The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803; explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commericial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century; [Vol. 1, no. 36]

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THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[Vol. 36

141 missionaries; and that there were only 59 suitable
secular priests in all the islands. The fiscal, seeing
that according to the report the procedure that had
been taken could not be maintained, in order to
obviate the inconveniences that would ensue to the
natives and inhabitants of those dominions if the
religious were withdrawn from the villages, petitioned on January 4, i656, that without innovation
the orders be maintained in the missions, until it
should be proved that there was a sufficient supply
of secular priests to take care of them; and that they
be assisted with the usual emoluments. He asked
and charged the reverend fathers-provincial to look
after the spiritual administration with their accustomed zeal. The royal Audiencia having so ordered
in toto by an act of February 17, the holy orders
returned very willingly to apply their shoulders to
the work. Those acts were sent to the royal Council
of the Indias. The cause having been discussed
there, in view of the reports of the governor (which
were throughout favorable to the orders), and of the
manifestos presented by the orders in justification
of their rights, the documents were approved on
October 23, I666, and the result was to make no innovation in what had been decided, and it does not
appear that any other decree was enacted against the
observance and practice that the religious have
always maintained in those islands. Therefore the
archbishop, having claimed that the appointments
for the missions devolved on him by the form of
canonical collation in cases where his Majesty did
not make use of the privilege which belonged to him
as patron; and endeavoring by that means to deprive
the orders of the right which they possess of making