INSTRUCTIONS TO COMMISSARY
OF THE INQUISITION
Instructions which the person who is or in future will be the commissary of the Holy Office in the city and bishopric of Manila and the Phelipinas Islands of the West,[1] must mark and observe, in order better to fulfil the office and trust which he holds.
1. For this office shall always be chosen persons who are thoroughly competent and well approved—whose purity of family descent, and exemplary life and habits, have been previously ascertained through written information. Besides this, confidence is placed in their prudence, moderation, and temperance, which qualities will enable them to exercise aright the trust conferred upon them, and they will exercise it, for the public good, for the better transaction of business, and not for any private ends. Above all, it behooves them, and they are earnestly charged, not to employ the name and title of the Holy Office for avenging individual wrongs, or for the intimida-
- ↑ Fray Santa Inés says (Crónica, i, p. 16) that the use of this phrase (Spanish, Islas del Poniente) arose among Spanish traders—partly because, to reach the Philippines, they followed the course of the sun westward from Spain; and partly to sustain the contention that those islands were "in the demarcation of Castilla, or the Western Indias, and not in that of Portugal, or Oriental India."
