Note 1 — THE EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS, 1768–1769

“All the disputes between España and Roma regarding the nature, extent, and limits of the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions—commonly known by the name of the regalias of the crown—are reflected in the continual conflicts with the nuncio, the inquisitor, and the confessor; and from them arose the pase regio and the disamortization [of corporation lands], in order to make themselves manifest in the expediente for the beatification of the venerable Palafox, and to endeavor to find a definitive solution in the expulsion of the Jesuits. Carlos I and Felipe II of Castilla alike considered themselves set apart by God to defend eternally the true faith, with the mission of guarding and protecting the Church; and, like the ancient Roman emperors, in temporal affairs they acknowledged no superiority or limitations on the earth. The king was regarded as a living law, a permanent tribunal, the supreme master and legitimate lord of all his vassals; in one word, the crown was looked upon as the defender of the Church. The conflict of the Middle Ages ended, España aspired to a double social ideal, unity of power and religious unity; and this thought produced concentration, and the desire to separate what was spiritual and concerned with dogma from what was temporal and belonging to the government of peoples. Two distinct ideas strove together in the field of doctrine; one, supported by the submissions in former days of the Eastern Empire, claimed to subject temporal monarchs to the supreme political direction of the head of the Catholic Church; and the other, derived from primitive traditions, claimed that the Catholic sovereigns ought to exercise, equally with the pontiffs, the external government of the Church, as its natural protectors. A persistent and obstinate strife arose between the two ideas, and after several centuries the controversy was settled, by limiting the rights of the Holy See to that which concerned dogmas and the spiritual power, and leaving to the royal authority all that referred to discipline and the exercise of government, in whatever relates to the security of the State and the welfare of the people. It is this which with some unfitness has been called regalías; and at bottom it has been nothing more than the recovery of the proper character of the civil power, and the demarcation of the attributes of the power of the Church and the State. This demarcation, the strife over which lasted for entire centuries, was recognized in España by the concordat of 1753, in which is declared the right of [ecclesiastical] patronage of the kings of España; and to it the exequatur, disamortization, and the reform of both the regular and secular clergy, served them as a complement.” (Danvila, Reinado de Carlos III, ii, pp. 270, 271.)

The pase regio (Latin, exequatur) above mentioned refers to the prerogative assumed by the Spanish kings of the right to “pass” or confirm papal edicts or briefs, or those issued by other foreign ecclesiastics, or by the superiors of religious orders, before these could be valid in the Spanish dominions; several instances of this have already been mentioned in documents of this series. “Disamortization” (a word which, as the standard English lexicons contain no single word which expresses exactly the idea conveyed in the Spanish desamortización, we are obliged to coin for this purpose, simply transferring it, in English form, from the Spanish) means the act of setting free any lands which had been conveyed, in mortmain, to the corporations (mainly religious), that is, enabling other persons to acquire such lands. The exequatur is called by Danvila (ii, p. 281) “the most transcendent of the regalías of the crown.” ↑