The first employment of Don Sabiniano Manrique de Lara in the beginning of his government, was to appoint the brave Francisco de Esteybar governor of the forts of Ternate, [84] and the commander Don Francisco de Atienza of those of Zamboanga, for the credit of the arms of España against the Dutch and against the king of Mindanao, Cachil Corralat. He sent Father Magino Sola, of the Society of Jesus, to the city of Macan as his ambassador, to make a treaty of commerce and trade. [85] He set a galleon upon the stocks, but he was unable to do as his great zeal wished because the royal treasury was exhausted by the lack of supplies from Nueva España, and because the trading galleons, which communicate vital strength to all these islands, had put back so many times.
[The people of Manila recognize that the evils that have been visited upon them are due to their sins, and accordingly an appeal is made to the pope, Innocent X. The latter absolves them from all the censures and interdicts they may have incurred, and concedes them plenary indulgence and absolution for their sins; "and he blessed the land, and ordered the archbishop to perform in public the ceremony of the solemn benediction." The archbishop, who has brought that despatch with him, sets the twenty-second of March for those ceremonies; and before that date a great religious fervor sweeps through the city and its suburbs. "On the Sunday assigned, the mass was chanted in the cathedral before the holy sacrament, and the archbishop preached a learned and fervent sermon, such as the season demanded--which was afterward printed, as it was worth being published to all the world." In the afternoon, the blessing of the land and the benediction in the name of the pope follow. At the governor's request, the archbishop also blesses the "fatal gate called Puerta de los Almacenes ('the gate of the magazines'), through which Don Fray Hernando Guerrero had gone into exile." The governor lives in great harmony for the ten years of his service in the Philippines.]
The archbishop tries to visit the missions of the religious, but suspends that effort, and builds the cathedral of Manila.
The archbishop, Don Miguel Millán y Poblete, came here with the firm determination to pursue the plans of Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, bishop of La Puebla de los Ángeles, who had consecrated him. Those plans had caused great disturbances in Nueva España because of their novelty, and had divided that country into the two divisions of Palafoxistas and Palancas, [86] who were no less mischievous than the Guelphs and Ghibelines in the time of Federico Barbarroja [i.e., Frederick Barbarossa] when determinations issued forth to combat with understandings. Don Juan de Palafox tried to reduce the ministries of the missions (which the orders had possessed in Nueva España since the conquest) to regularly-appointed curacies with canonical institution and collation, so that they could be administered by ordinary jurisdiction, to the suppression of the delegated jurisdiction. This was done in order that the ecclesiastical hierarchy might be one whole in its proportionate parts; and that the episcopal dignity might possess entire dominion over the shepherds of its sheep, by visiting them and sitting in judgment on their excesses in the office of parish priests, which they exercised by virtue of the concession of St. Pius V and other worthy pontiffs. His great perseverance obtained that in the form established at present among the orders, who desired to retain some ministries of the missions--leaving others, because that subjection to the bishops did not seem to them to be in harmony with the institutes of the orders. I shall not mention the disturbances and scandals that the common enemy of souls compassed during that time for the ruin of many--which filled the world with gloom, and gave perfidious heretics the opportunity to blaspheme against the Catholic priests--for they are very well known.