Sire:
We have written your Majesty whenever occasion has offered by means of the ships that have left these islands, relating to you the necessity of this holy church, as you are its true protector and defense. Inasmuch as it is farther from this blessing, so much greater is the loneliness and disconsolation which it suffers especially in this the period of its widowhood,[1] which has been so long because of our sins. So long as we do not receive word that your Majesty has received our letters, we shall make use of our permission to write you. We shall continue in this letter to mention certain matters which we related in former ones. Perhaps this letter will have a different fate and will merit a royal reception by your Majesty.
The king our sovereign, your Majesty’s father, (may he be in heaven), having been informed of the slight service enjoyed by this church (which amounts to only four prebendaries, to whom a stipend is paid from your royal treasury), was pleased to despatch a decree ordering the president and auditors of these islands to inform him of the facts regarding this matter so that he could enact the advisable measures. An investigation was made in accordance with that order, and this cabildo published the need of this church of being better served than others, as it is surrounded by so many barbarous nations who are daily receiving the light of the gospel and entering through its gates. We petition your Majesty, as a service to your Lord to please consider this matter, and enact regarding it what most pleases you.
Report has also been given your Majesty that the royal Audiencia is trying to have the ecclesiastical judge plead its aid in arresting Indians. Were that to be done it would be a great wrong to the miserable wretches, for the aid is not given unless the secular judge first examine the acts which are not fulminated in regular form against the Indians. We however, proceed briefly and summarily against the Indians, conforming thereby with the royal decrees. If their aid had to be asked, it would necessarily become a cause for receiving witnesses and issuing peremptory orders, and the expenses which now amount to nothing would be heavy. The provisor is continually taking Indian women from the houses of the inhabitants and soldiers with whom they are living in evil relations. If account had to be given to the civil judge for that, delays would ensue and the [guilty] parties would hear of it and would hide themselves so that the sin could not be corrected. The correction of sin is the end of the ecclesiastical tribunal and it has no other object. Consequently, since the aid [of the Audiencia] is not asked for any matter concerning the Indians throughout the Indias, it would not be advisable to cause any innovation in this region where the Indians are so poor that besides a few chiefs no one possesses ten pesos’ worth of property. In consideration of the above arguments and others, the former Audiencia issued acts of revision and review, by which the ecclesiastical judge was permitted to arrest the Indians without any aid until your Majesty was consulted. We humbly petition you to please order the course taken in this hitherto to be followed; since in what concerns the Spaniards and other matters we conform so closely to the laws that we have never, so far as we are concerned, had any encounters with your judges.
Some of the orders in this city claim a concession from your Majesty for the founding of a university, the establishment of chairs, and the granting of degrees in their courses. The unfitness of that has also been expressed to your Majesty by our letters, and if for no other reason than the consideration that all the greater part and the best of these islands have religious, and that the latter are all from the outside, while the poor sons of this land who are inclined to take the habit of St. Peter (who are in great number now by the grace of God, and have nothing to which they can aspire while the bishop has nothing to give them), will with the attraction of a chair, and the so honorable reward that will thereby be attained, be encouraged to work in their studies and there will always be educated men who will glorify this holy church. For so just considerations it is wise for your Majesty to advance its interests and favor its causes. We consider this as one of the most important matters as we wrote more at length to your Majesty last year, six hundred and one. We petition your Majesty to have the matter re-examined and to have enacted what appears best for your royal service and the advancement of these islands.
We said in a private letter that we wrote to your Majesty in the said year six hundred and one that the conquistadors of these islands, in order to ease their consciences, had made certain restitutions to the natives in common by agreement with Don Fray Domingo de Salazar, first bishop of these islands. With those restitutions quitrents were bought, and the money received therefrom is spent in ransoming the many captives in the power of surrounding enemies and in other alms which are made, both general and private. In the times of famine and sickness which the Indians suffer, they are aided. Very often this alms assists the hospital of the Indians of this city and that of the city of [Nueva] Caceres in the province of Camarines. In particular another hospital was founded a year ago among various natives who have been discovered twelve leguas from this city, where a great number of sick people are found, who would die if deprived of this aid. The fathers of the Society of Jesus are trying to have these so fitting works of charity converted into a college building for students. Such an action would be to divert those funds from their true and legitimate masters who are so needy to a matter that can never under any circumstances be of any use to the Indians. A father of the said Society and others are now going [to Spain] with that object in view. We petition your Majesty, for the love of our Lord, not to allow any innovation in this particular or in any other that concerns us without first hearing us, and your Majesty being informed by disinterested persons.
Opposite this city on the river side is a small hamlet containing less than one hundred native houses, all poor folk. They with the permission of the governor, come during the solemn feast to adorn and clean this poor church. That village is instructed by the cura of the natives of this city. The said fathers of the Society bought an estate in that village some years ago.[2] Little by little they have been extending themselves in that village so that they now have the greater part of the little land that it contains. They rent it to heathen Chinese, from which results not only that the wretched Indians are despoiled of their lands whether they are paid or not and that they have no place where they may plant their rice fields except in the vicinity of the Chinese. That is very harmful to the Indians for the Chinese arc a vicious race with evil customs. It is also said that the above-mentioned father of the Society intends to beg your Majesty for the concession of the instruction of that village and another called Sant Miguel which lies on the other side outside the walls of this city. The inhabitants of the latter place attend service in the house of the Society, and they might be satisfied with that, and leave the instruction to the cura who is a canon of this church. The latter has no other income than fifty thousand maravedís, which your Majesty grants him for his curacy. We also petition your Majesty to concede us the favor to deny this to those fathers, and not to allow us seculars to be despoiled for the religious. For they have too much while we have some men so poor that they do not possess more than the alms of one mass.
As your Majesty will have heard, the Order of St. Augustine has charge of the instruction of the best villages in these islands. Although there are many villages in the island without any convent, where they could spread and exercise their charity by preaching to and teaching the people who have no knowledge of God, without going to any great distance from this city, they thought it best to found a convent in the port of Cavite, two leguas from this city, where there has been a racionero of this church for the last sixteen years, as poor as the others. For that purpose the Augustinians went to the said port one day accompanied by the governor, Don Francisco Tello, who gave it to them as theirs to found a convent without any permission from the ordinary (according to his right) having preceded. He put them in possession of it and they immediately established a chapel, and said mass. When we tried to repair the harm that had been done us by this, the said Don Francisco Tello favored the Augustinians by saying that his permission alone was sufficient for the deed, and that ours was unnecessary. We had the provincial of the said order notified of the acts in order that he might have the church torn down, but he answered us as had the governor, saying that it had been established by the latter’s permission, and no other was necessary. Although the ecclesiastical arm has sufficient authority of itself to tear down that church, in order to avoid a scandal and the wrath of the governor which was terrible, the aid of the royal Audiencia was asked. There in order to justify our cause more thoroughly, the royal patronage, which orders that such foundations be made with the double permissions of the patron and the ordinary, was presented, as was also a clause of a letter of the king our sovereign, your Majesty’s father who is with God, written to Gomez Perez Dasmariñas. In that letter order was given the governor not to allow a church to be established in any other village where there was an establishment without the said two licenses, and it is your royal will that one should not be given without the other. However, as yet no decision has been reached in regard to the matter. This same conduct is true of all the affairs that work in favor of the church in this land, while those things that work against it are rushed through as your Majesty will see. There is a chapel an arquebus-shot from the walls of this city, called Nuestra Señora de Guia, where the natives outside the walls have always been administered. Archbishop Don Fray Ygnacio de Santivañes erected it into a parish church, and placed a cura in charge of it, giving him lately charge of the instruction of the said natives with canonical provision and collation. There was a suit with your royal officials before your royal Audiencia, as to whether he was to be paid a stipend or not. Acts of investigation and review were issued by the Audiencia in which they were ordered to pay the stipend. The said beneficiary having been in quiet and peaceful possession for four years, the said religious of St. Augustine, not satisfied with the past, published a royal decree which had been gained at the petition of Fray Francisco de Ortega of their order in the year ninety-four, by mentioning a doubtful relation which he had made, so that if it seemed best to the governor, he could give them that chapel as a house of retreat.[3] However, it was so unsuitable for that, that they having recognized it, have kept the decree until the present without caring to make use of it. But now piqued by the affair of the house of Cabite, they presented the decree to the said Don Francisco Tello, who, as he was so favorable to them, deemed it advisable to give it to them without notifying us or giving a copy [of the decree] to the cura of the said chapel. He ordered the Augustinians to be put in possession of it, and immediately sent an alcalde-in-ordinary to give it to them, in company with eighteen friars. We heard of it, and it was necessary to defend our house by closing the door and by making protests and petitions to the alcalde. In the meanwhile the said cura presented himself as the interested party to the royal Audiencia and appealed from the governor’s measure. He was ordered to cease and to go to make a relation, by which a great scandal was avoided, which would easily have happened if we had not had patience. The cause is now pending. We humbly petition your Majesty to pity our want of protection, in consideration of the fact that we are subject to innumerable insults and so far from relief, and to have silence imposed on the claim of that chapel, since it has become a parish church and a collated curacy as abovesaid. Will your Majesty also order your governors to keep the royal patronage, and not permit or consent that a church be erected in any other place where there is a religious establishment unless that of the ordinary precede. By so doing troubles will cease and peace and harmony will reign among all. If the contrary be done, many damages will ensue, for license is being so extended that even the Franciscan friars, with all the humility that they profess, also deny the jurisdiction to the ordinary, and have built another church in the village of Dilao, outside the walls of this city, by their own authority and without other license or permission, in order to instruct the Japanese. Although the provisor enacted an act ordering them not to do it, they have also made a suit and have occasioned no less scandal than the other friars. In order that your Majesty may see how unrestrained some of the religious live here, in these ships which arrived here from Nueva España this year, came a visitor for the Order of St. Augustine with authority from their superiors. They have refused to receive him, but have on the contrary treated him so that they obliged him to retire to the convent of St. Francis. He goes through the village with a friar of the latter order at his side. That has caused a great scandal in the community among Spaniards and Indians. It is thought that he will return without making the visit, although there are so many excesses and disorders that demanded that correction be not postponed, that perhaps we can not have it later by human agencies.
It is the custom here to give to all the monasteries both of this city and those outside it wine and flour from your royal treasury in order to celebrate [mass] each year. Since this church is so poor as appears to your Majesty, we petition your Majesty to order that it enjoy this alms and that sufficient be given of these two articles for that purpose, since the conventual masses which are celebrated in it are for your Majesty to whom this church belongs.
We have also advised your Majesty of two innovations in this church which no other church has. The first is a bench for the wives of the auditors to use which fills a great part of the principal chapel. The other is a very long bench with an inscription in large letters for the officials of the Holy Office. Both are very improper for a cathedral and metropolitan church. From the second it has resulted, moreover, that because a canon of this church had the bench removed one day and shoved over to the wall, for just reason, the commissary who is a Dominican friar excommunicated him and had him placed on the lists as excommunicated. Not content with that he gave the tribunal of Mexico what information he wished, from which it has resulted that after the arrival of the ships from Nueva España at these islands this year he arrested the canon, and kept him in prison for seventeen days and fulminated a cause against him which he sent to Mexico. It is not known where he will stop; and the same may be said of an unbridled letter which the inquisitors wrote to this cabildo, of which we complain more at length to your Majesty in your royal Council of the Holy Inquisition. In this letter we petition your Majesty to please correct this matter, and have these two benches removed. There are just causes for it as may be seen in a letter written the past year of six hundred and one.