ns of my office, and I would cease to be
a judge-conservator of the said Society of Jesus. Neither can I be
ordered to refrain from requesting the protest or paper that I am
asking from the archbishop of Manila, Don Fray Hernando Guerrero;
for it contains affronts and insults uttered recently against the
said Society of Jesus, and against my jurisdiction, and the acts
that I have pronounced. And supposing that it could also pertain to
the said tribunal of the Holy Office to try the defamatory libels
against religious persons, it has not hitherto been understood that
the exclusive trial of such causes has pertained to it. And since
this cause is at least _mixtifori_; [76] and since I am actually
trying this cause as apostolic judge-conservator, and consequently,
with exclusive apostolic authority, without anyone having the power
to take it from my hands, except his Holiness (whose delegate I am,
and to whom only I am immediately subject); and since, for all this
[authority], it is unnecessary for me to produce any other brief except
the apostolic authority and jurisdiction of judge-conservator which
I hold and which I am exercising; and since with less justification
can the said reverend father commissary restrain me from asking the
said paper or protest from the said archbishop, and make me leave
it to the said reverend father commissary--first, because he has a
part in this affair, as he was present and signed the first act of
the said archbishop against the said Society of Jesus on the ninth
of October of this present year, together with certain religious of
his order, whose signatures I have in my possession (that act having
been the foundation and origin of all the insults received by the said
Society of Jesus, and the reason whereby they were incited to appoint
me their judge-conservator); and second, because, the said archbishop
having made the said protest or defamatory libel, the said reverend
father commissary cannot lawfully demand it, for the said archbishop
is not his subordinate, while I, forsooth, can ask it as being his
legitimate apostolic judge, and moreover I can constrain him with fines
and censures against his obstinacy and disobedience to the apostolic
mandates; hence the said reverend father commissary's command that
I leave to him the demand for the said protest or defamatory libel,
and that I refrain from asking for it, means that I should allow him
to exceed the authority of his commission, and t