[110] Thus in the text, but it should read “forty-eighth.” Salazar there relates how Vargas, “in the same year in which he banished the archbishop,” suffered the confiscation at Acapulco of all the goods that he had shipped, “with little credit to his reputation and notable expense to his estate;” and, as excommunicated by the Church, Vargas had much to atone for and to suffer until his death. The auditor Grimaldos died, soon after Pardo’s banishment, “from a painful disease, in which the tongue with which he had spoken so much evil of his illustrious Lordship became rotten, and the arm with which he had seized the anointed of the Lord was withered.” The auditor Viga, who went to seize the Dominican provincial, Calderon, died in exile, in Cagayan, without having consented to make his confession. He and his colleague Bolivar had been sent there “for a certain sedition which they were plotting” against Cruzalaegui. [Murillo Velarde says (fol. 344) that they were plotting to put Zalaeta in the governor’s place.] The wife of Bolivar “died at Orion, impenitent, unwilling to confess; when her husband heard of this, he performed condign penitence for his sins, and publicly professed his detestation of his transgressions, and thus he gained absolution from the censures—but, returning from his exile, he died on the way.” Calderon “also died very suddenly, although at the hour of death he acknowledged his errors, and, to secure absolution from the censures, made the usual profession of detestation.” The fiscal Alanis, “the only one who experienced, while living, the punishment from the king our sovereign which deprived of their offices all the members of the royal Audiencia, died in Mexico in great poverty and humiliation. The same fate befell the usurping dean,” Miguel Ortiz de Covarrubias. The cantor Figueroa was sentenced to degradation, and to be delivered to the secular powers, “which was afterward commuted, for valid reasons, to perpetual banishment to the Marianas Islands, where he ended his days in a thousand miseries.” The bishop of Cagayan died so suddenly that he could not be confessed or absolved. The Jesuit Ortega died at sea, while en route to Madrid to complain of Pardo; and although he received the viaticum, his mind was so occupied, first and last, with accusations against the archbishop, that he scandalized all the people in the ship. He died practically an excommunicate, not having rendered his accounts for the executorship to the archbishop, and having been absolved only by “the usurping Dean, who had no jurisdiction.” “The two soldiers who carried out the father provincial died suddenly,” being stabbed to death, one by an infidel Chinese, the other on leaving the house of his mistress. A man who wounded the provisor—in trying to murder him; his name was Manuel Ortafán, and his wife had brought suit against him for divorce, before the ecclesiastical tribunal (Diaz, Conquistas, p. 766)—was sentenced to a short exile; “but God was not satisfied with that light punishment, and accordingly took upon Himself vengeance against that man, afflicting him with leprosy. This made him blind, and he finally reached the utmost poverty, begging alms, with a boy to guide him, before the gates of the convents.”
The spirit of this account is echoed—rather curiously, for so late a date as 1891—in Reseña biográfica, i, pp. 478–480.
[111] Pardo offered to his Dominican province the sum of thirteen thousand pesos, to be used as endowment for three chairs—law, medicine, and pharmacy—and for some scholarships in Santo Tomás; but the gift was declined, as the province was neither able nor willing to take the responsibility of administering in (Reseña biográfica, i, pp. 477, 478.)
[112] In the Ventura del Arco MSS. (iii, p. 761) is an extract from a letter by the Jesuit Pedro Cano, dated May 26, 1690, which says: “On December 31, 1689, they found Archbishop Pardo dead in his bed, sine cruce et sine luce, without any sacrament, through the negligence of the people of his household and his own confidence that he was to live a long time. For some days all his body had been swollen, and he said that, thanks to the Lord, he was gaining flesh. In the agonies of death, he called to his servants, who were buried in sleep; no one heard him except Don Juan de Cazorla, a cleric whom the archbishop kept a prisoner under his own apartment, in fetters—who did not dare to go upstairs, lest the archbishop should learn that his fetters were removed at night. The prelate’s body, wrapped in a loose gown, was carried to the house where Auditor Grimaldos died; and from there to Santo Domingo, where four days later it was buried.”
Official Visitation by Valdivia
An account of the occurrences in Manila on the occasion of the arrival of the [royal] visitor, Don Francisco Campos de Valdivia.
The said gentleman arrived in this city,[1] and on the same day he arrested the fiscal, Don Esteban de la Puente y Alanis, seizing his goods. He did the same with the notaries who had aided [the proceedings] against the church, and with the military leaders—beginning with Don Juan de Vargas, whom he left with guards in his own house. He made inquiries into many facts which had gone forth on the part of the archbishop, and many lies on the part of the Audiencia; many false statements in the acts, and many other things by which people in Manila have been undeceived regarding the just acts of the archbishop—who is lauded by that visitor as upright, just, and holy; and who told all who entered his house what was going on. He sent for the auditor Bolivar, the only one of the four who was yet alive, who had been for another reason banished to Cagayan; he was very repentant, according to report, and was absolved with his solemn declarations—which were published, by command of the archbishop, in all the pulpits of Manila—expressing detestation of all his actions against the church, in detail, up to his neglect to give aid for seizing the two hundred or more bales belonging to the Society. He came with the intention of dying, if it were necessary, in professing what he had detested; but in Ylocos he died suddenly and without the sacraments, while still near Pangasinan. Of his property and of that of Viga, little or nothing has appeared.
The archbishop, seeing that all that he had done had pleased the Council at Madrid and that at Roma, proceeded to lay aside his scruples, by imposing and declaring an interdict against the church of the Society, because the body of Auditor Grimaldos[2] reposed therein; and it was kept closed from the eve of St. Ignatius’s day for the space of two months, until the conclusion of the lawsuit which the widow of the said Grimaldos undertook to defend. They went to bring out the bones for sentence, and these were so intermingled with others—they say, it was done purposely or by artifice—that, in order not to deprive of asylum those of the just, the bones of Grimaldos were left in the church. It was blessed by the provisor with much solemnity, and the doors were opened with a peal of bells and the universal joy. Seeing this obstacle removed, on account of which that order were not entering that church, the Catholic visitor spoke in reconciliation of the two orders. At the first movement for peace, our order [i.e., the Dominican] declared that we desired it; and an agreement was reached, all the Society repairing to our convent on the octave of the naval feast. Our provincial preached, the archbishop and the Audiencia being present, and, I think, all Manila; for never was seen such a crowd of people. In a few days, I think in that same week, the feast of St. Ignatius was celebrated at the house of the Society; it had not been done [at the proper time], since on the eve of that day the church of the Society was placed under interdict. They had the same large attendance; Father Cani[3] preached, delivering a very spiritual and appropriate sermon.
The archbishop, seeing that God was on his side, concluded to give a public atonement to the church. In the courtyard of our church was erected a stage, on which sat his illustrious Lordship and his cabildo; one day at twelve o’clock he laid an interdict throughout the city, and on the following day were present all the culprits who had concurred in violating the sacred persons and places—in a body, without swords. They were absolved, with scourges [varillas] and miserere, and afterward his illustrious Lordship restored them to the church. Then the next day a procession was formed, accompanied by our Lady of the Rosary. For the morrow there was a sermon, at which the governor and the city were present; and in the afternoon, for the procession, all the Audiencia, and the archbishop, etc.