Note 15 — Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Philippines

With the above royal decree was despatched another to the royal Audiencia, in which its observance and fulfilment is ordered and charged; and another to the same archbishop, which only contains the [45] statement that he is strictly charged with its fulfilment.15 His Majesty says in it that it is advisable to do this for the relief of his royal conscience and that of the archbishop himself. Those decrees having arrived in the ships that came in the year six hundred and five, Don Fray Miguel de Benavides, archbishop at that time, as soon as he received them, presented all three in the royal meeting held on the second of June, of the said year, and they were obeyed and [46] ordered to be fulfilled. But as the said archbishop died within two months, he could not carry them out; and consequently they were left unobserved, because the cabildo succeeded to the government of the vacant see. Afterward, Archbishop Don Diego Vazquez de Mercado, either because he knew nothing about them, or because he was so far prevented by his age and infirmity (as all know), did not put them into practice. At his death, Don Fray Diego de Arce, bishop of Zibú, governed this archbishopric; but he did not know of the said decrees. But as they [47] have come to my notice, and since we are obliged, both myself and your Paternities, to observe and obey what his Holiness and his Majesty order in regard to this, as above stated, we cannot excuse ourselves from immediately putting it into execution.