Or,r Catliolic JI erit,ege in Tc.i:as
130
Having taken the matter under advisement, and having consulted the Sacred College of Cardinals for Propaganda Fide, Pope Pius IX issued his decree Arcano Divinae Pr01tidentiae on August 27, 1874, which be- came effective on September 3 of the said year, by which he separated from the Diocese of Galveston "that part of the State or territory of Texas which lies between the Colorado River on the east and the Nueces River on the west." The new Diocese was to receive its name from St. Anthony and its episcopal see was to be the city of San Antonio, "where there is a church, which may be taken as a Cathedral." The Diocese was to be a suffragan of the Archbishop of New Orleans. st The decree of erection specified only the east and west boundaries. It is safe to presume that the Gulf of Mexico was intended to mark the south- ern limits. Perhaps because no one knew how far north Texas extended is the reason that nothing was said about the boundary in this direction. An old map in the Chancery Office of San Antonio-probably drawn after the erection of the Diocese-gives however, the boundary line as begin- ning at the mouth of the Nueces River and running from this point on the Gulf along the river to its source, thought at that time to be near Rock Springs in Edwards County. The line on the map runs slightly southwest to the point where the Pecos empties into the Rio Grande in Val Verde County, then follows the Rio Grande to the southern boundary of New Mexico, excepting El Paso County-much more extensive then- and continues along the southern limits of New Mexico east to and down the Colorado River to the Gulf. Questions concerning the limits of the new Diocese, evidently arose, for on July 21, 1877, a papal decree redefined certain lines of the bound- ary. The decree gave the recently created Vicariate Apostolic of Browns- ville the counties of Bee,sz Goliad, Aransas, Refugio, San Patricio and that part of Live Oak which has been in the Diocese of San Antonio in compensation for which the latter was granted a relatively large tract lying north of Arroyo de los Hermanos 53 (a small tributary of the Rio 51 Decree of Pope Pius IX creating the Diocese of San Antonio, Rome, August 27, 1874. MS. copy in Chancery Office, San Antonio, Texas. 51 The Vicariate Apostolic of Brownsville had been created by a papal decree of September 18, t 874. Archives, Diocese of Corpus Christi. SSNo map, either of the Spanish period or of the English, shows a creek flowing into the Rio Grande in the area indicated by the name here cited. It probably derived the name from the friars or missionaries generally referred to in Spanish as "her- manos." This little creek may have marked the limits of the area visited by the Oblates from Brownsville.
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