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part of Columbus, on condition that he would secure
means of transportation within one year. Failing to
do so his permit was without effect.
The colonizer and first governor of the island was another companion of Columbus, Juan Ponce, sur- named de Leon after Ms birth-place in Spain. The eastern portion of the Island of Hispaniola (Haiti), separated from Porto Rico by the Mono Channel, wag at this time under his command.
In 1508 he secured permission to leave liis command in the province of Higuey, in Hispaniola, and to ex- plore San Juan de Boriquen. With fifty chosen followers, he crossed the channel, landing in Porto Rico 12 Aug., 1508, and was received by a friendly native cacique, who informed him of the existence of the harbour of San Juan on the north coast, then unknown to Europeans, which de Leon named "Puerto Rico" on account of the strategic and com- mercial advantages it offered for the colonization and civilization of the island. Having explored its in- terior, de Leon returned to his command in Hispan- iola, now the eastern portion of Santo Domingo, to arrange with King Ferdinand and Orando to lead an expedition for the conquest and colonization of Bori- quen. He made special request to have a body of priests assigned for his assistance.
In March, 1509, he sailed direct to the north coast for the harbour which he had named Puerto Rico, now known as San Juan. Anchoring about one mile from the entrance he established the first European settlement at a place then known as Caparra, now Pueblo Viejo, which remained capital of the island until it was officially transferred to the present site of San Juan in 1519.
Erection of the First Dioceses in the New World. — On 15 Nov., 1504, Julius II by Bull "lUius fulciti" erected in the Island of Hispaniola the first ecclesiastical province in the New World, comprising the archiepiscopal See of Hyaguata, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, under the title of Our Lady of the Annunciation, with two suffragans of Slagua and Bayuna. This Bull, how- ever, remained without effect, on account of incon- veniences attending the sites selected, and of the opposition of King Ferdinand, who objected to the concession to the first prelates of the New World the right to participate in the diezinos (tithes) upon gold, silver, and precious stones then being discovered within the territory. This rendered the Bull inopera- tive, because in 1501 Alexander VI had granted to the Crown of Spain in perpetuity the right of collecting diezmos in her transoceanic colonies.
Seven years later, 8 Aug., 1511, the same pope by the Bull "Pontifex Roraanus" declared as suppressed and extinguished in perpetuity the aforementioned ecclesiastical province, with the three sees comprised therein, and by the same Bull erected three new dio- ceses: two in Hispaniola (Santo Domingo and Con- cepcion de la Vega) ; the third was in the Island of San Juan, the name now given solely to the chief city of Porto Rico, but which then applied to the whole island. The new dioceses were made suffragans of the Province of Seville, Spain, and the three prelates pre- viously designated to rule the extinct seesof 1504 were assigned by this later Bull to the new dioceses without the right, however, of sharing the diezmos upon any gold, silver, or precious stones that might be discov- ered within the limits of their jurisdiction.
Father Alonso Man.so, canon of the cathedral of Salamanca, who had been elected Bishop of the See of Magna, was transferred by the Bull of 1511 to the newly-erected See of San Juan, of which he took pos- session two years later in 1513, arriving at a time when the island possessed only two European settle- ments, some two hundred white people and about five hundred native Christians, .\ccording to a letter which this prelate acMrcsscd later to the Spanish mon-
arch, he was the first bishop to reach the New World, a
statement, however, that is at variance with the opin-
ion that Father Bartholomew de las Casas had been
ordained priest in 1510 in Santo Domingo, though it
may be that he only sang his first Mass in America, as
there is no record of the presence of any bishop there
to ordain him at that early date.
Bishop Manso was the first Inquisitor General of the Indies, appointed in 1519 by Cardinal Adrian de Utrecht, afterwards Pope Adrian VI (1522). The car- dinal made this appointment in the name of the Regent of Castile, whom he represented while Bishop of Tortosa. Juan de Quevedo, Bishop of Darien, is credited with having planted the Inquisition in Amer- ica in 1515, but Bishop Manso was the first to be en- titled ' ' General Inquisitor of the Indies, Islands and the Mainland", with authority to act outside the jurisdic- tion of his diocese in union with the Vice-Provincial of the Dominicans, Pedro de Cordoba, who resided in Santo Domingo, until the establishment in 1522 of the Convent of St. Thomas Aquinas, the first religious community in Porto Rico. There is no evidence that this tribunal interfered in matters appertaining to the Holy Office outside the Diocese of San Juan. At least it did not interfere with the various bishops in their respective dioceses, who either sui juris or as delegates of the Holy Office exercised their functions in this re- gard.
It also has been stated that to the bishop, Manso, was assigned a number of Indians in the repartimiento made by the Crown, and that successive bishops had retained a number of natives as Encomietidas to care for the cathedral; but the aborigines in Porto Rico were always well treated by the early missionaries, who included Las Casas. In fact Paul III, as early as 1537, declared excommunicated all who dared to en- slave the Indians in the newly-discovered lands, de- prive them of their lands or fortunes, or disturb their tranquillity on the pretext that they were heathens.
In 1519, at the request of Bishop Manso, who com- plained that the revenue derived from San Juan was insufficient for his support, the Crown obtained from the Holy See an extension of territory for the diocese, so as to include all the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles from Santa Cruz to Dominica, thus rendering the jurisdiction of the bishop coextensive with the civU and military sway of the first governor and colon- izer, Juan Ponce de Leon. The Islands of Margarita and Cubagua were also added to the diocese during the episcopate of Rodrigo de Bastidas, who was trans- ferred in the Consistory of 6 July, 1541, from the See of Coro, Venezuela, to succeed Manso. On the ap- pointment of Nicolas Ramos, 12 Feb., 1588, fifth Bishop of San Juan, the diocese was further extended to embrace the Island of Trinidad, and that tract of mainland in Venezuela which comprises Cumana and the region between the Amazon and the I'pper Ori- noco reaching almost to the present city of Bogota. Gradually the various islands were severed from the Spanish Crown and were made independent of the See of San Juan, which, on the erection of the Diocese of Guyana in Venezuela (1791), was restricted wholly to the limits of the Island of Porto Rico. At present the two small islands of Vieques and Culebra (the latter now a United States naval station) remain part of the See of Porto Rico. Over this ancient diocese, now within the territory of the United States, fifty prelates have ruled, several of whom were born in the New World, one in the city of San Juan itself, Arizmendi, co-founder of the conciliar seminary, who died on one of the arduous visitations of his diocese.
The first church was erected in 1511 at Caparra, and by order of King Ferdinand was dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The edifice was a temporary structure, which fell into ruin on the transfer of the capital. In 1512 a like structure was erected for the inhabitants on the southern coast at a point known as San Ger-
