Note 9 — Letter Written by a Citizen of Manila to an Absent Friend (continued 2)

The following royal decree on this subject was issued in 1637: “Inasmuch as I have been informed that many soldiers and sailors who are in my service in the Filipinas Islands are becoming, and have become, religious, while indebted in large sums of maravedis to my royal treasury for pay which has been advanced to them; and that, after having been for some years in the orders, they leave them and wander about as vagabonds with the utmost freedom, and refuse to reënter my service: desiring to apply a corrective to such delinquencies, and the matter having been conferred over in my royal Council of the Yndias, I have considered it fitting to issue the present. By it I request my very reverend archbishop in Christ, the father of the metropolitan church of the city of Manila, and charge the venerable and devout fathers-provincial and other superiors of all the orders in the territory of his archbishopric, to note that they are to inform my governor of the said islands whenever such cases shall occur to the prejudice of my treasury, and that the culprits be punished as is fitting. No one may take the vows of religion without first satisfying the amount that he shall thus owe. In order that the contents of this my decree may be well known to all, I order my governor and captain-general of the said Filipinas Islands to publish it in all the necessary places, and to send a copy of it to the provincials of the orders throughout the said islands, in order that they may give to its fulfilment the earnest attention to which they are obliged; for such is my will. Madrid, December 23, 1637.”

The copy of this decree existing in the Archivo general de Indias at Sevilla—with pressmark, “Audiencia de Filipinas; registros de oficio; reales ordenes dirigidas á las autoridades del distrito de dicha Audiencia; años 1635 á 1672; est. 105, caj. 2, leg. 2, lib. 4”—bears the following endorsement in the margin: “In order that no soldier or sailor in the Filipinas Islands who may be indebted to the royal treasury may take the vows of religion without first satisfying the amount of his debt.”