Note 12 — The Camacho Ecclesiastical Controversy, 1697–1700

[On pp. 207, 208 of the same volume is the following abstract:] In a letter dated June 9, 1700 the Jesuit Luis de Morales wrote from Manla to Father Antonio Jaramillo, procurator-general at Madrid, that in the year 1698 the bishop of Troya and Auditor Don Juan de Sierra died, on the voyage from Manila to Acapulco. The governor not only showed little favor to the missions in the Marianas Islands, but in the year 98 he did not send a patache there with succor; in 99 he sent the vessel late, and it was driven by storms first to China and then to Manila, with damage to its cargo; and he had ordered that the ship from Acapulco should not touch at those islands. The governor had claimed that the conciliar seminary12 should be placed next to the college of San Jose, to which the superior of the Society had answered that there was no room for it. All the provincials [of the religious orders] had been commanded to present to the archbishop all their bulls and privileges for granting dispensation in case of impediments to marriage, for the purpose of ascertaining whether these were perpetual or temporary; they presented the documents extra-judicially. It seems that the viceroy of Mexico, Conde Montezuma,13 had undertaken that the regulars who were going to Filipinas should first take an oath of obedience to the bishops, [when the said regulars should act as curas] in the Indian villages; in which case, he [i.e., Morales] said, it was preferable to abandon the missions. The bishop of Cebu, Don Fray Miguel Bayot,14 had commanded that no layman should possess a slave girl eleven years old or upward; and that if such slave were not liberated he declared her free—in regard to which some persons had complained [to the] alcalde.