Note 8 — Remonstrance of Augustinians against the alternativa

There is frequent mention in canon law of alternativa decrees by the Holy See—a device in the interests of fairness, applied in the conferral of benefices and church offices, in order to do away with discords and displays of partisanship. Thereby in elections the preferments, etc., were to go to the opposite party, according at times, to very singular rules, applicable, for instance, according to the month wherein the said benefice fell vacant. The usage of the “alternation” was introduced in the time of Pope Martin V. (A.D. 1417–1431.)

The text of the present document concerns the extension of the alternativa rules to the Augustinians in the Philippine Islands, by force of which the offices in the order (distributed in provincial chapters every four years) were to be conferred one term on religious born in Spain, and the next on religious born in the Indias. The latter were known as Creoles (crioli)—thus in the Constitutions of the order, of 1685, where reference is made to decrees of Gregory XV, dated November 29, 1621 (confirmed by Urban VIII in 1628), with regard to elections of the brethren in Mechoacan, in Mexico. As the alternativa held in Mexico and South America—in fact, in Spanish colonies everywhere—these same papal decrees were presumably observed in all those colonies. Later, in Mexico, the statutes of the Augustinians required that in provincial chapters religious of Spanish blood should be chosen alternately with those of Indian, in the election of provincials, definitors, priors, and other officers; but this plan did not operate very satisfactorily.—Rev. T. C. Middleton, O.S.A.