The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 29 of 55, 1638–40 / Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of the Catholic Missions, as Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Close of the Nineteenth Century

by Unknown

Restricting the religious orders

The King. To Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, knight of the Order of Alcantara, my governor and captain-general of the Filipinas Islands, and president of my Audiencia therein: your letter of June 30, 636, touching ecclesiastical matters, has been examined in my royal Council of the Yndias, and answer is [hereby] made you.

You say that the religious of the Order of St. Augustine need to be reformed, for they pay no heed to the bulls of his Holiness, or the decrees despatched in regard to the rotation; and that it would be advisable not to give them any more religious for eight years—both because they have many, and because of the causes that you mention for such measure. I have thought best to charge you to have the rule for rotation put in force strictly, without allowing more religious in each mission station [doctrina] than, in accordance with my royal patronage, shall be necessary for it; and that the others be occupied in missions [misiones] and in preaching, for which purpose they were sent.

In regard to what you write me concerning the advanced age of the archbishop of those islands (who is so aged that his hands and head tremble), namely, that it would be best to give him an assistant; and that you are arranging to give such assistant an income of two thousand pesos in addition to the four thousand pesos enjoyed by the said archbishop, without taking that sum from my royal treasury, or from my vassals: I charge you to explain to me the method or means by which you can get that money without damage to my royal treasury and the vassals who serve me, so that, if it be worth while to allow it, you may execute it.

So that the Order of St. Dominic, and the other orders resident in those islands, may live with the regulation and good example that is proper, and so that they may not increase the number of mission stations granted them by my decrees, you shall allow no new elections in them, which shall not be in harmony with my patronage. With the advice of the archbishop, you shall endeavor to unite some of the stations; and in those that shall be newly founded, you shall endeavor likewise to have secular priests introduced, if you find them intelligent and competent. Madrid. September 2, 1638.

I the King

By order of the king our sovereign:

Don Gabriel de Ocaña y Alarcon