Note 34 — Chapter XI

The archbishop, Don Miguel Millán y Poblete, came here with the firm determination to pursue the plans of Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, bishop of La Puebla de los Ángeles, who had consecrated him. Those plans had caused great disturbances in Nueva España because of their novelty, and had divided that country into the two divisions of Palafoxistas and Palancas,34 who were no less mischievous than the Guelphs and Ghibelines in the time of Federico Barbarroja [i.e., Frederick Barbarossa] when determinations issued forth to combat with understandings. Don Juan de Palafox tried to reduce the ministries of the missions (which the orders had possessed in Nueva España since the conquest) to regularly-appointed curacies with canonical institution and collation, so that they could be administered by ordinary jurisdiction, to the suppression of the delegated jurisdiction. This was done in order that the ecclesiastical hierarchy might be one whole in its proportionate parts; and that the episcopal dignity might possess entire dominion over the shepherds of its sheep, by visiting them and sitting in judgment on their excesses in the office of parish priests, which they exercised by virtue of the concession of St. Pius V and other worthy pontiffs. His great perseverance obtained that in the form established at present among the orders, who desired to retain some ministries of the missions—leaving others, because that subjection to the bishops did not seem to them to be in harmony with the institutes of the orders. I shall not mention the disturbances and scandals that the common enemy of souls compassed during that time for the ruin of many—which filled the world with gloom, and gave perfidious heretics the opportunity to blaspheme against the Catholic priests—for they are very well known.