2 - Monastic Rule and the Mission As Frontier(ization) Institution

Summary

Chaque ordre de Religieux s’est donc emparé de ces provinces; ils se les sont pour ainsi dire partagées entr’eux; ils y commandent en quelque sorte … ils y sont plus rois que le Roi même … de cette saçon ils sont les maîtres absolus des espirits des Indiens de ces Isles.

— Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galasière (1767)

Abstract: Following Marcelo H. del Pilar's insight that “Spain abdicated its sovereignty in favor of monk rule in the Philippines,” this chapter establishes the legal and institutional bases of Spanish rule overseas, with attention to the role assigned to the religious Orders in the aftermath of the so-called conquest of the Philippines. Specifically, I analyze the peculiar character of friar and Jesuit authority: while both served as agents of the Crown, neither were subject to the Crown or even official Church laws and authority. The exploration of this paradox reveals the full implications of the institutional anarchy of Spanish rule overseas.

Keywords: immunity [fueros], doctrina, royal patronage [Patronato Regio], Omnímoda, Concordia, counter-Hispanization

“Era público y notorio” [It was well known and infamous]

The phrase appears repeatedly in a 1674 report that in all likelihood was never meant to see the light of day: it was submitted by seventeenth-century Archbishop of Manila, Felipe Fernández de Pardo (OP), who was also a member of the Dominican Religious Order. In it, Archbishop Pardo's fellow confrere Fr. Juan Santos (OP) reports the testimony of many villagers who lived in or around the mission-town settlement or doctrina called Bolinao in the Zambales region, concerning the many atrocities perpetrated on the people of Bolinao and the outlying settlements by the missionary prior or regional superior, Recollect Fr. Padre Martín de San Pablo [OAR]. It was “well known and infamous,” for example, the Recollects would exact a tribute from the settlements, which missionaries had no authority to do; or that they engaged in forms of contraband; that they would coerce the young men and women who had not yet come of age to be conscripted into forced labor by the colonial government, to work as servants for the missionary priests; that the religious would publicly whip any members of the mission town for disobeying their orders.