Note 24 — Chapter XI · THE AUDIENCIA AND THE CHURCH: THE ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION

The most significant and decisive judicial authority which the audiencia exercised in ecclesiastical matters, and that which was productive of more conflicts and opposition on the part of the church than any other cause, was the jurisdiction of the tribunal over the secular church courts, at the head of which was the metropolitan tribunal of the archbishop. The method of intervention most frequently followed in cases appealed from the archbishop was by the entertainment of the recurso de fuerza.24 In this way the civil jurisdiction, acting through the audiencia, could intervene for its own protection, and by means of this special procedure that tribunal actually did restrain the ecclesiastical judges more frequently and effectively in important cases than in any other way. It was on the grounds of fuerza that the audiencia justified its action in practically all cases of interference with the jurisdiction of the church courts.