The question of tithes, which had occasioned the unseemly dispute between the church dignitaries of Puebla and the society of Jesus, had been a source of contention for years before. As early as 1624 complaints were filed in the India Council against the different orders, demanding the payment of tithes from all the produce of plantations and increase of stock. The claim was made by the royal fiscal and supported by the secular church, based on the obligation of the crown to provide, if necessary, the means for the performance of divine service. On the other hand the religious orders pleaded their statutes and fueros, the validity of which was disputed on the ground of the cession of the tithes to the crown.[1] The first judgment was given in 1655 in favor of the fiscal; both parties appealed, the fiscal demanding that the tithes he collected at an earlier date than the one provided in the judgment, and the orders, among whom the Jesuits were most conspicuous, clamoring for a transfer of the law-suit to the holy see.
On the 16th of June 1657 the judgment was ratified by a new decision, ordering their payment after that date to the king or the secular church. All the orders submitted, except the Jesuits, who presented protests to the sovereign, but without avail. On November 4, 1658, and December 31, 1662, orders were trans-
- ↑ Pope Alexander VI. by a bull of Nov. 16, 1501, made a donation of all the tithes to the crown of Spain, in remuneration for the expenses connected with the conquest of the American colonies. Diezmos de Ind., no. 4, 5-6. A royal cédula of June 12, 1625, ordered that all bulls issued by the holy see to evade the payment of tithes, and sent to New Spain without the king's permission, be collected and forwarded to the India Council. Montemayor, Svmarios, 49.
counterbalanced by the prejudiced statements of Alegre, gives doubtless the best means to arrive at an impartial conclusion. Still the latter authority, in his Hist. Comp. Jesus, ii. 274-356, passim, has almost been implicitly followed by Bustamante, in Cavo, Tres Siglos, ii. 20-33, Ribera, Gobernantes, i. 144—51, and Sosa, Episcop. Mex., 83-90. Lorenzana, in Concilios Prov., 1555-65, 219, 251-69, as is natural, defends the policy of his predecessor, of whom he makes a glowing panegyric. So does Touron, a Dominican friar, in his Hist. Gen. Amérique, vii. 316-86, viii. 1-100, passim. Vetancurt and Gonzalez Dávila, who lived at the time of the dispute, pass it by in silence, but otherwise praise the saintly character of the bishop. Zamacois, in Hist. Méj., v. 336-47, 349-50, is unusually reticent in assigning the causes which led to the dispute, and also abrupt in speaking of its conclusion.
