19. Some disturbances led to others. On the ninth of December notification was served on the dean and four dignitaries of the cabildo, with a canon, that they must be regarded as under censure as irregular, for having assumed the government of the church, and for having arrested Juan Gonzalez and Don Pablo de Aduna.
20. The cabildo found itself entirely defenseless against the manifest anger of the archbishop, without power to appeal either to [the ecclesiastical court of] Camarines—since its bishop, the head of that court, was of the Dominican faction—or to [the court of] Cagayan, since Troya was there; or to the Audiencia, since recourse to that body was prohibited, and the governor did not wish to interfere with the archbishop.
21. On the same day, the ninth of December, an edict of the archbishop was posted in which were annulled the sacraments of penance administered by the said prebends, and the licenses which they had given for hearing confessions, preaching, etc.; item, the marriages solemnized without the permission of his provisor, Juan Gonzalez—and they rained down censures, excommunications, and threats by the thousand, according to the fury of Father Verart, who directed all these. By another edict, dated January 8, all the legal causes and suits which had been tried before the cabildo and its provisor were declared null and void.
22. The said measures produced innumerable perplexities. Soon afterward, the archbishop attempted to deprive the said prebends of their appointments; and to this end he held a conference with the governor, proposing most unworthy persons in the place of those prebends. This proposal was considered in the session of the Audiencia, and censured as irregular and out of order; and it went no further.
23. The archbishop issued an act against the trumpet of Don Juan de Vargas, commanding that he conduct himself as an excommunicated person. Soon afterward (on February 10, 1685), he posted Don Juan on all the church doors as publicly excommunicated. The latter had recourse to the royal aid, and wrote an excellent document in his defense; but the governor did nothing for him, and only commanded him to obey the archbishop and be reconciled with him.
24. Seeing himself deprived of recourse, the poor gentleman did all that he could to procure a reconciliation with the archbishop and the Dominican friars. He was commanded to beg the pardon of all the aggrieved parties, even from the most inferior lay brethren; and he did this, at the cost of many rebuffs. After this, the archbishop obliged him to swear, declare, and attest that when he sent the archbishop in a vessel to his exile he had sent him away without supplies of everything necessary, although this was manifestly false, for provision was made as if for a royal person. Even when he had done what was demanded from him, the archbishop would not even take his name from the list of excommunicates, such was his hatred for Don Juan. Ab ira et odio et mala voluntate monachi dominici libera nos, Domine.[86]
25. The archbishop claimed that the senior auditor, Doctor Don Diego Calderon, should [not] be absolved from the censures which, the archbishop informed him, he had incurred because of the demand which he made, when he was fiscal, against Bishop Palú,[87] who landed in these islands, with whom the Dominicans had secret dealings. Calderon replied to the archbishop, setting forth the reasons which induced him to act as he did with Palú; and for the time the archbishop desisted from his intentions.
26. The prebends endured this persecution with incredible patience. Again the governor wrote a letter, [endeavoring] to mediate in the question of granting a dispensation [to the cabildo] for their irregular government, and engaged the bishop of Sinopolis as his agent. Ybañez went to the dean to tell him that all would be settled according to his satisfaction, but this was nothing but a falsehood and invention; for the dispensation[88] was conferred with the utmost ignominy for the cabildo and prebends, for the greater glory and triumph of the Dominicans, the managers of this scene-shifting.
27. They obliged the prebends to make certain declarations, which were fraudulent and misleading, so that it was difficult not to blunder in the replies, which were directed by Father Verart, the mainspring of all these plots. They made the prebends take an oath; the latter consented to this, and submitted to everything, in order to extricate themselves from so much annoyance and to be free from enemies so powerful and so persistent.
28. The archbishop commanded the prebends to make a statement of detestation [of their errors], in which were contained things prejudicial and inimical to the royal jurisdiction and prerogatives; and others, complimenting the archbishop and his friars and various private persons. On the same day a conference had been held in which it was asked whether the said prebends were worthy of being dispensed; it was decided that they were, because those who were following the current with the archbishop were very influential, but those who were more judicious and learned thought that there was no reason why the said dispensation was necessary.[89]