Father Don Ildephonso Garcia, secretary.
[1] “All the disputes between España and Roma regarding the nature, extent, and limits of the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions—commonly known by the name of the regalias of the crown—are reflected in the continual conflicts with the nuncio, the inquisitor, and the confessor; and from them arose the pase regio and the disamortization [of corporation lands], in order to make themselves manifest in the expediente for the beatification of the venerable Palafox, and to endeavor to find a definitive solution in the expulsion of the Jesuits. Carlos I and Felipe II of Castilla alike considered themselves set apart by God to defend eternally the true faith, with the mission of guarding and protecting the Church; and, like the ancient Roman emperors, in temporal affairs they acknowledged no superiority or limitations on the earth. The king was regarded as a living law, a permanent tribunal, the supreme master and legitimate lord of all his vassals; in one word, the crown was looked upon as the defender of the Church. The conflict of the Middle Ages ended, España aspired to a double social ideal, unity of power and religious unity; and this thought produced concentration, and the desire to separate what was spiritual and concerned with dogma from what was temporal and belonging to the government of peoples. Two distinct ideas strove together in the field of doctrine; one, supported by the submissions in former days of the Eastern Empire, claimed to subject temporal monarchs to the supreme political direction of the head of the Catholic Church; and the other, derived from primitive traditions, claimed that the Catholic sovereigns ought to exercise, equally with the pontiffs, the external government of the Church, as its natural protectors. A persistent and obstinate strife arose between the two ideas, and after several centuries the controversy was settled, by limiting the rights of the Holy See to that which concerned dogmas and the spiritual power, and leaving to the royal authority all that referred to discipline and the exercise of government, in whatever relates to the security of the State and the welfare of the people. It is this which with some unfitness has been called regalías; and at bottom it has been nothing more than the recovery of the proper character of the civil power, and the demarcation of the attributes of the power of the Church and the State. This demarcation, the strife over which lasted for entire centuries, was recognized in España by the concordat of 1753, in which is declared the right of [ecclesiastical] patronage of the kings of España; and to it the exequatur, disamortization, and the reform of both the regular and secular clergy, served them as a complement.” (Danvila, Reinado de Carlos III, ii, pp. 270, 271.)
The pase regio (Latin, exequatur) above mentioned refers to the prerogative assumed by the Spanish kings of the right to “pass” or confirm papal edicts or briefs, or those issued by other foreign ecclesiastics, or by the superiors of religious orders, before these could be valid in the Spanish dominions; several instances of this have already been mentioned in documents of this series. “Disamortization” (a word which, as the standard English lexicons contain no single word which expresses exactly the idea conveyed in the Spanish desamortización, we are obliged to coin for this purpose, simply transferring it, in English form, from the Spanish) means the act of setting free any lands which had been conveyed, in mortmain, to the corporations (mainly religious), that is, enabling other persons to acquire such lands. The exequatur is called by Danvila (ii, p. 281) “the most transcendent of the regalías of the crown.” [↑]
[2] It may be noted that all these high ecclesiastics signed the reports of the Council justifying the expulsion of the Jesuits, and that the archbishop of Manila (Santa Justa) is cited in various documents as having counseled the king to banish that order from his dominions. [↑]
[3] “It is known that the Society of Jesus was, more than a religious association, in reality a great mercantile company, from a very short time after its institution until its extinction by Clement XIV. Its vast commercial transactions in Europe, America, and Oceania furnished to it immense wealth; and, infatuated with their power and the dominion which they exercised over the minds of their ardent followers; having gained possession as they had done of the confessional and directing the consciences of kings and magnates; and strengthened by the affection (which they exploited with great ability) of women—upon whom they always have exercised, as they still do, a magnetic influence—the Jesuits considered themselves absolute masters of the world; and they devoted themselves to intervention in political affairs, managing with cautious skill political dealings in almost all countries, according to the degree in which these concerned their particular purposes. Their insolent and illegal acts, their despotism, their ambition, the iron yoke with which they oppressed both kings and peoples; their disputes with the other religious associations, who could not look with pleasure on the predominance and wealth of the new society which so audaciously gathered in the harvest from the fertile vineyard of the Lord; their dangerous maxims in regard to regicide, their demoralizing system of doctrine, their satanic pride and insatiable greed, their hypocrisy and corruption: all these raised against them a unanimous protest. Mistrust of them awoke in kings and peoples; men of sincere purpose and true Christian morals were alarmed; and on every side arose enemies of their order, and irrefutable proofs of their abominable aberrations were brought forward.” (Montero y Vidal, Hist. de Filipinas, ii, pp. 142–146.) [↑]
[4] See detailed account of the so-called “family compact” and the secret agreement which accompanied it, in Danvila, op. cit., ii, pp. 101–167. At the end he says: “The celebrated ‘family compact’ was never an affaire de cœur, but an alliance offensive and defensive in order to check the progress of the British arms in Europa and America, and to dispute with England the maritime supremacy of which she had possessed herself …. The ‘family compact,’ and the secret agreement which completed it, were from the beginning an alliance offensive and defensive of España and France against Great Britain.” [↑]
[5] Montero y Vidal makes numerous citations (Hist. de Filipinas, ii, pp. 142, 143, 147–159) from letters written to Pope Innocent X in 1647 and 1649 by the noted bishop of La Puebla, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, showing how great wealth and power the Jesuits had attained in Nueva España, their hatred toward him and their conspiracies and even open attacks against him for doing his official duty, and their lawless, scandalous, immoral, and irreligious acts, as he has seen them. [↑]
[6] In November, 1779, letters were received by the Spanish government from their ambassador at Rome, asking that, in view of the poverty and suffering endured by the ex-Jesuits there, their pensions might be increased. Inquiries were made as to their numbers, with the following results; “On April 1, 1767, there existed in España 1,660 priests, 102 scholastics, and 965 coadjutors, making a total of 2,727. From the seven provinces of the Indias there arrived at the port of Santa María 1,396 priests, 327 scholastics, and 544 coadjutors, making a total of 2,267. The pensions of both classes amounted to 7,264,650 reals. On April 1, 1779, there existed in Italia 1,274 priests and scholastics, and 664 coadjutors belonging to the four provinces of España [i.e., those of the Jesuit order in that country, being designated as Toledo, Castilla, Andalucía, and Aragón], and, confined in them, sixteen priests and five coadjutors, the life-pensions of all these amounting to 2,852,600 reals; and from the seven provinces of Indias there were 1,197 priests and 279 coadjutors, the yearly sum of whose pensions was 2,255,750 reals, including those assigned to the Jesuits confined in España. Thus the difference between 1767 and 1779 was that of 2,151,300 reals, on account of the flight to foreign lands or the [ecclesiastical] suspension of 242 priests, 4 scholastics, and 145 coadjutors, and the death of 1,038 priests and 516 coadjutors. The twelve colleges and the procuradoría of the provinces of Méjico and of Filipinas, and of the college of Navarra, yielded 3,665,133 reals, 15 maravedís, leaving a surplus of 1,111,408 reals. The expenses for pensions, maintenance in España, clothing, and others which had arisen with the ex-Jesuits from the Indias, up to the end of June, 1779, reached the sum of 45,321,439 reals, 20 maravedís; and adding to this 3,086,767 reals, 14 maravedís, the value of a certain contribution given by order of his Majesty to the royal hospital of this court, and the payment of debts contracted by some colleges in the Indias, the total is 48,408,207 reals. The temporalities of the Indias were therefore indebted to those of España in 7,077,836 reals, 16 2–3 maravedís.” In view of these statistics, the Council did not feel able to increase the amount of the pensions, but agreed to send to the Spanish ambassador at Rome the sum of 1,500,000 reals, to be distributed among the ex-Jesuits in such manner as would best relieve their poverty. (Danvila, op. cit., iii, pp. 614, 615.)
(The above passage is carefully copied from Danvila, but there are some discrepancies in the figures given; these cannot be verified, of course, without reference to the original document in the Simancas archives cited by the author. These discrepancies are in all probability due to careless proof-reading, some instances of which we have seen in Danvila’s admirable work.)