Rethinking Church–State Relations in Seventeenth-Century Philippines: The Guerrero-Hurtado de Corcuera and Pardo-Audiencia Controversies

Abstract

The early modern Philippine archipelago is often described as being under the power of a frailocracy with a far-reaching impact. From a microhistorical approach of ecclesiastical contentiousness, I argue that the intermittent clashes between and inside the two pillars of colonial rule—the civil and ecclesiastical powers—belie the church's overarching control over state affairs. The church was not a monolithic unit in the Philippines, but was rather highly fragmented, especially in distant Asian enclaves, and it was not independent, but relied on royal patronage, diplomacy, and transnational networks. Using archival materials, official reports, religious manifestos, and royal appointments and decrees, I focus upon two significant case studies of the two exiled archbishops of Manila, Fray Hernando Guerrero, OSA, and Felipe Pardo, OP, to explore factionalism, negotiation, and microlevel political constellations as a way to approach conflicting church–state relations in seventeenth-century Philippines from a more nuanced perspective.

From the sixteenth century onward, the Catholic mission became synonymous with civilization as the space in which evangelization took place.¹ In the Americas, evangelization was primarily carried out by the mendicant orders until the end of the sixteenth century, when they were gradually replaced by diocesan clergy. This was not the case in the Philippines, where the greater number of friars allowed the religious orders (Augustinian, arrived 1572; Franciscan, 1577; Jesuits, 1581; Dominican, 1587; and Recollect, 1606) to enjoy political and social autonomy vis-à-vis royal officials and diocesan bishops. The power of the mendicant orders was for decades understood to have been only ineffectively contested within the church itself, and often consented or actively promoted by the state in those regions in which it itself was at its weakest. However, contemporary debates about the limits of the so-called frailocracy, as Filipino writer Marcelo Hilario del Pilar (1850–1896) first described the Philippines, are a barometer that show a growing interest in Philippine church history.²

It is an accepted trope that Spanish hegemony in the Philippines was based on a dualistic model of domination in which the church and the state stood tensely alongside each other. The relations between church and state, as Vicente Rafael noted, “were as dependent as they were antagonistic, because both claimed absolute prerogative over the other.”³ But how these relations operated, how they were negotiated, and by which actors are not well-researched subjects. While several scholars, most notably De la Costa, García de los Arcos, Manchado López, Díaz-Trechuelo, and Elizalde and Huetz de Lemps, addressed church–state relations, the early modern period has received little scholarly attention.⁴ Some historians, such as González Alonso (2012), Picazo Muntaner (2013), or Torres Olleta (2016), have cursorily looked at the conflicts between colonial governors and high-ranking church officials, including archbishops and the heads of the mendicant orders.⁵ The present contribution fills the gap by delving into a microlevel analysis that studies how social and political conflict, factionalism, and religious despotism molded seventeenth-century Manila as a confessional city.⁶

The analysis focuses on two case studies that show how diocesan political and legal jurisdiction over matters concerning immunity of sanctuary, royal appointments, and fiscal matters clashed with the civil jurisdiction of the colonial authorities. These cases reveal a conflict-ridden paradigm of confessionalization that highlights the far-reaching impact of conflict, negotiation, and local agency in the construction of social fields in early modern Manila.⁷ The microhistorical approach provides a window into the entangled jurisdictions in the Spanish colonial polities, showing us how the two universal powers, the spiritual for the archbishop and the temporal for the royal institutions (utrumque gladium), contested each other over the control of the political and legal structures of overseas territories. Contentious topics ordinarily remained hidden in official histories and hagiographies of ecclesiastical institutions, whose leading authorities were very partial to their own institutes and refrained from publicly raising their differences or disagreements. And yet, these “two swords” were in perennial competition to gain power and maintain control of Manila society's corporative organization.

Case 1: Archbishop Hernando Guerrero, OSA (1635–1641), or the Nemesis of Governor Don Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera (1635–1644)

In the late sixteenth century Philippines, Manila was elevated into an archbishopric with three suffragan bishoprics: Cebu, Nueva Segovia, and Nueva Caceres.⁸ Since then, episcopal jurisdiction was reasserted—not without contestation—over the friars and the secular clergy, but most particularly, over the illustrious members of the cathedral chapter of Manila.

After ruling the diocese of Nueva Segovia (1626–1629), Friar Hernando Guerrero, OSA (Albacete, 1566–Manila, 1641), was appointed archbishop of Manila on July 10, 1630.⁹ As was customary, King Philip IV (r. 1621–1665) issued a royal decree (Madrid, August 6, 1630) ordering the Dean Miguel Garcetas (in office 1625–1644), of the cathedral chapter in vacant see, to “receive him and let him govern and administer the things of that archbishopric as it is said, and give him power so that he can exercise all the things that you can do in the vacant see while they dispatch and send the said bulls, that in it I will be content.”¹⁰ However, the chapter refused to follow these orders, in the first place because its members were disappointed that a friar and not a clergyman had once again been selected,¹¹ And in the second, because the government of the diocese was being exercised by the oldest bishop of the Philippines, Friar Pedro de Arce (Alava, 1560–Cebú, 1645), who decided to continue in office until the bulls of appointment arrived.¹²

The refusal deeply angered Archbishop Guerrero, both for the humiliation that it entailed and because it kept him from enjoying the emoluments linked to the office. The royal decrees and executorial bulls of the archbishop were dispatched on May 24, 1634,¹³ and finally reached Manila in June 1635.¹⁴ Upon receiving them, the archbishop immediately presented the bulls to the Royal Audiencia to obtain the corresponding pass so that he could begin to govern “without any opposition whatsoever to his archbishopric.”¹⁵ He entered the capital under a ceremonial canopy—a privilege that was officially reserved for the king—and took possession of the archdiocese of Manila on June 25, 1635, the same day that Don Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera (Bergüenda, 1587–Tenerife, 1660) arrived at Manila as the new Governor-Captain of the Philippines and President of the Royal Audiencia of Manila. According to Fr. Juan Ferrando, OP, Corcuera's actions as governor, and especially his actions against Archbishop Guerrero, did not correspond to his position or his destiny.¹⁶

In his 1961 seminal book, Jesuit historian Fr. Horacio de la Costa labeled Governor Hurtado de Corcuera as “the last conquistador.”¹⁷ His undisguised preference for the Society of Jesus, which was evidenced in the beginning of his tenure, may have been due to his devotion to St. Ignatius or to his admiration for the structure and almost military character of the society, which was in keeping with his own character.¹⁸ However, his affinity was probably due more to the fact that the Jesuits were, in practice, a counterpower whose alliance allowed Hurtado de Corcuera to confront the other religious orders.

In an attempt to regain his oversight power and overcome the resistance of a capitular body that had become tremendously independent, in 1635, Archbishop Guerrero strove to impose Badajoz-born Pedro de Monroy as provisor judge and vicar general of the archbishopric, thus combining administrative and judicial functions. Father Monroy was no stranger to the archdiocese. After serving the previous archbishop Fray Miguel García Serrano (1620–1629), he had been vicar, provisor judge, and general subdelegate of the Tribunal of the Holy Crusade, to the detriment of Andrés Arias Girón, a native son of Manila and a key figure in these years, as we will see. Monroy was a persona non grata among the Jesuits because of his loyalty to the diocesan (as opposed to regular) ecclesiastical authority, as well as among the civil government, for his disregard to civil authority.

Monroy had revealed himself a staunch defender of ecclesiastical immunity in the case of Don Juan de Vega Soto in 1623.¹⁹ Vega had committed a theft, and Pedro de Monroy gave him refuge in the cathedral prison for eight months until he could board a galleon to the Indies. In the opinion of Archbishop Guerrero, Father Monroy's behavior in that matter had been exemplary, for Catholic temples were places of “ecclesiastical asylum” that guaranteed the protection of the people inside them. In his eyes, Monroy's actions demonstrated that not only was he a good cleric with an exemplary life, but that he was probably the only one capable of exercising the office of provisor governor and vicar general because “there is no other who can fill his place in these islands.” He added, with undisguised hesitancy, that he “dare not suggest it because the governor [Hurtado de Corcuera] would contradict him and we would have many lawsuits.”²⁰ Both Monroy and Guerrero defended the independence and even the superiority of ecclesiastical power vis-à-vis civil power.

Nevertheless, the archbishop ended up appointing Monroy as provisor judge. And in that post, he was again, curiously, involved in a case similar to the aforementioned of 1623. This second incident took place in 1635. The archbishop had forced an artilleryman, Francisco de Nava, to sell a female slave “with whom he had bad communication with scandal of the people,”²¹ to Doña María de Francia, wife of Pedro de Corcuera y Toledo, nephew of the governor-general.²² The artilleryman, however, did not accept her removal from his house, and on an occasion in which he encountered her and her new mistress, he proposed marriage, to which the slave refused, stating that she preferred “slavery with someone else's master to marriage with her former master.”²³ Feeling humiliated, the artilleryman stabbed her “in the breasts and she was left there dead without having been able to confess.”²⁴ He then took refuge in the church of San Agustín, and the governor-general ordered him forcibly removed. Pedro de Monroy demanded the restitution of the prisoner, but the response was his immediate execution in the very atrium of the convent. Indignant at the violation of the right of asylum, the archbishop excommunicated the general of artillery in charge of the arrest and tried to do the same with the governor-general himself, sending several clergymen to his palace, but the guards did not let them in.²⁵

Both the archbishop and his provisor judge were harmed by this affair. Pedro de Monroy was immediately stripped of his office by the apostolic judge of the ecclesiastical chapter and banished to the outskirts of Manila, where Dominicans and Franciscans gave him asylum in their respective convents.²⁶ The governor-general demanded that the archbishop depose Monroy, arguing that he was known to gamble at his house and that he was illiterate, which went against a mandatory requirement for the provisors since the time of Governor-General Niño de Távora.²⁷ When the archbishop refused, Governor-General Hurtado de Corcuera offered Father Monroy the major chaplaincy and the vicariate of Nuestra Señora de Tanchui (Formosa Island), against whose parish priest he had received several complaints.²⁸ It was, as Horacio de la Costa rightly pointed out, a skillful move that appealed to the Royal Patronage of the Roman Catholic Church—which allowed Spanish authorities, as representatives of the Catholic monarchs, to make religious appointments—to get rid of the polemical provisor who supposedly guided the hand of the archbishop.²⁹ However, Monroy declined, citing health problems.

The archbishop, for his part, responded by excommunicating Hurtado de Corcuera for meddling in his corporative body. There were many doubts about the legality of this act, especially since the governor-general was the king's representative. As Bastias Saavedra reminds us, “Political power, insofar as it was based on iurisdictio, was widely fragmented and, though organized in higher- and lower-orders of power, excluded the possibility of a unitary political structure.”³⁰ The prelate's excommunication seemed to put into question the legitimacy of the exercise of jurisdictional power within the church's corporation in the Philippines.

To elucidate this question, the archbishop requested that an urgent Junta be held in Manila on October 9, 1635, with “the Superiors and most serious subjects of all religions, to determine on these competencies.”³¹ However, the bishop of Nueva Segovia, Friar Juan Diego de Aduarte (Zaragoza, ca. 1570–Luzón, 1636), OP, did not attend, nor did any member of the Society of Jesus.³² The Jesuits’ refusal, which historian Francis Galasi considers “a stroke of genius,”³³ put them in the governor-general's orbit, but also placed them in frank opposition to the archbishop, who “unloaded against the Society his anger.”³⁴

The archbishop accused Jesuit provincial, Fr. Juan de Bueras (Burgos, 1583Mexico City, 1646), and the rector of the Colegio de San Ignacio, Fr. Luis de Pedraza (Vacea, Jaén, 1584–Zamboanga, 1639), of disloyalty and of other manifest insults to their prelate. In the same Junta, he forbade all clerics and religious of Manila from attending celebrations and festive events held in Jesuit colleges and churches, as well as receiving Jesuits in such events in the cathedral or parishes of the archbishopric, nor as preachers in any church of their jurisdiction. In his influential Historia de la Provincia de Philipinas de la Compañia de Jesus. Segunda Parte (Manila, 1749), written nearly a century after all these events took place, Pedro Murillo Velarde, SJ, accused Monroy of having inflamed the spirit of the archbishop, whom he considered a “timorous, religious and humble man, better suited to the retirement of a cloister than to the handling of such lurid business.”³⁵

The confrontations continued, this time having as protagonist a member of the ecclesiastical chapter, the criollo Fabián de Santillán y Gavilanes, who had been named canon by Governor-General Niño de Távora in 1629. In February 1635, by intercession of the oidor of the Royal Audiencia, the magistrate Don Marcos Zapata de Gálvez (Mexico City, ?–Manila, 1644), the interim governor of the Philippines, Don Juan Cerezo de Salamanca (in office 1633–1635), had promoted Santillán to the dignity of schoolmaster (maestrescuela)³⁶ because its holder, Don Alonso de Campos, had remained in New Spain instead of taking possession.³⁷

Santillán y Gavilanes, born in Manila, did not enjoy the favor of Archbishop Guerrero.³⁸ Nonetheless, provincial Bueras appointed him the society's conservative and apostolic judge before the archbishopric, probably because of his proximity to the civil power. On November 2, 1635, Santillan, as apostolic judge, asked Archbishop Guerrero, under penalty of major excommunication latae sententiae ipso facto incurrenda and a pecuniary fine of 4,000 ducats of Castile for the Bull of the Holy Crusade, to annul the order of October 26 so that the Jesuits could preach freely in the archbishopric of Manila. The dean and the ecclesiastical chapter in its entirety, several religious, and the twelve deputies of the Brotherhood of the Holy Mercy accepted the resolution, but the archbishop did not. For this reason, on November 4, Guerrero was publicly excommunicated on the tablet, “in the public parts of this city, and outside the walls,” and the fine was imposed on account of his salary.³⁹ Before what he considered an affront on the part of the Society of Jesus and the members of the chapter, Archbishop Guerrero went to the Royal Audiencia in search of protection,⁴⁰ but on November 9, the apostolic judge insisted on applying these sanctions, increasing the fine by 2,000 ducats more if within twelve hours he did not retract the insulting and illegitimate order.

Seeing that the situation was slipping from his hands, the archbishop consulted the Dominicans at the University of Santo Tomas and the bishops of Cebu and Nueva Segovia, who advised him to obey the judge's mandate. The archbishop did not accept without first submitting a formal protest to the royal notary of the Holy Office, Diego de Rueda. On November 10, 1635, the archbishop retracted the bill of indictment, and the governor-general ordered the arrest of provisor Monroy, but the Dominicans hid him in their convent.⁴¹ He also ordered the arrest of royal notary Rueda to force him to annul the protest. But the commissioner of the Inquisition, Friar Francisco de Herrera, OP, threatened the apostolic judge Santillán and the governor himself if they did not free Rueda and deliver the archbishop's formal protest to him. When they did not do so, the commissioner arrested them and had them sent as prisoners to Cavite. According to Hurtado de Corcuera, the Order of Preachers unconditionally supported the prelate, who used the Inquisition to avenge his passions and the pulpit to satirize his political enemies.⁴²

Such was the situation at the end of December 1635, when Archbishop Guerrero sent Francisco Montero Saavedra to Spain “to give an account to His Holiness and Your Majesty of the offenses and affronts that the conservative judge did to me and that the fathers of the Society of Jesus named.”⁴³

The Jesuits’ interpretation of their conflict with Archbishop Guerrero was very different, as was their opinion of him. According to Fr. Murillo Velarde, the archbishop, repentant, had restored “their honor,”⁴⁴ including the curacy of Santa Cruz, by means of an order of “restitution, annulment and humiliation” in the archbishop's palace of Manila.⁴⁵ Likewise, he had requested the apostolic judge to withdraw the fine he had imposed on him for not being able to pay it, begging Father Rector Luis de Pedraza to absolve him of all the censures and suspensions he had incurred. This took place on January 28, 1636.⁴⁶

That same year, another conflict arose regarding Andrés Arias Girón, a thirty-four-year-old Manila criollo who had studied arts and theology—as well as law with the Jesuits for two years, to great approbation—and graduated as Master of Arts. On February 5, 1626, the governor-general of the Philippines, Don Fernando de Silva (r. 1625–1626), named him priest beneficiary of the district of Balayán (Luzón) and the adjacent island of Mindoro. Due to his good connections with the civil and ecclesiastical power, Arias Girón accumulated various offices: judge of wills and chaplaincies, provisional judge and vicar general of the cathedral, and general subdelegate commissioner of the Tribunal of the Holy Crusade. Years later, in 1634, interim Governor Cerezo de Salamanca granted him the curacy of the shrine of Nuestra Señora de Guía, in Cavite. And, as if that were not enough, the public prosecutor (fiscal) of the Audiencia of Manila appointed him Protector General of the Indians.⁴⁷ However, what he aspired to the most was a permanent position in the ecclesiastical chapter, as evidenced by the fact that on August 4, 1622, he asked Don Alvaro de Mesa y Lugo (Castile, 1590–Manila, 1636), oidor of the Royal Audiencia, for the first vacant position of canon.⁴⁸ His desire to be a dignity of the cathedral chapter came closer when Governor Hurtado de Corcuera appointed Arias Girón interim archdeacon in the spring of 1636. But the archbishop refused to grant him the title and canonical collation, considering him unworthy of the office. This refusal was the beginning of one of the most important crises experienced in the Philippines, which reflected the power dialectics that confronted the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, as well as the different religious orders: the first banishment of an archbishop from his see in Manila.⁴⁹

It all began with the resignation of archdeacon Francisco de Valdés, who was “sick and offended by the bad words that [the archbishop] uttered in the choir whenever he felt like it.”⁵⁰ Valdés had tried on several occasions to resign from the office because of his poor health, but the archbishop always objected on the grounds that he was indispensable in the choir, being one of the few who, according to him, attended punctually. Valdés had finally gone to the governor, “as patron in the name of His Majesty,”⁵¹ who accepted his resignation. On April 18, 1636,⁵² the governor gave that dignity to Arias Girón, “manifesting that he was a person of letters, virtue and credit.”⁵³ The capitulars supported the appointment because of his more than eleven years of service in honorable offices and positions, in which he had “occupied himself in the ministries of souls and principally in the office of provisor and vicar general of this archbishopric of which he gave honor.”⁵⁴ But the archbishop refused to confirm the dignity. In fact, the governor's appointment had come when the archbishop was on an ecclesiastical visit to Arias Girón's parish, that is, as Guerrero was asserting his ecclesiastical authority, which entailed that he should visit the parishes and censure the bad parish priests of his diocese, regardless of whether they belonged to religious orders or not, and regardless of whether they enjoyed the favor or the civil authorities.⁵⁵

Arias Girón went to the Royal Audiencia, begging that, in consideration of his services and those of his father, captain Ramiro Arias Girón (?–1616), governor of Florida and one of the foremost conquerors of the Philippines, as well as the good credit of his name, the magistrates would grant him mercy and confirm his appointment. And so they did, certifying that the archbishop's accusations were frivolous and without foundation, and the appointment should be accepted immediately. Enraged, the archbishop vindicated his jurisdiction before the Royal Audiencia, according to Arias Girón, “with as much scandal as has been understood in the Council by the orders and reports that have come to him.”⁵⁶

According to Hurtado de Corcuera, Archbishop Guerrero disliked Arias Girón merely because the latter was loyal to him. But the archbishop's rejection of Arias Girón probably had many causes, including his closeness to the governor's circle. Guerrero had wanted Arias Girón to resign the position of provisor governor, which the archbishop wanted for his protégé, Pedro de Monroy. To substantiate his refusal, the prelate recorded his opinion that Arias Girón had acquired the title of Master of Arts “more for negotiation than for science”—which was a criticism of the Society of Jesus—implying that his was not a true vocation. He also noted that Arias Girón was related to the Biscayans, “the most powerful in this land,” thus suggesting that the favor granted to him by the governor did not stem from the cleric's own merit, but from his belonging to the right patronage network. Finally, Guerrero accused Arias Girón of being licentious and being “the scandal of this city for his vain pretensions,” of whom everyone knew “that he has thirty thousand pesos that he acquired in native districts.”⁵⁷

In a letter addressed to the king (Manila, April 27, 1638), Arias Girón defended himself from the latter accusations, arguing that Fr. Jerónimo de Heredia, the archbishop's assistant, or mayordomo, had made up the evidence of his alleged crimes to avenge his patron because the chapter—of which he was a part, albeit without a permanent seat—had not allowed him to govern the see until the bulls arrived.⁵⁸ The evidence he spoke of was a declaration signed by seven native chiefs of Balayán that accused the visitor general of the diocese of Manila, the Spanish canon Juan Maestre Briceño,⁵⁹ of not having punished the excesses of Arias Girón, and petitioned for a new visitation that would properly sanction him. The archbishop had admitted the petition, sending it to Juan de los Cobos, former governor of the bishopric of Nueva Caceres (or Camarines, 1626–1636),⁶⁰ whom he had already appointed visitor.⁶¹ Soon after, Visitor Don Juan de los Cobos immediately published the official announcement of his future visit and sent edicts to all the clerical districts of the archbishopric, beginning his visit in Balayán.⁶² According to Arias Girón, the Filipino natives had later declared that the petition for a new visit supposedly signed by the natives was false, “because they did not make it or sign it in any way, nor was the report true, but everything against the truth.”⁶³ Proof of this was that one of the native signatories had died six months before the said petition had been written. They affirmed that Fr. Heredia had pressured them to sign it, but that none of them had done so because “Master Arias Girón had been a very good minister.”⁶⁴ According to Arias Girón, Heredia was intent on discrediting him.

In the face of the archbishop's refusal to confirm Arias Girón's appointment, the Royal Audiencia asked Augustinian friar Francisco Zamudio y Avendaño, bishop of Nueva Caceres (Álava, 1633–Nueva Caceres, 1639) and apostolic judge and delegate of appeals, to appoint Arias Girón. According to Archbishop Guerrero, Zamudio complied “because he was a great friend of [Arias Girón] and because he had been given some gifts by the said Arias Girón when he exercised the said [position] of conservative judge who did not leave his side.”⁶⁵ The archbishop insisted that since the see was not vacant, this “intrusive judge,” in reference to Zamudio, had no say in this affair, adding that Arias Girón's serious faults were worthier of punishment than promotion in the cathedral chapter.⁶⁶ Finally, he asked Arias Girón to ask the ecclesiastical promotor fiscal for a report of good conduct, or, failing that, to find out if there was any impediment or nullity for his appointment.⁶⁷

But Arias Girón knew that the promotor fiscal, who was a member of Guerrero's curia, instead turned to oidor Don Marcos Zapata de Gálvez for an interdict (in Spanish, recurso de fuerza), who admitted it and emitted a cédula de ruego y encargo that ordered the cleric's immediate admittance.⁶⁸ The problem, according to Archbishop Guerrero, was that the dignity to which Arias Girón aspired was not vacant because its owner had not resigned before his ecclesiastical patron. If the resignation was not valid, neither was the appointment.⁶⁹ Oidor Zapata argued that, unlike the ecclesiastical benefices (that is, parishes), which had to be renounced before their prelates, ecclesiastical dignities could be renounced before the secular patron. Thus, there was no room for the archbishop's refusal, and he should make a new collation to the archdeacon. Unsurprisingly, Archbishop Guerrero considered that his ecclesiastical authority was being usurped by the Royal Audiencia, which had admitted Arias Girón's indictment against him and was in itself an act that undermined and disobeyed the prelate's authority. As a result, the archbishop imposed the Bull of the Supper (In Coena Domini—On the Day of the Last Supper), dictated by Pope Martino V (1368–1431) against those who abrogated, annulled, or attacked ecclesiastical immunity, and declared Zapata and Arias Girón publicly excommunicated.⁷⁰

Governor Hurtado de Corcuera and some lawyers and public notaries reproached the prelate for his supposed vindictiveness and questioned whether he could excommunicate ad cautelam the only active magistrate in the Royal Audiencia.⁷¹ Indeed, oidor Zapata turned a deaf ear to the censure and attended the next ordinary mass celebrated in the Royal Audiencia. The celebrating priest, aware of the censure that weighed upon the magistrate, refused to celebrate it in his presence, thus depriving him of the right to communion, but the governor forced him to give it.

This further entrenched the enmity of both sides. On the one hand, the archbishop refused to absolve magistrate Zapata, arguing that he had seriously violated the ecclesiastical censures, a serious sin against God and the church, and on the other hand, the Royal Audiencia issued a royal certificate, dated on Friday, May 9, 1636, condemning the archbishop to pay a fine of 2,000 ducats and the seizure of all his temporalities. And much more important, it declared the archbishop “a stranger of the kingdoms,” ordering him immediately to make collation to Arias Girón of the dignity of archdeacon and to remove his name and that of Zapata from the wooden board.⁷²

Although considering that such a provision was a blatant interference in the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the archbishop committed himself to obeying it as soon as the archdeacon was free of any canonical impediments that made it impossible for him to receive the collation of said dignity. It was a skillful move to gain time and demonstrate Arias Giron's incapacity for the office. To this end, he accompanied Fr. Juan de los Cobos on his general visit to the parish of La Ermita, outside the walls of Manila, where Arias Girón regularly practiced, in order to collect evidence against the cleric, certain that there would be such evidence, since “[the natives] do not dare speak against [the priests] when they are in the towns,” and would thus safely speak the truth in Arias Girón's absence.⁷³ Having collected the incriminating evidence that he had been after, the archbishop ordered Arias Girón's house arrest, in his home in the outskirts of Manila, with deprivation of office and benefit, until further notice. Arias Girón disobeyed and the archbishop declared him, again, publicly excommunicated.

According to the archbishop, the general visitation had confirmed the old charges and revealed new ones that made Arias Girón's nomination as archdeacon impossible, and therefore refused to lift his excommunication or to confirm his appointment. As a response to the royal certificate that ordered his banishment, Guerrero sent a delegation to the governor's palace constituted by Cristóbal de Valderrama, ecclesiastical notary, and several ecclesiastical witnesses to notify Corcuera of an order demanding that he depose the royal certificate, under penalty of 4,000 ducats of Castile for the Bull of the Holy Crusade and of mayor excommunication—latae sententiae.⁷⁴ But notary Valderrama, afraid of the consequences of such an act, was unable to read the notification in the governor's palace. Instead, according to the testimony of Alonso Baeza del Río, public notary and legal advisor of the governor, he did so after the sun set, in the corner outside the archbishop's houses.⁷⁵

The declaration read out loud by Valderrama under the light of a torch made public the interventionism of the governor and oidor Zapata de Gálvez when trying to impose Andrés García Girón as archdeacon and force the archbishop to give him collation and canonical institution. Valderrama denounced that the governor Hurtado de Corcuera had named Arias Girón as interim archdeacon when the archbishop was away in an ecclesiastical visit to the parish of La Ermita, where García Girón practiced.⁷⁶

The governor and the magistrate of the Royal Audiencia executed the bill of indictment against Archbishop Guerrero, proceeding to banish him from Manila. The archbishop, as the highest authority of the Church in the Philippines, prepared the pontifical and the custody containing the Blessed Sacrament, in order to receive the aldermen (regidores) of the municipal council, who were accompanied by Alonso Baeza del Rio, notary public and legal adviser to the governor. His intentions were conciliatory, but the prelate's argument remained the same: the dignity of archdeacon could not be granted to an excommunicated and rebellious clergyman who had pending cases with the ecclesiastical justice. The aldermen related the encounter to the governor, trying to calm him and deescalate the conflict, but it was all in vain. On May 9, 1636, between eight and nine o'clock at night, more than sixty soldiers went to the residence of Archbishop Guerrero under the command of the major marshal of the Royal Audiencia and his assistant, carrying firearms and lit torches. The field lieutenant, the Basque Lorenzo de Olaso y Achótegui, to whom Governor Hurtado de Corcuera had entrusted the execution of the order, excused himself because he was “coincidentally” ill.⁷⁷ The soldiers knocked loudly on the door, which was opened, and they saw the archbishop, dressed in pontifical dress and carrying the Blessed Sacrament in his hands, standing in front of the altar. He was accompanied by the principal authorities of the Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinian Recollects, as well as various clergymen. No members of the Society of Jesus stood by him, evidencing the Jesuits’ partiality to the governor in this conflict.⁷⁸

The chronicles highlight the event as one of the most humiliating and affronting in living memory. With no little scandal, the superiors of the religious orders were forced to return to their convents leaving the archbishop alone, accompanied only by a black slave, in his home. The governor allowed the bishop of Nueva Caceres, the dean, the ecclesiastical chapter, and the provincials of the different orders to visit him, but they were not allowed to give him food or water until he lifted the censures against the governor and the Royal Audiencia. Archbishop Guerrero, however, refused, and after giving the Blessed Sacrament to the Franciscans, he remained standing, awaiting his banishment.⁷⁹

Pedro de Corcuera y Mendoza, nephew of the governor, was in charge of executing the sentence in the early morning of May 10, 1636.⁸⁰ Upon leaving the city through the door of Santo Domingo, the archbishop took off his shoes and shook the dust from them, in a clear allusion to the Gospel of Matthew (10:14). They sailed seven leagues to the lonely and deserted island of Mariveles, an out-of-the-way settlement “that was more like a sow's hut than a man's house.”⁸¹ There he remained for twenty-six days, until on June 6, 1636, he was allowed to return to the capital if he complied “with several conditions.”⁸²

The first condition consisted in accepting the decisions adopted by Fr. Francisco Zamudio, whom Hurtado de Corcuera had named acting governor of the archbishopric of Manila during the exile of Archbishop Guerrero.⁸³ Zamudio, a supporter of the governor of the Philippines and the Jesuits, had absolved Archdeacon Arias Girón of the ecclesiastical penalty a divinis of suspension from divine offices, and lifted the penalty of excommunication ad cautelam on oidor Zapata and the governor, which allowed them to partake in the celebration of the Feast of Pentecost on May 11.⁸⁴ The second condition was to make canonical collation to the archdeacon Andrés Arias Girón. The third, and no less important, was to accept a legal advisor or expert appointed by the civil government. Although the archbishop continued to maintain that his episcopal jurisdiction was not “embargoed” by his banishment, and therefore considered that there had been no vacant see for Zamudio to govern, he reluctantly accepted the conditions. Be that as it may, he made it clear that he accepted under pressure and for the good of his flock, while awaiting the decision of the Royal Council of the Indies on his restitution.⁸⁵ It was a full-fledged defeat, for although he was allowed to rejoin his diocese, he did so under the supervision of his nemesis, Governor Hurtado de Corcuera.

The governor, for his part, wrote two down-to-earth letters to King Philip IV, both dated on June 30, 1636, hoping to avoid future conflicts, and rightfully interpreting that they came from the inherent complications of the Royal Patronage. In the first one, he begged that orders be issued that forbade the excommunication of governors, as the Dominicans requested, arguing that their excommunication could lead to political unrest. After all, “declaring them as excommunicated, the voices of discontent could take away religious obedience and raise a mutiny against the legitimate King and lord.” He also recommended that, in view of the experience lived, prelates should not be friars, “because they are made with the others and they disturb everything and oppose the government as soon as they can, and with clerical prelates, things will run better and in much conformity.”⁸⁶ That is, friars had entire communities that naturally backed them up, while clerics lacked access to this parallel structure of power.

The second letter made his desire to secure the submission of ecclesiastical power to civil power more explicit, suggesting a new scheme of government that included two governors-general, “. . . one to take care of ecclesiastical matters and the other of temporal matters, because one cannot do everything alone, since there are many burdens in these religions and there is no time left for political government, the affairs of war and the common good of the provinces.”⁸⁷

Moreover, Hurtado de Corcuera empowered Jesuit Fathers Diego de Bobadilla (Madrid, 1590–Carigara, Philippines, 1648) and Simón (or Simone) Cotta (Genoa, 1590–Manila, 1649),⁸⁸ appointed procurators in the courts of Madrid and Rome in 1637, to give an account to the monarch of the archbishop's intransigent attitude.⁸⁹ Upon his arrival in Spain in 1640, Bobadilla informed the king of the serious conflicts that had injured both the church and the state in Manila. These diligences bore fruit, as evidenced by the Royal Decree of 1640.⁹⁰ Although it did not mention “the parties,” according to Murillo Velarde, and it did not issue the orders or changes that the governor had suggested, “it was addressed to archbishop Guerrero”⁹¹ and contains the very severe reprimand that the king dispensed to the archbishop for losing his composure, altering the workings of the Royal Patronage in the Philippines, and disrespecting the royal representatives, especially the Royal Audience, which was His Majesty's highest representative in the land. He warned the prelate that,

… if the admonition that I thus issue to you is not enough to moderate you, it will be necessary to proceed to a greater reprimand with you, even, if necessary, to avail myself of His Holiness for the execution of it, which will be the one that seems most convenient to my service, good government, and public satisfaction, in which we will proceed with the indignation and severity that you will see by the effect.⁹²

With calculated doses of irony, Murillo Velarde said that, by the fiery expressions contained, the king's admonishment seemed to have been conceived on Mount Etna.⁹³ He was right about the degree of anger and discomfort expressed by the monarch. Philip IV had problems piling up: in addition to the continuous tensions in the Provinces of the Netherlands, in 1640 there was the independence of Portugal and the Catalan revolt or Corpus de Sang, which provoked the bankruptcy of the Spanish Crown. Governor Hurtado de Corcuera, a veteran of the Ancient Flanders Infantry where he served for sixteen years (1611–1627), a field commander (Maestre de Campo) of the Callao Infantry, and a member himself of the Supreme Council of War, represented for the king a defensive bastion on the borders of an empire weighed down by a deep political and economic crisis.⁹⁴

Case 2: The Felipe Pardo Controversy: The Royal Magistrates and the Banishment of the Archbishop from Manila

On November 11, 1677, the archbishop Fray Felipe Pardo (Valladolid, 1677–Manila, 1689), OP, took possession of the Archdiocese of Manila at the age of sixty-seven, although he was not consecrated until 1681.⁹⁵ He had served as prior of the convent of Santo Domingo, as well as a qualifier of the Holy Office, reader of theology, regent of studies and rector of the College of Santo Tomás in Manila. He had also been twice elevated to the dignity of provincial of the Dominicans (1661–1665; 1673–1677).⁹⁶

One of the official historians of the Dominicans, Vicente de Salazar (?–1754), OP, applauded his appointment as the best way to reform the abuses committed by powerful clerics and priests in the Manila archbishopric.⁹⁷ From the very beginning, Pardo carried out various reforms in the church, which led him to conflicts not only with the Royal Audiencia but also with the Society of Jesus on many different fronts.⁹⁸ As part of his mandate, he sought to implement to the Laws of the Indies, published in Madrid in 1681 (Law XXXIII, Book I, Title XV), which explicitly ordered that “. . . where there were Augustinians, there should be no Franciscans, nor religious of the Society where there were Dominicans. . . .”⁹⁹

The Dominicans—including the archbishop—were not satisfied with Governor Vargas, who not only was on very good terms with their rivals, the Jesuits, but whom they also accused of corruption and nepotism.¹⁰⁰ On January 6, 1682, during the feast of Epiphany, Fr. Francisco de Villalba, OP, delivered a rousing sermon to the civil authorities criticizing the mistreatment of Archbishop Pardo and the Order of Preachers by the governor, the lawyers of the Audiencia, and the prebendaries of the cathedral chapter. He pointed an accusing finger at “the three most powerful arms that exist in these Islands, which are the Royal Audiencia, the Society [of Jesus], and the Ecclesiastical Chapter.”¹⁰¹ During the mass, the lawyers asked Pardo to order Villalba to interrupt the insolent sermon, but the archbishop declined to do so, and instead justified Villalba's procedure saying that he was doing his duty.¹⁰²

It is not necessary to insist on the importance of sermons to attack political enemies, nor on the pedagogical and persuasive character of the ars predicandi as a creator of (political) opinion in a public sphere dominated (albeit not exclusively) by religious orders.¹⁰³ But it is perhaps necessary to highlight that preachers exposed themselves to the reactions of those whom they whipped from the pulpit, and if these victims of strong or insolent words had power, their reactions could hurt the preacher. And so it was with Villalba, whose words cost him the reprobation of Governor Don Juan Vargas Hurtado (in office 1678–1684) and his immediate banishment to a Franciscan convent located in the town of Catbalogan, in the province of Nueva Caceres.¹⁰⁴ There he would remain until a galleon arrived to carry him to New Spain.¹⁰⁵ The conflict between the Order of Preachers and the governor continued, and Governor Vargas escalated the stakes by issuing an order by which he sent three Dominican priests back to Madrid—Bartolomé Marrón (Asturias, 1646–Manila, 1717); Raymundo Verart (Lleida, 1651–1713), vice-rector (1684–1686) and rector of the University of Santo Tomás (1686–1689); and Cristóbal Pedroche (1640–1715)—and two theology lecturers, Juan de Santo Domingo (1640–1726), OP, and Francisco de Vargas, OP, to Cagayan. These two were, furthermore, forbidden from abandoning the province without a special permit.¹⁰⁶

For their part, the magistrates of the Royal Audiencia wrote to the Council of the Indies on January 15, 1682, complaining about the despotic and authoritarian attitude of the prelate, and which they argued was contributing to a flickering sense of loyalty to the king.¹⁰⁷ That same year, in early October, the magistrates decided to banish the archbishop and deprive him of his secular revenues (temporalidades), although the sentence was not executed until the following year. It happened on Wednesday, March 31, 1683, between three and four o'clock in the morning, when the oidor Dr. Cristóbal Herrera y Grimaldo (Mexico City, c.1625–Manila, 1686), accompanied by the mayor of Manila, Don Juan de Beristain, and a group of sixty rank-and-file soldiers under the command of sergeant major Don Alonso de Aponte, went to remove the archbishop from the Santo Domingo convent, located outside the walls of Manila. They forced their way into the college of San Gabriel and the house of the octogenarian archbishop, but they were met by the physical opposition of the Dominican priests. The arrest was a shameful spectacle, but, as we have seen, it was not new. After taking him, the infantry sent him to the island of Mariveles, and from there he was transported to the remote town of Lingayen, under Dominican jurisdiction, some thirty-six leagues from the capital.

Immediately, various Dominicans priests—mainly, Friar Cristobal Pedroche, Raimundo Verart, Ginés de Barrientos (Salamanca, 1637–Manila, 1698) and Alonso Sandin (1640–1701)—wrote letters, reports, and memorials denouncing the violence with which the arrest and banishment of the prelate had taken place. According to them, who witnessed it, his capture had been carried out “entering through the windows of the college and taking him out in the same chair in which he was sitting.”¹⁰⁸ Governor Vargas defended himself, claiming that he had given express orders to put the archbishop on a “competent and decent vessel in which to embark everything necessary for his sustenance, and to go [to his exile] with every comfort and privilege.”¹⁰⁹

Meanwhile, the dean of the cathedral chapter, the Mexican-born Don Miguel Ortiz de Covarrubias, in connivance with the Royal Audiencia, stripped the cleric Juan González de Guzmán of the office of provisional judge and vicar general of the archbishopric, to which he had been appointed in 1681, and gave it to the archdeacon Jerónimo de Herrera.¹¹⁰ The magistrates kept Juan González under house arrest until the following Tuesday afternoon, “without letting him speak to anyone.”¹¹¹ Finally, Ortiz de Covarrubias declared the diocese vacant, claiming that the civil death of the archbishop legitimated this procedure.¹¹² However, on March 17, 1683, Archbishop Pardo had already appointed Friar Barrientos auxiliary bishop of Manila, thus preempting the declaration of a vacant see by leaving a clearly and legitimately unquestionable ecclesiastical governor in his absence (1683–1684).¹¹³

Jesuit Fr. Jerónimo de Ortega, together with his former student at the College of San Joseph, the senior judge Don Pedro Sebastián de Bolívar y Mena (Mexico City, c. 1645–Manila, 1700), representing the magistrates of the Royal Audiencia of Manila, had been in charge of drawing up the bill indictment necessary to seize and banish the prelate.¹¹⁴ In collusion with the secular authorities, he allowed the dean and provisor Ortiz de Covarrubias to free the prisoners in the ecclesiastical jails, in particular the interim precentor (or chanter) of the chapter, Don Jerónimo de Herrera, whom King Charles II (r. 1665–1700) had ordered to be punished by means of several certificates of Royal Decrees, for having rebelled against the authority of the archbishop of Manila, Friar Juan López, OP (1672–1674).¹¹⁵ Bolívar y Mena had also ordered that the Dominican convent be surrounded, with the purpose of imprisoning the canon and legitimate provisor Don Juan González, as seen above.¹¹⁶ According to Fr. Pedroche, this absurd interposition through a recurso de fuerza was motivated by the fear that the said provisor could prevent Ortiz de Covarrubias from freely usurping his functions.¹¹⁷

The Procurator of the Jesuits, Fr. Antonio Matías Jaramillo (Zafra, 1648–Ocaña, 1707), believed that Archbishop Pardo was banished for usurping the civil jurisdiction of the Royal Audiencia.¹¹⁸ Needless to say, the opinion of Dominican Fathers Cristóbal de Pedroche and Alonso de las Huertas was radically different from that of the Jesuits: the prelate had resisted and challenged the governor's relentless and illegitimate encroachment on his authority, which violated his ecclesiastical immunity, and this had led the governor to banish Pardo.

For the Dominicans, the cause of the suspension, seizure, and subsequent banishment of the archbishop were products of the order's valiant and public critiques of the Audiencia's malicious maneuvering, more specifically, the order's criticism of the management of the galleons’ tickets (boletas). As is well known, the distribution of cargo space on the galleon was determined by the Junta de Repartimiento, founded in 1604 by Royal Decree of King Philip II (1556–1598). This space was divided into equal parts, and to each part corresponded a pieza, or bale of a defined size. These bales, in turn, were subdivided into four packages, represented by the so-called boletas, which were allotted to Manila's residents. Boletas therefore operated as permits that allowed their owners to transport a given number of units of cargo.¹¹⁹ The Spanish Crown allowed widows and poor merchants to cede or sell their boletas, and therefore, their space on the galleon, which generated an authentic and highly speculative market of boletas.¹²⁰

In 1682, many residents of Manila were unable to acquire boletas to ship merchandise on the Santa Rosa galleon because the Jesuits had been given “the biggest part of the ship with their merchandise, bundles and bales of cloth,” and the provincial Fr. Francisco Salgado (Grijoa de Galicia, 1683–Manila, 1687) had not remedied the situation despite complaints.¹²¹ Given the existence of a market of boletas, all kinds of rumors circulated regarding how the Jesuits had acquired so much cargo space, with special emphasis on the wealth that the society acquired through mercantile operations carried out in America and the Philippines, which was contrary to their vows. The Order of Preachers let it be known that they opposed the society's illicit enrichment through commerce.

Indeed, the then–public prosecutor of the Audiencia of Manila, Don Diego Antonio de Viga (Salamanca, c.1650–Manila, 1688), believed that the Jesuits obtained substantial economic benefits from their haciendas. On September 4, 1679, he wrote the king about the large Jesuit farms (or estancias) that used slave labor provided mainly by bisayas, joloes, and camarines, regretting that when

they ask for their freedom in this Royal Audiencia, what has been provided is that at the request of the demand . . . they never get their justice because the provincials before whom they go never hear them nor give them their freedom and of this kind the Society of Jesus alone has innumerable enslaved persons, not only of the Tagalog natives but also in the province of Cebu and in all the Visayas.¹²²

Pedroche agreed with the opinion of the prosecutor, assuring that “by this way [the Jesuits] take many millions from the Crown, which they take to their General.”¹²³ Friar Antonio de las Huertas ironized about the origin of the 100,000 pesos that the procurators of the Society of Jesus sent to the court of Madrid, wondering “how they could remit so much at once, even if they sold the chalices and silver of their churches, not being acquired by commerce.”¹²⁴ And the brief of Pope Clement IX (in office 1667–1669) specified that, although the bartering of products in order to “acquire the things necessary for life” was not punishable by the church, it was when economic benefits were obtained. Therefore, Archbishop Pardo had ordered the requisitioning of merchandise and the excommunication of those who were in charge of boxes of raw silk in bundles and bales of cloth “which proved to be of the said [Jesuit] Fathers, by six different marks, with which they were marked.”¹²⁵ The escalation of the conflict between Jesuits and Dominicans—and their allies and rivals—was served.

The Jesuits accused the Dominicans, and in particular, Fr. Villalba, of writing a satirical libel, entitled El Forzado, which “vomited abundant venom” against the Society of Jesus as well as against the oidores of the Audiencia of Manila, its president-governor, and the body of the chapter.¹²⁶ According to the memorials of the Jesuit procurators Luis de Morales and Antonio Jaramillo, the Dominicans of Manila acted with the connivance of the archbishop to ridicule them by placing “libelous and injurious papers,” better known as pasquines (leaflets), with special emphasis on the “forbidden dealings and trades” that supposedly occupied the Jesuits in the East Indies.¹²⁷ For the Dominicans, there was an “evident conspiracy” orchestrated by the Society of Jesus and the magistrates of the Royal Audiencia to expel the Order of Preachers from the Philippines and to alienate them from the king. As part of this campaign, the Jesuits continually attacked Archbishop Pardo. Moreover, in the words of Father Friar Antonio de las Huertas, the Jesuits elevated judicial powers to the Audiencia to defend their causes, so that “no lawsuit is ever lost that runs through the direction of the Society.”¹²⁸ To counter the “conspiracy,” the Dominicans published various papers “to defend themselves” from the Jesuits’ attacks—as they acknowledged themselves—and they also initiated legal action against the ministers of the Royal Audiencia in the Council of the Indies. They even resorted to the Roman Curia hoping that it would act in their favor.

Manila was characterized by a relational culture of power with specific historical processes and local dynamics in which archbishops and governors were leading members of kinship-like networks. On August 24, 1683, the new Governor of the Philippines, Don Gabriel de Curuceálegui y Arriola, came into office (1684–1689), making crystal clear his preference for the Dominican order.¹²⁹ One of his first measures, taken on October 24, 1684, was to revoke the banishment of Archbishop Felipe Pardo and officially reinstate him in office after sixteen months of exile by means of a royal certificate. On November 16, the prelate arrived at Manila, and six days later, he suspended Dean Ortiz de Covarrubias and the prebendaries of the cathedral chapter. On November 24, he excommunicated the former Governor-General Don Juan de Vargas, together with the oidores Don Diego Calderón y Serrano, Don Diego Antonio de Viga, and Don Pedro Sebastián de Bolívar y Mena, proceeding to impose the corresponding punishments and censures on those military officials who, directly or indirectly, had participated in his banishment.¹³⁰

Concluding Remarks

The last quarter of the nineteenth century (1880–1895) saw the rise of anti-friar and anti-church movements in the Philippine archipelago, and the propaganda movement's proto-nationalists (Marcelo H. Del Pilar, Graciano López Jaena, Mariano Ponce, José Rizal, among others), well-studied by John N. Schumacher (1991), represented the Spanish colonial church as an autocratic, centralized, corporate entity under friar power that exercised supreme control over political affairs.¹³¹ However, as we have seen in this article, the colonial church was not a monolithic unit in the Philippines, and its relationship with the civil powers shows that it was not an ideological state apparatus. It was far from being a hegemonic and uncontested institution with a clear agenda and a monolithic culture and interests.

Moreover, as this article shows, ecclesiastical contentiousness cannot be separated from intra-elite confrontations and political rivalries in early modern Manila. The Catholic Church was not a homogeneous and monolithic entity, but rather a fragmented and divided institution that depended on royal patronage, diplomacy, and transnational networks in an increasingly interconnected world. In microhistorical terms, what the aforementioned two cases unveil is the clashing of conflicting interests by a number of multifaceted actors playing out on a local stage. A close scrutiny also reveals how a rigid and dogmatic interpretation of the Spanish Patronato Real de las Indias [Royal Patronage of the Indies] left the church under the strict control of political power. As historian Lourdes Díaz-Trechuelo pointed out, “Church-State relations in Spanish America were always conditioned by the right of Royal Patronage exercised by the monarchs.”¹³²

The Spanish monarchy and the church were like a pair of fraternal twins with a conflict-ridden relationship who are, nonetheless, inseparable. In the Indies, evangelization “remained a resolutely state-directed enterprise, with the Crown responding to the wishes of the papacy only in ways that it deemed appropriate.”¹³³ However, although the “imperial machine,” or the bureaucratic state, was weak, particularly in the Philippines, the notion of a colonial church reigning supreme should be revisited in light of a new ecclesiastical (micro)history that includes local power constellations. In this article I have argued that church–state jurisdictional conflicts were not the exception but the rule, and that they placed substantive constraints on the actions of royal sovereignty in the early modern Philippines. By bringing contending factions and rivalries to the fore, I also confirmed that the church's political maneuvering went beyond strictly spiritual motivations. The long-running conflict that pitted archbishops Hernando Guerrero and Felipe Pardo against secular powers calls into question the discourse of the colonial church's overarching control of cosmopolitan Manila. On the other hand, what passed for state machinery was a close-knit web of alliances, patronage networks, and coalitions with church agents enmeshed in political factionalism. By examining the way in which political and religious actors interact with each other and interweave webs of conflicting interests, the two-headed imperial polity of the Philippines seems less a Leviathan than a political arena where political hegemony was always negotiated and contested.¹³⁴

Recent works on early modern globalization have characterized the colonial church as a polycentric, globally connected entity endowed with different interlinked nodes, but they often neglect to address local power constellations. In the light of a new ecclesiastical history that departs from a frailocratic-centered perspective, this article turns the tide by showing the way in which a host of political agents, such as bishops, archbishops, clergymen, friars, and canons of the ecclesiastical chapters in early modern Manila, aimed to defend their well-ensconced interests against their political opponents, giving rise to divisions among and within church entities and secular powers at the local level.