The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898; Volume 50 / 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

FIFTEENTH ABUSE

It is an abuse that, when the provincials go to visit, they make their so magnificent entrances into the villages at the cost of the Indians. That is, just as if they were bishops, the bells are rung for them, and they are accompanied by vast crowds from village to village; and the people go to receive them, and go to expense and make feasts, which only cooperate toward their absolute domination over those natives.

Remedy for this evil

That the regulars be subjected, as is decreed, to visitation by the ordinaries. By so doing, the latter will make use of their right without there being any necessity for visits by the provincials; and when the provincials wish to visit them purely as religious, and not as parish priests, to prohibit the Indians from great public feasts and expenses, under penalty of expulsion, since there is no other remedy.