting. Aside from the great Gothic monuments in Spain, 

 Mexico surpasses Spain in interesting ecclesiastical architecture. It has more variety, 

 more quaint beauty, more originality in towers and fa9ades. The interiors are gener- 

 ally monotonous, and repetitions of each other. The Spaniards, in an age of faith, 

 built churches, convents, monasteries, all over the county, in remote and unimportant 

 Indian villages, and as far north as their patient ministers of religion wandered, even 

 to the bay of San Francisco. In these edifices the Spanish ingenuity and enthusiasm 

 prevailed, but they were largely executed by Indian builders and artists ; and if there 

 is Sarasenic feeling shown, there are also, especially in ornamentation, traces of that 

 aboriginal artistic spirit which, long before the Spanish conquest, executed both in stone 

 and in pottery singularly attractive work. Even within a hundred years of our own time 

 Indian genius has been distinguished. Those who think that this genius is only exhib- 



