Padre Martínez’s Influence Went Far Beyond His Role in the Church
By Rob Martínez
Padre Martínez was a fierce Mexican patriot. He served his flock in all areas: religious, temporal, spiritual and secular. He was also devoted to his land and the people of New Mexico. Not just a priest, Martínez served in the Mexican government as a representative of New Mexico.
Martinez was an advocate for literacy and education. With the arrival of a printing press to New Mexico in 1834, brought on the Santa Fe Trail by Josiah Gregg, Padre Martínez, seeing the value of such an invention, printed the Cuaderno de Ortografía or Workbook of Orthography, a spelling primer that supported his vision.
Martínez was a man of the people, but a man nonetheless, setting aside his vows for passionate endeavors, fathering two children. This was not an uncommon practice in the Spanish-speaking world, where priests sometimes had companionship that was unofficial and often ignored. He did find time to serve in the departmental assembly of New Mexico under the Mexican government in the 1830s and 1840s and participated in the convention for the U.S. to annex the territory in 1848.
The first bishop assigned to New Mexico, Jean Baptiste Lamy, was a native of France, from a place where the currents of a Catholic heresy called Jansenism ran fierce and strong. Jansenism was a puritanical form of Catholicism that was strict and rigid. Lamy ran this course. Once, when he was a priest in Cincinnati, he suggested to his bishop the sacraments be withheld from those who did not tithe to the church. His bishop firmly rebuked him.
This strict form of Catholicism clashed with the folk Catholicism of Padre Martínez, as well as the enlightened teachings of the Jesuits of Durango, Mexico, who influenced the padre a great deal. At first, the two priests worked well together. But when Lamy issued a Christmas pastoral letter in 1854 stating sacraments would be withheld if the New Mexicans did not tithe, Martínez became furious.
He had, after all, secured a dispensation from tithing for the poor people of the New Mexico from the bishop of Durango.
Both men were of a keen intellect and likely suffered from some egotism. For decades Martínez was a proud leader of Northern New Mexico in areas of religion, education and politics. At the heart of their conflict was Martínez’s disobedience and Lamy’s rigidity. Both men commanded attention and devotion from their followers and were defenders of what they believed to be right.
In 1856 after retiring as the priest in Taos, a niece of Martínez was to be married and wanted her uncle to officiate the marriage. The new priest, a haughty Spaniard named Dámaso Taladrid, refused Martínez this honor. The old warrior priest officiated anyway. He believed God was on his side.
This, and the public challenging of the bishop by the old padre, led to Lamy excommunicating Martínez in 1858. This effectively removed his priestly faculties and separated him from church sacraments. Still, Martínez persisted ministering to his flock of followers in Taos. It was a schism that would be a persistent problem for Lamy.
Just as Martínez was a harbinger for New Mexico’s entrance into Mexican nationhood in 1821, so, too, was he a sentinel over New Mexico as it became a U.S. territory in 1848. He was politically astute during our Mexican period and was a leader in developing local policy for New Mexicans. It was not so much that Martínez was pro-American as he was pro-New Mexican.
As the winds of change swept through the region, Martínez wanted what was best for his people, be they subjects of the Spanish monarch, citizens of the Mexican nation or the U.S. government. As his life passed from his body, he was said to exclaim the Society of Jesus would clear up the mess between him and Lamy, and heal the schism created by the two men.
His prophecy came true, at least partially, as he died in 1867 — the year the Jesuits arrived in New Mexico.
This article first appeared in the Santa Fe New Mexican on March 4, 2022.