73, the first year of his
pontificate, whose beginning is _In tanta rerum_, etc., and which
father Fray Manuel Rodriguez inserted in the book that he published
concerning the privileges of the orders, [8] in number 38 of those
of that same supreme pontiff.
Although it is true that it is stated in the memorial which the Order
of St. Francis in Nueva Espana presented regarding the substance
of the privileges of the mendicant orders in the Yndias, at the
provincial council that was convened in Mexico in the year 1585,
at the instance of the same council (as is mentioned by father Fray
Juan Baptista, of the said order, in the second part of his book of
advice for confessors), that the said revocation had no effect, because
the cardinal protectors of the orders immediately appealed from it,
asking his Holiness to suspend the said _motu proprio_ and that it
be not promulgated; and that his Holiness agreed to it, and that,
accordingly, no account was taken of it--it appears that no attention
must be paid to that, for the said memorial has no further proof or
authority than the certification of Father Master Veracruz, who was in
Sevilla when the _motu proprio_ of Gregory XIII was issued, and because
Father Manuel Rodriguez, of the same Order of St. Francis, affirms
the contrary--who some years later, while residing in Salamanca, where
there was more notice of it than in the Yndias, published his books of
"questions concerning the regulars," as appears in article 7, question
8, of the first volume, [9] as well as in other places. With the same
agrees father Fray Alonso de Vega, in his conclusion, chapter 62,
case 4, _Questio de confessione_, and it appears by the declarations
of the holy congregation of the cardinals, which Marcilla reports
in article 20, of section 25, _de regularibus_, and in article 15,
of section 13, _de reformatione_, [10] besides others, by which it is
manifest that it is a privilege that his Majesty obtained for what he
then judged advisable for the proper government of the churches of the
Yndias, and the greater increase of their Christianity. It ought not,
nor can it, be understood to be to the prejudice of the privileges
that the holy apostolic see has conceded to the kings of Espana for
the same purpose, such as that of Alexander VI, in his bull of the
concession or confirmation of the Indias, as follows: _Hortamur vos
quamplurimum ... et infra sit--insuper mandamus vobis in virtute
sanctae obedient
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