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PROVINCIAL COUNCILS. 



HISTORICAL DETAILS RELATIVE TO THE PROVINCIAL COUNCILS OP 



LIMA. 



Among the many excellent institutions which distinguish 

 the Peruvian capital, is to be reckoned that of the provincial 

 councils celebrated there. They evince the constant zeal of 

 the monarchs of Spain for religion and discipline ; and the 

 pastoral vigilance of the prelates, who have spared neither 

 pains nor labour, in the promotion of their views, and in 

 the accomplishment of these sacred and interesting purposes. 



The disturbances of which Gonzalo Pizarro was the princi- 

 pal instigator having been successfully terminated, and before 

 others of a still more sanguinary nature had been excited by 

 the open rebellion of Francisco Hernandes Giron, the fathers 

 and prelates who resided at Lima, availed themselves of that 

 short interval, to establish some degree of order in the affairs 

 of the church, which, in common with all the other concerns 

 of the republic, had been deranged, shortly after the conquest, 

 by revolutions similar to those above pointed out. They ac- 

 cordingly united in a provincial council in the year 1552. 

 Not any mention is made of the bishops who were present ; 

 but it is extremely probable that, besides friar Geronimo 

 Loaysa, of the order of St. Domingo, the first archbishop of 

 Lima, the bishops of Quito and Cusco, who then resided in 

 that city, and who, as Well as the archbishop, accompanied 

 the president Gasco to the battle of Sachahuana, constituted 

 a part of the council. The questions which were discussed in 

 this congregation are not noticed ; and indeed the only infor- 

 mation now extant relates to the convocation itself. It is pro- 

 bable that this assembly was a kind of Peruvian Cortes, in 



which, 



