Sire:
We have written your Majesty whenever occasion has offered by means of
the ships that have left these islands, relating to you the necessity
of this holy church, as you are its true protector and defense.
Inasmuch as it is farther from this blessing, so much greater is the
loneliness and disconsolation which it suffers especially in this the
period of its widowhood, [127] which has been so long because of our
sins. So long as we do not receive word that your Majesty has received
our letters, we shall make use of our permission to write you. We shall
continue in this letter to mention certain matters which we related in
former ones. Perhaps this letter will have a different fate and will
merit a royal reception by your Majesty.
The king our sovereign, your Majesty’s father, (may he be in heaven),
having been informed of the slight service enjoyed by this church
(which amounts to only four prebendaries, to whom a stipend is paid
from your royal treasury), was pleased to despatch a decree ordering
the president and auditors of these islands to inform him of the facts
regarding this matter so that he could enact the advisable measures. An
investigation was made in accordance with that order, and this cabildo
published the need of this church of being better served than others,
as it is surrounded by so many barbarous nations who are daily
receiving the light of the gospel and entering through its gates. We
petition your Majesty, as a service to your Lord to please consider
this matter, and enact regarding it what most pleases you.
Report has also been given your Majesty that the royal Audiencia is
trying to have the ecclesiastical judge plead its aid in arresting
Indians. Were that to be done it would be a great wrong to the
miserable wretches, for the aid is not given unless the secular judge
first examine the acts which are not fulminated in regular form against
the Indians. We however, proceed briefly and summarily against the
Indians, conforming thereby with the royal decrees. If their aid had to
be asked, it would necessarily become a cause for receiving witnesses
and issuing peremptory orders, and the expenses which now amount to
nothing would be heavy. The provisor is continually taking Indian women
from the houses of the inhabitants and soldiers with whom they are
living in evil relations. If account had to be given to the civil judge
for that, delays would ensue and the [guilty] parties would hear of it
and would hide themselves so that the sin could not be corrected. The
correction of sin is the end of the ecclesiastical tribunal and it has
no other object. Consequently, since the aid [of the Audiencia] is not
asked for any matter concerning the Indians throughout the Indias, it
would not be advisable to cause any innovation in this region where the
Indians are so poor that besides a few chiefs no one possesses ten
pesos’ worth of property. In consideration of the above arguments and
others, the former Audiencia issued acts of revision and review, by
which the ecclesiastical judge was permitted to arrest the Indians
without any aid until your Majesty was consulted. We humbly petition
you to please order the course taken in this hitherto to be followed;
since in what concerns the Spaniards and other matters we conform so
closely to the laws that we have never, so far as we are concerned, had
any encounters with your judges.
Some of the orders in this city claim a concession from your Majesty
for the founding of a university, the establishment of chairs, and the
granting of degrees in their courses. The unfitness of that has also
been expressed to your Majesty by our letters, and if for no other
reason than the consideration that all the greater part and the best of
these islands have religious, and that the latter are all from the
outside, while the poor sons of this land who are inclined to take the
habit of St. Peter (who are in great number now by the grace of God,
and have nothing to which they can aspire while the bishop has nothing
to give them), will with the attraction of a chair, and the so
honorable reward that will thereby be attained, be encouraged to work
in their studies and there will always be educated men who will glorify
this holy church. For so just considerations it is wise for your
Majesty to advance its interests and favor its causes. We consider this
as one of the most important matters as we wrote more at length to your
Majesty last year, six hundred and one. We petition your Majesty to
have the matter re-examined and to have enacted what appears best for
your royal service and the advancement of these islands.
We said in a private letter that we wrote to your Majesty in the said
year six hundred and one that the conquistadors of these islands, in
order to ease their consciences, had made certain restitutions to the
natives in common by agreement with Don Fray Domingo de Salazar, first
bishop of these islands. With those restitutions quitrents were bought,
and the money received therefrom is spent in ransoming the many
captives in the power of surrounding enemies and in other alms which
are made, both general and private. In the times of famine and sickness
which the Indians suffer, they are aided. Very often this alms assists
the hospital of the Indians of this city and that of the city of
[Nueva] Caceres in the province of Camarines. In particular another
hospital was founded a year ago among various natives who have been
discovered twelve leguas from this city, where a great number of sick
people are found, who would die if deprived of this aid. The fathers of
the Society of Jesus are trying to have these so fitting works of
charity converted into a college building for students. Such an action
would be to divert those funds from their true and legitimate masters
who are so needy to a matter that can never under any circumstances be
of any use to the Indians. A father of the said Society and others are
now going [to Spain] with that object in view. We petition your
Majesty, for the love of our Lord, not to allow any innovation in this
particular or in any other that concerns us without first hearing us,
and your Majesty being informed by disinterested persons.
Opposite this city on the river side is a small hamlet containing less
than one hundred native houses, all poor folk. They with the permission
of the governor, come during the solemn feast to adorn and clean this
poor church. That village is instructed by the cura of the natives of
this city. The said fathers of the Society bought an estate in that
village some years ago. [128] Little by little they have been extending
themselves in that village so that they now have the greater part of
the little land that it contains. They rent it to heathen Chinese, from
which results not only that the wretched Indians are despoiled of their
lands whether they are paid or not and that they have no place where
they may plant their rice fields except in the vicinity of the Chinese.
That is very harmful to the Indians for the Chinese arc a vicious race
with evil customs. It is also said that the above-mentioned father of
the Society intends to beg your Majesty for the concession of the
instruction of that village and another called Sant Miguel which lies
on the other side outside the walls of this city. The inhabitants of
the latter place attend service in the house of the Society, and they
might be satisfied with that, and leave the instruction to the cura who
is a canon of this church. The latter has no other income than fifty
thousand maravedís, which your Majesty grants him for his curacy. We
also petition your Majesty to concede us the favor to deny this to
those fathers, and not to allow us seculars to be despoiled for the
religious. For they have too much while we have some men so poor that
they do not possess more than the alms of one mass.
As your Majesty will have heard, the Order of St. Augustine has charge
of the instruction of the best villages in these islands. Although
there are many villages in the island without any convent, where they
could spread and exercise their charity by preaching to and teaching
the people who have no knowledge of God, without going to any great
distance from this city, they thought it best to found a convent in the
port of Cavite, two leguas from this city, where there has been a
racionero of this church for the last sixteen years, as poor as the
others. For that purpose the Augustinians went to the said port one day
accompanied by the governor, Don Francisco Tello, who gave it to them
as theirs to found a convent without any permission from the ordinary
(according to his right) having preceded. He put them in possession of
it and they immediately established a chapel, and said mass. When we
tried to repair the harm that had been done us by this, the said Don
Francisco Tello favored the Augustinians by saying that his permission
alone was sufficient for the deed, and that ours was unnecessary. We
had the provincial of the said order notified of the acts in order that
he might have the church torn down, but he answered us as had the
governor, saying that it had been established by the latter’s
permission, and no other was necessary. Although the ecclesiastical arm
has sufficient authority of itself to tear down that church, in order
to avoid a scandal and the wrath of the governor which was terrible,
the aid of the royal Audiencia was asked. There in order to justify our
cause more thoroughly, the royal patronage, which orders that such
foundations be made with the double permissions of the patron and the
ordinary, was presented, as was also a clause of a letter of the king
our sovereign, your Majesty’s father who is with God, written to
Gomez Perez Dasmariñas. In that letter order was given the governor
not to allow a church to be established in any other village where
there was an establishment without the said two licenses, and it is
your royal will that one should not be given without the other.
However, as yet no decision has been reached in regard to the matter.
This same conduct is true of all the affairs that work in favor of the
church in this land, while those things that work against it are rushed
through as your Majesty will see. There is a chapel an arquebus-shot
from the walls of this city, called Nuestra Señora de Guia, where the
natives outside the walls have always been administered. Archbishop Don
Fray Ygnacio de Santivañes erected it into a parish church, and placed
a cura in charge of it, giving him lately charge of the instruction of
the said natives with canonical provision and collation. There was a
suit with your royal officials before your royal Audiencia, as to
whether he was to be paid a stipend or not. Acts of investigation and
review were issued by the Audiencia in which they were ordered to pay
the stipend. The said beneficiary having been in quiet and peaceful
possession for four years, the said religious of St. Augustine, not
satisfied with the past, published a royal decree which had been gained
at the petition of Fray Francisco de Ortega of their order in the year
ninety-four, by mentioning a doubtful relation which he had made, so
that if it seemed best to the governor, he could give them that chapel
as a house of retreat. [129] However, it was so unsuitable for that,
that they having recognized it, have kept the decree until the present
without caring to make use of it. But now piqued by the affair of the
house of Cabite, they presented the decree to the said Don Francisco
Tello, who, as he was so favorable to them, deemed it advisable to give
it to them without notifying us or giving a copy [of the decree] to the
cura of the said chapel. He ordered the Augustinians to be put in
possession of it, and immediately sent an alcalde-in-ordinary to give
it to them, in company with eighteen friars. We heard of it, and it was
necessary to defend our house by closing the door and by making
protests and petitions to the alcalde. In the meanwhile the said cura
presented himself as the interested party to the royal Audiencia and
appealed from the governor’s measure. He was ordered to cease and to
go to make a relation, by which a great scandal was avoided, which
would easily have happened if we had not had patience. The cause is now
pending. We humbly petition your Majesty to pity our want of
protection, in consideration of the fact that we are subject to
innumerable insults and so far from relief, and to have silence imposed
on the claim of that chapel, since it has become a parish church and a
collated curacy as abovesaid. Will your Majesty also order your
governors to keep the royal patronage, and not permit or consent that a
church be erected in any other place where there is a religious
establishment unless that of the ordinary precede. By so doing troubles
will cease and peace and harmony will reign among all. If the contrary
be done, many damages will ensue, for license is being so extended that
even the Franciscan friars, with all the humility that they profess,
also deny the jurisdiction to the ordinary, and have built another
church in the village of Dilao, outside the walls of this city, by
their own authority and without other license or permission, in order
to instruct the Japanese. Although the provisor enacted an act ordering
them not to do it, they have also made a suit and have occasioned no
less scandal than the other friars. In order that your Majesty may see
how unrestrained some of the religious live here, in these ships which
arrived here from Nueva España this year, came a visitor for the Order
of St. Augustine with authority from their superiors. They have refused
to receive him, but have on the contrary treated him so that they
obliged him to retire to the convent of St. Francis. He goes through
the village with a friar of the latter order at his side. That has
caused a great scandal in the community among Spaniards and Indians. It
is thought that he will return without making the visit, although there
are so many excesses and disorders that demanded that correction be not
postponed, that perhaps we can not have it later by human agencies.
It is the custom here to give to all the monasteries both of this city
and those outside it wine and flour from your royal treasury in order
to celebrate [mass] each year. Since this church is so poor as appears
to your Majesty, we petition your Majesty to order that it enjoy this
alms and that sufficient be given of these two articles for that
purpose, since the conventual masses which are celebrated in it are for
your Majesty to whom this church belongs.
We have also advised your Majesty of two innovations in this church
which no other church has. The first is a bench for the wives of the
auditors to use which fills a great part of the principal chapel. The
other is a very long bench with an inscription in large letters for the
officials of the Holy Office. Both are very improper for a cathedral
and metropolitan church. From the second it has resulted, moreover,
that because a canon of this church had the bench removed one day and
shoved over to the wall, for just reason, the commissary who is a
Dominican friar excommunicated him and had him placed on the lists as
excommunicated. Not content with that he gave the tribunal of Mexico
what information he wished, from which it has resulted that after the
arrival of the ships from Nueva España at these islands this year he
arrested the canon, and kept him in prison for seventeen days and
fulminated a cause against him which he sent to Mexico. It is not known
where he will stop; and the same may be said of an unbridled letter
which the inquisitors wrote to this cabildo, of which we complain more
at length to your Majesty in your royal Council of the Holy
Inquisition. In this letter we petition your Majesty to please correct
this matter, and have these two benches removed. There are just causes
for it as may be seen in a letter written the past year of six hundred
and one.
Above all we petition your Majesty to consider that this church is so
poor that we are unable for that reason to send a person to look after
its causes as the religious are doing. The latter are sending persons
suitable for the matters that concern them, and so that they may not
leave anything undone. We humbly petition your Majesty for correction
in this and in all things. We petition our Lord God to communicate to
your Majesty grace and ability to serve Him and aid you to govern the
kingdoms rightly in which He has placed your Majesty. May He preserve
you for us many long and happy years as He is able, and as we have
need. Manila, July 3, 1602. Your Majesty’s chaplains and vassals.
Don Juan de Bivero, dean of Manila.
Archdeacon Arellano
Sancto de Castro, precentor of Manila.
Juan de la Za, canon.
Diego de Leon, canon.
Licentiate Gabriel Sanz
Juan Galindo de Mesa
Ramirez de Cartajena, canon.
Pablo Ruiz de Talavera
Blas Vela Melquior
Crisanto de Tapiayo