Within a short time, the old wounds were reopened, and the archbishop was given new causes for anger in which it was impossible for him to employ dissimulation, as they were all concerning the administration of his office. The governor deprived the Order of St. Francis of the administration and chaplaincy of the royal hospital of Manila, which they had administered with great care, charity, and zeal; and appointed a lay administrator and a secular chaplain. The archbishop felt that greatly, and declined to give the new chaplain permission to administer the sacraments, on account of legitimate reasons which he had for this step. The latter had recourse to the Audiencia by plea of fuerza; and the auditor, Don Marcos Zapata, immediately declared that it had been committed. The archbishop protested, knowing by what had happened in the past the prejudice that the said auditor felt, and because one auditor with only the fiscal could not constitute so sovereign a tribunal. For the fiscal had not the royal appointment, but had only been appointed by the governor ad interim; for the plurality of votes which attest a correct decision and authorize the best opinion, according to the Divine sentence Salus autem ubi multa consilia (Proverbs, ch. 5), were lacking. This has been experienced on various occasions, on which only one auditor has been left in Manila, an arbiter following rather the dictates of his will than that of his understanding, which has the truth as its object.
At that same time, Don Francisco de Valdés having resigned the post of archdean, to which he had been presented by Don Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, the governor appointed Don Andrés Arias Xirón to it on the eighteenth of April, and presented him to the archbishop, so that the latter might give him the collation. The prudent prelate grieved sorely over an occasion that could only with great difficulty terminate satisfactorily, as the said Don Andrés was then prohibited from being promoted to any dignity, because of the visitation in which he had been proclaimed as a criminal by many heavy charges, which demanded a rigorous sentence and deprivation of the benefice that he held; and it was impossible to give him the collation for so lofty a dignity according to the holy canons and council. The archbishop refused to commit a like act of injustice, whereupon Don Andrés Arias Xirón, aggrieved, interposed the appeal from fuerza, which the auditor Zapata did not fail to declare against the archbishop. He did this, and despatched a royal decree for it, which the archbishop refused to obey. The governor was very angry at not succeeding with his attempt, and because the archbishop had not given the canonical collation to Don Andrés Arias Xirón. That strife increasing in violence by means of the interlocutors, Don Andrés and the auditor, the declared enemies of the archbishop, assemblies and meetings were held in order to exile the archbishop from the kingdom, because he did not obey the royal decrees. In conclusion, they issued a decree for his exile, and notified the archbishop of it May 9, 1636.
The archbishop called a meeting of the orders, in order to consult them and get their advice in so urgent a case. All were of the opinion that the archbishop ought not to yield, since what they were trying to compel him to do was manifestly unjust. They exhorted him to be constant in defending the ecclesiastical immunity, and the observance of the holy canons; for that, in case he were exiled, he was suffering for defending his church as a good shepherd, and it was enough to acquire the aureola of a martyr. Upon this the archbishop took the resolution to suffer for his church, with a valor and constancy worthy of wonder. The party of the governor having learned this, and that the archbishop would not yield his right, the governor determined to execute what had been decided by what he called the royal Audiencia.
The evening of that same day, Friday, May 9, the governor summoned the auditor Zapata and the fiscal to a meeting. After the meeting they sent the chief constable of that court with orders to execute the banishment of the archbishop. He was given such aid of soldiers as the governor deemed sufficient. The latter also sent other squads to the cathedral church, so that they might take their station in the sacristy of the most holy sacrament, so that it might not be taken out or destroyed. That order went forth and immediately the city learned of the impious imprisonment that was about to be executed on their shepherd. It caused great excitement and grief to all, and a great scandal among the natives of these islands, even among the pagans and Mahometans who frequent the islands for commerce; and not many wished to concur in so unjust a determination. The orders hastened to the archiepiscopal houses, where they found the archbishop with the warnings that they were about to arrest him, clad in his pontifical robes. He, also knowing that the most holy sacrament was being guarded in the cathedral, sent father Fray Juan de Piña, guardian of St. Francis, to his convent for the most holy sacrament. On that occasion it was placed in a lunette; and it was brought with all the propriety possible, accompanied by many religious carrying candles. When it had been brought, the father guardian placed it in the hands of the archbishop. He, bathed in tears, received it; and, with noteworthy courage, seated himself to await the agents of the execution. He sent his notaries to notify the governor and the auditor, Don Marcos Zapata, of censures; but the notaries, finding them assembled with the fiscal in the hall of meeting, had more respect for the human Majesty, whom they represented there in assembly, than the chief constable and his helpers had for the supreme majesty of majesties, Christ our Lord, whose sacrament was in the hands of the archbishop. Therefore the ecclesiastical notaries notified them at the doors. While doing this at one of the doors, it is said that the governor ordered a soldier to extinguish the lights by which they were reading, by waving his hat, which was done.
At that same time the chief constable and his helpers were in the archiepiscopal house, where the archbishop was found in the manner above described, surrounded and accompanied by all the orders except that of the Society of Jesus. The chief constable sent to advise the governor of the condition in which he had found the archbishop, whereupon the governor sent him orders that he should cause the religious to retire to their convents; and that, when the archbishop grew tired of holding the most holy sacrament, he was to arrest him with the soldiers whom he had with him. That was intimated to the religious and lay priests who were about the archbishop; but they refused to obey it, fearing lest they incur the wrath of God if they abandoned the prince of the Church on such an occasion. Thus by common consent they remained to aid their afflicted prelate; relieving him at times by easing him of the weight of the lunette, by placing their hands on those of the tired old man, whose eyes were turned into two fountains of tears when he reflected on the acts of desecration that they were practicing on the Supreme Lord. The governor was so far from mitigating his anger in what he had commenced, that, in place of repenting and returning to himself, he took horse, although it was the middle of the night, and went to the archiepiscopal house; and, seated at the door, sent his orders to the executors of the commission. The first order was for them to eject forcibly all the priests who were with the archbishop, the adjutants striking the soldiers with the flat of their swords and giving them heavy blows because they did not execute their orders. Thereupon the religious, seeing that the poor soldiers were forced to do what they did not wish, allowed themselves to be seized and carried outside. The soldiers humbly begged their pardon, protesting that they were under orders. The governor’s purpose was to wait until the archbishop, destitute of all human consolation, should surrender on account of his advanced age and his lack of nourishment, his watching and continual annoyance, and should relinquish the most holy sacrament, so that they could then seize him and make him enter the boat. That report circulated among the orders, and accordingly they all came in a body with lighted candles to attend to the recovery of the most holy sacrament. But the governor had already seized the entrances of the streets by means of soldiers, in order that they might not pass, and they accordingly returned to their convents. The city and the magistracy sent their commissaries to the archbishop, begging him to avoid compromising himself, which was equivalent to telling him to allow himself to be arrested and exiled. For, as these islands are one body which has only one head, it is the latter which attracts all wills to his own; for fear (which is very powerful here), or self-interest, has more place here than anywhere else in the world.
The afflicted shepherd seeing that “this was his hour of darkness,” and that the frightened sheep had abandoned him, ordered the interdict to be raised—the grieving bells publishing the feeling that many did not give vent to and others could not show, in order not to incur the anger of the passionate governor. The governor ordered the soldiers to disperse the religious by force, even if they had to take them into custody. The soldiers carried out the order with the violence necessary for so unjust a sentence, being instigated by the sword-blows and strokes of the adjutants. That having been seen by the priests, they pitied them so keenly that they preferred to have that punishment executed on them than on the poor soldiers. Some religious were seated beside the archbishop to see whether they would be allowed to aid him; but so many were the pushes and prods given them by the soldiers, that not only did they tear them away, but they fell down with the holy monstrance breaking the lunette in which was the holy host. This ought to be written with tears of blood. The father guardian of St. Francis and a secular priest hastened to put a strap about the archbishop’s neck and to fasten the lunette to him, so that he could support it, for his powers were now failing him. At that juncture, order was given to a soldier named Juan de Santa Ana (whom I knew, and who told me that event many times), to draw away the hand of the archbishop. He, assisted by a living faith, answered boldly that he would kill himself before he would commit such an act of sacrilege. Then drawing his sword, and placing the point in his breast, he fell upon it. By the permission of divine Providence, the sword doubled up in such a manner when the soldier fell upon it, that he was not wounded at all. That incident caused great surprise to all the bystanders; but the governor was so little moved by it that he ordered the soldier to be arrested, when he ought to have rewarded his heroic determination. At one o’clock at night, the archbishop was so greatly weakened and tired out from thirst, that he begged to be given a little water. They sent to consult with the governor as to what they were to do. The governor ordered that they should not allow it to be given him, explaining that the denial of the temporalities was understood not to allow water to be given him for his thirst, and that to do otherwise would be not to execute the royal law—as if so sovereign dispositions extended to such impieties. Advice was given to the convents, threatening the suspension of religious functions, in order that they should not forestall by celebrating the offices of the following day. The archiepiscopal hall was cleared of the religious who were assisting the archbishop, the soldiers having already driven them away by blows. The soldiers stationed themselves with firearms in hand, and thus did they remain all the night without giving any nourishment to the archbishop, except what a pious Franciscan religious could give him by applying to his lips a wet cloth, under pretext of tightening the strap with which the most holy sacrament was fastened to the afflicted prelate’s breast. And he did not receive any other nourishment for a day and a half, until they took him to the island of Mariveles. Saturday, the second [sic; sc. tenth] of May dawned, the most fatal day that these islands have seen. On that day the archbishop was so defeated that, seeing that he could make no further resistance for lack of strength, he ordered the most holy sacrament to be returned to the church with all possible reverence, and, bathed in tears, he laid aside the pontifical robe. Immediately he was seized by an adjutant and fifty soldiers with firearms. They led him from the archiepiscopal palace on foot, at five in the morning, and without other following than the troops who executed the tragedy. They did not need so great preparation for an old man of sixty, worn out by so much fatigue, hunger, and thirst. They took him on foot through those streets boasting of their victory, the fearful inhabitants thrusting their heads out of the most hidden windows, frightened by the despotic governor, to whom any commiseration that should be shown to the poor archbishop was regarded as a detestable crime. The soldiers took the archbishop to the gate on the river, called Santo Domingo, where the prelate, complying with the precept of Christ, shook off the dust from his shoes; and, bathed in tender tears, he threw five little stones at the ingrate walls of Manila. It was noted that one of them touched the leg of Don Pedro de Corcuera (sargento-mayor of the camp, and chief of that impious execution), where later in the war with Joló he received a ball, from which he died.
They put the archbishop aboard a champan of a ship-captain called Marcos Cameros, who would not allow one single mouthful of food to be placed on board. Setting sail, they carried the archbishop to the island of Mariveles, which is situated in the middle of the mouth of the bay. There they disembarked the exiled shepherd, for whose lodging they had provided a wretched little room, where he suffered many discomforts, too long to relate; for it has not been my intention to enlarge upon this lamentable tragedy, in the narration of which I have omitted many circumstances which aggravate the execution [of his banishment]. For it is my intention not to exaggerate, but only to relate succinctly what happened; and, although eye-witnesses of everything are not lacking today, to guide myself by the most truthful relations, and chiefly by those which are found in a book containing sketches of the archbishops, which is kept in the cathedral church of Manila.[13]
The purpose of the governor and his followers having been obtained, as we have seen, they persuaded the ecclesiastical cabildo to take charge of the government, interpreting the archbishop’s exile as a vacant see, thus opening the door to other disturbances, no less serious, which originated from this intrusion—in the very sight of the archbishop who was [still] within his diocese, and who had left a provisor in Manila, Doctor Don Francisco Fernandez de Ledo. For his forcible banishment and the deprivation of his secular revenues did not extend to his spiritual jurisdiction, which originated from the Roman pontiff. In case that the church had suffered a vacancy by the death of the archbishop, then the bishop of Cebú, Don Pedro de Arce, was to enter its government; for it belonged to him by virtue of the bull and royal decree mentioned in another place. The archbishop had already appointed the father master, Fray Francisco de Paula, of the Order of Preachers, to govern the archbishopric in the first place, and two others in the second, and hence they could not allege the condition of affairs that the law points out in the chapter Si Episcopus: de supplenda negligencia Prælatorum, in Case sixth. That happened afterward in Manila, in the exile of Archbishop Don Fray Felipe Pardo,[14] of the Order of Preachers, who had appointed to his place of governor during his absence Don Fray Ginés de Barrientos, bishop of Troya; the cabildo refused to admit him, but [declared] that it was a case of a vacant see, and took charge of the government—which cost the dean, Master Don Miguel Ortiz de Covarrubias, and all the prebendaries, very dear.
The cabildo took charge of the government at the governor’s command, and appointed Don Fray Francisco Zamudio, bishop-elect of Camarines (who had come to Manila to negotiate concerning his bishopric), as provisor-general. He received the appointment under protest of ad interim until the bishop of Cebú should be advised, for the vacancy pertained to him in case that one were proclaimed. He absolved the governor, the auditor Zapata, and the others included in the excommunications of the archbishop, on the twentieth of May. It is said that when the cabildo were obliged to take charge of the government by the governor and auditor, they entered their protests; but the archbishop was greatly grieved over it when he heard of it, which with the many other sorrows [that he endured] made it remarkable that his life did not come to an end, since he was so aged and had borne so many hardships.