Children of Unknown Parents

CHILDREN OF UNKNOWN PARENTS Baptismal documentation often refers to the designation of "children of unknown parents" to describe children whose parents are unknown. In this sense, the tagline "son of unknown parents" may also appear, although the general thing in the case of La Vega is that the registrar uses the first formula. Let's look at the distribution of children of parents of unknown parents: In general, during the Ancien Régime, on most occasions the people in charge of the registry pointed out the ignorance of one or both parents when in fact they did not know their identity. However, in the case of La Vega we have reliable evidence that the parish priest, even knowing the biological parents, silences them, a phenomenon that became natural at the time. These are parents who, for various reasons, abandon their partner or do not want to marry her. These episodes appear in the documentation as the children of "hidden" or "covert" parents – evidently by the priest. In these cases, the parish priest in charge of the registry reflects the knowledge of both parents, but keeps the paternal identity hidden despite the fact that he insinuates it in the baptismal certificate. Thus, we have the case of Francisco in 1605 "son of Catalina, black of Nicolás Ortis, merchant, and covert father"17 or the example of María, in 1603, "daughter of Isabel, black of Guillén de Ayala, alderman, and covert father".18 Most of the cases found in the documentation correspond to the period 1601-1608 in which the parish see remained quite unstable with several parish priests in a short time. which perhaps meant that the demand of them in view of their imminent departure and the zeal they had to maintain in their work was not all that was Christianly desirable.19 In addition, it can be seen that in most cases some slaves are involved, who are the mothers of the children. This explains the refusal of the male father to make himself known, who will have no great difficulty for the parish priest to silence his name even if he knows him, when it is an eminent figure, at least. Also in the City we have evidence that sometimes the priest who carried out the mission of registering the birth data in the certificate knows the identity of the father, but does not write it down.20 The causes that could motivate the concealment of the identity of the parents in the baptismal certificates were varied. Thus, we can find cases in which the parents are ecclesiastics or people of high social status who tried to prevent their contemporaries from being aware of their amorous dalliances. In the first case, the complicity of the religious is evident when it comes to preventing any person of the same condition from being implicated in any carnal sin. It was quite common for the religious to have relations with young men and barraganas or with any other woman, even if married. In order to know these aspects of the sinful life of the servants of the Lord, which is now alien to the study we intend to carry out, the work of Sarrión Mora21 on the behavior of the clergy with respect to women is very interesting. With regard to the concealment of identity in persons of high social status, it should be noted that the phenomenon of the honour of the individual is important in the old regime societies. Thus, most of the people who enjoy a preponderant position in the community try to avoid knowledge of their illicit relationships, especially if we are in a more closed and smaller society as was the case of La Vega. Here the zeal to conceal one's identity was much greater than in the City, given the need to avoid scandal. In Las Palmas, the love affairs of people of high social status were better known22 since the number of relationships governed by the marriage bond was higher than in La Vega, in addition to its also higher population volume. In this regard, it should also be noted the importance of the fact of the existence of a seaport with great traffic in La Ciudad, which led to the arrival of new population contingents that tended to favor the laxity of premarital relations, especially during the eighteenth century, in the shadow of a climate of less observance of religious precepts. Sara F. Matthews also echoes this idea of greater relaxation of ethical-moral customs in urban societies, based on the existence of more powerful family ties in rural areas, as well as the role played by clerics in these areas where they acquire the role of guarantor of the prevailing religious status quo.