On the said thirteenth day of May, in the morning, immediately after I had been notified of the second act of the said very reverend archbishop, I sent my secretary to his house on the river to notify him of another act of mine, in which I commanded him, under penalty of major excommunication and another 2,000 pesos, to withdraw within twenty-four hours the said edicts which on the twentieth and twenty-first days of March he had ordered posted and published against my apostolic authority as delegate; and, besides, to withdraw the two acts in which, with the said penalties of major excommunication and 8,000 pesos, he had commanded me to depart from the archdiocese. The said my secretary was told by the servants that he was not at home; and I, as this seemed to me only an excuse, and not the truth, went in person to the said house. They told me that he had, that very morning, gone back to Manila. I came to the city after him, and remained at his house, waiting for him, until twelve o’clock; and seeing that he had not come by that time (although he came in afterward), I went away, leaving a message for him, that he might expect me in the afternoon. I returned a little before sunset, but did not find him at home this time. My secretary began to read the said act in the main room of the archbishop’s house; but such disorderly yelling and clamorous talk was raised by his servants that my secretary could not make himself heard. I therefore determined to wait for him, and finally he came—making loud complaints that I was injuring the respect and observance due to his house, person, and dignity. I replied that his illustrious Lordship had showed greater incivilities to me; and that he could and ought to do [what I had done], if I had gone about all day, avoiding him [huyendo el cuerpo]. In conclusion, we agreed that my secretary should go again, alone, to notify him of the act; but, when he went to the house, his illustrious Lordship refused to give him entrance. As I was now weary of so much artfulness and craft, unworthy of such a station and dignity, I put aside this act, and despatched another of like tenor. In this, I summoned him, from that hour, under penalty of major excommunication, latæ sententiæ, and its publication, to withdraw within half an hour the said two acts and two edicts. Notification of this act was made by a Dominican religious, my notary, in the archbishop’s hall, in the presence of many persons, because the said very reverend archbishop had refused to listen to it. When the said half-hour had expired, a little while after this was told to me I declared and posted him also as publicly excommunicated. On the fifteenth of the said month of May, I ordered that he be notified, and he was notified in his archiepiscopal hall, of another act, in which I repeated the command contained in the preceding one—and, still more, that he should take down the notices posted against me, under penalty of a general interdict throughout his archiepiscopal diocese, latæ sententiæ, giving him a limit of twenty-four hours’ time; and, in case of his opposition and contumacy, I would proceed to the cessation of all divine worship. But, as I reflected that it was very near the feast of Corpus Christi, and that all the religious orders of this city and a great number of secular priests, who were on my side, would not take part in the said festival and in the procession, in order not to have communication in sacris with the said very reverend archbishop; and on account of the commiseration which I felt for this commonwealth; and finally, because the governor and captain-general of these islands, and some of the auditors of this royal Audiencia interfered in the matter, with the stipulations which I will send with the acts: I absolved the said very reverend archbishop from the excommunication and suspension which he had incurred; and he did the same, without my consent, absolving me from his excommunication. I dispensed him from the censure that he had incurred as irregular, and, finally, I suspended the declaration of the interdict. The whole matter was then left as it was, for the time being, until information of all could be given to your Holiness, in order that you may take suitable measures in this case. These are as follows: That the archbishop (or the cabildo, sede vacante) who at the time shall officiate and rule in this archbishopric of Manila shall not hinder, restrain, or limit the delegate of your Holiness; that, likewise, he who shall be at the time delegate shall, in cases of appeal to be taken from the said archbishopric, have the free use and exercise of his apostolic authority as delegate in this archiepiscopal territory; and that he shall not need, in order to enter the said territory or to perform judicial acts in it, whether in person or through intermediate persons appointed by him, any license, consent, or approbation from the said archbishop or from the cabildo, sede vacante. [These things should be done] in order that thus the like controversies may be avoided in the future. And I entreat your Holiness to be pleased and to deign to command that consideration be given to a legal opinion by the reverend father master Fray Juan de Paz, of the Order of Preachers, which I send with this; for it may be of service for the point at issue, and for your rights. I also inform your Holiness that from the day when the said very reverend archbishop set foot in these islands—that is, from last September to the present time—this entire commonwealth has been a perplexing labyrinth of contentions and acts of violence which he has performed against the holy religious orders of these islands. For his disposition and nature is very hasty, quarrelsome, and bold; and he is, finally, a man who does not care for or defend the ecclesiastical immunity—as appears from the authentic copy of the acts which I send. May God our Lord grant him better judgment; and may He guard and prosper your Holiness, as I entreat in my sacrifices and prayers, and as the universal Church has need. Manila, June 2 of the year 1698.
[Andres Gonzalez, of the Order of Preachers].
[This letter is followed by the following memoranda, apparently notes by Ventura del Arco of other letters found in the Jesuit papers in the Academia Real de la Historia:]
On the fourth day of June in the same year of 1698 the bishop of Nueva Caceres, Don Fray Andres Gonzalez, addressed to the king an explanation similar to the preceding one which is addressed to his Holiness. On the eleventh of June in the same year, he sent to his Holiness another account, in the same form; and on the twenty-first of June of the same year he wrote another to his Holiness, and another to the king.
The provincials of St. Dominic and St. Augustine, and those of the Jesuits and Recollects in Manila drew up [to send] to his Majesty the king a statement, dated June 25, 1698, complaining of the defenseless condition in which they found themselves against the proceedings of the archbishop, who neither heeded nor allowed their appeal; and they requested that the Council examine the documents which they sent for that purpose, relating to various suits against their religious orders—which continued or were renewed, in spite of the agreement made with the delegate of his Holiness, the bishop of Camarines. For this purpose they sent a copy of the documents.
[On pp. 207, 208 of the same volume is the following abstract:] In a letter dated June 9, 1700 the Jesuit Luis de Morales wrote from Manla to Father Antonio Jaramillo, procurator-general at Madrid, that in the year 1698 the bishop of Troya and Auditor Don Juan de Sierra died, on the voyage from Manila to Acapulco. The governor not only showed little favor to the missions in the Marianas Islands, but in the year 98 he did not send a patache there with succor; in 99 he sent the vessel late, and it was driven by storms first to China and then to Manila, with damage to its cargo; and he had ordered that the ship from Acapulco should not touch at those islands. The governor had claimed that the conciliar seminary[12] should be placed next to the college of San Jose, to which the superior of the Society had answered that there was no room for it. All the provincials [of the religious orders] had been commanded to present to the archbishop all their bulls and privileges for granting dispensation in case of impediments to marriage, for the purpose of ascertaining whether these were perpetual or temporary; they presented the documents extra-judicially. It seems that the viceroy of Mexico, Conde Montezuma,[13] had undertaken that the regulars who were going to Filipinas should first take an oath of obedience to the bishops, [when the said regulars should act as curas] in the Indian villages; in which case, he [i.e., Morales] said, it was preferable to abandon the missions. The bishop of Cebu, Don Fray Miguel Bayot,[14] had commanded that no layman should possess a slave girl eleven years old or upward; and that if such slave were not liberated he declared her free—in regard to which some persons had complained [to the] alcalde.
Preamble of the decree[15] which it has been commanded to place in the books of San Pedro Tunasan.
In the village of San Juan de Calamba in the province of Bay, on the sixteenth day of the month of November in the year one thousand six hundred and ninety-eight: I, Licentiate Don Francisco Sanctos de Oliveros, secretary in matters [secretario del Govierno y gracia] of this archbishopric, and a racionero of the holy metropolitan church of Manila, in obedience to the decree of his most illustrious Lordship below mentioned, do certify and attest that his most illustrious Lordship, having come to make the visitation of this district of Tabuco, issued the decree of the following tenor: