Note 9 — Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Philippines

Although it is true that it is stated in the memorial which the Order of St. Francis in Nueva España presented regarding the substance of the privileges of the mendicant orders in the Yndias, at the provincial council that was convened in Mexico in the year 1585, [36] at the instance of the same council (as is mentioned by father Fray Juan Baptista, of the said order, in the second part of his book of advice for confessors), that the said revocation had no effect, because the cardinal protectors of the orders immediately appealed from it, asking his Holiness to suspend the said motu proprio and that it be not promulgated; and that his Holiness agreed to it, and that, accordingly, no account was taken of it—it appears that no attention must be paid to that, for the said memorial [37] has no further proof or authority than the certification of Father Master Veracruz, who was in Sevilla when the motu proprio of Gregory XIII was issued, and because Father Manuel Rodriguez, of the same Order of St. Francis, affirms the contrary—who some years later, while residing in Salamanca, where there was more notice of it than in the Yndias, published his books of “questions concerning the regulars,” as appears in article 7, question 8, of the first volume,9 as well as in other places. With the same agrees father Fray Alonso de Vega, in his conclusion, chapter 62, case 4, Questio de confessione, and it appears by the declarations of the holy congregation of the cardinals, which Marcilla reports in article 20, of section 25, de regularibus, and in article 15, of section 13, de reformatione,10 besides others, by which it is manifest that it is a privilege that his Majesty obtained for what he then judged advisable for the proper government of the churches of the Yndias, and the greater increase of their Christianity. It ought not, nor can it, be understood to be to the prejudice of the privileges that the holy apostolic see has conceded to the kings of España for the same purpose, such as that of Alexander VI, in his bull of the concession or confirmation of the Indias, as follows: Hortamur vos quamplurimum ... et infra sit—insuper mandamus vobis in virtute sanctae obedientiae (sicut etiam pollicemini) et non dubitamus pro vestra maxima devotione et regia magnanimitate [38] vos esse facturos, ad terras firmas et insulis praedictas, viros probos....11