Building a Bonfire: The Ramification of Spain's Clerical Selection Process on the Michoacano Cathedral Chapter, 1720–1822

The Mexican independence movement began in the diocese of Michoacán when Father Miguel de Hidalgo called his flock to arms and demanded rights for the dispossessed, in particular, for his Indian parishioners. Historical interpretation of Mexico's struggle against Spanish rule has long been couched in terms of a racial and class struggle pitting the elite against Hidalgo's followers; the motivation and action of the middle ground, bridging the gap between the two factions, is often overlooked. To this analysis I add a new local actor, the prebends of the Michoacano cathedral chapter. Unlike parish priests, cathedral prebends were appointed to their lifetime benefices by Spanish bureaucrats of the Council of the Indies. All decisions regarding capitular membership were determined in Spain on the basis of clerical résumés, and decisions were made with little regard for local circumstances. My study dissects the membership of the Michoacano cathedral chapter in the century before independence and exposes the unforeseen consequences of Spanish ecclesiastical promotion policy. Based on variables including place of birth, family connections, educational training, and pre-chapter career trajectory, a comprehensive portrait of Michoacano prebends emerges. I conclude that the cathedral chapter in the very diocese where independence began, was a space in which competing policies and philosophies collided because the crown unwittingly rewarded prebendaries in the Michoacano cathedral to those with both revolutionary and royalist sympathies. With far-flung ties across the diocese, Michoacano prebends stood as arbiters of belief in the cathedral pulpit, and as independence approached, ideological schisms within the chapter radiated well beyond cathedral walls