The Florida mission, like the Boltonian one, was a canonically erected church congregation, coterminous with an Indian town that was under obedience to "both Majesties" and observed the same "laws of the realm" and "law of God" as a Spanish one. A doctrinero from the Franciscan Order was assigned to the congregation to say its Masses, administer its sacraments, and supervise its instruction in the dogmas of Roman Catholicism. A kind of teaching pastor, the doctrinero lived with a coterie of male assistants in a monasterylike convento close to the town's iglesia, or church structure containing a sanctuary to hold and display the Blessed Sacrament. The Crown paid the doctrinero's stipend, or sinodo, and underwrote his church expenses, as it did the expenses and salaries of the colony's one parish church of Spaniards. But the Florida mission was no theocracy. It was a fully functioning native town governed by an interlocking set of hereditary and elected native leaders: the cacique, who represented the town in councils and was its military leader, and the principales, who advised him and handled local government. Both levels of leaders were accountable to the governor and not to the padre provincial, or superior of the Franciscan Order in the colony. While Christian Indians in the Southeast played an important part in supporting the Spanish friars, soldiers, and settlers, they did so with comparatively little change to their own material culture and political organization. A Florida governor took seriously his duties as vice-patron of the Church. Advised by the royal officials of the treasury and the officers of the garrison, he approved or disapproved the Franciscan province's plans for expansion in the form of spiritual entradas; he controlled the number of doctrineros under royal patronage; and he oversaw their assignments and reassignments. The reams of documentation generated during the periods of high controversy between the colony's civil and religious authorities have obscured an important fact: in Florida, as elsewhere, the clergy was a branch of the civil service. The hundreds of Franciscans who were transported to the provinces of Florida and there maintained in frugal respectability for the rest of their lives were reminded at every turn that they were in America to promote Crown Catholicism. (Bushnell SS)