Note 23 — Letter Written by a Citizen of Manila to an Absent Friend

Since the above letter makes mention of the forcing of the guardhouse, I shall narrate to your Grace what occurred. Don Pedro de Monrroy, since he was not provisor, left the city. The governor, fearing that if he returned hither, the matter would be more unsettled than ever, left orders at the city gates that Don Pedro should not be allowed to enter, should he make the attempt. But on November 21—on the same day and at the same hour when the governor was with the archbishop in the convent of St. Francis, trying to settle the matter—the said Don Pedro Monrroy, clad as a Franciscan friar, with another Franciscan friar as companion, attempted to enter by a gate near the convent of St. Dominic, at the time of the Ave Marias. A great number of religious went out of the convent to receive him. The commandant at the gate, one Alférez Don Francisco de Ribera, recognized him; he seized him, and called out to his soldiers to take their arms, and prevent Don Pedro’s entrance. But there were so many friars of St. Dominic, who charged down and defended him by fighting with their fists, that the soldiers could not use their weapons or prevent his entrance. Consequently, forcing the guardhouse, they took him into the city. The governor felt just anger at this. He ordered the commandant and soldiers to be arrested, and he was about to garrote the commandant and punish the soldiers for not having obeyed his order. They exculpated themselves quite sufficiently in the report that they made of having done their utmost, but that the fury of the religious gave them no time to do any more. The governor in great anger wrote to the father vicar-provincial of St. Dominic, Fray Antonio Gonsalez, regarding the matter; and the latter responded very coolly that his religious had not done such a thing, and that he had proof and information to the contrary. The father vicar added that Don Pedro de Monrroy had entered the city in obedience to the summons of the Inquisition. For your Grace must suppose that as the friars saw the matter was ending ill, and as their passion against the fathers of the Society was so great, they endeavored by all means to make it a case of Inquisition against them. Therefore, on November 19, the father commissary sent for a copy of the act of the judge-conservator, in which the latter ordered the archbishop to produce the protest or defamatory libel, under penalty of suspension; that act was affixed to the archbishop’s door, as he was not at home, and as he could not be found to notify him. Father Fray Francisco de Paula23 acted as notary on this occasion. He ordered a writing-desk to be placed in the street, and, with great pomp and clatter, had the said act removed, and copied it on the writing-desk. Next morning the father commissary sent another friar, named Fray Ignacio Muñoz,24 to act as notary to summon the judge, Don Fabian de Santillan; he did it in so clamorous a manner, and at such a time, that people thought he was trying to place some stain on the said judge. The latter, in order to purge himself from it, asked the father commissary for an official statement stating that he had not been summoned for any crime, but only to be told that the trial of the said protest did not pertain to him. At nine o’clock in the morning of the twenty-third of the same month of November, two lay brothers of the same Order of St. Dominic, also in the capacity of notaries, went to the judge-conservator, who was at [the convent of] the Society, to notify him that he must surrender Diego de Rueda. And because the doorkeeper of the Society told them to wait a moment, they began to cry aloud and to attest by witnesses that they were being prevented from attending to the affairs of the Inquisition. On the twenty-sixth of the same month, another notification was made to the same judge, asking for Diego de Rueda, and ordering that he be sent to demand the protest. Many other notifications were served on him through the agency of Fray Antonio Espexo25 of the same order. From this your Grace will observe that they had a different notary for each day; this is a matter on which I may reflect much, and I even imagine that the inquisitors of Mexico would not be pleased with so great a variety of notaries for one commissary—some being lay brothers and others ordained priests, some youths and others of greater age—and usually but little restrained. To show that, I will only tell your Grace of one thing that one of those notaries, Fray Ignaçio de Muñoz, said, when going one day to a garden with another friar of his order, Fray Pedro de Ledo,26 and with the collegiates of Santo Thomas: “I shall not stop until I see all the Theatins [i.e., Jesuits] put to the knife.” What a fine disposition is that, your Grace, and what a good inclination in a notary of so holy, upright, and dispassionate a tribunal as is that of the holy Inquisition! Finally, the father commissary asked the judge-conservator to surrender to him an information that he had brought against Don Pedro de Monrroy, because he had said that Lutero and Calvino [i.e., Luther and Calvin] and other heretics had not done so much harm to the Church of God as had the fathers of the Society. The judge gave him the original, but kept a copy, which the father commissary also sent to get from him. The judge refused to give it to him, saying that he could not give it up, and that it was necessary to adduce in the cause; and that although it pertained to the father commissary, as far as it was a mischievous statement, yet it pertained to the judge himself, so far as if was an injury against the Society, of whom he was the conservator. The father commissary notified him, besides, that he himself would send to demand the protest or defamatory libel, since, being such, it pertained to the Inquisition to try it. The judge answered him that it did not pertain exclusively to the Inquisition, and that he had begun to try that cause, as it concerned the principal cause. The father commissary served many different notifications on the judge, in which it could be plainly seen that he was trying to embarrass the affair, so that if should not proceed further. Accordingly, the judge notified the commissary, or rather, father Fray Francisco de Herrera, not to lay obstacles in the path of his apostolic jurisdiction, and to cause him no hindrance in it. In order to conclude this part of the matter, I shall cite here the answer given by the judge-conservator to an act by the father commissary; it is as follows: