1763 Servando Teresa de Mier y Noriega is born on October 18 in Monterrey (Mexico), a city in what was then called the New Kingdom of León of New Spain. One of the principal figures of Mexican independence, José María Morelos, will be born three years later. Servando’s father and mother are Joaquín Mier y Noriega and Antonia Guerra; he spends his childhood and early school years in Monterrey. He receives his bachelor’s degree from the Dominican College of Mexico City.
1779 Mier enters the Dominican order, in Mexico City.
1780 Mier receives the degree of doctor of theology from the College of Porta Coeli. He returns to the Monastery of Santo Domingo, where he is a reader in philosophy.
1792 Mier obtains an official permit to preach.
1794 On November 8, Mier delivers the funeral sermon in honor of Hernán Cortés. On December 12, he preaches his famous sermon in the Collegiate Church of Guadalupe, offering a new version of the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. The following day an ecclesiastical trial is brought against him, he is kept in detention in the Monastery of Santo Domingo, and his permit to preach is revoked.
1795 Archbishop Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta issues an edict sentencing Mier to ten years’ imprisonment in the monastery at Las Caldas (Santander, Spain), following the verdict against him handed down by Canons Uribe and Omaña. In addition to the prison sentence, his punishment includes the suspension in perpetuity of his right to teach, to preach from the pulpit and to act as confessor. In March he is imprisoned for a little more than two months in the Castle of San Juan de Ulúa, and then put aboard the frigate La Nueva Empresa and taken to Cádiz, Spain. He finally arrives in Las Caldas toward the end of the year; he escapes, is captured and is again imprisoned.
1797 Mier spends the year as a prisoner in the Monastery of San Pablo, Burgos, where he writes his Letters to Dr. Juan Bautista Muñoz ( Cartas al Dr. Juan B antis ta Muñoz sobre la tradición guadalupana de México), a chronicler of the Indies, tracing in detail for him the Mexican tradition of the Virgin of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He asks to be transferred to Cádiz. En route to Cádiz, Mier retires to the monastery of San Francisco in Madrid, to draft his defense and bring his case to the attention of the Council of the Indies, petitioning it to examine Haro’s edict.
1800 The Academy of History finds against Haro and in favor of Mier. He is sent to a monastery in Salamanca, but he eludes the authorities and flees to Madrid. They find him in Burgos, and he is sent once again to the monastery of San Francisco; he escapes, and this time he crosses the border into France disguised as a French priest.
1801 Mier lives in lodgings in Bayonne and Bordeaux. He goes to Paris with the Count of Gijón; in that city, with Simón Rodríguez, who uses the alias Samuel Robinson and was the teacher of Simón Bolívar, he founds a school for the teaching of Spanish. He cotranslates with Rodríguez Chateaubriand’s Atala. He writes a dissertation against Count Constantine de Volney—a Girondin, rationalist and historian—which earns him the protection of the grand vicar of Paris and an appointment as head of the parish of Saint-Thomas.
1802 Mier journeys to Rome to seek secularization and authorization to hold curacies, benefices and prebends. He attempts to return to Spain in the entourage of Princess Isabel, who is about to marry Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, but he arrives too late to accompany her. He remains in Naples for several months and then returns to Rome.
1803 Mier is granted permanent secularization. He journeys to Florence, Siena, Genoa, Barcelona, Zaragoza and Madrid, where he is again arrested.
1804 Mier is sent to the jail of Los Toribios, in Seville. He escapes through the window, is again apprehended and is kept in shackles; he falls ill and manages to make his escape.
1805 From Cádiz Mier crosses the border into Portugal and chances to witness the battle of Trafalgar. He secures a post as secretary of the Spanish consul in Lisbon.
1808 Mier aids Spaniards imprisoned by order of General Andoche Junot, the commander of the Bonapartist occupation forces in Portugal and the north of Spain. In recognition of his work in their behalf, the Spaniards name him their chaplain; Mier journeys to Catalonia to join the battalion of volunteers from Valencia. Charles IV and Ferdinand VII have abdicated the throne of Spain and been succeeded by Napoleon’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte.
1809 Mier is taken prisoner by the French. They transfer him to Zaragoza and he escapes. The Central Junta of Aranjuez recommends him for a canonry in Mexico in recognition of his patriotic labors, but the Spanish rebels are defeated by the Bonapartist forces and the junta is dissolved.
1810 Mier is sent to Cádiz by his battalion of volunteers.
1811 The regency plans to give Mier the bishop’s miter in the cathedral of Mexico City, but there are no vacant bishoprics and therefore he is offered instead half an annual prebend. Mier refuses it and goes to London. There he meets José María Blanco White, the exiled Spanish journalist and advocate of relative independence for America; he begins an important correspondence with him. He publishes his Carta de un Americano al Español (Letter from an American to El Español).
1812 Mier continues his epistolary polemic with Blanco White on the subject of independence. He publishes his Segunda carta de un americano al español (Second Letter from an American to El Español). He is already decidedly opposed to any sort of ongoing political or economic relation with Spain, defending absolute independence and arguing for an America for Americans.
1813 Mier publishes, under the pseudonym José Guerra, his Historia de la revolución de Nueva España, which he has been working on since before his arrival in London. In it he makes an impassioned declaration in favor of American independence and provides for his English readers an explanation of this cause, denouncing the despotism of the Inquisitors and of the Spanish monarchy. He is still undecided as to whether a monarchical system of government or a republic is preferable, and mistrusts the example of the United States, being greatly influenced by his admiration for England. In the Historia he maintains that America already has a constitution, based on the centuries-old Magna Carta and laid down in the Laws of the Indies.
1814 Mier journeys to Paris, where he is made a member of the Institute National of France. He meets the man who is to be the great conservative historian of Mexico, Lucas Alamán.
1815 Mier returns to London, disappointed by the outcome of events in Spain and France: Ferdinand VII, restored to the throne, has rejected the liberal constitution promulgated by the Legislative Assembly of Cádiz; Bonaparte has returned to Paris. He meets the insurgent Francisco Javier Mina; the English court grants him a pension to enable him to travel to the United States.
1816 In Liverpool Mier boards the frigate Caledonia, along with other volunteers headed by Mina. They reach Virginia and from there go on to Baltimore.
1817 Mier leaves for Mexico with Minas expedition from the island of San Luis, in Galveston Bay. He reaches Soto de la Marina, where a fort is being constructed that will soon fall into the hands of the royalist brigadier general Joaquín Arredondo. At the time of his arrival, the fort had been dismantled because Mina had left with most of the combatants; Mier is taken prisoner, has all of his books confiscated and is sent to Mexico. En route, kept in shackles, he falls off his horse and fractures his arm; once again he is placed in an Inquisition prison. And once more he is put on trial.
1818 While in prison Mier writes his Apología y Relación de lo sucedido en Europa hasta octubre de 1805 (Apologia and An Account of What Happened in Europe up to October 1805).
1820 Mier testifies in his own defense before the Inquisitors’ Tribunal, which, after reviewing all his supporting documents, declares the case closed. As it is already common knowledge that the Holy Office is to be abolished in June and Mier is, in effect, a political prisoner, he is transferred to the Royal Prison, in Veracruz, and finally (for the second time) to the Castle of San Juan de Ulúa. There he writes his Manifiesto apologético (Apologetic Manifesto), Carta de despedida a los mexicanos (Farewell Letter to the Mexican People)Cuestión política: ;iqPuede ser libre la Nueva España? (Political Question: Can New Spain Be Free?) and Idea de la constitución (Idea of the Constitution). Though still in prison, he manages to remain in contact with the rebels fighting for independence.
1821 The authorities put Mier aboard a ship to Cuba, with Spain as his final destination. In Havana he escapes from the hospital where he is being treated. He is captured and imprisoned in the fortress known as La Cabaña, (The Cabin), from which he manages to make yet another break. He takes passage on the frigate Robert Fulton, headed for the United States. In Philadelphia he writes and publishes his Memoria política-instructiva (Instructive-Political Memorandum) in favor of a republican government in Mexico and against the Iguala Plan, which, though it provides for absolute independence, proposes that Ferdinand VII be made emperor. He now totally distrusts England, which he calls a secret enemy, and proposes an alliance with the United States, which he identifies with anti-monarchism. In August the viceroy O’Donojú and Agustín de Iturbide sign the Treaties of Córdoba, which incorporate a declaration of absolute independence and provide for a moderate monarchical government. The province of the New Kingdom of León elects Mier as deputy to the Mexican Constituent Congress. He decided to return to his native land and journeys to Veracruz.
1822 The commander of the Castle of San Juan de Ulúa, faithful to the royalist forces, arrests Mier once again. While imprisoned Mier writes Exposición de la persecución que he padecido desde el 14 de junio de 1817 hasta el presente de 1822 (Account of the Persecution I Have Suffered from June 14, 1817, to Date in 1822). The Constituent Congress demands that he be released from prison. On May 21 he is freed: it is the day on which Agustín Iturbide is proclaimed emperor of Mexico; the new emperor receives Mier personally in Tlalpan. Mier becomes a member of the Congress and begins his anti-lturbide activities. Toward the middle of the year he is incarcerated once more, this time for being a republican, in the Monastery of Santo Domingo.
1823 Mier makes his escape, is arrested and is sent to the Royal Prison and then to the prison of the Inquisition, an institution that has been abolished. Two infantry regiments in Mexico stage an uprising against Iturbide and free Mier and other incarcerated deputies. The First Constituent Congress is dissolved. As a deputy, Mier takes an active part in the Second Constituent Congress: in one of its sessions he delivers his speech “on prophecies,” attacking the adoption of a federal system of government. He warns that imitating the United States is not the right course to follow. Because of this speech he is attacked as a centralist, but his party loses the battle and in the parliamentary session of December 16 he votes in favor of a popular, representative and federal republic.
1824 Mier’s name appears among those of the signers of the new Constitutive Act of Federation, which will be superseded by the Federal Constitution of the United States of Mexico. He receives by decree an annual pension of three thousand pesos, and President Guadalupe Victoria gives him living quarters in the Palacio Nacional.
1825 Mier publishes his Discurso sobre la encíclica del Papa León XII (Discourse on the Encyclical Issued by Pope Leo XII).
1827 José Miguel Ramos Arizpe administers the viaticum to Mier in the presence of the president of the Republic and a great many others. It should be pointed out to those who accuse Mier of being a centralist that Ramos Arizpe—the very person who, as minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, will later decree the secularization of land holdings in upper and lower California, his aim being to wrest control of them from Spanish priests—was one of the principal leaders of federalism. On December 3, Servando Teresa de Mier y Noriega dies in his quarters in the Palacio Nacional, a few months after his sixty-fourth birthday. Vice President Nicolás Bravo is the ranking government official at his interment, in the Monastery of Santo Domingo.
1842 Mier’s body is exhumed and preserved in the ossuary of the monastery.
1861 Mier’s mummy is sold to don Bernabé de la Barra, owner of a circus, purportedly with the intent of exhibiting it in Brussels and Buenos Aires.
1882 Mier’s mummy is said to have been exhibited in Brussels as that of a victim of the Inquisition. The whereabouts of these remains is not known.