Note 73 — Chapter XI · THE AUDIENCIA AND THE CHURCH: THE ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION

It would be desirable, did time and space allow it, to illustrate further the jurisdiction of the audiencia over ecclesiastical affairs by showing in detail the part which the tribunal played in the friar lands litigation73 and in the disputes over ecclesiastical visitation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Philippines. It will be sufficient here to state that the government sought at irregular intervals and with varying degrees of success, to make the orders prove titles to lands in the same manner that was required of other corporations and individuals.74 The audiencia, as a tribunal, and the individual magistrates as special commissioners, participated judicially in the examination of these titles and in the correction of the abuses which were discovered. The oidores, when serving as special magistrates for the verification of these titles, officiated in a double capacity. By the very nature of the services rendered they were judges. They were also agents of the royal patron and as such they represented the person of the king, ascertaining whether the royal rights had been usurped or infringed upon.