ars that it was
confirmed on April 22 of the same year. The said archbishop ordered
it to be executed (October 26, 1707) with the most strenuous efforts;
but he encountered in this such dissensions and disturbances that it
is considered advisable to omit the relation thereof. It was necessary
to resign the ministries once more, the superiors [of the orders]
protesting that they would never agree to such a subjection, and
that the archbishop could make appointments to the curacies as he
wished. By that means his Excellency was so balked that, the cause
having been fully proved, the evidence received, and the proofs
adduced by both parties, the petition introduced by the orders was
allowed on March 30, 1708; and it was ordered that the necessary
official statements be given them. The authority of the governor
was interposed extra-judicially, and he ordered that the religious
should occupy the abandoned curacies, and that there should be no
change. The archbishop himself, who had put forward that claim,
was obliged to confess that he could not put it into practice.

724. It was sufficiently clear by that alone that the holy orders have
more than enough reason for the independence from the bishops that they
enjoy in their parochial ministry. For if they did not have in their
primitive being the causes and motives for the apostolic privileges
which exempted them, even from that of the ordinaries, it would not
have been possible for them to maintain themselves so long with that
prerogative which could not subsist in the kingdoms of America. But,
since there are some persons who, as their understanding is on a
par with their bodily senses, register events on the surface only
without going within for the reasons (from which the report has been
originated and spread through Europa, that the orders of Philipinas
have seized all the authority without other reason than because they
wish it so), I am compelled to vindicate them from so atrocious a
calumny by making known some of the reasons why they have made (as
they still do) so strong a resistance to this subjection. I shall
first discuss all the orders in common, and then our reformed branch
in particular. But I give warning that I do not intend to transform my
history into formal charges. Adequate apologetic writings, founded on
law, have been scattered through those holy families to demonstrate the
exemption that attends them. Quite recently, in the former year 1734,
a formal