[73] The author has treated this subject in a separate monograph entitled “The origin of the friar lands question in the Philippines,” in The American political science review, X, 463–480.
[74] The friar lands litigation began in 1687 and continued until 1751. The efforts of the government met with considerable opposition. The oidores who were charged with the inspection of the titles to these lands frequently abandoned their commissions and recommended that the friars be left alone. However, in the year last mentioned, the opposition of the Franciscans, the last of the resisting orders, was overcome (Correspondence regarding friar lands exists in A. I., 68–4–12 and 68–6–26). See also the Camacho Controversy, Blair and Robertson, XLII, 25–116; Montero y Vidal, Historia general, I, 385, et seq.; Concepción, Historia general, VIII, 192–206; Philippine Census, I, 342–343; Sobre una reseña histórica by the Dominicans of Manila, 65–89.
[75] “In America [and in the Philippines] the monks were given a somewhat unusual position. According to the canon law they were not able to hold beneficed curacies, but the extent of the American field, and the limited number of the clergy available to occupy it, induced Leo X, Adrian VI, Paul III, Clement VIII, and Pius V to permit them to become parish priests. Under this order a very large number of these parishes in America in the first century were occupied by friars. But in the middle of the eighteenth century, this privilege was withdrawn, leaving them only two friars in a conventual province” (Moses, South America on the eve of emancipation, 138–139).
[76] See Cunningham, “The question of ecclesiastical visitation in the Philippines,” in The Pacific Ocean in history, 223–237.
[77] Recopilación, 1–15–28.
[78] Ibid., 29.
[79] Ibid., 31.
[80] Valuable materials, for the most part original, on the visitation controversy may be found in Blair and Robertson, XXIV, 247; XXIX, 191; XLII, 25–116; XX, 87; XXI, 32–78; XXXVII, 193–200. See also A. I., 69–1–29, 68–4–16, 106–4–21, 105–2–9, 106–4–31. Montero y Vidal (Historia general, I, 86–87, 295, 398; II, 134–138, 257 et seq.) presents a good secondary account of the subject.