Note 21 — Chapter XI · THE AUDIENCIA AND THE CHURCH: THE ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION

Reference was made in the last chapter to the suits which occurred between the Jesuits and Dominicans, the two orders most extensively interested in higher education, for the right to maintain universities in Manila. The greater number of these disputes, in fact all of them, seem to have been based on the rivalry of their two colleges and on their zeal for royal favor and patronage. When Santo Tomás became a royal university in 1648, and was empowered to grant degrees as such, the Jesuits brought suit in the audiencia for the right to confer honors of a like character in their college of San José. The audiencia denied their petition; the case was appealed to the Council of the Indies, and the higher authority decided that both institutions should enjoy equally the privilege of conferring scholastic honors.21 The rivalry and bitter feeling between these two orders did not cease with this settlement, but in 1683 the Dominicans again brought suit in the audiencia, seeking to limit the educational activities of the Jesuits. The matter was again carried to the Council of the Indies. Although the decision was made in favor of the Jesuits, the disagreements between the two orders, the charges and counter-charges, and the influence of Archbishop Pardo, a Dominican, in behalf of his own order, went far beyond the authority of the audiencia, whose efforts to restrain them were entirely ineffectual.22